Mommy and Clyde

Summary

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Crime Scene Podcast: “Mommy and Clyde”

Host: Jonathan Hirsch
Guest/Co-Host: Cooper Mall
Date: July 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week, Crime Scene delves into the twisted saga of Sante Kimes and her son, Kenny—infamously dubbed “Mommy and Clyde” by tabloids. Together, this mother-son duo embarked on a decades-long crime spree, involving arson, fraud, slavery, and murder. The episode meticulously unpacks how a mother’s pathological criminality ensnared her own son and left a trail of victims across America, culminating in one of the most notorious “no-body” murder convictions in New York history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: A Crime Born of Family (00:30–02:33)

• Host Jonathan Hirsch introduces the case of Sante (often called “Santi”) Kimes and her son Kenneth (“Kenny”).
• Highlights the unusual nature of their crimes: “In this case, [she’s] not only committing crimes with the full awareness of her family, she’s committing them with her family.” (01:18)
• Lays out the initial arrest: mother and son are found with a cache of incriminating items and a plot to make socialite Irene Silverman “disappear”.

2. The Disappearance of Irene Silverman (02:34–06:51)

• Victim Profile: Irene Silverman, an 82-year-old Manhattan socialite and former ballet dancer, runs a prestigious townhouse.
• Kenny (as “Manny Garon”) rents an apartment from her, immediately arousing her suspicions: he pays in cash, avoids cameras, and changes locks.
• Irene vanishes on July 5, 1998. Her room is disturbed, $10,000 in cash and her ID are missing.
• Simultaneously, Santi and Kenny are arrested elsewhere for a bad check—leading police to discover personal info belonging to Irene, forged property papers, and meticulous notebooks charting their scheme.

3. Early Life and Patterns of Crime: Sante’s Evolution (06:52–12:12)

• Sante Kimes’ life is presented as an unbroken string of cons, starting with shoplifting and escalating to arson for insurance.
  • Quote from her first son, Kent: “Her crimes were like a game of Monopoly. She shoplifted when she could have bought the store.” (Approx. 08:15)
• Her compulsion transcended financial insecurity: even after marrying millionaire Kenneth Kimes Sr., she continued stealing for the thrill.
• Notably, Santi enslaved housekeepers—lured from poor communities, their passports confiscated, pay withheld, and subjected to abuse.
  • In court, she denied the extent of her abuse:

    Santi Kimes: "I've never yelled loudly, and I have certainly never physically touched any of them." (09:58)

• Convicted in 1986 for slavery charges, Santi served three years and swore never to be locked up again. Her crimes continued—and escalated in violence.

4. Motives and Personality: Crime as Identity (12:12–12:38)

• The hosts reflect on Santi’s psychology:
  • Cooper: “Most people commit crime to accomplish something, but she's committing crime almost as a...a lifestyle. Right. I mean, the con seems to be her entire identity.” (11:50)
  • Jonathan: “She married a multimillionaire, and she's still stealing... It doesn't really make sense unless it has more to do with the control or the feeling that she has...” (12:12)

5. Grooming the Next Generation: Kenny Becomes Her Accomplice (12:39–13:23, 14:24–19:55)

• Kenny was raised in isolation, homeschooled by a revolving staff who reported to Santi.
• After Kenneth Sr.’s death (which Santi concealed for months to continue accessing his funds), her bond with Kenny grew even tighter—he became her primary tool for criminal enterprise.
  • “She handed him his father's ashes in an urn and sent him to scatter them in the Pacific. Kenny was 19 years old, and now the only parental figure…was Santi.” (15:57)

6. The Murder of David Kasdan (16:41–19:55)

• Santi forged Kasdan’s signature on a mortgage and, when he found out and threatened to report her, she dispatched Kenny to kill him.
• Kenny recruits a homeless man for help, shoots Kasdan in the head, disposes of the body, and then:
  • Quote from Kenny’s testimony: “In my mindset, I thought I had completed a great duty for my mom… I wanted to celebrate.” (18:47)
• After the murder, they resume running cons across the country. Tabloids brand them “Mommy and Clyde”.

7. Psychological Dynamics and Culpability (19:55–21:04)

• Discussion about Kenny’s moral agency:
  • Cooper: “I don't really buy Kenny as like a sadist who enjoys killing... The murder is almost beside the point to him… It’s like a reward and chase for his mother’s approval.” (19:55–20:32)
  • Conversation segues into the nature vs. nurture debate, landing on nurture as the driving force behind Kenny’s crimes.

8. The Silverman Plot Comes to Light (23:13–27:40)

• Sante targets Irene Silverman after learning about her mansion at a Las Vegas seminar.
• The plan: steal Irene’s identity, forge a deed, and erase the owner.
• Kenny moves in as a tenant and, alongside his mother, surveils and ultimately murders Irene. Her body is never found.
• The Kimeses are arrested due to a fortuitously timed check fraud warrant, with the FBI closing in thanks to an informant connected to the Kasdan gun.

9. Trials and the Fall of Mommy and Clyde (27:40–32:12)

• The case goes to trial with no body, no weapon, no forensic evidence—only circumstantial documentation and orchestrated planning found in Santi’s notebooks.
• Santi and Kenny surprisingly give TV interviews before trial, attempting to sway public opinion.
  • Santi: “The media has so far portrayed us totally like we are not. We're just a mother and son.” (27:40)
• Jury finds both guilty on all counts. Santi receives 120 years, Kenny 125.
• In LA, Kenny finally testifies against his mother to avoid the death penalty.
  • Courtroom quote: “We had a defense. We were ready to tell a brainwashed jury what happened…” (29:13, Santi to Larry King)
• Judge Kathleen Kennedy calls Santi “one of the most evil people she had ever come across.” (29:50)

10. Reflections and Aftermath (30:18–32:12)

• Jonathan: “I keep thinking about those notebooks… She built this whole empire… and ultimately it was that obsession, after 40 years, that would come to haunt her.” (30:25)
• Cooper reflects on the tragedy that Kenny ultimately betrays Santi, breaking their “unbreakable bond.”
• The hosts ponder listener perspectives: Was Kenny a remorseless predator, a victim of his mother’s manipulation, or something in between?

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There’s no bond greater than the one between mother and child…in this case, it’s a bond that was forged by theft, fraud, and murder.”
  — Jonathan Hirsch (00:30)
• “The con seems to be her entire identity.”
  — Cooper Mall (11:50)
• “She shoplifted when she could have bought the store.”
  — From Kent’s memoir (08:15, paraphrased by Jonathan)
• “In my mindset, I thought I had completed a great duty for my mom. It was significant completion and I wanted to celebrate.”
  — Kenny Kimes, trial testimony (18:47)
• “I've never yelled loudly, and I have certainly never physically touched any of them.”
  — Santi Kimes, denying abuse (09:58)
• “We’re just a mother and son.”
  — Santi Kimes, media interview (27:40)
• “She built this whole empire… and ultimately it was that obsession, after 40 years, that would come to haunt her.”
  — Jonathan Hirsch (30:25)
• “He sold her down the river.” — Cooper Mall on Kenny turning state’s witness (30:44)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:30] Story set-up, initial arrest, glimpse of evidence
• [02:34] Irene Silverman: her life, suspicions, and disappearance
• [06:52] Santi’s criminal origins and evolution to bigger crimes
• [09:58] Santi’s denial of abusive behavior in court
• [11:50] Host analysis on Santi’s motivations and lifestyle
• [14:44, 16:41] Grooming Kenny as accomplice; Kenneth Sr.’s death
• [18:47] Kenny describes his state of mind after murdering Kasdan
• [23:13] The Silverman con and murder plot, planning and execution
• [27:40] Pre-trial media strategy and trial overview
• [29:13] Santi’s Larry King interview
• [30:25] Reflections on obsession, final thoughts on the case

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Tone and Style

The episode retains a crisp, journalistic tone, interweaving sharp narration, psychological analysis, and chilling, matter-of-fact quotes from primary sources and courtroom testimony. The hosts avoid sensationalism, instead focusing on unpacking the chilling dynamic between Santi and Kenny and the systemic failures that allowed their crimes to escalate over decades. The mood alternates between fascinated incredulity and sober analysis, peppered with dry, dark humor in asides about “Mommy and Clyde,” the “Dragon Lady,” and the banality of evil embedded in Santi’s obsessive record-keeping.

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Closing Reflection

The story of Sante and Kenny Kimes confronts listeners with the limits of nurture-versus-nature debates, the mechanics of manipulation within families, and the darkly fascinating psychology behind multigenerational criminality. The episode closes by asking listeners: Was Kenny a victim or a willing accomplice—and is it ever possible to separate the two?

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Transcript

[Cooper Mall]

Introducing Meta glasses.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

You have questions. They've got answers. Hey, Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

[Cooper Mall]

Lima. How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Donde esta Alvano?

[Cooper Mall]

Hey, Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Hey, Meta, what should I do with my life?

[Cooper Mall]

That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think? Ask anything with the new Meta glasses.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

They say there's no bond greater than the one between mother and child. And in this case, it's a bond that was forged by theft, fraud, and murder. In 1998, police in New York arrested a mother and son traveling together. They bounced a check used to buy a car. But when investigators searched their car in bags, they found a loaded handgun, $30,000 in cash, wigs, syringes, and a forged deed to a mansion that wasn't theirs. And something even more incrimin. Notebooks laying out a plot to make an elderly socialite disappear. Welcome to Crime Scene, the show where we tell the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. This week on the show, Santee Kimes and her son Kenneth, a con artist who burned houses for money, kept maids as slaves, and convinced her own son to silence anyone who got in the way. The tabloids called them Mommy and Clyde. Her enemies called her Dragon Lady. From Sony Podcasts and the Binge. This is a story we're calling Mommy and Clyde. Hey, y'.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

All.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Welcome to Crime Scene. My name is Jonathan Hirsch, and each week, over three acts, we dig into the most shocking and complex true crime stories of our era. And each week, I am joined by my friend and fellow documentarian, Cooper Mall. Hi, Cooper.

[Cooper Mall]

Hey, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Don't forget, this show is a part of the Binge, which is our true crime network of limited series podcasts. If you'd like to learn more, just go to getthebinge.com okay, so here's what makes this case different. A lot of criminals are leading a double life. You know, like Rex Herman, the Gilco beach killer we talked about on the show. A lot of them are doing it outside of the awareness of their own family. However, in the case of Sandy Kimes, she's not only committing crimes with the full awareness of her family, she's committing them with her family.

[Cooper Mall]

Let's get into it.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

All right, Our story begins with irene Silverman. She's 82 years old. She's a socialite. She's barely five feet tall. She's whip smart. Someone who didn't miss a lot in her youth. She danced in the corps de ballet for Radio City. Four shows a day for a few dollars a week. She liked to remind people that she wasn't a Rockette. She ended up running a six story limestone townhouse on East 65th Street. It's one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan. She rented its grand apartments to people who could afford them and kept a close eye on everything and everyone who came through the door. In June of 1998, a quiet guy named Manny Garon rented her ground floor apartment. He was just 23 years old. He paid in cash and almost from the first day he showed up, he set Irene on edge. He wouldn't fill out a credit application. He hid his face from her security cameras. And he changed his own locks so the staff couldn't get into the apartment. Irene trusted her instincts about him, and she began keeping written notes about his comings and goings. And she told her staff she wanted him gone. On the morning of July 5, 1998, Irene walked out of her bedroom and was never seen again. By that evening, her staff found her room disturbed and her keys, her ID, roughly $10,000 in cash, gone. But there was no Irene. Hours later, and across town, a mother and son sat in police custody at the New York Hilton. They've been picked up on an out of state warrant for a bad check. They'd written to buy a Lincoln Town Car. Except his real name was Kenny and his mom, Santi. Officers searched the pair, the Lincoln Town Car and a bag Santi had checked at a nearby hotel. Inside was a loaded 9 millimeter plastic handcuffs, an empty box for a stun gun, wigs, masks, syringes and a pink liquid. And like I already said, $30,000 in cash. This is a real criminal grab bag over here. But not only that, they had all kinds of personal information from Irene. Her Social Security card, her passport. They also had a forged notarized deed transferring her 8 million dollar townhouse to a shell corporation. Then notebooks, where Santee had laid out the whole scheme by hand. The police commissioner, Howard Safir, would call them the Queen. And prints of con artists. And the car, a rolling evidence locker. But this wasn't a joke. Among Santee's papers was a ledger with the names of three different people who were missing or murdered at the time, including a Los Angeles man, a businessman by the name of David Kasdan. So at this point, Santi's 63 years old and she has a long history. Irene Silverman is really just the most recent person to get in her way. And a little bit about her. Santee Kimes was born in Oklahoma City in 1934. And over the course of her life, the federal government was able to establish 28 different aliases that she had had. And one in particular that really stuck out that stayed with her. The Dragon Lady. She married Ed Walker, her high school boyfriend, in the late 1950s. Ed built houses for a living. They had a son together, Kent, who would one day write a book about trying to make sense of his mother. Santi shoplifted, forged checks and ran small cons. And by 1961, she got arrested for shoplifting in Sacramento. Kent later described his mother's life as a continuous crime. It simply was her job. I think I always held out hope

[Ad/Promo Voice]

and maybe she'd be okay.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

You know, you fall in love with the good stuff that she was and, you know, that was never going to be replaced at that. It made it too easy to forgive the bad stuff. Sometimes, you know, you kind of held out hope that maybe she'd calm down, maybe she'll become rational, maybe. Maybe she'll outgrow this. Maybe, you know, once Shantae Kimes got in your blood, she never left, never completely. Shoplifting and bad checks brought in pocket money. But Santi found a way to turn an entire building into cash. A fire. So the way the family tells it, around 1960, she set fire to one of the homes Ed had built and then collected on the insurance. Setting infernos, however, was not a one time thing for Santi. Burning buildings for the insurance money became one of her steadiest moves. So Santi moved to Palm Springs in search of a bigger stage. This was somebody who didn't look out of place on a season of White Lotus. She looked like Elizabeth Taylor. She had dark hair and pale skin. And soon she caught a break when she read that a real estate tycoon named Kenneth Kime Sr. Had divorced. He was worth $20 million. She found a way to meet him, got together with him, and then once she was his wife, she could continue on her stealing spree. Who knows if she did it for the thrill. But she wasn't doing it to make ends meet, that's for sure. Not anymore. An acquaintance from that time reportedly said her crimes were like a game of Monopoly. She shoplifted when she could have bought the store. Winning big never really cured her urge to steal. And in 1985, she was arrested for walking a $6,500 mink coat out of a Washington hotel lounge. Later, while the jury was still deciding on her punishment, she walked out of the courthouse and disappeared. In 1975, she and Kenneth Senior had a son, and from the start, his mother isolated him. He was kept out of school and taught at home by a rotating cast of the family's maids and tutors, people who answered to his mother. Santi's gift was making people believe they had no choice but to serve her. She had done it with her son, and in the mid-1980s, federal agents discovered she had enslaved a houseful of women. Santi and Kenneth Sr. Recruited them from poor communities, many from Mexico, with the promises of jobs as housekeepers in the family's homes in La Jolla, Las Vegas, and Honolulu. When they arrived, Santee would take their passports, withhold their pay, beat them into submission, and locked them inside the house. When she left, one of them, Maribel Ramirez Cruz, testified that Santi branded her with an iron, and another said she scalded her with hot water. Have you ever verbally abused any other maids while married to Mr. Clark?

[Santi Kimes]

Never. When you say verbally abused, I have had maybe, arguments, you know, where I would maybe raise my voice a little, but I've never yelled loudly, and I have certainly never physically touched any of them.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Santee was depraved, obviously, but so was her second husband. They didn't need any free labor, so why were they allowing this to happen? In August of 1985, federal agents arrested Santi and Kenneth Senior on charges tied to holding the women in involuntary servitude. In other words, slavery. In the 1980s, the husband took a plea deal, admitting enough to walk away with a suspended sentence and a fine. And Santee didn't admit any of it. She took it to trial, and in 1986, a federal jury in Las Vegas convicted her on multiple counts. Prosecutors called her greedy, cunning, and cruel. She was sentenced to five years and served about three of those. She even tried to weasel out of her sentence by slipping out of custody through a bathroom window, staying on the run for days till a bartender recognized her and turned her in. When Santi finally walked out of prison in 1989, she declared she would never allow herself to be locked up again. And after that, anyone who caught her scheming had a way of disappearing. So, Cooper, this is a fascinating story and character portrait. It's also kind of hard to understand what the motive of this person is. I know it probably sounds to you all like just a list of crimes and deceptions. Arson, fraud, theft, holding women as slaves. She seems to be this chameleonic figure that I can't quite put My finger on.

[Cooper Mall]

Right. And I think that's what distinguishes her from a lot of the different people we've talked about on this show so far. Right. I mean, most people commit crime to accomplish something, but she's committing crime almost as a. A lifestyle. Right. I mean, the con seems to be her entire identity. I mean, she married a multimillionaire, and she's still stealing.

[Santi Kimes]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It doesn't really make sense unless it has more to do with the control or the feeling that she has when she commits these crimes.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Cooper Mall]

Yeah. And, I mean, she can't even fess up to what she's doing. Right. I mean, her husband takes the plea deal, but she denies everything.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. And then she's got this son in the wings. That's the part that totally, I think, fascinates all of us.

[Cooper Mall]

Kenny.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She's building this kind of career in crime and molding him at the same time. He's not in school. He doesn't have as many friends around. There's no version of the world that doesn't include mom in this. And mom is a pathological criminal. So by 1994, Santi is out of prison, and she's desperate. And she really begins to rely on one person in particular. Her son. Coming up, the son she raised becomes the weapon she deploys. And a banker who came asking questions disappears without a trace.

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[Cooper Mall]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

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I've been told I'm a seven.

[Santi Kimes]

By who? Your mom?

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

She thinks I'm a ten.

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[Cooper Mall]

It's where we left it. Santi Kimes is a convicted con and fraudster. She's just lost her husband, so she doesn't necessarily have her right hand anymore. But at the top of this episode, we heard about her and her son Kenny. So. And their life in crime together. Tell me a little bit about how we got there.

[Santi Kimes]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

This is where the story starts to take an interesting turn. A while back, when she was first married to Ed, a lawyer named Elmer Holmgren, who was sort of down on his luck, offered to help Santee and her husband at the time with those insurance fires that she was committing. He agreed to torch their Honolulu home for a payout. But then he talked a little bit too much, which was a huge mistake. He drew the attention of the federal agents who agreed to spy on the couple who had hired him. Soon after, the Kimes's invited him along on a trip to Costa Rica. They came home and Elmer did not. For decades, no one knew what had become of him. And then Santi got a terrible surprise of her own. In March of 1994, Kenneth Senior collapses and dies. He was the rich husband and the source of her fortune. Kenny was away at school when it had happened, and his mother decided he didn't need to know. She kept the death to herself for about three months. She would tell callers that her husband had gone off to Japan to build a motel. And the motive here was to sort of keep the money to herself. She was signing his name and using his Social Security number. And she would try to seize as much of his estate as she could before his grown children from his first marriage would try to claim it. When Kenny finally came home, his mother met him at the airport. She didn't say the words out loud. She just handed him his father's ashes in an urn and sent him to scatter them in the Pacific. Kenny was 19 years old, and now the only parental figure in his life left was Santi. So things were going to get worse before they got better, if they got better. So that's where this businessman I talked about earlier, David Kasdan, comes back into the picture. He had known Kenneth Sr. Since the 1970s. He was a family friend in sort of the loosest sense. And years earlier, he had done Santee a favor and let her use his name on the paperwork for a property. That favor would cost him his life. After Kenneth Senior s death, she used Kasdan's name, forged onto a loan application to take out a fraudulent loan of about $280,000 against a house. This was in late 1997. It worked until the bank began mailing notices about the money owed. The notices went to Mr. Kasdan, who realized his name and credit had been used in a fraud he'd never agreed to. He was furious and threatened to report her. That threat made Kasdan a witness, according to Kenny's later testimony. His mother didn't agonize over it. She said plainly, we're just gonna have to kill him. She sent her son to do the dirty work. Kenny quietly bought a handgun from a Las Vegas acquaintance named Stan Patterson. He recruited a man from a homeless shelter to help him and paid him in cash. On a day In March in 1998, the two of them drove to Kasdan's house. Kenny and Kasdan, a man who had known his family for decades, talked for a few moments. Then Kenny stepped behind him, shot him once in the back of the head. He and the man from the shelter ran, wrapped the body, loaded it into a car, and drove it out to a dumpster near lax, where they left the body in the trash. Then Kenny went to a movie, changed out of his blood spattered clothes, and got dinner. And he stopped to buy flowers for his mother. He described the feeling years later from the witness stand. Quote, in my mindset, I thought I had completed a great duty for my mom. It was significant completion and I wanted to celebrate. Then, of course, mother and son covered their tracks. The gun was taken apart and dropped down a storm drain, never to be recovered. They changed their clothes and went on with their lives. As far as Santi and Kenny were concerned, it had been done so cleanly, nothing went back to them. And after Kasdan, the two of them did what they always do. They hit the road. They bought a green Lincoln Town Car with a worthless check and pointed it east, running cons as they went, talking a dealer in Alabama out of a motorhome, drifting down through Florida and then up the coast. Somewhere on that cross country run, a tabloid reporter gave the pair a name that would follow them into history. Mommy and Clyde. By the time the Lincoln rolled into New York, Santi already had her next mark picked out. And this one lived in a mansion. Cooper, I can't get past the flowers. The fact that he murdered this person and then bought his mom flowers.

[Cooper Mall]

Yeah, I mean, it is so sick. But I don't really buy Kenny as like a sadist who no enjoys killing. I think the murder is almost beside the point to him.

[Santi Kimes]

Right?

[Cooper Mall]

It's. It's like a reward and chase for his mother's approval. Right? I mean, she has taught him that nobody is better than her or them. Right. So I think that when she tells him this man has to die, it's not necessarily like a moral dilemma for him. It's more of a chore on her list and something to tick off that makes her happy. Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It makes this question about culpability really, really tough. In this case, because he is an adult, he did pull the trigger, but the amount of orchestration that happened around him, the social engineering of his own life and thoughts, it's kind of hard to qualify that.

[Cooper Mall]

Yeah, it makes me think of that, you know, this like age old debate of are people are criminals? Is it, is it nature and nurture? Right. And I feel like in Kenny's case it's nurture. Nurture, right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

I think so, yeah. Okay, so after David Kasdan's body is found in that dumpster in the middle of March 1998, for a while it was just an unsolved Los Angeles homicide. A man with a gunshot wound, no obvious killer. The trail to the Kimeses had not really been built yet. And while that case sat cold, Santi was already chasing a bigger score two and a half thousand miles away in a six story townhouse on East 65th street where an 82 year old socialite, Irene Silverman, had just taken on a new tenant. Coming up, a body lies in a dumpster near the airport. A case gone cold. And before anyone could connects it to The Kimes, an 82 year old Manhattan socialite vanishes from her own mansion.

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[Cooper Mall]

So, Jonathan, where we left it. It's 1998. Santi and Kenny Kimes have Left David Kasdan's body in a LA dumpster. How did they find their last target all the way in New York?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. So Santi heard about Irene Silverman at an anti aging seminar in Las Vegas, like you do. Around 1996, an insurance contact there happened to know this socialite and described an elderly widow living alone in a Manhattan mansion worth somewhere between seven and $10 million. Within two years, Santee had a plan to take it. She wouldn't buy the townhouse. She would steal the identity of the woman who owned it, forge a deed transferring the building to a Kimes controlled shell corporation for a fraction of its worth, and make the owner disappear so she could never contest it. Nobody. No crime. So In June of 1998, Kenny moved into Irene's ground floor apartment under the alias Manny Guerin, as we know, paying in cash. Santi had set up the rental previously and eventually moved in secretly alongside her son. And the two of them wiretapped Irene's phone calls and tracked her routine, filling the notebooks that they carried with her schedule. Sandy needed Irene's identity, her Social Security number, her signature, and her life on paper so that she could steal it. But Irene was watching her mysterious tenant too. As we also know, she kept a written log of his movements. She had her staff watch and describe him. She even had a sketch of the strange man in 1B made so that if she ever needed to evict him. The Kimes is listening to her calls, could hear the walls closing in. And Kenny later described what that did to them. Quote, the more laborious and complex it became, the more desperate we felt and the more twisted our minds became. We wanted to kill her. Kenny eventually confessed to what happened next. That morning, July 5, 1998, his mother stunned the tiny, frail 82 year old woman with a stun gun. And then Kenny strangled her. They bagged her body and got rid of it. And over the years, Kenny named different spots. A New Jersey construction site, a dumpster across the river in Hoboken. They bagged her body and then disposed of it. That body was never found. And then hours later, before the two of them could leave town, they were arrested at the New York Hilton on the warrant for that bounce check. It looked like luck. A pair of grifters undone by a bad check. But it wasn't entirely luck. Back in Los Angeles, investigators working the Kazden killing had tracked down Stan Patterson, the man who'd sold Kenny the murder weapon, and flipped him into an informant working with the FBI. Patterson stayed in friendly contact with the Kimes's and arranged to meet up with them in New York, then told agents exactly when and where they would be. That is what put federal investigators on the Kaimes trail inside of the city. And that is why, when the check warrant came through, there were already people watching them. Two separate investigations, one for the body in Los Angeles and one for the missing woman at the townhouse on East 65th street, were closing in on the same mother and son at the same moment. When the case went to trial in New York in early 2000, the prosecutors didn't have a body, no murder weapon, no forensic evidence linking the Kimes to a killing, no confession, and no eyewitness. The trial opened in February and ran for 13 weeks. And before it, the mother and son sat down with 60 Minutes for an interview on May 18, 2000. It's very unusual for people charged with murder to sit down and to do an interview before trial. Why are you doing this? May I answer that? Sure, Mr. Croft. The reason why we're doing this before trials, because of the unfair portrayal that's been given about us.

[Santi Kimes]

The media has so far portrayed us totally like we are not. We're just a mother and son.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

After four days of deliberation, the forewoman stood and read the word guilty more than a hundred times. Santi was sentenced to 120 years and 8 months. Kenny got 125 and 4. Legal scholars would pick apart this verdict for years afterward, because it was reported to be about only the sixth time in New York history that a person had been convicted of murder when the victim simply vanished. And the first with no body, no weapon, no eyewitness, and no confession at all. So once the New York case was clear, cleared, then there was the murder trial in Los Angeles, the death of David Kasdan, which carried with it a potential death penalty. Facing that, Kenny broke. And in 2003, he pled guilty to the Kasdan murder and agreed to testify against his own mother if they took the death penalty off the table for him. In 2004, in this flat and cold voice, he laid it all out from the stand. His mother, of course, denied everything, as she always had. She accused her beloved son of confessing only to save himself. She did an interview with Larry King in 2000.

[Santi Kimes]

We had a defense. We were ready to tell a brainwashed jury what happened, like where we think the woman is, that there was a legitimate sale. The judge, to me is really the worst, the worst guilty person in all of them.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

If that's true, you have an Obviously, successful appeal.

[Santi Kimes]

It's on the record. I beg you. I beg the world to read the record.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Where do you think the woman is? You think she was murdered?

[Santi Kimes]

I. I think this. I think that the ones that they pinned it on us that I don't know what they've done with her.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

In the Los Angeles courtroom, she arrived by wheelchair, fainted, staged what looked like a heart attack, and then wept on cue. This one judge, Kathleen Kennedy, was unmoved by all these theatrics. And so she called Santi one of the most evil people she had ever come across. And ultimately, mother and son, Kenny and Santi received life sentences stacked on top of of the ones from New York State.

[Cooper Mall]

Okay.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Wow, Cooper, crazy story, crazy person.

[Cooper Mall]

That should be a T shirt.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

It really should.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

We should make that. I keep thinking about those notebooks, though, Right? Like, she built this whole empire. She had this obsession with planning out her crimes. And ultimately it was that obsession, after 40 years that would come to haunt her.

[Cooper Mall]

I think for me, with this story, it's the ending that I certainly didn't see coming. Right. Which is like this unbreakable bond between Santi and Kenny is broken. I mean, he sold her down the river.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

He turned on her. But, you know, this is the thing about manipulating somebody in this situation. We've seen it so many times. Person will do what you ask them to do in these socially engineered situations only for a period of time, and at some point, they're going to have enough. And I think for Kenny, enough was the death penalty.

[Cooper Mall]

Yeah. And I'm curious what everybody else thinks. Right. I mean, Kenny ultimately did pull the triggers in these cases, bagged the bodies, but he was also this boy and man who never really had a chance to become his own person. So I'm curious where you all land on, you know, whether or not he was a remorseless predator or Santi's longest running victim, if you will.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Right. Is he a victim of Santi's crimes, or could he just not resist the terrifying specter of the dragon lady? Or was there a degree of complicity that we should give him more credit for taking part in all of these horrible crimes?

[Cooper Mall]

Yeah. Tell us what you think. Okay. Jonathan, before we go today.

[Santi Kimes]

Yeah.

[Cooper Mall]

Next week we're doing something a little bit different. It's not just gonna be the two of us.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Yes.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Very excited.

[Cooper Mall]

We have a very special guest joining us.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Cooper Mall]

Sabrina from Two Girls One Ghost.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

One of our favorite shows, the spookiest show in America, Two Girls, One Ghost. She's gonna be joining us live in the studio to tell a crime story with us. It is going to be spooky, I promise. It is going to be fascinating as always. So join us for a very special collab episode with our friends over at Two Girls one Ghost.

[Cooper Mall]

Hey y'. All.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Thank you so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Just a reminder here, you can watch or listen to us on Spotify or or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is a production of Sony Podcasts and the Binge. Thank you to everybody who makes this happen week in and week out. Also, we're journalists. We love journalism. These stories have been deeply reported, the ones that you hear on this show and you can find an extensive bibliography by going to the show notes of this episode and to every episode to learn more about the reporting that informed all of the great stories you hear on Crime Scene. And just one last note, you can get exclusive content from us and the binge over 60 jaw dropping true crime stories bingeable and ad free right now by signing up for our [e-mail] so go to getthebinge.com to get access to our entire catalog of stories, but also to get behind the scenes access to all of the stories that Cooper and I are working on. To join us in the conversation about these cases, go to getthebinge.com to learn more. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately though, Mint Story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try at mintmobile.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Com.

[Cooper Mall]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. C Terms.