It has been awhile since Earl last graced
this blog with one of his columns, but he is back today. The cases he finds are
simply mind boggling. They also serve as story idea generators for the writers
among us. The case of Sharon Kinne is the subject of Earl’s guest post today.
HISTORY’S RICH WITH
MYSTERIES
When I
look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly
those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious
uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those
stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always
desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the
other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne
of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery.
SHARON KINNE – She
Killed Three and Got Away by Earl
Staggs
Sharon Elizabeth Hall was born in Independence, Missouri, in
1939. At the age of sixteen, she met twenty-two-year-old James Kinne. They
dated until James returned to college in Utah. Sharon then wrote a letter to
James telling him she was pregnant. James returned to Missouri, and they
married in October of 1956. She later claimed she miscarried the child which
brought about the marriage. She soon announced she was pregnant again, and
their daughter Danna was born in the fall of 1957.
Sharon, a free spender who wanted the finer things of
life, spent her days shopping and with other men. Before long, she was enjoying
a steady affair with John Boldizs, whom she had known in high school.
By 1960, James Kinne wanted to divorce Sharon because of
her spending habits and because he was sure she was being unfaithful. Sharon
also wanted out of the marriage, but she was smart enough to know she would be
better off financially as a widow than as a divorced wife. John Boldizs said
she offered him $1000 kill her husband. Later, he claimed he thought she may
have been kidding.
On March 19, 1960, Sharon reported she heard a gunshot. She
rushed into the bedroom where James had been sleeping to find him bleeding from
his head. Their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Danna, was on the bed holding
one of her father's guns, a .22 caliber pistol. Sharon called for an ambulance,
but James died before reaching the hospital.
Police were unable to recover fingerprints from the
pistol, and neither Sharon nor Danna were tested for gunshot residue. Several
family members said James often allowed his daughter to play with his guns.
Police conducted a test in which the child demonstrated she was able to pull
the trigger on the gun.
With no evidence to the contrary, investigators had no
choice but to rule James Kinne's death an accidental homicide. Sharon collected
about $29,000 in life insurance, equal to more than $200,000 in today's
dollars.
Sharon wanted the gun returned to her, but the police kept
it. She had a friend secretly buy her another .22 caliber pistol, but asked
that it not be registered in her name.
Sharon used some of her life insurance proceeds to buy a
Ford Thunderbird from Walter Jones, a salesman at a local dealership. The pair
soon began an affair. Sharon wanted Walter to be her second husband, but he
refused to leave his wife. When she told him she was pregnant with his child,
he ended the affair.
The next day, Walter filed a missing persons report when
his wife, Patricia, did not return home from work. He questioned his wife's
coworkers and learned Patricia had met with another woman immediately after
work. The description of the woman matched Sharon Kinne, and Walter confronted
her.
Sharon admitted to meeting with Patricia to tell her about
the affair. She told Walter she dropped Patricia off near her home after the
meeting.
After talking to Walter, Sharon called John Boldizs and
asked him to help her look for Patricia. Sharon and John found Patricia's body
in a secluded area outside of town where they had often gone on dates.
Patricia Jones had been shot four times with a .22 caliber
pistol. Investigators were not able to find the gun.
Sharon, Walter, and John were interrogated by police. The
two men admitted to dating Sharon, and both gave signed statements and took
polygraph tests. Sharon gave an oral statement but refused to sign a written
one or take a polygraph test.
Sharon was arrested for the murder of Patricia Jones on
May 31, 1960, the same date of Patricia's funeral. At the request of the county
sheriff, she was also charged with the murder of her husband, James. Sharon's
attorneys were successful in having her released on bond.
The pistol that had killed James was ruled out as the
weapon used in Patricia's death since that gun was still in police custody. The
friend who had purchased a new .22 caliber gun for Sharon admitted to doing so,
but Sharon claimed first that she had lost it on a trip out of state and later
that it had simply disappeared.
She had told the truth when she told Wayne Jones she was
pregnant. Her trial was delayed due to her advanced pregnancy. Sharon gave
birth to a daughter, Marla Christine, on January 16, 1961.
PATRICIA JONES MURDER TRIAL
Sharon was tried first for the murder of Patricia Jones.
After an all-male jury was seated, the trial began in mid-June 1961.
Across Missouri, Sharon Kinne became a household name. Extensive press coverage had made her more a
celebrity than a criminal. In his book, “I'm
just an ordinary girl: The Sharon Kinne Story,” author James C. Hays said:
“Sharon
had control of that courtroom. She had control of the jury. She had control of
the spectators. Everybody’s attention was focused on Sharon Kinne, even to the
point where on the second day after the trial started, Sharon came moseying in
late, fashionably late probably in her mind. The trial went on for about 10
days. The jury came back after deliberating only an hour and a half with a
verdict of not guilty. The courtroom erupted in cheers. Jurors came out of the
juror box and went over and got Sharon’s autograph. People in the audience came
and got Sharon’s autograph.”
The jury had decided the prosecution's case was not solid enough and
found Sharon not guilty. After the verdict, Sharon was photographed giving her
autograph to one of the jurors. She was returned to jail the same day to await
trial for killing her husband.
THREE TRIALS FOR THE MURDER OF JAMES KINNE
At the first trial in January 1962, Sharon was convicted of killing her
husband and received a sentence of life in prison. In March of 1963, the
Missouri Supreme Court overturned that conviction on a legal technicality. Sharon
was released on bond pending retrial.
The second trial ended in a mistrial.
The third trial ended with a hung jury in July 1964.
Sharon was again released on bail to await the fourth trial, scheduled
for October 1964. That trial never took place. By then, Sharon had traveled to
Mexico with a new boyfriend, Francis Puglise.
She left her children with James Kinne's father and traveled as
Jeannette Pugliese, pretending to be the wife of her traveling companion.
In Mexico, Sharon went out alone to a bar one evening in
September 1964 and met Francisco Parades Ordoñez, a Mexican-born American
citizen. According to Sharon, he invited her back to his hotel room to show her
some pictures. When he made sexual advances, she said she was forced to fire
her gun to protect herself. She claimed
she had no intention of killing him, but her bullets struck him in the chest,
and he died instantly. A hotel employee, Enrique Martinez Rueda, heard the shots and entered the
room to investigate. Sharon said she feared he was also going to harm her and
fired at him. Although injured, Rueda left the room, locked Sharon inside, and
called police.
The
local police rejected her story. They believed she hooked up with Ordonez with
the intenton of robbing him. When he resisted, she shot him. She was arrested
and charged with homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. In her purse, they
found a gun and fifty shells. They found two more guns and more shells in her
hotel room.
While in prison awaiting trial, she was given
the nickname "La Pistolera," Spanish for "the gunfighter."
The Mexican press picked up on it, and once again, Sharon received a great deal
of publicity.
At
their trial in the summer of 1965, Francis Puglise was cleared of charges and deported to the
United States. Sharon
was convicted of homicide and sentenced to ten years. She immmediately
appealed. A three-man superior court
reviewed her case and upheld the conviction. To Sharon's amazement, they also
decided her original sentence was too lenient and increased it from ten years
to thirteen.
Sharon
Kinne was too clever and slippery, however, to spend thirteen years in a
Mexican prison. On December 7, 1969, she escaped. How she pulled it off is
unclear. While Mexican auhorities conducted a country-wide search for her, several
theories arose, including:
. .
.she bribed prison guards.
. .
.the prison was understaffed and oversight was generally lax.
. . .a
new boyfriend who happened to be a Mexico City policeman arranged her escape.
. .
.Sharon disguised herself as a man and exited via a door carelessly left
unlocked.
. .
.the family of Francisco Ordoñez, the man she'd killed, arranged her escape and
then killed her.
Sharon
Kinne was never found and could still be out there somewhere in Mexico, the
United States, or some other country. She would be 78 years old now.
She
holds the distinction of being the subject of the longest currently outstanding
arrest warrant for murder in the history of Kansas City, Missouri, and one of
the longest outstanding felony warrants in American history.
Author James Hays felt Sharon was smart enough to do
something with her life besides murder. He said:
“She could’ve used her intelligence and used her wit. She could’ve been
a pioneer woman in politics or in academia or anything, but she chose to go the
other way around. She let greed, avarice, and promiscuity rule her life.”
All things considered, I'd say Sharon did whatever she wanted to do no matter what, and considering the small amount of time she spent behind bars, she came out way ahead on the scales of justice.
As further proof of that, when Mexican police searched her hotel room after her
arrest, they found a .22 pistol which later proved to be the one used in the
murder of Patricia Jones. In spite of this damning evidence, even if she were
to be found and apprehended, Sharon could not be charged again with Patricia's
murder. Since she was declared innocent of that crime before, she is protected
under the Double Jeopardy rule.
Earl Staggs ©2017
Texas
author Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER
and JUSTIFIED ACTION and
has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He
served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the
Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent
speaker at conferences and seminars.
He also
invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.
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