00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR:
The 5th of July, 1998, Manhattan, New York,
82-year-old Irene Silverman
00:00:14
vanished, never
to be seen again. She'd been brutally
attacked in her home, tasered, then strangled in a bid
to fraudulently seize the title
00:00:24
to her multimillion-dollar
property. - GEOFFREY WANSELL: It
was an act of the most
00:00:29
grotesque malevolence. They dumped
the body in a dumpster. It is such a brutal act.
00:00:37
- NARRATOR: The two killers
were a mother-and-son duo-- 23-year-old Kenny Kimes,
00:00:42
and his 63-year-old mother,
Sante. She was a con artist
who would stop at nothing
00:00:48
to keep her crimes under wraps. - Most of her victims
were obstacles, as far as she
00:00:54
was concerned, that needed
to be got out of the way. There was something
innately evil about her.
00:01:00
- NARRATOR: Over the course
of two years, Sante Kimes coerced her son, Kenny, into
committing three murders.
00:01:08
- She transformed him into
a really evil person like her. She was like a black widow,
and he became that way, too.
00:01:17
- NARRATOR: Even their own
family were wary of them. - KENT: Mom has
always been dangerous,
00:01:23
but when Kenny
became her partner, she became really dangerous. - NARRATOR: Driven by greed,
they duped innocent victims
00:01:32
out of thousands of dollars,
and brutally killed three people to maximize their
ill-gotten gains,
00:01:39
making Sante and Kenny Kimes two of the world's
most evil killers. - ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Wealthy New York
socialite Irene Silverman
00:02:10
vanished on the
5th of July, 1998. Her killers,
Sante and Kenny Kimes, had already been linked
to crimes in five separate
00:02:20
U.S. states, following a trail
of fraud and suspected murder. Former NYPD Detective
Tom Hovagim
00:02:30
was investigating
Irene's murder. - They thought they
were untouchable. They thought they were
smarter than everyone else,
00:02:36
especially Sante. Kenny physically did it,
but she gave the orders, make no mistake about it.
00:02:46
- NARRATOR:
By sheer coincidence, on the same day as the murder of multimillion-dollar heiress
Irene, the police already had
00:02:53
a sting in place
at a local hotel to capture the Kimes for other
crimes they'd been linked to.
00:03:01
- They later found out that
they were being arrested for the bad check on the car,
and that was a big relief
00:03:05
to them, but little
did they know, we were also investigating them
for Irene Silverman's murder.
00:03:12
- NARRATOR:
The Elizabeth Taylor look-alike and master of disguise
Sante Kimes fooled victims
00:03:18
across the U.S. during her
outlandish 43-year crime spree. She used her powers
of persuasion to gate crash
00:03:27
parties with the rich
and famous, including U.S. Vice President
Gerald Ford. - She had at least 22 aliases,
00:03:37
all kinds of different
Social Security numbers, all kinds of
different passports.
00:03:43
She was a million faces. She lies so relentlessly
to everyone, it's a complete construct.
00:03:54
- She knew how to make you feel
like the most important person in the world, it was
fun, everyone loved her.
00:04:01
She was the life of
the party; as evil as she is, my mom was a walking
contradiction.
00:04:07
Her nature's evil. And--and the problem was
that she was good at it. - DR. YARDLEY:
She was a coercively
00:04:13
controlling manipulator. Some people in going
after that sense of power and that sense of control will
stop at nothing to achieve it.
00:04:22
- There you go.
Say hi, give us a smile. - MAN: Cheese. [laughing] - NARRATOR: Sante Kimes's story
begins on July the 24th, 1934,
00:04:34
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was born Sandra Singers, and had a brother
and two sisters.
00:04:43
It was the time
of a global economic downturn, the Great Depression. Families like Sante's,
who lived off the land,
00:04:51
were struggling to
feed themselves due to an intense drought
in America's south.
00:04:56
- There's a lot of poverty
in the society at this point in time, and
this is something that she will
00:05:02
always be very conscious
of throughout her life. She came from
quite a poor background.
00:05:08
Her father was East Indian,
and her mother was, uh, a Dutch migrant, and it's
said that she experienced
00:05:14
quite a lot of racism. But it's very difficult
to know what's true and what's fabrication
because this woman was good at
00:05:22
creating histories
that didn't exist. - Somehow they ended
up in Los Angeles. And her father, my
grandfather, was kind of
00:05:33
a con artist too,
from what we can think of now. He left my grandmother on
the streets in L.A, basically--
00:05:39
basically homeless,
as far as we know. It was tough. - JOHN: Sante used
to steal from food stores.
00:05:47
She claimed that was part
of her survival strategy. She was very conscious early on
of the huge disparity in wealth
00:05:56
between people like her and
people like the Hollywood set, and so she became
very conscious early on
00:06:02
of the need to achieve
some kind of material wealth, and of course, she
became obsessed by it.
00:06:09
- NARRATOR: Desperate to escape
her poverty, at the age of 13, Sante, or Sandra,
as she was baptized,
00:06:16
was given a lucky break. An L.A. theater owner
took a shine to her, and arranged for their
childless sister to adopt Sante.
00:06:25
- The story goes
that actually her mother and her sister were
quite happy to wave her off
00:06:30
because she was quite
a handful, and I think with this new mum and dad,
she would've been doted on.
00:06:36
So, I think any kind
of narcissism that was developing in her would've
been exacerbated even more.
00:06:43
- NARRATOR: The young Sante
was now living in Nevada and moving her way
up in the world.
00:06:49
Her adopted father had
a well-paid job in the Army, and she was focused on
getting good grades at school
00:06:56
to climb up the social ladder. - She was terrified
of being poor. She was scarred
by her childhood.
00:07:07
- DR. YARDLEY: She's been
described as quite pushy, quite overbearing, and it's
said that she had only one
00:07:12
female friend during
her school days. And this female friend
was somebody who really
00:07:18
looked up to her, and this
is quite significant for me because when you have a case of
somebody who is a narcissist,
00:07:25
you often have a codependent. - NARRATOR: With her
friend, Ruth, she decided to move back to California,
where they enrolled
00:07:33
in journalism at college. It was in Santa Barbara where
Sante first tried her hand
00:07:39
at fraud using the name
of Ruth's future father-in-law, Bruce. - Bruce started getting
all these bills, and what Mom
00:07:47
had done is gone down to
a local department store and charged thousand of
dollars to his name for makeup,
00:07:54
perfumes, clothes, and stuff
like that, and that was the first thing that I know
of that made Mom's thirst
00:08:00
for what she really was. - NARRATOR: On the 9th of
May, 1956, at the age of 21, Sante decided to marry
her boyfriend, Lee.
00:08:11
But when he got a job
as a lowly paid teacher, Sante filed for divorce after
barely a year of marriage.
00:08:19
- DR. YARDLEY: She was
physically quite attractive, but she was very much
a parasite, um, she would
00:08:24
hook on to particular men,
get what she wanted, and then she would
just abandon them.
00:08:30
- NARRATOR: Sante now focused
on finding the next man in her life who could
take her up in the world.
00:08:37
Just a few months after
her first marriage ended, on the 9th of November, 1957,
she married an old high school
00:08:44
sweetheart, Ed Walker. - KENT: My dad was
kinda like that puppy. My dad was completely
enamored with her.
00:08:52
He was his entire life. - GEOFFREY: She wanted him
to "better himself" so that she could
be bettered too.
00:08:58
She spent extravagantly.
I mean, she would spend $13,000 one Christmas on
Christmas presents.
00:09:06
He couldn't afford that.
There was no way that, in the end, it wouldn't
drive Ed to distraction.
00:09:14
- NARRATOR: Sante wanted
to be more than an average suburban housewife.
She wanted to exude wealth.
00:09:21
So she began to
reinvent herself, ditching her birth name,
Sandra, to make herself
00:09:27
sound more exotic. - Mom's name changed
several times throughout her life, um,
she started off as Sandy,
00:09:38
and then she decided she wanted,
um, be kinda French. Somewhere along the lines,
it turned into "Santi,"
00:09:45
and then she went to Sante. - NARRATOR: In 1962,
Sante found herself in a whole new role when
their son, Kent, was born,
00:09:57
and she became Mum.
But even this didn't deter her from her grifting ways. - Percent of the time,
she treated me like a king
00:10:06
or prince and--and made me feel
like the most important person in the world, you know, and--
and her love was fierce.
00:10:12
Yeah, so when you saw
the bad stuff, well, I don't know, maybe other
families are like that.
00:10:17
So I didn't know.
It's all that I knew. - NARRATOR: Not long after
Kent's arrival, the cracks
00:10:22
in the marriage are
beginning to show, and Sante had a string of affairs. With her spending sky high,
she resorted to new ways
00:10:31
of funding her lifestyle-- making fraudulent
insurance claims through arson. - KENT: One of my
earliest memories,
00:10:41
we pull up the driveway,
and there's fire engines all over the place and
stuff, the house had burnt
00:10:45
to the ground, and I think that
was the third or fourth fire. It pretty much
destroyed my father.
00:10:54
I mean, everything that
he would do was successful, but she found a way
to destroy it.
00:10:59
- NARRATOR: The local police
would later nickname Sante The Dragon Lady because of
the number of mysterious fires
00:11:05
that were attached to her name. She'd move with husband, Ed, and their young son, Kent,
from Sacramento to escape
00:11:14
the suspicions about the number
of homes she'd burnt down. - GEOFFREY: What a wonderful
scheme, you just keep on
00:11:22
setting fires to places,
you claim the insurance, you make more money. She knew exactly
what she was doing
00:11:27
and why she was doing it. - NARRATOR: Because of
Sante's obsessive need for material wealth,
she also continued
00:11:34
with another
compulsive criminal pastime. - Mom always stole.
I mean, there-- there was always
shoplifting involved.
00:11:40
I mean,
I was her little helper. I didn't know, you know,
I was a kid, I'm-- I'm not tryna make excuse,
00:11:45
but it's all I knew.
That's Mom. - GEOFFREY: In 1966, she
was arrested 3 times in a 5-day period.
00:11:53
She had no concept
of right or wrong. - NARRATOR: The police
raided the family home,
00:11:59
and found credit cards
that Sante had taken out under a number of fake aliases. She faced 17 charges of
grand theft, but thanks
00:12:09
to legal help provided
by one of her boyfriends, she walked away with nothing
more than a petty fine.
00:12:17
Meanwhile,
the affairs continued. For husband, Ed, it
was the final straw. - I remember they were
in this huge argument,
00:12:26
and Mom was going crazy,
and--and she actually threw a knife at him, and
I saw it stick in his arm.
00:12:35
There's times when
he walked in the house and saw her in
someone else's embraces.
00:12:42
My parents divorced.
It destroyed my father. He was a broken man, and
he never fully recovered.
00:12:50
- NARRATOR: With
nobody to reign her in, Sante's escapades escalated. On the odd occasion that
she did get caught out,
00:12:58
she would do whatever necessary
to get out of her latest fix, even exploiting her own
seven-year-old son.
00:13:06
- KENT: Not too long
after Mom and Dad split, I was sitting on the hood
of the car waiting for Mom.
00:13:11
Mom came running out
the dress shop, and, uh, this lady was chasing
her, and she's saying,
00:13:19
"Get in the car,
get in the car." The lady came up and
actually grabbed Mom's arm.
00:13:25
"You're shoplifting, we saw you
put that dress in that bag." So, what Mom did is she
stood up for a minute,
00:13:31
and she didn't say a word,
and she clenched her fists and roundhouses me,
and hits me right in the lip,
00:13:37
split my lip wide open.
I still have the scar. Cops got there,
and Mom starts screaming,
00:13:44
"This bitch hit my son,
this bitch hit my son." And long story short,
the cops end up
00:13:50
arresting her for hitting me. - NARRATOR: Now officially
free and single, Sante was determined to
climb the social ladder.
00:14:00
To do this, she knew she
had to marry into wealth. - KENT: We call those years
Mom's search for a millionaire.
00:14:08
I think we were broke.
We were living in a nice house and stuff, but the refrigerator
was bare, I mean, I grew up
00:14:12
on peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches for a while. She'd give me lectures
for hours and hours.
00:14:18
"Marry for money, you
don't wanna be broke." You know, that was her mantra. - NARRATOR: Sante would use
her looks to find herself
00:14:26
her millionaire man. - KENT: My mother had
a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, and
she played it to the hilt.
00:14:34
She was always made up,
big black wigs and stuff like that.
Um, men were attracted to her,
00:14:40
and she was the type of woman
if she walked into a room, she got everyone's attention.
00:14:44
Everyone's. - NARRATOR: Before
long, she set her sights on 52-year-old Ken Kimes--
a multimillion-dollar
00:14:53
property developer
who'd struck it rich by building a chain of
motels across the U.S.
00:14:59
He was 16 years Sante's senior. - KENT: Ken was worth,
our estimates at the time,
00:15:06
about 22 million bucks. And this was in 1969, 1970,
okay, so that's, you know-- today's money, it's a lot more.
00:15:16
- DR. YARDLEY: She's very
manipulative in how she goes about landing him, so she
finds out that his favorite
00:15:21
color is white, so she
wears white all the time. She finds out that he likes
gardenias--the flower--
00:15:27
so she has a perfume that
smells of those flowers. So she's doing everything
that she can to appear
00:15:34
very alluring to this man. - NARRATOR: Sante engineered
a meeting with her newfound millionaire.
00:15:41
- GEOFFREY: Ken was
rather flattered. A friend, I think,
warned him at one point,
00:15:45
"She's not up to much, you know,
she's got a very dodgy record," but Ken didn't mind.
00:15:50
She became
more and more controlling and Ken Kimes fell into her web. - JOHN: People
regarded him as goofy.
00:15:58
He was a man who, in spite
of his relative success, was obviously very
unsure of himself.
00:16:04
What the Kimes family
didn't have that they really wanted was
high-level status.
00:16:10
- NARRATOR: Sante preyed
on these insecurities. She cemented her role
as his lover by creating
00:16:16
something that
would boast his ego. She created a fictitious role
for him as an ambassador.
00:16:23
Sante grifted herself and
Ken Kimes into a reception at the U.S. presidential
guesthouse in Washington, D.C.
00:16:31
- GEOFFREY: They're
photographed with Vice President Gerald Ford,
and then they'd go on to crash
00:16:37
another three parties
at other embassies. Only Sante--only she
could've gotten away with it.
00:16:45
- NARRATOR: In spite of her
many talents, Ken seemed unwilling to commit to marriage.
00:16:51
Now Sante was concerned
about how she would get hold of his millions. She had competition,
as Ken had children
00:16:59
from his previous marriage. She disdainfully referred
to them as "The Creeps." - DR. YARDLEY: They see her
as a predatory gold digger,
00:17:08
so it's gonna be
quite difficult for-- for her to actually
get access to Ken's money.
00:17:15
What's the best way to
get to somebody's money? Well, it's to create an heir. - NARRATOR:
On the 24th of March, 1975,
00:17:25
Ken and Sante welcomed a
son--Kenneth Kareem Kimes, known as Kenny--into the world.
00:17:32
As he grew up, Sante
kept him isolated. She used home tutors
so that he didn't even
00:17:39
have to go to school. - DR. YARDLEY: Kenny Kimes's
early years would have been when he was completely
enmeshed with his mother.
00:17:48
Kenny almost
becomes an extension of her, and there's very much
a codependent relationship
00:17:55
that emerges, so his existence,
his identity is very much premised on hers. - KENT: Kenny was
the golden child.
00:18:06
I loved him, I mean, he
was a great little brother; we played and stuff. He was a great kid.
00:18:12
- NARRATOR: The first
big change in the happy young Kenny was at the age
of ten, when he witnessed
00:18:17
his parents get arrested. On the 12th of July,
1985, the FBI raided their Las Vegas home.
00:18:26
Sante had been trafficking young
Mexican girls across the border, and imprisoning them
in her home as slaves.
00:18:34
Several had escaped, accusing
Sante of extreme physical abuse. One of her so-called maids
claimed she was attacked
00:18:42
with an iron. - It became obvious
that something much more dangerous and
criminal was going on
00:18:52
behind their façade
of respectability and money. Rather sad, Ken Kimes,
who was not young,
00:19:01
gets charged with
15 counts of slavery. He did a deal
with the prosecutors. He got a three-year
suspended prison sentence.
00:19:10
He had to enter
an alcoholic treatment program because it was perfectly obvious
to the FBI that he was drunk
00:19:16
a great deal of the time. - NARRATOR: Sante,
however, was sentenced to five years in jail.
00:19:23
Free from his mother's influence
for the first time, young Kenny started to experience
a normal life.
00:19:30
He was allowed to go to school
and make friends with his peers. But by December 1989,
after serving 3 years
00:19:40
of her sentence,
Sante was back home. She was quick to reign Kenny in. - The coercively
controlling behavior becomes
00:19:49
much more focused. She gets him to leave school. If anything, it's even
worse than it was before.
00:19:57
- And it's at that point where
the Kenny that grew up with me, that I loved and was fun to be
with, and who had the potential
00:20:05
to being a good
person started to shed. And his disappointment,
and his anger, and his rage was relentless.
He was out of control.
00:20:17
- NARRATOR: At the age of 16,
Kenny ran away from home. Sante sent his older brother,
Kent, to stop him.
00:20:27
- Got Kenny back home, and, uh, his attitude
did not get better. He was still in
a rage and stuff.
00:20:35
But he did stay. You know, I thought I
was doing the right thing. But, uh, you know,
I wonder every day
00:20:46
if, uh, I'd let him go,
what would things be like today. Huh. - NARRATOR: Sante and Ken had
homes in various U.S. states,
00:21:00
as well as Nassau
in the Bahamas. The illusion was a life
of luxury and class, but the reality was that
everything had become
00:21:08
very stressful
for 77-year-old Ken due to Sante's
compulsive grifting. Suddenly, on
the 28th of March, 1994,
00:21:18
he died from an aneurysm. - GEOFFREY: Now, Sante
has another problem. She doesn't want "The Creeps"
from his first marriage
00:21:29
to get any of the money
that there is in the estate, and so nobody's told
that he's died.
00:21:35
She doesn't allow there
to be a full autopsy. It's a very quick cremation. - KENT: Ken had died March 28.
00:21:43
Kenny did not find out
about it until, uh, June. And what had happened,
is Mom convinced me
00:21:52
not to tell Kenny
until everyone knew. I'm so ashamed
of myself that she's able to manipulate me to do that.
00:22:00
- MAN: The gambling life? - JOHN: Sante kept Ken
financially alive for some time
00:22:04
after his death by using
his credit cards and trying to access his accounts. - NARRATOR: But soon
questions are being asked
00:22:13
by an executive at Ken's
offshore bank, Gulf Union. 55-year-old
Syed Bilal Ahmed was concerned
00:22:21
about the flurry of faxes
requesting money transfers by his client Ken Kimes.
Syed suspected they were fake.
00:22:31
- He turned up in
the Bahamas to investigate irregularities in
Ken Kimes' accounts.
00:22:36
And of course,
Sante immediately recognized that he was an obstacle
that needed to be removed.
00:22:44
- NARRATOR:
On the 4th of September, 1996, Sante and her son,
Kenny, wined and dined
00:22:50
the bank investigator at their
favorite Nassau restaurant. - They eventually invited him
back for coffee, to the house.
00:22:58
And that's when
they fed the date rape drug into his drink, got
him into a dozy state,
00:23:05
and drowned him in the bath. The two of them
took it in turns to hold him under the water.
00:23:15
It's believed Kenny
took the body and dropped it in the sea, however, the body
has never been found.
00:23:23
- GEOFFREY: As far as
the police are concerned, he's simply a missing person. Yes, of course, the last
two people to see Syed alive
00:23:31
are Sante and Kenny, but
there is no blood evidence, there is nothing. - NARRATOR: 21-year-old Kenny
was now fully committed
00:23:40
to Sante's criminal ways,
helping her carry out the ultimate of crimes--murder. They fled from the Bahamas
00:23:51
to the Sunshine State
of Florida. - Apparently, they got
a motorhome, and they went--
00:23:58
zigzagged across the States,
scamming as a matter of course as well. - NARRATOR: The mother-and-son
team embarked
00:24:05
on a Bonnie and Clyde-style
shoplifting crime spree until the 19th of May, 1997,
when Sante was apprehended
00:24:14
in a department store. Kenny punched
a policeman to let his mother escape, and he was
arrested for the first time.
00:24:24
The 22-year-old called
his brother, Kent. - KENT: "I'm in jail."
I was relieved.
00:24:30
I was thankful for it. Maybe this is one thing
that got him to stay straight, you know, get him back
on the right track,
00:24:37
let him look at consequences.
Uh, that didn't happen. - NARRATOR: In the eyes
of U.S. prosecutors,
00:24:44
Kenny was a first-time
offender, and as such, was treated leniently. - This teaches Kenny
a very important lesson,
00:24:51
that actually you
can break the law and you can get away
with it, and there will be
00:24:56
no consequences for you,
so this is something that is incredibly important. - NARRATOR: By now, Sante's
late husband's millions
00:25:06
had been depleted, and
what remained was mostly tied up in property.
So Sante and Kenny turned up
00:25:15
flat broke at the door of
Sante's eldest son, Kent. - KENT: It started to be more
Mom and Kenny against me.
00:25:23
They were becoming a team
that just didn't feel right. I remember one time,
I walk into my office,
00:25:29
and Mom and Kenny are
sitting there behind my desk going through my drawers.
And I said, "What the hell
00:25:33
you think you doing?" Mom and Kenny were getting
tighter and tighter, and I was becoming the outsider.
00:25:40
- NARRATOR: The criminal
twosome eventually left, but not before they'd
identified their next scam.
00:25:47
Back in 1992, Sante
and husband, Ken, had transferred the deeds
of their Las Vegas home
00:25:54
to a family friend--
David Kazdin-- to avoid it being seized
in a legal dispute.
00:26:01
- GEOFFREY: David Kazdin was
a 63-year-old New Yorker who had helped
them out of a jam.
00:26:07
He pretended to own it,
at the same time, they got him to sign
a quitclaim, so if ever
00:26:13
they wanted it back again,
they could get it back at once. - NARRATOR: In January 1998,
Sante used the property as
00:26:20
collateral to borrow $280,000 in David's name. He opened up his mail
to discover
00:26:28
he had a new mortgage. - KENT: And then David found out
that the house had burned down,
00:26:35
and the insurance companies
were not gonna cover it because they knew it was arson.
00:26:39
- NARRATOR: David reported
the fraud to the bank and revealed Sante Kimes
was behind it.
00:26:46
- Well, Sante's reaction
to the David problem was the usual one, which was
to, uh, remove the obstacle.
00:26:55
Kenny, of course,
knew immediately that that would be his job. - NARRATOR: On the 13th of
March, Kenny and an accomplice--
00:27:04
a drifter called Shawn--
drove to L.A. and paid a visit to David's home
in Grenada Hills.
00:27:11
Shawn waited outside whilst
Kenny knocked on his door. - JOHN: David welcomed him
into his house and said,
00:27:19
"Would you like a coffee?"
and went off to make coffee, at which point, Kenny
took a revolver,
00:27:25
put it at the back of
David's neck, and fired. - [gun firing] - JOHN: He was dead
before he hit the floor.
00:27:35
- Kenny returned to
the accomplice, and together, they loaded him into the back
of David's own green Jaguar.
00:27:44
They dumped David's body
in a dumpster in an alley. It wasn't very long before
he was discovered.
00:27:53
- [suspenseful music plays] - GEOFFREY: Among the prime
suspects in his murder were Sante and Kenny.
00:28:01
- I mean, one of the really
strange things about the David Kazdin murder
is the absolute detachment
00:28:07
that Kenny showed in
actually, uh, doing the deed because this person was
not someone unknown to him,
00:28:13
it was someone
very well known to him. But what happened next
was even more astonishing.
00:28:19
- He sends flowers
to his mother. It's almost as if
this is celebratory. This is an act of
approval-seeking.
00:28:27
It's like, "Hey, Mum,
look what I did for you." And this really reinforces
how strong that codependency
00:28:33
was between this narcissist
and her number two. - NARRATOR: Instead of keeping
a low profile, Sante was back
00:28:44
to her old tricks. Two weeks prior
to David's murder, she'd purchased a car
with a forged check.
00:28:52
The dealership had now
realized they'd been duped, and filed charges. Warrants were issued for
Sante and Kenny's arrests.
00:29:02
Now they were on the run
for two murders and fraud. They fled 2,800 miles
in the stolen car
00:29:10
to the East Coast. In the relative anonymity
of the big city, New York, the partners in crime
conjured up their next
00:29:19
money-making scam. - Sante had been
researching nice, comfortable, uh, apartments in New York,
and she'd come across
00:29:30
an 82-year-old widow
called Irene Silverman, who had a house in
East 65th Street in Manhattan
00:29:38
which she'd converted into
really very comfortable suites. - This was a lady who
was worth a lot of money.
00:29:45
Property on the Upper East Side
in the Central Park area is very, very expensive--in
the tens of millions of dollars,
00:29:52
and Sante wanted
a piece of this. - NARRATOR: Sante concocted
another fake alias--
00:30:00
Manny Guerrin--who was
looking for an apartment. This time, her criminal protégé,
her 23-year-old son Kenny,
00:30:08
would play the lead role. - GEOFFREY: Now normally, Irene
likes very good references,
00:30:14
but Kenny plays the classic con,
"I'll give you the $6,000 now," the implication being,
"If you don't ask
00:30:22
too many questions." It takes less than 24 hours
for him to place a bug in her apartment so that he
and his mother can listen in
00:30:31
to her telephone conversations. They want, by one hook or
crook, to get her to sign
00:30:39
over the mansion to them. - NARRATOR: But from the outset,
Irene seemed dubious about her new resident.
00:30:48
- DR. YARDLEY: Irene Silverman
was an incredibly smart woman. She noticed that he was able
to evade the security cameras
00:30:54
around the building. He kind of crept around, and--
and she knew that he stood behind his door looking
out through the peephole
00:31:01
because she could see his
feet from underneath the door. She told people that she
didn't like this guy.
00:31:09
- NARRATOR: After managing to
purchase a copy of the deeds to the Manhattan mansion, Sante
used her skills as a forger
00:31:17
to fake Irene's signature
on a deed's transfer. - GEOFFREY: The con began
to take on full force.
00:31:24
Sante dresses up as Irene
to convince the clerk to notarize the document.
It's a truly horrifying story.
00:31:33
- NARRATOR:
The property was signed over to a corporation
Sante had set up. Now that they had
the paperwork,
00:31:40
there was only Irene herself
that remained in their way. On the 5th of July, 1998,
Kenny pounced and dragged
00:31:50
his 82-year-old landlady
into his apartment. - GEOFFREY: Sante tases her,
rendering the poor woman
00:31:57
utterly helpless,
and then Kenny-- ever keen to do his mother's
bidding--strangles her.
00:32:06
It was an act of
the most grotesque malevolence. But yet, further evidence
of the extraordinary bond
00:32:16
between mother and son. - NARRATOR: Keen to
please his mother, 23-year-old Kenny
00:32:23
snuck Irene's all but 5-foot
body into a duffle bag and drove it across the water
into Hoboken, New Jersey,
00:32:31
where he dumped her
in a trash bin. The callous couple
now had the wealthy socialite
00:32:37
out of the way and
the falsified deeds to her Manhattan townhouse. Their outlandish plan for
Sante to fill the elderly
00:32:47
millionaire's shoes appeared
to be falling into place. Straight after the killing, they
celebrated their latest scam.
00:32:57
- They take themselves
off to Trump Tower to have pastries and coffee. Kenny at one point
reminisced and said,
00:33:05
"These are the hands that
have just been around the neck of Irene, and now they're
around a cup of coffee."
00:33:11
It is almost unbelievable. Inconceivable. - NARRATOR: But for people who
knew the New York socialite,
00:33:19
her disappearance that Sunday
afternoon was completely out of character. - DR. YARDLEY: She'd just
completely gone off the radar,
00:33:27
people were very
quick to notice that. It was only a matter of hours
that went by before somebody
00:33:32
reported her missing
to the police. - NARRATOR: Soon, former
NYPD Detective Tom Hovagim
00:33:39
was alerted by one of
his patrolling officers. - TOM HOVAGIM: Phone rang,
I picked it up,
00:33:46
and I had a patrol officer
on the other end tell me about an elderly
woman who is missing.
00:33:52
The officer said that, uh,
the staff was pretty insistent that, uh, she would never
leave the townhouse,
00:33:59
and she had difficulty
walking, and if she did leave, she wouldn't leave by herself.
00:34:04
So, then it started to raise
my suspicion a little bit more than the average
missing person call.
00:34:12
- NARRATOR: When he
arrived at Irene's home, Detective Hovagim was told
about one of her new tenants--
00:34:19
Manny Guerrin,
AKA Kenny Kimes-- who'd recently
been acting strangely. The police even found him
mentioned in Irene's notebook.
00:34:30
- TOM: She knew something
was not right with this guy. Irene made notes in regards
to Kenny's behavior
00:34:36
at the time, and drawings
and even said that, "He looks like jail." - NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
a joint task force of the LAPD
00:34:45
and FBI were pursuing
the Kimes for the bad check on the stolen car,
and as chief suspects
00:34:52
for the murder of David Kazdin. They'd found
a criminal associate of the Kimes--Stanley.
00:35:00
He'd previously supplied them with illegal guns,
and the deadly duo had recently
00:35:05
been in contact with him again. - They had called and
said, uh, "Stan, we want you
00:35:10
"to come out to New York, we
have a beautiful townhouse "that you're gonna love.
00:35:14
"We're gonna have you
be the caretaker. "We want you to change some
locks in the place, and get rid
00:35:18
of everyone that's
in the townhouse." - The police and the FBI
approach Stanley and say,
00:35:24
"If you help us pin
down Sante and Kenny"-- whom they now clearly have
a firm view are killers--
00:35:32
"we'll cut you a deal." - NARRATOR: By coincidence,
on the same day as Irene's murder,
the task force had set up
00:35:39
a sting to arrest the Kimes. - TOM: Stan helps them
lure Sante and Kenneth Kimes
00:35:46
to this Hilton Hotel
on Sixth Avenue. One of the things he had
to do to let the police know
00:35:51
that they were there
was tip his hat. - NARRATOR: The police stood
on alert, but there was no sign
00:35:57
of Sante or Kenny. They finally arrived
over six hours late, after dumping Irene's body.
00:36:04
- Stanley takes his hat off,
which is a clue if these are the right people,
so they're arrested.
00:36:10
- DR. YARDLEY: Sante, who
is carrying a black bag at the time, throws the bag
on the floor and says,
00:36:14
"This isn't mine", and then
Kenny reacts by wetting himself. They had killed Irene
literally a few hours before.
00:36:23
This was possibly
the first time in their lives that they've been
caught off guard.
00:36:28
- NARRATOR: In Sante's bag,
they found seven passports, five bank books, and numerous
checks belonging to Irene.
00:36:36
On Kenny, they found a forged Social Security card
in Irene's name. The Kimes
were taken into custody.
00:36:45
- I think Kenny must have
been feeling incredibly alone, like a fish out of water
at this point in time
00:36:50
because he's separated
from his mum. He's always looking for her
to tell him what to do next.
00:36:58
So, he's feeling like his normal has just been
tipped upside down. - NARRATOR: At this stage, the
investigators hadn't realized
00:37:05
the significance of
the paperwork belonging to Irene Silverman that
they'd found on the Kimes.
00:37:11
That is, until the New York
Police team investigating Irene's disappearance
held a news conference.
00:37:18
- TOM: A detective
heard the news conference early in the morning, and he
heard the name Irene Silverman.
00:37:24
So then they immediately
called up and said, "Hey, I think we have
a couple of people here
00:37:29
you might want to speak to." - NARRATOR: Now the police knew
that Kenny Kimes and the mysterious Manny Guerrin
were one and the same.
00:37:37
Irene's staff identified Kenny
as Manny in a police lineup, and detectives obtained
a search warrant
00:37:44
for his apartment. - TOM: When we went in, we found
a shower curtain was missing.
00:37:49
We found several wigs. We also found a drug
that is used to-- they call it the date rape drug.
It's used to knock people out.
00:38:00
We also found papers
with Irene Silverman's signature on it; someone was
practicing her signature.
00:38:06
We found a to-do list
written by Sante Kimes, duct tape, rope, garbage bags. We were hoping Irene
was still alive,
00:38:16
but we had our doubts
at that point. In a bag that they
checked at the Plaza Hotel,
00:38:22
we finally found the motive: the forged deed to
Irene Silverman's townhouse. It was a huge piece of evidence.
00:38:30
- NARRATOR: Now that they
had conclusively linked the Kimes to Irene Silverman,
Detective Hovagim questioned
00:38:37
23-year-old Kenny. - TOM: I was talking about
poor Irene and her missing, and how her staff misses her.
And I was trying to play
00:38:47
on his emotions, trying to
get him to feel sorry for her. At one point, I
thought I had him.
00:38:52
He started to tear up,
he started to slouch, and I thought, "This is
it, he's gonna spill."
00:38:58
Then all of a sudden,
in snap of a finger, he became stone cold--
rigid, sat up, stone cold,
00:39:06
and said, "I have no comment." That was it, he was done. - NARRATOR: Even though
Irene's body was never found,
00:39:15
on the 16th of December, 1998,
at Manhattan Criminal Court, Sante and Kenny Kimes
faced a total of 84 charges,
00:39:25
including Irene's murder. It was a media circus, and Sante reveled
in the spotlight.
00:39:33
She seized the chance
for yet another performance. - She went on "60 Minutes,"
she went on another news show,
00:39:42
and proclaimed her innocence,
and it was so over the top, it just was ridiculous--
crying, carrying on.
00:39:51
"As God is my witness, "we would never
do anything like that. Why would we murder
a sweet old woman?"
00:40:01
- NARRATOR: The prosecution
were missing one crucial piece of evidence: Irene's body.
00:40:07
- We had a homicide
without a body and all circumstantial evidence. But that circumstantial evidence
00:40:13
was overwhelming.
We had everything we needed. We just didn't have the body. I think we were all
a bit nervous, but we knew
00:40:20
we'd get a conviction. I mean, if you sat on the jury
and listened to the presentation
00:40:25
from
the District Attorney's Office, without a--without a doubt, these two people
killed Irene Silverman.
00:40:32
- NARRATOR: Sante was finally
convicted and sentenced to 120 years in prison. Kenny was given 125.
00:40:43
- We were ecstatic. The only downside is
is that we never found Irene. I still feel bad about
that to this day.
00:40:53
But we got a conviction,
and that was amazing. - NARRATOR: But the story
didn't end there.
00:40:59
New evidence found
during the search for Irene had allowed a case to be built
against the duo
00:41:06
for the murder of their
second victim, David Kazdin. They were to be extradited
to Los Angeles, where they
00:41:13
could face the death penalty
if found guilty. - Kenny is desperate
that his mother shouldn't
00:41:18
face the death penalty. In March 2001,
he is transferred to California. Kenny decides the only way
he can save his mother
00:41:29
is to turn against her. - NARRATOR: As part of
a plea bargain deal in order to avoid
the death penalty,
00:41:37
Kenny Kimes confessed
to the earlier murders of Syed Bilal Ahmed
and David Kazdin.
00:41:44
Mother and son were sentenced
to life in prison without the possibility
of parole.
00:41:50
Their victims
finally saw justice. - The sentencing judge in
California describes Sante
00:41:58
as one of the most evil
individuals that she'd ever encountered in her years
on the bench, and I think
00:42:04
that phrase can be
applied to both of them. They were both evil individuals. - NARRATOR: Almost 10 years
later, on the 19th of May, 2014,
00:42:16
Sante Kimes died in prison. She was 79 years old. Even up to the end,
she denied everything.
00:42:26
- She was innocent in her mind
'til the day she died. Never remorseful for
any of her actions.
00:42:33
- NARRATOR: Recently,
her son Kenny, however, has begun to show remorse. - He understands, you know,
00:42:41
what pain he caused
people by taking away people they loved because he lost
someone he loved and stuff.
00:42:46
So I think Kenny finally
gets it, uh, far too late. I have too much respect
for the people who have been
00:42:55
hurt by them to
call him a victim. He is evil; that's why I hope
he never gets out of prison.
00:43:05
- NARRATOR: They brutally killed
two men who got in the way of their money-making scams.
00:43:10
They conned and duped
innocent victims out of thousands of dollars. They strangled an 82-year-old
00:43:18
in order to steal her
multimillion-dollar property. That's what makes Sante
and Kenny Kimes
00:43:25
two of the world's
most evil killers. - ♪ ♪