Sante Kimes imparted all her knowledge to her son Kenny Kimes—including the macabre skill of taking a life.
The infamous pair, notoriously referred to as “Mommy and Clyde,” crafted a chilling legacy over several decades. Their crime spree spanned countless cons and culminated in their eventual capture on the bustling streets of New York City following the murder of a wealthy socialite.
Private investigator Cici McNair vividly described Sante Kimes in Oxygen’s series Dateline: Secrets Uncovered as “the ultimate femme fatale,” a woman who effortlessly seduced not only lovers but also lawyers, husbands, and even her own son.
Who Was Sante Kimes?
Hailing from Oklahoma, Sante left a rocky childhood behind and turned her sights toward the allure of Hollywood. Throughout her life, she leaned heavily on her captivating charisma.
“She had a force,” recalled her eldest son, Kent Walker. “It was a force to be reckoned with.”
As a single mom, money was often tight and Sante, who Kent said bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, often turned to crime to support herself, shoplifting, stealing credit cards or writing bad checks. It wasn’t long before she enlisted Kent to help with her schemes.
“I was small, I fit through windows,” he explained. “I knew how to be a decoy. I knew how to make attention happen, so people looked at me instead of her while she did her thing. She was training me how to do that.”
Sante Kimes Marries Multi-Millionaire Kenneth Kimes
Then, in 1970, while working at the Palm Springs Millionaire Magazine, Sante met millionaire Kenneth Kimes, who had secured his large fortune through real estate, casinos and motel ownership.
After tying the knot in Mexico and welcoming son Kenny Jr. in 1975, it appeared that Sante’s money troubles were a thing of the past.
“Our lives was beyond the American dream, I mean, we lived in five different oceanfront properties in Hawaii,” Kent recalled. “We had an oceanfront estate in the Bahamas. We had a golf course home in Las Vegas.”
Yet, Sante’s criminal ways didn’t end. While Kenneth looked on in amusement—and even liked to join her on the criminal exploits—Sante continued to pull off one con after another, once even allegedly enlisting someone to burn her own house down to collect the insurance money.
However, there was one person looking to get out of the family business. At the urging of his girlfriend Rhonda Martin, Kent refused to help his mom steal anymore. Furious, Sante blamed Rhonda and told her parents she needed to stay away from Kent.
“A lieutenant from Hawaii Five-O showed up at my house,” Rhonda recalled. “That lieutenant told me, ‘Don’t stick your head up, because if you contact him, she’ll find you and she will kill you.’”
Terrified, Rhonda ended the relationship, leaving Kent to falsely believe she just didn’t love him anymore.
Kent joined the Army and moved out of the house.
Sante Kimes’ Financial Scheme Ends With Murder of David Kazdin
With her oldest son gone, Sante made Kenny Jr. her new partner in crime.
“I am my mother’s biggest disappointment,” Kent said. “I was the one who was supposed to be Kenny.”
Sante became even more unhinged, after Kenneth died in 1994. By then, the couple had used up most of Kenneth’s fortune, leaving Sante to scramble to find other ways to support herself as she relied more heavily on Kenny Jr.
In one misguided attempt to hide Kenneth’s assets before his death, they’d asked their friend and businessman David Kazdin to put his name on the deed to one of Kenneth’s properties in Las Vegas. Kazdin agreed, but later wanted out. Instead, Sante somehow managed to go to the bank and take out a $280,000 loan all in David’s name.
When he found out, he asked the bank to launch an investigation, but as it got underway the Las Vegas mansion burned down in a suspicious fire.
Then in the Spring of 1998, David’s body was discovered by a homeless man in a dumpster by the LAX airport.
Kenny would later describe the killing in court, telling Los Angeles jurors that it was Sante who wanted David dead and ordered her son to shoot their one-time friend, after arriving at his doorstep one day.
“Kenny walked in, and I think Mr. Kazdin offered him some coffee or something,” retired Los Angeles Detective Bill Cox explained. “And when Mr. Kazdin turned around in the kitchen, that’s when Kenny took the gun and shot him in the back of the head.”
After carrying out the murder, Kenny bought a $100 bouquet for his mom to celebrate.
It didn’t take long for investigators to hone in on Sante as a possible suspect, but by then, the mother and son duo were on the run. After getting to Utah, Sante traded in her Lincoln for a Lincoln Town Car, writing a check to cover the difference. By the time the check bounced, they were long gone.
“Every place we went, we would miss them just by days, sometimes a day, sometimes just hours,” Cox remembered. “They were constantly moving.”
Sante Kimes, Kenny Kimes Orchestrate Plan to Kill Irene Silverman
By July of 1998, Sante and Kenny had made their way to New York City, where wealthy widow Irene Silverman would tragically cross their path.
Using the alias Manny Guerrin, Kenny rented a room in a swanky east side townhouse from Irene, an 82-year-old former Radio City ballerina. Irene’s employees reported her missing on July 5‚ one day after she’d hosted a lavish Fourth of July party, triggering an investigation by the New York City Police.
The only tenant police weren’t able to track down was Manny, who had rented the property in cash two weeks earlier. Working with Irene’s employees, they were able to create a sketch of Manny. Detective Ed Murray, who worked in the NYPD’s Fugitive Task Force, immediately recognized the sketch as car thief Kenny Kimes.
Kenny was already in custody after Los Angeles detectives enlisted Stan Patterson—a man who had done odd jobs for Sante—and Murray to help them pull off a sting to arrest Sante and Kenny in the streets of New York.
At the time of their arrest, authorities had also discovered a large wad of cash and Irene’s passport in Sante’s purse, connecting the two investigations. Inside the stolen Lincoln, they also found wigs, a gun, an empty taser box and notebooks Sante kept with details about Irene’s life.
“From the notebooks, it was obvious Sante and Kenny targeted Irene for her wealth,” Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison explained, “and plotted to steal her identity and drain her fortune.”
After learning that Irene had owned the townhouse, Sante posed as Irene, enlisted a notary and obtained a deed for the property—later recovered from one of Sante’s bags—before carrying out the murder.
Then, as Kenny would later describe in court, they went into Irene’s bedroom, turned on the television and hit the elderly woman with a stun gun. After the mother and son got her into the bathtub, Kenny strangled her to death, loaded her body into the stolen Lincoln and dumped it in Hoboken, New Jersey, just before their arrest.
What Happened to Sante Kimes and Kenny Kimes?
Kenny also ultimately confessed to killing banker Syed Bilal Ahmed with his mother in the Bahamas by lacing the man’s drink and then drowning him in the bathtub. Syed had been investigating irregularities in Kenneth’s banking accounts at the time he was killed.
Though both would maintain their innocence for their trial in New York, they were found guilty of 118 charges, including second-degree murder. While Kenny was sentenced to 125 years behind bars, his mom was sentenced to 120 years.
It wasn’t the end of their legal troubles, however. The two were later extradited back to Los Angeles to face trial for David’s murder. This time, they were facing the death penalty, however, Kenny agreed to plead guilty and testify against his mother in 2004 in exchange for prosecutors dropping the option of capital punishment for him and his mother. Sante was once again convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
She died behind bars in 2014 at the age of 79.
What Does Kenny Kimes Say About His Crimes Today?
Kenny continues to serve out his sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
In a call from prison, Kenny told Morrison that he was sorry for his actions.
“The first thing I want to say is that I absolutely regret my past,” he said, “and the ignorance of my past crimes makes me want to do better.”
He admitted there was “a lot of chaos” in his childhood and “only saw one road forward,” leading him to partner up with his mother.
“I didn’t have a support system,” he explained. “I didn’t have an escape valve.”
Still, he professed affection for Sante, saying he chose not to focus on the “negative elements” of his parents.
“I love my parents,” he told Morrison, “but there’s a lot of complexity there.”