Sharon took the stand and said Hopkins and Boldizs were lying. She and her husband, James, 25, were having frequent arguments. [43] Kinne's defense, which took less than two days and involved fourteen witnesses other than Kinne—who did not testify—[43] 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. Kinne escaped from the prison during a blackout in December 1969. Prior to going to jail and prison, Sharon had kept a low profile. Several hours later Sharon shot Ordonoz twice in the heart. The police bought that original story. [25], Suspicious of the identity of the unknown woman based on the carpoolers' general description, Walter called Kinne and asked if she had seen or spoken to his wife. [21] After graduating from Benton High School, she married Walter T. Jones, Jr., her high school sweetheart. [81], On December 7, 1969, Kinne was not present for a routine 5 p.m. roll-call at the Ixtapalapan prison where she was serving her sentence. [29] The scheduled polygraphs for the two men were performed on June 1, and both men were deemed to have been truthful in their statements. James resumed his studies at BYU, but put them on hold again at the end of the fall semester. [64], Police responding to Hotel La Vada arrested Kinne on charges of homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. Her absence was not officially noted until she also failed to show up at a second roll-call later that evening. [66] Under the legal terms of her bail, Kinne was permitted to leave the country,[67] but her contract with the company that posted her bond prohibited her from leaving Missouri without written permission from the company's agents. The guards were afraid of her, she said, and she ran a little store in the prison. [89], Kinne's arrest and conviction in Mexico had implications for the status of her Missouri legal entanglements. Dr. Hugh Owens, who had performed the autopsy, argued that he had recovered one of the presumed three bullets present in the body, and that because the body had been "prepared" by an undertaker prior to autopsy, any chemical tests on stomach contents would have been useless. She also told one interviewer in Mexico, "I'm just an ordinary girl.". [28] She was buried on May 31. The supersedeas 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,[93] but when that court upheld the bond's forfeiture, the $25,000 was paid to the State of Missouri in October 1965. Kinne went to trial for Jones's murder in June 1961 and was acquitted. In addition to this Crime Magazine feature, in 1997 James Hays wrote ", John Wayne Gacy Confessed to Killing Dozens (December 22, 1978). [25] Kinne then met with Patricia that evening to discuss the matter further before dropping her off near the Jones house. Sharon tried to get away, but the gate to the motel was locked. She said that when Ordonoz attacked her, she shot him in self-defense. A U.S. embassy representative who visited her, later told reporters that she’d said, "I’ve shot men before and managed to get out of it." 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. In a search of her house they’d found an empty box for a Hi-Standard pistol. Serial Killer Sharon Kinne (aka) La Pistolera, the gunfighter, was active for 5 years between 1960-1964, known to have ( 3 confirmed / 3 possible ) victims.This Serial Killer was active in the following countries: United States, Mexico Sharon Kinne was born on November 30th 1939 in Independence, county seat of Jackson County, Missouri, United States. Bond was set at $25,000. [2] Walter, instead of responding with what Kinne expected to be an agreement to divorce Patricia, ended the affair. [2], Despite her acquittal in the case of the murder of Patricia Jones, Sharon Kinne remained charged for the murder of James Kinne. [43] Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, juror Ogden Stephens asked Kinne for her autograph,[40] which she was photographed giving to him. [9], Although charged with both murders, Kinne was tried separately for the two crimes. The motion was denied by Judge Stubbs in April 1962, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which in March 1963 reversed the conviction[54] and ordered a new trial on the basis of her defense having been denied adequate peremptory challenges during jury selection in her trial. The best bet is that Sharon Kinne found a lonely man with money, and married him. They nevertheless provided a description of the unknown woman to Walter. Jones told police that he put a knife to Kinne's throat and demanded that she tell him where Patricia was. Boldizs, though nominally a witness for the prosecution, weakened his testimony on the stand during the trial by claiming that Kinne's offer to pay him $1,000 in return for James' murder could have been a joke, and Hill was forced to attack his own witness's credibility. She had been shot four times. Her trial for the murder of Patricia Jones began in mid-June 1961, with jury selection beginning on or about June 13[36] and the trial commencing days later[37] with an all-male jury. Shortly before midnight, within hours of Kinne's conversation with Walter, she and Boldizs found the body of a woman in a secluded area[25][note 2] approximately one mile outside of Independence. They did, however, test fire the gun and give those slugs to mason. [60] Assistant prosecutor Donald L. Mason declared at jury selection that he intended to death-qualify the jury,[59] 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. All three were questioned on May 28. She had a lot of time in prison to listen to older, wiser convicts. After only three days of trial she was convicted on Jan. 11, 1962, and was sentenced to … Wherever she is, Sharon Kinne will always be La Pistolera. Sharon Elizabeth Kinne (born Sharon Elizabeth Hall, November 30, 1939), also known as Jeanette Pugliese and in Mexico as La Pistolera, is an American alleged multiple murderer who is 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. Sharon Kinne was found not guilty in the murder of Patricia Jones. Sharon Kinne was found not guilty in the murder of Patricia Jones. A third trial on the charge of murdering James ended in a hung jury in July 1964. [97], In I'm Just an Ordinary Girl: The Sharon Kinne Story, Hays asserts that Kinne 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. [98] Charges against Chastain were filed in February 1960, weeks before James's death. [9] Even those who believe in her guilt, however, note that she had a certain appeal, describing her as "rather attractive"[9] and admitting that they grew to like her. Despite extensive manhunts, her whereabouts are unknown. At first, Sharon claimed to Kansas City Star reporters that she didn’t do well in Mexican jails. Several weeks later she went to have air conditioning installed in her car, and the salesman talked her into trading for a new Thunderbird with air conditioning already installed – for $500 difference. [30] A .22 caliber rifle 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 the place her body was found. Sharon Kinne was a clever woman - clever enough to know the Jackson County authorities would use those bad checks to bury her in prison. [48], The State's request that the Missouri Supreme Court re-consider its position on Kinne'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. The area Jones's body was found is variously described as a "quarry lane". Boldizs's name is spelled differently in sources, sometimes as "Boldwizs". After his discharge from the military, they returned to Missouri and settled in Independence with their two children. [68], After crossing the border, the couple registered at a local hotel, Hotel Gin, again as husband and wife. Despite rumors that she would receive probation and be deported like Pugliese,[75] Kinne was instead sentenced to a ten-year prison term for the crimes. She often lied about having paid bills. The media, including the Saturday Evening Post, flocked to Mexico to cover Kinne. [19] She had been shot four times by a .22 caliber pistol. [58] Boldizs' testimony in this trial remained contradictory as to whether he believed Kinne's $1,000 offer had been intended seriously, but he added this time that after James' death, Kinne had asked that Boldizs not tell authorities about her offer. So Sharon Kinne did the only sensible thing, for her: She shot James in the head while he was napping and said her 2-year-old daughter Danna did it while playing with daddy's gun -- a .22-caliber Hi-Standard pistol. "I don't intend to spend all my life in jail. In addition to this Crime Magazine feature, in 1997 James Hays wrote "Just An Ordinary Girl," The Sharon Kinne story, published through Leathers Publishing, which led to a segment on her earlier this year on "Unsolved Mysteries. [95], When Kinne failed to appear for the murder of her husband, a warrant was issued for her arrest in October 1964. Time to reflect on her own mistakes – the way she’d failed to cover her tracks, the way she’d failed to get rid of incriminating evidence. [10] Initial reports and investigation placed Patricia's time of death at approximately 9 p.m. on May 27. [43] Kinne was returned to jail the same day to await trial for the murder of her husband. Even though her case was still on appeal, she was shipped off to the women’s prison at Tipton, Mo. The prosecutors proved Kinne had bought a .22-caliber Hi-Standard pistol, and that she said she misplaced it or lost it while vacationing in Seattle. She said she thought he was taking her to her hotel, but took her to his instead. This was confirmed by James’ parents, Mr. And Mrs. Haggard Kinne. [17] Further prosecution testimony alleged that the Kinnes' marriage had been on the verge of dissolution at the time of James' death, that Kinne's adultery had been a cause of this, and that Kinne had known that she would collect her husband's $29,000 in life insurance policies only if she were still his wife. [52] 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 Kinne's counsel alleged had taken place before and during the trial; these included a juror taking "incomplete"[53] notes, disputes over Boldizs' testimony, and an incorrect number of potential jurors being provided for selection. [6], Kinne was reportedly a lavish spender who expected finer things out of life,[9] but on James's salary they lived first in a rented home next to his parents' residence, then in a ranch-style house they had built at 17009 East 26th Terrace in Independence. [25] Powder burns on the hemline of her skirt, which had been raised to her waist,[19] indicated that the gun had been fired from close range at least once. She took pride in the fact that her fellow convicts were afraid of her. Sharon told Boldizs to say he was alone when he found the body, but he quickly caved in when police began to focus on him, wanting to know why he'd been on a lover's lane alone at midnight (Kinne had torn the victim's clothes, to make it look like a sex crime). [2] She encountered Francisco Parades Ordoñez, a Mexican-born American citizen,[63] at a bar and accompanied him back to his room in Hotel La Vada. A number of witnesses testified to Sharon’s sex life – that she was a domineering personality, and possessive (by, Bobby Ashe, one of the most renowned criminals in Kansas City history, told me in 1973 that Sharon had slept with a lot of the guys on 12, A U.S. embassy representative who visited her, later told reporters that she’d said, "I’ve shot men before and managed to get out of it." [47] She began to serve her sentence in the Missouri Reformatory for Women. The gun, recently oiled, had so much oil it would not hold fingerprints. The letter said the gun was hidden in a wall by the chimney. The Kinnes were deeply in debt. Repeated[31] attempts were made to find the murder weapon and the bullet that had passed through Patricia's body, including the sifting of dirt at the crime scene for bullets[25] and the deployment of a troop of Boy Scouts to search for a gun. The newspapers in Mexico called her, Wherever she is, Sharon Kinne will always be, Ed. It appears she’d concluded her luck was running out in Kansas City. [78] When she was officially notified of the sentence the next day, she asserted that she would appeal her conviction. As soon as Sharon collected the insurance money from James' death, she raced out and bought a brand new blue Ford Thunderbird. [68], Shortly before her scheduled Missouri trial date, Sharon Kinne'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 Kinne's cases had so prejudiced residents of Jackson County against her that it would be impossible for her to get a fair trial there. She was reportedly enraged to learn this. [32] The same day, the Jackson County Sheriff requested that prosecutors consider a second charge of murder, this one for the death of James Kinne. [15] Kinne called the police, but James was dead by the time the ambulance carrying him arrived at the hospital. [69] Kinne, saying that she felt unsafe in the foreign country, bought a pistol—which meant that the couple now possessed multiple guns, having brought one or two with them from the U.S.[70], On the night of September 18, 1964, Kinne left the hotel without Pugliese, either to acquire money because the couple was running low[64] or to get medicine she required. She had asked the carpool driver to drop her off at a street corner in Independence, which he had done. [22] By 1960, almost five years into the marriage, Jones was working as a file clerk for the Internal Revenue Service, while her husband sold cars. [70], Authorities took Pugliese into custody at the Hotel Gin,[63] initially holding him without charge[72] and later filing charges of entering the country illegally and carrying an unlicensed gun. [33] Walter was taken into custody on June 2 as a material witness to the case and was freed the same day on $2,000 bond. [note 6] The couple later said that they had gone to Mexico to get married. No one has ever stopped talking about the mysterious case of Sharon Kinne, the female killer known as “La Pistolera.” Her story will air on Investigation Discovery’s A Crime to Remember.Sharon Kinne escaped a Mexican prison after her conviction, and she hasn’t been seen since. [5] The Mammoth Book of True Crime describes her as a relative rarity, a "pretty" criminal. James worked the night shift at Bendix, and his wife initially filled her days with shopping and, later, with other men. [56] Kinne and her children moved in with her mother and awaited the start of her new trial. She was briefly busted only to escape and vanish in 1969. [note 1][6], By early 1960, James was contemplating divorce, partially because of Kinne's spending habits and partially because he strongly suspected her infidelity. There were other nearby bars also, but she had an affinity for the mob bars. [17] Kinne's attorneys also presented testimony from witnesses supporting the viability of the theory that Danna had shot her father, including statements that guns 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. Although she was discovered missing at 9 p.m., no senior prison authorities were notified until 2 a.m. [55] Kinne was denied an opportunity for bail in May 1963,[54] but that ruling was overturned in July and she was released on $25,000 bond, posted by her brother. In 1969 she escaped from a Mexican prison and disappeared without a trace. With no evidence to the contrary, investigators ruled the case an accidental homicide. [Ed. Kinne told Walter Jones that she had met with Patricia, told her that Walter was having an affair with her sister (she had no sister) but that she had then driven Patricia home and let her out of the car. [78], Pugliese, cleared of the charges against him, was deported to the U.S., but Kinne was convicted on October 18[2] of the homicide of Ordoñez. She appealed the conviction, and the Mexican appellate court raised her sentence to 13 years, largely because she was unrepentant. [48], 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. [2] According to Kinne's account, she went with Ordoñez to see photographs he offered to show her,[63] but he soon began to make sexual advances toward her and she was forced to fire her gun at him in an attempt to protect herself. She and Puglise ended up signing a handwritten "marriage contract," similar to the one Sharon had signed with Margaret Hopkins. Former FBI profiler Candice DeLong supports this assertion, stating that Kinne is a sociopath, lacking in remorse and empathy, and therefore had no compunction about killing to get what she wanted. The last person seen with Patricia Jones was Sharon Kinne. Boldizs and Walter Jones took polygraph tests and passed. When the friend told Kinne that he had registered the gun in her name, she requested that he re-register it under a name other than hers. [2] In April of the same year, Kinne was formally sentenced to life in prison. It is still outstanding 65 years later—making it the oldest outstanding murder warrant known to exist in the Kansas City area. When she returned she told Walter Jones she was pregnant, and demanded that he marry her. Her second trial for the murder of her husband began on March 24, 1964. "I was afraid I was losing him – he acted funny", Nesbitt quotes Kinne as saying. They told Walter that Patricia had reported receiving a phone call that day from an unnamed woman who wanted to meet with her. Investigators speculated that Kinne had already crossed the border from Mexico into Guatemala, mooting the purpose of a Mexican manhunt. On Dec. 7, 1969, Sharon Kinne disappeared from Ixtapalapa Women's Prison. [80] The three-man superior court which heard Kinne's case overturned one aspect of her conviction—charges of attempted robbery—but upheld her murder conviction and increased her sentence from ten to thirteen years, saying that her original sentence had been too lenient. After languishing in a Mexican jail for a year, Kinne was sentenced to 10 years in prison. [23], According to Kinne's later testimony, on the afternoon of May 26, she contacted Patricia at her office[24] and told her that Walter was having an affair with Kinne's sister. J. Arnot "June" Hill, also a prominent criminal lawyer, prosecuted the case. It would appear that she’d finally made a friend in prison – either another female convict, or a guard.