Fascinating secrets of female fugitive who 'killed 3,' fled jail then lived quiet life on the run
By MELISSA KOENIG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: 21:25 EST, 30 January 2025 | Updated: 02:16 EST, 31 January 2025
A female fugitive who was accused of killing three people in both the United States and Mexico was found to have been living a quiet life in a small Canadian town for nearly 50 years.
Sharon Kinne's whereabouts had remained a mystery for decades, after she slipped out of a Mexican prison in 1969.
She was just four years into her 13-year prison sentence for the shooting death of Francisco Paredez Ordonez, whom she met at a local bar, and was due back in the United States for a retrial in the death of her husband.
The femme fatale was accused of shooting her husband dead in Independence, Missouri in 1960, and then murdering her new lover's pregnant wife years later.
But as Mexican authorities scoured the nation searching for the escaped convict, Kinne was living in the small town of Taber in Alberta, Canada - where she was known as a real estate agent and a community volunteer, CBC reports.
She had adopted the pseudonym Diedra 'Dee' Glabus and had remarried several times before she died of natural causes on January 21, 2022, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday.
'I would love nothing more [than] to one day sit across the table from her, and I would love to pick her brain,' Sgt. Dustin Love said.
'So yeah, it's unfortunate we couldn't catch her when she was alive,' he said, adding that Kinne 'was really good at what she did.'
Sharon Kinne had been living in a small Canadian town for nearly 50 years after she fled a Mexican prison
Kinne was accused of murdering three people in the United States and Mexico
Convicted killer confirmed dead by FBI 60 years after murder
In fact, the sheriff's office was only able to track down Kinne after it received an anonymous tip from someone in Alberta in December 2023.
That 'courageous' tipster informed police that she had been living in Alberta under a pseudonym, prompting officers to subpoena the funeral home for her fingerprints, Capt. Ronda Montgomery said at a news conference.
Officers were then able to match Glabus' fingerprints to that of the suspected murderer.
'I have already extended my apologies to both sides of the family that weren't able to catch her during her life,' Sgt. Love said.
'It just so happens that someone had that tip and was not willing to release it until after her death.'
Police have previously said that Kinne, who was married at the age of 16, shot and killed her husband, James Kinne, in the back of the head on March 19, 1960 inside their home in the Kansas City suburb of Independence.
She told police at the time she had been getting ready in the bathroom when she heard a gunshot, and blamed her two-year-old daughter.
'She said she was in the bathroom getting ready for dinner and she heard her daughter say, "Daddy, how's this thing work?" then she heard a shot and she said she ran in the bedroom and discovered her husband,' Col. William Morton, who was the first on the scene, recounted to talk radio station KCMO in the 1990s.
'She said that the little daughter had shot him... We bought it at that time.'
The Jackson County Sheriff's Office announced Thursday she had been living under the pseudonym Diedra 'Dee' Glabus
Sharon Kinne behind bars in Mexico before she escaped from prison during a 13-year sentence
James' death was then ruled an accident.
But just hours before James' death, he had confided in family members that he planned to leave his wife because she had been having affairs, the Tribune reported, The La Crosse Tribune reported.
When she was then let off the hook for her husband's murder, Kinne was able to collect a $5,000 life insurance payout, which she used to buy a Ford Thunderbird convertible.
She also began dating the car salesman who had sold her the car, Walter Jones.
Walter had refused to leave his pregnant wife, Patricia Jones, for Kinne.
The scorned girlfriend then allegedly duped Patricia into meeting her in May 1960, when she disappeared, sparking a massive search effort.
Just three months after her husband died, Kinne allegedly found Patricia's body.
She was with another boyfriend at the time of the so-called 'discovery' and acted surprised when she saw the body, which had been shot four times, telling her boyfriend, 'I think that's her,' Love claimed on Thursday.
Kinne then allegedly begged her boyfriend not to tell police she was there, but he did so anyway.
Kline was arrested in Missouri for both her husband, James' and Patricia Jones' murders
In the aftermath, Kinne was charged with her love rival's murder - a shock twist that also prompted cops to take another look at her husband's death. She was then also hit with charges for his murder.
The following year, she went on trial for each case separately.
Kinne was acquitted of Patricia's murder by an all-male jury to courtroom applause.
She was then convicted of James's murder.
But, the conviction was later overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court due to an improper jury selection.
She was tried twice more for James's murder: one ended in a mistrial, the second with a hung jury.
While out on bond after that fourth trial, Kinne jetted off to Mexico City with another lover before she could be tried again in Missouri.
Kinne's conviction in her husband's murder was later overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court due to an improper jury selection
But it wasn't long before Kinne was in the trouble with the law again.
Days after arriving in Mexico City in 1964, Kinne - using the alias Jeanette Pugliese - met Francisco Paredes Ordonez in a bar and went with him to a motel, KCTV reports.
Authorities said she was in the process of robbing him at the time, as she was caught with the murder weapon in her hands, but she claimed she acted in self-defense.
As police investigated the shooting, they uncovered a second gun - which investigators would later learn had been used to kill Patricia.
She was unable to face new charges for the murder, however, due to double jeopardy laws in the United States.
Behind bars, she earned the nickname 'La Pistolera,' meaning 'The Gunslinger,' and gave many interviews to the media
In 1965, Kinne was convicted in a Mexican court of Ordonez's murder and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Behind bars, she earned the nickname 'La Pistolera,' meaning 'The Gunslinger,' and gave many interviews to the media.
'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 told The Kansas City Star in one jailhouse interview.
'They're afraid of all the women convicted of murder.'
In another interview with the Saturday Evening Post, 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.'
She escaped from prison in Ixtacalapan years later, on December 7, 1969.
When Kinne finally passed in 2022, she had children from some of these later marriages, and was remembered for serving as the chair of Taber's daycare center steering committee
She was living in the small town in Alberta, Canada, where she had worked as a real estate agent
She then apparently moved to Los Angeles, California in 1970, where she married James Glabus under the pseudonym Deidra.
They moved to Taber, Alberta three years later, and owned Taber Motel before working together as real estate agents, according to an obituary for her late husband.
He died in 1979 at the age of 38, after years of alcoholism and diabetes, according to the findings of a fatality inquiry obtained by CBC.
It showed that James was drinking the night he died, and evidence presented to a judge showed Deidra tried to get her husband admitted to a local hospital, but they were out of beds.
The judge eventually ruled that Jim died of 'asphyxiation from inhalation of gastric juices as a result of being in a diabetic coma.'
A few years later, Deidra remarried William Ell, who died in 2011 at the age of 79.
When Kinne finally passed in 2022, she had children from some of these later marriages, and was remembered for serving as the chair of Taber's daycare center steering committee.
But in a statement from her family, they said, 'Sharon was a woman that never faced the consequences of her actions, leaving them for her children to deal with.'
They added: 'She caused great harm without thought or remorse.' |
