Attorney doesn't know, won't say, what happened to rogue client

HERMITAGE, Mo. -- The common link between two of Kansas City's most notorious fugitives can be found at the end of a rutted dirt lane near the Lake of the Ozarks.

That's where 91-year-old Alex Peebles lives. During his days as a prominent Kansas City attorney, Peebles was friends with Harry Truman and represented Mob boss Nick Civella.

But more often than not visitors don't want to hear stories about Truman. Instead, they ask about clients Sharon Kinne and Mike Cline.

Kinne was charged in the 1960s with killing her husband, the wife of a lover and another man in Mexico. She hasn't been seen since disappearing from a Mexican prison in 1969.

Police suspect Cline killed his pregnant girlfriend in 1970. But he vanished before police reached him with an arrest warrant.

Cases remain open

Although both cases remain open, authorities are no longer confident that either person will be found.

When Kinne telephoned Peebles from Mexico in September 1964 and told him she was in jail on a murder charge, he told her, "Well, tell me something new."

Kinne had gone to Mexico with her new boyfriend shortly before her third trial on charges of killing her husband, James Kinne. The guilty verdict from the first trial had been overturned because of improper jury selection, and a second trial had ended in a hung jury.

Sharon Kinne also had been acquitted of killing Patricia Jones, the wife of a man with whom she'd been having an affair.

Kinne told Peebles she'd picked up a man in a bar and went with him to his hotel. The man ended up dead, and a clerk found Kinne counting his money. She shot the clerk, too.

Kinne got 13 years for the two shootings.

Some sources in Mexico have told Peebles that the victim's family helped her escape, then killed her.

"Or she could be waiting tables in Hermitage, for all I know," Peebles said.