3 Murder Victims:
1996 - Syed Bilal Ahmed, murdered by the mother & son
together
Mar. 1998 - David
Kazdin, murdered by son on orders of his mother
2000 - Irene
Silverman, 82, murdered by the mother & son together
***
Wikipedia: Sante Kimes (born July 24, 1934) is an American
felon who has been convicted of two murders, along with robbery, violation of
anti-slavery laws, forgery and numerous other crimes. Many of these crimes were
committed with assistance of her son Kenneth. The two of them were tried and
convicted together for the murder of Irene Silverman, along with 117 other
charges. The pair were also suspected but never charged in a third murder in
the Bahamas, to which Kenneth has confessed.
According to
court records, Kimes was born Sandra Louise Walker in Oklahoma City to a mother
of partial Dutch descent and an East Indian father. Her estranged son, Kent
Walker, in his book Son of a Grifter has reported from an old acquaintance
of his mother that Sante Kimes was the daughter of a respectable family who was
unable to cope with the young girl’s aberrant, wild antics; Kimes herself has
claimed that her father was a laborer and that her mother was a prostitute who
migrated from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl to Los Angeles, where the young
Kimes ran wild in the streets. But Sante Kimes has given numerous, conflicting
stories about her origins and numerous other accounts are difficult to confirm,
and thus Kent Walker says that his ancestry could be anything from Latino to
East Indian to Indigenous American to simply white. She spent the better part
of her life fleecing people of money, expensive merchandise, and real estate,
either through elaborate con games, arson, forgery, or outright theft.
According to the
book Son of a Grifter, she committed insurance fraud on numerous
occasions, frequently by committing arson and then collecting for property
damage. She delighted in introducing her husband as an ambassador - a ploy that
even gained the couple access to a White House reception during the Ford
administration. And she sometimes even impersonated Elizabeth Taylor, whom she
resembled slightly. He also alleges that she committed many acts of fraud that
were not even financially necessary, such as enslaving maids when she could
easily afford to pay them and burning down houses she could have easily sold.
She frequently
offered young, homeless illegal immigrants housing and employment, then kept
them virtual prisoners by threatening to report them to the authorities if they
didn’t follow her orders. As a result, she and her second husband, alcoholic
motel tycoon Kenneth Kimes, spent years squandering his fortune on lawyers’
fees, defending themselves against charges of slavery. Kimes was eventually
arrested in August 1985 and was sentenced by the U.S. District Court to five
years in prison for violating federal anti-slavery laws. Her husband took a
plea bargain and agreed to complete an alcohol treatment program; Ken, Sr. and
their son, Kenny, lived a somewhat normal life until Sante was released from
prison in 1989. Ken, Sr. died in 1994.
~ THE MURDERS ~
~ David Kazdin ~
David Kazdin had
allowed Kimes to use his name on the deed of a home in Las Vegas that was
actually occupied by Kenneth Sr. and Sante Kimes in the 1970s. Several years
later, Sante Kimes convinced a notary to forge Kazdin’s signature on an
application for a loan of $280,000, with the house as collateral. When Kazdin
discovered the forgery and threatened to expose Kimes she ordered him killed.
Kenneth Jr. murdered Kazdin by shooting him in the back of the head. According
to another accomplice’s later testimony, all three participated in disposing of
the evidence. Kazdin’s body was found in a dumpster near Los Angeles airport in
March 1998. The murder weapon was never recovered, having been disassembled and
dropped into a storm sewer.
~ Irene Silverman ~
In June 1998,
with her son Kenny, Kimes perpetrated a scheme whereby she would assume the
identity of their landlady, 82-year-old socialite Irene Silverman, and then
appropriate ownership of her $7.7 million Manhattan mansion. Despite the
fact Silverman’s body was never found, both mother and son were convicted of
murder in 2000, in no small part because of the discovery of Kimes’ notebooks
detailing the crime and notes written by Silverman, who was extremely
suspicious of the pair. During the trial for the Kadzin murder Kenneth Kimes
confessed that after his mother had used a stun gun on Silverman, he strangled
her, stuffed her corpse into a bag and deposited it in a dumpster in Hoboken,
New Jersey.
~ Sayed Bilal Ahmed ~
Kenneth also
confessed to murdering a third man, banker Sayed Bilal Ahmed, at his mother’s
behest in The Bahamas in 1996, which had been suspected by Bahamian authorities
at the time. Kenneth testified that the two acted together to drug Ahmed, drown
him in a bathtub, and dump his body offshore, but no charges were ever filed in
that case. Sante Kimes denies any involvement or knowledge of
the murders, and claims that Kenneth’s confession was solely to avoid the death
penalty.
~ Trials ~
Although the
Kazdin murder happened first, The Kimes’ were apprehended in New York City and
tried first for the Silverman murder. Evidence recovered from their car helped
establish the case for trying them on Kazdin’s murder as well.
The Silverman
trial was unusual in many aspects, namely the rare combination of a mother/son
team and the fact that no body was recovered. Nonetheless, the jury was
unanimous in voting to convict them of not only murder but 117 other charges
including robbery, burglary, conspiracy, grand larceny, illegal weapons
possession, forgery and eavesdropping on their first poll on the subject. The
judge also took the unusual step of ordering Kimes not to speak to the media
even after the jury had been sequestered as a result of her passing a note to
New York Times reporter David Rhode in court. The judge threatened to have
Kimes handcuffed during further court appearances if she persisted and restricted
her telephone access to calls to her lawyers. The judge contended that Kimes
was attempting to influence the jury as they may have seen or heard any such
interviews, and that there would be no cross-examination as there would be in
court. Kimes had earlier chosen to not take the stand in her own defense after
the judge ruled that prosecutors could question her about the previous
conviction on slavery charges.
During the
sentencing portion of the Silverman trial, Sante Kimes made a prolonged
statement to the court blaming the authorities, including their own lawyers,
for framing them. She went on to compare their trial to the Salem Witch Trials
and claim the prosecutors were guilty of “murdering the Constitution” before
the judge told her to be quiet. When the statement was concluded the presiding
judge responded that Mrs Kimes was a sociopath and a degenerate and her son was
a dupe and “remorseless predator” before imposing the maximum sentence on both
of them.
In October 2000,
while doing an interview, Kenneth held Court TV reporter Maria Zone hostage by
pressing a ballpoint pen into her throat. Zone had interviewed Kimes once
before without incident. Kenneth Kimes’ demand was that his mother not be
extradited to California, where the two faced the death penalty for the murder
of David Kazdin. After four hours of negotiation Kimes removed the pen from
Zone’s throat. Negotiators created a distraction which allowed them to quickly
remove Zone and wrestle Kimes to the ground.
In March 2001,
Kenneth Kimes was extradited to Los Angeles to stand trial for the murder of
David Kazdin. Sante Kimes was extradited to Los Angeles in June 2001. During
that trial in June 2004, while he was facing the death penalty, Kenneth changed
his plea from “not guilty” to “guilty” and implicated his mother in the murder
in exchange for a plea deal that his mother not receive the death penalty if
convicted. Sante Kimes again made a prolonged statement denying the murders and
accusing police and prosecutors of various kinds of misconduct, and was again
eventually ordered by the presiding judge to be silent. The sentencing judge in
the Kazdin case called Mrs. Kimes “one of the most evil individuals” she had
met in her time as a judge.
~ Imprisonment ~
Sante Kimes is
currently serving a sentence of 120 years at the Bedford Hills Correctional
Facility for Women in New York. On her prisoner papers, Sante’s projected
release date is on March 3, 2119. Additionally, Kimes and her son were each
sentenced to life for the death of David Kazdin in California. Kenneth Kimes is
currently incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in
California.
~ In media ~
A 2001
made-for-TV movie, Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and
Kenny Kimes, starred Mary Tyler Moore as Sante Kimes, Gabriel Olds as
Kenny, and Jean Stapleton as Silverman. In 2006, another television movie based
on a book about the case, A Little Thing Called Murder, starring Judy
Davis and Jonathan Jackson, aired on Lifetime. She was also featured in a 2008 episode
of the television show Dateline.
