LeRoy M. Hoffman was a 52-year-old man who ran a coin shop in Kansas City, Missouri, a place where collectors came to talk dates, mint marks, and the quiet thrill of finding something rare. On March 12, 1988, that small world turned violent when Hoffman was killed inside his own shop during what appeared to be a robbery, with coins worth several thousand dollars reported missing afterward.
Accounts that later surfaced about the days leading up to the killing describe a stranger who
didn’t arrive like a smash-and-grab thief, but like someone patient enough to blend in. Hoffman had told his wife about a “local farmer” who had been coming around the shop and asking questions, including talk of selling a “large collection” of coins—exactly the kind of bait that would keep a dealer engaged and curious. Then, when the moment came, the visit wasn’t about business at all.
Hoffman’s death did not stay confined to Kansas City in the minds of investigators and journalists who followed a widening pattern. Reports described a method that felt chillingly rehearsed: a personable man repeatedly visiting coin shops as a would-be customer, building familiarity, then returning near closing time to rob and shoot—often a small-caliber gun, the shot delivered to the head. In that broader list of linked cases, Hoffman’s killing was repeatedly cited alongside similar coin-shop murders in other states.
By 1990, that pattern had a name attached to it: Charles T. Sinclair, a former coin-shop owner who authorities believed could be responsible for multiple coin-related robberies and killings across the West and beyond. Sinclair was arrested in Alaska in mid-August 1990 after investigators followed leads across states, and he was held on a large bond while Montana sought extradition. Montana authorities charged him with the Billings, Montana double homicide of coin-shop owner Charles Sparboe and employee Catharine Newstrom, and Utah authorities added charges tied to the shooting of coin-shop co-owner Kelly Finnegan during a robbery attempt in Murray, Utah—an attack Finnegan survived and later described in detail.
For Hoffman’s case specifically, public reporting consistently framed Sinclair as a prime suspect in a connected series rather than someone ever tried for the Kansas City homicide. Any courtroom ending never came: Sinclair died in custody in Anchorage on October 30, 1990, reported as a heart attack/heart failure in jail, and his death left investigators without testimony, a trial record, or the kind of final accounting that might have stitched the open cases shut. In the wake of that, Hoffman’s killing remained part of a grim constellation—one man dead behind the counter, the stolen coins gone, and the central suspect taking whatever he knew to the grave.
