Sharon Kinne went on trial four times in Missouri, once in the death of another man's wife and three times in the death of her husband, and was never left with a conviction there. A jury acquitted her of the murder of Patricia Jones in 1961. A second jury convicted her in 1962 of murdering her husband, James Kinne, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that verdict, and the retrials that followed ended without a result. While she was free on bond, waiting for a fourth trial in her husband's death, she went to Mexico City. There, in September 1964, a man she had met in a bar was shot dead in a hotel room, and a Mexican court convicted her of his killing. Ballistics tests linked a gun found among her things in Mexico to the death of Patricia Jones.
She escaped from a Mexican women's prison in December 1969 and was not seen again under her own name. In 2025 the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office announced that she had spent about five decades in Taber, a small town in southern Alberta, as a realtor and volunteer named Diedra "Dee" Glabus. She had died there of natural causes on January 21, 2022, at 81. An anonymous tip, a funeral home's fingerprint record and an FBI comparison closed one of the oldest open murder warrants in Kansas City's history.
Her legal record is narrow. She stands convicted of one killing, in Mexico. She was acquitted of a second. The third case, her husband's death, was never resolved in court; the charge was dismissed only after her death. In 2025 the police called her a "fugitive serial killer," and a sheriff's captain said that by definition she was "technically a serial killer."
Kinne lived in the Independence area, just outside Kansas City, Missouri. She married at 16, according to the Associated Press, and by early 1960 she was the mother of two young children. Her husband, James Kinne, was 25. The family lived in a ranch-style house.
Little has been reported about her childhood or her husband's work, but the marriage was troubled. Testimony at her later trials, the Associated Press reported, showed that the couple had marital problems and that she had been seeing other men.
One man from her past would become a central witness. According to the Missouri Supreme Court's 1963 opinion, he had known her since high school in 1956, lived in Independence and worked at a service station. He told a grand jury in June 1960 that she had asked whether he would kill her husband for $1,000, and that he believed she meant it. At trial he put it differently, saying the offer had been made "in a joking way." The court's handling of that change in his story became one of the grounds of her appeal.
James Kinne was shot and killed at home in March 1960 while he was napping. Sharon Kinne told police that she heard the shot while she was in the bathroom, and that she found their two-year-old daughter holding her husband's .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol. She said the girl had asked, "How does this thing work, Daddy?" just before the gun went off.
Officers accepted her account. Col. William Morton, who was the first officer at the scene, recalled it decades later in a radio interview quoted by CBC News and the Taber Times. "She said that the little daughter had shot him, two and a half years," he said. "We bought it at that time." The death was ruled accidental.
Kinne received about $29,000 from her husband's life insurance, according to KCTV5. With that money and the proceeds from selling the family home, the Associated Press reported, she went shopping for a car.
At the car dealership Kinne met a salesman, and the two began an affair. He was married to Patricia Jones. According to Sgt. Dustin Love of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, who reconstructed the case in 2025, Kinne tried to persuade him to leave his wife. "Of course he said no," Love told reporters. The Taber Times, summarizing the case file, reported that he tried to end the affair after she told him she was pregnant.
Patricia Jones was 23. She and her husband had a daughter who was two years old in 1960. Speaking to FOX4 in 2025, that daughter said she had no memory of her mother because she had been so young, and that the killing had followed the family for the rest of their lives. She remembered her mother's age before anything else: "To think, 23 years old," she said.
In May 1960, the Associated Press reported, Kinne arranged to meet Patricia Jones, and after that meeting Jones was not seen alive again. Her husband reported her missing.
That night, according to the sheriff's office account given to KCTV5 and the Taber Times, Kinne called on her former high school boyfriend and had him drive her along a road outside Independence. She pointed out a body. Patricia Jones had been shot. Love said Kinne acted surprised and said, "I think that's her." The man wanted to report what they had found; Kinne refused, asked him to take her home, and told him not to tell the police she had been there. He took her home and then led officers to the body, telling them she had been with him.
The Jackson County Sheriff's Office arrested Kinne on May 31, 1960. The Kansas City police release of 2025 lists that arrest as covering both deaths. On June 1, 1960, she was formally charged with the murder of Patricia Jones, and a Jackson County grand jury indicted her in her husband's death as well. The former boyfriend testified before the grand jury on June 27, 1960, the date recorded in the Missouri Supreme Court's opinion.
The two cases were tried separately. That decision shaped everything that followed: a jury hearing the Jones case would not decide the husband's case, and a later verdict in one could not settle the other.
The Patricia Jones case came to trial first, in June 1961. An all-male jury acquitted Kinne, and spectators in the courtroom applauded the verdict, the Associated Press reported. Speaking in 2025, Love said that the justice system had "come a long ways in 65 years."
The acquittal was final. Under the protection against double jeopardy, she could never be tried again for the death of Patricia Jones, whatever evidence later came to light. Evidence did come to light, in Mexico, three years later.
In January 1962 Kinne stood trial in Jackson County for the first-degree murder of her husband. The state waived the death penalty. The jury found her guilty and fixed her punishment at life imprisonment; the Kansas City police release dates the life sentence to January 11, 1962.
The former high school boyfriend was a witness for the state. According to the Missouri Supreme Court, he testified that she had talked about her husband and that something had been said about his killing James Kinne for her, but "in a joking way," and he quoted her as offering "a grand." The prosecutor then confronted him with his own earlier statements: a deposition, his grand jury testimony and what he had told sheriff's officers. Before the grand jury he had said that she asked whether he would kill her husband for $1,000 and that he believed she was serious. On the stand he said sheriff's officers had pressured him, and that Kinne had told him not to let them "bully" him. A truck driver testified for the state that the boyfriend had told him about the $1,000 offer; he could not remember whether the boyfriend had called it a joke.
Kinne appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri. Its Division No. 2 first took up the case at its January 1963 session and decided that the conviction had to be reversed. The Kansas City police release and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office date that reversal to March 1963. The court then granted a rehearing on one narrow question and issued a fresh opinion on October 21, 1963, written by Commissioner Barrett and adopted by the court. Motions to transfer the case to the full court were denied on November 11, 1963. The citation is State v. Kinne, 372 S.W.2d 62.
The court gave two grounds. The first was the jury panel. Because the state had waived the death penalty, the trial judge called a panel of 34 prospective jurors instead of 47, over the defense's objection. That reduced the number of jurors the defense could strike. Missouri law required a panel of 47 for an offense punishable by life imprisonment, and the court, following its own earlier decisions, held that the error required a new trial.
The second ground was the prosecutor's treatment of the former boyfriend. The court held that the state had improperly cross-examined and impeached its own witness when he had not been shown to be hostile, the state had not claimed surprise, and no effort had been made to refresh his memory. It also held that his earlier, inconsistent statements could be used only to test his credibility, not as proof that she had made the offer. The state had argued otherwise, and the trial judge had refused a defense instruction limiting how the jury could use those statements. Judges Storckman, Eager and Leedy wrote or joined separate concurrences on the impeachment question. The judgment was reversed and the case sent back for a new trial.
After the reversal Kinne was released on a $25,000 bond, which KCTV5 reported was paid by her brother. Love said in 2025 that a defendant in her position would not be freed on bond today.
The retrials did not produce a verdict. According to the Taber Times, drawing on the sheriff's office chronology, the second trial in her husband's death ended in a mistrial. A third trial, in July 1964, ended with the jury deadlocked seven to five. The Associated Press summarized the outcome more briefly: at her retrial, jurors could not agree. She remained free on bond, and a fourth trial was set for October 1964.
In September 1964, a month before the fourth trial, Kinne left for Mexico with a new boyfriend. The Taber Times reported that she went, by some accounts, to marry him. In Mexico she used the name Jeanette Pugliese, according to KCTV5 and The Canadian Press.
On September 18, 1964, according to the Kansas City police release and a Canadian Press photo caption, she was involved in a shooting in Mexico City. She had met a man in a bar and gone with him to a hotel. The man was Francisco Paredes Ordoñez; The Canadian Press, drawing on the Associated Press, described him as a man from Chicago. At about 3 a.m., the Associated Press reported, shots were heard, and Paredes Ordoñez was found dead.
A hotel employee who came at the sound of the shots was also shot and survived. The Taber Times and Vauxhall Advance reported that he found Kinne holding a pistol, was shot as he fled, and called the police. Kinne said she had fired in self-defense against the man's sexual advances. CBC News described the killing as happening during a robbery attempt. The two accounts have not been reconciled.
Mexican police held her in a cell in Mexico City. An Associated Press photo caption records that on September 21, 1964, she refused to have her fingerprints taken; a Canadian Press caption notes that a photograph from that week showed her with a blackened eye, with no explanation given.
Police found a gun in her room in Mexico. The Associated Press called the place a motel, CBC News a hotel room. Ballistics tests showed it was the weapon used to kill Patricia Jones, confirming what prosecutors had suspected, according to the Associated Press, CBC News and the Kansas City police. The Taber Times went further and reported that Paredes Ordoñez had been shot with the same weapon; the other reports say only that the gun matched the Jones killing.
The finding could not reopen the Jones case. She had been acquitted, and she could not be tried twice for the same death. Prosecutors closed that file, the Associated Press reported.
A Mexican court convicted Kinne of killing Francisco Paredes Ordoñez. Her sentence is consistently reported as 13 years. The Taber Times dates the conviction to October 1965 and says the 13-year term came after a judicial review; the court's name, the exact date and the earlier stages of the sentence were not reported.
The Mexican press called her "La Pistolera," which translates as "The Gunslinger." Missouri officers had their own name for her, "Pistol Packin' Mama," according to CBC News and Lethbridge News Now.
The Missouri charge stayed open. She never returned for the fourth trial, and her case became, in the words of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and The Canadian Press, the longest outstanding arrest warrant for murder in the history of Kansas City, Missouri, and one of the longest outstanding felony warrants in the United States.
Kinne served her sentence in a women's prison in Mexico City, which the Associated Press placed in Ixtacalapan, an older spelling of Iztapalapa.
She spoke to reporters from prison. In a 1965 interview with The Saturday Evening Post, quoted by the Associated Press in 2025, she said: "I knew out there, out of Kansas City and Independence, that the world was going on its way someplace." She added, "I wasn't going anywhere." In 1969 she told Kevin Kelleghan of The Kansas City Star: "You know, one of the reasons why I can do just about anything I please is they're a little bit afraid of me." She added, "They're afraid of all the women convicted of murder."
On December 7, 1969, Kinne escaped from the prison. The date is given by the Kansas City police and the Associated Press, which says she "reportedly" escaped. The Taber Times and Lethbridge News Now report that she got out during a blackout. She had served almost five years. How she left, and who if anyone helped her, has not been reported.
About two months later, on February 2, 1970, Kinne married in Los Angeles, according to the Kansas City police release. Her new husband's surname, Glabus, was the one she would use for the rest of her life. KCTV5 reported that she used the name Sharon Kinne on that marriage record; investigators found it in 2024 and used it to connect her to the Glabus name.
The couple moved to Taber, Alberta, in 1973, according to her second husband's obituary, which The Canadian Press quoted. Taber is a farming town of about 9,000 people, roughly three hours southeast of Calgary. There the couple owned a motel and later worked together as realtors; The Canadian Press reported that they started a real estate agency.
In Taber she was known as Diedra Glabus, or Dee. Lethbridge News Now and CBC News, citing the Lethbridge Herald, reported that she chaired the town's daycare steering committee. CBC described her as a bridge-playing realtor and volunteer. The Taber police chief, Graham Abela, told the Taber Times he had known her for many years and that she was well known in the community. She was never on police radar, he said, and had never been suspected of, charged with or convicted of any crime in Canada. Because she stayed out of trouble, he said, no one ever had reason to look at her papers.
Her second husband died in 1979, at 38, according to CBC News. A fatality inquiry found that he died while in a diabetic coma; CBC reported that she had tried to have him admitted to hospital and that no bed was available.
In March 1982 she married again, The Canadian Press reported. Her third husband died in 2011 at 79. She had children in at least two of her marriages, CBC said, though details are scarce. She raised a family in Taber and lived there for about 49 years.
How she obtained documents to live in Canada is still unknown. The Taber Times reported that how she and her second husband got visas, identification or citizenship has not been explained. Investigators say her movements from 1969 to 1979 remain unknown.
She died of natural causes in Alberta on January 21, 2022, at the age of 81.
In December 2023, nearly two years after her death, an anonymous caller contacted the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline and urged the Jackson County Sheriff's Office to look into her whereabouts in Canada. The Kansas City police received a tip at about the same time. The two agencies investigated separately until they realized they were working the same case, according to the Kansas City police release. The Taber Times reported that the tipster was believed to be in Alberta.
The work was led by Sgt. Dustin Love of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and by Darin Lee, an intelligence analyst with the Kansas City police. KCTV5 reported that Love and two deputies traced a marriage record and linked her to the Glabus name. The police release credits forensic genealogy and fingerprint analysis with showing that Sharon Kinne and Diedra Glabus were the same person; it does not say how the genealogy was used.
Love was blunt about the timing. "It just so happens that someone had that tip and was not willing to release it until after her death," he said at the 2025 news conference.
Confirming the match took some work. Abela, the Taber police chief, told the Taber Times that Canadian police could not take fingerprints from a funeral home without a search warrant, and no Canadian offense existed to justify one. Canada's Identification of Criminals Act allows fingerprints of deceased people with criminal records to be taken, he said, but she had no record. A request under the mutual legal assistance process between the two countries could have taken months.
There was another route. After her death, the funeral home had recorded her fingerprints through a service that keeps prints of the deceased; KSNT reported that three prints were taken. The company that held the data was in Missouri. Abela told the Taber Times it was in Independence; KCTV5 and KSNT reported Lee's Summit. Jackson County obtained the prints with an administrative subpoena and compared them with prints from her 1960 arrest. The fingerprints confirmed her identity on May 31, 2024, according to the Kansas City police. Taber police thanked Love in a statement for what they called "a true example of Canadian and United States law enforcement agencies working across international borders." The RCMP in Alberta said it helped coordinate but that the American agencies identified her "through their own means," a spokesman, Cpl. Troy Savinkoff, told The Canadian Press.
The news reached the public in two steps. On January 17, 2025, FOX4 in Kansas City reported that the FBI had told it a woman named Diedra Glabus, who died in 2022, had fingerprints matching Kinne's; local agencies would not confirm it at the time. On January 30, 2025, the Kansas City police and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office held a joint news conference and released a statement closing the case. Jackson County Prosecutor Melesa Johnson confirmed that as of January 29, 2025, all pending charges against Kinne had been dismissed, FOX4 reported.
Asked why the announcement came months after the May 2024 match, officials told FOX4 that they had many loose ends to tie up first. Capt. Ronda Montgomery of the sheriff's office said the timing did not matter because "she can't hurt anyone."
Love said he regretted that she had not been found alive. "I would love nothing more (than) to one day sit across the table from her, and I would like to pick her brain," he said. "So, yeah, it's unfortunate we couldn't catch her when she was alive. She was really good at what she did." He said he had apologized to both sides of the family.
The case touched three families: those of the people who died, and her own. "Not only are the victims' families affected by this, but so are her families," Montgomery said. Both sides asked for privacy, and the authorities said the families wished to remain anonymous.
Kinne's family issued a statement, read at the news conference. "Sharon was a woman that never faced the consequences of her actions, leaving them for her children to deal with," it said. "She caused great harm without thought or remorse." The family said it was glad the chapter could be closed and hoped the announcement would help it heal from her "traumatic legacy." Abela told the Taber Times that, as far as he knew, her family in Taber had not known her true identity.
Patricia Jones's daughter told FOX4 she learned of the death only when law enforcement called her after the station's first report. She asked why she was hearing in 2025 about a woman who had died three years earlier.
In Taber the news arrived in a town where many people had known Dee Glabus for decades. The Taber Times reported that it had received a tip from a retired FBI agent in Kansas City in mid-January and had asked the local police and Jackson County for confirmation on January 27; three days later the story was public. Savinkoff, the RCMP spokesman, said the story read like a novel and predicted that "someone will publish something."
Courts decided three things about Sharon Kinne. A Missouri jury acquitted her of the murder of Patricia Jones in 1961. A Missouri jury convicted her of her husband's murder in 1962, a verdict the state Supreme Court reversed in 1963; no later jury reached a verdict, and the charge was dismissed in 2025. A Mexican court convicted her of killing Francisco Paredes Ordoñez.
In 2025 the Kansas City police described her as a "fugitive serial killer." Montgomery put the sheriff's office view this way: "we know she killed two in Jackson County, we also know she killed one in Mexico, and possibly there is more, so under definition, she is technically a serial killer." Those are the conclusions of investigators. They are not court findings for the two Missouri deaths: the acquittal in the Jones case stands, and the husband's case ended without a final verdict.
Several points remain open or disputed:
Patricia Jones's death. The 1964 ballistics match tied a gun found among Kinne's things in Mexico to the killing, but it came after her acquittal and was never tested in court.
The Mexico City shooting. Kinne said she fired in self-defense; CBC News described a robbery attempt. Sources also differ on the month, with most giving September 1964 and the Taber Times October 1964.
The weapon. The Taber Times reported that the gun that killed Paredes Ordoñez was the gun that killed Patricia Jones; the Associated Press and the police say only that a gun found in her room matched the Jones killing.
Other victims. Montgomery said "possibly there is more." No other case has been named, and investigators asked for information about her life from 1969 to 1979 and any involvement in other crimes.
Her documents. How she settled in Canada under a new name is unexplained.
1956: Her former high school boyfriend, a later trial witness, says he knew her from high school that year (Missouri Supreme Court).
March 1960: James Kinne, 25, is shot and killed at home; she says their two-year-old daughter fired the gun, and the death is ruled accidental.
May 1960: Patricia Jones, 23, disappears after a meeting with Kinne and is found shot dead.
May 31, 1960: Kinne is arrested by the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
June 1, 1960: She is charged with Patricia Jones's murder; a grand jury indicts her in her husband's death.
June 1961: An all-male jury acquits her of Patricia Jones's murder.
January 1962: A jury convicts her of her husband's murder; life sentence (January 11, 1962).
1963: The Missouri Supreme Court reverses the conviction (January 1963 session; reported as March 1963; final opinion October 21, 1963; transfer denied November 11, 1963). She is released on a $25,000 bond.
1964: A retrial ends in a mistrial; another, in July, ends in a 7 to 5 hung jury. A fourth trial is set for October.
September 18, 1964: Francisco Paredes Ordoñez is shot dead in a Mexico City hotel; a hotel employee is wounded. Kinne is held by police.
October 1965: A Mexican court convicts her; sentence 13 years.
December 7, 1969: She escapes from the women's prison.
February 2, 1970: She marries in Los Angeles.
1973: She and her husband move to Taber, Alberta.
1979: Her second husband dies.
March 1982: She marries for a third time.
January 21, 2022: She dies of natural causes in Alberta, aged 81, as Diedra Glabus.
December 2023: Anonymous tips reach the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas City police.
May 31, 2024: Fingerprints confirm that Diedra Glabus was Sharon Kinne.
January 17, 2025: FOX4 reports the FBI fingerprint match.
January 29, 2025: All pending charges against her are dismissed.
January 30, 2025: Kansas City police and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office announce the case closed.