John Richard Kinsinger

John Richard Kinsinger, who devoted 34 years to law enforcement across New Jersey, New York and Las Vegas, died June 14, 2005, in Las Vegas at the age of 84. Born March 18, 1921, in Bloomington, Illinois, he was raised on his family's cattle and grain farm outside Chenoa and earned an agricultural degree from the University of Illinois. He served in the Army during World War II, and after the war worked briefly as an agricultural extension agent before graduating from the University of Illinois Law School in 1949.

Kinsinger spent four years in private legal practice before joining the FBI. He worked for a year at the Newark, New Jersey office before being reassigned to New York, where he served on the bureau's "hoodlum-hijacking" squad for eight years. In 1963 he transferred to Las Vegas, where he continued his FBI career until reaching the bureau's mandatory retirement age in 1977. He passed the Nevada Bar in 1973.

Upon retiring from the FBI, Kinsinger was hired by then-District Attorney George Holt and joined the Clark County District Attorney's office, where he served for 11 years. He initially handled Justice Court hearings and later presented cases to the Clark County Grand Jury for indictments, but his primary role was as deputy district attorney in the liaison section - serving as the middleman between Metro Police and prosecutors and becoming the attorney officers turned to for guidance on the legal dimensions of their work. He retired from that post in 1988.