World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 6 - Sante and Kenny Kimes - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

Sante and her 23-year-old son Kenny Kimes were a murderous duo who killed three people in the late 90s, including an 82-year-old woman.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Sante and Kenny Kimes murdered Irene Silverman for her property, revealing a history of fraud and manipulation between mother and son.

Key points

The Brutal Disappearance of Irene Silverman. Irene Silverman vanished on July 5, 1998, after being attacked in her home.
Sante Kimes: The Black Widow. Sante Kimes coerced her son into committing three murders over two years.
A Life of Deceit and Manipulation. Sante Kimes used her charm and manipulation to deceive wealthy individuals.
The Death of Ken Kimes. Ken Kimes died from an aneurysm, leading to a desperate cover-up by Sante.
The Murder of Syed Bilal Ahmed. Sante and Kenny Kimes murdered a bank investigator to cover their tracks.
Kenny Turns Against His Mother. To save his mother from the death penalty, Kenny confesses to their crimes.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Mom has always been dangerous, but when Kenny became her partner, she became really dangerous.

Kent discussing the transformation of Sante Kimes after involving Kenny in her crimes.

1:21WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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