Sante Kimes | Final Dynasty | 5

You're listening to American Criminal.

New episodes are released every Thursday.

But to listen to all episodes in this series right now and ad free, go to intohistory.com.

It's June 22nd, 2004, at the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Hollywood.

At the defendant's table, Sante Kimes sits in a wheelchair.

Now 70, Sante's hair is gray, and she's wearing a matronly blouse with embroidered detail at the collar.

Her spectacles are thick, but behind them, Sante's eyes are laser focused on the witness stand across the room.

Sitting behind the microphone, shrinking slightly under his mother's gaze, is 29-year-old Kenneth Kimes, Jr.

Not all that long ago, Kenny was the kind of guy who dressed in expensive suits and designer shoes.

He used to have wavy brown hair and a disarming smile.

Now he's dressed in an orange jumpsuit.

His face is hollowed out, and he looks pale under the courtroom lights.

Though that could just be because of what he's about to do.

In the 20 or so feet between mother and son is prosecutor Eleanor Hunter.

She's behind a lectern.

Her notes opened in front of her.

And like Sante, she's only got eyes for Kenny.

Both women are vying for his attention.

But it's a battle Sante lost long ago, though she'd never admit that to herself.

While Kenny answers Eleanor's questions, Sante's trying desperately to make eye contact with her youngest son.

She's sure that if she can just get through to him, she can pull him back into line, stop him from saying anything worse than he already has.

But it's no use.

Kenny's made his decision.

And try as she might, Sante is powerless to stop what's going to happen.

She wonders if she should try to cry or maybe fake another medical emergency.

That had derailed proceedings earlier in the trial.

Perhaps it could work again.

She's just about to clutch at her chest and start loudly complaining about her heart when she hears it.

Kenny begins to talk about what happened on East 65th Street, Manhattan, July 5th, 1998.

He starts to talk about what they did to Irene Silverman.

From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

By the mid 1990s, Sante Kimes was a woman much diminished.

She'd lost her millionaire husband, had alienated her eldest son, and the fortune she'd planned on inheriting had basically evaporated, wasted on legal fees, gambling addictions, and failed business ventures.

But Sante refused to be poor.

All her life, she'd insisted that she was special, that she'd be a great success.

And so, even in her sixties, she kept trying to make her delusions a reality through a variety of schemes and crimes.

The thing was, Sante was never a particularly skilled criminal.

She'd avoided punishment in many of her antics through sheer force of will, killing witnesses, and by throwing her late husband's money at the problem.

But now, without millions to burn, Sante was forced to rely on a resource she didn't have much of.

Her wits.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't enough.

Sante tried for months to get access to close to a million dollars in an offshore bank account belonging to her dead husband, but was thwarted by a suspicious and stubborn manager.

And instead of reassessing the situation, Sante had decided that the best thing for it was to just get rid of the guy and hope that that would solve her problem.

After that, Sante's schemes only got wilder, more desperate, and even bloodier.

This is episode five in our five-part series on Sante Kimes, Final Dynasty.

It's September 4, 1996, at the Androsha Steak and Seafood Restaurant in the Bahamas.

This is a regular haunt for 60-year-old Sante Kimes whenever she's in Nassau.

She and her son, 21-year-old Kenny, have been spending a lot of time in the island nation over the last few years.

And most nights, they're drinking alone.

But tonight, they're joined by Syed Bilal Ahmed, a 55-year-old executive from the first Cayman Bank.

Sante wants her guest to feel at ease.

She insists that he order an expensive dish and waves over a server every time Syed finishes his cocktail.

By the end of the meal, Syed's chuckling along to Kenny's jokes.

And when Sante invites him back to their place for a night cab, he happily agrees.

Sante and Kenny live in a four-bedroom rental on the beach, just a couple of blocks from where Syed's staying at the Radisson.

On the way there, Sante prattles on about how easy it'll be for him to walk back to his room later.

But she knows full well that he'll never make it.

Once they arrive at Sante's place, she asks Kenny to make the drinks.

Without saying a word, Kenny disappears into the kitchen, and Sante and Syed can hear the clink of glasses and bottles for a couple of minutes.

He emerges with a single glass and hands it to Syed, fixing his mother with an intense stare as he does.

Then he goes to fetch the rest of the drinks.

Syed doesn't notice that his hosts don't touch their glasses.

He doesn't clock that Sante and Kenny are both watching him closely as he sips his highball and chatters away.

He doesn't taste the Rehipnol in his cocktail either.

About 20 minutes after Syed first starts drinking, he begins slurring his words, then can barely keep his eyes open.

Before long, he's completely passed out on the couch.

Sante and Kenny wait a moment to make sure that Syed's actually asleep.

Then they each seize one end of his body and carry him slowly into the bathroom.

The bathtub's already full of water and they lower him in until he's completely submerged.

A few seconds later, Syed startles awake and starts to pull himself out of the tub.

Reacting quickly, Sante yells for Kenny to hold Syed down.

So Kenny leans forward and places his hand on Syed's shoulders, holding his thrashing form under the water for several long minutes.

Finally, it's quiet in the house.

While Kenny dries himself, Sante pats him on the shoulder and walks out of the bathroom.

She picks up Syed's empty glass and throws it in the trash.

She doesn't want any evidence the banker was here.

He's gone now, and that's all that matters to Sante.

The rest is for Kenny to deal with.

The next day, Kenny rents a boat and drives it far out into the ocean.

Once he can't see land anymore, he pulls Syed's body out of a wicker trunk and hauls it to the edge of the boat.

With a grunt, he pushes Syed into the water and straightens up to catch his breath.

But to his surprise, the body doesn't sink.

It floats.

And after just a few seconds, it starts to drift away.

Swearing under his breath, Kenny brings the boat around, and after a short, tense struggle, manages to fish Syed out of the water.

He ties the boat's anchor around Syed's ankles and heaves him over the side again, watching as he's pulled quickly down and out of sight.

Finally, it's done.

In the days after the murder of Syed Bilal Ahmed, local Bahamian authorities start investigating his disappearance.

They go to the Radisson, where Syed was staying, and staff there tell them that a couple of people, an older woman and younger man, were asking for a copy of Syed's room key just a few days before he vanished.

Then, when they speak to Syed's colleagues at First Cayman Bank, they hear about the suspicious faxes someone had been sending to their subsidiary, Gulf Union, demanding large wire transfers from the account of Ken Kimes Sr.

It doesn't take the detectives long to connect the dots.

After that, they make their way to Sante and Kenny's island home.

But Sante Kimes is no stranger to criminal investigations, and over the last few decades, she's gotten very good at avoiding the authorities.

That said, her technique here isn't particularly sophisticated.

When the police show up at her door, she simply refuses to answer it.

She also ignores the many phone calls that start coming in.

She figures that if the cops had anything solid on her, they'd have a warrant for her arrest.

Until that happens, she's gonna just pretend she's not home.

After a couple of days of waiting, Sante and Kenny notice that there are no police stationed outside the house.

So they grab their stuff and race to the airport, where they board the first flight to Florida.

Neither of them will ever return to the Bahamas.

With their prime suspects in the case gone, the Bahamian authorities step up their search for Sayed.

By this stage, it's already assumed that the banker has been murdered, so they're looking for a body.

They dig underneath Sante's rental home and even under the local branch of Sayed's bank.

Of course, they don't find anything and they never will.

Sayed Bilal Ahmed, the banker who dared to refuse Sante Kimes' request for money, has been swallowed by the sea.

As she touches back down in the US, Sante is excited to finally get her hands on the hundreds of thousands locked away in the offshore account.

Starting in December of 1996, she sends several more requests for withdrawals to the bank, all complete with Ken Kimes' senior signature.

But she doesn't get a dime.

It turns out that First Kamen is now in liquidation.

There's no way Sante and Kenny are going to get any money now, not without a long, drawn-out legal fight, and certainly not by sending in the forged signature of a dead man.

So in the end, Sante and Kenny killed Syed for nothing.

Now Sante is desperate for another source of income.

Luckily for her, though, she still has a few assets to her name, and she's going to milk them for all they're worth, and then some.

In January 1998, 15 months after she killed Syed, Sante takes out a mortgage of about $280,000 on her home in Las Vegas.

That'd be more than 500K in 2024.

It's a fraction of the amount she's been trying to get from Ken Senior's account, but it's still a sum she's willing to fight for.

She's even happy to kill for it if she has to.

Now, you might remember that a couple of years ago, Sante convinced her friend David Casden to put that Vegas home in his name.

It was part of a scheme to hide her property from an attorney who was trying to collect on unpaid legal bills.

Well, what that means now is that when Sante finalizes the mortgage paperwork, at least some of the documentation is sent to David.

So, suddenly, he's getting notices in the mail telling him that he's got to make repayments on a huge loan he never took out.

Hoping that his friends just made a mistake, David calls Sante to try and get it all straightened out.

But she just laughs.

She tells David that he has to accept that he's on the hook for the loan.

There's nothing he can do about it.

Ooh, and Sante's not done.

She's decided that she can squeeze even more money out of the property by returning to one of her favorite schemes.

Insurance fraud.

It's now that Sante executes the quid claim deed on the Vegas home.

That's the piece of paper that instantly revokes David's ownership of the house and returns it to Sante.

Once that's done, Sante pays a visit to a local shelter for the unhoused.

Since her conviction for slavery and human trafficking a decade ago, Sante's been picking up people from the shelter and using them as unpaid labor around the house.

Now she needs someone for a slightly different task.

So at the shelter, she lures a man to her car and offers him money to sign some paperwork for.

The documents are to take out a $500,000 insurance policy on the home.

Not long after that, on January 31st, 1998, the Kimes Vegas home goes up in flames, and Sante gets going on filing the insurance claim.

But after her stint in prison and the quick response of the police in the Bahamas, Sante's feeling more nervous than she used to when she pulled one of her schemes.

These days, she's got just enough self-awareness to realize that she has a suspiciously long track record of fire-related insurance claims.

So she and Kenny figured that it's a good time to get out of Vegas and put some distance between themselves and the scene of the crime.

In late February, the mother and son head southwest making for Los Angeles.

There they rent a room in a Bel Air home, giving their landlady the names Sandy and Manny Garan, along with $8,000 cash for a six month stay.

They also bring Robert McCarran, a man they picked up from the shelter in Vegas.

Sante tells their landlady that the guy is their servant.

It doesn't take long though for the landlady to figure out that Sante and Kenny are bad news.

When she corners Robert, he tells her exactly that, warning her that they're dangerous people.

Whether Sante overhears that conversation or her paranoia is simply flaring up, she decides she needs to teach Robert a lesson in obedience and loyalty.

She and Kenny drag Robert into their bedroom one night, where Kenny pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot him in the head.

Then Sante brandishes a knife and tells Robert that if he ever talks to anyone about them again, she'll cut out his tongue.

The reason Sante is so frightened is that she's trying to lie low.

For once in her life, she wants to fly under the radar, at least until the heat dies down and she can finally claim the insurance money for the Vegas home.

But while they wait for the right moment, David Casden forces Sante's hand.

Since Sante took out the mortgage on the house in his name, he's been trying to get the bank to cancel the loan.

He's told them what happened and given them all the information that he has on Sante Kimes.

Obviously, Sante hasn't ignored that.

She's been sending David threatening faxes, ordering him to stop lying about it.

But David's not gonna just start paying for a 30 year mortgage.

And when that becomes obvious, Sante tells Kenny that they've only got one choice now.

It's time for another murder.

I'm Jeremy Schwartz, a host of American Criminal.

And I'm telling you, Hero Bread is my hero.

I love their tortillas.

I love their cheddar biscuits.

I love their seeded bread.

Their food's amazing.

Low to no net carbs.

Tons of fiber, tons of protein.

All good for you.

All taste delicious.

Does not taste like cardboard.

That should be in gigantic print all over every piece of packaging they have.

It tastes like delicious bread, delicious tortillas, delicious croissants, delicious rolls.

Those Hawaiian rolls, I'm not kidding you.

Holy cow, those are good.

So go get it.

It's outstanding.

Keep the carbs out without compromising flavor with hero bread.

Get 10% off your order at hero.co and use the code American Criminal at checkout.

That's American Criminal at h-e-r-o dot c-o.

Hey, this is Jeremy Schwartz, host of American Criminal.

Question, have you thought about a gift for yourself this year, one that has the power to help you grow, help you learn and become a better version of yourself?

Give yourself the gift of language by getting Babbel.

Speak like a whole new you with Babbel, the language learning app that gets you talking.

Babbel's tips and tools are inspired by real life stuff that you'll actually need when talking.

With a focus on conversations, you'll be ready to talk wherever you go.

Studies from Yale, Michigan State University, and other leading universities continue to prove Babbel works.

One study found that using Babbel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester at college.

With over 16 million subscriptions sold, Babbel's 14 award-winning language courses are backed by a 20-day money-back guarantee.

So your gift to yourself or your loved ones is risk free.

Here's a special holiday deal for our listeners.

Right now, get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for listeners at babbel.com/americancriminal.

Get up to 60% off at babbel.com/americancriminal, spelled babbel.com/americancriminal.

Rules and restrictions may apply.

It's the afternoon of March 13th, 1998, in Los Angeles, California.

Outside their temporary Bel Air home, 22-year-old Kenny Kimes slides into his mother's latest car, a Lincoln she bought with a bad check.

Beside Kenny, Sean Little climbs into the passenger seat.

He's yet another drifter Sante's recruited to be something of a gopher whenever she needs him.

But what's about to happen is beyond what he expected when he signed up to be Sante's lackey.

From Bel Air, Kenny drives the Lincoln about 15 miles north to Granada Hills and parks in David Casden's driveway.

Kenny orders Sean to wait in the car, then gets out to ring the doorbell.

When 63-year-old David opens the door, Kenny greets him like an old friend.

After all, David's known Sante for decades and has watched Kenny grow up.

Still, it's clear that David's nervous.

He's always stayed on Sante's good side, but he knows that she can be vicious.

If he truly understood her, though, he wouldn't have invited Kenny inside.

But he did.

And after he and Kenny catch up for a couple of minutes, Kenny asks David for a cup of coffee.

When David turns his head for the kitchen, Kenny pulls out a gun, takes careful aim, and shoots him in the back of the head.

A minute or two later, Kenny's back at the car.

He opens Sean's door and tells him to come inside, stopping to grab some supplies from the trunk on his way.

Back in David's living room, Kenny throws Sean a pair of gloves and some rags, and tells him to wipe down any surfaces that might have fingerprints on them.

The whole time, both men stoically ignore the body lying face down on the floor in a growing pool of blood.

After they're done with their initial sweep, Kenny rips into a box of industrial strength trash bags.

That's when they turn to finally look at David's body.

They wrap them in a total of four bags and duct tape them closed.

Once that's done, they carefully clean the floor of blood and change into the spare clothes Kenny brought along.

With the house looking as clean as it was when Kenny showed up, he and Sean pick up David's body and bring it outside to the driveway.

They push David into the trunk of his own green Jaguar.

Then they drive both cars south for about an hour until they're near Los Angeles International Airport.

They cruise around for a while until they find a quiet alley behind LAX.

They pull over and hoist David's body into a dumpster in the alley, then drive off to dump the Jaguar closer to the city.

Once they're back together in the Lincoln, the men get to talking about movies and decide to stop and see The Man in the Iron Mask.

By the time they emerge from the theater, it's getting dark.

On his way back to Bel Air, Kenny stops to buy his mother a bunch of flowers, a special treat to celebrate a job well done.

David Casden's body is found in the dumpster the next day, and the investigation into his murder begins immediately.

When LAPD detectives talk to David's friends, they start to hear about some woman who saddled David with a massive mortgage for a house he doesn't even own, how she's been threatening him.

It doesn't take long for the cops to figure out that Sante Kimes is the woman they're looking for.

But by the time they start searching for her, Sante's already on the move.

She and Kenny flee LA quickly after the murder, and they spend several months traveling around the country, never staying in one place for long.

For a while, they crash with a friend in Las Vegas, but eventually head east, ending their road trip in Palm Beach, Florida.

Sante likes Florida.

A lot of people retire there to make the most of the warm weather, and Sante figures they're all easy marks.

She proves her theory by striking up a conversation with a couple at an exclusive country club.

The couple rent a two-bedroom apartment at the club, and Sante feigns interest in joining the community, eventually talking her way into taking over the lease from the couple.

Then, once she's in the condo, Sante spends a couple of months racking up huge long-distance phone bills, while the utilities are still attached to the former tenants.

She's calling people all over the country, sketching out a plan for her next scheme.

She wants to find a really solid target, the kind of person who will have plenty of money for Sante to get her hands on, and who won't have any family members to get in the way.

The bulk of her calls are to check on property titles.

She reads up on valuable buildings and homes and then works out who owns them.

She's looking for assets that don't have any money owing on them, and prefers owners who are much older than she.

One of her calls is about a mansion on East 65th Street in Manhattan.

The Upper East Side building is owned by one Irene Silverman, a widow in her 80s and is worth at least $7 million.

In 2024, the property's value is closer to $20 million.

Even better, the building's broken up into a number of smaller luxury apartments that go for thousands of dollars every month.

Some of her previous tenants have included Daniel Day Lewis, Jennifer Grey and Shaka Khan.

It's perfect.

By April 1998, Sante feels like she knows enough and sets everything in motion.

She calls Irene Silverman to inquire about renting one of her apartments.

Sante tells Irene that her name is Eva and that she's the secretary of a wealthy young businessman named Manny Guerin.

After a few phone calls, Sante finalizes a deal for Manny, who will be played by Kenny, to move into a one-bedroom apartment at the beginning of June.

With that lined up, Sante and Kenny get into their car and head up the coast to New York.

Once they arrive in Manhattan, Kenny goes right to Irene's place on East 65th.

Irene had told Sante that all prospective tenants need to go through a real estate company she deals with.

They take care of all the contracts and payments, as well as run a background check.

Obviously, Kenny can't have a background check done, not with his fake name.

And contracts create a paper trail, which they definitely don't want.

So Kenny knocks on Irene's door, introduces himself as Manny Guerin, and tells the 82-year-old that he'd rather not deal with any realtors.

Then, he pulls out 6 grand cash to cover a month's rent.

Against her better judgment, Irene agrees to the deal and shows Kenny to apartment 1B.

Within days, Irene's regretting her decision.

Kenny's acting very strangely.

And like his attention-seeking mom, he's in no way subtle.

He always hides his face from security cameras in the lobby, and whenever Irene passes his door, she can see a shadow underneath, like he's standing there watching everyone through the peephole.

He refuses to let the in-house maids come clean the apartment, and even installs an extra deadbolt on his door.

On the rare occasions he ventures into the rest of the building, he prowls the other floors, asking the building staff about Irene.

Personal questions.

The kinds of things that might be used as security questions to verify a person's identity.

He even outright asks people for Irene's social security number.

No one gives him any such information, of course, but still, it's unsettling.

Before long, Irene's telling her friends about her suspicious new tenant.

She writes in her notebook about the weird things he's doing and makes sketches of his face, just in case.

And while Kenny's creeping everyone out, Sante's trying to help in whatever way she can.

She calls Irene several times to tell her she's won a luxury vacation to Las Vegas.

All Irene needs to do to claim her prize is supply her social security number.

When Vegas doesn't tempt Irene, Sante calls back, each time offering something new.

Usually, some kind of all-expense paid cruise.

But Irene's no dummy.

She never falls for the scam.

At the end of June, Sante and Kenny give up on getting their hands on Irene's social security number and obtain a phony one for them to use instead.

Once they have that, they procure a number of documents that they forge Irene's signature on.

A power of attorney form, a contract transferring ownership of the mansion, and a stack of rental agreements.

Then they start inviting notaries public to witness the bogus papers.

The first guy walks in to Kenny's apartment where he's greeted by a woman, Sante, propped up in bed and dressed in a number of shawls and a wig, who says that she's Irene Silverman.

The lighting is turned down low in the room and Kenny and Sante present the notary with a stack of the pre-signed paperwork.

But he refuses to authenticate them without seeing Irene sign them herself.

The next notary is more easily convinced and does exactly as she's asked.

So with very little effort, Sante's got a contract saying that Irene has transferred her mansion to a holding corporation Sante owns.

The document says that Sante's paid Irene 396 grand for the property.

And with the contract in hand, Sante starts to get ready for the next phase of the plan.

Well, actually, the next phase should be making Irene Silverman disappear.

But Sante's impatient and cocky.

So she's thinking about what comes after that.

And it's a big mistake.

On July 1st, 1998, Sante calls Stanley Patterson in Las Vegas.

In the past, Sante's paid Stanley to move some furniture for her.

And Kenny's bought a couple of guns from him, too.

Now, though, Sante's got a set of elaborate instructions for Stan.

She wants him to fly to New York to take over managing an apartment building she's about to come into possession of.

He's to evict all of the current tenants and oversee any renovations to the place.

Oh, and she tells him to bring some guns with him.

Stanley tells Sante he'll be there.

And she arranges for him to fly out in a few days.

Once he hangs up the phone, though, Stanley picks it up again to call the Los Angeles Police Department.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, they'd come to see him about a gun registered in his name that was used to kill David Casden a year ago.

He told the police about Sante and Kenny and promised to let the cops know if they tried to contact him again.

Now, he knows exactly where they'll be on July 5th.

The LAPD investigators are cautiously optimistic.

They've been trying to track down the killer duo for over a year, and now they've got less than a week to organize a bicoastal sting.

But while the cops make their plans to move in and arrest Sante Kimes, she's getting ready to move in for the final kill.

Hey, this is Jeremy Schwartz, the host of American Criminal.

I have a word that a lot of people think is scary.

Investing.

Investing can feel very intimidating.

People don't know where to begin.

Investing can get put off on the back burner because people don't feel that it's urgent.

And saving enough for retirement feels almost impossible.

Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing.

For you, your kids and your retirement.

You don't need a lot of money or expertise to invest with Acorns.

In fact, you can get started with just your spare change.

Acorns recommends an expert-built portfolio that fits you and your money goals.

Then automatically invests your money for you.

And now Acorns is putting their money into your future.

Open an Acorns Later IRA and get up to a 3% match on new contributions.

That's extra money for your retirement.

Head to acorns.com/americancriminal or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future today.

Paid non-client endorsement.

Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns.

Investing involves risk.

Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.

View important disclosures at acorns.com/americancriminal.

It's just after 1 p.m.

on July 5th, 1998, in apartment 1B of Irene Silverman's Manhattan Mansion.

63-year-old Sante Kimes is waiting in the entryway of the apartment, leaning against the wall, her face pressed to the slightly ajar door.

She's watching the elevator in the lobby.

The rest of the building's residents are away for the holiday weekend, so Sante knows that when the elevator starts moving, it can only be Irene.

As the elevator groans into action, Sante hisses at 23-year-old Kenny to get ready.

He presses forward to take his mother's place at the door.

A minute later, the elevator opens and outsteps Irene Silverman, her flaming red hair unmistakable in the gleaming lobby.

As the 82-year-old passes by 1B, Kenny throws open the door and lunges.

He grabs Irene and drags her inside.

As soon as Kenny's got the door locked behind him, Sante turns on the television and cranks up the volume.

Then, while Kenny holds Irene still, Sante picks up a stun gun and shoots 200,000 volts directly into Irene's head.

With their victim knocked out, Sante turns her attention to her son.

Do it, she orders.

Kenny wraps his hands around Irene's throat and squeezes, throttling her until he feels all resistance leave her body.

Irene Silverman is dead.

And Sante Kimes couldn't be happier.

About an hour later, Kenny exits the mansion onto East 65th Street.

He's pulling the large black duffel bag on a luggage cart behind him.

He walks down the block to where their car's parked.

He loads the duffel bag into the trunk and gets behind the wheel and pulls away from the curb.

Just as his mother ordered, he heads out of the city and into New Jersey.

There he drives around for a while, cruising through back streets and quiet neighborhoods until he spots a dumpster in an empty alley.

That's where he tosses Irene Silverman's body before driving back to Manhattan.

Meanwhile, Stanley Patterson has arrived in New York to meet with Sante and Kenny.

A few hours before the murder of Irene Silverman, Stanley was met at the airport by a couple of FBI agents who have been coordinating with the NYPD and LAPD.

After a quick briefing, they rush Stanley to the Hilton on West 54th and 6th, where he's been waiting to meet Sante since 11 a.m.

While Stanley sits in the hotel lobby and the assembled task force watches him from a distance, Sante and Kenny are killing Irene Silverman and disposing of her body.

It's not until around 5 p.m.

when Sante finally shows up at the Hilton.

She immediately announces that she needs a drink, which makes sense.

It's only been a few hours since she and her son killed a woman.

So she steers Stanley to the hotel bar, where they stay for the next hour.

The cops hang back for the time being, wanting to make their move only when Kenny is there too.

After three strong drinks, Sante leads Stanley across the road to a park.

That's where Kenny catches up to them, having made it back to the city from New Jersey at last.

Once mother and son are reunited, the investigators move in, guns drawn, and grab Sante and Kenny before they know what's hit them.

Kenny is pushed up against a wall where he promptly wets himself in fright.

When a cop grabs Sante's giant vinyl purse off her shoulder, she starts screaming that it's not hers, that it belongs to a friend.

Clearly she's had plenty more experience being arrested than her son, and she knows that her bag is full of incriminating evidence.

Although it's all stuff relating to Irene's murder, which isn't what she's being arrested for.

These cops are only here about David Casden.

So while the bag's contents are suspicious, 10 grand in cash, seven passports, and a bunch of legal documents relating to Irene Silverman, they don't ring any specific alarm bells for the arresting officers.

And why would they?

As the NYPD officers and FBI agents cuff Sante and Kenny, they have no idea that their comrades are a mile away doing their first sweep of Irene's empty mansion.

Later that night, the police who arrested Sante and Kenny find the Lincoln in the parking garage where Kenny left it.

Inside, they pick up the box from the stun gun, a mound of plastic trash bags, and a quilt like the one missing from apartment 1B.

They also find 13 notebooks full of Sante's scribbled writing.

The cops don't pay much attention to what the pages say.

If they did, they might realize the notebooks are a detailed, meticulous roadmap for killing Irene Silverman and taking her mansion.

But for now, no one connects the suspected murderers with the missing socialite.

It's not until the following evening that a detective makes the connection.

He sees a sketch of Irene's creepy tenant, Manny Guerin, and realizes it looks an awful lot like Kenny Kimes.

After that, news breaks that the cops already have a mother and son in custody over the disappearance, and will be charging them in due course.

That will delay the Casden case in California, but Irene's story is the one that's captured the nation's interest.

In the days following their sensational arrest, Sante and Kenny Kimes make tabloid headlines across the country.

Who's ever heard of a mother-son killer team?

And when the indictments come down, the story only picks up steam.

There are over 100 counts between them, including second-degree murder, grand larceny, eavesdropping, possession of weapons, possession of stolen property, and forgery.

And that's just for the Irene Silverman case.

Over the next 18 months, anticipation for the trial builds, partly thanks to Sante's insistence on doing multiple high-profile media interviews.

She speaks with Larry King and 60 Minutes, trying to convince the world that she's innocent, that Irene was her dear friend who wanted nothing more than to gift Sante her mansion.

That's all.

But despite Sante's belief in her own powers of persuasion, no one's buying what she's selling.

When the case is finally gaveled in February 2000, the headlines stir up even more excitement.

Sante's courtroom histrionics are the same as they were during her slavery trial of the 80s.

She makes frequent outbursts that she's the victim of a conspiracy and that the police are out to get her and otherwise tries to draw focus from whoever's testifying.

And then there's her strange relationship with Kenny.

Journalists notice that they're always holding hands in the courtroom and frequently lean in to whisper in one another's ear.

They look more like lovers than mother and son.

Whether there's anything to the rumors, the mere suggestion of incest makes the story even more scandalous than it already is.

Through it all, Sante sits at the defense table, watching the prosecutors lay out the evidence against them, including Sante's handwritten notebooks featuring her complex plan to kill Irene and steal her home.

She even gave the scheme a name, Final Dynasty, showing off her obsession with creating a new legacy for her son to inherit.

In addition to the 130 plus witnesses who have their say, Sante is desperate to get her turn.

She knows, she just knows, that she can clear everything up.

But at the very last minute, Sante's lawyers manage to talk her out of testifying.

She's finally convinced that she'll only do a lot of damage to her own case which is a flimsy case as it is.

But Sante's silence doesn't help anyway.

After a three-and-a-half-month trial, Sante and Kenny are found guilty on every count against them.

Sante on 58 charges, Kenny on 60.

Sante's flabbergasted by the verdict.

She just doesn't understand how anyone could possibly believe that she's a criminal.

At sentencing, she finally gets the chance to have her say.

She gives a long rambling speech defending herself and her son, again claiming that they're the victims of a conspiracy, and asserting that there's no proof that Irene Silverman is even dead because her body hasn't been found.

For 55 minutes, Sante drones on and on, ignoring her lawyers who keep asking her to stop.

Eventually, it's only Kenny's begging that convinces her to draw breath.

That's when the judge cuts her off.

Everyone's heard enough from Sante Kimes.

When the judge hands down her sentence, she calls Sante the most degenerate defendant who has ever appeared in her courtroom.

She says that in all her years on the bench, she's always founded a difficult, painful obligation to impose sentences.

Until today.

Then she sentences Sante to 120 years behind bars.

Kenny gets 125.

But of course, that's not the end of the story.

Sante and Kenny are still expected to stand trial over the murder of David Kasdan in California.

And in that case, they're both facing the death penalty.

The extradition to California happens four years later in 2004.

But before the trial begins, Kenny cuts a deal with the prosecutors.

He agrees to confess to the murder and testify against his mother.

In exchange, neither of them will face the death penalty.

Then, while his mother sits in a wheelchair at the defense table, crying and yelling interjections, Kenny Kimes speaks in detail about the murders of Irene Silverman, David Casden and Sayed Bilal Ahmed.

When it's her turn to testify in her own defense, Sante continues her usual performance, accusing the prosecutor of torturing Kenny until he turned on her.

Of course, it doesn't do her any good.

At the end of the trial, Sante is found guilty, easily.

When sentencing her to life in prison, the judge calls 71-year-old Sante, one of the most evil individuals she's ever met.

After that, mother and son separate again.

Obviously, they've been in different prisons for years, but now they're on different coasts.

Kenny stays in California to live out his days behind bars.

After all of Sante's grand plans for her youngest son, her dream to make him the heir to his father's wealth, he's turned out just like his mother instead.

Sante herself is sent back to New York to serve out the remainder of her term.

No amount of scheming can get her out.

Her appeals are denied, and she's largely forgotten by the public.

For the next decade, she withers in her cell.

No one tells her that she looks like Liz Taylor.

No one does her any favors.

No one cares how much money she used to have.

Few people shed tears when Sante Kimes dies in 2014 at the age of 79.

And if you told her that before she went, no way would she have believed you.

Sante spent most of her life diluted by her own lies, living in a world where she was the center of the universe, beloved by everyone who knew her and owed everything by them.

Her criminal convictions were the result of a corrupt system, not justice.

Her reputation was tarnished by jealous liars who wanted what she had.

But in the real world, where you and I live, people eventually saw Sante Kimes for what she was, a narcissistic con artist, a woman who wanted it all, and who was willing to lie, cheat, steal, burn and kill to get it.

From Airship, this is episode five in our series on Sante Kimes.

On the next series, a young woman growing up in the shadow of World War II decides that the best way to get the life she wants is to become the greatest jewel thief there ever was.

We use many different sources while preparing this episode.

A few we can recommend are Son of a Grifter by Kent Walker, Dead End by Gene King, as well as reporting in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details, and while in some cases we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohammed Shazi.

Sound design by Matthew Fillion.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson, and Lindsey Graham for Airship.

On a quiet June morning, an airliner took off from the Seattle area, headed to Anchorage, Alaska.

Just after 10 a.m., one of the Northwest Airlines pilots radioed in, asking for permission to change altitude.

Within moments, Northwest Airlines Flight 293 with 101 souls on board, soldiers and airmen along with wives and children on their way to Cold War assignments in the land of the Midnight Sun was gone.

In the skies 14,000 feet above the Gulf of Alaska, something went wrong.

They said they've lost radio contact with the plane.

What do you mean it's down?

Well, they can't find the plane.

Whatever was left of Flight 293, including everyone on board, was a mile and a half underwater.

Families buried empty caskets and put up backyard memorials as they waited for answers.

Answers that never came.

What did happen to Flight 293?

Was it mechanical failure, human error, or something more sinister?

The DC-7 does not fall out of the sky.

If you lost all four engines, any pilot will tell you that thing wouldn't just do a nosedive.

One of our planes landed with a side-winder missile gun.

It's conspiracy theory.

And why do so many of the victims' loved ones say the US government turned its back on them and tried to forget Flight 293?

Everything about this, my whole life was hidden.

I just think it's travesty.

It was a living nightmare.

The military was going to have some kind of memorial.

We never had a service of any kind.

I'm historian and journalist Felix Bannell.

I've been researching and studying Flight 293 for the past several years.

I've interviewed experts and spoken with friends and family members of the 101 souls lost that dark day.

Ordinary Americans impacted by extraordinary tragedy who've been searching for answers, searching for healing and searching for closure.

Unsolved Histories Season 1.

What happened to Flight 293?

New from the journalists of KSL Podcasts, searching for answers to some of the greatest mysteries of all time.

Coming soon.