Crime Magazine is about true crime: organized crime, celebrity crime, serial killers, corruption, sex crimes, capital punishment, prisons, assassinations, justice issues, crime books, crime films and crime studies.
J. J. Maloney
J. J. Maloney, an award-winning journalist and founder and editor of Crime Magazine, passed away December 31, 1999, at his mother's home in Webster Groves, Mo. He was 59. Read More About JJ Maloney here.
Sharon Kinne: La Pistolera
Sharon Kinne
She was one of the most remarkable criminals in U.S. history. A housewife, she turned cold-blooded killer. In 1969 she escaped from a Mexican prison and disappeared without a trace.
In 1960 Sharon Kinne was an attractive 20-year-old Jackson County, Mo., housewife with two children, and was having an affair with John Boldizs, a friend from high-school.
She and her husband, James, 25, were having frequent arguments. Sharon wanted a new Thunderbird, and she wanted a vacation trip. She often lied about having paid bills. The Kinnes were deeply in debt.
On March 19, 1960 -- a Saturday afternoon – James, who – his relatives say -- knew she was cheating on him, reportedly told Sharon he would file for divorce the following Monday.
So Sharon Kinne did the only sensible thing, for her: She shot James in the head while he was napping and said her 2-year-old daughter Danna did it while playing with daddy's gun -- a .22-caliber Hi-Standard pistol. When the Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the house just east of Independence, Mo., they found the gun lying on the bed beside James.
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The Firefighter Case: Part I
South Kanasa City Blast Site
Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters in 1988. These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won the Missouri Bar Association's annual "Excellence in Legal Journalism" award. On Oct. 30, 1998, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal in the Kansas City Firefighters case. Read the full opinion here and our analysis of the opinion. On Oct. 4, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case.
by J.J. Maloney
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The Execution Photos
Allen Lee Davis
[Ed's Note: On Jan. 14, 2000, following the barrage of controversy created by the execution photos posted by Justice Shaw, Florida barred any further executions by electrocution, opting for lethal injection. On Dec. 16, 2006, then Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in Florida after it took two doses and 34 minutes for Angel Diaz to die by lethal injection.]
by J.J. Maloney
The execution of Allen Lee Davis in the Florida electric chair on July 8, 1999, was so violent that it set off a shock wave that rippled around the world. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled, yet again, that execution by electrocution is not unconstitutional, a dissenting justice attached three photographs of the execution to his dissent and posted them on the Florida Supreme Court web site.
The photographs drew attention from all over the world, with many foreign visitors expressing disgust, while many Floridians rallied in support of "Old Sparky," as the Florida electric chair is known. One Florida woman, in an email to the court, described the photographs as "wonderful."
Each person can view the photographs, and read the following lengthy excerpt from the dissent of Justice Shaw and come to his or her own conclusion as to the propriety of capital punishment, and electrocution in particular. As Justice Shaw points out, the United States is the only country in the world that uses electrocution as a means of execution, and even in the United States only three states still use this method of execution.
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The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey
May 7, 1999 Updated 8/30/06 and 07/20/08
by J. J. Maloney & J. Patrick O'Connor
Related Story: Solving the JonBenet Case by Ryan Ross. (04/14/03)
Editor's Note:
On July 9, 2008, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy stated that DNA tests conducted by Bode Technology Group revealed that skin cells left behind on JonBenet Ramsey's long underwear point to a killer other than the girl's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, or her brother, Burke. Mrs. Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at age 49.
"To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry," Lacy wrote in an exoneration letter to John Ramsey, who now has remarried and lives in Michigan. "No innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion."
Early in the investigation into the 6-year-old pageant star's brutal murder on Christmas night in 1996, Lacy said that Boulder police discovered male DNA in a drop of blood on JonBenet's underwear that did not match any members of JonBenet's immediate family. The tests conducted by Bode Technology Group, Lacy said, revealed the same DNA that was found previously in the drop of blood was present in three places on JonBenet's long underwear.
Lacy stated that Boulder investigators now hope they'll eventually find a DNA match in the ever-expanding national DNA databank, a sentiment echoed by John Ramsey. "I think the people that are in charge of the investigation are focused on that, and that gives me a lot of comfort," Mr. Ramsey said in an interview with a Denver TV station. "Certainly we are grateful that they acknowledged that we, based on that, certainly could not have been involved."
Even if a DNA match is eventually made, it does not mean that the DNA from this contaminated crime scene will reveal it to be that of JonBenet's killer, although it possibly could. For now, all that is known, is that it is not the DNA of John, Burke, or the late Patsy Ramsey. In the meantime, the JonBenet case will continue unsolved and will remain one of the most botched crime investigations in the annals of U.S. law enforcement.
The brutal murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas night in 1996 shocked America to its core. Just as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder seven decades earlier had seared the nation's consciousness, this murder – of a beautiful and talented child in a wealthy Boulder, Colo., home – renewed every parent's worst nightmare: No child was truly safe, not even tucked in at home on Christmas night.
JonBenet's murder – particularly as the days went by and no arrests were forthcoming – quickly became a national obsession, featured day after day on network news, television tabloid programs, talk radio, newspapers and magazines. Her image flitted across television screens innumerable times, often showing her in a fancy red cowgirl outfit, singing "I want to be a cowboy sweetheart," or dancing across the stage in a glittering Las Vegas showgirl outfit, complete with heavy makeup. Her unusual first name became so well known that like Cher and Madonna she no longer had need of a last name.
The public's shock at the murder soon began to share equal time with its growing dismay at the Boulder police's investigation, a dismay fed by a steady stream of leaks from the Boulder County District Attorney's office about the inept police investigation being conducted. For one thing it became known that the police had badly botched the initial investigation by failing to seal off the crime scene. For another it appeared the police were treating the primary suspects – JonBenet's parents – with kid gloves by not only acquiescing to their refusal to be interviewed at police headquarters, but also to being interviewed separately. Fueled with such information, the media, especially the tabloid television and talk radio shows, were showing no such restraint toward the glamorous child's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. Some in the media began to point the finger directly at her father. Others implied it was her mother who had garroted the girl. Some speculated the crime had to have been committed by both parents. The tabloids even raised the possibility that her brother Burke, who was just shy of 10-years-old at the time, murdered JonBenet.
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Remembering Karl Menninger
Feb. 2, 2012
Dr. Karl Menninger
Former convict and Kansas City Star reporter J.J. Maloney recalls his 17-year association with Dr. Karl Menninger, the avatar of prison reform.
by J.J. Maloney
In December, 1972, I attended a conference on prison reform in Topeka, Kansas, in connection with a prison series another reporter and I were writing for The Kansas City Star.
At lunch I found myself sitting next to Karl Menninger.
I'd seen pictures of him, but he was much more of a presence than I had expected. About 70 at the time, he was developing bags under his eyes, had silver hair, and was getting jowly; but he radiated intelligence, confidence and power.
Menninger remained slightly aloof until I mentioned to him that I had enjoyed a piece he had written for a bulletin published by the W. Clement Stone Foundation in Chicago.
What piece was that? Menninger asked.
The piece on the history of prison literature, I replied.
Menninger looked puzzled and said he didn't remember that piece. When I said I had a copy in my suitcase, he insisted I go to my room and get it.
He read the piece then said to me, "I didn't write this."
I finally told Menninger I had written the piece myself, for Book World, which was published in The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune. Apparently someone at the foundation had thought it would have more impact with Menninger's name on it.
Menninger appeared deeply embarrassed, but from that moment forward we had a warm relationship. Every time I would cover one of his appearances, or happen to attend some event at the same time he did, he would insist that I sit at his table.
We met frequently in those days. The 1970s was the heyday of prison reform in America, and Menninger bore the torch for the movement.
It wasn't always cordial. On one occasion when I attended a seminar sponsored by the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Menninger talked on the subject of training prison management personnel.
I asked him if he'd considered the common problem of prison managers using convicts as pawns in office politics – i.e., after one official gives a convict a job, that official's rival determines the convict isn't really "qualified" for that job and has the convict reassigned. The object of the game is to place the first official's judgment in question. The convict is just a pawn.
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Prison Stories
Feb. 6, 2012
Missouri State Penitentiary
J. J. Maloney, the founder of Crime Magazine, spent 13 years in prison for a murder he committed during an armed robbery when he was 19 years old. Paroled in 1972, he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a book reviewer and became a full-time reporter the next year. The following stories are based on his prison years at “The Walls” in Jefferson City, Missouri. Mr. Maloney died in 1999 at age 59.
by J.J. Maloney
I. A Natural Poet
He had a dog-eared sheaf of papers clutched in his hand. "You're a poet, aren't you?" he asked.
I nodded yes, but felt immediately paranoid because he made it sound like more of an accusation than a question. He was a reddish-haired kid with a puffy face and thick eyeglasses that made his eyes look watery. Between his two front teeth there was a sizeable gap.
He was a poet. He'd brought this sheaf of offerings as proof. I listened, politely, but with a lack of enthusiasm. Every prison has a hundred would-be poets.
He was different in that he had a sheaf of poems, which indicated some industriousness. He rattled off the names of several small poetry magazines that had published his work.
I reluctantly agreed to take his work to my cell and read it and critique it. People who write are generally more interested in confirmation than criticism.
That evening, though, when I'd finished everything I considered important, I dragged the poems out and read them. They were good – very good. They bordered on professionalism. So I read them again, and they were as good as they'd been the first time.
I sat there and stared out the bars for a while, thinking of this awkward-looking kid with the puffy face who also happened to be a good poet – a promising poet, since he was only 19 years old.
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