Bio

Sharon Kinne was born Sharon Elizabeth Hall on November 30, 1939, in Independence, Missouri. Her parents were Eugene and Doris Hall. When Sharon was in junior high school, her family moved to Washington State. However, they returned to Missouri when she was 15 years old.

In the summer of 1956, Sharon was 16 years old when she met James Kinne, a 22-year-old college student, at a church event. The two started dating regularly until James returned to Brigham Young University in the fall. Sharon wanted a partner with good prospects and wrote a letter to James claiming that she was pregnant. James left school and married her on October 18, 1956. Their marriage license falsely stated that Sharon was 18 and a widow. Sharon told people she was married before, but the details were unclear.

After their marriage, the couple moved to Provo, Utah, where James resumed his studies. He later paused his studies and the couple returned to Independence, Missouri. There, Sharon took jobs babysitting and working in shops while James worked as an electrical engineer. Sharon claimed to have suffered a miscarriage but soon became pregnant again. In the fall of 1957, they welcomed their first child, a daughter named Danna.

Sharon was known for being a lavish spender and wanted a better life than what they could afford on James's salary. They first lived in a rented home near James's parents and later built a house. As James worked night shifts, Sharon filled her days with shopping and started having affairs. By early 1960, James considered divorce due to concerns about Sharon's spending and suspected infidelity.

On March 18, 1960, he mentioned divorce to his parents, and there were talks about custody and alimony. At the same time, Sharon considered escaping the marriage and even jokingly suggested to a friend that he should kill her husband.

Murder Story

On March 19, 1960, James Kinne was found dead with a gunshot wound in the back of his head. Sharon Kinne claimed that their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Danna, had accidentally shot him while playing with a gun. Police conducted an investigation but ruled the case an accidental homicide due to the lack of evidence against Sharon. She later collected approximately $29,000 from his life insurance policies.

Later, in May 1960, Patricia Jones went missing after Sharon met with her. Patricia's body was discovered in a secluded area on May 27, having been shot four times with a .22 caliber pistol. The investigations revealed that Patricia was the wife of Walter Jones, with whom Sharon was having an affair. When questioned, Sharon admitted to last seeing Patricia on the day she went missing but did not provide any other details. Sharon was arrested for Patricia's murder around the time of Patricia's funeral.

Investigators were unable to find the murder weapon. Sharon initially avoided signing a written statement and did not take a lie detector test. She was charged with murder but acquitted in June 1961 due to insufficient evidence. The jury found too many loopholes in the prosecution's case.

Sharon's next trial was for the murder of her husband, James Kinne, which began in January 1962. This case was based on the claim that Sharon sought to get rid of her husband for financial gain. She was convicted after five and a half hours of deliberation and received a life sentence.

Sharon's conviction was overturned on appeal in 1963. During her retrial in 1964, the jury deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial. She was scheduled for yet another trial when she left for Mexico in late 1964 while out on bond.

In Mexico, Sharon killed a man named Francisco Paredes Ordoñez on September 18, 1964. She claimed it was an act of self-defense, but police thought her actions were intentional. She was arrested and later convicted of homicide in October 1965, receiving a thirteen-year prison sentence.

On December 7, 1969, Sharon Kinne escaped from a Mexican prison during a power outage. A manhunt was launched but was unsuccessful. An outstanding murder warrant in Jackson County remained active for decades, becoming one of the longest-standing felony warrants in U.S. history.

In December 2023, both the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas City Police Department independently received an anonymous tip directing investigators to Taber, Alberta, Canada — a small prairie town approximately 121 miles (195 km) southeast of Calgary — and a woman known there as Diedra "Dee" Grace Glabus.

Investigators discovered that Sharon had married a man named James Glabus in Los Angeles in February 1970 and moved with him to Taber by 1973, where the couple ran a local motel before later working together as realtors. She would spend the next 49 years living openly under that identity, becoming known to neighbours as a bridge-playing, community-minded local figure.

Glabus had died of natural causes on January 21, 2022, at the age of 82. Investigators learned that private companies in Canada preserve fingerprints of deceased persons as keepsakes for families, and authorities worked with Canadian officials to access and subpoena those records from the funeral home in Taber. The fingerprint data was processed through a company in Lee's Summit, Missouri — in the same Jackson County jurisdiction where Sharon's outstanding warrants had been held for over five decades. Jackson County investigators secured a warrant to obtain the prints, which were sent to the FBI and conclusively matched to Sharon Kinne's prints on file from her 1960 arrest — exactly 64 years later. DNA comparison with Sharon's surviving children further confirmed the identification.

On January 30, 2025, the Kansas City Police Department and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office held a joint news conference to publicly announce the findings, formally closing one of the longest-running fugitive cases in U.S. history.