The mystery of what happened to a U.S. woman who was tried in three killings before disappearing from a Mexican prison more than 50 years ago is about to be solved.
Authorities have planned a news conference for Thursday to discuss the case of Sharon Kinne, who was charged before her 25th birthday with killing her Missouri husband, her boyfriend’s wife, and a man she’d picked up in a Mexican bar.
Her whereabouts have been a mystery since she reportedly snuck out of the prison in Ixtacalapan on Dec. 7, 1969. And her story has been featured in the book, “I’m Just an Ordinary Girl: The Sharon Kinne Story” as well as in podcasts and TV stories such as Discovery I.D.’s “Deadly Women.”
An FBI spokeswoman directed questions to the Jackson County sheriff’s office in Missouri, which said it couldn’t confirm any information before the news conference, including whether she had died. But a news release promised answers.
“We hope that by bringing closure to this case, we can provide a sense of resolution not only to the friends and families of the innocent victims she murdered but also to those who were affected by her actions, including her loved ones,” the sheriff’s department said in announcing the news conference.
Kinne, who married at 16, was living in a ranch home in the Independence, Missouri, area in March 1960 when her 25-year-old husband, James Kinne, was shot in the back of the head while napping. Independence is just outside of Kansas City.
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The mother of two told police she had heard her 2-year-old daughter ask, “How does this thing work, Daddy?” Then there was a gunshot. Sharon Kinne said she ran into the bedroom and found the toddler holding her husband’s .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. The death was ruled accidental.
But Kinne and her husband had been having marital problems, and she had been seeing other men, later court testimony revealed.
According to press reports and interviews with investigators, Sharon Kinne then met car salesman Walter Jones when she went to buy a new car with money from her husband’s life insurance and the sale of their home.
A little more than a month later, Jones’ wife, Patricia, was found shot to death.
On June 1, 1960, Sharon Kinne was charged with Patricia Jones’ murder. Police took another look at James Kinne’s death and a Jackson County grand jury indicted Kinne for that crime as well.
In June 1961, Sharon Kinne was tried in the death of Patricia Jones. And an all-male jury acquitted her to courtroom applause.
In January 1962, Sharon Kinne was convicted of killing her husband. But, the Missouri Supreme Court later overturned the conviction because of improper jury selection. She was tried again, but jurors couldn’t agree on a verdict.
Sharon Kinne then headed to Mexico City. One evening, she picked up a man in a bar and went with him to a hotel. Around 3 a.m., gunshots were heard and Francisco Ordonez lay dead on the floor. Kinne got 13 years for killing Ordonez.
Ballistics tests proved prosecutors’ hunch that a gun found in Sharon Kinne’s Mexican motel was the one that killed Patricia Jones.
Sharon Kinne couldn’t be tried again for that crime, so prosecutors closed the case.
Before her apparent escape, she gave several interviews, and was known in Mexico as “La Pistolera,” which translates as “The Gunslinger.”
In a 1965 Saturday Evening Post interview, Kinne said: “I knew out there, out of Kansas City and Independence, that the world was going on its way someplace. And I wasn’t going anywhere.″
By Heather Hollingsworth
