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Sharon Kinne
American woman convicted of two murders From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sharon Kinne (born Sharon Elizabeth Hall; November 30, 1939 – January 21, 2022), also known as Jeanette Pugliese and La Pistolera in Mexico, and Diedra Grace "Dee" Glabus (later Diedra Ell) in Canada, was an American murderer, suspected serial killer and prison escapee who was convicted in Mexico for one murder and is suspected of two others in the United States, one of which she was acquitted for at trial. Kinne was the subject of the longest outstanding arrest warrant for murder in the history of Kansas City, Missouri, and one of the longest outstanding felony warrants in U.S. history. In January 2025, it was announced that she had been living in the small Canadian town of Taber, Alberta, from approximately 1973 until her death in 2022.[1]
On March 19, 1960, Sharon's first husband, James Kinne, was found shot in the head in their bedroom. Sharon claimed that their two-year-old daughter, who had often been allowed to play with James' guns, had accidentally shot him; police were initially unable to disprove her story. Then, on May 27, the body of 23-year-old Patricia Jones, a local file clerk, was found by Sharon and a boyfriend in a secluded area. Investigators found that Jones had been the wife of another of Sharon's boyfriends, who had tried to break off their affair shortly before Jones went missing. When Sharon admitted to having been the last person to speak to Jones, she was charged with her murder and, upon further investigation of his death, that of James.
Sharon went to trial for Jones' murder in June 1961 and was acquitted. A January 1962 trial for James' murder ended in conviction and a sentence of life imprisonment, but the verdict was overturned because of procedural irregularities. The case went to a second trial, which ended within days in a mistrial. A third trial ended in a hung jury in July 1964. Sharon was released on bond following the third trial and subsequently traveled to Mexico before a scheduled fourth trial could be held in October 1964.
In Mexico, Sharon, claiming to have been acting in self-defense, killed a Mexican-born American citizen named Francisco Paredes Ordoñez, who was shot in the back. An employee of the hotel in which the shooting occurred, responding to the sound of gunshots, was also wounded but survived. Investigation into the shootings showed that Ordoñez was shot with the same weapon that killed Jones. Sharon was convicted of the Ordoñez killing in October 1965 and sentenced to ten years in prison, later lengthened to thirteen years after judicial review. She escaped from prison in Iztapalapa during a blackout in December 1969.
Sharon's whereabouts remained unknown for over fifty years until January 2025, when U.S. authorities confirmed she had been living in Canada under the name "Diedra Glabus" between approximately 1973 and her death in 2022, at age 82. While her case is officially closed, authorities still seek information about her movements after 1969.
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Early life and marriage
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Sharon Kinne was born Sharon Elizabeth Hall[2][3] on November 30, 1939,[4] in Independence, Missouri, to Eugene and Doris Hall.[5] The family were devout members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now known as the Community of Christ), a denomination in the Latter-day Saint movement. Sharon's father worked in a steel mill and her mother was a homemaker. At some point her father was injured in a work accident and had to go on disability, resulting in him falling into depression and becoming an alcoholic. Her mother was emotionally distant and did not care for her daughter. Friends later recalled Sharon as an "adventurous" child who liked exploring unusual spots around town.
When Sharon was in junior high school, her parents moved the family to Washington State but returned to Independence less than a year later, when she was aged 15. An unconfirmed rumor held that the family had left town to escape social backlash after fourteen-year-old Sharon had married a boy who was subsequently killed in a car accident. As a teenager, Sharon was remembered as withdrawn and taciturn; she had a number of pimples on her face and was bullied for this reason.[6] In the summer of 1956, at age 16, Sharon met 22-year-old James Kinne, a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), while attending a church function. The couple dated regularly until James returned to BYU that fall. Most of the girls James knew were Mormons who were opposed to extramarital sex, but Sharon's openness and aggressiveness impressed him.[7]
Sharon was convinced that James had good career prospects that could allow her to leave Independence and afford her an affluent lifestyle.[7][8] To continue their relationship, she wrote a letter to James claiming that she was pregnant by him. James took leave from BYU and returned to Independence, where the two married on October 18, 1956. On her marriage license she added two years to her age to make it look like she was aged 18; she also listed herself as a widow.[9] The new couple held a second, more formal wedding the following year at the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, after Sharon had completed the process of joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Sharon was offended that very few people showed up at the wedding, even though LDS Church doctrine disapproved of shotgun marriages. She wanted yet another wedding ceremony in Las Vegas, but James refused.[7]
After their wedding, the Kinnes moved to Provo, Utah. James resumed his studies at BYU but put them on hold again at the end of 1956's fall semester. In the meantime, Sharon was unhappy with the couple's accommodations in Provo and felt that James was too preoccupied with college to spend time with her. The couple soon moved back to Independence and lived in a rental unit next to James's parents, Haggart and Kattie Kinne. Sharon feuded with her in-laws, particularly Haggart, as she disliked their strict religious beliefs; Kattie attempted to seek common ground with Sharon and act as a surrogate mother figure. At the start of 1957, Sharon realized that she could not keep up her fake pregnancy and told James that she had miscarried. However, she became pregnant for real a few weeks later, and the couple's daughter Danna arrived the following October. Sharon adored the baby and seemed devoted to motherhood, but it was not long before she fell back into her old behavior.[7]
Although James had been hired by Bendix Aviation as an electrical engineer, his salary alone was not enough to support Sharon's extravagant spending habits. Sharon subsequently worked numerous jobs babysitting, as a secretary, and at a print shop, never staying in one job for long as she became bored quickly. Any money she earned was spent strictly on herself and did not go to the family budget, but she still continued to charge items to James' accounts. James began working a second shift at Bendix that made him absent from home most of the time, giving Sharon ample opportunity to seek the comforts of other men. James was annoyed at how Sharon was never around, but mostly because she neglected her housekeeping duties and left the kids to be mostly cared for by babysitters.[10]
One year after the birth of their second child, a son named Troy, the Kinnes purchased a ranch home at East 26th Terrace Street, Independence. By this point Sharon was carrying on a regular extramarital affair with a friend from high school, John Boldizs.[note 1][7] James suspected his wife's infidelity, but his parents could not offer any advice except to fix his marriage for the sake of their children.[3][10] James broached the idea of divorce to Sharon herself, who accepted the idea but offered James a series of conditions he found absurd, demanding possession of their house, $1,000 per month in alimony and custody of Danna while he kept Troy.[7] Sharon, too, was thinking about ways out of the marriage; according to Boldizs, she once offered him $1,000 to kill her husband,[13] or find someone who would,[14] although he later claimed that she may have been joking.[15]
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1960 deaths
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James Kinne
On March 19, Sharon placed a frantic call to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office telling them that her husband had had a heart attack. When deputies arrived at the house, they instead found James laying on the bed with a gunshot wound to the back of his head, his High Standard .22 Pistol nearby.[10] James was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.[16] Sharon claimed she heard two-year-old Danna asking, "How does this work, Daddy?" followed by a gunshot. She went into the bedroom to find James on the bed and Danna standing nearby.[17]
James' autopsy found that the bullet had entered the back of his head, passed through the brain and came to rest just behind the skin between the nose and right eye; he could not have fired the shot himself, ruling out the possibility of suicide. Police were unable to recover any fingerprints from the well-oiled grip of the pistol,[8] and a paraffin test for gunshot residue was not performed on either Danna or Sharon, supposedly because the test was unreliable.[17] Multiple people, including family and neighbors, told investigators that James had often allowed Danna to play with his firearms.[18] Police performed a test where they gave Danna a disabled pistol to play with, finding that she was able to pull the trigger and activate the safety. No attempt was made to question the little girl about if she had indeed shot her father. With no evidence to the contrary, investigators ruled the case an accidental homicide.[11]
The pistol that killed James was taken into police custody and never returned to Sharon,[19] despite her efforts to reclaim it;[20] she later had a male friend secretly buy her a .22 caliber automatic pistol. When the friend told Sharon that he had registered the gun in her name, she requested that he re-register it under a name other than hers.[21]
With James buried and the investigation into his death closed, Sharon collected on his life insurance policies, valued at about US$29,000 (US$230,000 in present day).[13]
Patricia Jones
Patricia Jones, born Patricia Clements, was born on May 14, 1937, one of six children born to Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Clements of St. Joseph, Missouri.[22] After graduating from Benton High School in 1955, she married Walter T. Jones Jr., her high school sweetheart.[11] Walter enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after their marriage, and the couple relocated to the West Coast during Walter's service. After he received his discharge, the couple returned to Missouri and settled in Independence, where they had two children.[23] By 1960, almost five years into the marriage, Patricia was working as a file clerk for the Internal Revenue Service while her husband worked as a car salesman at Rudy Fick Ford in Kansas City.[11]
The Jones' marriage was in frequent turmoil over Walter's frequent infidelities, but Patricia was reluctant to leave him. On April 18, Sharon pulled into Walter's car dealership to order repairs on the air conditioning unit on James's 1954 Nash. Instead, Walter talked Sharon into trading the Nash for a new Ford Thunderbird, a model that Sharon had long wanted to buy but James had refused.[3] Sharon and Walter began an affair shortly thereafter.[16] Sharon viewed Walter as a prospect for a second husband, but he was uninterested in leaving Patricia.[3][23] When he declined to join Sharon on a trip to visit relatives in Washington State in May, she reluctantly went with her brother Eugene instead. On May 25, Sharon told Walter that she was pregnant with his child. Instead of agreeing to leave his wife and marry her like she had hoped, Walter's response was to cut off all contact, afraid that Patricia would carry through with prior threats to divorce him and take their children.[3][24]
Walter claimed that on the morning of May 26, he and Patricia had an argument and the two both departed to go to their respective jobs. According to Sharon's later testimony, on that afternoon, she contacted Patricia at her office[25] and told her that Walter was having an affair with Sharon's (fictitious) sister.[26] The two women met that evening to discuss the matter further before Sharon claimed to have dropped off Patricia near the Jones residence.[3]
After Patricia failed to return home that evening, Walter filed a missing persons report with police the next day[16] and began calling people he thought might have seen his wife. He got a lead when he spoke to friends of Patricia's who carpooled to work with her. They told him that Patricia had reported receiving a phone call that day from an unnamed woman who wanted to meet with her. She had asked the carpool driver to drop her off at a street corner in Independence, which he had done. There, Patricia's friends saw a woman who wore a head scarf and sunglasses, waiting behind the wheel of a 1958 Dodge. The occupants of the carpool did not recognize the woman but nevertheless provided a description to Walter.[26] His suspicions aroused, Walter phoned Sharon and asked if she had seen or spoken to his wife.[26] Sharon allowed that she had, indeed, seen Patricia that day; she had met her to inform her about their affair.[16] According to Sharon, she last saw Patricia where she dropped her off near the Jones residence, speaking to an unknown man in a green 1957 Ford.[20]
Based on her admission over the phone, Walter met with Sharon late Friday evening and insisted she give him more details about where his wife was; he later admitted to going so far as to hold a key to her throat threateningly.[25] Sharon's response was, after leaving Walter, to call Boldizs and ask him to help her search for Patricia. Shortly before midnight, within hours of her meeting with Walter, Sharon and Boldizs found the body of a woman in a secluded area[26][note 2] approximately one mile outside of Independence.[28] According to Boldizs, he had been the one to suggest searching the area in which they encountered the body; it was a spot to which they had often gone on dates before. Boldizs said that the car's headlights illuminated a female laying on the ground, whom he initially assumed was asleep. When they approached, he realized that the woman was dead and had been shot four times.[20]
The body—wearing white shoes, pantyhose, a yellow skirt and a black sweater—was soon identified as Patricia Jones.[20] She had been shot four times by a .22 caliber pistol.[19] Although the fatal wound was a shot to her head, entering near her mouth on an upward trajectory, she also had one through-and-through bullet wound to her abdomen and two penetrating gunshot wounds to her shoulders on a downward trajectory through her body.[26] Powder burns on the hemline of her skirt, which had been pulled up to her waist,[20] indicated that the gun had been fired from close range at least once. Although Patricia's clothing was in disarray, there was no indication of sexual assault and no blood was found at the scene, suggesting that she was killed elsewhere and her body dumped where it was found. Since robbery or rape were ruled out as motives for the murder, it was apparent that the only explanation could be that someone had a grudge against her.[11] Initial reports and investigation placed Patricia's time of death at approximately 9 p.m. on May 27.[29] She was buried on May 31.[22]
Arrest and investigation
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Investigators immediately began to question Sharon, Walter and Boldizs. All three were questioned on May 28.[20] Walter and Boldizs both gave written statements admitting that they had dated Sharon,[19] and both agreed to lie detector tests; Sharon gave an oral statement to police but declined to sign a written one[20] or take a lie detector test on the grounds that an innocent person had no need to do that.[30] She was questioned again on the morning of May 30,[26] and Boldizs on May 31.[30] The scheduled lie detector tests for the two men were performed on June 1, and both men were deemed to have been truthful in their statements.[31] Sharon's brother Eugene was also interviewed on May 31, but declined to answer questions.[21]
While police questioned potential suspects and witnesses, other investigators focused on processing the crime scene. Repeated[32] attempts were made to find the murder weapon and the bullet that had passed through Patricia's body, including the sifting of dirt where the body was found[26] and the deployment of a troop of Boy Scouts.[31] On June 2, a .22 caliber rifle slug was found six inches under the ground where Patricia's body had been found, providing evidence that at least some of her wounds had been sustained at that location. Although investigators went so far as to drag the bottom of nearby bodies of water, the gun that had shot Patricia—assumed to be a .22 caliber pistol—could not be found.[32]
Buildings near the crime scene were also searched for blood and gunshot evidence, in accordance with police's theory that Patricia had been attacked elsewhere and then transported outdoors.[22] A "white, powdery substance"[22] found in her hair was initially believed to be trace evidence of some other crime scene area—an idea that fueled the search of nearby buildings—but was later determined to be fly eggs. An abandoned barn across the street from the lover's lane was found to have some evidence in it; a wooden plank found inside had bullet holes and powder burns, suggesting Patricia could have been killed here although nothing else of interest was found. The cause of death had indisputably been the shot to her head; the abdominal wound was a postmortem injury and appeared to have been done to obfuscate the investigation into her death.[31]
Sharon was arrested at her home for Patricia's murder around 11 p.m. on May 31,[5] the same night as Patricia's funeral.[33] The same day, the Jackson County sheriff requested that prosecutors consider a second charge of murder, this one for the death of James Kinne.[21] Sharon's lawyers, Alex Peebles and Martha Sperry Hickman, filed a writ of habeas corpus with the court the next morning, and a hearing that afternoon resulted in her release on US$20,000 bail while she awaited a preliminary hearing originally scheduled for June 16. Walter was also brought in for a second round of questioning where he admitted that the original story he told police had bent the truth a little; he had not called Sharon on the phone like he originally claimed but instead went to her house and tried to threaten her into divulging his wife's whereabouts.[21]
Police were able to rule out the .22 caliber pistol that had killed James as the murder weapon in Patricia's death; that gun was still in the possession of the sheriff's office. However, a man who worked with Sharon admitted to having secretly purchased a new .22 caliber pistol at her request in the beginning of May. Police were unable to locate the gun in question when they searched her house, although they did find an empty box that they believed had once held a gun.[19] Sharon at first claimed to investigators that she had lost the gun on a trip to Washington State, then stated simply that the gun had disappeared.[34] Walter was taken into custody on June 2 as a material witness to the case and was freed the same day on US$2,000 bond.[34]
Patricia's initial autopsy was criticized by police and prosecutors, who felt that the recovery of bullets and a testing of stomach contents should have been done. Dr. Hugh Owens, who had performed the autopsy, inexplicably sent the body to be embalmed before it could be autopsied and then did little outside of extracting the bullet from Patricia's head. The .22 round had entered above the mouth and went in an upward trajectory through the brain before impacting the rear of the skull; it was too badly deformed to be useful as evidence. Owens also made no attempt to examine the stomach contents, which he said "would have been too messy," or to extract the bullets from her neck; he had a history of bungled autopsies.[9] With Walter's consent, Patricia's body was exhumed on June 17 for a more thorough autopsy performed by Dr. Charles Wheeler. Wheeler removed the two bullets from the neck, confirmed that Patricia was not raped and that her last meal had consisted of pickles and salami, which correlated her co-workers' recollection of her lunch on May 26. He also established the order in which each bullet had been fired into Patricia's body.[35]
Sharon's arraignment on July 11 resulted in denial of bail, but the Missouri Court of Appeals struck down the ruling days later based on the prosecution's reliance on circumstantial evidence. She was freed on US$24,000 (worth US$188,976 in 2013 dollars) bond on July 18.[36] After a delay in her trial date due to her advanced pregnancy, Sharon gave birth to a daughter she named Marla Christine on January 16, 1961.[10]
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Trials for 1960 murders
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Trial in the death of Patricia Jones (1961)
Now that Sharon was charged in her husband's death, her insurance company cut off her life insurance payouts. She was forced to sell her Thunderbird and the family home, as her own income was not enough to maintain her lifestyle. Although charged with both murders, Sharon was tried separately for the two crimes. Her trial for Patricia Jones' murder began in mid-June 1961, with jury selection beginning on or about June 13[37] and the trial commencing days later[38] with an all-male jury.[39]
Opening arguments by both prosecution and defense set up cases based on purported times of death. Basing their assertion on pathologist-given testimony that Patricia had died about six hours after she ate lunch on May 26,[40] the prosecution claimed that Jones had died more than twenty-four hours before Sharon and Boldizs found her body; defense attorneys argued that death had more likely occurred six to eight hours prior. The botched initial autopsy created numerous problems for the prosecution, as there were two different autopsy reports and the debacle had made it difficult to establish an exact time of death, had destroyed any hair or fiber evidence that had been on the body and prevented testing of her blood for drugs or chemicals.[38] Prosecutor J. Arnott Hill[41] cited testimony by Walter Jones and Chief of Detectives Lt. Harry Nesbitt as evidence of Sharon's motive for the crime: Nesbitt recalled statements by Sharon that she was afraid Walter was drifting away from her[note 3] despite the financial support she offered him, and Walter testified that Sharon had told him she was pregnant by him and he had thereafter attempted to end the relationship. Walter was not necessarily a sympathetic character as he admitted to cheating on Patricia and physically threatening Sharon while searching for the former.[39]
The prosecution was unable to firmly establish that Sharon owned or had once had the weapon that killed Patricia, though both Sharon's known pistol and the one that fired the bullets that killed Patricia were .22 caliber weapons. Sharon's gun had been a used weapon purchased in a private sale, but its original owner, a Trans World Airlines pilot named Roy Thrush, admitted to shooting it into a tree for target practice. When the bullets were extracted from the tree trunk, tests showed that they were not identifiable as having come from the weapon that killed Patricia.[42]
The prosecution rested its case on June 21[43] after calling twenty-seven witnesses.[44] Sharon's defense, which took less than two days and involved fourteen witnesses other than Sharon—who did not testify[44]—focused on breaking down the State's claims of motive and means, arguing that she had no reason to kill Patricia and that the pistol she was alleged to have owned had not been proven to be the murder weapon.[41]
After slightly over one and a half hours of deliberation,[note 4] the jury, citing "just too many loopholes" left in the prosecution's case, acquitted Sharon Kinne in the murder of Patricia Jones.[44] Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, juror Ogden Stephens asked Sharon for her autograph,[41] which she was photographed giving to him.[44] Sharon was returned to jail the same day to await trial for the killing of her husband.[3]
First trial in the death of James Kinne (1962)
Despite her acquittal in the Patricia Jones murder, Sharon remained charged for the murder of her husband, James Kinne. When jury selection began on January 8, 1962,[45] Hill announced that he did not intend to pursue the death penalty in the case.[46]
The prosecution's case rested largely on their contention that Sharon had been so interested in eliminating James that she had been willing to pay for his murder, supported by the grand jury testimony of Boldizs. Boldizs, though nominally a witness for the prosecution, weakened his testimony during the trial by claiming that Sharon's offer to pay him US$1,000 in return for James's murder could have been a joke, and Hill was forced to attack his own witness' credibility.[18] Further prosecution testimony alleged that the Kinnes' marriage had been on the verge of dissolution at the time of James' death, that Sharon's adultery had been a cause of this, and that Sharon had known that she would collect her husband's US$29,000 in life insurance policies only if she were still his wife.[17][18]
The defense, led by attorneys Hickman and James Patrick Quinn, focused on the circumstantial quality of the prosecution's evidence, noting that prior police investigation had determined James's death to be "obviously accidental"[18] and that the jury was obligated to assume innocence on the defendant's part no matter how unpleasant they found her moral character to be. The defense, too, attacked the reliability of Boldizs' testimony, calling him a "poor, mixed-up kid" who would "sign anything."[18] Sharon's attorneys also presented testimony from witnesses supporting the viability of the theory that Danna had accidentally shot her father, including statements that firearms had been regularly left within her reach at the family home, that she was able to pull the triggers on toy guns with stiffer trigger pulls than the weapon that caused James' death and that she had often been observed pretending to fire guns in play.[18]
The trial ended in conviction on January 11[47] after five and a half hours of deliberation.[3] In April of the same year, Sharon was formally sentenced to life in prison.[48] She began to serve her sentence in the Missouri Reformatory for Women.[49]
Later interviews with jurors from the trial revealed that "three or four ballots" had been taken before the "guilty" verdict was reached, beginning with the jury solidly divided and moving progressively toward unanimity for conviction. One juror told the Kansas City Star that Sharon's morals had not been considered at issue by the jury, and that she thought no juror had been aware of her previously being tried for the murder of Patricia Jones.[50] Despite the verdict, James' family continued to believe the best of their daughter-in-law, telling reporters on the day of the verdict, "[W]e can't find it in our hearts to say anything bad about her" and, "We still don't feel that she committed murder."[51] Sharon herself told reporters that she felt the verdict was a mistake, and that she regretted her previous enthusiasm for having a woman on the jury.[52]
The following week, Sharon's lawyers requested that she be released on bond, supported by a community petition signed by 132 supporters of her innocence. The motion was denied on the basis of first-degree murder not being a bailable offense; Judge Tom J. Stubbs also counseled Sharon's lawyers that he felt their involvement in such a petition at a time when a motion for bond was being considered was "highly improper."[53] A subsequent defense motion requested that the conviction be vacated because the jury had delivered its verdict based on "surmise and speculation" rather than "substantial evidence," listing a series of procedural errors that Sharon's counsel alleged had taken place before and during the trial; these included a juror taking "incomplete"[54] notes, disputes over Boldizs' testimony and an incorrect number of potential jurors being provided for selection.
The motion was denied by Judge Stubbs in April 1962, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which in March 1963 reversed the conviction[55] and ordered a new trial on the basis of Sharon's defense having been denied adequate peremptory challenges during jury selection in her trial.[56] Sharon was denied an opportunity for bail in May 1963,[55] but that ruling was overturned in July and she was released on $25,000 bond, posted by her brother Eugene.[49]
The State's request that the Missouri Supreme Court re-consider its position on Sharon's conviction was granted, but in October 1963 that hearing resulted in further grounds being found for a new trial, this time on the basis of the prosecutor having been allowed to cross-examine a prosecution witness.[15] A second request for a re-hearing on the validity of the conviction was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court.[57] Sharon and her children moved in with her mother and awaited the start of her new trial.[3]
Second trial in the death of James Kinne (1964)
Sharon's second trial for the death of James Kinne began on March 23, 1964. As jury selection got underway that day, the public was initially barred from the proceedings, but the restriction was soon loosened and journalists were allowed into the courtroom.[58] An unusually long jury selection process made the first day of the trial last fourteen hours, beginning at 9 a.m. and not ending until nearly midnight; Judge Paul Carver noted that due to the notoriety of the case, he had been forced to choose between sequestering the entire jury pool overnight or forcing the court into a long day. The eventual jury, all men, were immediately sequestered,[58] but days later,[59] a mistrial was declared after it emerged that a law partner of prosecutor Lawrence Gepford had once been retained by one of the jurors.[60]
Third trial in the death of James Kinne (1964)
Sharon's third trial, originally scheduled to begin early in June 1964,[60] began instead on June 29.[61] Assistant prosecutor Donald L. Mason declared at jury selection that he intended to death-qualify the jury,[60] a process in which a prosecutor peremptorily challenges any juror who automatically opposes the death penalty, and jury selection once again took more than twelve hours in one day.[59] Boldizs' testimony in this trial remained contradictory as to whether he believed Sharon's US$1,000 offer to have James killed had been intended seriously, but he added this time that after James' death, Sharon had asked that Boldizs not tell authorities about her offer.[14]
A new witness, a female acquaintance of Sharon's, testified that she had once joked that the woman should "get rid of [the woman's] old man like [Sharon] did," but defense cross-examination highlighted inconsistencies between this testimony and a similar quote the woman had offered at a previous deposition.[14] For the first time at any of her trials, Sharon took the stand on the last day of this trial to issue a categorical denial of all charges.[62] The all-male[59] jury deadlocked seven-to-five in favor of acquittal in this trial, resulting in a second mistrial.[62]
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Killing of Francisco Paredes Ordoñez
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A fourth trial was scheduled for October 1964; however, in September, Sharon, still free on her $25,000 bond, traveled to Mexico with an alleged lover, Francis Samuel Pugliese,[note 5][66] leaving her children with James' father and traveling as Pugliese's wife under the name "Jeanette Pugliese."[note 6] The couple later said that they had gone to Mexico to get married.[67] Under the legal terms of her bail, Sharon was permitted to leave the country,[68] but her contract with the company that posted her bond prohibited her from leaving Missouri without written permission from the company's agents.[69]
After crossing the border, Sharon and Pugliese registered at a local hotel, Hotel Gin, again as husband and wife.[70] Sharon, saying that she felt unsafe in the foreign country, purchased a pistol—which meant that the couple now possessed multiple guns, having brought one or two with them from the U.S.[71]
On the night of September 18, Sharon left the hotel without Pugliese, either to acquire money because the couple was running low[65] or to get medicine she required.[3] She encountered Francisco Paredes Ordoñez, a Mexican-born American citizen,[64] at a bar and accompanied him back to his room at Hotel La Vada.[3] According to her account, Sharon went with Ordoñez to see photographs he offered to show her,[64] but he soon began to make unwelcome sexual advances and she was forced to fire her gun at him in an attempt to protect herself.[63]
Sharon later maintained that she had had no intention of harming or killing Ordoñez, and had intended only to frighten him, but her bullets struck him in the chest and killed him.[63] Responding to the sound of gunfire, hotel employee Enrique Martinez Rueda[72] entered the room. Sharon fired again and hit Rueda in the shoulder. Wounded, Rueda fled the room, locking Sharon inside, and called the police.[3]
Police, rejecting Sharon's story, theorized that she had gone out that evening intending robbery, and had chosen Ordoñez as her victim. When he resisted her orders to give her his money, police believed, Sharon had shot him.[65]
Arrest, investigation, and trial
Police responding to Hotel La Vada arrested Sharon on charges of homicide and assault with a deadly weapon.[72] She maintained that she had not intended to harm Ordoñez, and that she had fired her weapon at Rueda because she feared that he, too, was coming to attack her. Police searched her purse, finding a gun and fifty cartridges, and then the couple's room at Hotel Gin, where they found two more guns and another supply of cartridges.[71]
Authorities took Pugliese into custody at Hotel Gin,[64] initially holding him without charge[73] and later filing charges of entering the country illegally and carrying an unlicensed gun.[74] The gun found in the couple's room that night was later proven through ballistics to be the same gun that killed Patricia Jones in 1960,[75][76] but because Sharon had already been acquitted of that crime, she could not be charged again for it based on the new evidence.[77]
Pugliese was held at the Palacio de Lecumberri in Mexico City, while Sharon was initially placed in a women's prison[78] before being transferred to Lecumberri for her trial.[3] The couple were arraigned on September 26.[74] The following month, Sharon's Mexican attorney, Higinio Lara, filed a recurso de amparo, similar to a writ of habeas corpus, asserting that the Mexican government was violating her constitutional rights by holding her for a shooting committed in self-defense.[78] The request was denied and both Sharon and Pugliese were tried in the summer of 1965.[79]
Pugliese, cleared of the charges against him, was deported to the U.S., but Sharon was convicted on October 18 of the homicide of Ordoñez.[3] Despite rumors that she would receive probation and be deported like Pugliese,[76] she was instead sentenced to a ten-year prison term for the murder.[79] When she was officially notified of the sentence the next day, she asserted that she would appeal her conviction.[80] The appeal, rather than overturning her sentence, lengthened it.[81] The three-man superior court that heard the case overturned one aspect of her conviction—charges of attempted robbery—but upheld her murder conviction and increased her sentence to thirteen years, saying that her original sentence of ten years had been too lenient.[2]
Sharon was returned to the women's prison to serve her sentence.[75] There, she was nicknamed "La Pistolera" ("the gunfighter"),[8] a nickname subsequently adopted by the Mexican press.[82]
Escape
On December 7, 1969, Sharon was not present for a routine 5 p.m. roll-call at the Iztapalapan prison where she was serving her sentence. Her absence was not officially noted until she also failed to show up at a second roll-call later that evening. The news of her escape was not reported to Mexico City police until 2 p.m. the following morning.[83] A manhunt was then organized, initially focusing on the northern Mexican states[84] due to authorities' belief that Sharon may have been heading for the last known location of a former inmate to whom she had grown close while they were in prison together.[83]
The search also encompassed country-wide transport hubs and eventually circled back to the Mexico City area.[85] U.S. authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), were also alerted of Mexican authorities' belief that Sharon may have been attempting to work her way back into her native country, but the FBI noted that it was unlikely to have jurisdiction in the case.[86]
Initial police speculation was that Sharon had bribed guards to look the other way while she escaped the prison—an unusual blackout had been reported at the prison on the evening of and at the approximate time of her escape. Investigation showed that a door that should have been locked had been left unsecured.[83] Further questioning of prison guards and administration showed that oversight at the prison was generally lax and that it was staffed by fewer guards than it should have been.[87]
News reports of the time presented numerous theories about Sharon's escape, including that she had bribed prison guards,[83] that she may have enlisted the help of a supposed boyfriend who was a Mexico City policeman,[85] that her mother had been involved in the escape plan,[87] that a former Mexican secret service agent had assisted in the escape[88] and that Sharon may have disguised herself as a man to effect her escape.[89] A more recent theory incorrectly speculated that Ordoñez' family had helped her escape and then killed her.[90]
The intensive manhunt for Sharon was short-lived. By December 18, the Mexican secret service and the Mexico City district attorney's office were both reporting that they were no longer involved in searching for the escaped prisoner, while the federal district attorney was reporting that responsibility for the hunt belonged to the city district attorney's office. Investigators speculated that Sharon had already fled to Guatemala, mooting the purpose of a Mexican manhunt.[91] They noted that she was fluent in Spanish after her years in Mexican prison, and she could therefore "get along rather well" in nearly any Spanish-speaking area of the world.[89] Despite vowing to keep the case open and their investigation running until Sharon was back in custody, authorities were forced to admit by the end of December 1969 that they had run out of investigative leads to pursue.[89]
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Fugitive from justice
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Perspective
Sharon's arrest and conviction in Mexico had implications for the status of her Missouri legal entanglements. Because she was being held in Mexico on October 26, 1964—the scheduled date for her fourth trial in the murder of her husband—her US$25,000 bond was revoked on that date. Although the United Bond Insurance Company, which had posted the bond, argued that paperwork irregularities rendered the issuance of her bail illegal, the court ordered the company to forfeit the bond.[92] Sharon was reportedly concerned about the monetary implications of this forfeiture: "I could always use the money"; the Altus, Oklahoma, Times-Democrat quoted her as saying: "I don't intend to spend all my life in jail."[93]
A US$30,000 supersedeas bond was issued in August 1965 as the United Bond Insurance Company continued to dispute the payment of Sharon's original US$25,000 bond. The supersedeas bond allowed the company to defer payment of the US$25,000 bond until a ruling on the matter was handed down by the Missouri Supreme Court,[94] but when that court upheld the bond's forfeiture, the US$25,000 was paid to the State of Missouri in October 1965.[95] The United Bond Insurance Company later filed suit against Sharon's family to recover the cost of the bail, lawyer's fees and manhunt for Sharon after her escape.[69]
Shortly before her scheduled Missouri trial date, Sharon's Missouri counsel filed a motion to change the venue of any eventual fourth trial in the death of James Kinne, claiming that news coverage of the case had so prejudiced residents of Jackson County against Sharon that it would be impossible for her to get a fair trial there.[96]
When Sharon failed to appear for the fourth trial, a warrant was issued for her arrest in October 1964. It was still outstanding at the time of her death, making it the oldest outstanding murder warrant known to exist in the Kansas City area.[77] Sharon's status in the Mexican system also remained outstanding, though authorities pointed out that at the time of her escape, jailbreak was not a crime under Mexican law; if she were re-captured there, she would have only had to serve out the remainder of her outstanding sentence.[97]
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Posthumous discovery
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In December 2023, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas City Police Department both received an anonymous tip that Sharon had been living in the town of Taber, Alberta, Canada, approximately 121 miles (195 km) southeast of Calgary, under the alias of "Diedra Glabus," and that she had died in January 2022.[1]
Under Canadian law, police agencies are allowed to obtain fingerprints from deceased persons with criminal records. However, because "Diedra" had no such record, Canadian police were unable to do so. However, the local funeral home which had handled her remains provided a service preserving fingerprints as mementos for loved ones, which were processed through a company coincidentally based in Independence, Missouri—the very jurisdiction where Sharon's criminal warrants remained in effect. Jackson County investigators subsequently secured a warrant to obtain "Diedra's" fingerprints, which were conclusively matched to Sharon's by the FBI.[98] U.S. authorities publicly announced these findings on January 17, 2025.[99]
Life in Canada
Little is known about all of Sharon's movements following her prison escape. She married her second husband, James Thomas Glabus, in Los Angeles, California, in February 1970, two months after her jailbreak in Mexico.[100] The couple relocated to Taber in 1973, where they operated a motel and, later, a real estate agency; advertisements for the latter business showing Sharon's picture were printed in local newspapers. In her later years, Sharon performed volunteer work, including serving as chairwoman for a daycare center steering committee, and was known for needlepoint artistry and playing bridge.[101]
On August 11, 1979, at age 38, Glabus, a diabetic and an alcoholic, fell into a diabetic coma and died from complications thereof;[1] it was reported at the time that Glabus did not have any prior history of diabetic comas.[102] Glabus had been denied admittance to Taber General Hospital twice in the two days leading up to his death, prompting a provincial court judge to later rule that hospitals should immediately discharge patients to make beds available in future cases.[102] Sharon was left out of Glabus' will, an omission she fought in court.[101]
Sharon later married her third husband, William "Willie" Ell, in March 1982. Ell died in on April 7, 2011, at age 79.[103] Sharon herself died of coronary artery disease on January 21, 2022, at age 82, with Alzheimer's disease being listed as a contributing factor on her death certificate.[1] Both her death certificate and her headstone falsely record 1940 as her year of birth. Sharon left behind one son from her marriage to Glabus in addition to her three children in the U.S.[104]
How Sharon was able to obtain a travel visa, identification and citizenship despite her status as a fugitive remains unknown. While the news of Sharon's death officially closed her case, as of 2025 authorities were still seeking details about her life after 1969.[1]
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Psychology and motivation
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In a segment of the Investigation Discovery series Deadly Women covering the case, author James Hays speculated that Sharon committed her first murder for monetary gain, hoping to cash in on James's life insurance policy, and that she began to derive pleasure from killing at that point. Former FBI profiler Candice DeLong supported this assertion, stating that Sharon was a sociopath, lacking in remorse and empathy, and therefore had no compunction about killing to get what she wanted.[8]
This idea was echoed by some of those involved in prosecuting Sharon.[10] Even those who believed in her guilt, however, said that she had a certain appeal, describing her as "rather attractive"[10] and admitting that they grew to like her.[6] The Mammoth Book of True Crime describes her as a relative rarity, a "pretty" criminal.[105]
In I'm Just an Ordinary Girl: The Sharon Kinne Story, Hays asserts that Sharon was inspired to kill her husband by a magazine article she read about Lillian Chastain, a Virginia woman who shot her husband during an argument and blamed the gunshot on the couple's two-year-old daughter.[106] Charges against Chastain were filed in February 1960, weeks before James's death.[107]
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See also
General:
Notes
- Or "Puglise", or "Puglishe", or "Publicet", as per previous note.
References
Bibliography
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