“La Pistolera” Sharon Kinne

Hi Serial Killers listeners.

I have some news to share today.

After seven incredible years of hosting this show, I will be signing off of Serial Killers after this week's episode.

The good news is, Serial Killers isn't going anywhere.

It will still be in the best hands with people who have been here for years, some since the very beginning.

I know that wherever they take the show next, it'll be worth sticking around for.

It's been the greatest privilege to bring you these stories week after week, and I've been humbled by the encouragement, support, and enthusiasm you've given this show over the years.

Thank you for listening.

And please don't forget,

stay safe out there.

Due to the nature of this case, listener discretion is advised.

This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual assault, and violence.

Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.

It's September 21st, 1964, and assistant prosecutor Donald Mason is reading the daily edition of the Kansas City Star.

There's several stories on the front page, one about the war in Vietnam, another covering a local cable car crash.

But the column at the bottom of the page catches Mason's eye.

The story is from Mexico City.

An American woman had been charged with murder for shooting a man to death in a hotel room.

The woman's name is Sharon Kinney.

Mason realizes she's the same woman who's been tried for murder four times in the Kansas City area.

She's the same woman he had been preparing to prosecute

when

she

vanished.

I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast.

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This week, we're covering Sharon Kinney.

In the 1960s, people close to Sharon kept dying.

She kept going to court, but still, she roamed free.

Stay with us.

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Years before she became La Pistolera, 16-year-old Sharon Hall was just another girl looking for a sweetheart.

Except, she wasn't just searching for a date to the prom.

No, she wanted someone who would be her escape from Independence, Missouri.

To Sharon, her Podunk hometown was a nightmare.

She wanted someone who could take her away from her parents and the dim prospects Independence offered her.

Whatever she was going to get out of life, she knew she would have to get it herself.

But to Sharon's estimation, the only assets she had at her disposal were...

well, her assets.

That's why she was at a local Mormon church on the night of a mixer for the congregation's young adults.

Of course, the boys her age eyed her with the kind of interest teenage boys are known for, but Sharon wasn't wasting her time with them.

They couldn't help her escape her life.

Instead, she had her sight set on nabbing a grown man, a college student.

So there she was, keeping her eyes peeled for a good prospect.

Eventually, she found him.

James Kinney was sitting alone in the corner, handsome, shy, and certainly more mature than the high school boys.

Never wanted to waste time, Sharon approached him and sparked up a conversation.

She found out he was 22 and had spent the last couple of years studying at Brigham Young University in Utah.

He was just back home for the summer.

Bingo.

James was just the type of guy who could rescue Sharon from her backwoods town.

She just needed to get him on the hook.

To do that, she lied through her perfect teeth.

She told James that she was 20 and a college student herself.

She explained that she was taking some time off to visit her family, but that she intended to go back as soon as possible.

As she spoke, James's eyes lit up.

She seemed like exactly the kind of woman he needed.

He'd been raised to be straightforward, honest, and upstanding.

So he wanted a wife who matched his ambitions and his religious beliefs.

He couldn't believe how lucky he was to have met a woman like that who looked like Sharon did.

In other words, it was on.

The two had their first date within days.

However, once Sharon could tell that James was smitten, her behavior became wildly different.

Sometimes she'd act like he was the greatest man she'd ever met.

Other times, she'd yell at him and blame him for all her problems.

As the summer wore on, James got over Sharon and her mood swings.

By the fall, he was excited to return to college in Utah.

It gave him an excuse to end the relationship.

But just like before, Sharon had other plans.

James was her ticket out of independence, and she knew just how to bring him crawling back.

About a month after James' return to Brigham Young University, he received a letter from Sharon, and she had big news.

She was pregnant.

It was devastating.

With cultural taboos and his religious beliefs, James knew he should marry Sharon, but it was the last thing he wanted to do.

But in the end, he moved back to independence and proposed.

They married on October 18, 1956.

James was 22 and Sharon was just 16.

In Sharon's mind, she'd won the lottery.

She'd reeled James back in and secured her future.

But for someone with her eyes on the road ahead, Sharon was pretty short-sighted, though to be fair, she was only 16.

Because their entire relationship was based on lies, things started to unravel pretty soon after the wedding.

James wasn't happy when he found out how old his wife really was, and was perhaps even more horrified to discover that he hadn't been her first.

Worried about what else she'd lied about, James wanted a divorce, but his extremely religious parents, Haggard and Caddy, wouldn't let him.

He'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it.

Things only got worse.

Eventually, Sharon's fake pregnancy ended in a fake miscarriage, which was, at least for James, genuinely sad.

But soon enough, Sharon got pregnant, for real this time.

Their daughter, who we'll call Leslie, was born in the fall of 1957.

James got an engineering job to provide for his young family, and things might have settled down there, but Sharon wasn't happy.

James was supposed to be her ticket out of Missouri.

How had she ended up trapped there with an ungrateful husband and a baby?

Furious with James for getting her pregnant and dissatisfied with her domestic life, Sharon began to spend James's money faster than he could make it.

She bought clothes, makeup, anything shiny, but even that couldn't satisfy her.

To make matters worse, the power she'd once had over James was all but gone.

His sexual appetite had dampened when they'd moved in together, and her only means of control had vanished.

Of course, she still had that influence over other men, and she found that exhilarating.

She knew men liked to look at her, at her body, and it made her feel good.

Before long, she acted on those feelings and began having affairs.

One of her partners was her former high school classmate, 18-year-old John Boldis.

Sharon often asked her mother-in-law, Caddy, to watch Leslie while she, quote-unquote, worked late.

By this stage, James was fed up.

He didn't like Sharon's spending habits, and he suspected she was running around on him.

Before long, they were at each other's throats on an almost daily basis.

Things only grew worse when Sharon got pregnant a second time.

At some point in 1959, 19-year-old Sharon gave birth to a son, and while both parents loved their son, they had long since fallen out of love with each other.

So by the beginning of 1960, both James and Sharon were looking for a way out of their relationship, but in very different ways.

James just wanted out as painlessly as possible.

Sharon, on the other hand, wanted to make James suffer.

He had failed to give her the flashy, exciting life she wanted.

He'd turned her into the very woman she never wanted to be, a housewife stuck in a sad little town, living a sad little life.

Never mind that she had tricked him into a relationship, she decided it was all his fault.

She wanted a better life, and she wanted to burn his down on her way out.

Tension built in the house like a rubber band, stretched to its limits.

Sharon wanted a divorce, and she told him how much she hated him, their small small town life, and his goody two-shoes parents.

Eventually, in March of 1960, James asked her what it would take to make her go.

Sharon decided she only wanted three things.

The house, their daughter Leslie, and a $1,000 check.

He could keep their son.

James said he needed to sleep on it.

On March 18th, James told his parents about the deal.

He wanted out out of the marriage, and he felt $1,000 was a bargain if it got Sharon out of his life.

His parents disagreed.

Haggard said that divorce was a sin against God and a stain on their family name.

He told James it was his duty to stay married and suffer the consequences of his actions.

James didn't want to hear it.

He went home that night, determined to finally end his miserable marriage.

When Sharon got home that night, she found James sitting at the table cleaning his pistol.

He always cleaned his pistol when he had something to think about, so at first Sharon hoped he was ready to take her offer.

Instead, he told her that he was filing for divorce that Monday and he intended to leave her with nothing.

She was furious.

She told him to go to bed and said that they'd talk about it in the morning.

Too tired to argue anymore, James finished cleaning his gun and went to sleep.

Sharon sat up fuming.

She'd made him a more than reasonable offer, and here he was spitting in her face.

As she watched him sleep, she came up with a truly diabolical plan.

The next afternoon, James returned home from work and lay down to take a nap.

After he fell asleep, Sharon made her move.

She grabbed James's gun and made sure it was loaded, then snuck into the the bedroom where her husband was sleeping.

She laid the gun on the pillow and aimed it at the back of her husband's head.

Then she squeezed the trigger.

James awoke, his mind literally shattered.

Sharon watched, not moving as he suffered.

Before she did anything else, she had to make sure that her husband

was dead.

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On March 19th, 1960, 20-year-old Sharon Kinney shot her husband, 25-year-old James Kinney, in the back of his head.

She waited until he was as good as dead.

Then she calmly washed her hands and called James's father, Haggard.

She cried into the phone and told Haggard there'd been a horrible accident.

His two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Leslie, had shot James.

Haggard told Sharon to call the police while he called an ambulance.

Within minutes, the house was flooded with emergency personnel.

The paramedics attempted to save James, but it was too late, which was exactly how Sharon planned it.

James died soon after they arrived.

The police were delicate about Sharon's loss, but when she told them her story, they were immediately suspicious.

James's gun was rather heavy, and the odds of a two-year-old being able to pull the trigger seemed slim.

Add to that how unlikely it was a toddler would know how to remove the safety, and things started to smell fishy.

They only got more suspicious when Haggard and Caddy arrived.

Her in-laws offered to let Sharon and her children stay at their house, but she refused.

Remember, Sharon hated her in-laws even more than she hated her husband.

She had killed James to win her freedom, and now these zealots were trying to force her to stay with them.

Of course, she couldn't say that in front of the cops, so instead, she claimed she'd rather grieve alone.

She wanted to sleep where her husband was last alive and remember him fondly, even though the bed was stained with his blood.

The Kinneys chalked up Sharon's hesitation to shock.

Eventually, they convinced her to stay with them for the night, but the damage had been done.

The cops were going to keep an eye on her.

After she left, they tested James's pistol for fingerprints and gunpowder residue.

Unfortunately, the gun still had oil on it from when James cleaned it the night before, so there was no usable evidence to be found.

Next, the cops interviewed the Kinneys and discovered that James had wanted a divorce.

It seemed like the perfect motive for Sharon to kill her husband.

All they had to do was prove that her story about her two-year-old daughter pulling the trigger was as absurd as it sounded.

They returned to Sharon's home with a gun of the same make and model as the one that had killed James.

They removed the bullets from the chamber and turned the safety on.

Then, with Sharon's permission, they handed the gun to the little girl.

To their surprise, Leslie was able to pick the gun up.

Even more shocking, when Sharon told her, show the men how you used to play with daddy, Leslie turned the gun, flipped the safety off, and pulled the trigger.

It was unbelievable.

It seemed like Leslie could actually have killed her father.

Investigators had expected Sharon's guilt to be obvious and easily demonstrable.

Instead, the experiment made their case much more difficult to prove.

So, with so much doubt, James's death was ruled accidental.

Sharon was free to go.

With James dead, she kept the kids, the house, and her lovers.

She could even tell her in-laws to screw off.

So when Caddy stopped by to check up on her, Sharon finally told her what she'd been telling James for years.

She hated Caddy and her husband.

Then she slammed the door in her face.

Sharon was ecstatic.

She'd lived out one fantasy of telling her in-laws to stick it, and things were only set to get better.

A short time later, Sharon claimed payouts from James's various life insurance policies worth $24,000.

That'd be approximately $221,000 today.

Flush with cash and free of her pesky in-laws, Sharon decided the first thing she would do as a free woman, buy a flashy new car.

This decision gives us some insight into Sharon's mindset at the time, time.

According to a study titled, The Impact of Parenthood on Consumption, The New Car Buying Experience, the vehicle a person chooses is a strong reflection of their values and self-perception.

New mothers often purchase cars that are meant to protect their children.

They're motivated by safety and reliability.

In contrast, flashy cars are about danger, status, and self-expression.

Sharon wanted to show off her wealth.

In her mind, a new car would tell the world that she had finally arrived.

On April 18, 1960, less than a month after James's death, Sharon went to a dealership in search of a blue Ford Thunderbird.

She got the car and also picked up a little extra something that caught her eye, a dashingly charismatic former Marine.

Walter T.

Jones sold her the car.

Then he sold her on his charms.

The two started up an affair.

Only this time Walter was the one cheating on his spouse.

For some reason, Sharon decided that she needed James's gun.

Maybe she thought it was a neat memento of her crime, or perhaps she wanted it in case she needed to kill again.

So Sharon went to the police station and demanded that they give her back her late husband's gun.

She told the cops she felt unsafe without it.

She argued that since nobody had been tried for murder, they owed her the return of her property.

The truth was, the police had simply forgotten to return the gun to Sharon, but when she showed up demanding they give it back, their old suspicions flared up.

After all, it seemed strange for a woman to want the weapon that had killed her husband and scarred her daughter for life.

Most reasonable people would never want to see the thing again.

As such, they refused her request and officially reopened the case.

They hoped that someday Sharon might tip her hand and give them the proof they'd need to charge her with murder.

But for now,

they waited.

In the meantime, Sharon found another way to get her hands on a gun.

She had one of her former lovers purchase a.22-caliber pistol for her.

When the man registered the gun in her name, she freaked out.

Her friend didn't understand why she wanted to keep the gun anonymously, but he didn't think too hard about it.

Sharon had ways of convincing men to do what she asked, so he gave in and took her name off the registry.

Now, with gun in hand, Sharon felt truly unstoppable, and it was time for more pieces of her life to settle into place.

In May, she called Walter Jones to invite him over for,

well, you know.

But when he arrived, Sharon dropped a bomb.

She was pregnant, and it was his.

Then she demanded that Walter leave his wife and marry her instead.

It was the right thing to do, she figured.

But Walter refused Sharon's demands, called her a liar, and insisted that any child of hers couldn't be his.

Then he made his escape, ending the affair with a slam of Sharon's front door.

Sharon let him leave, but she was shocked.

The only man who had ever dared to tell her no was lying in a coffin six feet under.

Every other man loved her.

In her mind, the only reason any man would walk away from her was if another woman had him in her grip.

And there was only one way to deal with that problem.

The next day, May 26th, Sharon called Walter's wife, Patricia, at her office.

She told Patricia that she had bad news.

Her husband was having an affair.

Then she asked the shocked woman to meet her later that evening.

So the two women met a little after 5 p.m.

and Patricia got into Sharon's car.

From there, Sharon drove Patricia into the countryside and told her all about how her sister had been sleeping with Walter.

Patricia didn't take much convincing.

Walter had always had trouble keeping it in his pants.

It hurt to hear that it happened again, but she said she was determined to work it out.

They had children to think about after all.

Sharon listened to Patricia with pursed lips, getting more and more fed up.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Sharon had hoped that Patricia would want to leave Walter once she knew he was a no-good two-timer.

That way, Sharon would have him all to herself.

But Patricia wanted to ruin everything by keeping her family together.

Sharon wasn't about to let that happen.

So she drove Patricia to the secluded Lover's Lane, where she often spent time with Walter.

Once they arrived, she asked Patricia to step out of the car.

Confused, Patricia did as she was asked and followed Sharon.

That's when Sharon came clean.

She was the one sleeping with Walter.

Then she pulled her gun out of her purse and aimed it at Patricia.

Ignoring the woman's pleas for her life, she squeezed the trigger five times.

Sharon dragged her body into the weeds.

On her drive back into town, she felt pleased with what she'd accomplished for the day.

Walter was sure to marry her now.

Of course, Walter had a very different reaction.

When his wife didn't return home that evening, he reported her missing.

Patricia's work friends told him that they'd dropped her off in town where a mysterious, beautiful woman was waiting.

When Walter heard that, he immediately knew it was Sharon.

He went to pick her up in his car and demanded to know what had happened.

Sharon admitted that she'd told Patricia about their affair, but insisted that she had dropped Patricia off near Walter's house.

Walter didn't buy it for a second.

He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and pressed it against Sharon's throat.

He swore that if he found out that Sharon had hurt Patricia, he would do the same to her.

She left the confrontation, petrified.

She decided that Patricia's body had to be found soon, and that the discovery needed to look like an accident.

That way she figured Walter would get off her back.

That night she went to see her other lover, John Boldis, and demanded that he go searching for Patricia with her.

So John and Sharon spent hours driving all over town searching for Patricia.

When it became clear to John that they weren't going to find her, he asked Sharon if she wanted to go park instead, which was exactly what she'd planned.

John's favorite place to go park was the same Lover's Lane where Sharon had murdered Patricia.

The sun had long since set when they arrived at the deserted clearing.

John's headlights cast an eerie glow over the weeds that grew beside the road.

Not that he was paying attention to the scenery outside the car.

He only had eyes for Sharon.

But her eyes were locked on the field in front of them.

He asked her what was wrong, and she said she could see something in the field.

He couldn't see anything, but Sharon insisted there was something out there.

Then she said, oh God, I think it's her.

At Sharon's insistence, John climbed out of the car and wandered into the weeds.

After just a few steps, he stumbled across Patricia's body, sprawled out on the ground, riddled with bullet holes.

John panicked and sped towards the police station, but Sharon told him to drop her off at home first.

She didn't want the police to think she had anything to do with Patricia's death.

John understood Sharon's worry, but he didn't truly understand her deviousness.

All the same, he dropped her off and continued on to the police station alone.

Of course, when he brought police to the body, they immediately suspected that he was involved.

To save himself, he told them all about Sharon.

When the cops heard Sharon's name, they were sure Sharon had struck again.

It had only been two months since the death of her husband, and now she was wrapped up in another shooting death.

It couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

Now, they were determined to put her away for good, but they greatly underestimated

Sharon Kinney.

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Around midnight on June 1st, 1960, police in Independence, Missouri arrested 20-year-old Sharon Kinney for the murder of her lover's wife, Patricia Jones.

They figured they had a slam-dunk case.

Sharon was the last person to see Patricia alive, and forensic entomology proved that Patricia had died shortly after that time.

The police were so confident of Sharon's guilt that they decided to prosecute her for the murder of Patricia as well as Sharon's late husband, James.

Sharon pleaded not guilty on both counts, and in June of 1961, she went to trial for the murder of Patricia Jones.

The prosecution laid out their case carefully and compellingly.

Then, the defense did everything they could to undermine it, presenting beautiful Sharon as a young, innocent widow.

Unsurprisingly, the media had a field day with the trial.

Sharon's story had all the juicy drama that people love.

Some papers called Sharon a femme fatale.

Others said she was a victim of circumstance and tragedy.

No matter your perspective, Sharon's persona became larger than life, and she played her part perfectly.

She pouted and cried for the cameras.

She claimed she only cared about the well-being of her two young children and wished that the real killer would be caught so she could go back to being their mother.

Then, in court, she winked at the 12 male jurors, using every chance she got to draw attention to herself.

Before long, everyone in town had an opinion about Sharon Kinney, and by the time the trial ended, nobody knew whether she'd be found guilty or innocent.

Despite all the uncertainty, it only took the jury an hour and a half to make up their minds.

They declared Sharon not guilty, and the courtroom went wild.

Sharon celebrated by walking up to the jury box and kissing each of the 12 men on the cheek, and they treated her like Marilyn Monroe.

One even asked for her autograph.

Seeing this, it was clear to the prosecution that Sharon hadn't been tried according to the strength of the evidence.

No, she'd been judged based on her appearance, and she hadn't been found lacking.

There's some research that suggests this is a fairly common occurrence.

According to a study by Bruce Darby and Devon Jeffers titled, The Effects of Defendant and Juror Attractiveness on Simulated Courtroom Trial Decisions, more attractive defendants were convicted less, punished less severely, rated as less responsible for the charges being brought, and seen as happy, likable, and trustworthy.

In other words, Sharon's sex appeal was a potent weapon in the courtroom, and she knew it.

Her looks had literally helped her get away with murder.

The loss was a devastating blow to the prosecution.

They had much less evidence against Sharon for the murder of her husband, James, and if they didn't get a conviction, a double murderess would walk free.

About six months later, in January of 1962, Sharon Kinney's second trial began.

This time, the prosecution made sure to get a woman on the 12-person jury.

Sharon's lawyer tried to keep the woman off the panel, but Sharon said she felt good about the woman's inclusion.

But that decision was a miscalculation.

That female juror helped convince her fellows to convict Sharon for murder.

And just like that, Sharon was sentenced to life in prison.

The courts gave her children to their paternal grandparents, Haggard and Caddy Kinney.

And Sharon, she was going to lose it all.

Inside the prison walls, there'd be no one she could manipulate using her looks, would there?

Well,

not quite.

When Sharon entered the prison, she sought out the burliest, meanest woman she could find and started a love affair built on sex and violence.

It was a refreshing reminder of her power.

Those women who were imprisoned with Sharon said she became a bully and a terror.

She threatened people with violence and ran the prison with her lover.

And while she did that, her lawyers appealed her case to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The appeal hinged on several procedural mishaps that occurred during Sharon's trial.

Based on those errors, the Supreme Court reversed Sharon's conviction.

On July 19, 1963, Sharon was released on bond and ordered to stand trial again.

She spent the next year in and out of court.

Her first retrial resulted in a mistrial.

Her second retrial ended in a hung jury.

The date for a fourth trial was set, but by that stage, 25-year-old Sharon was sick to death of her life in Independence, Missouri.

She wanted to get out and see the world.

Making her frustrations worse, her assets were frozen by the state.

Every time she wanted to make a withdrawal from the bank, she had to submit an application to the courts.

One day towards the end of 1964, she went to request money for her children's Christmas gifts.

While at the courthouse, she met a man named Francis Samuel Pugliese.

He was a good-looking grifter in his 30s who was at the courthouse to apply for unemployment benefits.

Luckily for Sharon, Pugliese didn't follow the news, so he had no idea who she was or how dangerous she could be.

He immediately fell for her charms and good looks, and she fell for his.

Just a few days after they met, the duo of Ne'er-Doo Wells decided to take an international trip down to Mexico City.

Sharon's bail didn't technically require her to stay in the country, but her lawyers insisted that her trip was a bad idea.

If she missed her court date, she'd certainly be found guilty.

The concern was valid, but considering the consequences of her actions had never been Sharon's strong suit.

So she and Pugliese boarded a bus and traveled south of the border.

Of course, neither of them had planned ahead, so the trip was a disaster.

They checked into a cheap hotel in Mexico City, only to find their room infested with rodents and cockroaches.

To cap things off, they both got food poisoning on their first night and fought about who got to use the toilet.

Sharon thought her trip would be a refreshing break from the slow-burning monotony of her trials.

Instead, it was a vermin-ridden hell.

Like always, nothing ended up quite the way she had planned.

To make matters worse, Pugliese blamed Sharon for dragging him down to Mexico, and the duo fought constantly.

It was a nightmare.

When she wasn't practically bolted to the toilet, she dreamed of an escape from her escape.

The moment she felt slightly better, she abandoned Pugliese and walked herself to a five-star hotel further in the city.

She didn't have enough money to cover the cost of a room, but she did bring enough for the drinks.

She also, somehow, still had the pistol she used to kill Patricia.

As she sat at the bar, a refined man named Francisco Paradez Ordones approached her.

Francisco was an American citizen with a job that required him to travel to Mexico City often.

Perhaps sensing he had capital M money, Sharon cozied up to Francisco.

They spoke for hours at the bar, and eventually Francisco invited Sharon up to his room.

Exactly what happened next is unclear, but according to Sharon, Francisco got pushy.

Then when she refused to sleep with him, his pushiness turned into an attempted rape.

How much of that story is true, we just don't know.

However, we do know exactly what happened next.

Sharon shot Francisco in the chest, killing him instantly.

At the sound of gunfire, the hotel's attendant came running, only for Sharon to shoot him in the shoulder as soon as he walked in.

Luckily, the man was only mildly injured.

He tackled Sharon and wrestled the gun out of her hands.

Then he kept the gun aimed at her and called the police.

Sharon told the cops she'd shot Francisco in self-defense, but they weren't buying it.

To them, it looked like Sharon had seduced a wealthy businessman, then attempted to rob him at gunpoint.

They raided Sharon's crummy hotel room, where they found Pugliese lying on a bed loaded with drugs and weapons.

This only made Sharon look more guilty.

The Mexico City Police Department then ran a background check and discovered Sharon's murderous reputation.

Even though her conviction had been overturned, they were convinced they had captured a dangerous killer, and they weren't going to set her free.

Sharon was assigned a public defender, but Mexico's criminal justice system is quite different from what Sharon was used to.

Instead of a trial by jury, she was brought before a single judge who would determine her fate.

In Sharon's eyes, the whole thing was a joke.

It was obvious to her that she was the real victim.

She was insulted that they didn't believe her.

Of course, she didn't have all the information.

She didn't know the Mexican authorities had contacted Kansas City forensic scientists.

They tested the 22 pistol Sharon had used to kill Francisco and confirmed it was an exact match for the gun that had killed Patricia Jones.

The Kansas City police now had definitive proof that Sharon was guilty all along.

She couldn't be tried there because of double double jeopardy laws, but it meant they had a definitive answer.

So they closed the case and left the Mexican authorities to administer justice for Francisco instead.

Unsurprisingly, the judge found Sharon guilty.

He sentenced her to 10 years behind bars, and she was sent to Ista Palapo women's prison to serve her sentence.

Sharon was furious.

She swore to appeal her case, insisting that she would be acquitted.

The local press had a field day with her claims.

Mexican papers branded her La Pistolera for the three murders she committed with a pistol.

They ridiculed her as an arrogant foreign murderess who had no understanding of Mexico or its justice system.

That ridicule was well justified.

After a year in prison, Sharon finally got to have her appeal heard.

She was brought before three superior judges in May of 1966.

They listened carefully to her arguments, and then when she was done, they agreed that there had been a mistake.

They found that Sharon's initial sentencing had been too lenient.

Instead of 10 years in prison, they sentenced her to 13 and sent her back to Ista Palapa.

They also denied her any opportunity for further appeals.

Finally, 26-year-old Sharon realized that she was stuck for a good long while.

Over the next few years, she received occasional visits from American journalists who wanted to interview her.

She'd tell them all about her life story and make herself out to be the real victim in everything.

But after a while, the story got old and people stopped visiting.

Everyone assumed Sharon's 15 minutes of fame were up, but she still had one last trick up her sleeve.

On December 7th, 1969, the Ista Palapo women's prison had an annual visitation day.

During the visitation, there was a strange blackout throughout the facility and many of the lights turned off for a number of hours.

When the lights came back on, 29-year-old Sharon Kinney was nowhere to be found.

By the time anyone noticed she was gone, she'd already had several hours to make her escape.

The guards conducted a manhunt in the surrounding area, but they couldn't find a trace of her.

Over the days and weeks to come, the Mexican authorities searched nationwide for La Pistolera, and her face was published in all the national papers, but it was hopeless.

Sharon Kinney had vanished.

Sharon Kinney has never never been seen or heard from again.

Even today, over 50 years after her escape, authorities in Mexico and the U.S.

still wish to see her face justice.

In fact, a warrant for her arrest stands in Kansas City, where she holds the record for the longest-standing murder warrant in the state.

Many people still theorize about her baffling disappearance.

Some think she bribed or seduced a guard to enable her escape.

Then again, an investigation found the prison was actually understaffed and security was lax at the time, so maybe she didn't need to bribe anyone.

Then there are the rumors about a strange man who visited Sharon a few days prior to her escape.

He was said to have underworld connections and business ties to the United States.

Maybe people say he was a friend of Francisco Ordóñez's family.

The theory goes that they hired him to break her out of prison, then kill her in the desert.

A revenge plot would certainly explain how she's still missing to this day.

However, there's not enough evidence to prove this theory one way or another.

The thing is, we'll probably never know what really happened to Sharon Kinney.

Perhaps she fled to Guatemala and began a new life.

Maybe she was hunted down and executed in revenge for her last crime.

Or perhaps she still wanders Kansas City watching her children from afar.

Thanks for tuning in to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast.

We'll be back Monday with another episode.

For more information on Sharon Kinney, amongst the many sources we used, we found I'm Just an Ordinary Girl, the Sharon Kinney Story by James C.

Hayes, extremely helpful to our research.

Stay safe out there.

This episode was written by Giles Hovseth, edited by Jane O.

and Joel Callan, fact-checked by Haley Milliken, researched by Mickey Taylor and Chelsea Wood, sound designed by Anthony Valsic and Alex Button, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich.

Our head of programming is Julian Boirot.

Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor.

I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.