- 2 days ago
Homicide New York Season 3 Episode 2
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:05¡Suscríbete al canal!
00:30You may think you know my mother, but you don't.
00:33My son and I are innocent.
00:36There is a huge evil cover-up going on.
00:39The police have made a terrible mistake.
00:47With Saté and Kenny Kimes, there's something more than a mother and son relationship here.
00:54People who seem to come and go from the Kimes' lives disappeared.
01:00I got a call.
01:00My friend Irene is missing.
01:02We had an 82-year-old socialite who disappeared from her townhouse.
01:07Every day, without exception, I'd get a call from the police commissioner's office with a simple question.
01:14Where is Irene?
01:18We don't know where she is, but we pray for her.
01:21I pray with my son at 11 o'clock every night.
01:24We pray she's all right, but we don't know where she is.
01:28We're innocent.
01:29And if just given our rights, we will prove it.
01:39Our job is to make sure you can go home and sleep at night.
01:44It's so important for a family to know who murdered their relative.
01:49Compassion for the victims, that's the most important thing.
01:52I've always liked the peek behind the curtain.
01:55What really happened?
01:58You want to find out the truth.
02:01That's what detectives do.
02:03Your instinct is to help people.
02:07In New York City, the NYPD.
02:12This is it.
02:26In 1997, I had 10 years as a New York City cop.
02:29When I got promoted to third grade detective.
02:32And I got transferred from the 34th precinct in Washington Heights to the 19th precinct,
02:37which is the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
02:43It's probably the richest part of New York City.
02:47We would get homicides, but certainly not compared to other precincts.
02:51Within a year of being in that precinct, there was a burglary on Fifth Avenue.
02:55So we go up there, and it's Mary Tyler Moore's apartment.
02:59That's the kind of case that we were working on.
03:02The precinct covers from 59th to 95th Street, from Fifth Avenue all the way to the East River.
03:08It's like a big square.
03:09And there's all kinds of high-rises, so it's very densely populated.
03:13When I got transferred, I had culture shock.
03:16I went from the basement to the penthouse in one move.
03:26In 1998, 4th of July weekend, the city was a ghost town, especially the Upper East Side,
03:32because everyone goes to their Hamptons house out in Long Island.
03:36On July 5th, it was myself and two other detectives working.
03:39Everyone else took off.
03:43A call comes in about a missing person by a staff member of an 82-year-old woman named Irene
03:49Silverman.
03:50I'm the junior detective, so your two other guys were like, well, kid, this is yours.
03:55Here you go.
03:55I was like, oh, shit.
03:57No one really wants a missing person's case.
04:00They usually, um, someone ran away or went somewhere for the weekend.
04:05They didn't tell anybody.
04:06They usually come back, and the case winds up being closed.
04:10But we had to check on it.
04:13So we went over to the townhouse.
04:17It was on a great block on 65th Street, right off of Madison Avenue.
04:26I was a second-grade detective who grew up in the housing projects in East Harlem.
04:31And the first thing I thought was, this is probably the first time I walked into a multimillion-dollar building.
04:38It was a beautiful five-story limestone with a penthouse deck on the roof.
04:44I had not been in many, many buildings that took my breath away as to, you know, wow, this is
04:49really expensive.
04:50I said, this is really, really a woman who's well off.
04:54When we first get to the townhouse, no one's there except Irene Silverman's housekeeper and Jeff, who was her personal
05:01assistant.
05:02The staff started to tell us.
05:04Last night, she threw a 4th of July party.
05:07She had a lot of guests.
05:08They had a great time.
05:09The next morning, at about 11.45 a.m., was the last time any of her staff saw her.
05:15Irene was going to go take a nap.
05:16Later on, at about 4.35 o'clock in the afternoon, Marta goes and knocks on Irene's door to her
05:24bedroom, and Irene doesn't answer.
05:27She goes into the room and realizes that Irene is not there.
05:32I'll never forget.
05:34It's one of the saddest days of my life.
05:37The phone rang, and it was Jeff.
05:40And from the tone of voice, I can sense that something very serious and something wrong is going on.
05:47So all Jeff says, is Irene with you?
05:50I said, no.
05:51So Jeff, the next thing, Jeff said, we were all hoping that Irene is with you, because usually we spend
05:58Sunday together.
05:59He said, she has been missing since 12 o'clock.
06:01I said, what happened?
06:02She said, we don't know.
06:04So I said, I'll come over soon.
06:08When I get to the house, the whole staff was there, everybody.
06:11Suddenly, everybody was at a loss that the lady of the home is gone.
06:19The staff said, Irene would never leave the residence by herself.
06:23She always had someone escort her, whether it was to the store or wherever.
06:26Someone always went with her.
06:28But they also said that this woman is as sharp as a tack.
06:33There is no Alzheimer's.
06:34There's no dementia.
06:35Nothing like that.
06:37We searched the whole townhouse.
06:40We started tracking down guests that were at the party, getting the names so we could interview them also.
06:47The staff told us that her keys were missing.
06:50Not only that, they said that she always kept money on hand, and they said that there was $10,000
06:54missing.
06:55And they showed us where she kept the money, and that envelope was gone.
07:01The people who she employed told us that she treated them just like family.
07:08I remember being impressed with how much they cared for Irene.
07:13That said a lot about the character of Irene Silverman.
07:16To have your worker that loved you and devoted to you and wanted to do the best for you.
07:24They tell us that she doesn't have any family.
07:26She was a socialite.
07:28So if she liked you, she automatically took you in as a friend, would invite you to the parties, would
07:32invite you over to the townhouse.
07:33And that was it.
07:34You were part of her family.
07:36The more I got to know who she was, the more I really liked her, and the more I'd like
07:40to hang out with her.
07:42When she tore a party, she is the center of her attention.
07:46Just like in the movie, the Auntie May movie.
07:50Oh, darling, I'm so glad to end.
07:53I called you yesterday.
07:54Hello, darling.
07:55I'll be with you in just a minute.
07:57She hold court like no one else.
08:00I first met Irene Silverman in 1994.
08:03I was at the peak of my career.
08:07I was the very first Asian designer that was championed by Anna Wintour.
08:12I went to this very fancy Christmas Eve party.
08:16My friend ran into the kitchen.
08:19She said, the grand dame just arrived.
08:21The grand dame just arrived.
08:23You must meet her.
08:24Everybody wants to meet her.
08:26I was introduced to her.
08:28Even though she's tiny, she's barely five foot tall, but she's larger than life.
08:33She's so glamorous, so green, the way she dressed, the way she holds herself.
08:39She said, you must come and have tea with me.
08:42And I was there until after midnight.
08:45We had the best time ever, and she had the best story to tell.
08:50At the age of 17, she was one of the ballerinas at Radio City.
08:57And during one of the performances, Samuel Silverman was in the audience, was so smitten with Irene.
09:05After a courtship, they got married.
09:08Irene told me he's in finance, and then Irene started to live this very, very glamorous life.
09:16After her husband passed away, she started to get a little lonely in this huge mansion.
09:22So, to entertain herself, she rented all the beautiful room to very wealthy people,
09:28for people who do not want to stay at a hotel.
09:37The people who she employed told us that directly to the back, as you come into the building,
09:44there's a door, and that door was for an apartment.
09:46On the first floor, she rented that apartment to a white male named Manny Guerin.
09:52The staff told us that Irene Silverman usually did background checks on her tenants.
09:57However, in this case, she didn't.
10:00A butcher who Irene used, that was a mutual friend recommended Irene's townhouse to Manny Guerin.
10:09On June 14th, he paid $6,000 for one month up front in cash.
10:18The staff mentioned that from the moment he came into the building,
10:22Irene felt that he was not a nice person.
10:26He would often listen to Irene talking to the staff in the foyer,
10:31and they knew that because they would see his feet right by the front door.
10:37We were told by staff that Manny was also sneaking a woman into the building named Eva.
10:44They described her as an older woman, well-dressed.
10:47Eva's a person that Manny claims that he worked with, almost like an assistant.
10:53When we go into Irene's office, there's papers on her desk,
10:57and there's notes that she wrote about the tenant in 1B.
11:01And some of the notes said that he was very suspicious, she didn't trust him, and she wanted him out.
11:06She actually drew, like, a little sketch of him and a description of his height.
11:13She wrote, he looks like jail.
11:15I remember the very first day Manny moved into the rental space.
11:21I was having lunch with Irene at the basement, and then we hear the elevator door open.
11:29Immediately, Irene sent Martha, who's the maid, to the elevator.
11:33She said, please tell Manny, the tenant, this is a private area.
11:37No tenants are allowed in this area.
11:41When Martha finally came back to the dining table,
11:44I never forget, Irene told me, he said, you know what, I'm very suspicious of this guy.
11:50I said, what, Irene, why, why are you taking in someone that you suspected?
11:55She said, I trusted my butcher.
11:58So I did not ask for a background check,
12:01and I agreed to rent them the apartment for a month.
12:07When we find out about the guy in 1B, that's when I was like, oh, this is not good.
12:12So all these flags are going up, you know, saying, hey, this guy's a shithead.
12:17We do a physical check of the apartment that Manny rented to make sure that she was not in there
12:23laying wounded or maybe even dead.
12:27The apartment was dimly lit.
12:30It wasn't a mess, but it wasn't tidy.
12:32The bed was unmade.
12:34There was boxes of food on the counter.
12:38In the garbage can in the apartment, there was a wad of duct tape.
12:43Also recovered was a spool of rope or string.
12:48One of the staff members notices that a comforter from the room is missing,
12:52and we find an empty shower curtain box with just the rings in it.
12:58Why would you need a shower curtain in an apartment with glass lighting doors?
13:03You don't need a shower curtain.
13:05It was at that point that we were thinking we might have an abduction of some kind.
13:16We bring our staff back to the precinct to do a sketch of Manny Guerin,
13:21the person in 1B that was acting suspicious.
13:25I was assigned to stay in the townhouse that night.
13:29That was my oh, shit moment.
13:31I'm a junior detective.
13:33This is my ball of wax.
13:34We thought maybe there'd be a knock at the door of a witness.
13:37Maybe Irene would walk through the door.
13:39Maybe there'd be a phone call.
13:41Could have been anything.
13:42The only one who was with me was George, Irene's dog.
13:51In July of 1998, I had the rank of deputy inspector,
13:55and I was also in charge of Manhattan North Detective Operations,
13:59which oversaw the 12 precincts in Manhattan North.
14:04From 59th Street up to the tip of Manhattan,
14:08we have what we call special category missing persons.
14:12Irene fit at least two of them.
14:15One was that she was 82 years old at the time,
14:20and the second was she seems to have disappeared involuntarily,
14:24and something drastic has happened to her.
14:26A special category missing person prompts
14:30a temporary headquarters to be established.
14:33I get a phone call from Inspector Resnick saying,
14:36Waz, you're going to have to go over the 19th precinct today with your team.
14:40Joe wanted to have the best guys,
14:42or the guys that were attention to detail guys.
14:46Joe Resnick is a tough boss to work for, I'm not going to lie.
14:49He's a no-nonsense kind of guy,
14:51but if I had a relative that was missing or murdered,
14:54I'd want him running this investigation.
15:00We immediately had cards made up
15:03with Irene Silverman's picture on it.
15:06We got any information regarding the spirits.
15:09More whereabouts.
15:10But Mrs. Ironson, please contact the Crime Stoppers.
15:14Detectives would literally stand out on the corner
15:16and hand out flyers and ask people if they saw anything strange.
15:20Now the press gets a hold of it, and that's it.
15:22It just explodes.
15:23The 82-year-old woman vanished from her mansion.
15:26Silverman was last seen alive July 5th.
15:28We have an elderly female who has disappeared very mysteriously.
15:33We have an occupant of an apartment
15:36who she rented to in less than three weeks ago
15:39who has also disappeared mysteriously.
15:42We also mentioned that we are looking for the person in the composite sketch
15:46known as Manny Guerin.
15:49We are looking for him in connection with Ms. Silverman's disappearance.
15:57The day after this press conference,
16:00the 19 Squad gets a call from an NYPD detective
16:04who's part of a joint fugitive task force
16:08where FBI agents and NYPD detectives
16:11are assigned to locate fugitives wanted
16:15not only in New York but from around the country.
16:19He said that on July 5th,
16:21when Irene Silverman was reported missing,
16:25he had arrested two people,
16:27a mother and a son,
16:28at about 55th Street and 6th Avenue
16:31on a warrant that they had from Utah
16:33for buying a car with a stolen check
16:37that they drove to New York City.
16:41The detective from the Preserve Task Force told us
16:44that they both had on their possession
16:48identification that belonged to Irene Silverman.
16:51They were identified as Kenny Kimes
16:55and his mother, Sante Kimes.
16:58In her pocketbook was $10,000 in cash.
17:02When questioned about why she had $10,000 cash,
17:05she said she needed a lot of cash to visit New York,
17:08which didn't make any sense.
17:10I don't know who carries $10,000 cash
17:14in their pocketbook.
17:15I have a gun and I wouldn't go to New York
17:17with $10,000 cash in my pocket.
17:20But also there's a ring of keys with red nail polish,
17:23which were Irene's.
17:25I thought we were looking for Manny Guerin,
17:28but when I heard about that,
17:30I said, are you fucking kidding me?
17:34With this new information,
17:36we grab a car and we go down to Manhattan Central Booking
17:39to interview Kenny.
17:42When I first walked in,
17:44I thought, holy shit,
17:47Kenny matched the sketch of Manny Guerin
17:51pretty dead on.
17:55I was convinced we had Manny Guerin, for sure.
17:59We asked him,
18:01why do you have Irene's ID?
18:03Do you know Irene?
18:03Yes, I know her.
18:07I think my mother was friends with her.
18:10We said, Kenny, think of Irene.
18:13She could be alive somewhere.
18:15Maybe she's missing.
18:16Maybe you could help us find her.
18:17Why don't you talk to us?
18:18What if that was your mother?
18:19How would you feel?
18:21There was a glimmer of light.
18:23There were tears in his eyes.
18:25I remember it.
18:27And I thought that he would start talking to us
18:31and he was going to fall on the sword.
18:33But seconds later,
18:35it's like a switch went off inside of him.
18:39He just became very stoic,
18:41turned to stone and asked for an attorney.
18:44When I was leaving,
18:46I was 100% convinced
18:48that he had a big part of Irene's disappearance.
18:53His mother, Sante Kimes,
18:55was at the FBI building downtown
18:57waiting to be arraigned
18:58for the stolen car case.
19:00And I was hoping that the detectives
19:02who were interviewing her
19:03were having more success than we were.
19:06But she requested an attorney
19:09and the interview was shut down.
19:17So we do a background check on them,
19:20see what they were arrested for in the past.
19:22We saw that Kenny never had any major run-ins with the law.
19:27Then we looked at Sante
19:28and you couldn't believe
19:30the horrific things that they see.
19:33At one point,
19:34I was assigned the story
19:36of what happened here
19:39to Irene Silverman in New York.
19:41And I found out that
19:42Sante Kimes was orphaned
19:45when she was younger
19:46and she sort of bounced around
19:47from house to house,
19:49whether it was an orphanage
19:51or a friend of a friend.
19:53She was very poor.
19:55She met Kenneth Kimes, Sr.
19:58In 1970,
20:00he was in the construction business
20:03and owned a chain of motels.
20:05They had houses in the Bahamas,
20:09oceanfront property in Honolulu,
20:12a house in Las Vegas.
20:15They were living the high life.
20:19A couple of years after they met each other,
20:22she and her husband had Kenneth Kimes, Jr.
20:27Sante Kimes definitely considered Kenneth
20:30her little prince,
20:31but Sante would control everything
20:34that Kenneth did.
20:35To the point where she decided
20:36to homeschool him,
20:37not send him to school.
20:40Kenny did what Mommy said.
20:42He, he, Mommy said to jump.
20:45He jumped.
20:46She knew how to manipulate things
20:49to her needs.
20:51Sante was a con artist.
20:53Don't take me when I'm cat.
20:55Like, you don't.
20:56She had, like, I think 11 different aliases
21:00listed on her arrest histories,
21:03which included insurance fraud,
21:06some larcenies.
21:08Sante Kimes, I think, loved danger.
21:11She liked to see how much she could get away with.
21:16She claimed that her husband was an ambassador
21:20and somehow got invited to a reception being thrown for Gerald Ford.
21:28There's a picture of her and Kenneth Kimes shaking President Ford's hand.
21:33To this day, no one knows how she got through Secret Service.
21:38She had a way of entering a room and everybody would look over and say,
21:44oh, look how she's dressed.
21:46Oh, my God, look at her jewelry.
21:48She must belong here.
21:50Another one of the things that stood out was a slavery charge back in 1985.
21:58Sante Kimes would hire help from Mexico to clean her big homes.
22:04She would treat them really badly.
22:09She would lock maids in their rooms.
22:13One of them subsequently testified at that trial
22:16that she was burned by an iron.
22:21They gave her the name The Dragon Lady.
22:25It's a different crazy, is what it is.
22:28She's a psychopath.
22:30Sante was sentenced to five years in prison.
22:34However, her husband was never prosecuted for that case.
22:39She served three years out of a five-year term.
22:45Then, Kenneth Kimes Sr. died in 1994 of a brain aneurysm.
22:53And when he died, this threw Sante's life in a tailspin.
22:58She was like, how am I going to continue my lifestyle?
23:02As long as Sante ended up on top, that's all she cared about.
23:08After his fault, his death, mother and son were hooked hip to hip.
23:13Whatever ventures they got involved with, they did it together.
23:18Befriending the Kimes was a very dangerous proposition.
23:23People they knew seemed to disappear out of the blue.
23:28One of them was David Kasdan.
23:31David Kasdan was an associate of Sante and Kenneth Kimes, a business partner in some sense.
23:38She took out a fraudulent loan against David Kasdan's home.
23:42And he gets, I believe it was a coupon book for payments on a $250,000, $300,000 loan that
23:48he was totally unaware of.
23:50And he went to the authorities.
23:53Shortly after that, they found Kasdan's body in a dumpster by LAX airport.
24:00But at that point, the LAPD didn't have enough to arrest Sante and Kenneth Kimes for the murder of David
24:08Kasdan.
24:09And at that point, Sante and Kenny drove all the way across country in the stolen car so they could
24:15rent the apartment in Irene's townhouse.
24:22There were discussions about whether they should be extradited to LA to face the David Kasdan murder or leave him
24:30here in New York.
24:31Well, I got news for you.
24:33If someone is killed here in New York City, the case should stay here in New York City until it's
24:38totally resolved.
24:39And trust me, there was just a voluminous amount of work that had to be accomplished yet.
24:48News Channel 4 took these exclusive pictures of the K-9 police dog unit and the crime scene technicians going
24:55to the basement garage where the car Kenneth Kimes drove was being held.
24:59The search warrant was conducted on the Green Lincoln Town Car.
25:04We open up the trunk.
25:06Nothing, just garbage.
25:08Everything is piled in the back seat of the car.
25:11And there was a lot of shit, man.
25:14It took eight hours to go through that car.
25:17We recovered a box from a taser gun.
25:20We found a clear liquid that was later identified as a knockout drug like a roofie.
25:25We found Irene Silverman's Social Security card with some other papers that had Irene's name on it.
25:31We recovered all kinds of wigs, eavesdropping equipment.
25:35Sitting in the car were 15 notebooks that had notes meticulously detailing Irene's movement.
25:44You know, when you look at the big picture and what's going on here, those are pretty telling things.
25:50Also in those notebooks was how to take possession of Irene's house, get notary, get title, get deed.
25:59Also recovered from the car was a microcassette with some cassette tapes.
26:03And we listened to them.
26:08And one of them had Sante posing as a person calling Irene, saying that she won a trip to go
26:17to Las Vegas to stay at Circus Circus.
26:34The whole gist of the call was to try to get Irene Silverman to divulge over the phone her Social
26:42Security number.
26:53She was trying to get information so she could use on the deeds and the forged papers and stuff.
27:06She tried every which way to get that number out of Irene and Irene was not fucking having it.
27:13She tried to get the right man.
27:13Well, you send me whatever you have there, and if I like it, the idea, then I'll give you my
27:22Social Security number.
27:26With all the information that we had recovered, we weren't dealing with a missing person.
27:32We knew we were looking for a homicide victim.
27:36I have a great reader or fortune teller, whatever you call.
27:41So as soon as I sat down, he looked at me and said, I'm so sorry for your loss.
27:47And I said, your great friend is no longer with us.
27:53Immense sadness and emotion came immediately.
27:58And also then, I immediately went to deny.
28:01I said, maybe he's wrong.
28:02I hope this time he's wrong.
28:06Knowing that this is going to be a homicide case, we still felt we needed a body to put these
28:12people away.
28:12We knew they did it.
28:13But without a body, there was a good chance that they might get off.
28:17Personally, to me, I was pissed off.
28:19I wanted to go back and punch Kenny in the face and get the information out of him.
28:30There was a tip line that was put out for a person to call with information as to the sightings
28:35of the Green Lincoln Town Car.
28:37We were following up on every lead that we got.
28:42We searched the Meadowlands out in Jersey.
28:45Meadowlands is no picnic.
28:47It's a swampy, tall grass area.
28:50It sucks.
28:51It sucks.
28:52It's just a smelly, dirty place to search, but perfect to dump a body.
28:59We'd find all kinds of garbage, all kinds of discarded containers, luggage, and what I call Coney Island whitefish, meaning
29:06used condoms, used tampons.
29:10We were desperate to find Irene Silverman's body.
29:14Every tip that came in on this case, or any case, has to be investigated.
29:18As crazy as it may sound, one particular day, I recall being in the office.
29:24Someone's come to our office with a dead chicken.
29:28What brought my attention to it was the fucking smell.
29:32It reeked, and it permeated the office.
29:35We were all told, inside the anus of the dead chicken, there's a note, and in that note, it says
29:42where Irene Silverman's body is.
29:45I says, get the fuck out of here.
29:48And I made them get her out of the office.
29:53But they slowly took the chicken and her down to 126th Street, Amsterdam Avenue, where there was a chicken poultry
30:00farm, factory, whatever you want to call it.
30:02And they examined the chicken.
30:05As far as that chicken was concerned, there was no note in the chicken's ass.
30:13It was one of the lighter moments that we had during this investigation.
30:18But that's how much pressure we were under.
30:21Each and every lead that came in had to be answered.
30:28The Kimes were still in jail for the stolen car, and we were listening to their phone calls.
30:33And we intercepted a call from Sante Kimes, talking to a private investigator hired by the defense.
30:40She was advising him to go to the Plaza Hotel to retrieve a bag.
30:48With that, myself and another detective got into a car and rode lights and signs down to the Plaza Hotel.
30:59And his retired detective captain was the head of security there.
31:03He said, private investigator just came in and got the bag, gave us his name.
31:08We have another detective looking up his private investigator's license.
31:14The PI's office was down by City Hall, so we went over there.
31:18First, he denied picking up the bag.
31:21And then we told him, listen, we know that you went and picked up the bag.
31:26How do you think we got to your office?
31:29Out of the blue?
31:31So then he decided to surrender the bag.
31:34That was probably one of the biggest breaks in the case that we got.
31:38In that bag, we found a .22 caliber handgun.
31:44A power of attorney with Irene Silverman's signature on it.
31:51And we recovered a copy of the deed signed by Irene Silverman.
31:57What was noted on the deed was that, in fact, the house was being sold to the Atlantis Group Incorporated,
32:04which we subsequently learned was a shell company created by Sante Kimes.
32:11We had handwriting analysis done on them, and sure enough, it came back that those documents were forged.
32:22We can see that it was notarized, signed, and dated by a specific notary.
32:29Once the notary was located, she was interviewed.
32:33The notary states that she came to Irene Silverman's building.
32:37She found herself in a room where it's dimly lit.
32:40It was dark.
32:42Sante Kimes was dressed up as Irene in a bed, you know, with a red wig on and some to
32:51cover in her face.
32:52The covers pulled up, you know, just like a little Red Riding Hood.
32:56She had some ID, which was forged ID or whatever, and she notarized it, and that was it.
33:06The notary was asked to view a lineup of Sante and Kenny Kimes at the district attorney's office.
33:13And I remember sitting with Sante Kimes, guarding her before the lineup.
33:19She and I were the only ones in the room.
33:21Knowing that she's a con artist, I just decided to not drop my guard and not allow her to get
33:27me into any type of conversation.
33:29Two minutes later, I'm telling her, yeah, I'm separated.
33:32I live in Yonkers.
33:33My kids are 10 and 12 years old.
33:35I should have known better than to let her engage with me.
33:40But she had the ability to just make you relax.
33:45Make you relax to a point where you can just answer any and all questions that she asked.
33:50And that's how she got information from people.
33:53I don't have to be...
33:54Stop it!
33:55To go forward with some sort of scam or fraud that she was planning to do.
34:01The notary picked Sante right out of the lineup, no problem at all.
34:11Those forged documents became critical to the case because it was the motive.
34:18It painted a very persuasive picture that the Kimeses were creating a fraudulent transaction to make it look like Irene
34:29Silverman was turning over the townhouse to them.
34:32Although we didn't have a body, we were convinced that we could go forward with charging them with homicide.
34:41Five months after Irene went missing in December of 1998, Sante and Kenneth Kimes were finally indicted for murder in
34:48the second degree.
34:49They were indicted for burglary.
34:50They were indicted for robbery.
34:51They were indicted for eavesdropping.
34:53There were 84 counts of charges against them.
34:56I mean, that's a hell of a lot of counts.
34:58From her jail cell, Kimes claims she's innocent.
35:01Please help.
35:03I am pleading for our constitutional rights to a fair judge, trial, and a venue so that my wonderful young
35:11son's innocence can be proven to everyone.
35:15What was strange is how many times Sante and Kenny Kimes got to the media while waiting for their trial.
35:25My son and I are innocent.
35:28There is a huge evil cover-up going on.
35:31The police have made a terrible mistake.
35:34You have been led to think certain things about the both of us which are completely untrue.
35:42We are innocent.
35:43It was really some act.
35:47They were portrayed as being prosecuted for no good reason.
35:53And then, look at my son.
35:54Does he look like a killer to you?
35:5760 Minutes invited the Kimes to talk about what had happened.
36:02It certainly didn't appear to be a mother-son relationship.
36:06They're holding hands and Kenny, you know, complimenting his mother's looks.
36:11I think she's a beautiful person spiritually and intellectually and physically.
36:17It was just the strangest, strangest thing to see of a mother and son who are adults.
36:23There was speculation that there was an incestuous relationship going on.
36:27I personally don't believe that.
36:31My belief is that she was in control of every aspect of his life.
36:41She groomed Kenny to be a killer.
36:48The case goes to trial in January of 2000, about a year and a half after Irene's disappearance.
36:57The main defense strategy was, how can you possibly convict if there's no body?
37:03I'm not sure there is another defense.
37:07But we were able to put on a four-month trial and it went in quite smoothly.
37:13Both Sante and Kenny Kimes were found guilty on every single charge.
37:21Each one of them were going to get a minimum of 125 years to life.
37:27Sante honestly thought she was smarter than everyone else.
37:30These schemes were feeding her and she needed it like Dracula needs blood.
37:35And I'll say this, in their possession was a list of 16 other New Yorkers targeted by the Kimes.
37:44We checked with all of them to make sure that they were okay.
37:50In October of 2000, when Sante and Kenny were awaiting extradition to the state of California
37:59where they faced the murder trial of David Kasdan,
38:02I was assigned to produce a documentary for CORE TV.
38:07Kenny agreed ultimately to do an interview with me on camera.
38:12He walked in and he looked scary.
38:15He had the darkest, blackest eyes that just seared right through me.
38:24Cameraman, audio person, start rolling.
38:27Within 40 minutes, he had asked me for three breaks.
38:30Could, um, if I may ask, uh, could we take a break in maybe five or ten minutes?
38:35The last break, he asked, would you mind getting me something to eat?
38:41So I went to the vending machines.
38:44I reach out to give him these items.
38:47And before I know it, he's around my back with his right arm across my, my neck.
38:55And he said to me, this is a hostage situation.
39:00Sirens are going off.
39:03Kenny notices that the cameraman has the camera still rolling.
39:07And he said, stop the fucking camera.
39:10Don't kill him, man.
39:11Back.
39:16Being that close to him was disgusting.
39:20I could feel his heart pounding against my back.
39:25Um.
39:29I, uh, could feel his sweat.
39:34I remember him flicking this pen.
39:38And right away, I'm thinking he's going to stab me with this pen.
39:43The prison officials that had come into the room were saying,
39:48Kenneth, calm down.
39:50You're not going to accomplish anything by doing this.
39:53I said to him, why are you doing this?
39:57And right away, he said, my mother is old.
40:00She cannot handle another trial.
40:02I want my mother and I to be extradited to Canada.
40:10It was really terrifying.
40:15Five long hours had gone by.
40:18And I said to him, Kenneth, you know, um, do you know how to pray?
40:24Let's pray together.
40:25And he said, yes, I do.
40:27And, like, this calmness came across his face.
40:31After we prayed together, a hostage negotiator said to Kenny,
40:36Kenny, it's been long enough.
40:39He said, this is my business card.
40:41Let me help you.
40:43Kenny went to grab it, which means he let me go.
40:47And that was my opportunity to just storm out of that room.
40:52There was at least a half dozen guys in there.
40:55They jumped him.
40:57And I didn't look back.
40:58I just kept on going.
41:01But I was just, um, so grateful to be alive.
41:13Kenneth Kimes helped his mother kill a wealthy widow.
41:16Now he's admitting to another murder.
41:17He surprised a courtroom in Los Angeles by pleading guilty to killing a businessman,
41:22David Kasdan.
41:23He made a cooperation agreement with the L.A. County District Attorney's Office
41:29in which he testified against his mother.
41:33He confessed to the murder of David Kasdan
41:39and the murder of Irene Silverman
41:42in exchange for a sentence that did not include the death penalty
41:48for himself and his mother.
41:55Kenny said that Irene Silverman knocked on his door.
42:00He pulled her into the apartment.
42:02He stun-gunned her.
42:04She dropped to the floor.
42:06He choked her to death.
42:09Then took a shower curtain, wrapped her up,
42:12taped her up with the duct tape,
42:14put her in a duffel bag,
42:17put her in the trunk of his car,
42:20drove downtown through the Lincoln Tunnel.
42:23He goes, I saw a dumpster.
42:25I put her body in the dumpster, and that was it.
42:33Justice was served.
42:35But we didn't have Irene's body.
42:38You know, it'll haunt me to my death
42:41that a great woman like that
42:44who actually contributed something to society
42:47doesn't even have closure, you know, in her life
42:50where her body was never laid to rest.
42:54It's still an open case in my mind.
42:59I'm hoping one day her remains are found
43:01and there's DNA,
43:03and I get a phone call saying,
43:05hey, we found Irene.
43:07Do I think that's going to happen?
43:08No, I don't.
43:09But do I hope it happens?
43:11A hundred percent.
43:11I'd love to get that phone call.
43:13I really would.
43:17It took at least ten years for me to come to term
43:20that someone really, really killed her.
43:29I had that fantasy
43:31that they keep me acting somewhere
43:33and put her away somewhere,
43:35a little tongue somewhere,
43:36maybe she'll reappear.
43:38But sadly, last few years, I came to term.
43:43I came to term that, you know,
43:46she's no longer with us,
43:48but she's smiling down at me every day.
43:52Every time I cross 65th Street,
43:56I always look up to a beautiful home.
44:00I say a quiet hello to her
44:05and tell her quietly that I miss her.
44:22I get a call that a guest is experiencing
44:26a heavy leak of water into their room.
44:30Solo House is a very exclusive, high-end club,
44:34and we have a young woman dead in the bathtub.
44:37The identity of the victim
44:39was Sylvie Cachet, female, 33 years old.
44:43She was a fashion designer, swimsuit designer.
44:47She was just the perfect member
44:49to be a part of Solo House.
44:51She checked in with her boyfriend,
44:54and he's no longer there.
44:55So, yeah, it is suspicious.
44:58And then we find the fuck you email.
45:02A picture is starting to emerge.
45:04There are situations you hope to never be in.
45:09What happened in that room?
45:10It's not something you can just forget about.
45:12It's not something you can just forget about.
45:13It's not something you can just forget about.
45:14It's not something you can just forget about.
45:18It's not something you can just forget about.
45:19It's not something you can just forget about.
45:21It's not something you can just forget about.
45:26It's not something you can just forget about.
45:30It's not something you can just forget about.
45:32It's not something you can just forget about.
45:33It's not something you can just forget about.
45:34It's not something you can just forget about.
45:36It's not something you can just forget about.
46:08Gracias por ver el video.
46:37Gracias por ver el video.
46:50Gracias por ver el video.
Comments