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Chapter 1: What is the story behind 'The Devil Wore White' episode?
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Hi, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. And this month, I'm grabbing a Hugo Spritz with former reality star Lauren Conrad here at The Drink. We love learning about someone's journey to the top. And Lauren and I, we go back to the very beginning of her extraordinary story.
We talk about why she always saw reality TV as temporary for her, the scrutiny she faced in the public eye, and why she says she'll never watch Laguna Beach again. Hope you'll join us for the drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Keith. Hi, Keith. Oh, hello, Josh. So this episode is called The Devil Wore White, and it's the kind of story that we almost never do at Dateline because it's less about the relationship between killer and victim and almost entirely about the relationship between killer and other killer.
Now, this is the story of a criminal mastermind, someone you might have heard of. Her name is Sante Kahn. She became famous back in the 90s when investigators who were looking for a missing millionaire uncovered a very, very creepy, dark history of crimes and her surprising partner in those crimes and those murders, her youngest son, Kenny.
Now, if you have not listened to this broadcast yet, it is the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts that you chose from. So you can go there, you can listen to it, you can watch it on Peacock.
And then when you come back, Keith has an extra clip that he wants to play from more of his interview back in 2001 with Kent Walker, who was, you know, sort of the heart and soul of this show in a lot of ways. Later, Keith is going to be joined by Dateline producer Ann Priceman, who covered this story and worked on this broadcast.
And they will discuss some new updates to the case before answering your viewer and listener questions on social media. So let's talk Dateline. So as I said in the intro, this is the kind of story we don't usually do here at Dateline. That is absolutely correct. This is less about killer and victim and more about killer and killer. And it's a crazy, crazy story.
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Chapter 2: Who is Sante Kimes and what makes her a criminal mastermind?
Well, what's interesting is that Sante was arrested a few times and had a criminal record, and that didn't slow her down. But the possibility that that might happen to him clearly did slow Kent down.
It did because I think he was smart and never recognized the logical outcome of this sort of behavior. And she felt that she was smarter than any authorities who would try to catch her. One of the other things about that bunch that fascinated me, and I'll include Kenneth Sr., her husband with this, the millionaire, was –
How good they were at persuading otherwise normal people to engage in criminal behavior at their behest. You know, they could persuade them to burn a house down. They could persuade them to illegally sign their name to a deed. They were just phenomenally good at doing that sort of thing, and she was. And I think it was her charisma and charm that really, you know, led that parade.
You know, frequently on Dateline, we cover stories. We cover the stories of murders. And the murder is the point of the person's criminal activity, which is like they want to get rid of their husband or wife or, you know, a boyfriend or whatever, right? But in this case…
Frequently the murders were to cover up other crimes, financial crimes, insurance fraud, check kiting, when they would be found out like they were with that bank examiner, right? Like they killed that guy. Like they didn't gain anything from his death except that he was no longer investigating them.
And they clearly killed that poor old woman in New York City just because they wanted to either live in her house or sell it and cash it out.
They had two ideas. One was that they were going to take it over and rent the apartments for a lot of money. And then the second idea was to sell it. Obviously, it was a pretty valuable piece of property. And the antics that she went through, poor old Irene Silverman didn't see what was coming.
But the antics that Sante went through to try to get a notary public to sign the right kind of paperwork so that she could take over the property, phenomenal. And she found one that would.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did the Kimes family dynamics influence the crimes committed?
Well, I mean, first of all, you do this – he does this interview, you know, but I don't want to talk about my mom, right?
Exactly, yeah. The only thing he wanted to talk about was I'm – you know, I want to raise a million dollars and you're going to help me raise that million dollars. Yeah, come on. And then we'll spend it on education because education needs to be better and maybe I'll take a course in being a good military guy. And then he didn't want to really talk about it very much of anything else.
That's a guy who sort of is disconnected from reality now as he was when he was under his mother's thrall.
Yes. And as I'm sure you have encountered frequently in doing these stories, Josh, as I have, when people go into prison, they tend to stay the same age in some weird way. That they'll come out 20 years later and they're still the, you know, 20-year-old who went in the first place. Intellectually, you know, emotionally. And you think that's Kenny?
Yeah.
Seems to me, yeah. I mean, you know, he has done some things in there. He had a girlfriend for a while, though she passed away.
He had a girlfriend while he was incarcerated?
Yes, exactly. He wouldn't have been able to have one before he was incarcerated.
I will never understand that. Although I did work years ago with a woman who was dating a guy and And he was locked up. And I assumed wrongly that they'd been together before he got locked up. She's like, no, I met him, you know, after he was... And I'm like, why are you dating somebody who is incarcerated? And she said to me, well, you always know where he is. It's right.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Kent Walker provide about growing up with Sante?
Yeah, yeah. That part was super creepy. Okay, after the break, we'll answer some of your questions from social media.
Hello, everybody. I'm Keith Morris. I'm here with Anne Priceman, the producer of this episode. As anyone watching can probably tell, some time has passed since we initially shot this program. And we talked to Josh about the case. That was last year. But Anne and I wanted to get together to talk about an update, which is really quite remarkable. We never really thought that it would go this far.
At least I didn't. Did you expect that they would identify Anne Priceman?
No, sort of straight and out of the blue. It was surprising this many years later. Ken Holmgren, the son, had thought his father was murdered in Costa Rica, never to be found, never to be investigated.
But, you know, the guy's found in a dumpster, and sure enough, that's what happened to their other victim. So tell me how they figured it out.
A former FBI agent joined the Englewood PD, and he was picking up some cold cases and was looking at this one, trying to ID the body. They had good autopsy photos. They've done a decent crime scene analysis. But that many years ago, there was not... DNA was not where it is now. So he opened up the case, hooked up with his old colleagues at the FBI, and they did a genealogy search.
And they found some distant cousins and eventually made their way to... Ken Holmgren in Texas, who is the son of Elmer Holmgren. And he, Ken, sees these autopsy photos and immediately ideas him as his dad.
It's amazing how many cases are now, you know, being resolved this way. It's like they're all sitting out there in these cold case files. And in many cases, all they have to do is pluck out the DNA. And if they could do the genealogy work, that's the complicated part. And the FBI is particularly helpful in this area, I gather, with local police departments.
They essentially, as they put it, offer a service to smaller or police departments with less resources, and the FBI offers these resources free of charge.
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