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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 , suspected serial killer and who was convicted in Mexico for one murder and is suspected of two others in the United States, one of which she was acquittal of at trial. She 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 Kinne had been living in the small Canadian town of Taber, Alberta, from approximately 1973 until her death in 2022.
On March 19, 1960, Sharon's husband, James Kinne, was found shot in the head inside the home they shared in Independence, Missouri. Sharon claimed that the couple's two-year-old daughter, who had often been allowed to play with James' firearms, had accidentally shot him, and 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 disappeared. When Sharon admitted to having been the last person to speak with 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 acquittal. A January 1962 trial on charges of murdering James ended in conviction and a sentence of life imprisonment, but the verdict was Vacated judgment 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 bail 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 in October 1965 of the Ordoñez killing and sentenced to ten years in prison, later lengthened to thirteen years after judicial review. She escaped from prison in Iztapalapa during a power outage in December 1969.
Sharon's whereabouts remained unknown for over half a century until January 2025, when U.S. authorities confirmed she had taken the name of "Diedra Glabus" and lived in Canadawhere she ran a local motel and, later, a real estate agencybetween 1973 and her death in 2022, at age 82. While Sharon's case is officially closed, authorities still seek information about her movements after 1969.
Sharon, who was reportedly searching for a partner with prospects who could take her away from Independence, wrote a letter to James claiming that she was pregnant by him. James took leave from BYU and returned to Independence, where he married Sharon on October 18, 1956. The couple's marriage license falsely identified Sharon as being 18 and a widow; though she later refused 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 later died in a car accident. 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.
After their wedding, the Kinnes returned to Provo, Utah. James resumed his studies at BYU but put them on hold again at the end of 1956's fall semester. The couple returned to Independence, where both took jobs—Sharon babysat and tended shops, while James worked as an electrical engineer at Bendix Aviation. Although Sharon claimed to have miscarriage the child that had brought about their marriage, she soon became pregnant again. In the fall of 1957, she gave birth to a girl the couple named Danna.
Sharon was reportedly a lavish spender who expected finer things out of life, but on James' 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, Independence. James worked the night shift at Bendix, and Sharon filled her days with shopping and, later, with other men. By the time the couple had a second child, a boy named Troy, Sharon was carrying on a regular extramarital affair with a friend from high school, John Boldizs.
By early 1960, James was contemplating divorce, partially because of Sharon's spending habits and partially because he strongly suspected her infidelity. He spoke to his parents about the possibility of divorce the day before his death, telling them that Sharon had agreed to give him one if he allowed her to keep the house, gave her child custody the couple's daughter and paid her US$1,000 in alimony. James' parents, devoted Mormons, urged him to stay in the marriage. Sharon, too, was thinking about ways out of the marriage; according to Boldizs, she once offered him US$1,000 contract killing, or find someone who would, although he later claimed that she may have been joking.
Police were unable to recover any fingerprints from the well-oiled grip of the pistol, and a paraffin test for gunshot residue was not performed on either Danna or Sharon. Multiple people, including family and neighbors, told police that James had often allowed Danna to play with his guns, and in a test by investigating officers, Danna proved able to pull the trigger on a gun matching the one that had killed her father. With no evidence to the contrary, investigators ruled the case an accidental homicide.
The pistol that killed James was taken into police custody and never returned to Sharon, despite her efforts to reclaim it; she later had a male friend secretly buy her a .22 caliber machine 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.
With the investigation into his death closed, James was buried and Sharon collected on his life insurance policies, valued at about US$29,000 (US$230,000 in present day).
Despite his marriage and children, Walter reportedly had a wandering eye. On April 18, Walter met Sharon when she bought a Ford Thunderbird from his dealership using some of the insurance payout from her husband's death. The two began an affair shortly thereafter. Sharon viewed Walter as a prospect for a second husband, but he was uninterested in leaving Patricia despite difficulties in their marriage. When he declined to join her on a trip to Washington State in May, Sharon reluctantly went with her brother Eugene instead. Although they reunited on May 25, the relationship became fraught when Sharon told Walter that she was pregnant with his child. Instead of responding with what Sharon expected to be an agreement to divorce Patricia, Walter ended the affair.
According to her later testimony, on the afternoon of May 26, Sharon contacted Patricia at her office and told her that Walter was having an affair with Sharon's sister. Sharon then met with Patricia that evening to discuss the matter further before dropping her off near the Jones residence.
After Patricia failed to return home that evening, Walter filed a report with police the next day and began calling people he thought might have seen his wife. He got a lead when he spoke to friends of Patricia's who 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. Patricia had asked the carpool driver to drop her off at a street corner in downtown Independence, which he had done. The occupants of the carpool had seen a woman waiting for Patricia in another car but did not recognize her. They nevertheless provided a description of the unknown woman to Walter.
Suspicious of the identity of the woman based on the carpoolers' general description, Walter called Sharon and asked if she had seen or spoken to his wife. Sharon allowed that she had, indeed, seen Patricia that day; she had met her to tell her about Walter's affair. 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.
Based on her admission over the phone, Walter met with Sharon late Friday evening and insisted she give him more details about his wife's whereabouts; he later admitted to going so far as to hold a key to her throat threateningly. 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 conversation with Walter, Sharon and Boldizs discovered the body of a woman in a secluded area approximately one mile outside of Independence. 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.
The body, dressed in a black sweater and yellow skirt, 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. 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 and investigation placed Patricia's time of death at approximately 9 p.m. on May 27. She was buried on May 31.
While police questioned potential suspects and witnesses, other investigators focused on processing the crime scene. Repeated 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 and the deployment of a troop of Boy Scouts. 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 crime scene. 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 located.
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. A "white, powdery substance" 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.
Sharon was arrested at her home for the murder of Patricia Jones around 11 p.m. on May 31, the same night as Patricia's funeral. The same day, the Jackson County sheriff requested that consider a second charge of murder, this one for the death of James Kinne. Sharon's lawyers, Alex Peebles and Martha Sperry Hickman, filed a writ of habeas corpus with the court the following morning, and a hearing that afternoon resulted in her release on US$20,000 bail bond while she awaited a preliminary hearing originally scheduled for June 16.
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, though they did find an empty box that they believed had once held a gun. 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. 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.
The initial autopsy performed on Patricia 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, 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. Owens did add when asked that he had not seen any food apparent in the stomach at autopsy. Patricia's body was exhumation on June 17 in order to collect the bullets that had been left behind at the original autopsy, as well as to gather what samples of tissue and stomach contents were possible.
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$24,000 (worth US$ in 2013 dollars) bond on July 18. 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.
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, the prosecution claimed that Jones had died more than 24 hours before Sharon and Boldizs found her body; defense attorneys argued that death had more likely occurred six to eight hours prior. Prosecutor J. Arnott Hill 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 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.
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. Roy Thrush, the man who sold the pistol to Sharon's male friend, had led police to a tree that contained what he claimed to be bullets he had fired from that pistol; however, when the bullets were extracted from the tree trunk, tests showed that the extracted bullets were not identifiable as having come from the weapon that killed Patricia.
The prosecution rested its case on June 21 after calling 27 witnesses. Sharon's defense, which took less than two days and involved fourteen witnesses other than Sharon—who did not testify—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.
After slightly over one and a half hours of deliberation, the jury, citing "reasonable doubt" left in the prosecution's case, acquittal Sharon Kinne. Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, juror Ogden Stephens asked Sharon for her autograph, which she was photographed giving to him. Sharon was returned to jail the same day to await trial for the murder of her husband.
The prosecution's case rested largely on their 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 Boldizs. Boldizs, though nominally a witness for the prosecution, weakened his testimony on the stand 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's credibility. Further prosecution testimony alleged that the Kinnes' marriage had been on the verge of dissolution at the time of James's 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.
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" 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." 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 than the weapon that caused James' death and that she had often been observed pretending to fire guns in play.
The trial ended in conviction on January 11 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 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. Despite the verdict, James's family continued to believe the best of their daughter-in-law, telling reporters on the day of the verdict, "We can't find it in our hearts to say anything bad about her" and, "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 petition signed by 132 supporters of her innocence. The motion was denied on the basis of first-degree murder not being a bailable offense; presiding 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." A subsequent defense motion requested that the conviction be vacated judgment 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" 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 and ordered a new trial on the basis of Sharon's defense having been denied adequate peremptory challenges during jury selection in her trial. Sharon was denied an opportunity for bail in May 1963, but that ruling was overturned in July and she was released on $25,000 bond, posted by her brother Eugene.
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. A second request for a re-hearing on the validity of 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.
A new witness, a female acquaintance of Sharon's, testified that she had once joked that the woman should "get rid of the 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. 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. The all-male jury hung jury seven-to-five in favor of acquittal in this trial, resulting in a second mistrial.
After crossing the border, Sharon and Pugliese registered at a local hotel, Hotel Gin, again as husband and wife. Sharon, 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.
On the night of September 18, Sharon left the hotel without Pugliese, either to acquire money because the couple was running low or to get medicine she required. She encountered Francisco Paredes Ordoñez, a Mexican-born American citizen, at a bar and accompanied him back to his room in Hotel La Vada. According to her account, Sharon went with Ordoñez to see photographs he offered to show her, but he soon began to make sexual advances toward her and she was forced to fire her gun at him in an attempt to self-defense.
Sharon maintained later 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. Responding to the sound of gunfire, hotel employee Enrique Martinez Rueda entered the room. Sharon fired again and hit Rueda in the shoulder. Wounded, Rueda fled the room, locking Sharon inside, and called the police.
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.
Authorities took Pugliese 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 1960, but because Sharon had already been acquitted of that crime, she could double jeopardy for it based on the new evidence.
Pugliese was held at the Palacio de Lecumberri in Mexico City, while Sharon was initially placed in a women's prison before being transferred to Lecumberri for her trial. The couple were arraigned on September 26 and held for trial. In October, 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. The request was denied and both Sharon and Pugliese were tried in the summer of 1965.
Pugliese, cleared of the charges against him, was deportation to the U.S., but Sharon was convicted on October 18 of the homicide of Ordoñez. Despite rumors that she would receive probation and be deported like Pugliese, she was instead sentenced to a ten-year prison term for the murder. When she was officially notified of the sentence the next day, she asserted that she would appeal her conviction. The appeal, rather than overturning her sentence, lengthened it. 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.
Sharon was returned to the women's prison to serve her sentence. There, she was nicknamed " La Pistolera" ("the gunfighter"), a nickname subsequently adopted by the Mexican press.
The search also encompassed country-wide transport hubs and eventually circled back to the Mexico City area. 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.
Initial police speculation was that Sharon had guards to look the other way while she escaped the prison—an unusual Power outage 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. 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.
News reports of the time reported numerous theories about Sharon's escape, including that she had bribed prison guards, that she may have enlisted the help of a supposed boyfriend who was a Mexico City policeman, that her mother had been involved in the escape plan, that a former Mexican secret service agent had assisted in the escape and that Sharon may have disguised herself as a man to effect her escape. A more recent theory incorrectly speculated that Ordoñez's family had helped her escape and then killed her.
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. 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. 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.
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, but when that court upheld the bond's forfeiture, the US$25,000 was paid to the State of Missouri in October 1965. 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.
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 her husband, 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.
When Sharon failed to appear for the fourth trial, a arrest warrant 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. 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.
Under Canadian law, law enforcement 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, Missourithe 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. U.S. authorities publicly announced these findings on January 17, 2025.
On August 11, 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. She later married her third husband, William "Willie" Ell, in March 1982. Ell died in on April 7, 2011, at age 79. WILLIE ELL (1932-2011). Southland Funeral Chapel and Crematorium. Retrieved 3 March 2025. 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. 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.
Little is known about all of Sharon's movements following her prison escape. In Taber, she performed volunteer work, including serving as chairwoman for a daycare center steering committee, and was known for needlepoint artistry, making banana bread and playing contract bridge. While the news of Sharon's death officially closed her case, as of 2025 authorities were still seeking details about her life after 1969.
This idea was echoed by some of those involved in prosecuting Sharon. Even those who believed in her guilt, however, said that she had a certain appeal, 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.
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.Hays, Chapter II, pp. 83, 99, 115, 130, 145 Charges against Chastain were filed in February 1960, weeks before James's death.
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