American homicide suspect and con artist along with his mother, Sante, the brains behind their scams. (Sante was born on 24 July 1934 in Oklahoma City, OK.) In mid-2000, the couple were sought in murder, missing-persons and fraud cases around the country and overseas.
Using a phony reference, Kenneth Kimes Jr. conned his way into renting a $6,000-a-month apartment in Silverman’s East Side mansion. Police believe Sante Kimes, an ex-con who calls herself the “Dragon Lady,” may have posed as Silverman for notaries in an attempt to get the deed to her house. They apparently forged a form giving them power of attorney the 82-year-old socialite widow. Hope for Silverman’s safe return faded as the NYPD learned of other cases involving the mother and son from coast to coast. Authorities have linked them to a missing banker, a dead businessman and a vanished socialite. Then there are the suspicious fires, mind-boggling swindles and threats.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said an investigator, one of dozens of lawmen piecing together the Kimeses’ bizarre odyssey. Sante, a Liz-Taylor look-alike, had an extensive rap sheet from 1961 involving theft, fraud and confidence-games. She and her husband left a trail of crime which may have included murder. They raised their son Kenny and Kent Walker (12 years older than Kenny, from a former marriage) by tutoring them in the finer points of theft and graft. Walker broke off relations with his mother in 1997.
In 1985 they were arrested on the bizarre charges of luring Central American immigrants into their homes and then enslaving them – even abusing them. In 1986 Sante was convicted of 14 counts and was sentenced to five years in prison. Her then-ailing husband, Ken Sr., cut a deal that kept him out of prison. Sante was paroled in 1989 and dug back into her bag of tricks.
When Ken Sr. died, Sante groomed her handsome blue-eyed son, a sharp-dresser with a 1997 Florida arrest from a shoplifting incident, to be her new partner. Whenever the law caught up to their trail, they once more disappeared. Picked up in July 2000, Kenneth made headlines in October when he held Court TV producer Maria Zone hostage for four hours after putting a pen to her throat during an interview at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He misses his mother terribly as Sante was being held at the women’s prison at Bedford Hills, New York, in solitary confinement after guards found a makeshift weapon fashioned from a pen in her cell.
After steadily protesting his innocence, Kenneth surprised police when he confessed on 14 November 2000 that he had indeed killed Silverman, then wrapped her body in garbage bags and, with Sante along for the ride, dumped the corpse at an unidentified excavation site. Extradited to California on 20 March 2001, the two will stand trial for the 1998 murder of businessman David Kazdin and could face the death penalty.
Link to Wikipedia biography