‘This would just be another burden to the man who had always put himself first.’
JOHN Myles Sharpe appeared to be just another family man doing the best he could to raise a family and get ahead. Not a born risk-taker, he had finally quit his safe but boring job with a bank and had ventured out of his comfort zone into a business he hoped eventually to own. Married with a daughter and another child on the way, he was the sort of everyman we pass on the street every day.
But John Myles Sharpe was different, although no-one knew it back then. Underneath that mild exterior was a cold-blooded monster.
We are supposed to be able to sense evil. Violent people tend to have a threatening presence or a chequered history. Most of us leave footprints that lead to the present but there was nothing much about Sharpe to indicate the man he would become. It would take 37 years for the true John Sharpe to surface, leaving even experienced homicide detectives wondering about their neighbours. Nothing stood out in his past as an event that might twist his character.
Sharpe’s background was as plain as it was stable. He was the fifth of six children born to a shop-keeping couple who lived in the Melbourne seaside suburb of Mornington. In his lifetime he never ventured far from home … except perhaps in his head.
Although he was the fifth child he was the family’s first son and many saw him as a little spoilt, needy and inclined to be a mummy’s boy. He had a habit of whining when things didn’t go his way but those who knew the family hoped that age would round out his character. Schooled locally, the unremarkable student would become the equally unremarkable adult. A grey man in a world filled with colour. A life in sepia.
He plugged on in school, without the dash to be a personality and without the brains to be a nerd, before he failed year 12 in 1984. He then moved seamlessly to the white-collar safety net of a job with the State Bank.
When the bank was taken over by the Commonwealth Bank and many of his colleagues took redundancies and moved on, Sharpe just kept his head down and plodded on. It was in this job that the grey man with the dull life finally met someone with the energy and ambition he lacked – New Zealand-born Anna Marie Kemp.
Unlike Sharpe, who lived his life within minutes of his childhood home, Anna was prepared to move to improve hers. At the age of 27 she left New Zealand with her close friend, Jenny Young, and moved to the bayside suburb of Mentone. She almost immediately applied for a job with the Commonwealth Bank and, with her cheery personality and obvious people skills, was employed as a customer service operator. She was appointed to her local branch at Mentone, where the quiet and shy Sharpe was already working. Despite him being five years younger and lacking the sense of fun of the New Zealander, they began to date and were married on October 30, 1994.
Many of Anna Kemp’s friends could not see the attraction. Some of his few friends also wondered what she could see in the socially inept bank worker. Those who knew them said they were virtually opposites. She was strong-willed, direct, open, bubbly and had a wicked sense of humour. He was passive, quiet, manipulative and cunning. She enjoyed meeting people, while he was socially awkward. And even though he was an adult, he still tended to run to mummy when things didn’t work out. Perhaps his attraction to the slightly older, much stronger and more purposeful Anna was the replacement of one dominant woman with another. He didn’t marry her to share his life but to fix it.
Anna resigned from the bank and tried her hand in other business. He just stayed where he was. She became an Australian citizen on June 19, 2001, while he was treading water. Finally, and largely due to the encouragement of his wife, Sharpe left the bank in August 2002 to strike out of his comfort zone. He became a partner in a conveyancing business – Fast Trak Conveyancing – and hoped to eventually take over the business when the older man retired. His last day at the bank after seventeen years was the same day his wife gave birth to their first child, Gracie Louise. It was Friday, August 13. Black Friday.
SHARPE struggled with any form of change and was definitely not the man for a crisis. Gracie’s birth was not easy. She was delivered by emergency caesarean at The Bays Hospital in Mornington. When her parents learned the baby was born with a congenital abnormality in her hips, the cold and distant father simply withdrew further. It was Anna who had to cope and for the new mother it would be a major struggle. The infant underwent orthopaedic treatment and had to wear a corrective harness for her first three months. The unsettled and uncomfortable Gracie was a sporadic feeder and a spasmodic sleeper. If Anna had not known before, she now realised there were two babies in the house – her daughter and her spoilt husband. She knew she needed help but realised that it would not come from John.
In November, three months after the birth, she went to the Hillview Maternity Unit of Peninsula Health and confided to medical staff that she was anxious and struggling to cope. Three times she and Gracie were admitted for respite to try to establish regular sleeping and eating patterns. But instead of showing real concern and compassion for Anna and Gracie, Sharpe began to head home to his mother where he complained that his wife was ‘moody and bossy’.
After the corrective harness was removed, Gracie quickly settled down – unlike her father. She was enrolled at a Mornington childcare centre where staff described her as ‘a gorgeous little girl with a smile on her face … a delight to look after’.
With only one income – as with many young families – money was tight, so they decided to sell their home and move to a smaller one. But Sharpe would not abandon the area where he had lived all his life and they moved from Spinnaker Rise to a two-bedroom, double-storey weatherboard in Prince Street – less than two kilometres from his parents’ home.
Although the house was smaller, Anna saw it as an opportunity. It was just two streets to the beach and she already had plans to renovate. They bought the house in September 2003 and two months later she announced she was pregnant again. Rather than show excitement at the news, Sharpe brooded again. He would later say that their sex life was so limited he was surprised she was expecting.
The first child had been difficult enough and their marriage was under strain. This would just be another burden to the man who had always put himself first. In January 2004, Anna went to an obstetrician, Dr Andrew Griffiths, who confirmed she was eleven weeks pregnant.
She told him the pregnancy was unplanned. She then added that there was a ‘lack of enthusiasm’ from her husband at the news they were to have a second baby. John Sharpe the mild-mannered but mean-spirited former bank worker was beginning to feel trapped – and it was then that he began to plan his dreadful escape.
DESPITE living close to Port Phillip Bay all his life, Sharpe was not one for seaside activities so it would have come as a surprise to those who knew him that he chose to wander into Sport Phillip Marine in Main Street, Mornington, to buy a high-powered spear gun. That is, it would have been a surprise if he had told anyone, but he chose to keep his purchase to himself. Spear fishers usually only carry one spear. They fire, retrieve and then fire again.
But when Sharpe bought his new black spear gun he insisted on buying a second stainless steel spear to go with the one already included. The former bank employee chose to pay cash, knowing that a credit card would leave a record of his $190 purchase – a record that no doubt would have led his wife to ask why he had decided to take up spear fishing as a hobby.
Or perhaps he was concerned about who else would be interested if at some time in the future his financial records were to be examined as part of a criminal investigation.
Some time after he bought the gun – from a shop only a few doors from the local police station – he decided to test it. Not in the bay just a few minutes away but secretly, in the backyard of the Spinnaker Rise home. It worked perfectly.
On March 3, the Sharpes moved to their new smaller home. Boxes were unpacked, cupboards filled and furniture shifted. But John Sharpe made sure no-one saw him carry and hide his secret purchase on the floor in the corner of the garage. Sharpe rang a local tradesman and organised a time to have a new television antenna fitted and electric cables checked. The appointment was for 9am on Wednesday, March 24.
Shortly after moving in, Anna began to make contact with her friends to visit the new home. The first was her fellow New Zealander Jenny Young, who came to dinner on the night of Friday, March 19, and stayed the night – sleeping on a fold-up sofa bed in the lounge room that was already made up. Anna told her that Sharpe sometimes slept in the bed. Jenny thought nothing of it, as it was not unusual for the parents of a baby occasionally to sleep apart.
The next day Anna and her old friend went to lunch. They chatted but there was no talk of marriage problems. Young thought her friend looked relaxed and happy. She would never see Anna again.
When the Sharpes were photographed on Sunday, March 21, it looked like a snapshot of a happy family. The parents and their little girl took a steam-train ride from Mornington to Moorooduc for the birthday of Sharpe’s nephew.
The truth was that many members of the Sharpe family were drawn to Anna – a relative by marriage – rather than to John, who was one of their own. She was open, friendly and interested in others. John was withdrawn and seemingly only interested in himself. He was tolerated while she was truly liked. The needy Sharpe’s social life centred on his family while Anna had built a strong group of her own friends. She enjoyed some, but not all, family functions while his life tended to revolve around them.
The fact that she would not always fall in with him was a source of continued irritation. But this day there seemed no conflict and family members at the barbecue in the park remember Anna as happy and excited about her plans with the house. Gracie was seen laughing and playing with her young cousins. Even Sharpe appeared to enjoy himself – as much as he ever could. The distant parent even seemed to indulge in quality time, taking his only daughter for a stroll around the local lake.
But the image of the perfect extended family was a lie. The Sharpes had argued and bickered about John’s refusal to stand up on his own and his continued emotional reliance on his parents. He would tell police much later he had to pretend Anna was sick when she refused to attend some family functions.
‘You know, there’s many times she would just say, “I’m never, never going to a family thing again”, or “I’m never going to their house again”.’ Even while he went for the walk with his little girl, Sharpe knew he would soon be a murderer. It was only a matter of time.
ON Monday, March 22, at 9am Anna took Gracie to childcare as usual and picked her up three hours later. That morning she rang her mother, Lilia Gebler, in New Zealand. During the hour-long chat she complained of feeling a little unwell but brightened when she spoke of the alterations she planned for the family home. Already they had replaced old-fashioned lights with down-lights and removed blinds from the sunroom to fill the house with natural light.
That afternoon a close friend and former workmate named Samantha Jeffrey called Anna. She later told police that Anna sounded upbeat and they arranged to meet on Friday so Samantha could see the new home. Anna wrote a quick note on the calendar to remind her of the meeting. That night another friend rang. They talked about her pregnancy and the family picnic. They agreed to catch up during Easter.
While Anna was annoyed by her husband’s lethargy, she remained positive and was already preparing for the birth of their second child.
The next day she rang her private health insurance fund to ask when she should add her unborn child to the family cover. She said she would ring back after the birth.
Telling what happened next relies on a version of events provided to police by John Sharpe who, since he was a child, manipulated the truth to place himself in the best light. But there was nothing he could say that could alter the unspeakable facts.
According to Sharpe, who was now working from home, he and his wife argued and bickered during that Tuesday. He told police he could not remember what started the dispute, but that in itself was not unusual, as they were always arguing. They went to bed just before 10pm and while his wife slept he lay awake thinking about how unhappy his marriage and his life had turned out to be.
He hated the fact that he was so easily dominated and lacked the strength of character to change. ‘She was very strong. Like, the one that would, if you like, wear the pants in the family … it seemed to be so very much sort of “her way or the highway” … It was almost like it was her house and I was living in it, sort of thing, but, you know, that type of thing,’ Sharpe would tell police in his attempts to explain the unspeakable.
He got out of bed, went to the garage, grabbed the spear gun, loaded it and crept back into the bedroom.
He knelt on the bed over his wife, placed the spear against her left temple and fired. Anna’s breathing began to shudder but instead of stopping, just continued. Sharpe reloaded and fired again into the temple.
This time her breathing appeared to stop. He covered her with towels, closed the bedroom door, went downstairs and then went to sleep on the sofa bed as his little daughter slept in a nearby bedroom. The following day he woke about 7am and fed and changed Gracie before taking her to childcare. It was business as usual.
Sharpe appeared calm when, as arranged, a tradesman from Jim’s Antennas arrived that morning. Sharpe informed the worker he couldn’t go upstairs, as his wife was sick in bed. He paid by credit card and the tradesman left around 11am. Soon after, around 11.30, another friend of Anna’s rang and left a message on the answering machine asking what time on Saturday should she pop around to have a look at the new house. Sharpe returned to the childcare centre to collect his daughter. Staff said that day was the first time the father had dropped off or collected Gracie.
While his daughter slept and played inside, he dug a shallow grave in the backyard. Between 6 and 7pm he took a blue plastic tarpaulin upstairs, nudged his wife and, once satisfied she was dead, tried to remove the spears only to find they would not move. He then rotated the shafts leaving the heads in his wife’s skull.
He dragged her in the sheets onto the tarpaulin, then downstairs and buried her in the pre-dug grave. He began to prepare a story that she had left him and Gracie for another man – she was having an affair, that the unborn child was not his and she had left in a ‘silvery coloured car’.
For the next few weeks, Sharpe slowly disposed of Anna’s clothing and personal belongings in the Mornington tip transfer station. He would get a local rubbish remover to take items, including the marital mattress, for disposal. He bought a new queen-size mattress from a local furniture store. The banker, with knowledge of money trails, paid cash to try to stop police tracing the purchase.
On the Thursday, he rang the childcare centre to tell staff Gracie was ill and would not be attending. That afternoon he started to ring his wife’s closest friends, tearfully telling them that Anna had left him and he was going to put Gracie in full-time childcare.
He took Gracie to the centre the following day but when he collected her he told staff he had separated from his wife and this would be the last day his daughter would be attending. He asked for his final account to be sent home. The last time staff saw Gracie was walking out of the centre, holding her father’s hand.
The pressure was building on Sharpe. There were three messages from New Zealand from Anna’s mother – first social, then increasingly anxious, pleading for a return phone call. Sharpe rang back that night telling the incredulous mother that Anna had left him for another man.
She told him she found the story hard to believe. He said he would ring back the next day to explain further.
As promised, he rang saying Anna had left him and was returning the next day to collect Gracie. Anna’s brother, Gerald, then rang Sharpe and said that if his sister did not ring him, he would take the matter to the police.
Sharpe immediately responded that he had to look after Gracie and abruptly hung up.
On the Sunday he rang Anna’s mother to say that Gracie was now gone. But it was how he delivered the news that convinced Anna’s mother to call the police. He said, ‘Gracie belongs with her mother. She is now in a bigger and better place.’
Forty minutes later, she rang back and left a short message. She was going to the police.
DOMESTIC murders are the stock-in-trade of the homicide squad. While no murder is routine and every case a tragedy, the ‘domestic’ is usually the easiest to understand and the easiest to solve. But detectives who thought they had seen the worst of the human spirit had to think again as the Sharpe case was slowly pieced together.
It will never be known when John Sharpe decided that to sustain his story that his wife had left him, his young daughter had to die, too. Some say he must have considered it an option when, more than a month earlier, he bought the spear gun and insisted on buying a second spear. Others think he was so self-centred that once he saw his story had to be strengthened, the idea of sacrificing his own child to save himself came easily.
Certainly, even in his self-serving confession, he could not tell police when he decided to kill Gracie. But he said from the moment he killed his wife he started to have thoughts of killing his daughter.
He would tell police that in the days after he killed his wife he returned to the same local marine shop to buy another spear. And the man with no apparent conscience took his trusting little girl with him.
In his formal record of interview he would be asked by Detective Sergeant Shane Brundell, of the homicide squad missing person’s unit, ‘Was Gracie with you at the time that you bought it?
Sharpe responded, ‘She was’.
Brundell asked, ‘And what was your intention when buying that spear?’
Sharpe replied, ‘That it was going to be used – or most likely would have to be used on Gracie to try and make this bullshit I was trying to make out work.’
Sharpe knew there would be a need for sedation to dull the pain. Not for his little victim but for himself. He drank several glasses of scotch and coke before he killed his daughter while she slept, using the spear gun. There is no need to publish details of the murder. Sharpe can take them to his grave.
But the man who killed his wife, his unborn child and his daughter would spend the next three months building a straw house of lies. What he didn’t know was that for much of the time police were watching and each layer of deceit would compound his guilt. He was effectively building the case against himself. He disposed of his daughter’s body in a hard waste collection bin and over the next week dumped her cot, clothes and toys to give the appearance they had been taken by her mother.
Once he knew police would be investigating the disappearances, he began to try to leave an electronic trail that they would invariably find to indicate his wife had simply walked out with Gracie. Just hours after he killed his daughter, he used Anna’s mobile phone to ring home. In the next two months he would use the phone a further seven times to try to lead police to believe she was still alive. He would spread a story that she had moved to Chelsea with her new lover. To help support the black fairytale, he used her Visa card to make five withdrawals over two months from a Chelsea ATM.
On March 29, he used the home computer to send a fake email from Anna to her brother saying she needed space and had fallen in love with another man who was the father of her unborn child. Sharpe rang her brother Gerald to say Anna had collected Gracie two days earlier. He asked if anyone had been to the police, suggesting it would be counterproductive as Anna wanted space.
He said he feared that if police became involved the delicate situation could get worse. He said he wanted Anna to have a chance to think and was concerned that any further complications could result in difficulties for him having access to Gracie. But he was hours too late. Earlier that day Anna’s mother had gone to a Dunedin police constable to say her daughter and grandchild were missing and she feared for their safety. Sharpe kept trying to stay ahead of the posse he knew must surely soon be on its way.
With the body of his wife in a freshly-dug grave in the backyard he was only one police visit away from discovery. So he headed to his local Bunnings hardware store and bought a roll of duct tape, two tarpaulins and a Homelite brand 1800-watt electric chainsaw. He paid cash.
He returned a call from a New Zealand detective, Senior Sergeant Phil Foster, and again claimed his wife needed ‘space’. Sharpe gave Foster Anna’s mobile number. Foster rang the number, leaving a message that Anna should ring her worried mother.
Sharpe exhumed the body and used the chainsaw to cut it into three pieces. He wrapped the remains and disposed of them at the local hard waste bins at the Mornington transfer station. He dumped the chainsaw and other incriminating items in local refuse bins. He typed letters and emails to Anna’s friends and family with a consistent message: ‘Yes, I am fine but give me space’. One of the friends who received a letter knew the wording was just not Anna and became increasingly suspicious.
On May 1, Sharpe went to the Frankston Library and used the computer to order flowers through Interflora to be sent to Anna’s mother. He paid with Anna’s credit card. The flowers arrived with a message: ‘For Mothers Day and your birthday in one hit. I’ll be thinking of you on both days and sending my love. My freedom is precious – I hope you understand. Love Anna’.
The mother understood, all right. She understood there was no way her daughter had sent the flowers. With every attempted cover-up, Sharpe was convincing those around him that he was a double murderer. Some members of his own family would start to see the truth but there were others who would stick by him blindly – making the police investigation more difficult and drawing out the agony for months.
On May 20 New Zealand police contacted the Victoria Police homicide missing persons unit. The situation was no longer to be treated as a messy domestic dispute. It was a likely double murder. That night police went to Sharpe’s house and he was taken to the Mornington police station where he provided his well-rehearsed story. He said Anna had been home many times to pick up personal items for her and Gracie. He even provided a written statement for police on what had happened over the past two months. Like him, it was weak, shallow and unbelievable – so much so that detectives decided to watch the man who claimed his wife had walked out on him. The following day police launched a surveillance operation on Sharpe. On that first morning he was seen hiding a plastic bag near a toilet block at Mornington. It contained Anna’s mobile phone and her Visa card.
Police followed Sharpe as he went to a series of beachside bins, dumping evidence that was immediately retrieved and added to other damning pieces in the puzzle. Items collected included Anna’s driver’s licence, an invoice from the rubbish man who collected the bloodied double-bed mattress and handwritten notes on his version of the disappearance of his wife and child. In another bin police found more handwritten notes, this time outlining a story that he had seized Anna’s mobile phone and cards when she came to collect Gracie in a desperate attempt to make her come home.
He would later admit to detectives that these were ‘cheat notes’ he made when rehearsing a back-up story he would give to police if he were to be confronted with the evidence. The pressure was mounting. He reverted to type, scuttling home to his parents.
The media repeatedly interviewed him but no-one believed his story. He told one reporter: ‘I understand people will have their own opinions, but I can’t do anything to change what people think. I also understand that the police have a job to do and obviously they have to investigate me and question me. I’ve been fully cooperative with the police and I will continue to be.’
He said he was hurt by suggestions he was cold-hearted. ‘The things you do as a husband and a father and the effort you put in … (then) getting painted that you don’t care about your daughter and marriage … it’s soul-destroying.’ Police interviewed him on June 10 at Mornington but again he stuck to his story.
While police made it clear they believed Anna and Gracie were dead, Sharpe tried to maintain his public charade. Flanked by his parents and holding a picture of his daughter he read a statement in his quavering voice, ‘Anna, our marriage may be over but I still love you and you are the mother of our beautiful daughter Gracie, whom we both adore more than anyone else. I know the current circumstances are very stressful for you and everyone concerned, including all our families, and that we are very private people. We need to resolve this. My biggest fear is being denied a part of Gracie’s future.’ Later he would say, ‘I just want to see my daughter’.
HOMICIDE interviews are usually understated affairs. The trained detective asks hundreds and sometimes thousands of questions, playing a game of chess with suspects. It is not a grilling. The truth is more often teased out of the suspects than forced out. People can be caught lying, but that alone won’t crack a case. They can lie out of fear, to cover up embarrassment or because they are just born liars. That does not mean they are necessarily killers. The questions often seem irrelevant but they are asked with an eye to a jury. They need the suspect to make admissions that can corroborate a crime – to reveal facts that only the killer could know. A confession – ‘I did it’ – is never enough.
So when police were finally ready to confront Sharpe they had to remain calm and non-judgmental. He was a weak man likely to freeze at the first stern word. Intimidated people clam up. No matter what he said, the detectives – mostly men with wives and children – could not betray the horror at what he would say and their contempt for what he had become. While they had already decided to charge him with the murders, the interview would be pivotal because the case was largely circumstantial. Without a confession, police would have had to go to court without the bodies of the pregnant woman and the little girl, killed months earlier.
It was 9.31am on June 22 when Senior Detective Mark Kennedy asked the first question of Sharpe in the homicide interview. Sharpe responded to any questions he thought were difficult with the standard, ‘On legal advice, I won’t answer the question’.
Sharpe’s story was clearly bogus but after more than 200 questions he was sticking to it. At question 219 Kennedy asked, ‘Is there anything else that you have not told us in relation to the disappearances of Anna and Gracie?’ He declined to answer. Then police pumped up the pressure. They showed him pictures of the beaches and bins where they had found items he had dumped. They showed him the mobile phone and cards they had recovered. Then, making sure he was comfortable, they played him a short video. It was of Sharpe, sneaking around the toilet block to where he had hidden Anna’s phone and cards in a plastic bag. Kennedy asked, ‘I put it to you John, that that was actually you in that video, have you any comment to make in relation to that?’
They showed him items from the house that he had tried to dump, and which police had found. Books including one called Up The Duff aimed at women who are pregnant and another containing 50,000 names for babies. It was from this book that Anna had planned to find the name for her unborn son. After two hours and 378 questions the interview was suspended – but just for 25 minutes. John Sharpe was then formally charged with the two murders. At 12.16 the interview ended.
Rather than taking Sharpe directly to court, the investigating team allowed him to see members of his family. This was not an act of compassion but an attempt to persuade him to open up. There were the mandatory tears and hugs before he finally confessed to the detectives outside the interview room that he killed his wife and daughter. But that was not enough. They needed it on videotape. So, two hours later, he returned to the interview room and in answer to a question from Detective Sergeant Shane Brundell, Sharpe finally said what police had known for weeks: ‘Well, that I did have … well, that I had killed Anna and also Gracie.’
This time he answered questions and apologised when he couldn’t remember little details. He seemed to treat Detective Sergeant Brundell as a new-found friend, referring to him as Shane during the questioning. Finally, on question 1366, asked if he understood that he had been charged with the murders, Sharpe answered, ‘I do, Shane.’
It should have been the end of the investigation but police had to find the remains. For nearly three weeks they searched through a one metre deep, 60 square metre area at the Mornington landfill site before they found what was left of the bodies.
On August 5, 2005, Supreme Court Justice Bernard Bongiorno sentenced Sharpe for the double murder. In his sentencing remarks Bongiorno, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, said: From the moment you killed your wife you began to have thoughts that you would have to kill Gracie to maintain your façade of innocence with respect to Anna’s murder. Indeed, at some time between your wife’s death and the time you actually killed your daughter, you took her with you to Sport Phillip Marine whilst you purchased another spear for the spear gun. There could have been only one reason for that purchase, which was carried out in circumstances of unspeakable callousness.
The judge said that according to a forensic psychiatrist who examined Sharpe, he was socially inept, dependant, passive and a retiring individual. Another psychiatrist … considered you to be an inadequate, isolated and withdrawn individual. You had few appropriate social skills and few friends. He thought you were very dependant on your parents and lacked the psychological resources to cope with the stressors in your life.
Bongiorno said Sharpe had planned Anna’s death: Your killing your wife was no impulsive act of desperation. He described the murder as … singular in its barbarity … (and) there was the fact that your wife was pregnant. Your act effectively destroyed two lives, not one. Of the murder of Sharpe’s daughter, the judge said: Gracie was a defenceless child for whom you had a legal and, more importantly, a moral responsibility.
In sentencing Sharpe to life with a minimum of 33 years’ jail, Bongiorno said he doubted the double murderer was truly sorry for what he had done. You may reach a state of genuine remorse; it is to be hoped that you do. A positive finding that you have done so yet, however, cannot be made. Finally, your time in prison, especially in the early years of your sentence, is likely to be marked by hostility and even violence from fellow prisoners which, in turn, is likely to lead to your having to be isolated, thereby making the ordeal of incarceration particularly onerous.
As Sharpe was sentenced he dabbed away tears of self-pity before being led away. John Myles Sharpe, the weak man who felt his wife wore the pants in the family, will be in his 70s before he is eligible for parole. He will have decades to get used to taking orders.