The notorious mother-son crime team convicted of the murders of a wealthy widow in New York and a businessman in Los Angeles may have had an incestuous relationship, a detective assigned to the case has revealed.
The claim, aired in an interview on Sunday, comes from Clarissa “Cici” McNair, the private investigator who was involved in the Kenneth and Sante Kimes case a little more than two decades ago.
Kenneth, now 50, is currently serving a life sentence in San Diego for the murders, while his mother died in prison in 2014 at age 79.
They were jailed in 2000 for the 1998 murder of 82-year-old socialite Irene Silverman, the couple’s then-landlady – after Sante, a dead confidant of Elizabeth Taylor, plotted to kill her to protect her Upper East Side in To take possession of the villa.
Sante, played by Mary Tyler Moore in a 2004 TV movie, always denied the murders, but Kenneth – who shot businessman Dave Kazdin after an argument with Sante in 1998 – confessed to prevent the execution of either of them.
Sante Kimes and Kenneth Kimes, the notorious mother-son con team convicted of the murders of a wealthy widow in New York and a businessman in Los Angeles, may have had an incestuous relationship, a detective assigned to the case said Sunday
The claim, made in an interview on Sunday, comes from Clarissa “Cici” McNair (pictured), the private investigator who was involved in the case just over two decades ago
The case made headlines, in part because of the intrigue surrounding the initial disappearance of Silverman, a retired Radio City Rockette, but also because of the strange dynamic between the Kimeses, who had reportedly been sharing a bed on the first floor of the townhouse at the time.
“They were loving and affectionate, but in many ways they were also like a couple,” McNair theorized to Fox News about the couple and their living arrangements in Silverman’s 65th Street townhouse, which she also ran as a boarding house.
“Was it an incestuous relationship? “I can’t comment on that,” the private investigator continued, before delving deeper into her work on the case – which began by investigating Silverman’s disappearance in July 1998.
It was then that she first met Sante, a pretty woman who looked much younger than her 64 years.
“I asked her about it and she was very offended,” McNair continued, quickly adding, “But their relationship as mother and son was very unusual.”
She elaborated: “He had no friends.” Nobody was good enough for him. He grew up with her as the dominant force.”
She painted a picture of a selfish con artist who had no qualms about cheating her son – sometimes at his expense.
“Sante denied everything from the moment I met her in the summer of 1998 until her death in 2014,” McNair recalled. “She had an answer for everything… There were no excuses whatsoever.”
In 1998, the two killed their landlady, Irene Silverman, an 82-year-old former Radio City Rockette, who they strangled and then threw into a dumpster in New Jersey. She was a popular figure in her community and her disappearance and murder made headlines
Kenneth, now 50, is currently serving a life sentence in San Diego for the murders, while his mother died in prison in 2014 at age 79
Sante, a real-life confidante of Elizabeth Taylor, plotted to kill her in order to become the owner of the Upper East Side Mansion after Silverman’s death, and allegedly used a stun gun to subdue her in bed before Kenneth strangled her to death
Kenneth, who was reportedly sleeping in the same bed as his mother on the first floor of the townhouse at the time, has since spoken about how his mother taught him to kill. In a prison interview while serving a life sentence, he said this should serve as a “cautionary tale.”
McNair continued of the con artist, who denied any wrongdoing until the day she died in a Westchester County jail, “You couldn’t help but be attracted to her.”
“She had this… bad energy, evil energy, but she was attractive… She was flirtatious. She would fluff her hair and smile at you with twinkling eyes. She could have been a woman welcoming you into her home as she called for the butler to bring champagne.
It was this behavior that not only allowed her to excel in her craft, but also to influence her son to serve as her protector – and perhaps more.
In an extremely honest 2018 article, Kenneth — while serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to his involvement in the murders — detailed how he strangled Silverman at his mother’s behest.
“My hands are around Irene’s neck and I feel the electricity pulsing through this little woman as I choke the life out of her,” the fraudster — who now claims to be reformed — wrote in an open letter published by Narratively became.
“I’m terrified, but I keep my hands around her neck,” he continues, recalling the memory in the present and first person
“I don’t want to do this.” I want to run. I want to get on a plane and get as far away from New York City as possible, but I remain committed…
“Irene lies dead in my hands.” “She is so fragile,” he wrote.
The murder occurred at the mansion Silverman owned on East 65th Street (Center), where the couple reportedly slept together regularly, sources told the New York Post
Silverman was a former ballerina and wealthy Manhattan socialite. She owned the building where the mother-son duo had rented an apartment and they killed her with the intention of taking control of it after her death
He then placed the older woman’s body in the bathtub – also on his mother’s instructions – in an unfortunate attempt to take over the noble estate after her death.
As part of the conspiracy, they broke into Silverman’s apartment to find her passport and Social Security number before returning to their own rented apartment to stuff Silverman’s body into a duffel bag.
Kenneth recalled this endeavor in 2018: “My mother instructs me to put the body in a duffel bag.”
“Her tone reminds me of how she would speak to me as a child: “Kenny, go to bed. Kenny, brush your teeth. Kenny, put the body in the damn holdall.”
“I do as I am told.” The obedient son. Always,” he wrote.
Once the body was in their car, the mother-son duo drove to Trump Tower a few blocks away to eat breakfast and lie down after Sante scrubbed the crime scene with rubbing alcohol to ensure no trace of them remained.
“We’re sitting at a table drinking coffee and eating pastries. ‘How fucked up is that?’ wrote Kenneth, now 50, at the time.
“A woman was murdered by the same hands that are now wrapped around a cup of coffee.”
Other victims: Kenneth’s first murder was banker Syed Bilal Ahmed (left), whom they killed in the Bahamas in 1996 after he became suspicious about their accounts. In March 1998, Kenneth shot and killed Dave Kazdin (right) after he was involved in an argument with Sante. Sante had forged his signature to obtain a $280,000 loan
He then recounted how his mother had abused him throughout his life, recalling that the only time he was free from her influence as a child was when she spent five years in prison.
Also arrested was her husband, California real estate mogul Kenneth Kimes Sr. – both were charged with slavery after the couple’s maids told Mexican authorities that they had been beaten and locked in the couple’s home, The New York Times reported.
According to the outlet, Kimes served five years in prison while her husband served three years, while Kenneth served just ten years in prison at the time. He then visited the collage before finding himself under his mother’s yolk when his father, a wealthy motel owner, mysteriously died – the first in a series of deaths that culminated in Silverman’s death.
After Kenneth Sr.’s death, his son wrote, Sante discovered that her spouse had kept much of his assets in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, raking in thousands as a result.
Their use of the funds eventually caught the interest of banker Syed Bilal Ahmed – a Bahraini official at the First Cayman Bank in the Cayman Islands who had met mother and son in the Bahamas.
He was suspicious of the couple and it cost him his life, Kenneth wrote – revealing how they drugged him, drowned him and dumped his body in the Atlantic in 1996.
Despite Kenneth’s confession, they were never arrested for this murder.
This police photo, released in July 1998, shows Sante Kimes, who served as a domineering and potentially romantic role model for her son
Next came the murder of David J. Kazdin, a Las Vegas real estate owner who knew Kimes and her late husband. In 1998, his body was found in a trash can near Los Angeles Airport.
After Kenneth was sentenced to life in prison, he said his mother planned Kazdin’s murder and sent him to do the job.
He testified that he shot Kazdin in the back of the head at close range and that someone he found at a homeless shelter helped him dispose of the body.
Although Kazdin’s murder happened first, it was only linked to the couple after they were arrested in New York City – after documents uncovered by police in Silverman’s apartment revealed that the landlady had already suspected the couple were up to no good was up to.
Evidence in her car bolstered the case for Kazdin’s murder – which led to Kenneth, after years of following his mother’s example, pleading guilty to the businessman’s death in 2003.
In 2004, Sante was convicted in California and later sentenced to life in prison. Kenneth said his mother decided to kill Kazdin, an old friend, after Kazdin discovered that she had taken out a $280,000 loan by forging his signature.
At the time of the Kimeses’ sentencing, authorities determined that Kenneth had strangled Silverman and that he and his mother had stuffed her body in trash bags and disposed of it in a location only they knew.
Mary Tyler Moore and Gabriel Olds star in Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes, a 2001 TV movie
A police search of her car and luggage found weapons, a knockout liquid, plastic handcuffs, terror masks, syringes, recordings of Silverman’s telephone conversations and a forged deed to Silverman’s home.
For her role in this murder, Sante was sentenced to 120 years in prison. Her son received 125 years and a life sentence.
Kent Walker, Sante’s estranged son, said in his book “Son of a Grifter” that his mother – the daughter of an Oklahoma prostitute who often lied about her past – came from a good family that couldn’t handle her wild behavior.
In one of her wildly different stories about her upbringing, Kimes claimed that her father was a laborer and her mother a prostitute who left Oklahoma for LA, leaving her young daughter to fend for herself.
Kimes also committed insurance fraud and arson to recover property damage.
He also recalled that the late con artist was also a skilled con artist – she once even managed to gain access to a Ford administration reception at the White House by introducing her husband as an ambassador.
After more than a decade and a half in prison, Sante died in her cell at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County in May 2014.
Without her son’s confession, she would likely have been executed for the murders.
The private investigator said Sunday that the case of the duo – often referred to as “Mama and Clyde” – proves that there are “sociopaths everywhere… And I think in this case we had a sociopath creating her son in her own image.” has”.
In his article, Kenneth, who is still in prison, lamented how difficult it was to take action against them after years of obedience.
“To avoid the death penalty, I made a deal and confessed. My mother wouldn’t cooperate, not even to save my life. She insisted that we continue with our lies of innocence, so I testified against her to save us both.
“After two days of confessions, I went back to my cell and wrote in my diary: “Tattle Tell, Tattle Tell, too bad you’re going straight to hell. I’m no longer the son who would do anything for his mother.” But I’m still a murderer. Only now can I live. I’m the narc who escaped the needle. The piece of shit that isn’t allowed to walk the Green Mile.
“Just spent the last 10 minutes vomiting. I ratted out my mother. If I didn’t, we would both go to death row. Now we can live. I already feel dead… God have mercy on us. Nobody else will do it.’
McNair added of the couple’s suspected motive and possible relationship: “Sante was a very powerful, highly intelligent, ruthless and ruthless woman.”
“She manipulated her lawyers.” She manipulated me… She was a femme fatale who attracted lovers, husbands, bankers and lawyers. She said.
“And when she wanted something, she would stop at nothing until she got what she wanted.” And I think Kenny got sucked into her web. He was willing to follow their wishes… I also believe that they fed off each other.
“When Kenneth Sr. died, they became closer as mother and son… Those daring escapades of stealing credit cards, using false disguises, checking out of hotels without paying – that was exciting for them.”
She went on to tell Fox that the case of the duo – often referred to as “Mommy and Clyde” – proves that there are “sociopaths everywhere.”
“They’re not a rare species,” she said. “They are smart, often very attractive and used to getting what they want.” There is no guilt.
“And I think in this case we had a sociopath who created her son in her own image.”