Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena.
And this is Morbid.
This is Morbid.
And we just got finished watching the... Is it 2009 documentary?
I think it is 2009.
Catfish.
The movie.
Catfish the movie.
Not the TV show.
The movie it all stemmed from.
Oh, 2010.
2010.
Wow, for some reason I thought it was earlier than that.
That movie...
Wow.
Henry aged really well.
Henry did age very well.
That's actually nuts.
But if you haven't watched that movie yet, where are you?
Honestly, everybody aged pretty well.
You gotta watch that movie.
That movie... will give you so many different emotions.
It feels like a horror movie.
No, I stand by the fact that it turns into a horror movie.
I remember the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, is this like a found footage thing?
Yeah, we thought it was a horror movie when we first watched it.
Yeah.
I fully get that.
It's a weird comfort movie for me, even though it's not comforting in any way, because the time period it came out in, we watched it when we were like living with friends and we all watched it together.
Yeah.
And it has like a nice cozy feel to it.
And I remember very vividly watching it for the first time.
Yeah.
So it is like one of those movies I can put on and it puts me in like a weird cozy place.
I don't know.
It's weird.
All right.
I get it being from a time period that like feels comfy.
I understand that.
Yeah.
Because there are certain movies that are just like I love and this movie is awful.
There's one scene that I can't watch.
Oh, God.
No, it's true.
Hold on.
I'm literally having problems.
I was like, what movie is this?
It's the Yaya Sisterhood, I think.
Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood.
Oh, I almost said Traveling Pants.
Oh my God, that's exactly what I was going to say.
I kept going to say Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
I don't know why.
That makes sense.
I was like, that's not it.
Because Sisterhood, you know?
Sisterhood, yeah.
No, The Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood.
I love that movie, but it's like the darkest movie of all time.
I've never seen that movie.
You would hate it.
Yeah.
There's one scene that like literally I could never watch again.
Really?
Yeah, I saw it when I was like way too young.
But I love that movie, but it's like...
I think it just like reminds me of a childhood or something.
That's the thing.
It's like it's not necessarily, I will say, with Catfish, though every time I feel like I know what is going to happen.
Yeah.
Because I've seen it a million times.
But you're still shocked.
I'm still shocked by it.
And I'm still like just...
You could knock me over with a goddamn feather.
I get it.
Every time.
I get it.
And we were watching it and Deb had not seen it.
Watching somebody?
And Mikey had not seen it actually.
So we had them watch it for the first time and they were shocked.
And watching their reactions.
That's the thing.
Made us sit there and go, wait a second.
Maybe we should talk about the original Catfish movie on a bonus episode, because you know it'll be fun and terrifying and wild.
And if you've never seen it before, go watch it.
Don't spoil it for yourself.
Go watch it.
Yeah, don't Google anything.
But maybe we'll do... We have a few bonus episodes planned out ahead of time.
We're going to be covering Eclipse, obviously.
We've got a fun book club coming up.
And we have...
America's Next Top Model, sweetie model, um.
So we have those lined up, but we could do it after those and just let us know if that sounds like a good idea.
I feel like it would be a fun yeah, it'd be fun, a fun one to like deep dive into.
It feels crimey, because I would also love to go into like this happening.
Like, the phenomenon of catfishing on the internet.
Because doesn't it feel crimey?
Like, identity theft is a crime.
Yeah.
I mean, it does feel very crimey.
You know what I mean?
Especially And I don't want to ruin anything.
So, like, I feel like it would be a fun episode.
Yeah, there's so much to talk about.
Yeah, so let us know if that sounds like a good bonus episode for a few out from now.
Yeah, yeah, hit us up.
Yeah.
I have a wild case today.
And Dave named this one.
And I said, what am I getting into?
Mommy and Clyde, mommy and clyde, mommy and clyde, it's the crimes of santa and kenny kimes.
Okay, and i hadn't heard of this one when i dived into it.
No, i haven't heard of it and i was swimming in a sea of what the fuck?
Oh, i always love that and it starts like really beautifully, but then it gets so sad, so fast, let's go girls.
And then it gets fucking dark and crazy and murderous, oh man.
So it also starts on July 4th.
Oh.
On July 4th 1998, 82-year-old Irene Silverman threw a small party for her friends at her East 65th Street townhouse.
Let's go.
She was a former ballet dancer who had studied under the famous Russian instructor Michael Fokine.
And even when she was retired and got older, she never lost a single bit of her elegance.
This woman is gorgeous if you look her up.
Her friend John Gruen said, Honestly, she sounds iconic.
I love her.
So it seemed like everybody who had even just a casual relationship with Irene had only good things to say about her.
Her former dancer, Janice Herbert, said she was so hip, so funny, so awake.
She was with it.
Another close friend, Zhang Toy, echoed those same statements.
He said she's vivacious.
She's a lot of fun.
Uh zhang toy and irene had actually been friends for many, many years, so of course he had been to her manhattan townhouse for a ton of the lavish parties that she'd thrown throughout the years, and he was always amazed by the lengths that she went to just to make sure everybody was entertained like anybody who was at her party.
There was going to be something special for each person, he said.
She knew how to throw a great party during her heyday and she had a heart of gold.
So, rewinding a bit now, Irene had been born into a poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana.
New Orleans.
So you would love her.
She was born in 1916.
Her father was a fisherman.
Her mother was a seamstress.
And, despite the odds, she did manage to escape that poverty through her incredible talent and commitment to dance.
She was a beautiful dancer.
Eventually, she landed a spot studying with some of the most famous ballet instructors in the world.
And at her height, she was dancing on some of the most prestigious stages, which included a high-profile position with the Radio City Music Hall's Classical Ballet Company.
Oh, shit.
Like, that's a huge deal.
That's huge.
And that was called, I believe it was called Corps du Ballet.
Cool.
She used to say, lots of people think I'm very rich, and I am, but I've always worked.
And look at where I began.
I'm a tough broad, a child of the depression.
I had to be self-supporting from the age of 16.
Wow.
I just love, lots of people think I'm rich, and I am.
She's like, fuck you, I worked for it.
Yeah, good for her.
She's got great energy.
So in 1941 Irene married millionaire real estate broker Sam Silverman, and they were happily married until his death in 1980.
Obviously, they had been married for so so long.
So Sam's death was incredibly hard for Irene, but she was determined to hold on to her love of life.
She didn't want to just lose herself in his death.
And in the years that followed she was just making sure she was constantly surrounded by friends and family.
Now she was a widow, so she had a lot of time on her hands.
And she also had more money than she knew what to do with.
So 59-year-old Irene enrolled in courses at Columbia University.
Wow.
Started taking classes.
Look at her.
And then she'd throw these huge parties for her classmates and her instructors.
And she would regularly treat them to like small gifts or gestures of her friendship.
Her friend George Frango said these gatherings were colorful improvised theater over which Irene presided, reveling in the intrigue and drama of it all.
She sounds like a hot fucking ticket.
She really does.
She really does.
It wasn't just that she wanted to fill her time after her husband's death either.
It seemed like no matter where she was, she just wanted to be surrounded by people.
Like she had a love for life.
In the wake of Sam's passing, she decided to rent out one or two of the rooms.
She had very large bedrooms in her Manhattan mansion.
And over the years, she shared her home with tenants like actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Oh, okay.
She rented out to Lenny Kravitz and Chaka Khan.
No big deal.
Isn't that nuts?
No big deal.
And it wasn't that she needed the money.
She just didn't like being alone.
And she, again, loved being around people.
And why not have really awesome people around her?
Well, and that's the thing.
When it came to choosing tenants, she had two requirements.
They had to be interesting and they had to be easy to get along with.
Honestly, that's so valid.
Yeah, that was pretty much it.
So those who happily shared their lives with her usually found themselves rewarded too, in like just unexpected ways.
Yeah.
According to journalist Alex Kirsta, they might find Silverman's antique, silver service and a bottle of champagne left in their dining room.
Wow.
She said, get to it.
She said, you know what?
She said, you're welcome.
I'll help.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm like, I want to be friends with Irene.
Yeah.
So at the end of the night, just where we started on July 4th, Irene said goodbye and goodnight to her guests and she went to bed.
The next morning, her maid, Aricella, came to clean up after the party.
And it was a holiday, obviously, so the rest of the staff was off.
And Aricella herself was planning to leave around noon.
She was working a shorter shift.
Okay.
The last time she saw Irene, she was still dressed in her nightgown and her slippers.
And Irene asked if Aricella would take the dog for a walk on the roof garden before she left.
And Aricella was planning to leave for a few hours and then she was going to come back.
Okay.
So she was like, oh, before you go, just walk the dog.
So when Aricella returned after being away around 4 p.m., she got back.
The house was empty and there was no sign of Irene anywhere, which was very strange.
And as far as Aricella knew, Irene didn't have any plans to go out that day.
The rest of the staff was gone.
And Irene, like I just told you, she loves being surrounded by people.
She very rarely went anywhere alone.
So it seemed highly unlikely that she would have left without saying anything to anybody.
Yeah.
Uh-oh.
So similarly, Irene's close friend and business manager, Jeff Feig, hadn't heard from her in a day or two.
And he said she hadn't mentioned having any plans to go anywhere over the holiday weekend.
So he agreed it was weird.
So Aricella waited in the house for an hour or two.
She was like, you know, she could have gone somewhere.
It would be out of character, but let's not panic.
But after an hour or two, the panic was starting to set in.
There was still no sign of Irene.
So Aricella called the police.
Now, strangely, the day after 4th of July is a quieter day for the Manhattan police.
When the call came in about a missing elderly socialite, it didn't seem like an emergency situation, which is kind of weird to me.
But the case was assigned to newly promoted junior detective Tom Havajim, Havajim, excuse me.
Later, he said, I'd just gotten promoted in January.
So the other two guys were pretty senior to me.
And they said, well, kid, this is yours because nobody really wants a missing persons case.
It's tedious work.
Damn.
I was like, that's fake as fuck.
All right.
Cool.
It's tedious to find someone missing.
So you do it.
Nice.
And also like you're junior, so you do it.
But you guys are senior, so you might be a little better at it.
And it's like a whole person missing.
Yeah.
Somebody's loved one.
You could treat it with a little more than that.
Respect, dignity, any of the above.
Yeah.
But luckily, Detective Hovijim was a good detective.
He drove to Irene's six-story townhouse on the Upper East Side and he started collecting information.
I just, like, picturing a six-story townhouse, all I can think of is Sonia Morgan's house.
That's literally all I can think of.
From Real Housewives of New York.
But, like, to have to collect evidence from a home like that?
Yeah.
I can't imagine.
Oh, my God.
And there's all this, like, expensive... I was going to say, and there's, like, years of...
Of living in there that you have to, like, search through.
But you also have to be careful.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
So, with Aricella as a guide, Hovijim searched the entire house and the entire property, but there was truly no sign of Irene anywhere.
After searching the house.
He spoke with the attendees of the party the previous evening but didn't really find anything useful or suspicious there.
And the same was true of Irene's staff.
Everybody was accounted for and nobody had any information that seemed useful in finding Irene and none of them seemed suspicious in any way.
So other than the missing homeowner there was really just one thing that seemed out of the ordinary.
Irene's current tenant a man named Manny Guerin also appeared to be missing.
Huh.
So about three weeks earlier on June 14th, Manny Guerin showed up at Irene's door.
He said he was a businessman from Palm Beach and he was looking to rent one of her large vacant apartments upstairs.
Okay.
I think earlier I said they were rooms.
They were actually apartments.
Oh, wow.
Because picture like a townhouse.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So Manny was charming.
He was well-spoken.
Two things that Irene prized.
Seems like he might be easy to get along with.
A good tenant.
But the only weird thing was he didn't have any references or identification.
What he did have though, was 6000 cash for the first month's rent and a promise that he would give her the references the following day.
So all, it's a red flag for sure.
But it's also a red flag from yeah, I was going to say it's from, like you know the rear view mirror.
Exactly.
A red flag.
But I think, I mean, she was 84.
She probably is like, I can read people at this point and like I'm getting good vibes.
Yeah.
He's a businessman.
He's got the money.
Obviously the vibes run off to her.
Right.
Right.
Once he moved into the large first floor apartment he became far less charming than he had been on that first day.
When Irene or the staff members interacted with him at all, he seemed to avoid eye contact, which was obviously very strange.
And he also would only give one word and often very blunt responses.
He refused to allow the cleaning staff into his apartment, which it's like, why?
You don't own it.
Yeah.
You're just, you're renting it.
And anytime Irene would press him for those references, he'd come up with one excuse or another about why he didn't have them.
Yep.
Equally troubling was the number of suspicious-looking people who seemed to show up at his apartment at all hours, including an older woman who he quote.
This would fuck me up.
Yeah.
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Get out.
Get the fuck out of here.
Also, this woman has well-established relationships with these people.
They know who she is.
You think you're going to turn them on her right now?
And she treats her staff like family.
That's the thing.
Like, she puts her money where her mouth is.
Exactly.
So eventually, several of the staff members, including Majestu, told Irene about their concerns.
They were trying to have respect for her, of course.
Yeah, they're like, this guy's talking shit behind your back.
Right, exactly.
Like, in the beginning, I think they were like, you know what you're doing.
And like, we're not going to second guess you.
But I think as time went on, they were like, Irene, are you sure about this?
Like, we're getting weird vibes.
Yeah.
And they had actually heard.
I think they felt more confident sharing these concerns after they heard her arguing with him for a few days after he moved in.
Oh, damn.
You were going to say for a few days.
For a few days.
I almost did.
It was like the stamina that takes.
Yeah, they were arguing for days.
So Irene's friend Bob Yakovic remembered, Valerie and Menji both warned her not to trust him.
Down in the kitchen, Menji had drawn an Ethiopian cruciform symbol on top of the fridge, as if to ward off evil, saying these people mean you no good.
They are bad and you should be afraid of them.
Irene's response was that she was an old lady who had survived many dangers and she still wasn't afraid of anybody.
She is such a bad bitch.
She really is.
But still, after just one week...
Wow.
This all happened in one week?
This all happened in one week.
Holy shit.
Irene had had enough of Manny, and she told him she wanted him out.
He never got her the references.
Yeah.
He's trying to turn her staff against her.
He's bringing all these weird people, and she's like, get out of here.
The following day, she instructed her business manager to serve him with eviction papers before the month's lease was even up.
Good for her.
So the last time that James Shenton, a friend of Irene, saw her was June 27th, just one week before the Fourth of July party.
Irene might have talked a tough game, and she was definitely a very self-sufficient woman, but that day her friend couldn't help but notice that she seemed particularly spooked by what was going on.
Rather than sit inside to have coffee and talk, like they always did, Irene insisted they go up to the rooftop garden because she was quote nervous of being overheard.
She felt like she was being listened to.
Imagine having a rooftop garden to go to.
I fucking wish.
To talk shit.
I would never stop talking shit on my rooftop.
That would be the only reason for my rooftop garden.
I would name it talk shit.
I would name it something about talking shit, talking shit yeah yeah, like that would.
Oh, my god, i would decorate it for optimal shit talking.
Yes, absolutely.
Comfy chairs, oh hell yeah.
Mini fridge, yep snacks, tea cups, tea cups spilling tea, metaphorically and literally.
Those chairs are gonna have big comfy pillows so you can sit cross-legged.
Someday let's get a roof garden where we can talk shit.
Shake.
Shaking.
We're shaking across the room.
We're doing that.
So they went up to the roof garden to talk shit.
And when Shetton asked Irene what was wrong, she said, I can't tell you what's wrong.
I don't want to put you in danger.
You'll know more next week.
That would fuck me up.
I would be like, I'm going to take you away from here.
Yeah, I'd be like, we got to go somewhere.
Yeah.
I can't.
But obviously, at the same time, Irene's telling you like, I can handle it.
I'm good.
So there's nothing he could have done to get involved.
No, definitely not.
I just wouldn't be able to let that go.
I would think about it.
Day and night.
Yeah.
Day and night.
So the disappearance... That happened to us earlier.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
No, no, you're good.
It did happen to us earlier.
When somebody gave us a very vague, like, oh, don't worry about it.
This person said this.
And we hung up the phone and we said...
No.
And we immediately texted and were like, tell me everything that person said.
I don't care what it was.
I need to know.
Tell me now.
I need to know.
And we convinced them to tell us what they said.
Yeah.
Because I'll obsess over it forever.
And we won.
Yeah.
So the disappearance of Manny Guerin at the same time as Irene Silverman went missing was definitely suspicious.
Yeah.
But at the same time Irene had insisted that she wanted him out and her business manager had given him eviction papers.
So to Detective Hovijim.
He thought it was possible that maybe Manny had just simply left as he was instructed.
Yeah, it's like it's suspicious that they are gone at the same time.
But like, if you look at it piecemeal, you're like well, his disappearance isn't crazy, because of what you just said.
Right.
It's just when you put it together that it gets like a little...
Well then, as he was leaving the house, the detective, he noticed a spot of blood on the ground by the front entrance, and the case was immediately elevated to something far more concerning than just a missing person.
This is echoing the Nancy Guthrie case right now.
Okay, thank you.
In a way I can't handle.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
It's all I could think of while I was putting this together.
That's so weird.
Isn't it?
And that's not on purpose either.
No, it's not on purpose at all.
Which also, just a quick little thing, they still don't have like updates.
They detained someone last night, but then let them go.
Yeah.
Like what the fuck is going on in that case?
I know.
It's very strange.
I'll keep watching.
The doorbell footage is haunting.
Doorbell footage is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
I hate it so much.
It ruins everything about me.
Yeah.
To the core of my being.
I was watching it last night before I went to bed and I was having weird dreams afterwards.
I know.
It's such a bad idea.
Truly the worst idea.
But back to this.
Things only got more alarming when one of the staff members opened Manny's room for the detective and inside Hovajim found a small number of personal items, but what stood out most were the garbage bags, the roll of duct tape and the shower curtain rings on the shower rod with lack of a shower curtain.
Oh.
Yeah.
That points to something.
Sure does.
So the next day, Hovijim and his partner, Joe Resnick, held a press conference to ask for the public's help in locating Irene Silverman and Manny Guerin.
They didn't have a photo of Manny, but they did have a professional quality sketch of him that Irene had actually had done a few days before she disappeared.
Wow.
Which is just next level.
Wow.
So they used that as a reference for the public.
Now, Detective Ed Murray of the NYPD's Fugitive Task Force happened to be watching that press conference that day.
When he saw the sketch, he immediately recognized the man, not as Manny Guerin, but as Kenny Kimes.
Oh no.
A car thief and con artist that he had taken into custody just a day earlier, a few hours after Irene Silverman had disappeared.
Oh no.
So a few weeks before Kenny Kimes showed up at Irene's door posing as Manny Guerin, he and his mother Santa, had fled Utah after writing a bad check to rent a Lincoln Town car.
The fraud was reported to the police and when they were discovered to be in the New York area, the Fugitive Task Force set up a sting operation to capture them.
So from the moment that Santa and Kenny Kimes were arrested, Murray found the pair to be very odd.
He said, Damn.
And when they pulled both their criminal records, what came back was a startling trail of crimes and suspicions of things much more serious than check fraud.
Interesting.
So Santa Kimes, let's get into who she was.
Santa Kimes was born Sandra Louise Singers, I believe it is, in Oklahoma City on July 24th, 1934.
She was one of three children born to Mary and Prem Singers.
She was born during the peak of the Dust Bowl in the part of the US that was most affected by the Dust Bowl.
So they went on to move to L.A. to look for work.
According to her oldest son, Kent Walker, Santa's oldest son, not long after arriving in LA, Prem abandoned his family and left the children to wander the streets of LA day and night, while their mother did whatever she could to support their family, which sometimes included sex work.
Yeah.
Now it would be several decades before Kent learned that most of what he thought he knew about his mother's past was largely untrue.
She had lied to him for most of his life.
Interesting.
The father had not abandoned the family.
He actually died of a heart attack when Santa was about five years old.
That's different.
Very different.
And according to her sister, Reba.
Reba.
Love that.
They had been a solid middle class family and nobody ever relied on sex work to support the family.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
That's the weirdest shit I've ever heard.
What?
Yeah.
Considering her extensive history as a con artist and a consummate liar, it's really hard to determine what part of her life is true and what part is not true, and what's a lie and what's not.
I know people who like do that.
Same.
All the time.
Like they just make up like entire backstories.
And it's like, why are you doing that?
Like write a book.
I think it becomes.
You can write a whole backstory for a character in a book.
You can.
And it won't affect anyone.
I think it becomes like compulsive at a certain point.
It does.
I think it does.
Pathological.
Pathological.
And I do believe that there are people who believe – they start to believe the falsehoods that they make up.
I don't know if she's one of them but – I don't know what the difference between like pathological and compulsive would be, because like a compulsive liar and a pathological – my ex-boyfriend told me once because he said he was one.
I think a compulsive liar –
He told me one of them.
A pathological liar lies because they can't help it.
A compulsive liar lies to get out of trouble.
One of them is like you lie when you don't have to.
And I'm not kidding you.
My ex-boyfriend, he was very matter of fact when he would get caught doing things.
Because you called him a pathological liar.
Because I said, you're a fucking pathological liar.
And he said, I'm not actually because pathological liars lie when they don't have to.
And he always lied when he had to, he felt.
Well, actually, he was a pathological liar.
He just wasn't a convulsive liar.
Yeah, I think he was lying when he said he wasn't a pathological liar.
That's a mindfuck.
So this is according to Google.
Pathological liars lie manipulatively to gain control, which is what he did.
Attention or an advantage.
There you go.
Often with little remorse to serve a selfish agenda.
So he's a pathological liar.
Yeah, he was wrong.
Conversely, compulsive liars lie habitually as an automatic, uncontrollable urge to cope with anxiety or stress, often about small, mundane matters, without a clear motive.
Maybe that, maybe I had it wrong then.
Maybe it was like flipped around that compulsive liars lie technically when they don't have to, but pathological liars.
Pathological lying is more calculated.
Compulsive lying is more impulse-driven.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
It sounds like she could have been a pathological liar, I would say.
Yeah, she kind of sounds like she was pathological.
Yeah, but then I don't know the difference.
I don't think there is a difference, but I wonder what kind of liars start to believe their own lies, if there's like a word for that.
Yeah, because...
Because that just becomes like a mental health disorder.
But I wonder if that's just in general, like if you lie enough.
Yeah.
Which I do believe that that's a thing because like, if you lie enough, you begin to believe what you're saying.
Because your brain will just be like, well, this is real.
It's like how you tell yourself if you're like, oh, I'm so ugly, your brain starts to believe it.
It's true.
So it's like if you tell yourself anything for long enough, your brain will start to go into like survival mode of like well, this is life now.
And like rewrite history.
Yeah.
So that's lies.
Lies.
But it's hard to determine what part of Santa's life is true and what's lies.
Most of it's lies, I feel.
Even her son Kent, who's her older son, by the way.
It's a little confusing because there's Kent and then there's Kenny.
I was going to say Kenny.
And then she also marries a man named Ken, which is very confusing.
Wow.
Yeah, it's a lot.
I think she also marries a man named Kent.
No, she doesn't.
Holy shit.
There's Kent, Ken, and Kenny.
That's like Ron Swanson when it's like my first ex-wife Tammy, my second wife Tammy.
And his mom Tammy.
And yes, my mother's name is Tamara.
Yeah.
We call her Tammy.
I don't understand.
It's a lot.
So even her son Kent acknowledges that his mother's backstory should be taken with a grain of salt.
For sure.
According to Santa's version of the story, when she was still very young, she ingratiated herself to a local theater owner who took pity on her and started buying her lunches whenever she came around.
And this was Dottie Seligman.
Dottie's brother-in-law, Edward Chambers, and his wife Mary had always wanted children, but had been unable to have any of their own through natural means.
So Dottie arranged for the couple to adopt Santa and within a few years of living in California she had a new home and a new name Sandy Chambers.
What?
I don't know if that's true.
It might be.
It might not be.
We don't really know.
Cool.
But according to those who did know Santa during her early years, she was a liar and a thief, all while she was still in high school.
Whoa.
And her inclination to manipulate and con others only got worse the older she got.
Oh, no.
So by then, she had renamed herself Santa.
Santa.
She believed the name sounded more French and therefore more sophisticated.
I mean, is she correct?
Yeah.
Actually, we were setting some, this just reminded me, we're tangenting today.
Yeah, it's one of those days.
We were setting up an account the other day, Drew was, and the guy was like oh, should I add?
I'm so sorry if I say this wrong Ashley.
Ashley?
And Drew was like, oh, it's just Ashley.
Ashley.
And he goes, it's spelled so fancy.
It is.
I was like, yeah.
I mean, he's right.
I was like, you can just say Ash.
I love that a lot.
So my name is French and more sophisticated.
Ashley.
Imagine if I just demanded everybody call me that because I thought it sounded more sophisticated.
I think you should.
Well, Santa did.
So in 1956, Santa reconnected with an old boyfriend, Edward Walker.
They got married not long after.
And one year later, her first son, Kent, with a hard T, Kent, was born.
But his arrival did not do a lot to strengthen the couple's already failing marriage.
At the time, Edward was a contractor who built houses in and around Sacramento.
And it was a stable job with a pretty decent income.
But it was far from the riches that Santa believed she deserved.
She wanted more.
So in 1960, she set fire to one of her husband's properties.
Holy shit.
It escalated fast.
I said, so you know what she did about it?
She collected an insurance payout.
I deserve more than commits arson.
Yeah.
She committed lots of arson.
Damn.
So in the years that followed, several more of Edward's construction projects would quote burn down mysteriously.
I just feel bad for Edward.
I do, too.
That's his hard work.
Yeah.
And all the people that had to build all of that and put in hours and hours and days of work.
She's just burning them down.
Ew.
Yeah, she sucks.
So in 1961, she was arrested and convicted, not for arson, but for shoplifting in Sacramento.
Yes.
And after that, it kind of seems like her marriage disintegrated.
She and Edward were living apart by then.
They got back together every now and again and talked of reconciling permanently.
But by 1969, they finally gave up and officially divorced.
Now single, Santa left Sacramento.
Ready to mingle.
Ready to mingle.
And she wanted to mingle in the decidedly more glamorous Palm Springs.
Oh, my.
And she took her son Kent with her.
It was there that she met Ken.
Oh, okay.
So not Ken.
She met Ken Kimes.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
So, seeing him in the life of luxury that she believed she was entitled to, she orchestrated their meeting.
And they were dating in no time.
That's confidence, though.
It's called manifesting.
I will give her that.
Look it up.
She's like, I love that she was just like, I can snag him.
And she did.
Good for you on that front.
On that.
Yeah.
Period.
Just that.
A few years later, in 1975, their son Kenny was born.
Jesus.
Ken, Kenny's, Kent.
So first came Kent, then came Ken, then came Kenny.
Okay.
So Kenny is Ken Jr.
Yeah, that's the Kenny that was Manny.
Exactly.
Okay.
You're following.
We're following.
You're following.
Get your red string out, everybody.
Look at that.
So Kenny was born in 1975 and six years after that, Santa and Ken officially got married in Nevada.
Okay.
And I said it right.
You did say it right.
I know.
And I don't even say it like that.
I did that for you guys.
Oh, I say it wrong.
I was just about to, I was like, maybe I say it right.
And then I said, no, no, I don't.
I say Nevada.
We say it wrong.
Sorry.
But I said it right for the listener.
That's really nice of you.
You're So.
By all accounts, there never seemed to be a moment in Santa's life where she wasn't scheming conning, ripping somebody off.
Aren't you tired?
No.
I think people like that thrive.
They have to.
Because it's exhilarating to them, I think.
Yeah, I think they're those kind of people that live, live for drama.
Yeah, they live on their lifeblood.
It drains me, i was just gonna say it drains the shit out of me.
So, even while she was living well off of ken's millions, it seems like she just couldn't help but commit crime if, like i just said, only for the thrill.
She's loved to crime.
She loves criming, loves criming.
Her last name is literally kimes, but it should be crimes.
He's had crimes.
So in the winter of 1980, just a few months before she got married to Ken, Santa was at the Town and Country Lounge in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC.
Just like a little lounge area where she was drinking.
Drinking.
And eating, maybe.
Probably not.
When it looks like she was getting ready to leave, though, one of the patrons, Rina Beachy.
Rina Beachy?
Rina Beachy.
Sounds like a nice lady.
And you know what?
She is in a lounge.
Yeah absolutely, rina.
And rina bici yes, absolutely.
Well, rina bici watched with astonishment as santa threw her own mink coat over the coat of another woman who wasn't paying attention, and then santa casually stood up, put both coats on and walked out of the restaurant.
So her first son kent, confirmed later that's who she was.
That is who she was.
I love that Kent is just like, yeah, I don't know.
She just did that.
It reminds me of, again, a quick little tangent.
We're tangenty today, but it's okay.
I know I am.
Go watch on Netflix, Man on the Inside.
It's Ted Danson.
Yeah.
Real funny.
Two seasons, I think.
Mankos?
Very funny.
They also have like a con woman in the second season that is reminding me very much of this.
Like would pull something off like that.
Really?
I gotta watch that.
You've been telling me that.
It's one of those shows that is delightful.
Yeah.
Like, I'm telling you, if you need a little, we could all use a little pick-me-up right now.
Fact.
A little fluffiness, a little whimsy.
Man on the Inside with Ted Danson.
I fucking love Ted Danson.
I love Ted Danson.
Don't tell me anything about Ted Danson.
I just love him.
Oh my god, don't.
Just don't.
Don't.
I don't want to know anything.
Don't.
To me, he's awesome.
And...
It's a great show.
So I highly recommend it if you need like a little thing.
It's just reminded me of it because it's very culinary.
I'm going to watch that.
Yeah.
So back to this.
It didn't take long for the DC police to catch up with Santa and she was charged with grand larceny because mink coats are very expensive.
Yeah, that's a big deal.
But when the trial day came, she was just nowhere to be found.
Yeah, she said that's not for me.
She said no.
No.
That wasn't part of it.
No, she's a lounge girl.
She's not a trial girl.
Yeah, no.
So the prosecutor proceeded with the case anyway, trying her in absentia, and she was found guilty.
Oops.
Which also, it doesn't happen that often that they try you in absentia.
Yeah.
Which is a fun thing to say.
That is really fun.
Ready?
Absentia.
Fun.
I do like that.
So she later appealed the conviction, arguing that her constitutional rights were violated when they tried her in absentia.
But the lower court's conviction was upheld.
They said, you know, they said you larcenied.
You did.
Grandly.
You larcenied a lot.
So this was the first of many times that she would be caught committing crimes.
But she always seemed to have a way of getting out of taking responsibility.
Until the slavery charge came in 1985.
What?!
!
Yeah.
What?
She was charged with slavery.
What?
In 1985.
I... The year of Big Red.
There's no... That is the year of me, but my goodness.
I don't know what the fuck is happening in this case.
I've never heard of it in my entire life.
It goes crazy.
I did not look at this beforehand.
That just took me.
Yeah.
That just took me out.
I figured I would kind of just deliver it to you in a normal tone.
You just casually laid down that charge.
And just really get your reaction.
What the fuck?
Yeah.
Oh, let's, tell me about this, Jesus.
Okay, I will.
So in the mid-1980s, Santa and Ken, they were living a good life in a large house in La Jolla, California.
They had a staff of housekeepers to handle most of the responsibilities around the home.
At first, Santa treated the housekeeping staff very well, almost like family, almost like what we were saying with Irene earlier.
Yeah.
But the difference was as soon as they challenged Santa in any way, they found themselves on her bad side.
Ew.
Kent said, it is just like everything else in her life, elevated, elevated, elevated.
And so the maids then became the enemy in the house.
Oh, she's such an asshole.
She sucks.
That's so gross.
So now no longer interested in treating them well, Santa became abusive towards the housekeepers.
So singling out one housekeeper who often traveled with them from California to their house in Hawaii.
According to the criminal complaint, Santa was physically and verbally abusive towards this woman, who alleged that Santa and Ken locked her in her room, and she alleged, quote they literally forced her to work for them, locked her up when she wasn't working and let her out to work.
That's it.
And treated her horribly and physically abused her as well.
What a fucking pair of monsters.
Yes.
So, as a result, Santa and her husband were charged with violating federal peonage, which is forced labor and slavery laws.
And they were indicted.
She's a real piece of shit.
She's a big old piece of shit.
So the indictments were the first charges of slavery to be pursued in the United States for many many many many, many years.
Yeah, I bet.
And the evidence was damning, holy shit.
Ken accepted a plea deal and he was given a short, uh short prison sentence and a large, fine dick.
But santa, on the other hand, flatly rejected the accusation and actually tried to make herself the victim in all of it.
Oh, shut the fuck up, she said.
She took the case to trial, which is just insane, like i don't know why you would ever do that.
You're literally accused of slavery yeah, and she insisted that she was being framed.
The jury did not buy that and she was ultimately found guilty but only spent three years in federal prison.
Three years for a slavery charge?
Yes.
Wow.
Next level.
We're killing it.
We're a broken system.
We're really killing it here.
We're a broken system.
We remain killing it.
Yeah.
Holy shit.
So the conviction and the jail sentence you would think would be a wake-up call for Santa.
Probably not.
Maybe setting her on a path toward a more responsible, maybe law-abiding life.
Nah, she's a...
Total bitch.
Yeah, as anybody could have guessed.
It didn't seem like that was the life she wanted, and she was a bitch.
Actually, after being released from jail in the late 1980s, it seemed that not only did she not have any intention to stop committing crimes, but she actually had bigger and more elaborate schemes in mind.
Huh.
She was like, I only got three years for slavery, so I feel like I could fuck around some more.
Yeah, I mean, that'll make you think you're invincible, I guess.
Yeah.
So after returning to their house in my birthplace Honolulu, in 1989, things went back to normal for a little bit, but it wasn't long before Santa got back to her old ways.
The Kimes family, including Kent, were all living in Las Vegas when they got a call from John, who was the caretaker of the house in Hawaii.
According to John, the house had caught fire and was reduced to ashes in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Oh, no.
Kent said, her oldest son said, I knew what happened.
I didn't know the specifics, but there was no doubt in my mind.
Damn.
In fact, when he heard about the news at the house, he started thinking back to his own father and all of those times that Edward Walker's construction projects had burned in quote-unquote mysterious circumstances.
He's like, huh.
He's like, that's weird.
Fire seems to follow my mom wherever she goes.
So a few weeks after the house burned down, Santa obviously filed an insurance claim and she waited for her money to come in.
Of course.
But by that time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ATF had taken an interest in the case and they started investigating what they believed to be arson.
A short time later, Elmer Holmgren, who was an unemployed lawyer and associate of Santa and Ken's, confessed to setting the fire.
He never mentioned Santa or Ken in his confession, but many, many people suspected that Santa had somehow convinced him to set the fire.
A month later, another fire occurred, this time in Elmer Holmgren's office, where he had paper stored that could implicate Santa in the arson.
Uh-oh.
Elmer still hadn't identified Santa as the one who paid him to burn the house, but she assumed that it was only a matter of time before he did, and that type of accusation obviously would have landed her back in jail.
Yeah, of course, where she belongs.
Where she belongs, but she's not going to have that.
No, of course not.
And just as she expected he would, Elmer Holmgren did make a drunken confession to a friend in early 91 that it was he who had burned the house in Hawaii, but that he had done it for 3000 given to him by Santa Kimes.
But what he probably didn't expect was for his friend to immediately relay that information to ATF agents working on the case.
And in exchange for a reduced sentence he agreed to wear a wire and try to get Santa to confess to their arrangement.
Damn.
But the most federal agents ever got was a short message from Elmer, who told them that the plan would have to be put on hold.
He couldn't handle it.
Several months later, in August, Elmer told his family he was going on vacation to Costa Rica with Santa and Ken Kimes.
Don't do that.
That was the last time anybody ever saw him alive again.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
According to Kent Walker, during a drunken fight with Kenny, his younger brother, Santa and himself, his brother admitted that their mother had murdered Elmer Holmgren.
Holy shit.
Kenny allegedly shouted, she killed that guy.
She was sitting in the backseat and she hit him with a hammer.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
Several years later, in 2000, Kenny would repeat that confession, this time to federal authorities, but no charges were ever brought against Santa or Kenny, and Elmer's body has never been found.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
That's diabolical.
Yeah.
So in the years that followed Santa and Ken, her Ken senior, the husband seemed to be laying low and avoiding the attention of law enforcement somehow.
But then, out of the blue in 1994, poor Kent got a call from his mother who was in hysterics.
I know I'm feeling bad about Kent.
I do too, but there's good news.
Can i feel bad about kent?
Yes okay, you could totally feel bad.
I've been wanting to say that.
But i was like what if he's terrible?
No, he's great okay.
As far as i well, i don't actually know anything about him, but from what i've seen he's great okay, and there's like a nice little sprinkle in here that i'm glad he okay, we'll get there.
So but before that, in 1994 he gets this call from his mom.
She's hysterical and she keeps repeating over and over they won't fix him and then she just hung up.
That's it, which is like maybe relay information, Yeah.
Ken had no idea what she was talking about, but eventually he learned that his mother was referring to Ken Sr, who had just died from a brain aneurysm.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
I would feel a little bit worse if he wasn't guilty of slavery.
If he wasn't charged with slavery.
Yeah, exactly.
Charged and convicted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
So Ken's death sent Santa into a downward spiral, if she wasn't already in one, and that caused her to become more erratic than ever.
Not only because her husband and literal partner in crime was gone, but also because when he died, he left her with nothing.
Wow.
He left her with nothing.
I mean, if you're both like that, how are you expecting that you have an actual partner?
That person's whole life is lying and conning, just like yours.
They're going to lie and con you, too.
Well, and the thing was, it wasn't even necessarily a lie and con situation.
They'd been together for 20 years, and by that point, they'd blown through almost everything he had.
Damn.
Aside from a few non-liquid assets that weren't easy to access.
Wow.
So she didn't have any accounts of her own at that time, so she really had nothing.
Yeah.
So her frantic desperation started to scare the shit out of Kent, her oldest son, and he eventually made the decision to step away from his family and build a healthier life for himself.
Kent.
Yeah.
Kent.
Yeah kent yeah, i'm proud of you, kent.
Yeah, i am too.
You know what?
I know nothing about you, but i'm proud of you for that.
But i'm very proud of you for that, and i hope you built a very healthy life for yourself and you're happy and thriving.
And it's not easy to walk away from people.
No like, it's really not, but it's necessary sometimes.
Healthy and well, that's healthness and wellness it is.
You know, it's healthy and wealthy.
I thought is what you were going to say that It is healthy and wealthy.
Good job, Kent.
I'm very proud of him.
What a boundary.
Yeah, we love a boundary king.
And in the 90s, establishing a boundary, tough.
Yeah, I'd never heard of it.
Tough.
Or even in the early aughts.
No.
So, of course, with Ken Kimes dead and Kent having become estranged from his mother and his brother, that left Kenny alone to deal with his dangerous and increasingly desperate mother, who proved that she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
Yes.
Over the next two years.
Over the course of the next two years, Santa combed all of Ken's accounts, looking for whatever money was left after his death.
In September of 1996, Santa and Kenny so her son were in the Bahamas staying at the house that they owned in Nassau.
And they had dinner with 48-year-old Saeed Bilal Ahmed.
I looked up that pronunciation.
I so hope I'm saying it correctly.
That's what the internet told me to say.
Saeed was an executive at the first Cayman Bank where Ken had stashed some of his money.
Santa invited Ahmed to dinner in the hopes that she could convince him to release 850000 that was in Ken's account to her, despite the fact that she was not a signatory on the account.
Damn.
Yeah.
So in the weeks leading up to that night she had sent several faxes and other documents over to the bank with Ken's forged signature, demanding that the money be sent to various American addresses.
But all of the requests were obviously unsuccessful because they were like that man is dead.
He didn't sign this.
We can't do that.
Now, in addition to his executive role at the bank, Ahmed was also the bank's auditor.
So he would have been made aware of any potential fraud or attempts at fraud.
So obviously he suspected Santa Kimes of trying to fraudulently access the money in the account.
He's like, this is kind of my thing.
And he's like, yeah, I guess I'll have dinner with you.
But like, I know what you're up to.
I know you're a fraudster.
Yeah.
And those suspicions of fraud would have been confirmed quickly once the bank learned that Ken Kimes, like I just said, was in fact dead.
Yeah.
On the night of September 4th, Santa and Kenny met with Ahmed for dinner at the Androja, which is a restaurant in Nassau.
Whatever happened during that dinner is unknown, but the staff at the restaurant recalled seeing Santa and Kenny leave with their dinner guest a little after 10 pm and Saeed Bilal Ahmed was never seen again.
What the fuck?
This is crazy.
It's diabolical.
I had no idea how layered this was.
A few days later, police in the Bahamas opened an investigation into Ahmed's disappearance.
So not only were the mother and son the last people to be seen with the missing man, but a hotel employee at the Radisson where Ahmed had been staying reported two people matching the Kimes' description attempting to get access to Ahmed's room a few days before he disappeared.
They were planning this, like, Well ahead of time.
Malice aforethought, my darling.
Yeah, very much.
Despite their strong suspicions that they were responsible for Ahmed's disappearance, they weren't ever able to come up with anything strong enough to make an arrest.
And it was only after Santa and Kenny were arrested on those several other crimes and facing the death penalty, that Kenny Kimes confessed that he had drugged Ahmed that night, drowned him in the bathtub and dumped his body in the ocean, all at Santa's request, holy shit.
And it's like that's not gonna get you the money either.
So what's the fucking point?
You're just diabolical, you're just evil.
So after the murder of Saeed Bilal Ahmed, Santa spent months trying to fraudulently access her husband's accounts, demanding that the money be sent to some random address in the US.
But obviously she was unsuccessful because people are smarter than that.
According to Kent Walker, after Ahmed disappeared, the first Cayman Bank was being liquidated.
He said in part because of Ahmed's disappearance because he was such a big part of the thing.
Yeah, he was an auditor.
Yeah.
That meant that by killing Saeed Bilal Ahmed, Santa had made the goal of getting Ken's money impossible.
She fucked herself.
And honestly, I hope that that's his final fuck you.
Yeah.
And I'm glad.
Truly.
And I hope she thought about it every day for the rest of her life.
So by the fall of 1997 Santa and Kenny were basically broke, living in a rundown one-bedroom apartment in Fort Lauderdale.
And that's when she came up with her latest scheme.
Several years earlier, before Ken's death, Santa and Ken had transferred one of their properties to their friend, Dave Kasdan, in order to hide it from federal authorities.
Ken and Kasdan had been friends since the 70s and he had always been willing to help whenever they found themselves in a jam.
He was a nice enough guy.
Yeah.
In 98, Santa remembered that house, which imagine just having a home that you forgot about.
Yeah, like.
She's like, we're really in a pinch.
What do we do?
What do we?
Oh, I have that house.
I've got that house.
So she came up with a scheme to get some quick cash.
After convincing a notary to forge Kasdan's signature on a loan document which, like who are you brother?
Seriously.
She took out a loan for 280000 in Dave Kasdan's name using the house that they'd transferred as collateral.
Holy shit, the loan went through and santa got the money.
But in late january dave kasdan also learned of the scheme when he got a notice in the mail informing him that he'd taken out a second mortgage on a home he didn't even think he still owned.
Wow yeah, this is some rich people shit.
Yeah.
So when Kasdan called the bank to report the fraud, it was already too late.
Santa had already cashed the check and moved the funds into an offshore bank account.
I'm exhausted just listening to this.
I don't know how people live like this.
I don't either.
I really don't.
I also don't know how people keep track of all this shit.
Because I also, I'm allergic to admin.
It's true.
So I can't imagine this.
I don't even like the admin that I have to do.
Yeah, this is so much admin.
Yeah, it's just a lot of what.
It's a lot of talking to people, it's a lot of convincing people.
It's a lot of like oh yeah, I'm tired.
It's pretty terrible, pretty fucking terrible.
So it turned out that the loan scheme was just the first step in Santa's process.
Lord.
A few weeks later, Dave Kasdan got a call informing him that his home in Las Vegas had burned down.
My goodness, the arson.
The arson is everywhere.
In the days that followed, it was discovered that Santa had taken out an insurance claim on that house, and by the time Kasdan learned all the details, she'd already made off with the money.
My... She's...
She's diabolical.
She's lava.
So when Dave Kasdan started making reports to the authorities about who he thought was responsible for all the fraud, he started getting letters and faxes from Santa.
In a fax from late February 1998, she wrote, I'll give you five days to stop all these lies.
You know you endorsed the loan.
Why are you doing this?
Wow, so she's literally like gaslighting gaslighting him.
She thought that establishing a paper trail would help support her claim that she had nothing to do with the fraud and she was being framed.
Yeah, but at some point she obviously realized that wasn't going to work and she came up with another plan.
Two weeks after her last fax to dave kasdan, his body was discovered in a dumpster at the los angeles international airport.
He'd been shot in the back of the head.
This lady needs to be stopped.
She sure does.
The coroner quickly identified him and made a homicide investigation was opened and that was led by LAPD detective Bill Cox.
It didn't take long for Cox and his partner to learn that Kasdan had recently been the victim of financial fraud.
And according to his daughter, somebody had been harassing him in the weeks leading up to his death.
Oh, of course.
Wow.
So for months detectives in LA dug into Santa Kime's criminal history and reached out to any of her known contacts in the hope that somebody might know where she had gone.
But they just kept coming up empty.
Then, in July, when Irene disappeared, Detective Bill Cox got a call from a detective in New York informing him that Santa had been arrested there and she and her son were suspected of murdering Irene Silverman.
So we went on a big old...
Roundabout.
Roundabout and we're all the way back.
Yep.
So when Santa and Kenny were arrested outside the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, it had been on suspicion of check fraud in Utah.
But what investigators found in their hotel room implied that something much larger was going on.
In a bag, detectives found Irene Silverman's house keys, her passport, her checkbook, her social security card and countless other personal documents.
Yeah.
10 different wigs, the sedative flunitrazapam and boxes of documents related to their business associates, including Elmer Holmgren, Dave Kasdan and Saeed Bilal Ahmed.
This is wild.
That's not even it.
They also discovered eight microcassettes of recordings of telephone conversations between Irene and a woman who would eventually be identified as Santa Cams.
Holy shit.
So they literally just had like the smoking gun basically with them.
Yeah, they had everything.
In one of the conversations, Santa posed as a manager of a Las Vegas casino and was trying to persuade Irene to share her social security number in order for the casino to finalize details of a free trip that she had won.
The Jen Shah of it all.
I can't imagine living life like this.
I don't understand this kind of thing.
And targeting an elderly woman, an elderly socialite.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
What the fuck?
I mean, she's already been convicted of slavery, so we know that there's a lot wrong with her.
I was going to say, she has nothing inside of her.
So in the months that followed their arrest, investigators worked tirelessly to rebuild Santa's extensive criminal history, which must have been exhausting.
Because that included, at that point, arson, fraud, slavery, at least three suspected murders.
And the murders stretched across the U.S. and into the Caribbean.
My God.
They also started digging into Kenny's history.
And in doing that, they found that he was a young man who, from a very early age, had been shaped and molded into exactly what his mom wanted him to be.
That's so disgusting.
An accomplice, not a son.
Yeah.
In addition to the crimes that he was believed to have committed with his mom, he'd also been arrested for domestic violence and assault.
He had beat up one of his former girlfriends and another student when he was briefly in college.
Ew, disgusting.
Yeah, he's gross disgusting, literally.
So the case of irene silverman and santa and kenny kimes quickly became a national sensation.
Of course, the press dug up santa's old nickname, which was the dragon lady yep, because of her association with arson, of course, but most were more fond of the new moniker that they'd given the pair, mommy and clyde.
Mommy and clyde is the perfect way to describe this.
It's also diabolical.
It is very diabolical.
When i first read that though, i was in Yeah.
That makes you just want to know everything.
Yeah.
I love a moniker.
Yeah.
So the first big break in the case came in late July when investigators found a notarized deed in Santa's possession which seemed to indicate that Irene transferred ownership of her townhouse to Santa and Kenny at a value of 390000.
Oh, yeah, I bet.
That was less than 10% of its value.
Wow.
No.
Good try.
And despite the compelling evidence though, Sanda and Kenny both maintained they had nothing to do with Irene's disappearance.
You lie.
We just have her checkbook, her passport, her social security card.
And recordings.
Recordings of us.
Of me trying to fraud her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just we were doing that, but we didn't kill her.
Yeah, I don't even know her.
Oh, okay.
For the prosecutors, the biggest problem wasn't that they maintained their innocence.
It was the fact that they still hadn't found Irene Silverman.
They didn't have a body.
And at that time, she obviously was assumed to be dead.
Despite the lack of a body though, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau decided to move forward with the case.
And in December of 1998 Santa and Kenny Kimes were indicted for murder on purely circumstantial evidence.
Morgenthau said, the mere fact you don't have a body doesn't give somebody a walk.
All the facts show that the murder was committed.
Which is very true.
Where is she?
So when the trial finally arrived in the spring of 2000, it was exactly as sensational and chaotic as everybody expected.
Before both sides had even selected the jury, Santa had to be ordered by the judge to stop speaking to the media after she continuously reached out to members of the press to give interviews.
That checks.
She was also caught passing a note to New York Times journalist David Rodenkort, and the note said Girl, you're doing the most.
Yeah.
And then that wasn't even her doing the most.
That was just the beginning of her crazy-ass behavior.
She's already doing the most.
In late April, after the judge repeatedly told her lawyer to stop a certain line of questioning, Santa became irate and started yelling at the judge.
Your Honor, how can we have fairness?
And then she went on to compare the trial to the Salem witch trials and then told the judge that she was quote murdering the Constitution.
Shut the fuck up.
This bitch went nuts.
I hope someone just said, shut the fuck up.
Can you imagine being accused of murdering the Constitution?
You know what?
Get a life.
Get a life.
Get a life.
So throughout the trial, the prosecutor called over 100 witnesses, all of whom spoke to the criminality of Santa and Kenny.
Mommy and Clyde.
And presented a ton of evidence that established a direct connection to Irene Silverman.
The only thing that they couldn't get around was the fact that there still was no body and technically, no conclusive proof of murder.
But in his closing statement, defense attorney Michael Hardy reminded the jury of that very thing.
He said, there's no body, no witnesses, there's no proof of any murder at all.
Oh, yeah.
So on May 16th, the jury retired for deliberation.
And when they returned two days later, they found both defendants guilty.
Good.
I was going to say, if they get off, I'm going to riot in the streets.
Yeah, no.
They were both found guilty not just of the murder of Irene Silverman, but but on over a hundred other charges related to fraud, larceny and kidnapping, among others.
That next month they went before a judge to be sentenced and the judge referred to Santa as a sociopath of unremitting malevolence.
Yes.
And her son as a vacuous dupe who had evolved into a remorseless predator under his mother's influence.
Yes.
I have never heard a better description of two people in my entire life.
Vacuous dupe goes crazy.
No notes.
Obsessed.
No notes.
You are a sociopath of unremitting malevolence.
And a vacuous dupe and a remorseless predator.
Obsessed.
Just chef's kiss.
Yeah.
When asked if they had anything to say on their own behalf, Santa spoke up for the both of them and she said Shut your mouth.
Shut your mouth.
You didn't – that's not even a good like correlation.
What are you talking about?
Police – like what are you talking about?
You have nothing to do with the Salem witch trial.
Shut up.
Shut up.
So basically the judge felt the same way and they were like, okay, are you done speaking?
And she was like, I'm all done.
And he said, okay, cool.
Or she said, I sentence you to 120 years in prison.
Hell yeah.
And Kenny was sentenced to 126 years in prison.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I just love how it was like six more years.
He was like, you done here?
You done here?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
So in the wake of their sentencing, Santa and Kenny, of course, did not just fade into obscurity.
Of course not.
Still facing potential murder charges in California, Nevada and Nassau, Kenny felt that it was his duty to make sure his mommy was spared from the worst of the consequences.
Damn, dude.
So in October, during an interview with court, TV reporter Maria Zone Kenny took her hostage by holding a ballpoint pen to her throat.
What?
While holding her hostage, he demanded his mother not be extradited to Los Angeles, where they both faced the death penalty for the murder of Dave Kasdan.
Fortunately, officers were able to create a distraction that allowed them to safely remove Maria's own from the room, and Kenny's attempts to save his mommy failed.
He is so pathetic.
It's really pathetic.
Like, ew.
Yucky.
A few months later, both Santa and Kenny were extradited to Los Angeles and charged with Dave Kasdan's murder.
Now facing the death penalty.
Kenny accepted a plea deal from the prosecutor where he would confess to the murders in exchange for taking both death penalty sentences off the table.
Wow.
After pleading guilty, he confessed to the murders of Saeed Bilal Ahmed, David Kasdan and Irene Silverman.
And as part of the deal, he was required to detail all of the crimes for investigators.
So, according to Kenny, after they failed to get Irene's money through deception, they resorted to violence.
On the afternoon of July 5th they went to the townhouse where he and Santa tased Irene, an 84-year-old woman, and then Kenny strangled her.
Oh poor Irene.
Once she was dead, they put her body in several garbage bags and put her in a dumpster in Hoboken, New Jersey.
To this day her remains have never been found.
Wow.
And I just want everybody to remember how I described Irene for you.
Like the lengths that she went to to make other people feel special and all of the connections that that woman had.
How generous she was.
How generous she was.
How talented.
And they wrapped her body up and threw it in a dumpster in Hoboken.
Yeah.
Like what the fuck is wrong with you?
All for money.
Yeah.
That's it.
Mm-hmm.
Which meanwhile, if he had been nice to her and actually ingratiated himself, he probably would have got money or something.
Anything.
Mm-hmm.
So in 2004 they were both found guilty of Dave Kasdan's murder, but no charges have ever been brought up in the other two cases.
After their convictions, Senta returned to New York to continue serving her life sentence for the murder of Irene Silverman.
And on May 19, 2014, she died of natural causes at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.
She was 79.
It's pretty old.
I feel like that's kind of young to die of natural causes.
79.
In prison, though.
Yeah, in prison.
That's true.
Kenny Kimes remains incarcerated at the Richard J Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California.
Wow.
And that is the case of Mommy and Clyde.
Wow. jam-packed.
That was a non-stop thrill ride.
Wasn't it?
That was I'm shook.
It was insane.
And what kills me is like the amount of people that they just disposed of.
Like they were nothing.
When they didn't need them anymore.
Or when they didn't give them what they wanted.
Exactly.
Like that's so disgusting.
It's such like predatory inhuman behavior.
And obviously Kenny is a piece of shit.
But it's really sad that he was moldy to be what he was.
That's the thing that he was.
Just like he didn't have a choice.
You feel bad for the child version of him and then he became an adult.
When you become an adult, you make your own choices exactly.
You don't choose as a child, but as an adult you make a choice very much, and he made a bad choice.
I think we need a fun fact.
Yeah, we do.
Do you want to hear the fun fact i found?
I really do.
The world's oldest dog lived to be 29 and a half years old.
I want to have that dog.
And their name was Bluey.
Bluey?
Bluey.
Oh.
Yep.
Yeah.
That is a fun dog.
Bluey the Australian Cattle Dog survived to the ripe old age of 29 and a half.
I want my dogs to live to 29.
Sydney, Blanche, and Dolores will live to be 100.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I will take no further questions.
With that, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird.
And definitely so weird that you spend the rest of your life with your dog.
Yeah.
Because they're going to live forever.
Do it.
Bye.
Not so weird as Santa, though.
No.
