Episode 519: Sharon Kinne- La Pistolera Pt.2

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Hey, weirdos.

I'm Ash.

And I'm Alayna.

And this is Morbid.

It's Morbid.

I always have to repeat it.

I don't know why.

It's a weird routine that I do.

It's entirely possible that I do that too, but I don't know.

I think we both do it.

Sometimes I'm a self-aware queen, and other times I'm a Delulu queen.

Delulu queen.

We live in a grand Delulu.

Yeah, I'm usually, I'm pretty self-aware of my annoying traits.

I think.

I'm not going to change them, but I'm aware of them.

That's the most Capricorn shit you've ever said.

I know I'm annoying, but fuck you.

Yeah, that's straight up.

I know I'm annoying, but deal with it.

That's straight up how I feel.

Unapologetic.

I love it.

Yeah, I'm very self-aware, but like, there's no way I'm changing.

Good for you.

You know what?

I'll grow, but I won't change.

Good.

But like, in growth, there is change.

Nah, not in my growth.

She's something, everybody.

She's a girly.

She's a girly.

She's out here.

I am out here.

She's out here in these streets, not changing, but growing, question mark.

We don't understand it.

But you know what?

I don't claim her.

The girlies who get it, get it.

You know what?

I do claim you, though.

I can't even say that.

My fellow Capricorns get it.

We grow.

We do not change.

I honestly, I really feel as though you're, we were just talking about this.

I feel like you're becoming more and more of a Virgo with each passing day.

I can, I definitely have Virgo.

I mean, it's in my big three, isn't it?

Well, that's what I'm saying, because you're a Virgo rising.

And I heard that, like, the older you get, like, the more you go through life,

you kind of morph more into your rising sign.

Mine is Sagittarius.

I feel that.

And I like Saggies.

So, like, I morph into a Saggie.

Yeah.

Saggies, I feel like, maybe they, like, don't give as much of a fuck about things as Geminis do.

I hope.

I don't know.

It's just a hope, I think, of mine.

It's just a hope.

Maybe they hope not to.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Well, that was astrology with Ash.

You were just like, but you're becoming a Virgo.

Yeah, you are.

I just, I feel it.

Because Dave is a Virgo, and I'm noticing a lot of attributes of Dave that you are.

Yeah, Dave and I are very, have found each other, realizing that we're very alike.

You are.

Yeah.

There's moments where we're just like, huh.

Well, and Drew is a Capricorn, and, like, he definitely possesses, like, some Capricorn qualities for sure.

He's a January Capricorn.

He's a January Capricorn, which is different, but he's also a Taurus rising.

And I was saying to him that lately I feel like he comes off way more Taurus.

But they also say that you come off to other people like, like your rising sign is what you present to other people, I'm pretty sure.

So I present a Virgo.

Yeah, and that makes sense.

I feel like Virgos are misunderstood, and sometimes I feel like you're misunderstood.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Capricorns are too.

Yeah, definitely.

We're both in those.

Yeah, and then you got Cancer in there, which just, like, fucks it all up.

Which is really wild.

Yeah, your big signs are chaotic.

They're very, they're scary.

Mine are super fucking chaotic, too.

Mine are just scary.

Yeah.

It's interesting that we both have water moons.

I just realized that.

Look at that.

Because I'm a Pisces moon, which I don't like to claim out loud, but here we are.

You know, I have, actually, never mind, I'm not going to say that.

Anyways.

Let's get into the story.

Yeah.

Now that we've all discussed our risings and big threes.

Yeah, I hope you guys yelled yours out at us, too.

Yeah, I hope you did.

I heard it.

That's what I hope for us.

Oh, my God.

Is that when we go through these little weird, like, intros that we just start talking about,

Chip, that you guys are just yelling stuff back.

I hope so.

It feels that way.

Yeah.

I feel like my friends are out there in their cars.

And they're not too long, so I feel like you can hang in and, like, yell back at us for

a minute, and then we're like, ah, right.

Yeah.

Ah, right.

Getting back on track.

So, yeah, let's get back on track.

Let's get back on track.

This is Sharon Kinney, a.k.a. La Pistolera.

I can't say it in American accent.

Very pretty.

But that's the case that we're covering.

We're in part two of that.

And in part one, we covered, you know, Sharon's, I would call it a failed marriage to her first

husband.

I would also call that a failed marriage.

Yeah, his untimely and wildly, wildly suspicious death.

Yes.

We covered her affair with a married man named Walter.

And then we found out that Walter's wife, Patricia, had been murdered.

And Sharon had not only been the one to find her, but was also the last person to be seen

with her the very day that she went missing.

And then finally, at the end of part one, Sharon was arrested right after Patricia's

funeral.

So there's that.

I've said it like 42 times, but I am just going to say it one more time.

Trial heavy in the beginning of this one.

Stick with me.

I'm sticking.

I'm here.

I'm glad you are required by contract to be here.

So while that means a lot to me that you're not going anywhere, it's also just the law.

Yeah.

I mean, that's very true.

Contractually obligated to be here.

I appreciate you and I love you.

I love that.

Yeah.

We're all in this together.

That's good.

We're just not all under the same contracts.

No.

But the next morning, June 1st, after, you know, she was arrested, Sharon appeared before

Magistrate J.J. Brady in an independence courtroom where she was formally arraigned with the

first degree murder of Patricia Jones and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for June

16th.

In the meantime, she was held on $20,000 bond, which friends and relatives actually

wasted no time pulling together, and she was released that very afternoon.

What?

I feel like even that speaks to, like, the manipulation she was able to conjure.

Yeah.

Like, friends and relatives were like, yeah, I know that two people have been mysteriously

shot or murdered around you lately in a span of two months, but, like, I don't think you

have anything to do with it.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She's a high-level manipulator.

She's a wily one.

That's what we've been discovering.

But then, after the arraignment for Patricia's murder, the Sheriff's Department actually

asked District Attorney William Collette to file charges against Sharon for the murder

of her husband.

There you go.

I was waiting for that.

He did that later that afternoon.

But the biggest issue for the prosecutor's office was the lack of forensic evidence connecting

Sharon to both murders.

And remember, it's the 60s, so they didn't have, like, a shit ton that they could do.

Like, there wasn't any DNA.

There was DNA to test, but there weren't any tests yet to figure it out.

Very true.

So they knew she was the last person to be seen with Patricia Jones, and she had been

uncooperative from the start of the investigation.

But with the fourth bullet or the 20, or, excuse me, without the fourth bullet or the

.22 caliber pistol used in the shooting, prosecutors knew that getting a conviction would be an

uphill battle.

But they were ready to climb uphill.

Investigators, citizen volunteers, and even a troop of Boy Scouts had scoured the crime

scene with metal detectors, like I mentioned in part one, but still they hadn't found

any evidence.

But then, finally, on June 2nd, a sergeant with the sheriff's office located the fourth

slug lodged about six inches into the ground directly under where Patricia's body had

been found.

Oh, so it was lodged in there.

It was lodged into the earth.

So then you wonder...

I mean, I don't know if I'm being, like, super...

No, you go for it.

You theorize.

Because we were saying how we, like, they believed initially that she was brought there

and probably dumped because of the lack of blood.

And then they found that barn.

So my thought process here is because that barn kind of, like, disappeared, you said?

It does feel like it, like, it kind of does disappear because they've, they theorized

that maybe she was shot there because there was some evidence that, like, some, something

was shot there.

Yeah.

Or somebody shot there.

But the cause of death was the shot to the head.

Yes.

So I'm wondering if all that happened somewhere else.

She was dumped there and they did one more shot to the stomach to try to confuse the

whole thing.

Maybe.

And that's why there's no blood because she had already died from the blood, from the

shot to the head.

So it's not flowing.

So it's not flowing.

That's actually brilliant.

That's not some investigator type shit.

That's just me over here being an investigator.

Yeah.

You know?

That makes a lot of sense.

What are you, writing, like, a novel about murder or something?

No.

No.

No, never.

Yeah.

That, I didn't even think of that.

Could have been it.

That definitely could have been it.

It's pretty, it's pretty shady.

Because they never really account for the lack of blood at the scene.

Yeah.

So maybe that's, it could be why.

Yeah.

It's just like an overkill kind of thing to confuse things.

Or just like an angry overkill.

Yeah, like one more.

You know, one more.

Mm-hmm.

You're right.

But anyway, finding that missing slug was huge.

Yeah.

That was a huge win.

Regardless.

But it was immediately followed by a pretty big blow once they realized that the coroner

had sent Patricia's body to the mortuary with the two remaining slugs still in the body,

which had then been buried.

Come on, everybody.

So not, so yeah, he sent her body off to the mortuary and she had already been buried with

those slugs still in her.

Great.

A spokesperson for the sheriff's office told reporters,

we feel there was a negligence at the time of the autopsy.

You feel that?

They did feel that.

I also feel that.

I feel that from, you know, decades after.

Me too.

I still feel that.

I still feel it in my bones.

And according to the sheriff, investigators had made the explicit request for the coroner

to hold the body for additional testing and removal of the remaining slugs.

But the coroner disregarded the request, sent Patricia's body to the mortuary where she

was prepared for burial, destroying what could have been vital evidence in this case.

Why the fuck?

She's a murder victim.

Why are you sending her off with evidence inside of her body?

It gets worse.

The more investigators dug into Patricia's case, the worse things looked for the prosecution.

Not only had legit evidence been buried with the body, but the embalming process actually

occurred before the coroner performed the autopsy.

Shut the fuck up.

What?

They embalmed the body first before he did the autopsy.

What?

What?

Colette told the press, it's just all botched up.

How badly this series of mistakes will hurt us will have to be determined later.

This is not the first case they messed up for us, and it probably won't be the last.

How do you even?

How?

And also, if this is not the first case that they've messed up for you and you're pretty

confident it's not going to be the last, uh, we think it's time to hire a new coroner?

Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that coroner is not good at their job.

Like, what?

Also, I wonder if this, where, where did this take place?

Independence, Missouri.

I wonder if this is a, this is one of those cases against coroners, like, against, like,

um, voted-in coroners.

Oh.

Because it's like, this could be a case where this guy had no fucking business doing any

of this shit.

It kind of sounds like it.

That's what it sounds like.

I'm going to look this shit up.

Go for it.

Because it does sound like it.

According to the prosecutor's office, the coroner even tried to cover up his mistakes

at multiple points in the investigation.

What the fuck?

He told detectives, this is wild, you're going to, you're going to, I don't even know what

you're going to do, but you're going to lose your mind at this.

Oh no.

He told detectives finding the slugs in the body would be like looking for a needle in

a haystack.

Literally shut the fuck up.

What?

Like, you have literal entrance wounds.

That's the thing.

Like, slugs don't appear in a body.

There's a fucking exit wound that you can follow pretty quickly.

Looking for a needle in a haystack?

Looking for a needle in a haystack.

It's a bullet.

Are you kidding me?

Like, what are you saying?

Is this guy all right?

Who is this man?

No, because I'm, I'm not done yet.

This is what's really going to send you.

He also told them that he did not want to conduct tests on the stomach contents because

it would be, and I quote, too messy.

This guy had to have been voted in.

He's not a real fucking medical, there's no way.

Too messy.

Like, that's your.

Too messy.

Nothing.

Smelly and.

What?

Like, literally.

That's the field you went into, brother.

You walk into that room and it's just, your mess smells everything.

Of course.

What are you doing?

Have you ever, honey, coroner, dear coroner from 1950, whatever, or 1960, whatever.

Have you performed an autopsy before?

Because I don't think you have.

There's no way you have if you're like, that would be messy.

Oh, no, he had.

He had because he had also.

He had fucked up.

He had fucked up cases for them in the past.

I'm without words.

I think you're right.

I didn't, I forgot about that whole thing where like they were.

I'm looking it up.

Voted in, yeah.

I'm looking it up because this is not.

Too messy, he said.

This is not, no.

Yeah.

No.

But fortunately for the prosecution, moving away from that for a second, fortunately for

the prosecution, Patricia's husband, Walter Jones, did actually allow them to exhume Patricia's

body so that a proper autopsy could be conducted.

Well, thank goodness.

Because basically you can't even call it a proper autopsy at that point because she's

already been fucking embalmed, but they could do way better than this guy did.

Yeah.

Now, in addition to retrieving the remaining bullets, the new pathologist, like a legit

one, Dr. Charles Wheeler, he was able to determine that what Patricia ate before the murder.

She had pickles and salami, which that's a girl dinner.

That is.

That truly is.

And I would eat that and I want that right now.

But he also confirmed that she had not been sexually assaulted and he was able to confirm

the sequence in which the bullets had entered the body.

So this guy's legit.

Yeah.

Now, the new autopsy results were encouraging to the prosecution because they not only retrieved

those remaining slugs, but they also concluded that the murder was not motivated by sexual

deviance or robbery, leaving the most likely explanation to be a personal grudge.

Why else would this woman have been murdered?

Of course.

Yeah.

Now, for Sharon, the investigation into both Patricia and James's deaths were immediately

a big inconvenience.

With the murder case reopened or opened and James's death, the insurance company stopped

any payments on her claims, which left her with little money for her expensive defense

attorneys or her expensive or her excessive spending and basic needs.

Yeah.

So she was like in a bad place.

Now, in response, she ended up putting her house on the market.

She sold her car and she hoped that the money from those two things would keep her afloat

until her payments resumed because she believed they would.

Yeah, of course.

Now, as detectives and the prosecution kept building the case against her or the cases,

the introduction of Sharon's defense team slowed things down considerably because at

every step of the way, they challenged almost everything the prosecution said or did or

tried to admit or anything.

Of course.

Anything.

And because of that, actually a full year passed before either case finally went to

trial.

And when they did finally go to trial, things did not look as good as the prosecution had

hoped.

Uh-oh.

Yeah.

She struck him with her motor vehicle.

She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her

boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe.

It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John

got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location.

What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion?

If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

This was clearly an intentional act.

And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

Or a corrupt police cover-up.

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of

their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

Law & Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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Sharon's trial for the murder of Patricia Jones began June 12, 1961,

with opening statements being given on the afternoon of June 14.

In his statement for the prosecution, J. Arnett Hill presented the state's case.

They believed Sharon Kinney had been having an affair with Walter Jones,

and after he refused to divorce his wife, she lured Patricia to this meeting place and shot her to death.

Once she killed Patricia, Sharon dumped her body in an area known to be frequented by young people

and staged the scene to quote, give indications that a crime of sexual passion had occurred.

Yeah, fully.

Yeah, like, to me, I'm like, yeah.

Yeah.

But also, we have the background knowledge of everything else that has gone on in her life.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, the jury did not.

Yeah.

Did you get anywhere yet, by the way?

I did.

So, I did see that you were, because this is called a coroner at this point.

They do now in Jackson County have, they have a medical examiner.

Oh, okay.

And she's a woman.

She looks like badass.

I don't know.

I'm just saying.

Hell yeah.

She's the chief medical examiner.

Let's go, girl.

But she's a medical examiner.

She is a doctor.

She is a forensic pathologist, like she is there.

But it says in the state of Missouri, larger urban counties operate under medical examiner

jurisdiction, while smaller counties by statute operate under coroner jurisdiction.

And it says coroners from several rural Missouri counties contract with the Jackson County

medical examiner's office for autopsy services when needed.

But I'm assuming back in 1960, they just had an elected coroner, because that's the

difference between an Emmy and a coroner.

Right.

Because a coroner is usually an elected lay person that has no fucking business doing

It's so wild that that's like still something that happens.

Yeah.

So, I think that's probably what happened here, is that was an elected official who

had no business doing this.

I mean, if it's not, if that's not the case, I'm appalled.

And if it is, I'm still appalled.

I would be willing to bet a lot that this was an elected official that is not a medical

doctor.

I would think so, because the fact that he said it was going to be too messy, and also