Killer Couples (17 page)

Was she another victim or a willing accomplice who shared in Gerald Gallego’s sick fantasies and enthusiastically helped him carry them out? Did she detach herself from what her ‘husband’ was doing, or participate enthusiastically, piling yet more agonies on the victims she’d helped lure into his path?

Somewhere in America, no one knows exactly where, there’s a middle-aged woman, barely over five feet tall, whose child-like frame makes her appear vulnerable and in need of protection. She may still be looking for a man powerful enough to take care of her, a man she can look up to. She has a pretty, intelligent face but the wariness in her eyes speaks of a shadowy, difficult past.

Only she knows all the answers, but she’s unlikely to tell you.

D
espite the obvious age gap, the couple in front of the TV cameras were clearly besotted by one another. Constantly holding hands and stroking one another as they took turns to talk to the presenter of the
60 Minutes
programme, they seemed to take great comfort just from being close to each other.

He was a young guy, probably in his mid-twenties and handsome in a clean-cut, preppy kind of way. In his designer suit, he looked like the kind of guy you’d expect to be selling you expensive houses or trying to sweet-talk you into a luxury car you couldn’t really afford. She was well into middle age, a fact she hadn’t been able to disguise with her unsparing use of heavy make-up, accentuated by her sensible-looking, business-style clothes. Her unnaturally black hair offset the chalky white of her thickly powdered skin.

They were hardly the best-matched couple but because of the obvious bond between them you could forgive these two lovebirds the incongruities in their age and wish them well, if it wasn’t for one thing: Sante and Kenny Kimes were mother and son – and they were about to stand trial for murder.

The body was bulky, and with the head and feet wrapped in plastic bin liners, the two men found it difficult to get a proper grip.

‘Come on, on the count of three!’

With a concerted effort, they heaved their awkward burden into the open dumpster. In the gloom of a Los Angeles evening, the alleyway they were in seemed eerily silent, the rubbish bins and empty boxes just menacing shapes in the shadows.

‘Right, let’s get out of here.’

The relief, as Kenny Kimes slid in behind the wheel of his car and high-tailed it away from that alleyway, was almost tangible. It was as though he could feel himself growing lighter with every metre he put between himself and that thing in the dumpster. And then along with the relief came another feeling – exhilaration.

He’d done it, he’d done it for her!

For almost the first time in his short life, he felt he’d really proved himself to the woman he loved above any other. With his nerves almost buzzing with energy and euphoria, Kenny wanted to do something to mark the occasion, a grand gesture to show how much she meant to him and how much he was willing to do for her.

Passing a florist, he pulled into the side of the road.

‘Give me the biggest bunch of flowers you’ve got,’ he told the pretty girl behind the counter. ‘A hundred dollars’ worth!’

She was worth it, he reflected, as he winked at the flower girl and strode back out to his car, his arms full of exotic blooms.

His mother was worth it.

Growing up as the son of the flamboyant Sante Kimes hadn’t exactly been a picnic for Kenny. Forget the enormous mansions where maids outnumbered family members; the swimming pools and the fancy holidays, the nice clothes and the
chauffeur-driven
cars. Yes, he had wanted for nothing materially, but Kenny had been deprived in other areas. Although his mother Sante and Kenny’s millionaire father Ken adored him, they were always off here and there – on someone’s yacht, at a weekend party. And with his half-brother Kent thirteen years older and mostly living away from home, he was left largely to his own devices.

It wasn’t as if he had a gang of mates to fall back on either. Sante, who always told Kenny he was different and special, didn’t allow him to attend school where he might have mixed with any old riff-raff. Instead she had him tutored at home and he was only allowed to play with a few children that she’d personally vetted.

‘What do you need lots of friends for when you have me?’ she’d ask, her heavily made-up eyes wide with sincerity. ‘You’re my whole world.’

That might have been true, but it wasn’t a very stable world.
Glamorous, extrovert Sante, who prided herself on being a Liz Taylor lookalike and even pretended to be the famous actress on occasion, had come from a desperately poor background where she’d had to get by on her wits. The result was that even as a wealthy adult she was always running one scam or another, never satisfied with what she had. Her third husband, Ken Kimes, was loaded enough for her never to have to worry about money, but being a Californian housewife was never part of Sante’s plan. Instead the couple continued to amass more money through various cons and fraudulent deals, living it up as they went.

Sante was a woman of frustrating contradictions – charming, funny and warm on one hand, but self-absorbed and cruel on the other. Having lacked for so much as a child, she now made up for it by fashioning her life into the Sante Kimes show, with everyone else as supporting actors, just grateful to be able to warm themselves within the outer rings of her radiance.

As much as Sante could love anyone, she loved her children, particularly her younger son Kenny. In her typical vain,
self-centred
way, Sante never really believed Kenny existed in an independent state – only as an offshoot of herself, a wonderful artwork she personally had created.

Right from the word go, she watched over what he wore, who he mixed with. Whenever she could, she had him with her: talking to him, moulding his views to her own. And Kenny, knowing nothing else and in thrall, as so many people were, to the force of nature that was Sante, was by and large happy to be moulded.

By the time Kenny was a teenager, his beloved mother was in jail. She was found guilty of two separate crimes – one of stealing a mink coat, another of slavery. Incredible though it sounded in 1980s California, Sante had recruited impoverished girls off the streets in Mexico and brought them to the US with promises of a steady income, only to keep them imprisoned in her homes, forcing them to work for nothing and beating them at whim. One even claimed to have been branded with a hot iron. She served five years in prison.

But if that period of enforced separation gave Kenny a taste of independent life away from his controlling mother’s clutches, he was back under her spell the moment she was released in 1989.

The thing was, Sante Kimes just had something about her. Though capable of great cruelty, she was also warm, charismatic and generous to those she loved. Being with her was never dull. She was always looking out for the next adventure, the next thrill, and her impressionable young son was swept right along with her.

By the time Kenny started at the University of California in Santa Barbara in August 1993, his close relationship with his mother was already raising eyebrows. ‘It’s not natural for a young guy like that to spend so much time with his mother,’ friends would whisper. Tongues wagged faster still when Sante insisted on moving with Kenny when he started college, sharing a house with him off-campus, where she played hostess to student parties, mingling with his friends as though she were his
girlfriend rather than his mother. Rumour had it that when the family went on holiday, it was Kenny and Sante who shared a double room while Ken slept alone.

Sante and Ken loved each other but it was a destructive kind of love. They brought out the worst in each other, and Ken always knew that the relationship between his wife and their son was unnaturally close. Indeed, there was a constant power struggle when he was alive between him and Sante over who could have most influence over Kenny.

When Ken died of a heart attack in 1994 Sante, well aware that her husband hadn’t changed his first Will made before he met her, didn’t tell anyone. Instead, she continued to forge his name on documents and told anyone who asked that he was away doing business abroad. Now that it was just Kenny and Sante their relationship, always close, became claustrophobic. If he was her world, she was also his. Handsome, charming young Kenny would do anything for his mother.

In 1996, the pair flew out to the Bahamas to meet with Syed Bilal Ahmed – a banker whom Sante was sure would help her secure a loan. It was an offer Ahmed could, and did, refuse. Shortly afterwards, he disappeared. Kenny would later admit in court that he’d drugged Ahmed and then he and Sante had held him down in the bathtub until he’d drowned. His weighted-down body had then been tossed into the ocean. No body, no crime…

David Kazdin was an old friend of Ken Kimes who agreed to help Sante out by putting his name on the deeds of one of her
properties. However, when Sante secretly took out a massive mortgage on the property, which Kazdin was then expected to repay, he threatened to go to the authorities.

Sante’s response was as unequivocal as it was callous: ‘We’re gonna have to kill him.’

On 13 March 1998, Kenny and a drifter he’d recruited to help went to Kazdin’s luxurious Los Angeles home.

‘David, I need to talk to you about some things,’ Kenny told the older man. But as Kazdin turned to get him a coffee, Kenny shot him in the back of the head. Later, he and his accomplice dumped Kazdin’s body in a dumpster near Los Angeles airport. He then stopped to buy his mommy dearest a bunch of flowers.

‘I felt I had completed a great duty,’ he would later explain to a packed courtroom.

With the heat on, Kenny and Sante fled across America, writing dodgy cheques as they went. They had no plan of what to do next but Sante, ever the optimist, was sure something would come up. And it did. In Florida, they were told about an elderly Manhattan socialite who lived alone and rented out suites in her sumptuous New York mansion.

Irene Silverman may have been 83 years old, but she wasn’t going to let a little thing like age get in the way of having a good time. The high-living widow, who owed her fortune to her property mogul husband, had converted her imposing grey limestone mansion at 20 East 65th Street, New York City, into a kind of luxury B&B for the rich and famous, where suites cost up to $6,000 per month. Even so, she didn’t let just anyone stay,
preferring those who came with a recommendation, or anyone who was fun to have around and happy to join her for dinner at one of her favourite restaurants or to accompany her to a party.

When a young man came to see her about renting an apartment in June 1998, Irene was suspicious. But the man, calling himself Manny Guerin, mentioned the name of one of her oldest friends by way of recommendation. It also didn’t hurt that he offered her $6,000 in cash to stay in one of her suites.

‘I’m expecting my PA any day. I hope that’s OK?’ he asked her, flashing her what was intended to be a winning smile.

But Irene was too long in the tooth to be taken in that easily. There was just something about the young man with the aquiline nose and the easy West Coast charm that put her on edge. And things didn’t improve when his PA arrived. The dumpy, middle-aged woman with the impossibly black hair and loud rasping voice soon put the backs up all Irene’s loyal staff and so the old lady decided to keep a watchful eye on the suspicious pair and keep a written journal of her observations.

The weekend of 4 July is one of the biggest celebrations in the US calendar. Irene had given all her staff the weekend off to spend with their families and the Silverman mansion was uncharacteristically quiet. During the night of 4 July, while the rest of the city celebrated 223 years of independence, Irene’s latest guests kept to their room, where they could be heard talking and arguing. But at some point during that night, the door to their suite opened and someone let themselves out softly. Soon after, 83-year-old Irene Silverman was bundled into
her own bedroom, where a struggle ensued. She was shot in the head with a stun gun and then young Mr Guerin strangled her with his bare hands.

Except, of course, that his name wasn’t Manny Guerin: it was Kenny Kimes. And his loud, brash PA was none other than his mother Sante.

The plan had been simple – and breathtakingly arrogant. They’d murder Irene, then pretend that the old lady had gone off on a long vacation and had sold her house to her ‘dear friend’ Sante. She would even forge a Bill of Sale to back up the story. Every stage of the planning was jotted down in one of the notebooks Sante took everywhere with her.

Once Irene was dead, the couple wrapped her tiny, frail body in a shower curtain specially bought for the task and crammed it into a large case, which they then hauled downstairs and out onto the street. Luckily for them, New York City was sleeping off its collective hangover by this time and hardly anyone was around to witness the mismatched couple heaving their heavy suitcase into the boot of their Lincoln car.

‘No body, no crime,’ Sante always said, and the two went to great lengths to make sure Irene Silverman would never be found, driving all the way to New Jersey to dispose of the body in a rubbish container in Hoboken.

But back in New York City, their luck was about to run out. A few days before the murder, they’d called a contact of theirs in Las Vegas. Stan Patterson had done ‘odds and ends’ for them before, not all of them strictly legal, so they were sure they could trust him.

‘We’re thinking of opening up a luxury B&B in New York City,’ Sante told him. ‘How’d you like to run it for us?’

Nothing Sante Kimes did surprised Patterson, but equally he wasn’t too surprised to find the police at his door soon after that conversation, asking about the murder of a guy named David Kazdin, a stolen car and a trail of other things that all seemed to point in one direction: Sante and Kenny Kimes.

When Scott turned up to meet Sante and Kenny at the New York Hilton, on 5 July 1998, he was not alone.

‘You can’t do this, we’re completely innocent – get your hands off me!’ Sante played the outraged citizen to perfection. Kenny, meanwhile, was wetting himself. Literally.

A search of the couple’s car soon turned up some interesting finds for the arresting officers. There were two guns, syringes, handcuffs and pepper spray. In addition, there was a wealth of evidence pertaining to a certain Irene Silverman – passport, keys, social security card and, most damning of all, a deed to her house with what was later proved to be a forged signature, reporting transfer of the ownership of the property to a corporation set up by Sante herself. There were also notebooks in Sante’s handwriting, in which she jotted down questions about the old lady’s habits and practised copying her signature.