In January 2025, Missouri authorities announced that Sharon Kinne had lived in Canada under another name and died there in 2022.
Case brief
Independence / Jackson County, Missouri · 1960
- Recorded outcome
- Missouri conviction reversed; Jones acquittal; death identified; case closed 2025
Key moments
People in this case
- Sharon Kinne
Acquitted in Patricia Jones’s death. The James Kinne prosecution ended without a conviction.
Photo at source · Kansas City Police · booking photograph from Mexico
The discovery ended a decades-long search. It did not produce a new trial in the deaths that had first brought her to investigators’ attention.
Her Missouri record requires particular care: she was acquitted of Patricia Jones’s murder, and her conviction for killing her husband, James Kinne, was reversed.
Two deaths and different outcomes
In March 1960, James was fatally shot. Sharon attributed the shooting to their young daughter. That was her account, not an established finding about the child.
Patricia Jones disappeared two months later. Investigators learned that Sharon had been involved with Patricia’s husband. Sharon was present when Patricia’s body was found, according to the police department’s historical timeline [2].
A jury acquitted Sharon in Patricia’s case in 1961. Another jury convicted her of James’s murder and imposed life imprisonment.
Those results cannot be compressed into two standing Missouri murder convictions. The second verdict did not survive appeal.
Why the conviction was reversed
The Missouri Supreme Court’s 1963 opinion [1] identifies a defect in jury selection.
Although prosecutors had waived the death penalty, the charge remained one for which the statute required a larger jury panel and a corresponding number of defense challenges. The trial court had used a smaller panel.
The Supreme Court held that the statutory requirements had not been followed and ordered a new trial.
That was not a finding that James’s death was accidental. It was a determination that the conviction could not stand after a trial conducted under an improper jury-selection procedure.
The opinion also examined the handling of a prosecution witness, John Boldizs. He described a conversation about killing James as joking. Prosecutors confronted him with earlier statements that appeared more incriminating.
The dispute concerned when the state could impeach its own witness and how prior inconsistent statements were being used. His testimony raised questions about pressure, context and whether an earlier statement was being treated as substantive proof.
A witness whose words changed meaning
One of the prosecution's witnesses, John Boldizs, had known Sharon since high school and acknowledged a sexual relationship with her. Asked about a conversation concerning James's death, he described Sharon offering a thousand dollars to get rid of her husband—but characterized the exchange as a joke. The prosecutor responded by questioning him about earlier statements to the sheriff and grand jury. The disagreement was not just whether a conversation had occurred. It was whether the earlier versions could be used to prove a serious solicitation. [1]
The appellate judges examined that distinction closely. The principal opinion rejected the way the state used its own witness's previous statements, while separate opinions differed over whether his characterization made him hostile to the prosecution. Even judges who would have permitted questions attacking his credibility objected to treating the earlier statements as substantive proof in the manner used at trial. The court's discussion preserves the dispute; it does not convert a contested remark into a newly established fact about who killed James. [1]
There was also an independent problem with the jury panel. Because prosecutors waived the death penalty, the trial court called thirty-four prospective jurors rather than forty-seven. But the applicable statute still entitled a defendant facing the relevant life-imprisonment charge to the larger panel and associated challenges. The supreme court held that failing to provide it required a new trial. Its October 21, 1963 opinion followed an earlier decision and rehearing in the same appeal. [1]
A name settled, separate cases left separate
Decades later, the fingerprint comparison answered an identification question. Police said they confirmed on May 31, 2024 that the woman who had lived in Alberta as Diedra Glabus was Kinne. She had died on January 21, 2022. The public announcement came in January 2025. That sequence explains why the announcement produced neither an arrest nor a new Missouri trial. [2]
The later identification belongs beside the earlier court outcomes, not in place of them. Patricia Jones's case ended in an acquittal; the conviction for James's death was reversed. Fingerprints linking two names cannot undo those outcomes. [1][2]
Mexico and a missing defendant
The official timeline states that Kinne went to Mexico, was convicted of a separate killing there and escaped from prison in December 1969.
The remaining Missouri proceedings therefore did not reach the kind of final retrial outcome that a casual retelling might imply.
Decades passed before an anonymous tip led investigators toward a woman known as Diedra Glabus in Alberta.
A posthumous answer
Authorities used genealogy and fingerprints to establish that Glabus and Kinne were the same person. The Kansas City Star reported [3] that prosecutors dismissed the pending charges on January 29, 2025, after the death was established.
The announcement answered the question of where Kinne had gone. It did not retroactively replace the Jones acquittal with a guilty verdict or revive the reversed conviction in James’s death.
The story ended without investigators questioning Kinne about the long gap in her life. James Kinne and Patricia Jones remained the people whose deaths began the Missouri proceedings, rather than supporting characters in an account of an ingenious fugitive.
The discovery in Canada closed a search. It also makes older descriptions of Kinne as a currently wanted, possibly living fugitive obsolete.
TheCatalyst31 with modifications by Kbh3rd · Image source · CC BY-SA 3.0
Look closer · 3 visuals
Inside the evidence.
Open a visual to explore what it contributed to the case—and the limits of what it shows. These original illustrations explain the record; they are not photographs of the actual evidence.
The fingerprint identity link
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Police reported that fingerprints connected the Alberta identity to Kinne.
Illustrative ridge pattern, not anyone’s fingerprints. Identity confirmation is not a new murder verdict.
Why a new trial was required
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The court held that the jury-panel procedure violated the applicable statutory requirement.
This explains the historical ruling; it does not establish who committed either Missouri killing.
Three cases, different outcomes
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The Missouri outcomes and the separate Mexican conviction must be kept distinct.
A case-history diagram, not an authentic court order.
★ Key evidence used in a conviction · ✓ Exclusion or reversal · ◇ Disputed evidence · ⊘ Excluded at retrial · ◆ Identity / investigative finding, not a conviction. A symbol does not mean one item proved the whole case.
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Follow the dated entries, then select an event to find its regional setting. Shared-location pins open a group of events. Evidence symbols identify important findings and their limitations.
Open the map in its own window ↗Sources & further reading
- State v. Kinne
- KCPD and Jackson County Sheriff’s Office announce Kinne identificationOfficial identification and timeline; police characterization separated from verdicts.
- Accused of murder, KC-area woman evaded police for 50 years — Kansas City StarCharges dismissed January29 and contemporary account of announcement.
Editorial review: 2026-09-29 · 887 words