Full Transcript for Unsolved Midwest - Episode 19 - The Case of Sharon Kinne

2025. So let's get into her life. Sharon Kinney was born Sharon Elizabeth Hall. On November 30th, 1939, in Independence, Missouri, to Eugene and Doris Hall. Sharon's parents were devout members of the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ. And this is a domin denomination in the Latter-day Saints movement. When she was a junior in high school, Sharon's parents moved the family to Washington State. And by the age of 15, they had returned to Missouri. And in the summer of 1956, at 16, Sharon met James Kinney, a 22-year-old student at Brigham Young University, also known as BYU. The two met at a church function, and the couple started dating until James returned to BYU in the fall. Now, Sharon was on the hunt for a partner with the prospect of Who could take her away from independence? And she wrote a letter to James claiming that she was pregnant by him. So James took leave from BYU and he returned to independence, where he and Sharon were married on October 18th, 1956. The couple's marriage license falsely identified Sharon as being 18 years old and a widow, though she later was to address the assertion. Sharon told people at the time that she had been married when she lived in Washington State to a man who died in a car accident. The new couple held a second and 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 and Latter-day Saints. Now, the newlyweds returned to Pope. Provo, Utah, after the wedding, James continued his studies at BYU, but eventually putting them on hold again at the end of the 1956 fall semester. The couple then returned to independence where they both took jobs. Sharon babysat and worked at a shop while James worked as an electrical engineer at Bendix Aviation. Although Sharon claimed to have had a miscarriage with the child that may, ultimately was The driving force behind their marriage. She soon became pregnant again. In the fall of 1957, she gave birth to a girl and the couple named her Dana. Now, Sharon was a spender and she expected an affluent lifestyle. But on James' salary, they lived at the beginning of their marriage in a rented home next to his parents' residence. Then they moved into a ranch style house that they built at 17009 East 26th Terrace in Independence. James worked the night shift at Bandex and Sharon started to spend more of her days shopping and spending outside of their means. And she also started spending her time in the company of other men. By the time the couple had a second child, a boy named Troy, Sharon was carrying on a regular regular extramarital affair with a friend from high school named John Boldes. By early 1960, James wanted to divorce Sharon because of Sharon's poor spending habits. And he was beginning to suspect that she was having an affair. Now he was unaware of the fact that she was actually at one point having multiple affairs, but he did discuss his desire for a divorce with his parents. The literally the day before his death. And telling them that Sharon had agreed to give him one if he allowed her to keep the house, gave her custody of the couple's daughter, and he paid her $1,000 in alimony. But James's parents, being that they were devout in their Mormonism, they urged him to stay in the marriage and work through it. Sharon, too, was thinking about ways out of the marriage, according to Baldis. She once offered him a thousand dollars. So think about she wanted a thousand dollars in alimony and she's offering a hitman a thousand dollars to kill her husband. Or she asked him if he could find somebody that would do it for her. And he later went on, Boldus later claimed that she may have been joking. So let's get into the death of James Kenny. And according to Sharon. On March 19th, 1960, around 5:30 p.m., she heard a gunshot from the wound the room James was sleeping in. When she entered the room, she found her two and a half-year-old daughter Dana on the bed next to her father holding one of his firearms. And it was a 22-caliber pistol. And just remember that that's a very important reference through the story. So just keep that in mind. James was bleeding from an apparent gunshot wound in the back of his head. And Sharon called the police, but James was dead by the time the ambulance had arrived and was announced dead at the hospital. Police were unable to recover any fingerprints from the well-oiled grip of the pistol, and paraffin tests for gunshot residue were not performed on Dana or Sharon. Multiple people, including family and neighbors, told police that James often allowed Dana to play with. his gun. And this just blows my mind. It's just obviously a totally different time and things were way more accepted. But I am just shocked at every source material I read that Dana was allowed to play with his gun. And in a test by the investigating officers, Dana proved able to pull the trigger on a gun matching the one that had killed her father. And with no evidence to the contrary, investigators ruled the case an accidental homicide. Now, the pistol that killed James was taken into police custody and never returned to Sharon, despite the fact that Sharon made multiple attempts to have the gun returned to her. She later had a male friend secretly buy her a 22 caliber automatic pistol. When the friend told Sharon that he registered the gun in her name, she requested that he re-register it under the name of someone else other than hers. With the investigation into his death closed, James was buried, and Sharon collected on his life insurance policies. And these valued about $29,000. And that is the equivalent of $330,000 in today's currency. Now let's get into the death or the murder of Patricia Jones. Patricia Jones was born Patricia Clements. She was one of six children born to Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Clements of St. Joseph, Missouri. After graduating

from Benton High School, she married her high school sweetheart, Walter T. Jones Jr. Walter enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after their wedding, and the couple relocated to the West Coast during his service. After Walter was discharged, the couple returned to Missouri and settled in independence with their two children. By 1960, almost five years into the marriage, Jones was working as a file clerk for the Internal Revenue Service while her husband was a car salesman. Despite being married with children, Walter was reportedly unfaithful to his wife, carrying on multiple multiple affairs himself. On April 18th, Walter met Sharon when she was buying a Ford Thunderbird from his dealership using some of the insurance payout from her husband's death. And soon the two began to carry on a tour and affair. Sharon saw Walter as a prospect for a second husband, and he had no plans of leaving Patricia despite the difficulties in their marriage. And when he refused to join her on a trip to Washington State in May, she went with her brother Eugene instead. And May think that this was the nail in the coffin for her. She thought that, hey, you, you want me, I want you. And by all accounts, everyone says how pretty Sharon was and just how intoxicating she was. I think she knew, like she met her match, that this man was not gonna do what she wanted her to do. And I think on this trip is when she started to mentally prepare herself for what she needed to do to get the wife out of the way. So When Sharon returns from her trip, she tells Walter that she's pregnant with his child. And instead of responding with excitement, Sharon expected him to have, she thought this would result in the agreement to divorce Patricia. But instead, Walter ended the affair. And that was like the final, like, okay, you're mine. No one's going to tell me no. No one's going to leave me. So I'm sure that is when it clicked in her head. I by all means, I'm gonna get this man. So, according to her later testimony, on the afternoon of May 26th, Sharon contacted Patricia at work and told her that Walter was actually having the affair with her sister. That was the initial reel to get her attention, to get her to meet her. So Sharon and Patricia did meet that night to discuss the matter. matter further before she says she dropped Patricia off near the Jones residence. But after Patricia didn't return home that evening, Walter filed a missing person report with the police the next day and began calling people who might have seen his wife. And his first lead is when he spoke to so Patricia was in a carpool and he spoke to the driver of the carpool and he told Walter that Patricia received a call. And so that did correlate with what Sharon said, but he called her the unnamed woman. And then Patricia asked for the call carpool driver to drop her off at a street corner in downtown Independence. And that's what he did. The occupants of the carpool, they were not able to say what the

woman looked like or provide a description of the unknown woman. But obviously. Putting two and two together and suspicious of the identity of the woman based on the carpooler's general description about the situation. Walter did call Sharon and he asked her if he had seen or spoken to his wife, which Sharon does acknowledge. She says that she had had seen Patricia that day. She met with her and she wanted to tell her about the affair that she was having with Walter. But Sharon says that she, again, last saw Patricia when she dropped her off near their home. And then she added that she was speaking to an unknown man in a green 1957 Ford. Based on her admission over the phone, Walter then he went and met with Sharon late Friday evening and insisted that she give him more details about his wife wife's whereabouts. He later admitted to going so far as to hold a key to her throat, threatening her. And then after leaving, Walter Walter left. Sharon called Baldus and she asked him to help her search for Patricia. Before midnight, within hours of her conversation with Walter, Sharon and Baldus discovered the body of a woman in a secluded area approximately one mile outside of independence. And according to Baldus, 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. The body was dressed in a black sweater and a yellow skirt, and it was soon identified as Patricia's. She had been shot four times by a 22-caliber pistol, 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. And powder burns on the hemline of her skirt, which had been raised to her waist, indicated that the gun had been fired from close range at least once. Initial reports, an investigation placed Patricia's time of death approximately 9 p.m. on May 27th, and she was buried on May 31st. So let's get into the arrest and the investigation. Investigators began qu immediately. Was the first person to question was Sharon, Walter, and Boldis. All three were questioned on May 28th. Walter and Boldis both gave written statements admitting that they both dated Sharon and they both agreed to take lie detector tests. Now Sharon, on the other hand, she gave an oral statement to the police, but she declined to sign. A written one or take a lie detector test. She was questioned again on the morning of May 30th and Boldus on May 31st. The scheduled lie detector tests for the two men were performed June 1st, and both men were deemed to have been truthful in their statements. Sharon's brother, Eugene, he was also interviewed on May 31st, but he declined to answer questions. Now, while police question potential suspects and witnesses, other investigators focused on processing the crime scene. And repeated attempts were made to find the murder weapon and the bullet that they had passed through the through and through shot in Patricia's body, including sifting the dirt at the crime scene and deployment of troops of Boy Scouts was actually used to help. Find the missing bullet. And a 22 caliber slug was eventually found buried in the ground where Patricia's body had been found, providing evidence that at least some of her wounds had been sustained at that crime scene. Although investigators went so far as to drag the bottom of the nearby bodies of water, the gun that had shot Patricia assumed to be a 22-caliber pistol, it was never located, or it couldn't be located at the time. Buildings near the crime scene were also searched for blood and gunshot evidence in accordance with police theory that Patricia had been attacked elsewhere and then transported outside. And then they noted that there was a white powdery substance found in her hair. And that was thought to be trace evidence of a crime scene. So she was somewhere else and then brought to where she was actually found. But that was later. Determined to be fly eggs. So the police arrested Sharon at her home for the murder of Patricia Jones around 11 p.m. on May 31st. And this was the same night that Patricia's funeral took place. That same day, the Jackson County Sheriff requested that the prosecutor can consider a second charge of murder. And this one was for her husband. Sharon's lawyer, Alex Peeble, or lawyers, and Martha Speary Hickman, they filed a habeas corpus, a writ of habeas corpus with the court the following morning. And a hearing that afternoon resulted in her release on $20,000 bond while she awaited the preliminary hearing originally scheduled for June 16th. Police were able to rule out the 22 caliber that had killed James as the murder weapon and patr and the one in Patricia's death. That gun was still in possession of the sheriff's office. However, again, a man that worked with Sharon admitted to secretly buying her a 22 caliber pistol at her request at the beginning of May. And police were not able to locate the gun in question when they searched her home. They did find an empty box that they believed once held a gun. Sharon at first claimed to investigators that she had lost the gun on that trip to Washington State, the one where I think. That was the beginning of the breaking point for her. But she just eventually just had the gun disappeared and she didn't know where it disappeared to. I don't know how many people walk around with just guns, just going missing, but I yeah, I digress. Walter was taken into custody on June 2nd as a material witness to the case, but he was eventually free. Well, he was freed the same day on bonds. Now, the autopsy that was performed on Pretricia, it was heavily criticized by the police and the prosecutors. They felt that the recovery of the bullet and the testing of her stomach contents that should have been done and they weren't. Dr. Hugh Owens, he is

the one that performed the autopsy, and he argued that he recovered one of the presumed three bullets that were in her body, and that because the body had been prepared by the undertaker before. Autopsy. Any chemical tests on her stomach contents would have been useless anyway. And Owens did add when asked that he had not seen any food appear in her stomach at autopsy anyway. Now they went back and they exhumed Patricia's body on June 17th in order to collect the bullet that had been left behind at the original autopsy. And to try to see if they could possibly gather any samples or tissue and stomach contents if the if they just happened to be there. So at Sharon's arraignment on June 11th, it 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 $24,000, which would be about $270,000 in today's currency. And she was released on July 18th. And after a delay in her trial date due to her advanced pregnancy, Sharon gave birth to a daughter and she named her Marla Christine on although charged with both murders, Sharon was going to be tried separately for the def The two murders. Her trial for the murder of Patricia Jones began mid-June 1961 with jury selection beginning on or about June 13th and the trial commencing days later with an all-male jury. And opening arguments by both sides, the defense set up cases based on purported time of death. Basing their assertion on the pathologist's given testimony that Patricia had died about six hours after she ate lunch on May 26th. The prosecutors claimed that Jones had died more than 24 hours before Sheridan Boldis found her body. Defense attorneys argued that death had more likely occurred six to eight hours prior. Prosecutor J. Arnett Hill cited testimony by Walter Jones and Chief Detective Lieutenant 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 despite the financial support. Walter testified that Sharon had told him she was pregnant by him and And he had attempted to end the relationship. And I just think Sharon was like, mm-mm, nobody leaves me. The prosecutor was or the prosecution was unable to firmly establish that Sharon owned or had the weapon that killed Patricia. Although both Sharon's known pistol and the one fired the bullets that killed Patricia were 22 caliber weapons. Roy Thrush, the man who sold the pistol to Sharon's male friend, had led the police to a tree that contained what he claimed to be bullets that he had fired from that pistol. However, when the bullets were extracted from the tree trunk, tests showed that extracted bullets were not identifiable as having come from the weapon that killed Patricia. And then the prosecution rested its case on June 21st. They called 27 witnesses. Sharon's defense, which took less than two days and involved 14 witnesses other than Sharon, who did testify or did not testify. Sharon did not testify, focused on breaking down the state's claim 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. After slightly over one and a half hours of deliberation, the jury citing just too many loopholes left in the prosecution's case, they acquitted Sharon Kinney. I was shocked. Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, juror Ogden Stevens asked Sharon for her autograph, which she was photographed giving him. Sharon was returned to jail the same day to await trial for the murder of her husband. Now, for the murder trial of James Kenney, and this was in 1962, despite her acquittal for the murder of Patricia Jones, Sharon remained charged for the murder of her husband, James Kinney. When jury selection began on January 8th, Hill announced that he did not intend to per pursue the death penalty in this case. The prosecution's case rested largely on the contention that Sharon had been so interested in seeing her husband removed. That she had been willing to pay for his murder, supported by the grand jury testimony of Boldus. Boldus, though, he's he's just a crappy witness. He really was. For the prosecution, he weakened his testimony on the stand during the trial by claiming that Sharon's offer to pay him a thousand dollars in return for James' murder could have been a joke. I don't joke like that. I don't know who does, but yeah, I yes. And Hill was forced to attack his own witnesses' credibility. Further, prosecution testimony allege that Kenny's marriage had been on the verge of dissolution at the time of James' death, that Sharon's adultery had been the cause of this, and that Sharon had known that she would collect $29,000 in life insurance policies only if she was still his wife. The defense, led by attorneys Hickman, And James Patrick Quinn focused on circumstantial quality of the prosecution's evidence, noting that prior police investigation had determined James's death to be obviously accidental, and that the jury was obligated to assume innocence on the defendant's part, no matter how un I cracked up when I read this, no matter how unpleasant they found her moral character to be. The defense too attacked the reliability of Boldus' testimony, calling him a poor mixed up kid who would sign anything. Kenny's attorney also presented testimony from witnesses supporting the viability of the theory that Dana had shot her father. And this included statements that the gun had been regularly left within her reach at the family home. I cannot get over that. That she was able to pull 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 and play. I cannot get over that. The trial ended in conviction on January 11th after five and a half hours of deliberation in April. of

the same year, Sharon was formally sentenced to life in prison. She began to serve her sentence in the Missouri Reformatory for Women. Later interviews with the jurors from the trial revealed that three or four ballots had been taken away before the guilty verdict was reached, beginning with the jury solidly divided and moving progressively towards 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, though no jury had been aware of her previously being tried for the murder of Patricia Jones, despite the verdict, James family, they continue to believe the best of their daughter-in-law. And they are telling reporters on the day of the verdict, I quote, we can't find it in our hearts to say anything bad about her. And quote, we will. We still don't feel that she committed murder. 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. The following week, Sharon's lawyers requested that she be released on bond, supported by a community p petition signed by 132 supporters for her innocence. The motion was denied on the basis of first-degree murder not being a available offense. Presiding Judge Tom J. Stubbs also counseled Sharon's lawyers that he felt their involvement in such a petition at a time a motion for bond was being considered was highly improper. A subsequent defense motion requested that the conviction be vacated because the jury had delivered its verdict based on 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 taught or taking incomplete notes, disputes over Baldus testimony, and an incorrect number of potential jurors being provided for selection. The motion was denied by Judge Stubbs in April of 1962, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. Which in March nineteen sixty-three reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial on the basis of Sharon's defense having been denied adequate preemptory challenges during jury selection in her trial. Sharon was denied an opportunity for bail in May nineteen sixty-three, but that ruling was overturned in July, and she was released on twenty-five thousand dollars bond posted by her brother Jim. The state's request. That the Missouri Supreme Court reconsider 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. A second request for a rehearing on the validity of the convictions was denied or the conviction was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court. Sharon and her children moved in with her mother and awaited the start of her new trial. So then there's a second trial in the death of her husband, James Kenney, in 1964. Sharon's second trial for the death. Began on March twenty-third, nineteen sixty-four. 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 to enter the courtroom. An usually long jury selection process made the first day of the trial last 14 hours. It started at 9 a.m. and it didn't end 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 again, were immediately sequestered, but days later, a mistrial was declared after it emerged that a law partner of prosecutor Lawrence Gepford had once been retained by one of the jurors. Then the third trial, nineteen sixty four, Sharon's third trial, originally scheduled to begin early in June of nineteen sixty-four, began instead on June twenty ninth. Assistant prosecutor Donald L. Mason declared at jury selection that he intended to death qualify the jury, a process in which a prosecutor preemptorily challenges any juror to Who automatically opposes the death penalty? And jury selection once again took more than 12 hours in one day. Baldus' testimony in this trial remained contradictory as to whether he believed Sharon's $1,000 offer to have James killed had been intended seriously. But he added this time that after his death, Sharon had asked that Baldus not tell the authorities about her offer. 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, they highlighted inconsistencies between this testimony and a similar quote the woman had offered at a previous deposition. For the first time at any of her trials, Sharon did take the stand on the last day of this trial to issue just all the denials of all the charges. And the all-male jury deadlocked seven to five in favor of acquittal in this trial, resulting in a second mistrial. So 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 named Francis Daniel Puglis, leaving her children with James' father. and traveling as Pugli's wife under the name Jeanette Puglies, the couple later said that they had gone to Mexico to get married. Under the legal terms of her bail, Sharon was permitted to leave the country, but her contract with the actual company that posted her bond prohibited her From leaving Missouri without written permission from the company's agent. After crossing the border, Sharon and Puglies registered at a local hotel, the Hotel Gin, again as husband and wife. Sharon saying that she felt unsafe in the foreign country, she bought a pistol. Sharon and all these pistols, which meant that the couple now possess multiple guns,

having bought one or two, or they brought additionally one or two with them from the US. On the night of September 18th, Sharon left the hotel without Puglis, either to acquire money because the couple was running low or to get medicine. She encountered Francisco Paredes, a Mexican-born American citizen at a bar. And she accompanied him back to his hotel room at the Hotel of Plebeda. According to her account, Sharon went with Francisco to see photographs. He offered to show her, but soon he began to make sexual advances towards her. And she was forced to fire her gun at him in an attempt to protect herself. Sharon maintained later that she had no intentions of killing Francisco and that she had just only wanted to scare him. But her bullets struck him in the chest, killing him. Responding to the sound of gunfire, an employee named Enrique Martinez entered the room. Sharon fired the gun again and hit Martinez in the shoulder and she wounded him, and he fled the room locking Sharon inside and he called the police. Now police rejected Sharon's story and theorized that she had gone out in the evening intending to rob and she had chosen her victim. When he resisted, Her orders to give her his money. Police believe she shot him. Police responding to Hotel Aveda arrested Sharon on charges of homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. She maintained again that she did not intend to harm him and that she shot Martinez because she out of fear. And police searched her purse, finding the gun and cartridges, and then the couple's hotel room when they went to search the room at the hotel gym. where they found two more guns and more ammunition. Authorities took Puglis into custody at the hotel gin, initially holding him without charge and later filing charges of entering the country illegally and carrying an unlicensed gun. 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 nineteen sixty. So the gun that they were looking for, they finally found it. But The big but to this is because Sharon had already been acquitted for that crime, she couldn't be charged again based on the new evidence, unfortunately. Now Puglis was held in jail in Mexico City. And while Sharon was initially placed in a women's prison before being transferred for her trial, the couple were arraigned on September 26th and held for trial. And in October, Sharon's attorney filed a motion similar to a Brit Apious Corpus. And it was asserting that the Mexican government was violating her constitutional right by holding her for a shooting committed in self-defense. And this request was denied for both of them. And they were tried in the summer of 1965. Now Pugli was cleared of charges against him. And then he was deported back to the United States. But Sharon was convicted on October 18th of the homicide of Francisco. Despite rumors that she would receive probation and be deported like Puglies, instead she was sentenced to a 10-year prison term for the murder. When she was officially notified of the sentence the next day, she asserted that she was going to appeal her conviction. The appeal, rather than overturning her sentence, unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, but this ended up lengthening her sentence. So the three men superior court that heard the case overturned aspects of the original conviction and they upheld the murder conviction and increased her sentence to 13 years, saying that her original 10-year sentence just it was too lenient. Sharon was returned to the women's prison to serve her sentence and then she was given the nickname La Pisolera, which is the gunfighter. And on December 7th, 1969, Sharon was not Present for roll call at 5 p.m. when she was called again for final late evening roll call, she wasn't there either. The news of her escape was not reported to the Mexican city police until 2 p.m. the following morning. Then a manhunt. was organized. And they initially focused their search to northern Mexican states due to authorities' belief that Sharon may have been headed for the last known whereabouts of a former inmate who she had grown close to while they were serving time together. The search encompassed countrywide transport hubs and eventually circled back to the Mexico City area. US authorities, including the FBI, were also alerted of Mexican authorities' belief that Sharon may have been attempting to work her way back into the United States. Initially, police speculated that Sharon had bribed guards to look the other way while she escaped. An unusual blackout had been reported at the prison on the evening of and at the approximate time of her escape. Convenient. Investigators showed that a door that should have been locked. It was left unsecured. Further questioning of prisoner 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. News reports of the time reported numerous theories about Sharon's escape, including that she had bribed the prison guards, that she may have enlisted the help of a supposed boyfriend who was a Mexico City policeman. Another one that her mother was involved in the escape, and that a former Mexican Secret Service agent had assisted in the escape, and that Sharon may have disguised herself as a man to affect her escape. A more popular theory at the time, and I remember this when I watched this on Deadly Women, people speculated that maybe one of her victims at the hotel that their family helps her escape. To ultimately capture her and kill her and get even. The intensive manhunt for Sharon was short-lived. And by December 18th, the Mexican Secret Service and 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, which would have made a Mexican manhunt moot. They also said that she was fluent in Spanish after years in a Mexican prison. And she could therefore get along just fine. She'd be able to communicate with zero issue. And authorities, they acknowledge by the end of December 1969 that they had exhausted all of their investigative leads. So as a fugitive, Sharon's arrest and conviction in Mexico had implications for the status of her legal stuff in Missouri. So because she was being held in Mexico on October 26, 1964. The scheduled day for her fourth trial and the murder of her husband, her bond, the $25,000 bond, was revoked on that day. And although the United Bond Insurance Company, which posted the bond, argued the paperwork irregularly rendered the issuance of her bail illegal, the court ordered that the company forfeit the bond. Sharon was reportedly concerned about the monetary implications of this forfeiture. I could always use money, she was quoted as saying, and I don't intend to spend all my life in jail. A $30,000 bond was issued in August of 1964 as the United States insurance company continued to dispute the payment of Sharon's original $25,000 bond. And the bond allowed the company to defer payment. Of the $25,000 bond until a ruling on the matter was handed down by the Missouri Supreme Court. But when the court upheld the bond's forfeiture, the $25,000 was paid to the state of Missouri in October of 1965. And the United Bond Insurance Company later filed suit against Sharon's family to recover the cost of the bail, lawyers' fees, and a manhunt for Sharon after she escaped. So shortly before her scheduled Missouri trial, Sharon's Missouri counsel filed a motion to change venue of any eventual fourth trial and the death of her husband. And they just claimed that the news coverage of the case, it just prejudiced all the residents of Jackson County against her. And any trial against her there would just be unfair. So when Sharon failed to appear for the Ford trial, a warrant was issued again for her arrest and is still outstanding at the it was at the time of her death. 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 Tabor Alberta, Canada, approximately 121 miles southeast of Calgary, under the alias of Deedra Glabas, nicknamed D. Under Canadian law, law enforcement agencies are allowed to obtain fingerprints from deceased persons. With criminal records. However, because Deirdre had no such record, Canadian police were unable to do so. But however, the local funeral home which had handled her remains provided a service of preserving fingerprints as mementos for loved ones, which were processed through a company coincidentally based in Independence, Missouri. I'm like, if that is not my goodness, the the craziest coincidence. The very jurisdiction where Sharon's criminal warrants remained in effect. Jackson County investigators subsequently secured a warrant to obtain deirdress fingerprints, which were conclusively matched to Sharon's by the FBI. US authorities publicly announced these findings on January 17th, 2025. So her life in Canada, Sharon married her second husband, James Thomas Glabas, in Los Angeles, California in February of 1970, two months after her jailbreak in Mexico. The couple relocated to Tabor in 1973, where they operated a motel and later real estate agency advertisements for the latter business showing Sharon's pictures were printed in local newspapers despite her fugitive status. The details of how Sharon obtained legal documentation such as travel visas, identification, and citizenship still remain unknown. On August 11th, 1979, at age 38, Glabus died from complications related to diabetes and alcoholism. Sharon was left out of his will. An omission she fought in court. So she went to court. she later remarried her third husband, William Willie L in March of 1982, and Elle died April 7th, 2011, at age 79. Sharon herself died of coronary artery disease on January 24. First, twenty twenty-two at eighty, with Alzheimer's disease being listed as a contributing factor on her death certificate. 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 the three children in the US. And details about Sharon's movements after prison, her prison escape remain largely unknown. In Tabor, she performed volunteer work, including serving as a chairwoman for a daycare center, steering committee, and was known for needlepoint artistry, making banana bread and playing bridge. Although Sharon's death officially concluded her case, authorities were still seeking information about her life after 1969 as of 2025. Now, the psychology and the motivating factors. In a segment on ID Discovery's Deadly Woman, I love that show. When they covered the case, author James Hayes he speculated that Sharon committed her first murder out of monetary gain. So this completely just agreed was the motivating factor. Just hoping to cash in James life insurance policy, because she knew he was getting ready to leave. And if he divorced her, then and if he died, she's not his wife, so she's no longer going to be the beneficiary. So that first kill he thought was out of necessity. But then she began to derive pleasure from killing at that point. Former FBI. Profiler Candice LeLong loved her and she supports that assertion, stating that Sharon was a sociopath, lacking remorse and empathy, and therefore had no issue with killing to get what she wanted. And this idea was echoed by some of those involved in the prosecution of Sharon. Even those who believed in her guilt, however, said that she was personable and describing her as rather attractive and admitting that they grew to like her. The Mammoth book of true crime describes her as a Relative rarity, a pretty criminal. And in I'm Just an Ordinary Girl, the Sharon Kinney story, Hayes asserts that Sharon was inspired to kill her husbands 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. Charges against Chastain. were filed in February 1960, weeks before James's death. And that, I mean, isn't that enough? Cause that's a lot. But that concludes our look into the case of Sharon Kinney. And again, she was on the run for more than 60 years and she was actually never caught in life. But that just goes to show and it's a reminder that no matter how cold you think a case is, The smallest details will open a case wide open. And that is such a coincidence about the Kansas City connection to the fingerprinting from the funeral home. So I find that very fascinating. her warrant, again, it remained open and it was resolved only when the tip from the forensic fingerprint evidence and the cooperation between the US and the Canadian authorities. So That is all I have today. That's enough. There's no peak of the week, but please submit one. I really want to interact with everybody. So please do that. And I'll have the link to my Instagram in today's show notes. And my credits are for today's episode, unsolved.com, Wikipedia, James C. Hayes' 1997. I'm Just an Ordinary Girl, the Sharon Kinney story. And then the Kansas City Times were also. To be credited in the story via the Sharon Kinney murder case, a special collection of the Kansas City Public Library. And that is all I have for today.