🎙 Episode 101: Sharon Kinne — “The Pretty Widow”
Part 1 of a multi-part series
Independence, Missouri. March 1960. A husband found dead in his bed. A young wife weeping, a toddler daughter blamed. Police call it an accident. Sharon Kinne walks free.
But before that shocking day, there was a restless teenager pushing against small-town life. A whirlwind marriage at sixteen, two children by nineteen, and a reputation for glamour, ambition, and danger. In Part 1 of Sharon Kinne’s story, host Sidney Smith takes you inside her beginnings—how a small-town girl became a wife, a mother, and then a widow with $29,000 in insurance money and a brand-new Thunderbird.
From church socials to whispered gossip at the beauty parlor, we follow how Sharon’s hunger for control, money, and excitement began to eclipse the quiet life James Kinne wanted. And how his death, ruled accidental, left neighbors and family wondering what they had really seen behind closed doors.
📍 Location: Independence, Missouri
📅 Key Dates: 1956–1960 (marriage, children, James Kinne’s death)
👥 Central Figures: Sharon Kinne, James Kinne, daughter Danna Kinne, Troy Kinne, Walter Jones, Patricia Jones
🧠 Themes: Restlessness, control vs. security, image vs. reality, the allure of glamour in small-town America
📖 Next Episode Preview: Patricia Jones disappears. A search begins. And Sharon’s name surfaces again—this time in a love triangle that will shake Independence to its core.
🎧 Murderess Podcast is written and hosted by Sidney Smith
🎙 Produced in partnership with Sidney Smith Cre8tiv, LLC and the You Hear Good Things podcast network
📅 New episodes every Thursday
🔗 Find past episodes, merch, and tour dates:
https://www.sidneysmithcre8tiv.com
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Official Sources Used:
– State v. Sharon Kinne, Supreme Court of Missouri, 372 S.W.2d 62 (1963) — trial records, testimony, jury instructions
– James Patrick Quinn & Martha Sperry Hickman, defense briefs (1960–63)
– Murderpedia: Sharon Kinne case file
– James Hays, I’m Just an Ordinary Girl: The Sharon Kinne Story
– The Mammoth Book of True Crime (1978)
– Candice DeLong, commentary on female psychopathy (Deadly Women, Investigation Discovery)
– Contemporary reporting: Kansas City Star, Associated Press (1960–1964)
– Local Independence oral histories and retrospective features (Missouri Historical Society collections)
– Susan Hatters Friedman & Michael H. Friedman, Just as Deadly (2020)
