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Chapter 1: What led to the arrest of a mother-son duo in a wealthy widow's case?
I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.
I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows? You might just come away with your own glass half full.
Search Glass Half Full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
Tonight on Dateline.
I just see Sante Kimes as the ultimate femme fatale, seducing lovers, lawyers, husbands, her son.
A whole new twist in a case chock full of them.
This is someone who gets what she wants. this story about a mother and son grifter team. This was a diabolical duo.
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Chapter 2: How did Sante Kimes manipulate those around her?
July 4th, 1998. Millions gathered in New York City to watch the nation's biggest fireworks spectacular. At just off Manhattan's Millionaire's Row, a smaller crowd gathered for a different kind of spectacular, a dinner party at a mansion on East 65th Street. The hostess was an 82-year-old widow named Irene Silverman. She's vivacious. She's a lot of fun.
Fashion designer Zhang Toy was a close friend and frequent party guest. She know how to throw a great party during her heyday, and she had the heart of gold. Friend Janice Herbert also loved Irene's company.
She's delightful. She's funny. I adored her. Someone described her as an Auntie Mame, and that's exactly what she was.
She was absolutely fabulous.
Irene Silverman had quite literally danced her way from poverty to a dream job as a ballet dancer at Radio City Music Hall. And by the time of our story, she was a healthy, wealthy widow with a fine, big townhouse in New York's most expensive neighborhood. It was for companionship as much as anything that Irene rented rooms in her mansion.
Her tenants included some A-list celebrities like Daniel Day-Lewis and Lenny Kravitz and Chaka Khan. She lived by herself. She rented just for fun and to also keep herself company. The day after Irene's bash, July 5th, was as quiet as a country church on a Monday morning at the NYPD's 19th precinct, where Detective Tom Hovigum was working his shift. Tell me about July 5th. You were on duty.
What was it like?
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.
The missing elderly woman was Irene Silverman.
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Chapter 3: What details emerged about Irene Silverman's disappearance?
Which is why they reported her missing.
We did the preliminary investigation, searched the townhouse, searched the surrounding areas, looked for video cameras, interviewed neighbors.
But no sign of Irene. And curiously, two other people seem to have vanished too.
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.
Though not alarmingly, yet. But then, outside, near the front entrance, they found blood. And Tom Hovigin's missing person case suddenly became urgent.
When you get a person on the Upper East Side like Irene Silverman, it becomes very special. The whole city takes an interest.
Pretty soon, the whole country would take an interest. Because the case of the missing socialite was about to take an unexpected turn. into something diabolical. Ever had any other case anything like this in your career? Not even close. What would follow and what came before is a story when all told of crimes astonishing in scale and scope.
Next thing I know, he's around my back with his arm across my neck.
Stretching from New York to L.A.?
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the Lincoln Town Car in the investigation?
On Monday night, July 6th, Hovigim's unit asked the public for help to find Irene Silverman and her suspicious missing tenant.
We posted pictures of Irene Silverman. We had a sketch done of Manny Guerin. We had a news conference where we posted the sketch.
The next day, Hovigim got a call. Someone had recognized Manny Guerin from the police sketch. It wasn't a member of the public, but another of New York's finest from a different department of the city's sprawling police organization.
No doubt in my mind, that was him.
Ed Murray was a detective working for the NYPD's Fugitive Task Force. When he saw the sketch of Manny Guerin, he said he knew right away who it was, and it wasn't Manny Guerin.
I see that picture, and it's exactly a composite sketch of Kenny Kimes.
Kenny Kimes? Murray was certain the man in the sketch was actually a car thief named Kenny Kimes, who he'd taken into custody just a few hours after Irene Silverman disappeared. Kimes had been arrested with his mother, Sante, for writing a bad check for a Lincoln Town car back in Utah. An unusual pair, those two.
It was something that I just didn't think it was like mother and son.
Like she was the boss.
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Chapter 5: How did the police connect the Kimes to multiple murder cases?
I don't think it's there anymore. I remember it well. Yeah. We were sitting at the bar, and a gal came up to her and asked her for her autograph. And Mom signed it. Elizabeth Taylor. Elizabeth Taylor? Elizabeth Taylor. She looked that much like Elizabeth Taylor sometimes. She didn't have the eyes, but she had the charisma, the look, the cheeks, the mouth.
And then, pure corrupt ambition, Sante's charisma changed their lives for good. The truth is, Mom was on a hunt for a millionaire. In 1970, Sante even took a job at something called Palm Springs Millionaire Magazine and was thereby able to interview a man named Kenneth Kimes, a millionaire 20 times over. His fortune made in real estate, casinos, motels, and mansions.
Sante turned on her charm, and Kenneth was smitten. A year later, they returned from a trip to Mexico, declared they were married, and just like that... Our lives was beyond the American dream. I mean, we lived in five different oceanfront properties in Hawaii. We had an oceanfront estate in the Bahamas. We had a golf course home in Las Vegas. They were all home.
You know, it was almost embarrassing. Four years later, 1975, Kenny Jr. was born. And now Sante ran a full house, but not a nurturing one. She had rules, the sort no one would dare defy.
No one answers the phone and no one answers the door. Do you got that? And I just went, oh yeah, I got that.
It was the late 1970s, 20 years or so before the unfortunate events at Irene Silverman's place. Sante, Kenneth, Kent, and now little Kenny Jr., all living the lush life. Fancy clothes and luxury cars and villas full of servants. In the house in Hawaii, we had a secret storage spot in the master bedroom. She had 30 mink coats. I've never seen anyone wear a mink coat in Hawaii.
I don't know if you have or not. Sante, at last, seemed to have the life she wanted.
She always called me my darling Rhonda.
Rhonda Martin was Kent's high school girlfriend and spent lots of time with the family in their seaside mansion. Sante was like a dream, said Rhonda. A lovely dream.
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found that linked Sante and Kenny Kimes to the crimes?
She knew the words to you. She knew the emotions to put onto you. And sometimes she did it in positive ways, with love and affection. And she also knew how to scare the hell out of you. Like when Kent was 12 and still his mother's little helper. And one day, on his own, he stole a surfboard and got busted. I thought I was going to go to jail. So Kent tried his best to go straight.
Maybe the difference between you and your mother is... If you get caught stealing a surfboard, it scares you straight. If she gets caught stealing a surfboard, it's encouragement for the next time. She got mad because I got caught. And she tried to give me, she actually took me to where I got caught and she told me how I should have done it so I wouldn't have got caught.
So Sante did nurture, in a way, the criminal way. And she wasn't about to let anyone get between her and her son's.
A lieutenant from Hawaii Five-0 showed up at my house. That lieutenant told me, if you contact him, she'll find you and she will kill you.
On the outside, Kent lived what seemed to be a normal teenager's life. High school, sports. His girlfriend, Rhonda, loved spending time with Sante too.
Until the day... I was over there and all of a sudden the doorbell rang and I jumped up to answer it. She was in the kitchen. And I swear to you, she flew over the counter.
Before I got to the door, she got right up in my face and she pulled me. I mean, I was this close to her face. It was so close.
I could feel her breath. And she goes, there are two rules in this house. No one answers the phone and no one answers the door. Do you got that? And I just went, oh, yeah, I got that.
This is the first time you saw anything other than the wonderful Elizabeth Taylor person.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of the trial for Sante and Kenny Kimes?
And then Mom returned and things went back to normal, if such a word could be used for the life of Sante Kimes. Kent got married, started his own family, made Sante a grandmother. This a decade before the events on that July 4th weekend in New York, when Irene Silverman disappeared. And though Kent tried to put some distance between his old life and his new one,
Here he is running the video camera on a family vacation. They're at the Kimes Beachfront Estate in the Bahamas, an address that will come into play a little later in our story.
Last day here. It's been a great vacation.
Thanks for everything, guys.
Just a few months after that island vacation in 1994, Kent got a call from his mom. Mom's hysterical. They won't fix him. They won't fix him. They won't fix him. And at the time, I'm not putting two and two together, and she hangs up. And then it dawned on him. His mother was telling him that Ken Sr., his stepfather, had died. And after, Sante seemed unhinged, even more than usual.
Because, it turned out, they'd blown through most of Ken's fortune when he was alive. And now that he was dead... All that was left were a few properties and some cash tucked away in offshore accounts. Mom didn't have any checkbooks. She had no accounts. She had nothing. Now she was scrambling for money. The frenzy of it all spooked Kent. He eventually stopped taking her calls.
I had made a break from Mom and Kenny. We were estranged. And I missed Mom. Kent had no idea then that he had timed his exit perfectly. It was now just a year before that New York City summer when Irene Silverman disappeared. Who knew what a desperate mother and son were capable of together? It was the spring of 1998, four months before Irene Silverman disappeared in New York City.
And Kent Walker was living in Las Vegas. He had done the hard part, cut off his mother and little brother, who was now 23, for good. And now? I missed the good stuff. It was hard, you know, but I was doing okay. Kent had no idea where Kenny and Sante were, or that they had moved on themselves. In fact, they were in Los Angeles now, had rented a wing of a house in affluent Brentwood.
Looking for trouble, maybe? I was working homicide at the Los Angeles Police Department. Detective Bill Cox was also unaware the times it arrived in the City of Angels. In fact, he had never heard of them. Not yet, anyway. When he caught a curious case about 15 miles down the freeway from Brentwood, something about a body in a dumpster in the back alley near LAX.
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Chapter 8: How did the Kimes family's history influence their criminal behavior?
The dealer reported the car stolen. And the local sheriff issued warrants for Sante and Kenny, wanted for Grand Theft Auto. That was just what the LAPD needed to amp up their search. Something concrete to hold Sante and Kenny on. If only they could find them. For months, detectives ran down tips from people who knew them. In Los Angeles, in Las Vegas, in you name it.
Every place we went, we would miss them just by days sometimes, a day, sometimes just hours. They were constantly moving. Did she know you were on their tail? Well, I think so. The mother and the son in that Lincoln were in the wind. And across the country, in New York, that wealthy widow, Irene Silverman, was still living her fine life on the Upper East Side, nothing to worry about.
But the Fourth of July was right around the corner. And so was a confrontation on a busy street in midtown Manhattan. One of the agents grabbed Santee, took her bag. I saw there were like five agents struggling with Kenneth. Couldn't take him down. Couldn't take him down. Mother and son, suspects in a years-long crime spree that included two murders at least. How did it ever get this far?
Kenny Kimes will tell us.
There's a lot of chaos in my youth. I love my parents, but there's a lot of complexity there.
It was the beginning of summer now, and LAPD Detective Bill Cox had a pretty good idea what happened to David Kasdan, the guy who wound up in the dumpster near the airport. Knew his suspects, too, but fining them was quite another matter. Sante and Kenny were just gone. And then, sleuthing paid off. Detective Cox landed an informant, a guy who'd done odd jobs for Sante in L.A.
and Las Vegas, named Stan Patterson. Stan became basically our eyes and ears because he said Sante would call him once in a while. So we told him, hey, next time she calls you, let us know. Then, on July 3rd, just before the holiday weekend, the detective's phone rang. It was Stan.
He says that the Kimeses are...
in New York, and they are getting an apartment, and they wanted me to manage it. My, my, my. And to bring a gun with me when I come out there to New York. Stan, the informant, agreed to go to New York and help lead police to Santi and Kenny. We contact NYPD, and so we told them that Stan was on an airplane coming out there, and could they follow him?
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