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| Remnants of the home at 2121 Geronimo Way |
On a quiet evening on the last
day of January, 1998 heavy smoke began to rise from the dilapidated house at
2121 Geronimo Way. The two-story home with
its tall, narrow slit-like windows sat at the end of the Geronimo Way
cul-de-sac long suffering from neglect. Owned
by part-time residents, it was only a matter of hours before the entire home,
with its peeling paint and overgrown vegetation was gutted by the fire. This would be only a blip on the radar of bizarre
events that unraveled into one of the most compelling stories of horror that
took place at the end of the 20th century, spawning multiple books, a
made-for-TV movie starring Mary Tyler Moore and Jean Stapleton in 2001, and a
second made-for-TV movie in 2006.
The owners of the home were
described by neighbors as strange. First
appearing on Paradise Palms’ Geronimo Way in 1980, the large, eccentric woman
with mounds of hair, heavy perfume and copious amounts of jewelry instantly
rubbed neighbors the wrong way. Describes as a ‘fat Liz Taylor’, her
condescending attitude coupled with an oft-putting personality set a negative
tone for the next two decades – that and the day after she moved in, she
knocked on her new neighbor’s door asking to use the phone, claiming she was
waiting for hers to be installed.
Immediately after she left the house, the neighbor’s Bulova watch went
missing.
Tall, bramble shrubs and a fence
separated the double-golf course frontaged home from prying eyes, while large
sliding glass doors were adorned with ‘keep out’ signs. Visitors to the home would notice two strange
things: Once one entered the home, they could only exit when the homeowner let
them out with a key. The other, was that
there was always a Mexican maid on staff, barefoot.
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| A rare image of the Kimeses Paradise Palms home, 2121 Geronimo Way |
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| Aerial image of 2121 Geroimo Way, present day |
Her name was Sante Kimes. Or Sandy.
Or Santa. Or any combination of Santa,
Sante, Santee, Sandy, Sane, Taj, combined with the different last names of
Walker, Singhrs, Singhers, Singer, Saligman, Powers, Kimes, Jacobson, or
Chambers. The
New York Post once ran a front page headline of her naming her the ‘Dragon
Lady’. Others described her as ‘pure
evil’. She had spent a lifetime conning
people for her own gain. Born in
Oklahoma in 1934, Sante Louise Singhrs moved with her family to California in
the late 1930’s, where a tumultuous family life led to her and her three
siblings being orphaned. Or so we
think. Sante changes the story every time
she tells it.
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| Sante Kimes |
Last of her siblings to be
adopted, her new family moved her to Carson City where she graduated high
school in 1952 and shortly thereafter married her high school sweetheart, Lee
Powers, then divorced him three months later. She married again in 1956, had a
son and divorced in 1961. A decade
later, after building skills in petty theft, prostitution and grifting, she met
motel developer and millionaire Ken Kimes.
One of her more notorious grifts from just before she met Ken was the
time she walked into a car dealership, conned the salesman into letting her
take a test drive alone, and disappeared with a brand new Cadillac. Three months later when police caught her,
she told them she was taking the car on a test drive – and still was testing it
out.
It’s unclear how the Sante and
Ken met. But by 1974 they were conning
their way into Washington DC political circles with hopes of supplying every
classroom in America with a bicentennial scheme called the Forum of Man. The Forum of Man was really just a poster of
state flags praising the United States, that Ken and Sante envisioned selling
at $10 apiece to the over 250,000 classrooms across the United States. During
this time Sante and Ken miraculously gained a meeting with First Lady Pat
Nixon, presenting their scheme. Mrs. Nixon saw through the con and after dismissing
the White House photographer, Sante produced her own camera to record the
event, an image which was later used in the Bicentennial Times, which Sante and
Ken used to gain legitimacy for their scheme.
It didn’t end there.
In February 1974, Sante and Ken
slipped past the Secret Service and crashed a reception hosted by Vice
President Gerald Ford, where they received face time with the second in command
to hype up their plans. High on their
success, the pair then hopped in a cab and crashed receptions at the West
Germany Embassy, the Belgium Embassy, and then a formal dinner at the
Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. Sante commandeered
the floor of the Belgium Embassy making a brief pitch for the Forum of Man, before
she was asked to leave. The next day the
two were exposed, making the front page of the Washington Post garnering the
headline ‘The Biggest Crash Since 1929’ which effectively killed a Forum of Man
dreams.
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| The Kimes with Vice President Ford |
In 1975 Sante gave birth to her protégé,
Kenny Kimes Jr. Spending time between
homes in Honolulu, the Bahamas and LaJolla, the Kimes arrived in Paradise Palms
in 1980 after Sante had torched their Honolulu home in 1978 to cash in on
insurance money. Kenny was home
schooled, isolated and protected by Sante. Private tutors were hired to educate
him; however, Sante’s daily ritual of disrupting lessons every ten minutes bore
frustration to each tutor. Kenny would have just one childhood friend, Vittorio
Radho who lived on Cochise Lane. Sante would openly tell Vittorio’s father,
Benito, what a genius Kenny was, how smart he was and how Vittorio wasn’t.
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| Sante and Ken Kimes enjoy life |
During Kenny’s childhood, Sante
continued on with her pattern of petty theft, grand theft and insurance
fraud. In 1980 Sante and Ken made a trip
to the Mayflower Hotel where they encountered a woman named Katherine
Kenworthy. Ken struck Katherine up in conversation, distracting her, while
Sante slipped Katherine’s $6,500 mink coat off her chair, and slipped it under
her own coat. Because of Sante’s resemblance
to Liz Taylor, several people in the room had been visually drawn to Sante and witnessed the event. Sante was caught,
charged, and delayed the trial for five years claiming medical and health
issues. In 1985 a jury convicted her,
but as the verdict was read Sante had feigned another health emergency claiming
to be hit by a car, forcing the verdict to be read in her absence. Her lawyer
called the court on it’s technical error, claiming the verdict was invalid due
to Sante’s absence and therefore illegal.
Sante won, and was free on a technicality.
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| The Kimes Family in Honolulu |
1985 was a banner year for Sante,
as that was the year her Mexican slave had escaped from the house on Geronimo
Way bringing attention to the horrors that were taking place within the home. Sante had made a habit of traveling to Mexico with her family and Kenny’s tutor. She would send Kenny’s tutor out on the
streets, looking for young women who spoke no English, promising huge salaries
and a better live in the United States.
The maids were placed in Sante and Ken’s various homes, subject to cruel
treatment, locked inside and unable to communicate with their families. Alerted to Sante’s unwilling houseguests, in
August police swarmed in on Sante’s La Jolla home and arrested her. Sante claimed
her home was in Las Vegas, and successfully gained prosecution there. During
her transport to Nevada, Sante claimed yet another medical episode, and was
taken to a local Hospital. The ever
scheming Sante managed to escape custody, and was arrested three days later at
the Elbow Room bar, turned in by the bartender whom Sante thought was a friend.
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| Sante's trademark padlocked doors on 2121 Geronimo Way |
Held without bail due to the Washington
DC mink coat incident, the trial began and at least seven of Sante’s indentured
servants testified against her, despite facing deportation back to Mexico. One stated
that every time Sante left the house, she was locked in and the telephone was
taken away. Another testified that she
once burnt hamburger buns, prompting Sante to hit her. She also once had an
allergic reaction and fainted. Sante dragged
her to the shower, dousing her in scalding hot water. When she moved out of the
path of the hot water, Sante took a pan and began throwing scalding hot water
on her. It gets worse. Another maid testified that she had been locked
in a closet overnight, and at another time had been branded with a hot iron,
revealing her truth-telling scars to the jury.
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| The arrest of Sante Kimes |
Sante was convicted; Ken was
slapped with a $70,000 fine and ordered into an alcohol treatment program. While Sante began serving a three-year sentence,
Kenny began to lead a more normal life. Ken became a doting father, allowing
Kenny to be enrolled at nearby St. Viator Elementary School, and later Bishop
Gorman High School. Ken bought Kenny a piano, built a swimming pool in the
backyard and allowed Kenny to have friends over. The remnants of the pool can still be seen in
the vacant lot on Geronimo Way. After
being isolated for so long, Kenny did have social problems and one Fourth of
July, while playing with fireworks, accidentally torched a neighboring
house. The case was settled for
$170,000.
Sante was released from prison in
1989. She immediately undid all of Ken’s
parenting, banning Kenny from associating with any of the friends he made. The Kimes began to leap between houses, and
Sante began plotting her next scheme. She
hired family lawyer Elmer Holmgren to torch her Honolulu home. The Chubb Corporation refused to pay Sante’s insurance
claim, as the 1978 fire was suspicious. Sante filed suit against Chubb, who in
turn filed suit against her. Undaunted, Sante began traveling to New Jersey and
showing up at Chubb headquarters, planting herself in executives offices weaving
tales of woe. She learned the home phone numbers of Chubb executives, calling them
in the middle of the night. One
executive in particular had a 17-year-old son.
Sante called the executive, trapping him on the phone for over an hour,
and finished by telling him a story about her ‘friend’ whose 17-year-old son
was dismembered and sent to his father in pieces. Another time she appeared at the CEO of Chubb’s
home, brandishing a bouquet a while lilies – the symbol of death. A short time later, Sante had left a large
black crow on the CEO’s wife’s car.
Following a new policy of leaving
behind no witnesses, Sante invited lawyer-turned-arsonist Elmer Holmgren on a
vacation to Costa Rica. The Kimes returned to Las Vegas without Holmgren, who
was never heard from again. Sante was busy that year, and began hiring movers
to remove contents of the Geronimo Way home. She then filed insurance claims
stating that all the furnishings had been stolen from her home. In 1994 Ken Kimes suffered a fatal aneurism
outside a bank in Santa Monica. Sante
hid Ken’s death until she could update his will to ensure that she would
receive his $12 million fortune. Ken had
died while Kenny was away at college.
When Sante picked Kenny up from school at the end of the semester, Kenny
asked where his father was. Sante held
out an urn, telling Kenny he was right here. Horrified, Kenny was then whisked
away to Honolulu to dispose of his father’s ashes.
Sante had also transferred ownership
of the Geronimo Way home into fellow real-estate fraud artist David Kazdin’s
name. Unbeknownst to Kazden, Sante took
out a second mortgage on the home for nearly $280,000. When a coupon book appeared at Kazden’s
residence, he began asking questions. Sante
instructed college-drop out Kenny to dispose of Kazden. Kazden was shot to death, his body found in a
Los Angeles dumpster. Kenny celebrated his
monumental event by purchasing his mother a bouquet of flowers.
In September 1996, Sante and
Kenny were in Nassau and were meeting with Syed Bilal Ahmed, a 55-year-old
Bahraini who worked for the First Cayman Bank in the Cayman Islands. He
was investigating irregularities at the Gulf Union Bank in Nassau, a subsidiary
of the First Cayman Bank. The Kimeses were in constant contact with
Ahment. He was presented with an on-line business venture by Sante and
Kenny and accompanied by them on his last trip to Nassau. He was
scheduled to have dinner with Sante the night he disappeared. All his
belongings were also missing from the Radisson Cable Beach Resort in Nassau
where he was checked in. Sante and Kenny left Nassau and the police were
unable to question them regarding the incident.
Following Kazden’s untimely
death, Sante went to a local homeless shelter and found a man named Robert
McCarran. She took him in, and transferred
ownership of the Geronimo Way home from the deceased Kazden’s name to McCarran’s. After ensuring that McCarran had taken out
the maximum fire insurance policy from Fireman’s Fund, the house was torched.
All fourteen rooms of 2121 Geronimo Way had been soaked in gasoline. When the fire department notified the
insurance company of their findings, the Kimeses and McCarran were nowhere to be
found. Finally Fireman’s Fund executives
heard from McCarran and had arranged a meeting with McCarran to discuss the
blaze; however, McCarran would only agree to meet at a hotel lobby near
LAX. Turned out the Kimes’ had trapped McCarran in
a hotel room, forcing him to rehearse a fictitious story.
If he made a mistake in his account, Sante would beat him. At the
meeting with the Fireman’s Fund executives, McCarran repeated Sante’s story of
events, while Sante and Kenny sat nonchalantly on an adjacent bench sipping tea,
eyeing McCarran. McCarran even gave Fireman’s Fund executives Sante’s bank
account number in which to wire insurance funds to. Following this event,
McCarran managed to escape Sante’s custody and told his story to investigators.
Sante and Kenny began their next
scheme. Sante contacted a Cedar City car
dealership with who she had purchased automobiles from previously. She
requested a green Lincoln Town car to be delivered to her in Los Angeles. Sante Kimes was a multi-millionaire, and a valued
customer to the dealer, and there was no need to question this transaction. The dealership delivered the
car, and Sante delivered the dealer a phony check. Sante and Ken then took off on a road trip to
Louisiana and Florida. Needing temporary lodgings, Sante approached a RV dealer
in Baton Rouge and used a similar scheme to obtain an $80,000 RV utilizing a
phony check. The RV was found abandoned
a few weeks later in Florida.
Sante and Kenny turned up a few
weeks later in New York City. Kenny
rented an apartment in a townhouse owned by octogenarian millionaire Irene
Silverman, for $6,000 a month cash. Posing
as business partners, the Kimeses began to plot to forge Mrs. Silverman’s signature
on documents, signing over ownership of the townhouse to them. Rightfully suspicious
of mother-and-son Sante and Kenny, Mrs. Silverman began to keep notes in her
journal about the pair, noting physical details and other irregularities.
On July 5th, 1998 Mrs. Silverman disappeared
off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. Coincidentally, later that day police closed
in on Sante and Kenny – not alerted by the disappearance of Mrs. Silverman, but
by the stolen vehicle report filed by the Cedar City car dealer.
Investigations on the pair had
already been underway by the FBI, and the air found themselves facing 117
different charges, including robbery, grand larceny and burglary and forgery, along
with the murder charge of Silverman. The
Kimeses were tried in New York, where Sante was eventually convicted of 58 crimes
and sentenced to 120 years in prison. Protégé
Kenny was convicted of 60 crimes and also received a 125-year sentence. At her sentencing,
Sante was asked by the judge if she had anything to say. She jumped to her
feet, and began a soliloquy that lasted for over an hour. Fed up, the judge eventually stopped her,
exclaiming, “Mrs. Kimes, your performance is over.”
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| Sante Kimes grandstands in front of the court |
Months later convicted Kenny gave
an interview to Court TV reporter Maria Zone.
The Kimeses were both facing extradition to California to face charges
in the death of David Kazden. Not
wanting his mother to face California’s death penalty, Kenny held Maria Zone
hostage for three hours with a ball-point pen held to her throat. After a torturous three hours, Kenny was distracted
and guards were eventually able to wrestle him to the ground and free Ms. Zone.
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| Sante and Kenny Kimes give an interview |
The stunt didn’t work, and Sante was
extradited to California in 2002, where she and Kenny were charged with
Kazdin's murder. Kenny entered a plea deal, pleading guilty to first degree
murder. Not wanting to face the death penalty, Kenny agreed to testify against his
mother. Sante was ultimately convicted of Kazdin's murder and on March 21,
2005, both were sentenced to life in prison. Sante did not show any remorse, nor did she go
down without a fight--at her sentencing, she continued ranting and raving about
the unfairness of it all from a wheelchair.
Sante continues to maintain her innocence, and won’t be eligible to be
released from prison until 2119. Her sentencing
judge named her ‘one of the most evil individuals.’
This has been a very brief recap
of the Kimeses and their life in Paradise Palms. The web that Sante, Ken and
Kenny spun was extremely complex and significantly deeper than can be covered
in what is this very brief overview. Their
long, twisted story reads like fiction, but is darkly true and close to
home. There have been several books
published about this real-life horror story, including ‘Son of a Grifter’, by
Sante’s first-born son, ‘Dead End: The Crime Story of the Decade--Murder,
Incest and High-Tech Thievery’, ‘The Mother, The Son, And The Socialite: The
True Story Of A Mother-Son Crime Spree,’ ‘The Anonomaty of Evil,’ ‘Female
Terror,’ and mentions in countless other anthologies. There’s also the two TV movies, ‘Like
Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes’ and ‘A Little
thing Called Murder.’ Our sympathies go
out to the victims of the Kimses, and we hope that no other individuals have to
face such maladies that the Kimeses endured on those within their grasps.
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| Mary Tyler Moore as Sante Kimes |
