Charles Thurman Sinclair was never convicted of anything, and no court ever heard the evidence against him. In August 1990 he was arrested at his home in Alaska. In the weeks that followed, police departments in half a dozen cities in the western and central United States and in Vancouver, British Columbia, came to the view that he was the man behind a run of robberies of coin shops in which the owners or staff were killed. He died in a jail cell in Anchorage in October 1990, while he was fighting extradition to Montana.
Sinclair was charged in Utah with attempted criminal homicide and aggravated robbery. Montana police sought him in connection with two killings and an armed robbery. Detectives in other cities named him as a suspect or as their prime suspect. No confession to any of it was ever reported, and he never stood trial for any of it.
Little of his early life was reported. He was 44 when he died, according to the Deseret News in November 1990 and February 1991. In August 1990 the Deseret News, carrying Associated Press reporting, placed him at a home at Kenney Lake, Alaska; a later report described the home as near Valdez. Little is on record about his work, schooling and family. Police told reporters that he had rented a storage shed in Sumas, Washington, a border town close to British Columbia. A search of that shed was what led detectives in Vacaville, California, to connect him with their case.
The first charges against him came from Utah. On May 4, 1990, the owner of a coin shop in Murray, a city in the Salt Lake City area, was attacked during a robbery at the shop, Legacy Rare Coins. The owner survived. The Deseret News reported in August 1990 that the owner survived by feigning death and was believed to be the only living witness to the crimes attributed to Sinclair. That was the account given to the press by the investigators; it was not a court finding.
A Murray police detective, Mark Mehrer, was among the officers quoted in connection with the case. Utah charged Sinclair with attempted criminal homicide and aggravated robbery. The Coinweek writer Pete Smith, in a 2016 survey of attacks on coin dealers, put the value of the merchandise taken in Murray at about $60,000.
The case that brought the other states together was in Billings, Montana. On July 31, 1990, according to Smith's account, Charles Sparboe, 60, and his assistant Catharine Newstrom, 47, were killed in a coin shop there, and about $54,000 was taken. The Deseret News reported in August and November 1990 that Sparboe and Newstrom were killed in July and that Billings police wanted Sinclair for the two killings and an armed robbery.
Montana authorities asked for his extradition from Alaska, and UPI reported that he was fighting it. The Deseret News reported that he was held in Palmer, Alaska, on a bond of $500,000 and that investigators had traced his movements through Washington, Wyoming and Alaska before the arrest. In the months after the arrest, he challenged extradition, which kept him in Anchorage, in the Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility.
Sinclair was arrested on August 13, 1990, at his home in Alaska, the Deseret News reported in February 1991. The FBI took an interest in the case after the arrest, the same report said. Accounts in the weeks that followed, including the Deseret News of August 24, 1990, and UPI on August 28, 1990, describe the Murray and Billings matters as the formal basis for holding him, with the other cities waiting to see what evidence could be tied to him.
Canada entered the case through two killings in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 19, 1990, which the August 1990 report listed among the crimes suspected to be his.
The Deseret News listed the suspected coin-shop killings in August 1990 as follows (UPI's list of the same week added Watertown, New York): a shop owner in Vacaville, California, in November 1986; the coin dealer Leo Cashatt in Spokane, Washington, in July 1987; one in Kansas City, Missouri, in March 1988; and two killings in Vancouver on June 19, 1990. By the end of October 1990 the same newspaper added Everett, Washington, to the list and described him as a suspect in the deaths of coin-shop owners there, in Spokane, in Vacaville and in Kansas City.
Several police officers were quoted in the August reports. A sergeant with the Vacaville police, Mike Cook, linked the case to Sinclair after the search of the storage shed in Sumas and described the suspect in terms of a typical serial killer; that is his characterization, not a finding. A Spokane police lieutenant, Robert Van Leuven, was also quoted.
Pete Smith's 2016 article gives a longer list and says it was believed that Sinclair was responsible for a series of coin-shop killings from 1980 to 1990. Beyond the cases above, it names David Sutton, 36, killed in Everett on January 27, 1980; Thomas Rohr, 41, of Mishawaka, Indiana, killed during the robbery of his coin shop on August 28, 1985; Ruben Williams, the owner of a coin shop in Vacaville, killed on November 1, 1986; Leo Cashatt, 45, killed in Spokane on July 14, 1987; and LeRoy Hoffman, killed in Kansas City on March 12, 1988. The article does not say which agency or person made the link in each of these cases. Smith ties one further case, involving a couple who disappeared in Washington State in August 1986 and who were not coin dealers, to Sinclair through stolen credit cards.
The one thing the attributed killings had in common, according to the police and press accounts, was the victims' trade: they were coin dealers or worked in coin shops. That shared feature, together with robbery as the apparent purpose, was the basis on which detectives in different states came to treat the cases as the work of a single person. It was an inference, and it was never tested in court.
A further theory surfaced in late August 1990. United Press International reported on August 28 that Sinclair was fighting extradition from Alaska to Montana on charges tied to the Billings robbery and the deaths of two people, and that investigators believed he had been recruited by a Texas man. That man's 1985 conviction in a coin shop killing in Pantego, Texas, and his life sentence had been overturned by a Texas appeals court in 1988. He was free on bond and the county was appealing to reinstate the conviction.
The source of the theory was a Tarrant County, Texas, assistant district attorney, David Chapman, who told UPI that "The similarities are amazing" between the Billings and Pantego crimes. He said an accomplice's testimony in the Texas case indicated that the man had "a standard plan for robbing coin shops" and was always looking for someone "cold-blooded" to recruit. Chapman acknowledged that some of the coin shop crimes took place while that man was in prison, but said he "certainly could have planned and supervised these types of crimes from inside" the penitentiary. He also said Texas officials had suspected the man in a similar November 1982 killing in Dallas, though he was never charged. An FBI special agent in Alaska, Ken Marischen, said agents were "currently looking into" a connection between the two men. UPI did not report any finding. No charge against the Texas man in connection with Sinclair's cases was ever reported.
UPI added further allegations. It listed the suspected coin shop killings as Vacaville (1986), Spokane (1987), Kansas City (1988), Watertown, New York (1989) and Vancouver (June 19, 1990), reported that he was charged with wounding a coin shop owner in Murray, and said he was suspected in the 1986 disappearance of a California couple traveling in Washington State. It also said he was wanted in New Mexico for allegedly embezzling about $30,000 in state license fees from a store that he and his wife had operated in Hobbs. UPI reported that investigators saw a pattern in most of the coin shop crimes: the attacker knew the victims and took rare coins.
In late October 1990, Sinclair collapsed in his cell at the Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility in Anchorage. Jail staff found him unconscious and tried to revive him. He was pronounced dead at an Anchorage hospital about 25 minutes after paramedics took him there. The Deseret News reported on November 2, 1990, that he appeared to have died of a heart attack and that he had a history of heart problems.
A coroner's jury in Anchorage later reached a different conclusion about the cause. The Deseret News reported on February 17, 1991, that the jury, after deliberating for more than an hour, ruled the death accidental. It found that cardiac arrest was brought on by an accidental overdose of his own prescribed medication. The finding was a ruling on how he died; it was not a finding on any of the crimes.
He died before any trial, so the Utah charges and the Montana extradition effort did not go forward. The Deseret News in February 1991 described him as later suspected in 11 other coin-shop homicides in Washington, California, Indiana and Missouri, as well as the Billings and Murray cases. Whether any police agency closed its case on the strength of the suspicion has never been reported.
None of the allegations was proved in court. The distinctions are these.
Charged: attempted criminal homicide and aggravated robbery in Utah (the Murray attack of May 4, 1990). No verdict.
Sought: two killings and an armed robbery in Billings, Montana, July 1990. Extradition was contested and ended with his death.
Suspected or attributed by police: the killings in Vacaville, Spokane, Everett, Kansas City and Vancouver, and others in a longer list printed in 2016. Those attributions were statements by investigators or by the press; none rests on a court finding.
Not established: whether one person was responsible for all of the killings. The reports differ on the number: the Deseret News in August 1990 spoke of seven killings at five shops, and in February 1991 of a total that included 11 other homicides beyond the Billings and Murray cases.
The Texas theory rests on one prosecutor's statements and an FBI agent's remark that agents were looking into it; no finding was reported.
The accounts also differ on two points: the Deseret News first described his death as an apparent heart attack, and a coroner's jury later ruled it an accidental overdose of his own prescribed medication. The August 1990 report puts his home at Kenney Lake and the February 1991 report puts it near Valdez.
1980: David Sutton, 36, is killed in Everett, Washington (listed in a 2016 account among cases linked to the suspect).
August 28, 1985: Thomas Rohr, 41, is killed during a coin shop robbery in Mishawaka, Indiana (same list).
November 1986: coin shop owner killed in Vacaville, California (attributed by Vacaville police).
July 1987: coin dealer Leo Cashatt killed in Spokane, Washington (attributed).
March 1988: coin shop killing in Kansas City, Missouri (attributed).
May 4, 1990: coin shop owner in Murray, Utah, attacked and survives; Utah later charges Sinclair.
June 19, 1990: two killings in Vancouver, British Columbia, listed among the suspected crimes.
July 31, 1990: Charles Sparboe and Catharine Newstrom killed in a coin shop in Billings, Montana.
August 13, 1990: Sinclair arrested at his home in Alaska.
August 28, 1990: UPI reports a Texas prosecutor's theory that a Texas man recruited Sinclair; the FBI says it is looking into a connection.
August 1990: held on $500,000 bond in Palmer, Alaska; Montana seeks extradition.
Late October 1990: dies in the Cook Inlet Pre-Trial Facility, Anchorage.
February 1991: coroner's jury rules the death an accident.