This control the psychopath holds within family relationships often compels spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, and even children (such as in this case) to join in antisocial and criminal acts such as murder but more often in crimes such as theft, fraud, forgery, etc.
The psychopath, with the ability to con and manipulate so well often evades the legal radar screen. And there is no psychopath that is more hidden, more invisible, more stealthy than the mother, if for no other reasons than our own stereotypes about women.
Sante Kimes
She was born Sante Louise Singhrs in July 1934 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She was raised in foster homes and orphanages until the seventh grade when she was adopted by Edwin and Mary Chambers.
Sante had a history of criminal behaviors including shoplifting, petty theft and forgery, starting basically from birth. By high school, she was busted for shoplifting and stole her adoptive father's credit card.
After she graduated from high school she quickly married Lee Powers but was divorced from him 3 months later. She then married Edward Walker, in 1956, and had a child with him. That too did not last. Her husband accused her of stealing and shoplifting, she had been arrested in 1961 in Sacramento for petty theft. So she abandoned her husband and child and moved to Los Angeles where she continued to commit crimes such as shoplifting and stealing. She later turned to prostitution and to grand theft auto. Court records show she was arrested for grand theft in Los Angeles in 1965, and auto theft a few days later in Norwalk, California.
The names of Sante Singhrs and several aliases were becoming more widespread to the various police forces in Southern California. There was a charge against her in Glendale in 1968, and another grand-theft charge in Riverside the next year.
She then met what some people have called a kindred spirit, Kenneth Kimes, a fellow con artist who already amassed a substantial fortune when they met, he was worth nearly ten million dollars when she met him. Still that did not stop them from attempting to con and swindle people. They later had a son Kenny. (More about Ken Sr at the end of this post)
One con that she and her husband Ken attempted to pull off resulted in her and him meeting and having their picture taken with the Vice-President of the United States!! They had attempted to con even the President and had forged a letter on white house stationary. They slipped past the Secret Service at a Blair House reception for Vice-President Gerald Ford and after being asked to leave there they proceeded to attend functions at the West German embassy, the Belgian embassy, and finally, a sit-down dinner at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery. At the one function Sante herself stood up and chatted up their "con" to the crowd. The con failed and was reported the next day in various newspapers. What did Sante have to say about it when asked? Sante said they were doing the project just to "get rid of cynicism in the world."
Their son, Kenny Kimes Jr., was born in 1975 to these two parents who both were apparently psychopaths who loved to steal and con just for the thrill of it. Not a good start from the nature or nurture viewpoints. And there was a lot more that he had to endure growing up. One hired caretaker for him, Kara Craver-Jones, said "I was the hired playmate, he wasn't allowed to have any other friends and we had to do what his mom said, when she said it. He never talked back. She was dominant of him, of me, of everybody." Kenny was learning from his parents to be just like his parents in every way.
Later on, by all accounts, when Kenny entered college at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Sante began sleeping with her son. The pair have never admitted it, but those who witnessed their relationship think it is likely that Sante and Kenny Kimes had sexual intercourse and that Sante victimized her son sexually while he was growing up.
Even with a child her crimes never stopped. Sante kept getting arrested for grand theft, petty theft, and insurance fraud. Houses owned by Ken and Sante would also mysteriously burn to the ground and an insurance firm would write out a settlement.
Then there was the "coat" incidents in Washington in which she and her husband almost went to jail again. Apparently a woman had put her mink coat over the back of a chair and Sante had her husband chat up the woman while Sante walked up, put the coat on and walked out. She was caught as they were staying in the same hotel the theft had occurred in. The police found the coat but the initials had been cut out with a razor blade. They also found several other mink coats and a man's topcoat, all with the identifying features removed. They were charged with the theft of the coats and then the two posted a $4000 bond and left town.
For the next five years, Sante kept getting her trial delayed by having letters from unknown doctors in Mexico sent just before trial. The notes always said she was either too ill to travel or was about to have an operation. In 1985, Sante finally had to go to trial, but as the jury deliberated, she skipped town. The jury convicted her, but a few days later another phony letter was presented that said she had been hit by a car crossing a street just before the verdict and had flown home for treatment. Her lawyer then said she had been convicted while absent and that was illegal. The ploy worked: Sante won on a technicality.
Now Sante was not in Mexico just to arrange for false letters and hide from the law. She had been going to Mexico for a specific purpose for quite a few years and that purpose was going to catch up to her and end up putting her in jail finally.
What she had been doing in Mexico was she would grab poor and impoverished girls off the streets and take them to her homes with promises of a better life and making good money. Instead, she paid them nothing, kept them locked up inside her houses, and made them work seven days a week. (Law and Order did a fictionalized version of this one case)
The problem for Sante was that after the Washington trial, several of her slave girls escaped and went to the police with their tales. Even knowing they would be sent back to Mexico they still went to the police and told their story. That was another crime Sante had committed, she smuggled the girls into the country.
The police raided a house that Sante and Ken owned in La Jolla, California and charged them both with "conspiracy to violate slavery laws." But they convinced the authorities that their legal residence was in Las Vegas and so it was there that a trial took place. The police held Sante without bail because of her previous actions at the coat trial. But before the trial, Sante conned her captors into moving her to a hospital because of medical complaints and then escaped by crawling out a bathroom window. She was caught 3 days later at a local bar.
At the trial, numerous people who were victimized by Sante testified against her. Many of them claimed that Sante had tortured them. One said that Sante would always dismantle the telephone and lock her in when she went out. and that Sante also slapped her around.
One lady named Dolores Vasquez, stated the following:
"I had an allergy. I fainted. [Sante] said to go into the shower. I had taken off my clothes and she told me to get into the shower. I put the water on lukewarm. She changed the water to very hot. It burned. When I moved to a corner of the bathtub, she threw the hot water on me with a little pot." She also stated that Sante had hit her, called her stupid and had threatened her with a gun in the past. Another person said that Sante had branded her with a hot iron and had the scars to prove it. She also said Sante had locked her in a closet overnight.
Sante was sentenced to 5 years in a Federal prison and ended up doing only 3 years. After this point is where things began to get even worse for Sante's actions. People began to disappear when the heat was on.
In 1990 their family lawyer, Elmer Holmgren, burned down one of their homes for the insurance money and made the mistake of talking about it to others. So when the police got wind of it they recruited Holmgren to become an informant on Sante. He went on a vacation trip with them to Costa Rica. He never came back and his body was never found.
Remember Kenny Jr? He was attending college and so was his mother. She had moved them close to Kenny, attended parties with him, and allegedly even shared the same bed with him when they would travel (like to Costa Rica).
Ken Kimes died in 1994, but Sante hid the death from their son because his will had not been updated to name her as the benefactor and so she never told anyone he had died. She made up various stories to cover his absence. Rather than risk losing the money, Sante simply began forging her husband's name on checks and legal documents, spending his $12 million dollar fortune.
She also appears to have recruited David Kazdin who had been an associate of her late husband. Kazdin apparently got angry when he learned that Sante had forged his name on a $280,000 mortgage and had threatened to go to the police. His mistake was in not going to the police before telling her. His body was found in a trash dumpster near Los Angeles airport in March of 1998. He had been shot to death.
Sante, joined by her son Ken, continued to commit even more crimes. They bought a new Lincoln Town Car with a bad check. They had also use a bad check on an Alabama motor home dealer and bought an RV from him. They were swindling people and using bad checks to purchase numerous other things as well. They began working their way across the country and ended up in Florida, where they heard about a rich heiress in New York that ran a bed and breakfast for the wealthy. As you can guess by now they conned and murdered this lady also.
They were caught this time though. During their scam they had contacted an old friend to come help them. What they didn't know was that this old friend had been contacted by the FBI and he was working with them to catch Sante and her son.
On July 5, 1998, Sante and her son Kenny murdered the victim and disposed of her body. Kenny strangled her with his bare hands, placed her body into a suitcase and wrestled it into a car. Her body was never found and Sante was caught to late to save her life.
Some of the things they found in Sante's Lincoln when she was arrested included the victims passport and keys to the mansion, a fully loaded Glock .9 mm pistol and a .22 Beretta. There were real estate transfer papers and a notebook that showed Sante practicing the victims signature over and over again. There was an empty stun-gun box, blank social security cards, handcuffs, extra license plates, syringes, and walkie-talkies.
Sante Kimes was initially convicted of 58 crimes and was sentenced to 120 years in prison. At the sentencing, Sante was asked if she had anything to say. She she ranted about her life and the unfairness of her trial for more than an hour before she was made to stop.
And you would think that it was over. But there is even more to consider and review yet:
During the 2000 trial Sante Kimes passed a note to a reporter in which she claimed she had legally purchased Irene Silverman's town house, and said employees of the missing woman were responsible for her disappearance. The Judge chastised her for writing the note, calling it an overt attempt to influence the jury. Sante had also previously contacted media sources in an attempt to give interviews and the judge had barred her from doing so and after that she passed the note to the reporter. The judge said ''This defendant's only purpose is to improperly affect this jury's deliberations.''
In 2004 both she and her son were extradited to California for the murder of David Kazdin. The attempted cons and manipulations continued even then. Kenny was facing the death penalty and decided to testify against his mother. He testified that it was his mother's idea, planning and urging to kill Kazdin.
There were also letters presented to the Court. Letters that Sante had written to Kenny while they were in custody in New York, awaiting trial for Silverman's murder in 2000. In the letters she instructed Kenny on how to develop his alibi and how to carry himself in court. The letters were creepily started with things such as "My honeybunny" and "My soulmate".
"A lot of time you read in the papers, 'The defendant was cold; showed no compassion,'" one letter read. "I think the key is to show good emotions just like a sweet little beaten little puppy."
Reports from CNN at the time stated:
Kenneth grinned with embarrassment as he further explained how his mother advised him of ways to escape jail: "Find a friendly guard; look for an open door; when someones not looking, run."
Sante Kimes' attempts to manipulate her own trial have been a constant source of irritation for Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell, who admonished Kimes again Thursday morning for being an hour late after refusing to get on the jail bus that was to transfer her to the courthouse.
On Wednesday, court was postponed after Kimes complained to prison guards that she was having severe chest pains. She was taken to the medical ward where a doctor conducted a series of tests. On Thursday, outside the presence of the jury, the judge confronted Kimes.
"The doctor determined that you don't even need a wheelchair and you're absolutely fine," Judge Kennedy-Powell said, warning Kimes that if her "fake displays of illness" continued that the court would determine that she has "voluntarily absented" herself from her own trial and would be carried on without her presence.
On March 21, 2005, both Sante Kimes and Kenny Kimes were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Sante did not show any remorse. At her sentencing, she continued ranting and raving about the unfairness of it all from a wheelchair.
Note: The National Crime Information Center lists 28 different aliases for Sante Kimes.
I wanted to add a little more about Sante Kimes and how she met, hooked, and kept Ken Sr. According to one report she she behaved like a geisha, she would cater to his every him, she would do any sexual trick she needed to ensnare him. According to one of his relatives she even went so far as to find out his favorite flower and had a perfume scent made to match. Basically she "swept him off his feet" as so many do.
There is a lot more that I could have added but there are now various books and movies that have been made about this case and anyone interested can find more details in them. One of those books is titled The Mother, the Son, and the Socialite: The True Story Of A Mother-Son Crime Spree.
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