Keri Sherlock PART III – Two Faces of a Killer
Two Faces of a Killer: Kinney Details Life
Convicted murderer James Allen Kinney met with reporters Monday in a holding cell in Bellingham, Wash. (Pete Kendall/The Bellingham Herald)
By MIA TAYLOR
Staff
January 16, 2002
The Patriot Ledger
BELLINGHAM, Wash. – He shifts seamlessly between personas with the slightest change in the direction of a conversation.
There’s the James Allen Kinney who stares down through dust-covered eyeglasses at his lap, rubbing his knees nervously and speaking in almost childlike tones about bad memories and painful moments.
And then there’s the James Allen Kinney who looks right at you, with a smirk, talking proudly about the clever tactics he used to stay one step ahead of the law for more than two years, the Kinney filled with bravado, willing to take risks even as his mug shot appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
“I walked into a police station in Pennsylvania, to get directions to Allentown, and the officer said, You look familiar,'” Kinney boasts. “I said I’m just your average Joe,’ and walked back out.”
On Monday, in a courtroom in the northwest corner of Washington state, the 52-year-old drifter was sent to prison for life for the rape and murder of Braintree resident Keri Sherlock in 1998. She was 20.
Kinney picked up Sherlock while she was hitchhiking near Bellingham. A nature lover who enjoyed travel, Sherlock was in Washington fulfilling her dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean.
Monday’s sentencing closed a case that devastated a Braintree family and inspired a nationwide manhunt.
A tip generated by the television show “America’s Most Wanted” ultimately led to Kinney’s capture.
Kinney spoke with reporters for an hour Monday in an 11-by-15-foot holding cell while awaiting transfer to a state prison. Wearing white rubber sandals and yellow prison fatigues, he sat unshackled in the small room with cinder block walls and a gray concrete floor.
The conversation wandered, disjointedly, through childhood, traveling across the country, and what he called the two James Allen Kinneys: “The monster who killed Keri Sherlock” and the “civic-minded” citizen.
Kinney’s lawyer said Kinney’s account of his life and actions are not entirely true, but investigators working on the case were able to verify parts of it.
He was born Earle Norman Suskey in Tulsa, Okla. on Sept. 5, 1949, the second child of a troubled marriage.
His father was an alcoholic who physically abused Kinney and would abandon the family for days, weeks or months at a time, according to court records.
By the time he was 2, alcohol, infidelity and violence had taken such a toll on his parents that Kinney and his brother were put up for adoption, becoming wards of the state.
A young couple, Margaret and Clifford Kinney, took in the two children, initially on a foster-care basis, and adopted them after just a few months.
The family moved to Lansing, Mich., so the boys could grow up on a farm. The Kinneys joined the local Methodist church, where the family attended weekly Sunday services. They lived a modest life, spending much of their time on the farm or fishing.
“I had my own cows,” Kinney says with a sudden, surprising laugh and lingering smile. “I got up at 4 a.m. to feed the cows and got an animal husbandry badge, along with a Future Farmers of America badge.”
Clifford Kinney worked a lot and his wife ran a strict home in his absence. Her approach to child raising was detailed in dozens of interviews in the court file, among them conversations with Kinney’s brother Robert, Michigan neighbors and his Boy Scout troop leader.
There were no hugs or physical affection. But there was a great deal of yelling and punishment in the home. Court records show that Kinney was horse-whipped, leaving scars on his right cheek.
When he talks about the bad times, Kinney seems to recede into a shell, looking at his lap or staring with vacant eyes.
“It was fun there for awhile,” he says. “But then it wasn’t fun anymore. It started getting bad for us.” Eventually, Kinney joined the Army and went to Vietnam.
Clifford Kinney began to notice signs of “mental problems” when Kinney returned from the service in the early 1970s.
Kinney has been in hospitals for extended psychiatric treatment at least 26 times since 1980. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with bipolar disorder.
Kinney’s public defender, John Komorowski, said his client is now taking several mood-stabilizing medications, including lithium.
As Kinney talked, Komorowski leaned against a nearby wall. Often, Kinney appeared overwhelmed or confused, turning to look at Komorowski for assistance. He frequently expressed feeling “jittery,” and again looked to his lawyer for help.
But Kinney also revealed details of a thought process sharp enough to figure out how to avoid capture after Sherlock’s murder.
He went to a library and checked out a book detailing how the FBI tracks suspects. Then, Kinney said, he used what he learned reading the book to stay out of jail. He also watched television broadcasts about the case.
“I let John Walsh pave the way,” he says, of the “America’s Most Wanted” host. “Wherever they were looking, I wasn’t there.”
Kinney said he spent time in California, Vermont and even Massachusetts. He claimed to have thought about turning himself in, not to police, but to Sherlock’s family.
“I went up to Massachusetts looking for her parents, but couldn’t find her house,” Kinney said, explaining he looked in phone books but didn’t know what town the Sherlocks lived in.
When reporters appeared incredulous about the claim, he added, “If you were her mother and this guy comes in and says, I’m here to turn myself in,’ you might have been frightened, but you might have felt like, My prayers are answered.'”
Komorowski, who had investigators independently verify the facts of Kinney’s life, doubts some of the things Kinney said during the interview. He said Kinney lied about being the leader of a Boy Scout troop.
Did he get a book about the FBI? Maybe, Komorowski said.
He was probably not in all the places he claimed to have visited, Komorowski said.
The lawyer stressed that Kinney’s mental illness is no excuse for murder. He said Kinney deserves to die in prison.
But his client does not deserve all the blame.
“Society fails the mentally ill,” he said. “If he had been on the proper medication, I don’t think this would ever have happened.”
As for whether the apologies he has offered time and again for his violent actions are sincere, only Kinney himself knows.
He insists they are.
“I can’t undo what I’ve done. I’ve had rages for years and years,” Kinney said as the interview concluded. “I’m asking Keri to forgive me for what I did to her. If I have to die the same way she did, so be it.”
Mia Taylor may be reached at mtaylor@ledger.com
Copyright 2002 The Patriot Ledger Transmitted January 16, 2002
Mia Taylor 