Original subtitles

[music playing]

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on Unsolved Mysteries--

NARRATOR: When Monika Rizzo disappeared,

an anonymous phone call led the police to her house,

but what investigators found buried in the backyard

was beyond anything they ever expected.

Is blood thicker than water?

Not if you ask convicted felon Frederick Young.

He's spending the rest of his life in prison

for crimes he insists he did not commit.

So who's the real culprit?

According to Frederick, none other

than his identical twin brother, Cedric.

What would you do if someone sold you a house haunted

by some very nasty ghosts?

This family in England decided to take

the former owners to court.

By all accounts, Sharon Kinne was a woman

who knew what she wanted.

What she wanted most was sex and money,

but would she kill for the big payoff?

Police say a trail of victims leaves little doubt.

Join me for these stories of heartbreak and intrigue

on Unsolved Mysteries.

[music playing]

Hello, can I help you?

MAN 2: Is this the San Antonio police?

Yes it is.

MAN 2: I'd like to report a murder.

OK.

A woman, Monika Rizzo, was murdered.

And who killed her sir?

She was murdered by her husband, Leonard Rizzo.

You can find her bones in the backyard of their house.

There's a skull and some other bones too.

NARRATOR: It sounded like a gruesome prank,

but the police in San Antonio, Texas

wasted no time checking it out.

They intended to question Monika Rizzo's husband Leonard,

but that would have to wait.

Just at the moment the detectives arrived,

Rizzo was having some sort of a seizure.

POLICE: Mr. Rizzo?

RIZZO SON: Hey, dad?

POLICE 2: How long has he been like this?

I don't know.

I was upstairs for a while.

Mr. Rizzo?

NARRATOR: At first, the detectives

suspected a drug overdose.

They were later told it was one of a series of seizures Rizzo

had recently been suffering.

With Leonard Rizzo on his way to the hospital,

the police questioned his older son.

He lived across town.

He said he hadn't seen his mother for about a week.

You know when she's expected back?

No.

You mind if we have a look around?

No thats-- that's fine.

NARRATOR: Monika's clothes still hung in the closet.

Her car was parked in the driveway.

Nothing seemed to be missing, except Monika Rizzo.

Next, the backyard.

The detectives did find bones, but they clearly belonged

to some kind of an animal.

The anonymous caller appeared to be wrong.

There was no sign of a body, no clues to murder.

Where was Monika Rizzo?

For her coworkers at a government office in San

Antonio, the mystery had begun one

month earlier on May 5, 1997.

That day, Monika Rizzo left her desk, apparently on her way

to lunch.

She walked out without even taking her purse.

After eight days of repeated phone calls,

Monika's boss finally reached her at home.

GILBERT SAENZ: She told me that--

that she wasn't feeling very well and she would--

she wanted to let me know that she was going

to be out the rest of that week and she would be returning

to work Monday of the following week, which

would have been May the 19th.

NARRATOR: But the 19th came and went.

Monika Rizzo never returned to work.

Leonard Rizzo claims that a few days later he

simply woke up one morning and she was gone.

He never reported it to the police.

LEONARD RIZZO: I was very confused.

I was-- It made no sense.

My wife and I were very close.

There was no reason for me to believe she wouldn't be coming

back where ever she had gone.

I just-- I--

I have faith in her.

I just chose to wait.

[phone ringing]

Hello?

Is this the San Antonio police?

Yes it is.

Can I help you?

MAN 2: I reported that Monika Rizzo had been

murdered several weeks ago.

Yes, I remember.

You need to go back and search their house again.

Leonard Rizzo killed his wife.

The bones are in the backyard.

They're under a pile of tires by the fence.

Look under those tires.

Again, the police responded out there, along

with some homicide detectives that went out there

and took a look and they did find some, what

appeared to be human bones.

NARRATOR: Detectives collected a skull, a number of bone

fragments, and even a bag filled with what

appeared to be human flesh.

Leonard Rizzo had some explaining to do.

These bone fragments that are in my yard

are an absolute mystery to me, as--

as big a mystery as my wife's disappearance.

To me, there's-- to me there's no question,

to me someone is trying to draw attention from themselves.

Someone is doing this to me.

NARRATOR: Inside the house, police found potential evidence

of a violent struggle.

Several sections of bashed or blood spattered drywall.

LEONARD RIZZO: Basically, I just got very, very emotional

about missing her and attempted to beat up the house,

I guess you could say.

The house won.

I got the worst end of it.

NARRATOR: Detectives also learned that Monika's coworkers

had been so worried about her that on one occasion

they asked the police to check on her.

The officer who responded believe

there was reason for concern.

Hello, is something wrong?

Monika Rizzo?

Yes?

I'm with the San Antonio police.

Some people at your office asked that I stopped by.

Are you OK?

Yes, I'm fine.

It looks like there's some bruising on your face.

No, I just fell.

I'm fine.

Is your husband here?

Yes, but he's very sick.

I've been taking care of him.

You sure you're OK?

Yes.

There was no domestic abuse.

There was no domestic violence.

My wife and I were deeply in love.

We are deeply in love.

We'd been married 26 years, going on 27 years now.

It's a long time.

NARRATOR: Police brought in a team of archaeologists

from the University of Texas to excavate the site.

DR. ROBERT J. HARD: We go to a crawl across this area using

our trowels and moving the roots and the-- moving the grass

blades and looking down beneath the grass and every time

we found a bone fragment or something

the police department considered might be evidence,

we'd put a orange pin flag out.

NARRATOR: Before they were done, the yard was dotted

with dozens of orange flags.

DR. ROBERT J. HARD: When you find

bone in an old archaeological site, the bone is very dry.

This bone still had a greasy feel to it,

so we knew it had not been there very long,

but at the same time, it had been there more than a week

or a couple of weeks.

There was no soft tissue still attached to it.

NARRATOR: There were bones everywhere,

even inside the barbecue grill.

DR. ROBERT J. HARD: I picked it up and looked at it,

and I was sure it was a human hand bone, because it has

a distinctive shape, although it's very small,

maybe half an inch or so.

POLICE: What do you got?

NARRATOR: The archaeologist sifted

the ashes, finding more bones, all of them from human hands.

You sure?

NARRATOR: No one is sure how many hands.

OK, well the bones we found were under these tires.

NARRATOR: Over eight days, Dr. Hard and his team

collected more than 200 bone fragments.

Most of them had been chopped into pieces

less than three inches long.

And what do you think could cause that?

I don't know, something mechanical.

DR. ROBERT J. HARD: We felt it was some kind of machine.

Some type of chipper shredder has been discussed quite a bit.

It's the only machine that we can come up--

that we can come up with that could possibly account

for this type of breakage.

You wouldn't get it with a saw, you

wouldn't get it with a knife, you wouldn't

get it with a lawn mower.

We-- we can't think of anything else that

would break up bone like this.

NARRATOR: Once again, police had questions for Leonard Rizzo.

I've never even operator a wood chipper.

I have never renti-- rented anything

in a rental store other than a car dolly, maybe a trailer.

No, I-- do not and did not operate a wood chipper,

never have.

SGT. ERNEST CELAYA: The case of Monika Rizzo, at this point,

is being investigated as a missing persons case.

The human remains that were found

in the backyard of Leonard Rizzo,

we have no knowledge how those people died.

We don't know the cause of death.

We haven't established that a crime did, in fact, occur.

NARRATOR: Whatever happened in his backyard

and whoever it happened to, Leonard Rizzo

continues to insist he had nothing to do with it.

Those bone fragments and such, where they came from,

I don't know how they got there.

I don't know and I adamantly did not kill them or anyone else.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: They look so much alike, even their mother

can't tell them apart.

Is it possible the police made the same mistake?

The final appeal of Frederick Young.

[music playing]

June 9, 1993, midnight, a motel in Greensboro, North Carolina.

What's up?

[knocking]

Don't move.

Get down on the ground.

- [inaudible] - All right.

Don't move. Get down.

- All right. - Get down.

On the floor!

Don't move.

Who else up in here?

What's going on?

NARRATOR: The five young people gathered in the room

never knew what hit them.

The heavily armed robbers took cash and jewelry.

It was all over in a matter of minutes.

Based on eyewitness testimony from one of the victims,

police arrested two men.

One was 22-year-old Frederick Young.

He was convicted of the motel robbery, as well as two others

that same night.

He will be in prison until his 91st birthday.

Rest assured that every hour of every day of every one

of those years, Frederick Young will, like many other convicted

felons, be claiming his innocence,

but Young's claim may hold more water than most.

He says his is a case of mistaken identity.

Incredibly, Frederick insists that the real robber

was his brother.

In fact, his identical twin brother Cedric Young.

That accusation has forced her mother to make an impossible

choice, which son to support and indeed, she supports

Fred, the son in prison.

FREDERICK YOUNG: We were very close, closer than anybody.

We dressed alike all the time, did mostly everything together.

It was a bond, you know what I'm saying?

Much great than any bond, like friends

or anything or any other relative in the family,

just close.

NARRATOR: Cedric Young Arsed was born four minutes before Fred

on December 29, 1971.

From the start, it was virtually impossible to tell

the twins apart.

Their relatives still have a tough time,

even their own mother.

Cousins, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, nobody

knows Ced from Fred.

If you don't see them when they do something,

you don't know who did what.

If I can't do it, I know you can't do it,

because I'm the one that had them.

NARRATOR: June 10, 1933, the night after the motel robbery,

luck was not on Fred's side.

Everything that could have gone wrong for him did.

How you doing officer?

What's the problem?

Did you know your license plate light is out?

No I did not. I'm-- I'm sorry.

Can I see your driver's license?

Sure, no problem.

NARRATOR: Fred acknowledges that he had a history of trouble

with the law, otherwise he might have acted differently.

You know what officer, I think I left it at home.

I don't live that far away.

What's your name?

Cedric Young.

Spell it.

C, E, D, R, I, C. I gave him my brother's

name, because I didn't even have any driver's license.

My brother did.

Keep an eye on him.

NARRATOR: It seemed like a good idea at the time

to use Cedric's name instead of his own.

It turned out to be anything but.

Cedric, turn around and put your hands behind your back.

What's the problem officer?

Your license is revoked.

License revoked?

Cedric Young?

Yes, you're under arrest for driving

under a suspended license.

Oh, this is ridiculous.

At the same, he asked me could he search my car.

I told him, sure he could.

NARRATOR: Things were about to go from bad

to worse for Frederick Young.

FREDERICK YOUNG: He started searching the passenger side

and he reached in and grabbed a bag.

Cedric, would you like to explain

what this is doing in your car.

Officer, I swear to you I've never seen

that gun before in my life.

NARRATOR: That same gun was later linked to the holdups.

At the police station, Fred came clean about the mix up

with Cedric's name.

It was too late.

An incriminating chain of events had been set into motion.

Fred Young was charged with six counts of armed robbery.

So was his alleged accomplice, Chris Ross,

a boyhood friend of the twins.

Fred's trial got underway a year later.

During the court proceedings, it would

come out how the sawed off shotgun got in his car.

It was just one of many revelations to come.

Now, what happened after they came into the room?

Buster and Tina was in the bathroom when I got--

NARRATOR: The first jolt, the testimony of Deborah Haney,

one of the motel robbery victims.

She claims she recognized Fred during the holdup.

Chris opened the bathroom door where Buster and Tina was at

and he had a gun on him and then Fred came in the room

where we was at and he had Larry and Veronica

to lay down on the bed.

Now, you say Chris and Fred.

Do you know their names?

Well, I learned the names afterwards.

Fred's face was familiar to me.

I had seen him around just in various places in Winston.

When you say Fred, do you see that person here

in this courtroom?

NARRATOR: Not so says Fred.

FREDERICK YOUNG: When she pointed directly

at me, that's when I kind of figured in my head,

if she think it was me, it's definitely my brother.

NARRATOR: Fred claims it hit him like a bolt of lightning,

but until that moment, it had never occurred to him

that his twin Cedric might have been

Chris Ross's partner in crime.

How long did it take for all of this

to happen from the time they came in the door?

Less than 10 minutes, a little more than five,

but less than 10 minutes.

NARRATOR: Fred says that in his mind,

the picture was becoming crystal clear.

So was his belief that his attorney

was not doing a good job.

FREDERICK YOUNG: I told him in-- right there in the courtroom,

I said subpoena Chris Ross.

He's like, no I--

I'm-- I can handle it from here, but it didn't happen that way.

He didn't do anything.

NARRATOR: Not long after the trial,

Fred's attorney would have his license

to practice law suspended for various violations,

including neglecting his client's cases.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: I just really feel like-- that he was being

misrepresented by a lawyer.

He never called Fred.

He never wrote Fred a letter.

As a matter of fact, he never even accepted

a call coming in from Fred.

What time did you leave your sister's place

to go to the bowling alley?

NARRATOR: According to Fred and his mother,

it was a case of mistaken identity

that led to a miscarriage of justice.

Chris Ross has since freely admitted

that he put the shotgun in Fred's car

without Fred's knowledge.

CHRIS ROSS: It was my shotgun and I

put it up under the car seat.

I didn't come forward with my information for the trial,

because nobody tried to contact me to give my side of the story

about him being charged for something he did not do.

NARRATOR: Chris Ross plea bargained and received

a 20 year sentence.

Frederick Young, insisting he was innocent,

refused to plea bargain and was found guilty

of six armed robbery counts.

He was given a separate sentence for each conviction,

a total of 68 years.

WALTER T. JOHNSON, JR.: The way my client was sentenced,

even if he were guilty of something,

we think that sentence is out of whack,

but it makes it even worse when he's not guilty to get

that kind of sense. DET.

SAM JONES: He never said, I'm innocent.

It was my brother you want, not me.

He waited until it went to trial.

Trial didn't go as he hoped it would, I think,

and this became a desperate effort on his part

to throw the blame elsewhere.

During the trial, I had no idea

that my twin brother committed these robberies until the lady

pointed directly at me.

That's when I come to the conclusion

and I knew it was my brother.

At some point in time did--

NARRATOR: A year after the verdict,

Frederick got another chance.

The Court of Appeals agreed to consider new evidence.

Chris Ross took the stand, hoping

to straighten out the Cedric versus Frederick

predicament once and for all.

And while you and Cedric Young were

in Guilford County, did the two of you,

in fact, commit these six armed robberies?

Yeah.

The same six armed robberies that you pled guilty to?

Yeah.

CHRIS ROSS: They picked up the wrong one.

Fred wasn't with me.

It was Ced that was with me.

The reason why they picked up Fred, because he got

caught with my gun, so they figured

he was the one to use it.

I'm willing to take any polygraph tests,

anything, whatever it has to take

to prove that I'm innocent.

I'm willing to go along with it.

NARRATOR: A lie detector test has never been done.

Chris Ross' uncorroborated testimony

failed to persuade the judge.

Frederick Young was denied a new trial.

With his legal options limited, Fred took his case

to the court of public opinion.

On a national talk show with millions of viewers

playing jury, the question was put to Ced,

are you the guilty party?

No I'm not.

To be in his shoes, I would be saying the same thing,

exact same thing.

Why you want to lie man?

We're brothers man, dang.

Why do me like that man, making me suffer

for something you done, man?

If I was a rich man, if I had money,

I would spend all of my money to get my brother out of jail.

I-- I'll spend all my money.

I would spend all my money to get

a high paying lawyer to get my brother out

of jail, because I miss him.

NARRATOR: Is Fred languishing in prison for crimes

his brother said committed, or is it simply a desperate ploy

to gain freedom at all costs?

As far as the courts are concerned, the case is closed,

but if the twins mother were the judge,

the verdict would be very different.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: I'm hopeful that something will come out of this

that I'm dealing with now that Fred is released

and he can go on with his life and Ced

it's punished, because he has done a great hurt to me

and everybody.

NARRATOR: Next, what would you do

if you discovered the house you'd just purchased

is haunted?

You're about to meet a couple who are taking

the former owners to court.

[music playing]

There's a certain charm to Lowes Cottage.

The 250-year-old farmhouse sits on an idyllic piece of property

in the English countryside.

It's an oasis of peace and quiet,

though it may have a few unearthly surprises.

JOSIE SMITH: It's very frightening.

We-- we think the place is haunted.

We've seen ghosts, we've had articles thrown about,

we've seen candles move.

All the time, the inside of it churning up,

expecting something to happen.

Even when it's quiet, you're still on edge.

Another story about a haunted English farmhouse?

Not quite.

The Smith's are suing the homes former owners for selling them

a house they say is haunted.

The previous owners have filed their own lawsuit.

They believe the Smith's are trying

to get out of paying for the house by telling a ghost story.

It's a precedent setting trial that could

rock the English legal system.

Which side do you think has the most compelling case?

NARRATOR: The story begins in May of 1994.

Andrew Smith and his wife Josie move their family

to an old farmhouse in the remote Hamlet

of upper Mayfield.

They believe it would be the ideal place to raise their two

children and because the home was badly in need of repairs,

the Smiths bought it at a bargain price.

JOSIE SMITH: We wanted to buy that house,

do it up, and sell it and with the equity that we would have

made on the price, we wanted to buy another place,

but about six weeks after we'd moved in,

we noticing things happening.

But if you stand over here, it's really cold.

JOSIE SMITH: We'd walk into our bedroom

and the temperature would be a couple of degrees

lower than the rest of the house,

a definite temperature drop.

The rooms, you could never really see the ceiling.

There was always just--

just hazy.

It was always hazy.

NARRATOR: But the former owners, two sisters who grew up

in the cottage, say they never experienced

anything out of the ordinary.

SUSAN MELBOURNE: Our parents, myself, and my sister

never saw any ghosts or heard any strange noises or anything

associated with the paranormal.

I don't think it's haunted.

I would live there about 25 years,

never saw anything, heard anything.

NARRATOR: But the Smith's claim life at Lowe's Cottage

was a nightmare.

[objects rattling]

ANDREW SMITH: You got this feeling when you're in the room

that if this thing was a person, with it's little finger,

it could flip you straight across the room.

JOSIE SMITH: One night we stayed awake until about three

in the morning, and then we just fell asleep through exhaustion

and within minutes of his falling asleep,

I felt this pressure on my throat strangling me.

[hard breathing]

[screaming]

ANDREW SMITH: When Josie was being strangled, that was--

that's what you call fear.

That was-- that made my hair shoot straight up.

JOSIE SMITH: One night I was in the kitchen

that was downstairs.

It was about eight o'clock at night and I turned around

and I saw this young girl.

She had a day old gathered top with the bodies

on the gathered skirt and I thought,

oh, there's somebody outside.

It wasn't until I thought about it

that I realized I could see the window frame through her.

SANDRA PODMORE: That's rubbish, absolute rubbish.

We never saw any ghost, no unusual happenings,

there was nothing flying around rooms,

there was no vile smells and mists, nothing at all.

NARRATOR: Convinced that some demonic force was living

in Lowe's Cottage, the Smith's went to the local church

for help.

REV. PETER MOCKFORD: We have requests that

come from individuals who are very deeply upset,

to people who have buildings that are causing the problems,

various smells, apparitions, anything, really, that has

to do with the supernatural or the occultic

or that kind of area and I would say

that Lowes Cottage comes out fairly near the top

of the list of this.

Father and Son--

NARRATOR: The Smith's ask Reverend

Mockford to bless their home.

ANDREW SMITH: After the vicar blessed the place,

the house just let up everywhere.

It just seemed so light.

When-- when you see the reaction to a prayer in the house,

that's when you're, kind of, really amazed

and there's no two ways about it,

there is definitely something there.

NARRATOR: The Smith's believed the vicar's

prayers would finally bring them peace, but later that evening,

[music playing]

What's the stereo doing?

I don't know.

Perhaps you left the timer on.

Go switch it off, will you?

OK.

NARRATOR: Then the Smith's began to make

inquiries in the local village.

So you're the young couple that's

taken over Lowes Cottage.

Everything all right, because there's a story

about that cottage you know?

NARRATOR: They soon found out that they were

the only ones in town who didn't know about the history

of Lowe's Cottage.

A tragic story had been handed down

in local legend for 140 years.

During the 1860s, a milkmaid named

Elaine Herring lived in the cottage along

with her lover Joseph Philips.

The Smith's checked the town records and say

the young couple did exist.

Local folklore says that Elaine was murdered by her employer

and died in the seller of Lowes Cottage, which

today is the home's kitchen.

When Joseph Phillips received word of Elaine's death,

he hung himself in despair next to the body of his lover,

or so the story goes.

SUSAN MELBOURNE: The cottage isn't haunted.

The cottage has no reputation in Upper Mayfield of being haunted

or in Ashbourne for that matter.

It's all untrue.

There's no record whatsoever of Elaine

Herring and Joseph Phillips ever living at Lowes Cottage.

NARRATOR: Local newspapers began carrying

accounts of the haunting.

When the Smith's tried to refinance their mortgage,

the bank refused, saying the publicity had

devastated the home's value.

With no money to move, the Smith's

filed a lawsuit against Susan Melbourne and Sandra Podmore.

JOSIE SMITH: We definitely believe that they should have

told us the house is haunted.

We have got to tell people, if anybody should,

anybody in their right mind want to buy our house,

we've got to tell them what has happened and the fact

that it's haunted and I think the same should apply to them.

[interposing voices]

The Smiths hired two paranormal investigators

to videotape their home, hoping to get

evidence to support their case.

The investigators use a night vision camera

and place two candles to capture evidence of a haunting.

Suddenly, the lower candle seemed

to tumble down the stairs.

Then the candle on an upper step appeared

to fly through the air.

TONY DAWSON: We was-- were literally scared to death.

We didn't know what to think, what to do.

You just definitely got the presence that there

was somebody with you.

They're definitely not imagining it,

because we've had the experience ourselves.

NARRATOR: The two sisters think the whole thing is ridiculous.

SANDRA PODMORE: Absolute rubbish, nothing

happened at Lowes Cottage.

SUSAN MELBOURNE: Mr. and Mrs. Smith are--

have come up with a story about the ghosts to try

and get out of paying.

JOSIE SMITH: Had we known any of this, anything at all,

we wouldn't have bought the place.

We would have just steered clear of it.

We should have been given the choice.

If anybody bought our house instead of us

with a weak heart, I'm sure it would have killed them.

[storm]

[music playing]

NARRATOR: When we return, some say

she was the black widow of Missouri,

the baddest or bad girls.

Have you seen Sharon Kinne?

[music playing]

Some people might call Sharon Kinne a man's woman.

That is if you're a man who likes his women

fast and loose and ruthless.

Word has it that in her youth, Sharon took on lovers

at the drop of a hat and was well

versed in the art of deception.

She was a very definition of a bad girl,

in the eyes of the law, a lethal black widow.

Today she is still a wanted fugitive, whereabouts unknown.

March 19, 1960, Independence, Missouri, a Sheriff's deputy

was summoned by a distraught Sharon

Kinne, then 20 years old.

I don't know-- my hus--

I was in the bathroom.

I didn't know what was happening.

I--

Calm down Mrs. Kinne, calm down.

Where is he? - He's in the back bedroom.

NARRATOR: Sharon's husband, James Kinne,

had been shot once in the back of the head.

A 22 caliber target pistol lay in plain sight.

There was no sign of a struggle.

25-year-old James Kinne would die on route to the hospital.

POLICE: Mrs. Kinne, I realize how difficult

this time is for you, but if you could tell us

exactly what happened--

NARRATOR: The next day, Sharon Kinne

was interviewed by detectives.

James was cleaning his gun--

NARRATOR: Her grief and heartbreak were convincing.

Her bizarre story demanded no less.

James was in the bedroom cleaning his pistol.

Sharon was in the bathroom putting on makeup.

James lay down for a nap.

The couple's two-year-old daughter

Dana wandered into the bedroom.

Daddy, show me this.

Show me this.

Show me this.

Daddy, show me this.

And then I heard the shot and I ran in there

and there he was just lying there.

Was it common for him to keep the gun loaded?

JAMES R. BROWNING: I thought she was credible,

and she was very distraught and it was very genuine.

And then, for me, it became a problem

of, if that little girl did it, what a shame,

what a terrible tragedy.

NARRATOR: In fact, it was beyond terrible.

Sharon Kinne was blaming two-year-old Dana for the death

of her own father.

For the police, doubt began to blossom.

JAMES R. BROWNING: We were skeptical

about the little girl, but unfortunately, they

were the only witnesses there.

There was no one else to talk to except Sharon Kinne.

JAMES C. HAYS: All they could do is just buy into whatever

it was Sharon was telling him.

And she was very convincing.

And that's not to their discredit.

When-- when Sharon told you something,

it was expected that you'd believe it.

You were just expected to believe it.

She was that good.

NARRATOR: She was certainly good enough

for the insurance companies.

In short order, Sharon collected on policies

totaling $29,000 equal to more than $150,000 today.

Sharon moved on, quickly.

She paid cash for a sporty new car

and allegedly took up with a married man she bought it from.

JAMES C. HAYS: She wanted the salesman

to leave his wife and his children and take care of her.

She wanted him.

In her mind, whatever Sharon wanted, Sharon got.

NARRATOR: But the salesmen apparently

had no intention of leaving his family,

even though Sharon told him she was pregnant.

Some people say Sharon Kinne knew exactly how to separate

the car salesman from his wife.

Hello, Patricia Jones, I'm sorry to have to tell you this,

but I have some information about your husband.

Well, he's been having an affair with my sister.

I'd like to get together with you if I could

and talk about this a little more.

NARRATOR: Patricia Jones reportedly agreed to a meeting.

She asked a friend to go with her.

Hi, Patricia?

Sharon?

Yeah, nice to meet you.

You too.

Hi.

You know, why don't we take a drive?

Come with me and we'll go talk somewhere else, not here.

Yeah, that-- that's probably a good idea.

Look, I'm going to take a quick ride with her.

Are you sure?

I need to do this.

OK, just be careful.

NARRATOR: Patricia Jones never made it home that night.

When word got around the next day,

Sharon herself volunteered to help in the search.

All right, well, where should we check next?

I don't know.

We've checked the east, south east--

NARRATOR: Sharon enlisted the aid of yet

another lover, John Boldes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, their search yielded

no sign of Patricia Jones.

According to John Boldes, Sharon suggested that they finish off

the evening at a popular lover's lane,

a spot Sharon was reportedly very familiar with it.

It's been a while since we've been this.

It's been too long since we've done this.

Yeah, I think you're right.

What? - Do you see that?

See what?

Oh my God.

Don't let it be what I think it is.

My friend's wife was wearing a yellow dress

just like that yesterday.

Oh God, don't let it be her.

JAMES C. HAYS: She makes this young man get out and look,

and it scares the living bejesus out

of him because there is the salesman's wife laying

shot and dead in the grass.

We've got to go to the police.

- Why? - Because she's dead.

We have to go to the police.

All right, fine, go to the police,

but you know what, drop me off at home first

and don't tell them I was with you.

JAMES C. HAYS: Straight away, he gave Sharon away.

Straight away he told them, well,

I wasn't out here by myself.

I was out with Mrs. Sharon Kinne.

And the name just set of all kinds of bells and whistles

in the investigator's head because they

remembered her story from just a couple of months before that.

NARRATOR: Prosecutors wasted no time.

Sharon Kinne was charged with both

the murder of Patricia Jones and the murder of her husband

James.

The circumstances were sensational.

And across Missouri, Sharon Kinne became a household name.

The Patricia Jones case was tried first and considered

the strongest, even though the murder

weapon, another 22 caliber target pistol,

was never located.

By all accounts, Sharon's new found celebrity

charmed the all male jury.

JAMES C. HAYS: Sharon had control of that courtroom.

She had control of--

of the jury, she had control of the spectators.

Everybody's attention was focused on Sharon Kinne,

even to the point that the second day of the trial

after the trial started, Sharon came

moseying in late, fashionably late, probably in her mind.

The trial went on for about 10 days.

The jury came back after deliberating

only an hour and a half for the verdict of not guilty.

The courtroom erupted in cheers.

Jurors came out of the juror box and went over

and got Sharon's autograph.

People in the audience came and got Sharon's autograph.

NARRATOR: Kinne's glory would be short lived.

In the case of her husband, she was convicted

of murder in the first degree.

The star witness for the prosecution

was none other than Sharon's sometime

boyfriend, John Boldes.

He testified that Sharon had once offered

him $1,000 to kill her husband.

Sharon Kinne was sentenced to life in prison,

but in March of 1963, the Missouri

Supreme Court overturned her conviction

on a legal technicality.

She was released on a $25,000 bond, pending retrial.

So what do you think of that?

Does that look too short for you on that side?

NARRATOR: In no time, Sharon had a new lover,

a man who listed his occupations as hairdresser and blacksmith.

You know, I'm surprised you know so much about all this.

Well, you know, I'm full of surprises.

JAMES C. HAYS: Sharon meets a traveling nomadic type

fellow in the unemployment line in Kansas

City in the summer of 1964.

They fall in love, decide that what they're going to do

is they're going to go to Mexico on a pre marriage honeymoon.

Now, that's OK for Sharon to go to Mexico.

She can go to the moon, even though she's

under a $25,000 bond, there's no geographic restrictions.

Franky, I'm so excited.

I've never been to Mexico before.

I want margaritas and pina coladas.

NARRATOR: Once in Mexico, a series of misadventures

landed Sharon in a seedy hotel room with yet another man.

She would later tell the local police

that she acted in self-defense.

The Mexican authorities never bought the story.

Sharon Kinne was convicted of murder

and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

She served less than five.

In December of 1969, Sharon Kinne

apparently squeezed through an unguarded window and vanished.

JAMES C. HAYS: Sharon Kinne could have been somebody.

She could have used her intelligence and used her wit.

She could have been a pioneer woman, in politics,

or in academia or anything, but she chose

it to go the other way around.

She let greed, avarice, and--

and promiscuity will her life.

NARRATOR: James Hays is convinced

that Kinne is alive and well.

She may have stayed in Mexico or she may have gone to Alaska,

where she has relatives.

Computer aging shows how Sharon Kinne might

look today, at the age of 57.

A final intriguing footnote, among Sharon Kinne's belongings

seized in Mexico was a 22 caliber target pistol

that killed Patricia Jones.

Because of double jeopardy laws, Kinne can

not be retried for that crime.

However, she can still be tried for the murder of her husband.

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Join me next time.

Perhaps you hold the key that can solve a mystery.

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