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Sante
KIMES
Characteristics:
Robberies
-
Silverman's body was never found
Date of murders:
1996 / 1998
Date of arrest: July
1998
Victims profile:
Syed Bilal
Ahmed / David Kazdin / Irene Silverman, 82
Method of murder:
Drowning / Shooting / Strangulation
Location: The
Bahamas / California/New York, USA
Status:
Sentenced to 125
years in prison in New York on June 27, 2000. Sentenced to life in
prison in California in 2004
Mother and son convicted of murdering elderly
widow
Court TV
May 18, 2000
NEW YORK — Mother-and-son
grifters were convicted Thursday of murdering an 82-year-old
millionaire widow in a plot to steal her elegant townhouse mansion.
The jury forewoman pronounced "guilty" 118 times —
58 times for Sante Kimes and 60 for Kenneth Kimes — in the slaying of
Irene Silverman, a former Radio City Music Hall dancer whose body has
never been found.
Sante Kimes, 65, and her 25-year-old son could get
up to life in prison at sentencing June 27.
Prosecutors said the two plotted to steal the
six-story Beaux-Arts mansion Silverman's husband had left her.
Silverman vanished in 1998, the day the Kimeses
were arrested for writing a bad $14,900 check for a car.
The Kimeses had not disposed of Silverman's
personal documents or other suspicious items. In the car, police found
loaded pistols, a red wig and two fright masks, plastic handcuffs,
$30,000 in cash, a stun gun box, syringes, and a pink liquid similar
to a known"date rape" drug.
They also found cassettes of Silverman's telephone
conversations — secretly taped by the Kimeses — and a forged deed that
transferred her townhouse to the Kimeses for a fraction of its nearly
$10 million value.
Chip off the old block
Zambi
Laverne & Shirley
One scam after another
The slave girls
Where's papa?
Mommy and Clyde
"No body, no crime"
A few months later, Kenny attempted to escape by
holding a Court TV reporter, Maria Zone, hostage by pressing a
ballpoint pen into her throat. After three hours he was subdued, and
the following month, both Kenny and Sante Kimes were extradited to Los
Angeles to stand trial for the murder of David Kazdin. During that
trial in June of 2004, while he was facing the death penalty, Kenny
changed his plea to guilty and betrayed his mother by implicating her
in the murder. He also confessed to killing the Bahamian banker, Syed
Bilal Ahmed, by first drugging him, then drowning him in a bathtub,
and later disposing of the body in the ocean.
"No body, no crime," Kenny told the judge,
revealing the Kimes family motto. Even though her son had "ratted" her
out, Sante maintained her innocence and tried to play the sympathy
card. Her court appearances included arrivals via wheelchair, fainting
spells, a "heart attack," and continuous weeping. The judge, Kathleen
Kennedy-Powell didn't buy the illness routine, particularly after
Sante took to name-calling and repeatedly called the prosecutor "Mr.
D.A. Death."
Each received another life sentence that was added
on to the more than 100 years they were already serving.