True Crime Campfire - Mommy Darkest: Sante and Kenny Kimes, Part 1

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

A wise man once said, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.” Oh, wait. That was actually Norman Bates, wasn’t it? Sorry. But a mother’s love IS one of the most powerful forces on earth. At its best, it’s unconditional, selfless, kind, protective. Willing to throw itself between its young and whatever danger threatens them. At its worst, well…you’re about to find out. This is the story of what happens when a mother decides that instead of nurturing her young, she’ll make him a tool instead…and when the mother in question is an unstoppable, unmerciless force of greed. And what happens when a boy’s love for his mother turns from tender to toxic, from admiring to obsessive, from protective to partner in crime. Sources:Son of a Grifter by Kent Walker with Mark SchoneVanity Fair: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2000/03/sante-kimes-mother-murderer-criminal-mastermindhttps://www.alixkirsta.com/articles/silverman/index.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sante_KimesNBC's "Dateline," episode "Missing Millionaire" A&E's "Biography," episode "Sante Kimes"A&E's "American Justice with Bill Kurtis," episode "Like Mother Like Son"Investigation Discovery's "Vanity Fair Confidential," episode "Sins of the Mother"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. A wise man once said, a boy's best friend is his mother. Oh, wait, that was actually Norman Bay. wasn't it? Sorry, but a mother's love is one of the most powerful forces on earth. At its best, it's unconditional, selfless, kind, protective, willing to throw itself between its young and whatever danger threatens them. At its worst, well, you're about to find out. This is the story of what happens when a mother decides that instead of nurturing her young, she'll make him a tool instead, and when the mother in question is an unstoppable, unmerceless force of greed.

And what happens when a boy's love for his mother turns from tender to toxic, from admiring to obsessive, from protective to partner in crime. This is Mommy Darkest, the crimes of Sante and Kenny Kimes. So, campers, we're on the Shishi Upper East Side. of Manhattan, New York, New York, July 5, 1998. Friends of 82-year-old Irene Silverman were starting to worry about her. They couldn't find her anywhere, and that was unheard of. This was not a lady who would leave her house on a whim, especially by herself and without letting her staff know. In fact, she hardly ever left it at all anymore. She'd had one of her famous dinner parties the night before to celebrate the 4th of July, and she'd been as effervescent as she always was,

with her flaming red hair and great stories and the ballet move she could still do and love to show off. The morning after, this morning, the fifth, Irene's housekeeper had chatted with her for a few minutes in Irene's study on the first floor. Then the housekeeper had gone down to the basement to clean. She always listened to loud music down there while she was working, and when she came back up hours later, Mrs. Silverman was just gone. The staff had searched everywhere, even the rooftop garden, but there was no sign of Irene. Finally, they gave in to panic and called the police. Irene was to the people who loved her an absolute treasure,

and she was a legend in Manhattan. At 82, she was still as bright and funny and entertaining as she'd been in her heyday as a dancer at Radio City Music Hall. That was where, in 1941, she'd met her husband, the ridiculously wealthy mortgage broker Sam Silverman. Sam fell head over heels for her when he saw her on stage, and he managed to woo her away from her other suitor, the famous Arctic explorer, Admiral Richard Burt.

Holy crap. Away from an Arctic explorer. I know. Away. This dude must have had some interesting stories. Man, I need some adventurer to sweep me off my feet. I'm not sure what's left on Earth to explore, aside from like the terrifying deep ocean. But if you're an explorer, like just shoot us an email.

Just try us out. Me out. Try me out. Yeah, I'm not interested. in exploring. I'd like to stay right here with the cats. My husband and the Cheetos. The Cheetos supply. She and Sam got married later that year. Irene had grown up poor, so it was a real-life rags-to-riches story for her. Sam bought her the beautiful Bozart's Mansion on East 65th, and they'd lived there together

for many happy years before Sam's death in 1980. For most of their marriage, they'd traveled the world, spent time in Paris and Greece and Hawaii, and Irene had become famous for her witty, street-smart personality, and her incredible parties. She'd invite an eclectic mix of people, artists and actors and writers alongside priests and business moguls and professors and Rockefellers.

And she always carried a bottle of Domperignon in her purse. But in recent years, she'd stopped jet-setting around and started letting the world come to her. She hadn't been out of her house by herself in years, but she was by no means alone or lonely. She still had frequent parties and a wide circle of friends who adored her.

some of those friends were tenants too for extra income and to keep interesting people around her Irene had created a handful of luxury apartments in her gorgeous big house and she'd been renting them out for about $6,000 a month for years oh my god can we just stop for a second and like dry heave at the thought of that rent oh so so high although I'm sure it'd be worse today I mean this was 1998 New York so I'm sure it's if they were 6,000 then they'd be obscene now. Yeah, I was perusing like a couple years ago and I saw a studio, a studio in Hell's Kitchen going for $10,000 a month. And I had to go lay down. God. How do people live there? I have friends who live there. I don't know. How do you live in New York? How does it happen?

It's bonkers. But the people who lived there could afford it, I guess. Some of her tenants over the years had included Shaka Khan and Daniel Day Lewis. And if you lived at Irene's house, you got invited to the parties, and you got to know Irene. It was an amazing place to live, according to several former tenants. And one of the first things the NYPD got an earful about when they took the missing persons report on Irene was the newest tenant, a guy named Manny Guerin. Some of the people who'd been at the 4th of July party the night before told the detectives that at one point during dinner, Irene had drawn their attention to one of the closed circuit TVs that she had scattered around the house to keep an eye on things, hooked up to security cameras all around the brown

Stone. This guy, Mani Garon, had just come in and was really obviously avoiding the security cameras, kind of ducking his head so they didn't capture his face. He always did that, she said. It was creepy. Mani had moved in just weeks earlier in mid-June, but already Irene was planning on kicking him out. He scared her. She said, he smells like jail. When he'd shown up on June 14th to inquire about her vacant apartment, Irene was initially charmed by him. He was in his mid-20s, handsome, well-spoken, and he said he'd been given her name by a couple of people she knew, an insurance broker in Florida and Irene's butcher's son, a guy she'd known for years. He seemed like a smart, charming guy. He didn't have any references or ID, though, and that was something that would normally

be a deal-breaker for Irene. She was always careful about who she rented to. She always vetted people thoroughly. But Manny showed her a wad of cash, $6,000, the first month's rent, and promised to bring her his ID and references in a day or two. Now, despite her wealth, Irene grew

up poor, and she wasn't one to turn down cash in hand, so against her better judgment, she agreed. Manny moved into Apartment 1B, the one next to Irene's first floor study, where she sometimes slept that same day. And very quickly,

Irene came to regret it. He didn't deliver on the ID and references, just kept making excuses and putting her off, less and less politely every time. And within a couple weeks of Manny Garron moving in, Irene was walking around her own house with this unsettling feeling like she was always being watched, feeling, in fact, a little like prey.

She noticed how he and the guests who visited him carefully avoided the security cameras around the house. And when she'd walked past his closed apartment door, she could see the shadows made by his feet as he stood there, silently watching her through the people. Oh, Jesus, Murphy, that's creepy. Ugh. And then there was the woman who visited Nanny every day.

She was older, with a passing resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor in eyes like Flint. She made Irene feel like a mouse and a tank with a vice. paper. Irene had asked her attorney to start eviction proceedings against Manny. Now, she was missing. When police searched Irene's bedroom, there was no obvious signs of a struggle, no blood, no disturbed furniture, or anything like that. But they found an entry she'd written in a notebook about Mani and his older lady friend. It said in part, They stay in the apartment day and night. The woman goes in and out glued to his side.

Irene wrote about how suspicious she'd become of them both and how much she wanted them out. The investigators were immediately suspicious of Manny Garen, who coincidentally was nowhere to be found either. In this case, there was none of the usual, she's an adult, she can disappear if she wants. The people in Irene's life were able to convince them that very first day that Irene was in danger. They knew they were most likely dealing with a murder. In the apartment Garen had occupied, police found heavy-duty trash bags. It felt like an ominous sign. With help from Irene's household staff, the police quickly drew up a sketch of Manny Garen and circulated it around.

It's a dead-on sketch, by the way, one of the best I've ever seen. Yeah. And soon, they got a startling phone call from another precinct. Documents, a passport, checks, and credit cards belonging to Irene Silverman had been found in the personal effect. of a pair of fugitives they'd just arrested. They were wanted in Utah for buying a Lincoln town car with a bad check. The fugitives were 63-year-old Santee Kimes and her 23-year-old son, Kenny. And Kenny Kimes was a dead ringer for the sketch of Mani Garen.

Sante and Kenny had been staying at the Plaza Hotel when they were apprehended, and when the police confiscated the luggage they'd checked in with, they found a document that made their blood run cold. A deed to Irene Silverman's house, with forged signatures. All it needed was to be notarized, and Sante and Kenny Kimes would have been the new legal owners. They also found Power of Attorney paperwork with Irene's forged signature. Now, when you combine this with the other stuff they found in the luggage, including zip ties, a vial of a sedative ten times stronger than Valium,

syringes, a box for a stun gun, some live rounds of 22 ammunition, a Glock handgun, and a red wig, things looked pretty damn dark for Irene. Had Kenny and Sante Kimes murdered her to try and steal her $7 million home? And if they had, where'd they put her body? Now, according to Sante, Irene was a beloved friend of hers, and she had no idea where the old deer could be. Maybe she's out walking her dogs, she told one detective. Yeah, sure. This was, of course, something a real friend of Irene's would never say in a million years.

Irene was 82 years old, and she hardly ever set foot outside her house. She didn't walk her dogs, her household staff did. She also tried to claim that the bag with Irene's credit cards and passport and whatnot in it wasn't hers. Well, it's in your car, Sante, and she's like, oh, that's not mine. Yeah, smooth, sugar, I'm sure they're going to buy that hook line and sinker. Didn't anyone tell her that possession is nine-tenths of the law? So, as Sontay and Kenny sat in jail, the NYPD formed the Silver Task Force, determined to find out exactly what had happened to Irene. And as the investigation unfolded, detectives would discover that the Kimes' story,

went far deeper than Irene Silverman's disappearance. It was a decades-long cross-country saga of fraud, arson, family dysfunction, slavery, and murder. Sante had a rap sheet dating back to 1961, and for much of it, her boy Kenny had been right at her side. Mommy's little helper. And soon after taking Norma and Norman Bates into custody, the Silver Task Force found out that the LAPD had been looking for these two for months, about a case eerily similar to Irene Silverman's. Yet another real estate scam involving a man who was first missing, then discovered in a dumpster with a bullet in his neck.

Wrapped, as it happens, in the same kind of heavy-duty trash bags the NYPD had found in Manny Garin's apartment. An eyewitness had told the L.A. cops that Kenny Kimes was the shooter. They'd been looking for him and Mommy Dearest ever since. Not only that, Sante and Kenny were also persons of interest in the disappearances of two other men. But we'll get into all that later. For now, let's put a pin in this

and get some background on our dynamic duo. Sante spent her early childhood in 1930s, Oklahoma. Her dad, Prama Singers, was an Indian immigrant and her mom, Mary, was white. They met in Illinois at a traveling fair where Prama was performing a magic show. A small town girl meeting a traveling magician and giving birth to a demon like Sante Kimes

is like the hook to a D&D adventure. It really is. Mary's dad was a Presbyterian minister, and he was not happy about his daughter marrying an Indian man. So after they married, Sante's parents moved to Oklahoma to start their life together. Prama worked a series of different jobs, stage magician, herb doctor, and farmer. They had four kids in quick succession with Sante the second to last. Sante was a gorgeous kid with gobs of natural charisma,

which is just great because, of course, it's one of the natural gifts that enabled her to fuck over almost every person who had the misfortune of getting close to her for the rest of her life. When Sante was six, her father died of heart disease, leaving Mary and the kids in really seriously dire financial straits. Mary did laundry for neighbors to bring in money, but it wasn't nearly enough. A lot of the time, Sante and the rest of her family didn't know where their next meal was coming from. And Sante's attitude did not help. Sante's sister told the A&E show biography

that some of the earliest memories are of Sante's wide smile looming over her as she burned her with lit matches. Eish. Sante was a sadistic kid. She loved hurting anyone and anything she could hurt, including her siblings,

her mother, and whatever animals she could get her hands on. Oh, no. Huh. Fire and cruelty to animals. Looks like we have two of the three McDonald triad criteria here, don't we campers? Yeah, that ain't

good. Nope. But to many outside her family, her immediate family anyway, Sante was a delightful kid. One afternoon, she wandered into a local diner and sweet-talked the owners so well that they gave her a free meal. Soon, she was coming in every day.

The owners of the diner totally fell in love with Sante, who, in addition to being pretty and charming, had a lightning quick intellect. They knew what a sad situation her family was in financially, and they wanted better for their new little friend. So when Sante was 12, they convinced her mother to give her up for adoption. They found a couple in Nevada who desperately wanted to adopt a little girl, and it all fell into place surprisingly quickly. Her mom didn't need a ton of convincing. I mean, for one thing, Mary knew she was struggling to support her four kids, but

also, for all her charm outside the family home, Sante was a flaming bag of hot buttered hell to deal with in private. According to her sister, she had horrendous rages, three or four times a day. Oh, God. Anything could set her off, but her main trigger was being told, No, you can't have that. When Sante didn't get something she wanted,

there were six kinds of holy hell to pay. Her sister told biography that the day Sante left to go to her new family in Nevada, she and her mother danced around their apartment from sheer relief. Wow. Later, Sante would tell all kinds of stories about her childhood, that she came from royalty, that her mother had been a sex worker and turned her out as one too. I mean, we have no way of knowing if that's true,

but based on the little we know about her mom, I sort of doubt it. And based on the fact that Sante lies, every time she opens her mouth as well. Exactly. Based on what we know about Sante, especially. Yeah, and later on, her mom actually came to bitterly regret giving her up for adoption. She really missed her, and she actually went to Nevada to try to get her back, and Sante refused to go, and it was a whole big miss. Yeah.

So it's not like she didn't love her. No, of course she loved her. It's just, you know, she had four mouths to feed, and she wanted to give her kid a better chance. And the kid was flipping out three or four times a day because her mom said, no, you can't have more salt on your mashed potatoes or whatever. Overnight, Sante went from being essentially a street kid to having the ideal middle-class childhood. With her new adoptive parents, she had her own bedroom, pretty clothes, horseback riding lessons,

everything. And she reveled in it as anybody would in her place. By the time Sante graduated high school, she'd resolved, just like Scarlett O'Hara, to never be poor again. The acquisition of wealth became the driving force in her life, and she pursued it with single-minded passion that left little room for anything else. Sante's first move toward this goal was to marry Ed Walker in 1957. Ed was studying to be an architect, but Sante quickly talked him into quitting that and becoming a real estate developer instead.

Yeah, who gives a shit about Ed's dream job, right? Sante wants to buy pretty cars and fur coats. Sante wants a real estate empire. And Ed was pretty successful at his new gig building houses. He and Sante had a son, Kent, and all went well for a while. But pretty successful was never going to be enough for Sante. And before long, she started to get bored. Yeah, her son Kent Walker, who wrote the book Son of a grifter about growing up with Sante,

says his mom was always bored, always restless, never satisfied with what she had. And when Sante got bored, she'd start stealing. She sold anything and everything, jewelry, clothes, luxury stuff she could easily afford to buy. But, you know, buying it just wasn't as much fun as stealing it. According to Kent, she'd also steal cars sometimes by simply asking for a test drive and then never bringing them back. She got arrested quite a bit, but as these people always seem to do, she always managed to talk her way out of it. She never faced any real consequences. And that is bad news, campers.

We've talked about this before. When you let somebody like Sante, somebody with that personality profile, get away with stuff again and again and again, all it's going to do is fuel that narcissism and that sense of invincibility. And if you add that to Sante's overactive sense of entitlement, you have got a recipe for all kinds of shenanigans. None of them good. Kent says Sante used to give him hours-long lectures about the importance of marrying Rich, too, when he was like seven years old. So he's like at his mother's knee and she's telling him, marry a rich. girl, marry a rich girl. You don't want to be poor. So, in addition to the frequent stealing, Sante also started having affairs with some of Ed's business associates, the richest ones, of course.

Kent remembers one instance where Ed came home and caught Sante red-handed shed up in one of these dudes. But Ed adored Sante, and he did not seem to know how to stand up for himself. So through it all, he stayed. Again, no consequences for Sante. Then the R-Sainté. started. Several, over the course of five years. Always homes Ed had built, always mysterious and suspicious fires that couldn't quite be proven as arson, and always with nice fat insurance payouts to keep Sante in Chanel. According to Kent, Ed managed to delude himself about the first couple of fires, but eventually he figured it out that his wife had to be behind it. And it broke his heart, but again, he just couldn't bear to leave her. And of course, for someone like Sons,

Conte, unconditional love and acceptance like that, is both baffling and contemptible. She had no respect for Ed. Later, she told a friend she'd never really seen him as a lover, more like a brother. Yikes, out. Eventually, she dumped him. Took Kent and moved to Palm Springs. She got a boob job and started wearing big bouffant black wigs to enhance her dubious resemblance to Liz Taylor. And in 1971, she set out to find herself a rich husband.

So I think we need to stop for a second and talk about how much this bitch reminds me a Dante Sitorious. Is this not bananas? It's crazy. How is this possible? It doesn't seem like it should be possible. And yet, it is Dante and Sante. Two bad bitches, both on the prowl for rich and easily manipulated husbands, with names that flip and rhyme. I can't tell you what to do.

Again, I'm not your mom. But just don't name your kids with, I guess Dante wasn't named. She named herself. Damn it. I was going to say. Don't get together with an auntie. Don't get to. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the, that's the angle. If you, if you're with an auntie, that's also a lady, don't do it. Yeah. Male, male aunties are probably fine. Yeah, a male, a male Dante would probably be fine. But the females apparently, bad news. Yikes. It's like one of those bad names, like Bundy. You know, it's just steer clear. All the Bundys are bad. Okay. Enter Kenneth Kimes, a self-made multimillionaire and construction slash motel tycoon.

Ooh, she got herself a tycoon, y'all. She found an article about him in Millionaire magazine, which is a thing that exists in the world. Yeah, Whitney, it's like a bumble for horrible demon gold diggers. Bumble for greed goblins. Kenneth was recently divorced on the rebound, and she just zeroed right in on him. And, of course, he fell hard and fast for Sante, and she fell hard and fast for his bank account. Kenneth was totally enthralled to his new squeeze.

She was 12 years younger than he was. He thought she was the most gorgeous thing he'd ever seen, and she made life interesting. It was party, party, party all the time, including parties that they hadn't been invited to. Sante was a serial crusher. One time, she sweet-talked her way past the secret flippin' service, so she and Kenneth could crash a party

for then Vice President Gerald Ford and they went in and talked to him and had a picture taken with him and everything before finally the Secret Service figured out they weren't supposed to be there and kicked him out and they actually had to get like investigated by the FBI and everything who I'm sure were baffled

when they finally just figured out, no, they just did it for funsies they weren't trying to like steal state secrets or anything they're just idiots so they jet set it around Sante doing her best impression of Liz Taylor with her big wigs and sparkly jewelry and Kenneth driving her around and big boat-sized Cadillacs.

They had houses in the Bahamas and Hawaii and Las Vegas. It was all gravy. Except that behind the scenes, Sante had started running scams again. She never could stay off the grift for very long, no matter how well things were going. She had more than 20 aliases.

She filed insurance claims for expensive, quote-unquote, stolen items. that had never existed. When Kenneth's elderly sister told an insurance company, truthfully, that she'd never seen a tapestry that Sante was claiming got stolen, Sante punished this poor old lady by holding her against her will

and starving her for like several days. And thank God, her family finally figured out something was wrong and came to get her. Now, where the hell Kenneth was during that awfulness? This is his sister. I cannot imagine. But as you will soon see, he did not tend to stand up to Sante

no matter what she did. Yeah, Sante like, her men like she liked her coffee, rich and unable to tell her to fuck off and die. That's how I like my coffee. Damn. For sure. I like my coffee to stand up to me if I need it. Exactly. And year after year, the scams rolled on. She drove a brand new caddy off the lot and didn't bring it back. Their Honolulu house went up in flames, a suspicious fire, but nothing the authorities could prove, and Sante and Ken got a nice insurance payout. Somehow, despite all this, Sante always managed to slide out of any real trouble.

It's not clear if they were ever really married. When they first started dating, he told friends that as much as he adored Sante, he could never marry her or she'd take all his money, which, yeah, pretty accurate. Never wanted to give up, Sante's workaround was to get Prego. Oh, of course. And in 1975, when Sante was 40 years old, Kenneth Kimes, Jr. was born. By now, Kent Walker, Sante's older son, was a teenager, and he was thrilled to bits to have a younger brother. Kenny was a cute kid, friendly and gregarious.

He had the same kind of magnetic charm his mom did. and from the minute he was born, he was Sante's little prince. He had a succession of nannies, and because Sante didn't trust the schools to educate him, he was homeschooled by private tutors. One tutor tells a story about catching little Kenny in a lie. Like his mom, he had problems with the truth. To try and teach him a lesson, she told him the story about the boy who cried wolf. Afterward, Kenny was all excited to tell his mom and dad the story.

Sante sat and listened, stone-faced, and after Kenny finished, she took the tutor by the arm, led her into a back bedroom, and threw her down on the bed. Whoa. She said, don't you ever talk morals to my son again? There's a time to lie and a time to tell the truth, and I will be the one who teaches him that. Holy shit. That's bonkers. Sante micromanaged every aspect of Kenny's life.

She bragged to friends about his alleged genius IQ and told them she didn't want him mixing with the other, possibly less brainy kids. What few friends she did allow, she chose for him. Kenny was desperate to play with other kids in the neighborhood, but he spent most of his time alone or with the adults around him. Kenneth thought his kid should be in school, making friends, getting involved in extracurricular stuff. But as usual, Sante got her way and Kenneth was too much of a wist to argue with her. Oh, God, I hate Kenneth. I mean, obviously, Sante is the flipping devil in a Liz Taylor wig, but Kenneth is just such a putts. Oh, I hate him.

I just can't stand when the spouse is like, well, what can I do? I'm like, shut up. Yeah, and you're about to see, like, you're about to see, like, the strength of my reaction to Kenneth. You're about to understand why here in a minute. And then Kenny's life got flip turned upside down. As the great poet Will Smith once said.

It was like the fresh prince of bill here. In 1985, the FBI showed up at the Kansas California mansion and arrested both Sante and Kenneth. For what, you ask? Oh, campers. One former friend of the family told biography that during one of Sante and Kenneth's lavish wool parties, she noticed all the

perfectly groomed, uniformed maids serving drinks and snacks, and asked Sante where she'd managed to find such good household staff. And Sante smiled, ear to ear and said, oh, aren't they wonderful? When I get to know you a little better, I'll tell you how I got them. They're my little slaves, and I love them. The friend just thought it was a tasteless joke at the time. Turns out, it wasn't. Sante's older son, Kent, describes one of Sante and Kenneth's trip across the Mexican border to recruit a new maid. They'd be driving a fancy Cadillac, and Sante would be all dressed up. Everything about the scene would just ooze money.

They'd go into these little Mexican towns and pull over and talk to teenage girls who are homeless or living in poverty. Come back to the U.S. with us. We'll give you a great job. It's a lot of money and freedom and not a lot of work. Trust us. It's a great opportunity for you. They told the girls they just enjoyed helping them find a better life in the States. Yeah, that's our Sante. She just loves to make people happy.

And when a girl agreed, they'd have her climb into the trunk of the car. They never got stopped or searched at the border. Rich people, nice clothes, nice car. So no one ever discovered them. And very quickly, these young women found out they'd been lied to. And not only lied to, essentially kidnapped. Sante forced them to work 16 to 18-hour days with no pay. She only allowed them to leave the house if she was with them

and then only to buy supplies for the house. She threatened to have them thrown in prison if they tried to escape. She kept reminding them that they were illegal. Ugh, God, I hate this bitch so much it makes my stomach hurt. and if these poor women complained or if Sante wasn't happy with their performance, she beat them. One young woman said Sante liked to burn her back with a hot iron. She threw another into a scalding hot shower.

She locked them in closets. She deprived them of food. Kent says Kenneth Kimes wasn't happy about the way Sante treated the maid, so, you know, give him a fucking Nobel Peace Prize, I guess. But like Ed Walker before him, he never tried to stand up to her. One time, he said, you know, you really shouldn't be treated. treating these women like this, and all it took to get him to drop it was for Sante to say, shut the hell up, you don't know what you're talking about. And that was it. So, way to be the

hero Gotham needs there, Kenneth. You utter and complete prick. Honey, I thought I told you that you couldn't run a human trafficking ring out of my basement. Oh, that face. I just can't stay mad at you. God. And Sante was super proud of herself for all this. Finally, one of the young women managed to escape in the middle of the night and ran screaming and crying to a neighbor's house. And the police were just completely stunned by her story. The FBI stepped in and arrested Sante and Kenneth. They charged them with transporting illegal immigrants across the border, conspiracy, and involuntary servitude, aka slavery. Why they weren't charged with kidnapping and assault is beyond me.

But apparently this was only like the second, case of its kind in like decades and decades, like a hundred years or something like that. Like, yeah, so she has that dubious distinction. Kenneth quickly realized that his best bet was to try and work a deal. Because, you know, if he had to serve prison time, the time away from his construction and motel empire could send him broke. God forbid. So he pled guilty to some lesser charge or other, I forget what exactly, and was sentenced

to three years probation, a fine, and a court-ordered alcohol treatment program. which is just fucking disgusting and makes me want to set stuff on fire. There were eight young women involved. Eight traumatized teenage girls. It's just horrifying. Sante, of course, was incensed at the charges and insisted on fighting them at trial. She denied everything. According to her, these girls were just opportunists who wanted some of her and Kenneth's money.

She lost. And much to her shock, she was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison. Yeah, it should have been 50. You know, I can only assume that the reason she wasn't charged with kidnapping on top of everything else was that, you know, these were poor Mexican women who would come in the trunk of her car. Yeah. And in my opinion, that is some bullshit. If I were that prosecutor man, oh, my God, I would have thrown every available book in the world at these assholes and they would still be sitting in jail.

Well, not really, because they're both dead now, but you know what I mean. Damn it, it makes me so mad. And this is bone-chilling. While he was preparing for trial, Sante's lawyer went to the Kimes' house to examine the maid's quarters and figure out, you know, if the prosecutors were exaggerating when they said that it would have been difficult for the women to escape. He found the maids' rooms down a long, kind of dimly lit hallway, and as he was looking around, it suddenly hit him. the deadbolt locks on the doors were on the outside. Oh, God. He told Vanity Fair, these were little prison cells.

And suddenly, I turned around and Sante was 14 inches behind me. And Sante had a really intense appearance. Her eyes could suddenly go black like a shark's. And I looked at her, and in that moment, I could see as she could tell, I knew. He later said he thought, she's going to kill me. It's just so creepy It's like a horror movie God, those poor girls

Sante served three years of her five-year sentence And by all accounts I know, fuck off Breathing, we're breathing campers, it's fine I'm so mad about this, I'm so mad about this I can't even about anything else in the story Yeah, it's disgusting

There was a huge miscarriage of justice Yeah, they should never have seen daylight either of them Like, if I were queen of everything like that, literally your life would have been over at that point, Sontay. You'd have gone to prison forever. They had slaves. They had slaves. The 20th century America. We had an entire war about this.

Jesus Christ. Yep. Well. So she served three of the five years, which just stick her in there, just stick her in there for the full. five years. And, you know, those three years were the best of little Kenny's life. Yep. His dad immediately put him in school and suddenly he had friends and activities like a normal kid. He had birthday parties and pool parties with actual people his own age. Kenneth Sr. sold a couple of his motels and cut back on his time at work so he could hang out with Kenny more.

Maybe he was trying to make up for some of his past sins, like being such a massive wuss. and letting Sante run every second of their poor kids' life. Mm-hmm. He encouraged the neighborhood kids to come and hang out with Kenny around the pool he'd built for him. The kids loved him. When 14-year-old Kenny found out that his mom was being released from prison two years early, he flipped his shit. He knew his life was going to shrink back to what it was like before.

The minute she got back home, and he was pissed. According to one source, when Sante came home, Kenny was so upset he actually hit her. This was way out of character for him, too. Friends said he didn't have a violent or mean streak at all when he was a kid. But obviously, being around his mom brought out strong emotions. To celebrate getting out of prison, Sante booked around the world vacation for her family, and she pulled Kenny out of school just like he was afraid she would.

According to Friends of Kenny's, he was so desperate to escape her micromanagement of his life that he started asking people if they knew how to find a hitman to kill her. Yeah, see, he still had some fighting him then. She hadn't completely brainwashed him yet and made him her little minions. It's really sad if you think about it. Unfortunately for Kenny, and for a whole bunch of other people yet to come, the kid never managed to find a hitman. Dang. And as years passed, Sante cemented her stranglehold on Kenny's life in his psyche. I think Jeff the hitman might have taken this one for free. I know, where the hell were you, Jeff?

Come on, dude. Like, take on the ones where the person really has it coming. Come on. In 1990, some of the young women, Sante had held captive, filed a $35 million civil lawsuit against Sante and Kenneth, which good for them. Hell yes. That's probably the worst thing that could happen to Sante anyway,

taking some of her precious money. Oh, yeah, she'd hate that worse than prison. They ended up settling, and I'm not sure how much four, but I'm glad they got something, and I hope it was a lot. Anyway, before this eventual settlement, Sante hired an attorney named Doug Crawford to help her fight the lawsuit. He said she was incredibly charming, but there was a definite edge to her, too. Like, she'd send him cards calling herself his biggest fan club, but she also made sure

he knew that if she wasn't happy with his performance, she'd sue him. for malpractice. Oh, that's nice. You know, you got to get a little hot and cold. Let him know what's up. Sante was obsessed with beating the lawsuit. And at one point, she started spinning this ridiculous yarn that the former maid's attorney was with the Hawaiian mob. And he'd helped these young women make up the allegations against Sante just to get a hold of her money. Oh, boy. They were all in danger, she insisted. It was absurd. And then, in the fall of 1990, Doug Crawford's law office got firebombed. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Take a moment to deal with that. We know. Fire bombed. In the morning after it happened, Sante called Doug and said, Oh, honey, I knew they were going to get you. Uh-huh. So it's almost as if this firebombing has added verisimilitude to her ridiculous.

claims about her opponent's lawyer and the Hawaiian mafia. How interesting. How convenient. Needless to say, there was never a shred of evidence to connect this attorney or Sante's former maids or anybody in the Hawaiian mob, for God's sake, to the firebombing. And for minute one, Doug Crawford was convinced it was Sante. But as usual, nobody could prove anything, because this bitch is bulletproof. But you know, even a bulletproof bitch has to screw up sometime, and Sante's luck

was about to start running out. But not before, she left a lot more shrapnel in her wake. So, I'm afraid we're going to have to hurt you a little bit this week, Campers, as you may have figured out from the timestamp. I can just hear y'all thinking, wow, this is a long episode. Wait a minute, they're never going to make it. Oh no, not a two-parter. Yeah, it's a two-parter, my ducklings. So we're going to leave it there for part one, but never fear. Next week, shit is about to get so much weirder, you have no idea. There's just no way we can fit all of Sante and Kenny into one episode. So hang tight and let the anticipation build, because this is a wild one,

and we're going to have the second half for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Ken, Chris, Donna, and Callie. We appreciate you to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you are so missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free at least a day early, sometimes more,

plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker, a rad enamel pin while supplies last, virtual events with Katie and me. So if you can, come join us. You can follow us on Twitter. at T.C. Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.