Sharon Kinne (born Sharon Elizabeth Hall, November 30, 1939), also known as Jeanette Pugliese and in Mexico as La Pistolera, is an American murderer and prison escapee who was convicted in Mexico for one murder and is suspected of two others in the United States, one for which she was acquitted at trial. As of 2023, Kinne 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 U.S. history.
On March 19, 1960, Sharon's husband, James Kinne, was found shot in the head with the couple's two-year-old daughter playing nearby. Sharon claimed that the child, who had often been allowed to play with James's guns, 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, and that Jones's husband had tried to break off his affair with Sharon shortly before Jones went missing. When Sharon admitted to having been the last person to speak to Jones, she was charged with her murder and, upon further investigation of his death, that of James.
Sharon went to trial for Jones's murder in June 1961 and was acquitted. A January 1962 trial on charges of murdering her husband ended in conviction and a sentence of life imprisonment, but the verdict was overturned 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 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 Parades 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 the prison during a blackout in December 1969. Despite extensive manhunts, Sharon Kinne's whereabouts are unknown.
Early life and marriage
Sharon Kinne was born Sharon Elizabeth Hall on November 30, 1939, in Independence, Missouri, to Eugene and Doris Hall. When she was in junior high, Sharon's parents moved the family to Washington State, but by the time she was aged 15 they had returned to Missouri. In the summer of 1956, at age 16, Sharon met 22-year-old college student James Kinne at a church function, and the couple dated regularly until James returned to Brigham Young University (BYU) in the fall.
Sharon, reportedly deeply interested in finding a partner with prospects who could take her away from Independence, wrote a letter to James informing him 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, 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 the 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 miscarried the child that had brought about their marriage, she soon became pregnant again. In the fall of 1957, she gave birth to a girl they named Danna.