Detective Tom Hovigum

Irene Silverman was in good health, both physically and mentally.

Yeah, I didn't think they were killers. We have a woman. A socialite goes missing.

We knew we were looking at a homicide investigation at that point.

We got the phone numbers from every dumpster that we saw to find out where they dumped their garbage.

No, not me personally, no.

There was a lot of things in that car. Clothes, wigs, a gun, an empty taser box.

I think she had 15 notebooks of all kinds of things. Irene's movements. Then she'd write like a laundry list, like shower curtain, handcuffs, stun gun.

They found out that Irene owned the building outright. There was no mortgage left on it. She owned it. So that put the scheme in motion. Then they, you know, they looked for a notary. They did their research, I guess, as far as the deed, obtaining a deed and things like that.

Yeah, the city was empty, Fourth of July weekend. So we expected a slow day. Then we received a call. from a patrol officer. I picked up the phone. We have a woman, elderly woman, that is missing. Her staff reported her missing.

I was the junior detective. I just had gotten promoted in January.

So the other two guys were pretty senior to me, and they said, well, kid, this is yours, because no one really wants a missing person case. It's very tedious work.

The guy they picked up in Florida, when they drove up the coast, he claims that he went into the room, he walked in, and they were in bed naked together.

So that's where we got the incestuous relationship from. It wouldn't surprise me. You know, it really would not surprise me.

It was actually beautiful. Beautiful artwork, beautiful furniture. The night before she disappeared, she had a great party. American flags, hats, you know, the whole bit.

We had such circumstantial, overwhelming evidence that I knew we'd get a conviction.

Absolutely. 100%.

They got the notary to come in, they forged the deed, they got her signature.

What was in the bag? In the bag was the deed to the house, the most important piece of evidence that we needed. That's what we were searching for. That was the nail in the coffin.

We did the preliminary investigation, searched the townhouse, searched the surrounding areas, looked for video cameras, interviewed neighbors.

We couldn't find one of the staff members. When we went up to his apartment, he wasn't there. So that was a little suspicious. The other missing person was a young man who was renting a room on the first floor. We couldn't find the person in 1B. He disappeared the same time she did. You know, that raised our suspicion, of course, yes.

When you get a person on the Upper East Side like Irene Silverman, it becomes very special. The whole city takes an interest.

The boss who was running the investigation dubbed us the Silver Task Force. Because we all had an affection for Irene because it could have been our grandmother. Could have been our mother.

He had gone away, but once we got him and brought him in, we eliminated him pretty quickly.

We went through the motions of interviewing him and getting their alibis. There wasn't anyone on the staff.

The staff told us that there was a person staying in apartment 1B who Irene thought was very suspicious since she had rented the apartment to him.

She was smart enough to write everything down in detail about this guy's suspicious behavior. What kind of behaviors? When there was a conversation in the lobby of the townhouse, she would see his feet. underneath the door or the shadow of his feet like he was eavesdropping.

And when he came into the house, into the townhouse, he would avoid the cameras, walk on the sides of the walls, things like that to stay out of camera view. And she described him, you know, male, white, you know, 5'9", about 180 pounds. She was a sharp woman, man.

She was going to evict him right, you know, right around the time she disappeared.

We found all kinds of things, garbage bags, a roll of duct tape, shower curtain rings, but no shower curtain, things like that, which raised our suspicion.

We posted pictures of Irene Silverman. We had a sketch done of Manny Guerin. We had a news conference where we posted the sketch.

And then when we did the photo array of Kenny, the staff picked him out, saying, yeah, that's Manny Yarin.

You know, we had some background on his mother, on Sante, at that point. So I used that against him, like, look, we know your mother put you up to this. We know she's been arrested before and that she's manipulative and she's manipulating you.