Sante Kimes | Involuntary Servitude | 3

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 the evening of July 5th, 1998.

The Upper East Side of Manhattan has started to cool slightly after another warm summer's day.

As this cab turns onto East 65th Street, Jeff Feig watches from the back seat as a couple of kids ride their bikes on the pavement.

They scream with laughter as a third kid chases them with a water gun.

It looks like fun.

Jeff's not in the mood for fun right now.

He's too worried.

About an hour ago, he got a call from Carol Hansen, telling him that their mutual friend, Irene Silverman, is missing.

The cab pulls up outside Irene's limestone mansion, and Jeff gets out.

He hurries inside the building.

There's no time to waste.

All of Irene's friends know that she wouldn't just go somewhere on her own.

The 82-year-old doesn't leave the house alone these days, not to go to the grocery store, not to go to the post office.

She even tells her staff when she's going to the rooftop garden to walk her dog.

So, for her to vanish like this is worrying in the extreme.

Jeff's already been to the police station, where he reported Irene is missing, but the cops told him to search the mansion himself and make absolutely sure she's not there.

They promise that when he comes back to tell them that, then they'll look into the situation.

Jeff meets Irene's weekend companion and housekeeper, Marta, in the lobby.

She's the one who first noticed that Irene had been quiet for a few hours and sounded the alarm when she couldn't find her boss.

Now, Jeff tells Marta about the police instructions.

He suggests they start at the top of the building, where Irene's two story apartment is, then work their way down from there.

They head up to the penthouse and Marta lets them in using her set of keys.

Inside, Irene's bulldog Georgie runs up to greet them, but they don't have time to give them any attention.

Jeff and Marta pace through each room, calling out to Irene, opening every cupboard and closet, switching on every light.

Nothing.

Once they've swept Irene's apartment, they move down to the floor below and let themselves into the apartments there.

Irene has a few tenants living in her building, but most everyone's away for the holiday weekend, so it seems unlikely that Irene would end up in one of those apartments.

Still, they check to be sure.

The small search party make their way down through the building, scouring every apartment and common space, but there's no sign of Irene.

By the time Jeff and Marta are back on the first floor, there's only one corner of the building they haven't been in, apartment 1B.

That's where Irene's shifty new tenon has been living for the last few weeks, the one who creeped Irene out, the one she told everyone she was planning to evict.

Jeff and Marta don't say anything to each other, but they're both thinking the same thing.

They don't want to go in to 1B.

They're afraid of what they'll find if they do.

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

By the end of the 1970s, Sante Kimes, who used to be Sante Kimes, who used to be Sante Walker, who used to be Sandy Chambers, who used to be Sante Singers, she had it all.

After years of shoplifting and arson-fueled insurance fraud, she kicked her ever-loyal second husband to the curb.

He couldn't provide the millions of dollars she wanted.

Then she latched on to Kenneth Kimes, a bonafide business mogul who had money to spare.

Together they spent their time bouncing between homes in Palm Springs and Newport Beach, California, and their latest mansion in Hawaii.

And Sante wasn't going to give up that lifestyle for anybody.

She tethered herself to Ken by taking his last name, though they never married, wearing an enormous rock on her finger, and finally by having his baby in a plot to produce an heir who'd inherit everything.

Of course, Sante Kimes rarely got anything she actually earned.

And no matter how much wealth she acquired, she never felt like she had enough.

She could never sit back and enjoy the fruits of her labor.

So the stealing and the scheming continued, like a compulsion.

And although she didn't know it, Sante's lifelong habit of lying, cheating and scamming would come back to bite her.

And it had eventually cost her everything, which, when you think about it, is exactly what she earned.

This is episode three in our five-part series on Sante Kimes, Involuntary Servitude.

It's April 1979, when 44-year-old Sante Kimes struts into the lobby of the Las Vegas Hill.

Behind her, her partner, Kenneth Kimes Sr., leads their five-year-old son by the hand.

Sante's dressed to the nines as usual.

A synthetic black wig is piled on top of her head, and a white caftan billows around her, cut low to accentuate her ample bosom.

To someone taking a quick look, she bears a passing resemblance to Liz Taylor.

Reaching the front desk, Sante takes off her sunglasses and smiles at the receptionist, telling him that she phoned earlier to book a room for Ambassador Kimes.

Hearing that, the clerk stands up a little straighter and checks the files in front of him.

He hands Sante a key, telling her that the ambassador's suite is ready.

And then he waves over a bellhop, who loads the family's luggage onto a cart and directs them towards the elevator.

Sante slips the receptionist a $5 bill before putting her sunglasses back on, then follows the bellhop up to their luxury suite.

She's been in Vegas for less than an hour, but Sante Kimes can already tell that she's gonna like it here.

Just days earlier, Sante and Ken Senior had decided that Hawaii wasn't for them after all.

They'd been there for around five years, but things were feeling a bit boring for Sante.

Plus, she'd been paranoid that the authorities are after her.

And with a lifetime of shoplifting charges and insurance frauds to her name, that's not all that surprising.

But Vegas?

That's a place Sante's sure she'll fit right in.

If nothing else, she's got the gaudy wardrobe to make her look right at home.

Sante's always showy with her fashion, her hair, her makeup, her implants, her wealth.

It's how she cons herself a free stay at the Hilton.

She's been around the block enough to know that casinos will offer plenty of perks to guests they believe will gamble big numbers.

So Sante dropped Ken's name with his make-believe title and was promptly offered a comp suite.

Once they settle into their room overlooking the strip, Sante and Ken do head down to the casino, but mostly just so they could take advantage of the free drinks and food they're entitled to as high rollers.

At this stage, Ken Sr.

is not much of a gambler, so he never wages more than a few dollars at a time.

Eventually, the Hilton figures that out and asks the Kimes family to leave.

Surprisingly unbothered, Sante gathers up her things then calls another hotel on the strip.

Rinse, repeat, over and over.

For about their first six months in Vegas, Sante and Ken Sr.

bounce from hotel to hotel, and all it costs them is a few bucks here and there for tips and cab fare, and the tiny amounts they leave on the casino floor when they're bored.

Eventually, though, they run out of hotels to scam and figure it's time to put down roots.

But if they're forced to actually fork out money for somewhere to live, they're sure as hell not gonna pay full price.

So when Sante spots a 4,000-square-foot house she likes next to the Sahara Golf Course, she hatches a plan to snatch the home for well below asking.

Like plenty of Sante schemes, this one begins by getting her mark to trust her.

The owner is an older man named Dr.

Howard Zellhofer.

Before she says anything to him about buying his house, she treats Howard to meals out and buys him drinks, then offers him the use of their place in Hawaii free of charge.

Only then does she tell Howard that she'd like to buy his house by the golf course.

By now, Howard thinks Sante is a kind and generous woman and he's happy to shake hands on a deal.

So far so good for Sante.

Sante explains to Howard that there's no rush on the paperwork.

She wants everything to be above board.

But so that Howard doesn't lose out on any money while the papers are drawn up, she suggests that she and her family move into the house and pay rent for the first month or so.

Once the Kimes clan are in, they're not going anywhere.

But in her mind, Sante is not a complete monster.

She fully intends to pay Howard for his house.

It's just that she'll only pay a price she finds acceptable.

During their early months in Las Vegas, Sante invested time in finding and befriending various property inspectors and local government officials.

Now she calls in a few favors, asking these new friends to come and check Howard's place for problems with the construction, any renovations made without the approval of the authorities.

And wouldn't you know it, she comes up with a list of things that are wrong with the property.

With that in hand, it's time to go in for the kill.

Sante meets with Howard and shows him the list.

Then she tells him that he's going to sell her the house at her price, or she'll have him charged with various building code violations.

Whether Howard is actually facing any real trouble is murky, but he believes that he is, and he's too scared to fight back.

He accepts the terms of Sante's blackmail.

And after just a few weeks of planning, Sante Kimes has herself a new place to call home.

After screwing hotels at a free stuff for months, then staging a long con to scam a guy out of his house, it seems strange that one of Sante's smallest crimes could bring her so much grief.

But that's exactly what happens on February 4th, 1980.

She and Ken are on a trip to DC when they wander from their room in the Mayflower Hotel down to the first floor bar.

It's cold outside, so Sante is taking the chance to wear one of her many furs.

This one's an ankle-length white fox fur coat.

As ever, the rest of Sante's outfit is also white.

She's wearing several gaudy pieces of costume jewelry, and she's doused in her gardenia perfume.

In her mind, she's the pinnacle of wealthy sophistication.

To everyone else, though, she looks like a tacky socialite from the 1940s.

When a couple come in off the street to enjoy a drink in the hotel bar, Sante and Ken glom on to them.

Sante listens quietly as Ken talks politics with the man.

After a few minutes, the other couple excuse themselves and turn back to the group they're with.

For a moment, they take their eyes off the chair where they piled their coats, including the woman's brown mink number worth thousands.

Sante doesn't need the coat.

She already has over a dozen furs of her own.

Plus, she lives in the desert, but she wants it all the same.

So she carefully reaches out and slides the mink off the chair.

Then she slips it over her shoulders and pulls her own white fur over the top to hide it.

The theft complete, she gives Ken a nod and they make a beeline for the elevator.

Hours later, the police knock on Ken and Sante's hotel room door.

At least two people saw Sante take the mink and could easily describe the woman in the black wig and white coat.

See, that's the problem with Sante's fashion sense.

It's memorable and not in the way Sante wants.

The cops search Sante's suite but don't find the missing coat.

Before they leave though, one of them notices that the balcony door is slightly ajar.

He pokes his head out over the railing and sees a crumble of fabric on the lobby's roof several floors down.

It's the monogrammed lining of the stolen mink.

Sante had ripped it from the coat in an effort to hide the fact that it belonged to someone else and then thrown it off the balcony.

The fur itself turns up a few hours later, stuffed behind an ice machine in the hotel.

Sante and Ken spend the next day in jail, waiting to appear before a judge on grand larceny charges.

Determined to prove their innocence, the couple try telling the police that they're scheduled to meet with President Carter that very afternoon.

They're not, but they have bought tickets for a tour of the White House.

Of course, the cops don't care about that and eventually bring Sante and Ken to the courthouse.

They're granted bail and allowed to walk free, with the expectation they'll return to DC for trial at a later date.

Sante Kimes isn't one to accept any kind of judgment, though.

Rules are for other people, and so is the judicial system.

So she and Ken hit the road, moving nearly constantly between Vegas, California and Mexico, sometimes stopping to rest in Hawaii for a few days then flying out again.

Their perpetual motion makes it difficult for the prosecutors in DC to track them down and summon them to court.

But when they do manage to get papers into Sante's hand, she stalls by firing her attorney and hiring a new one, a ploy that earns her an extension every time she does it.

Over the next few years, Sante and Ken dragged the process out by filing for extensions with excuses written by pliable doctors who swear the couple are too sick to travel across the country for a court date.

Eventually, it seems like Sante's won the fight.

She's wearing the authorities down and seemingly on the path to avoiding any consequences for her actions.

The episode with the coat will come back around though, in time.

For now, there's trouble brewing at home.

Sante's first born son, 18 year old Kent Walker, has had enough of his mom's antics.

He knows Sante loves him, but she can have violent mood swings, and she's constantly meddling in Kent's life.

Now, Kent's 18, and he's like any young man, trying to work out what he wants to do with his life.

College is okay, but he prefers to spend time drinking with his friends.

That's what he's been doing when he gets back to the Kimes family home in Vegas, late one night in July, 1981.

When Sante comes downstairs to find her teenage son drinking, she curses him out and looks set to fly into one of her very best rages.

And to be fair, Kent is underage.

But he has enough sense to know that arguing with his mom won't lead anywhere good.

So he gets up to leave before things get out of hand.

Sante doesn't like that.

She doesn't like that her son is all grown up and no longer under her control.

So she follows him down the hallway towards the front door and cracks a wooden broom handle over his head.

Kent goes down, stunned by the blow, blood trickling from behind his ear.

While he's distracted, Sante grabs Kent's car keys and dashes up the stairs, her sheer negligee whipping out of sight just as Kent staggers to his feet.

Kent's a big guy by this stage, and he follows his mother up the stairs.

He easily forces open her locked bedroom door and snatches back his keys.

Then, without a word, he heads for the front door again.

But Sante follows him, and when Kent's close to making his escape, she picks up a heavy crystal decanter and lobs it at him, hitting him in the lower back.

He goes down like a sack of bricks and doesn't move.

Kent temporarily loses feeling in his legs while he's down on the floor, but he's distracted from that terrifying thought when his mother starts kicking him over and over.

He's rescued by Ken Sr.

He grabs Sante around the middle and pulls her towards the kitchen, begging her to leave Kent alone.

While Sante and Ken Sr.

scream at each other in the other room, Kent drags himself to the phone and calls the police.

But when the cops arrive, Sante twists the narrative, telling them that her underage son has been drinking and he became violent with her.

Kent ends up in cuffs and it looks like he's about to be carted off to jail.

But he convinces the officers to look at the situation more closely, to take in the many injuries that he sustained and then consider the fact that Sante is completely fine.

After that, the cops agree to let Kent go.

But Sante is not in a forgiving mood.

She throws Kent's things out of the house that night.

He's just another man she's done using.

But before long, Sante will start to regret that decision.

Her mood will shift, and she'll move heaven and earth to get her eldest son back on her side.

And if that doesn't work, she'll just manipulate a branch of the armed forces to get what she wants.

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

And what do you say we take a little trip with a gal named June and a game called June's Journey?

You're obviously listening to this show, and others like it, so you like mysteries, you like the crime, you like this game.

Play it.

It's fun.

It's a hidden object mystery mobile game.

It puts your detective skills to the test.

You play as June Parker, and you investigate these detailed scenes of the 1920s while you uncover the mystery of your sister's murder.

Search for hidden objects from the parlors of New York to the sidewalks of Paris.

And there's a lot of cool stuff you can do.

You can customize your very own estate island.

You can collect little scraps of information to fill your photo album, learn more about each character.

You can chat.

You can play with, against, it doesn't matter, other players, by joining a detective club.

You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.

Relax and lose yourself in this captivating quest of mystery, murder, and romance.

Whether you're craving a good mystery or just looking for an escape.

Can you crack the case?

Download June's Journey Today for free on iOS and Android.

It's January 1983 in Hawaii.

On Honolulu, the Kimes home is full of life for the first time in years.

19-year-old Kent Walker has a fresh haircut and a sharp new outfit.

Around him are a dozen or so older military men, most of them in uniform.

At the center of it all is Sante Kimes.

Now 48, Sante moves through the small crowd and a white mumu, pressing drinks into the hands of her guests and inviting each and every one of them to make use of any of her various houses around the country.

This is something Sante does a lot, playing the part of a generous benefactor who wants nothing more than to share her wealth with the people in her life.

None of it's sincere though.

She's buttering them all up and in this case, she's getting ready to ask for a favor on behalf of her eldest son.

After their knockdown fight in the Vegas home in 1981, Kent washed his hands of his mother.

He dropped out of college and worked a string of short-lived jobs while deciding what to do with his life.

It was in 1982 that he figured it out.

He wanted to fly helicopters.

So he applied to the Army's flight school.

But that's a highly competitive position, and a few months later, Kent got his rejection letter in the mail.

In the meantime, Sante had wormed her way back into her son's life.

He's too useful as a lacky cum chauffeur for her to discard permanently.

And although she doesn't strictly approve of his being in the Army, she chafes even more at the idea of her son being told no.

So towards the end of 1982, she sent Kent down to live at the family home in Hawaii while she worked on a plan.

That's why there's a party going on in the sprawling Kimes home right now.

Sante's befriended the colonel in charge of Army recruiting for the entire state of Hawaii and thrown a party for him and a dozen of his colleagues.

Kent Sr.'s here, talking about his time serving in World War II.

Sante's boasting about her brigadier general father and Kent smiling and being polite, exactly as Sante told him to do.

Sante's plan works out perfectly.

Soon after her salute to the armed forces, Army recruiters are deluge with letters of recommendation on Kent Walker's behalf.

And he's suddenly accepted into flight school.

He's going to be a pilot after all.

And in exchange, all his mother asks for is a few small favors.

She insists that Kent fly with her to DC to trawl through hotel bars flirting with young women.

It's not a romantic mission, though.

Sante's still dragging out her fight against the charges for stealing a valuable fur coat in early 1980.

And she's sure she's found a way to beat the rap.

Once Kent started the conversation, Sante swoops in to offer to cover the tab for more drinks.

Then she tells the women about her little legal trouble and starts working on them to testify on her behalf.

She reminds them about the night that they saw her in the hotel bar, and crucially, how they saw someone else take the coat.

It's a clunky plan, but it's the best Sante can come up with.

Mother and son's reconciliation is brief, though.

When Kent does begin a romance with a young woman his age, Sante takes an instant dislike to the girl and tries repeatedly to break them up.

Eventually, Kent's had enough, so he and his sweetheart fly to the mainland to get married in November of 1983.

Then he goes off to begin his training, effectively freezing his mother out once again.

Of course, Sante's not one to sit around racked with guilt over the state of a relationship with her son.

So although Kent doesn't speak to Sante for a year, she's got plenty else to focus on while she waits for him to come around.

In July of 1985, Sante's finally ordered to appear in court over the grand larceny charges related to the fur coat.

On the 12th, Sante does as she's told and shows her face in the DC courthouse.

Kent Sr.

isn't there though.

Sante figures that if only one of them appears, there'll be another delay.

But the judge is sick of Sante's tricks and decides that one of the two defendants is enough for things to move forward.

So, while her partner in crime is hiding out in a hotel across town, Sante faces justice alone.

Despite all her efforts to coerce phony witnesses into lying for her, the trial doesn't go well for Sante Kimes.

And she knows it.

So, wanting to avoid paying for her crimes as long as possible, Sante stages an elaborate disappearing act.

On the afternoon of the 18th, when the jury are due back in court to deliver their verdict, 50-year-old Sante calls for an ambulance to rush her to the hospital, telling the dispatcher that she's been hit by a car.

At the hospital, Sante rattles off a laundry list of injuries and various pains around her body.

Despite there being no physical evidence, she so much as stubbed her toe lately.

Meanwhile, the jury returns a guilty verdict.

Even though no one knows where Sante is.

Three days later, Sante sends a telegram to the judge and her lawyer to explain where she was and why she couldn't contact them.

She also makes a sideways accusation that her attorney was blackmailing her as part of a scheme to fix the verdict.

None of this moves the judge, who issues an arrest warrant for Sante Kimes.

She is going to prison.

They just have to catch her first.

After her disastrous showing in DC, Sante decides it's best to lay low for a while.

She and Ken Senior move around Vegas, switching hotels frequently, staying far away from their own home, lest the authorities go looking for them there.

After a couple of weeks of that, though, they're tired of being on the run.

Ken Senior's closing in on 70 by now.

And Sante's night as sprightly as she once was either.

So they rent a condo in La Jolla, a neighborhood of San Diego, California.

That's where they are when federal marshals catch up to them on August 3rd, 1985.

But the marshals aren't there about the FERS.

They've got warrants for Sante and Ken Senior for two much, much bigger crimes, slavery and human trafficking.

Over the last dozen or so years, Sante's been in the habit of smuggling young women across the border from places like Mexico, El Salvador and Peru to work as maids in her homes.

Only she never pays them.

She confiscates their passports and forbids them from leaving her home.

In more recent years, she's done the same to college students brought in to be round the clock tutors for Sante's youngest, 10-year-old Kenny.

Like the maids, Kenny's tutors are young women enticed with promises of luxury accommodations, exciting travels with the family and generous paydays.

None of it materialized though.

Instead, what these women got was beaten, burned and belittled.

Most eventually escaped the horrors on their own.

Some of them managed it with Kent's help.

And a few even went to the authorities to report Sante and Kent Sr.

But nothing was done for years.

Even when a 14-year-old girl showed up to the US.

Consulate in Guadalajara to talk about the time Sante threw a pot of boiling water over her.

The information was simply filed away for later.

But now, the sheer number of complaints against Sante has become impossible to ignore.

And the feds have finally moved in.

When they crash through Sante and Kent's rented condo door, they even find a final, terrified young woman who's just the latest maid in Sante's...

employment.

After the arrest, Sante and Kent Sr.

are transported to Las Vegas to answer for their crimes.

Kent's wife is called in to look after Kenny, but Kent is in for a treat of his own.

Even from jail, Sante's determined to keep pulling the strings on the men in her life.

At this stage, Kent's graduated from flight school and is on a training exercise when he gets a call from his mother, who orders him to come back to Las Vegas and help her.

When Kent resists the summons, Sante goes over his head, telling his superiors that her husband's had a heart attack and that she needs her son to come home to help care for him.

Despite Kent's protest, he's ordered to return to his family.

Sante's continued manipulations delay his return for so long that Kent gets an early discharge.

He'll never fly a helicopter again.

Not that Sante cares about her son's life.

She's staring down 85 years in prison for 17 charges, including involuntary servitude and transporting people across the border.

Kent's only slightly less complicit, so he's looking at 75.

Of course, local news sees on the story of the millionaires who've been using slave labor in their mansions.

And out come the old stories about the times Sante and Kent Sr.

crashed government parties in DC, and Kent's fake ambassador title and all the rest.

Pretty quickly, it seems like there's not a single person outside the family who wants to take Sante's side.

In fact, people are lining up to take their shot.

An attorney in Hawaii assembles a group of Sante's former maids and tutors to file a civil suit against the couple, asking for $31 million in damages.

So even if Sante and Kent Senior somehow beat the criminal charges, they'll have to fork out millions in legal fees.

And that's even if they win the suit.

It's not looking good.

So it's a minor miracle when Sante and Kent Senior's lawyers manage to work out a deal for their clients.

He just has to plead guilty to one count of misprision of a felony, which means that he knew a felony was being committed and didn't report it.

In exchange, he'll get off with probation and a felony record.

Sante has to plead guilty to more than Kent Senior, but her sentence shouldn't be more than two years.

They're astoundingly good deals, considering the charges.

Still, both of them have to be talked in to taking those deals.

Both Sante and Kent Senior believe there's a conspiracy against them, that they've been set up by crooked lawyers and a corrupt justice system.

Kent finally sees reason when he's reminded that court cases are expensive.

He could easily lose his fortune fighting the charges in court.

Sante meanwhile believes that a guilty plea will set them up for catastrophe in the civil suit.

It'll lose them everything.

But like Kent Senior, she's finally talked in to taking the deal.

Then comes the big day, when Sante and Kent Senior appear in court to actually sign the papers.

Kent goes off without a hitch, but then it's Sante's turn.

And, surprise, things go very differently.

It turns out there's been a typo in Sante's deal, so now it says that the various prison terms she'll be given have to be served consecutively instead of concurrently.

Seeing that, Sante starts throwing a tantrum right there in the courtroom.

Instead of calmly asking that her lawyer and the prosecutors rectify the mistake, she starts screaming and crying and has to be physically restrained.

She's like an angry toddler.

Only there's nothing and no one that can get Sante Kimes to calm down.

So she refuses to sign her deal, which means she's going to trial after all.

And in the meantime, she has to stay behind bars.

At least she's supposed to stay behind bars.

But as always, Sante has something else in mind.

On December 30th, 1985, about three months after her courtroom freakout, the news breaks that Sante Kimes has escaped jail.

A couple of days after Christmas, she feigned a medical episode so that she'd be moved to the hospital, where security was much, much less stringent.

There, she easily gave her guard the slip and just walked out the front doors.

So now, all of Las Vegas is on the lookout for the Liz Taylor lookalike who's on trial for slavery.

The headlines don't get much wilder than that.

Well, not yet they don't.

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.

Because 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 January 3rd, 1986, at a strip mall in Las Vegas.

A woman dressed in shabby clothes is pushing a cart full of junk across the parking lot when it happens.

A pair of police cars scream into the lot from either end, coming to stop on either side of the woman and her cart.

Clearly terrified, the woman tries to make a run for it, but she's got nowhere to go.

She screams for help, yelling that she's being attacked, but no one is coming to save her.

After four days of freedom, 51-year-old Sante Kimes has been recaptured.

And now she gets to add prison break to the long list of charges she's facing.

Sante's trial begins on February 10th, 1986.

And thanks to her Houdini Act, the courtroom drama is front page news.

Everyone in Las Vegas is fixated on the woman the media started calling the Dragon Lady.

And it's quite a show.

Prosecutors parade over a dozen different maids and tutors to testify about what they endured while in Sante's quote unquote, employee.

They talk about their confiscated passports, how they were forbidden from leaving the house alone, and about the violence.

One young woman tells the court that Sante burned her with a clothes iron.

Hearing that, Sante cries out, screaming that the woman's lying and that she's doing it just to get money.

But by that stage of the trial, outbursts from Sante aren't all that unusual.

The entire time she's made a show of crying loudly throughout testimony, trying desperately to paint herself as the victim of a cruel plot to steal her hard earned wealth.

She doesn't do a very convincing job though.

She hisses at the witnesses as they pass her at the defendant's table and does her best to drown out their words with her theatrics.

Not all of the witnesses are there to trash Sante though.

The defense presents a long line of people who swear that they've never seen Sante hit or otherwise abuse one of her maids.

Even still, things aren't looking good for Sante.

So, she takes the stand herself, believing that her powers of persuasion are so strong that she can overcome the evidence against her.

On the stand, Sante continues to market herself as a victim and points to her childhood as when it all started.

According to Sante's testimony, she was sexually assaulted by strange men for years when she was a child.

Then, once she moved to Nevada, her adoptive father regularly assaulted her.

Whether Sante's account of her childhood is truthful or not isn't what the jury has to decide, which is what makes sharing it such a strange decision.

Throughout the trial, Sante's maintain that she's innocent of the slavery charges.

But pointing to a childhood of abuse seems like something a guilty person would do as a way of excusing their actions.

Sante doesn't seem to get that.

She's just narcissistic enough to believe that she knows what's best.

But as it turns out, she doesn't.

On February 28th, after a two and a half week trial, Sante's convicted on 14 counts, including slave holding, escaping prison, and transporting undocumented immigrants.

A couple of months later, she's sentenced to five years in a federal facility.

Despite her long career of shoplifting and insurance fraud, it's the first time Sante's been handed a prison term.

And it's quickly followed up by her second.

In July 1986, Sante's extradited to DC to finally face sentencing for the stolen furs.

There, she tries to convince the judge she's a changed woman, that she's committed to getting help.

But the judge remains unmoved.

She sentences Sante to serve 3 to 9 years, which will begin as soon as she finishes her federal stint.

Finally, Sante Kimes is behind bars, and in her absence, her family thrives.

Ken Senior and Kenny return to living in their Las Vegas home, and 11-year-old Kenny starts attending school for the first time.

Up until now, he's been home schooled by the long line of unpaid tutors Sante recruited.

Part of her reasoning was her delusional belief that Ken Senior's family, who she calls the Creeps, would try to kill Kenny if he was allowed out into the world.

But Ken Senior never really bought Sante's line about his relatives' vendetta against them.

Now, he decides that his son will do just fine with other students.

Until now, Kenny's had little contact with the outside world, so the people he's interacted with mostly have all been adults, his parents, his brother, his tutors and the maids.

Sante made sporadic attempts to socialize her youngest son, but her methods were typical Sante.

She'd invite local children over to play with Kenny as a sort of audition.

Invariably, she decided that none of the other kids were good enough to hang around with her son, though.

Consequently, he's been mostly friendless his whole life.

Now, though, Kenny's surrounded by other kids.

At school, he becomes the class clown.

He gets into punk rock and starts wearing studded bracelets and collars.

He makes friends, too, kids his own age who think he's funny and who like the same things he does.

So when Kenny turns 12 in March of 1987, Ken Senior takes him and a few of his friends for a birthday trip to Disneyland in Anaheim.

It's a pretty extravagant gift, but that's just the beginning.

The following year, on Kenny's 13th birthday, Ken Senior puts a pool in at the house.

Nothing is too good for Kenny.

So perhaps it's not surprising that as the kid gets older, he starts to act entitled.

Part of that is just him being a teenager.

But it's also down to Ken's indulgence.

Kenny starts to believe his parents' line that everyone in life is looking to get at their money.

Ironically, though, it's been Sante who's been draining Ken Senior's fortune.

And now that her legal fights are for the most part over, Ken Senior picks up where Sante left off.

He starts going to local bars most afternoons.

And while he definitely drinks a lot, it's not the alcohol that's doing the damage to his bank account.

It's the electronic poker games that are beside every bar stool.

This is Vegas, after all.

Day after day, Ken Kimes feeds money into the machines, seemingly oblivious to just how much he's losing.

Hundreds of thousands at least.

He's also losing his desire to reunite with Sante.

Sure, he's lonely without her, but at least he has Kenny.

And Kenny's lost all affection for Sante too.

By the late 80s, he's refusing to speak to his mother on the phone, tells his father to file for divorce, and hates going to visit her.

Luckily for him, in 1989, Sante's moved to a prison in DC to begin serving her grand larceny sentence.

So the visits are less and less frequent.

If Kenny has his way, his mother won't ever get out.

He doesn't want things to go back to the way they were when she was around.

He won't get his wish, though.

In December of 1989, Ken Sr.

and Kenny fly east for their monthly visit with Sante.

Only when they get to the prison, she's not there.

Officials can't tell them where she is, only that she's been released early.

Finally, Ken Sr.

gets in touch with Sante's attorney, who fills him in.

Sante's been working nonstop to get out since she first started her sentence, and although she didn't manage to get her slavery conviction overturned, she had better luck with the grand larceny charge.

She found a loophole that meant that because she wasn't in court to hear the verdict delivered, it was invalid.

It was a loophole she'd inadvertently created for herself by faking a car accident and skipping town.

Now, rather than retry the case, prosecutors have to let her plead guilty to a misdemeanor offense and let her go with time served and a $10 fine.

Since her release about a week ago, Sante's treated herself to a life of luxury, renting a townhouse in DC and racking up credit card bills in the thousands, buying herself clothes and fine foods.

She didn't bother to tell her family where she was, knowing they'd figure it out eventually.

Now that they have found her, Sante's ready to go home.

After just a few minutes, she picks up on how much the family dynamics have changed in her absence.

She doesn't like that Ken Senior and Kenny have gotten closer, doesn't like that her son will barely look at her.

She's determined to put things back the way they were, only they can't.

Ken's fortune has been eaten away by years of legal fees and his recent gambling addiction.

So even as the trio fly back towards Las Vegas, Sante Kimes is thinking about how she can claw back the money she's lost.

And after years in prison, she's learned her lesson.

She knows that whatever scheme she pulls, she can't leave any witnesses behind, even if that means getting her hands a little bloody.

From Airship, this is Episode 3 in our series on Sante Kimes.

On the next episode, one of Sante's accomplices turns on her, and she responds with swift, brutal violence.

We use many different sources.

While preparing this episode, a couple we can recommend are Dead End by Gene King, and Son of a Grifter by Kent Walker.

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 Filler.

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 airline, 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 sidewinder missile gone.

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 a 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.