The Dragon Lady : Sandra Kimes & Son

Season 21 : Strange & Unusual

Sandra Kimes lived her life as a thief and a scammer, even bringing her son in to be her partner. When her crimes started getting noticed, she turned to murder in order to silence anyone who had information about her.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
When eighty two year old Irene Silverman vanished from her
New York City mansion in nineteen ninety eight, investigators had
no idea she was the final piece of a puzzle
which had gone unsolved for more than two decades. Her
disappearance exposed the dark family legacy of two monsters who
spent years conning and killing their way to the top.

(00:23):
This is Monsters. Sandra Luise Singers was born on July

(00:53):
twenty fourth, nineteen thirty four, in Oklahoma City. She was
the third of four children to her parents, Mary and Prama.
Her father had emigrated to the United States from East
India in search of a better life, and while he
achieved that dream for a while, it wasn't to last.
When Sandra was a toddler, he moved his family from

(01:14):
his failing farm in Oklahoma to the promise of prosperity
in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that dream quickly became a nightmare.
Prama passed away when Sandra was only three years old,
leaving her mother to raise the children on her own.
With no support and no way to make ends meet,
she was forced to beg for food on the streets.

(01:37):
When that wasn't enough, she turned to sex work, which
spiraled into an alcohol addiction. With no one caring for
the children, they turned a petty crime in order to
feed themselves. Life was already hard enough, but Sandra also
had a mean streak. With no comfort or guidance from
her parents, she found cruel ways to entertain herself. Her

(02:00):
sister recalled how even when she was a toddler on
their farm in Oklahoma, Sandra would use hatpins to torture
their goats and dogs. When they moved to La Sandra
would light matches and hold them under her sister's fingernails.
Sandra's vicious streak also extended outside the house. When she
was ten years old, she was caught stealing cheese and

(02:23):
turned over to the police. The officer sent a collector,
showed pity and decided not to arrest her, instead taking
her out for a meal. According to Sandra, however, that
apparent act of kindness was designed to groom her. It
was four months before she told someone what the officer
was doing to her. The adults she chose to trust

(02:44):
were the owners of a local movie theater where Sandra
often begged for food. When she told them about the abuse,
they confronted the officer and he left her alone. After that,
the couple took Sandra under their wing. They fed and
clothed her, and off offered her money for helping them
clean the cinema. A few months later, they enabled her

(03:05):
adoption to one of their own family members in Nevada.
Mary and Edwin Chambers were a wealthy couple who were
unable to have children of their own, but had plenty
of love to give. They had already adopted a six
year old boy and gladly welcomed Sandra into their home
and hearts. So Sandra Singer became Sandra Chambers, and she

(03:27):
seemed to thrive with her new family. She did well
in school, was on the girls athletics team, secretary of
the Spanish club, co editor of the school newspaper, and
member of the Future Monsters of America I mean Future
Homemakers of America. Beyond her intelligence, Sandra was also a
natural beauty. As she grew into her teenage years, her

(03:49):
hourglass figure drew the attention of her male classmates, and
she was often compared to Elizabeth Taylor. Despite her attractive appearance,
Sandra wasn't as confident in as she wanted people to
believe because her father was of Indian descent, her skin
was darker than her classmates, and so when she went
to school, she would smear pale makeup over her face

(04:12):
to cover up her complexion. She also shaved her arms
so no one would notice how dark her hair was.
But no matter how much Sandra tried to conceal her insecurities,
her true nature wasn't as easy to hide. She was
known as a confident and outgoing girl with a sharp
sense of humor, but she wasn't particularly liked. People either

(04:33):
sensed her mean streak or they got caught in the crossfire.
Sandra had a way of pitting people against each other
to get what she wanted. She would tell one person
one thing, and then the opposite to someone else, just
so she could sit back and watch the fireworks, and
then when everything was blowing up, she would put on
the sweetest smile for the teachers, as if she had

(04:54):
no idea what the drama was all about. She was
also a bully who seemed to find enjoy in mocking
students for being different, which was exactly the thing she
hated about herself. That's usually how it works, though, Sandra's
relationships never went beyond service level, even when it came
to her best and only friend, Ruth. Ruth adored Sandra,

(05:18):
even though she dictated what Ruth wore, who she could
talk to, and how she spent her time. When Sandra
got her first boyfriend, Edward Walker, she treated him exactly
the same way. By then, Sandra was going by the
name Sandy, which she thought made her seem older and
more mature. By the time Sandra was in her mid

(05:39):
teen she had well and truly mastered the arts of
lying and manipulation. She saw people as a means to
an end, a ticket to whatever next thing she had
her eye on. She was a chameleon, able to shift
her personality to suit whatever situation best served her interests.
That ability to switch between various identities in person andalodies

(06:00):
became Sandra's trademark. After graduating from high school, she moved
into a boarding house with Ruth while they worked as secretaries.
By then, she had developed a passion for writing short
stories and poems. Her vivid imagination enabled her to create
entire worlds outside of her own. At night, she would

(06:21):
read her latest creation out loud while Ruth dutifully typed
out every word. Sandra sent the stories and poems to
various magazines and publications, but none of it was ever published.
After six months, Sandra decided her writing would be taken
more seriously if she went to college, so in nineteen
fifty two, she enrolled to study journalism at the University

(06:43):
of California and Santa Barbara. When she met her new classmates,
she introduced herself as Candy. She thought the name made
her sound fun and care free. At college, Sandra met
her next boyfriend and first husband. He hard and fast,
and after a year of dating, he thought they had
a future together. But after one too many incidents of

(07:06):
Sandra controlling his every move and manipulating his friends, he
decided they couldn't make it work and left California to
join the military. He told his friends that she was needy, jealous,
and impulsive, but just a few months after their separation,
Sandra called him and said she was pregnant from their
one and only intimate experience. He immediately went on leave

(07:30):
and returned home to marry her. Sandra Chambers then became
Sandra Truman. A few months after their wedding, he was
honorably discharged from the military. Right around the same time,
he discovered there was no baby and Sandra had never
been pregnant. He realized it was yet another one of
her manipulations designed to trap him in a marriage neither

(07:52):
of them wanted. But even though he knew that, he
decided to stay with his military career over looking for
a job that would fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming
a high school teacher. The problem he was about to
discover was that Sandra was obsessed with money. She constantly
belittled him for wanting to be a teacher, and she

(08:14):
tried to force him to find a job in sales.
When he accepted an offer to teach at the local
high school, Sandra called him and said she was leaving.
He never heard from her again. Sandra moved back home,
right back into the arms of her high school boyfriend Edward.
A few months later, they were married and Sandra Truman

(08:35):
became Sandra Walker. Actually that time she told people her
name was Santee, which she thought was a more exotic
version of Sandy. Edward worked as a general contractor while
Sandra started a business as a professional welcomer. Yes welcomer.
Her company was called Hi Welcome to California, and its

(08:57):
purpose was to quote welcome new people, bring in industry,
and generally engage in activities to encourage progress, stimulate interest,
and foster goodwill for and throughout the state of California.
Oh okay, how she made money is anyone's guess, but
whatever she was making, it wasn't enough. Just like she

(09:19):
had done with her first husband, she constantly pressured ed
into making more money. He would later say. She had
an extreme fear of being poor, and she was obsessed
with not only having the finest things, but also showing
them off. Ed's business was doing okay financially, but they
weren't rich. Sandra wanted everyone to think they were, though.

(09:41):
One year she spent thirteen thousand dollars on gifts for
her friends at Christmas. That was the equivalent of Edward's
annual salary. The following Christmas, their home partially burned down
under suspicious circumstances. Sandra and Ed sued their insurance company
over the ten thousand dollars settlement they were offered to

(10:02):
repair the damage. Two months later, Sandra was arrested for
stealing a hair dryer from a department store. Ed was
shocked by Sandra's actions, mostly because they could easily have
afforded to buy it. It happened again with a lipstick
and a handbag, followed closely by a string of suspicious
fires at several homes. Ed was the contractor for all

(10:25):
of The fires resulted in significant insurance claims. Ed didn't
know it then, but those incidents were yet another indication
that the beautiful and charming girl from Oklahoma was well
on her way to becoming a monster. Ed stayed with
his wife even when it came out that she had
been sleeping with one of his biggest and wealthiest clients,

(10:46):
and she had been for two years. In nineteen sixty three,
she gave birth to her first child, a son named Kent.
Ed believed the child was his, but Sandra would later
give varying stories on who the actual father was. Not
long after Kent's birth, they moved to southern California, where
Ed re established his contracting business. But old habits die hard,

(11:09):
and in December of nineteen sixty six, Sandra was arrested
three times for shoplifting from stores in La nor Walk
in Beverly Hills except that time, instead of simply walking
out of the stores with the items, Sandra had been
charging them to other people's accounts using fake IDs. On
more than one occasion, she used her young son to

(11:30):
help pull off her scams. After all, no one's going
to call the cops on a five year old pocketing
a watch or slipping a scarf into his mother's bag.
After one too many incidents, the clerk got wise to
Sandra's scam, and she was arrested and charged with shoplifting.
She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a two

(11:51):
hundred dollars fine. By that stage, Edward had reached the
end of his tether with Sandra's schemes, but before he
had a chance to serve the divorce papers, she filed
her own, along with a demand for full custody of
their son that came with a healthy child support payment
and alimony. Kent stayed living with his mother until he

(12:12):
was fourteen years old, during which time she was arrested
several more times for petty theft and graham theft. In
nineteen seventy two, Sandra moved with Kent to Palm Springs
in search of a new gold mine, and it didn't
take long to find it. Almost as soon as she arrived,
she caught wind of a wealthy businessman who had moved

(12:33):
into town following his divorce. Kenneth Cimes started out as
a farm hand, but turned his fortunes around after getting
into the hotel building business. With a net worth of
nearly twenty million dollars or one hundred and fifty million
dollars today, Sandra saw him as the perfect man to
give her access to the unlimited supply of cash she

(12:54):
had always dreamed about. It didn't matter that he was
sixteen years older than her, or that he had kids,
or that he wasn't looking for another relationship. All she
needed to do was convince him that she was the
one he'd been waiting for. To do that, Sandra needed
a game plan. She spent weeks tracking Kenneth's every move,

(13:15):
hoping to learn exactly what he liked, disliked, and what
turned him on. When she found out his favorite color, scent,
and beverage, she committed to them completely. Simply being attractive
to him wasn't enough. Every other available and not so
available woman in Palm Springs were throwing themselves at him. Already,

(13:36):
Sandra needed to be impossible to ignore. When she was
certain she had planned everything down to the last detail,
she made her move with confidence, charm, and a perfectly
rehearsed introduction. She approached Kenneth and introduced herself as chante.
At first, Kenneth played it cool, but Sandra was a

(13:57):
master of her craft. She had got his attention by
being impossible to ignore. Now she had to make herself
impossible to live without. She wove herself tightly into every
aspect of Kenneth's life. When he went to a business meeting,
she would show up out of nowhere, and when he
was dining at an exclusive restaurant, she would book the

(14:18):
table right next to him to make it look like
they ran into each other serendipitously. Still, it took nearly
two years for Kenneth to make things official with Sandra.
By then, he had spent a considerable amount of money
hiring a private investigator to look into every aspect of
her background. He knew about her kleptomania, her son, and

(14:39):
her two ex husbands. He also knew she didn't have
much money, but none of that put him off. She
was an expert at stroking his ego, and she made
him feel like the powerful and important man that he was,
or at least believed himself to be. In time, Sandra
was able to convince Kenneth to hire her to do

(15:01):
pr for his hotel building firm. With Kenneth's wealth and
business connections, she was able to climb the social ladder.
She took every opportunity she could to rub shoulders with
people who could elevate her status. Sandra made sure they
were front and center at high profile events from California
to New York and Washington, DC, and Kenneth was more

(15:24):
than happy to go along with it. He craved prestige
just as much as Sandra craved money. Together, they played
the part of a glamorous, successful couple, him the hotel
tycoon and her the exotic femvitale. When Sandra managed to
get Kenneth named as an honorary Commissioner for the celebration

(15:45):
of the American Bicentennial, they thought they had a ticket
to the global stage. They envisioned joining embassy trips to
India and South America to rub shoulders with diplomats, but
the invites never arrived. Just like in high school, people
were wary of Sandra. Kenneth had made his own way
in the world, but she was seen as more of

(16:06):
a clinger than someone who truly belonged with high society.
No matter how expensive her clothes were. Sandra didn't let
that put her off, though. Even when they weren't on
the invite list to the elite gatherings they aspired to attend,
they simply turned up and walked through the front door.
One night in February of nineteen seventy four, they talked

(16:28):
their way into a reception hosted by then Vice President
Gerald Ford. When they were asked to leave, they caught
a taxi to a party thrown by the director of
the Smithsonian Museum, and when they were asked to leave
that they caught another taxi to a ceremony at the
German Embassy. When one of the hosts asked them if
they were in the right place, they said they had

(16:50):
gotten mixed up and managed to get a ride in
a diplomatic vehicle across town to an event at the
Belgian Embassy. When the story of Sandra and Kenneth Said
Escapades hit the news, the FBI launched an investigation into
how two outsiders had gotten so close to the Vice president,
right under the noses of the Secret Service. The couple

(17:11):
were never charged with any crime, but when the storm
blew over, it was clear to Kenneth he had truly
met his match in Sandra. She brought a fire and
unpredictability to his life that he never knew he was missing,
and he had begun to crave it. Even when his
family warned him that Sandra was a gold digger and
she stopped Kenneth's children from his first marriage visiting him,

(17:34):
he was unwilling to question her motives, but the relationship
with Sandra came at a cost. Over the next few years,
she left a trail of civil suits in her wake.
There were more suspicious fires, lawsuits over disputed insurance payouts,
unpaid invoices to contractors, and several arrests for shoplifting. Sandra

(17:57):
loved spending Kenneth's money, and she didn't seem to have
a problem with him wasting it on lawyers and court
fines to get her out of trouble. In nineteen seventy five,
Sandra gave birth to her second child, a son named
Kenneth Junior. Four years later, she convinced Kenneth Senior to
sue his older children, his siblings, and his son in

(18:19):
law for emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and conspiracy. She
had finally and totally broken any bond he had with
his family, and now he was all hers. In nineteen
eighty one, they officially got married and Sandra Walker became
Sandra Himes. By then she had well and truly earned

(18:40):
her nickname as the Dragon Lady. For all of the
crimes Sandra was so far accused of, there were far
worse things going on under her own roof. Controlling her
husband and his money simply wasn't enough. She wanted total
control over everyone. She recruited young, undue documented immigrants with

(19:01):
the promise of free accommodation in exchange for working at
one of Kenneth's many homes. When they arrived, she confiscated
their passports, threatened to report them to immigration if they disobeyed,
and forced them into endless, pointless labor. She made them
scrub already spotless floors and forbid them from leaving the

(19:21):
house for months at a time. She took their clothes,
locked them in cupboards, hit them withheld food, and burned
them with hot irons for any perceived misdeed. She wouldn't
let Kenneth Junior attend school, and instead she brought in
private tutors. The way she treated them wasn't much better
than the house staff. Some of the women Sandra enslaved

(19:45):
were able to escape and went to the police to
report the mistreatment, but it took years before the authorities
did anything about it. Even when they did, Kenneth stayed
by her side. She had complete control over him, his money,
and the people in her house, but soon even that
wouldn't be enough. It took until nineteen eighty five for

(20:07):
Sandra and Kenneth to be arrested for violating federal anti
slavery laws. That time, even their extremely well paid lawyer
couldn't get her off the hook. Sandra denied enslaving the
house staff and put on a great show for the jury,
but they sided with the prosecution. Sandra was convicted, and
despite trying to convince the judge that a round of

(20:30):
psychiatric treatment would be enough to teach her a lesson,
she was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Kenneth took
a plea deal and was released after promising to undergo
treatment for alcohol addiction. Sandra only served five years of
her sentence, and she was released in nineteen eighty nine
as a new woman. Less than a year after her release,

(20:53):
Sandra hired Elmer Holmgren to set fire to Kenneth's Hawaiian
estates so she could make another fraudulent insurance call. Fire
investigators immediately recognized it was oursin and Elmer was interviewed
about his relationship to Sandra. He immediately confessed that she
had paid him to set the house on fire. He

(21:13):
told the investigators that he had documents to prove his story,
but before he could hand them over, his office burnt
down and everything inside was destroyed. A couple of months
after the fire, Elmer told his family that he had
been invited on a holiday to Costa Rica with Sandra
and Kenneth. He was never seen or heard from again. Meanwhile,

(21:35):
Kenneth Junior, or Kenny as he was known, was struggling
to adapt to life since his mother returned from prison.
During the five years she had been away, his life
had been relatively normal. There were no screaming matches between
his mother and the housekeepers. He was allowed to attend
regular school. He made friends and he wasn't being forced

(21:56):
to steal to please Sandra. The time apart had given
and him a chance to form a very close bond
with his father. Unfortunately, when she returned, so did the chaos.
Kenneth was fourteen years old, which made him old enough
to recognize her manipulative nature. The oppressive atmosphere that had
once defined their home came flooding back, along with the

(22:19):
constant tension. At first, Kenny rebelled and he refused to
follow the strict control she tried to impose on his life.
He spent more time out with his friends and as
little time as possible at home. But Sandra was a
master of patience. She knew how to wait and how
to wear people down until they bent to her will.

(22:40):
All she had to do was get Kenny back on
her side, and now that he was almost a man,
he would be the perfect accomplice. Kenny had other ideas.
He finished high school and enrolled in college, which gave
him his first experience living away from home. But old
habits die hard, and he constantly got into trees. There

(23:01):
were fights with other students, incidents at campus parties, and
bad grades no matter whose fault. Any of it was.
Sandra was always there to defend him. When the school
threatened to kick him out, she hired lawyers to have
the band reversed. When he got into a fender bender
with another driver, she had Kenny file a lawsuit claiming

(23:22):
permanent and irreversible damage. Kenny was torn between trying to
be independent and relying on his mother to get him
out of trouble. He was exactly where she wanted him. Then,
in nineteen ninety four, Kenneth died suddenly of an aneurism.
Despite Sandra being his partner for more than twenty five years,

(23:44):
she never posted a death notice, and she didn't hold
a funeral for him. It was weeks before she told
Kenny about his father's death. She said it was so
he could finish his finals without any distractions, but it's
more likely that she didn't want anyone to know oh
Kenneth had died, because they would come after him for
payments of outstanding court orders. When she filed the paperwork

(24:07):
for his death, she intentionally provided the wrong social Security
number and misspelled his parents' names. Most people who knew
Kenneth didn't know he had died until many years later.
In the meantime, Sandra had a fortune to spend, but
the secrecy around Kenneth's death came with an unexpected consequence.

(24:28):
Kenny was devastated about his father's passing and that his
mother had kept it from him. He refused to go
back to college, and instead he moved with a friend
to Las Vegas and got a job as a laborer.
He kept in touch with Sandra, and he was happy
to use his father's homes and money to make his
life easier, but he refused to come home. Sandra wasn't

(24:50):
going to let him get away so easily. She had
worked so hard to mold Kenny into her accomplice, and
she wasn't going to let her efforts go to waste.
In September of nineteen ninety six, Sandra suggested that she
and Kenny take a trip to one of her favorite
places in the Bahamas. They had visited a few months
earlier to celebrate Kenny's twenty first birthday with a group

(25:14):
of his friends, but Sandra wanted some alone time with
her son, at least that's what she told him. What
she actually wanted to do was tie up a loose end,
And by tie up, I mean eliminate a problem. Sayid
bealalah Med was a banking executive and the man in
charge of managing Sandra's offshore accounts. He was also an

(25:36):
auditor for one of the major banks in the Bahamas,
and he had recently stumbled across some discrepancies in the
accounts of several of its customers. Although Sayid had known
Sandra and Kenneth for more than a decade, there was
rarely a reason to meet in person. But one night
Sandra invited him to join her in Kenny for dinner
at a popular seafood restaurant at around ten. She paid

(26:01):
the bill in cash and the trio walked outside. Said
was never seen again. Not long after his disappearance, the
bank he worked for collapsed and customers lost access to
millions of dollars in investments. By then, Sandra and Kenny
were long gone. In May of nineteen ninety seven, Kenny

(26:22):
was arrested for the first time. Sandra was shoplifting lipsticks
in her handbag when she was spotted by a police officer.
Kenny tried to cover for her by grabbing her bag
and making a run for it. When the officer caught
up to him, they got into a tug of war
over the handbag and he lashed out. That landed him
in front of a judge, charged with four felonies, including

(26:45):
resisting arrest, strong arm robbery, battery, aiding an escape, as
well as misdemeanor obstruction. As a first time offender, Kenny
pleaded guilty to one felony and the misdemeanor, and the
other charges were dropped. It was his first run in
with the law, but with a teacher like his mother,
it was far from his last. It had taken Sandra

(27:08):
forty years to go from petty crimes to suspicion of murder,
but for Kenny it would only take a fraction of
that time. David Kasden had known Kenneth Cimes for several
years when he agreed to let him and Sandra use
his name on a deed for one of their homes
in Las Vegas. He knew Kenneth was attempting to conceal
his assets and protect them from being forfeited in one

(27:31):
of Sandra's many outstanding court cases, but he went along
with it anyway. What he didn't know was that when
Sandra found a target, she never let them out of
her sights. After Kenneth's death, Sandra used David's signature on
a loan application and used the house as collateral. When
David's bank notified him that he owed money on a

(27:53):
loan he knew nothing about. He figured there must have
been a mistake. Just as he was trying to figure
out what had happened, he was contacted by an insurance
agent about a suspicious fire at the same property. When
Sandra's name was mentioned, he knew he was in trouble.
When he called Sandra to confront her about the forgery,

(28:13):
she suggested they meet in person. Three days later, David's
body was found in a dumpster in an alley near
the Los Angeles International Airport. He had been shot in
the neck. Sandra had taken care of another loose end,
but this time she had left a paper trail. One
of David's friends knew all about the forged loane paperwork

(28:35):
from the house in Las Vegas. As soon as he
heard about David's murder, he told investigators exactly who they
needed to be talking to Chante Climes, But by then
Sandra had already moved on to her next scheme. In
her mind, she had gotten away with everything so far
except that little five year prison stay, and she had

(28:57):
no reason to believe getting away with murder would be
a problem. In January of nineteen ninety eight, Sandra visited
a car lot Kenneth used to frequent. The owner believed
her when she said her husband was traveling overseas and
he needed her to order a brand new Lincoln town
car on his behalf. Sandra asked for the vehicle to

(29:20):
be delivered to the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel at the
bottom of Rodeo Drive. The dealership owner sent a friend
at his wife to complete the transaction, but when they
arrived at the hotel, there was no sign of Sandra.
After two hours of waiting in the hotel's flashy lobby,
she finally appeared with Kenny by her side. She flashed

(29:42):
a warm smile and apologized for the delay and offered
to treat the couple to dinner to make up for it.
She ordered drinks, but the man needed to drive across
town that night, so he only had two. His wife
didn't drink, so she stuck with soda, but Sandra kept
asking her if she she was feeling tipsy yet. When

(30:02):
the couple got up to leave. Something felt off, The
man felt unsteady, and his wife felt strange too. Then
Sandra suddenly said she was too intoxicated to read the
paperwork and hastily scribbled a name and social security number
onto the purchase agreement. She handed over a check for
the car and was given the keys to the Lincoln.

(30:25):
A few days later, the check bounced and the social
security number showed up as someone other than Sandra. Meanwhile,
Sandra and Kenny's landlady in Beverly Hills was growing suspicious
of her sketchy tenants. They had put big locks on
the door, and even though they had paid the first
month up front in cash, she had been chasing them
for rent ever since. She also noticed that they invited

(30:48):
a string of random strangers into their room, which wouldn't
have been so weird except they appeared homeless when they
arrived and then left the room wearing fancy new clothes.
All thought they seemed a lot closer than a typical
mother and son. One day, the landlady decided to take
a closer look at some of Kenny and Sandra's belongings,

(31:10):
which were stored in the communal garage. Inside, she found
pages and pages of notebook paper which had different signatures
written out repeatedly, as if someone was practicing. She also
found papers in a passport belonging to David Kasden, as
well as documents with the name Sayid Ahmed. The landlady

(31:30):
wasn't the only one who found Sandra and Kenny strange.
More and more people were starting to see through their act,
and Sandra's dazzling smile and sweet talk were no longer
enough to distract from the growing list of red flags.
The unpaid bills, disappearing from their accommodation in the middle
of the night without warning, a long list of aliases,

(31:52):
mismatched social Security numbers, and insurance claims on cars, houses,
and motor homes, not to mention their names turning out
up in the investigations into the disappearance of Sayid and
the murder of David. By early nineteen ninety eight, the
pair were wanted for questioning in three states and their
world was closing in. That's said. The only official warrant

(32:14):
for their arrest was thanks to the car dealer, who
was fed up after months of chasing Sandra for payment
on the Lincoln Town Car. He filed criminal charges against
both her and Kenyon April ninth, nineteen ninety eight, and
an arrest warrant was issued that should have been enough
to put an end to their deadly run, but before
authorities could find them, they had already moved on to

(32:35):
the next person on their list. Irene Silverman was an
eccentric eighty two year old widow of a millionaire mortgage broker.
She lived alone in a nineteenth century mansion on East
sixty fifth Street in Manhattan, which she had fashionably, if
not illegally, converted into ten short term rental apartments. The

(32:56):
rooms cost two hundred dollars per night, and she managed
all of the ten and sees herself right from selecting
the guests to doing the background checks and collecting payment.
She employed nine house staff to manage the daily cleaning
and linen changes for the rooms, as well as a
driver to take her wherever she needed to go. Although
Irene was well off, her money was tied up in

(33:17):
the mansion. She used the rent money to pay her expenses,
as well as setting some aside for her ultimate dream
of converting her home into a museum to celebrate the
art of needle point Irene's mother was the inspiration behind
her passion for textiles, with Irene describing her as quote
the finest needlewoman in New York. She also had an

(33:39):
extensive collection of fabrics and clothing, lovingly curated over the
years of international travel as a professional ballerina, which she
intended to display in the museum. In nineteen ninety four,
Irene established the Kobe Foundation in honor of her mother,
which to this day awards grants to textile and fashion
really life projects. Irene was well known in New York society.

(34:05):
She loved to entertain in her ground floor apartment or
on the rooftop terrace of the building. Despite her outgoing nature,
she hadn't left the house on her own for more
than fifteen years after a nasty fall on the street.
She made sure she was always accompanied by either a
friend or an employee whenever she went out, so when

(34:25):
the police received a report that Irene had gone missing
from her building, it was immediately concerning. Officers interviewed Irene's
staff and tenants of the apartment to see if anyone
knew where she might have gone. That's when they discovered
someone else was missing too. Irene had recently rented a
first floor apartment to a man named Manny Geerin. His

(34:48):
assistant had called Irene to book him a room several
weeks earlier. When he showed up to the house, he
was wearing a suit and tie, with his hair slicked back,
and driving a new Lincoln town car. Many claimed to
be a web page designer, and on paper, he seemed
like the perfect tenant. Still, something about him made Irene uneasy.

(35:09):
She later told a friend that the way his eyes
lit up reminded her of someone who had just gotten
out of jail. Irene was usually meticulous about running background
checks on her tenants, and she never allowed them to
move in without verifying their documents, but she was facing
a bit of a cash flow problem that month. She
was reliant on rental income to cover her expenses, and

(35:31):
she had just paid over thirty four thousand dollars in
property taxes and insurance, which left her in need of
quick cash. Even though Manny didn't have the right paperwork
on him, he did have money. When he pulled out
six thousand dollars to cover the first month's rent, she
made him promise that he would drop off the documents
in a day or two. He never did. Irene ignored

(35:54):
her instincts, and it was a decision she wouldn't live
long enough to regret. When he was a problem from
the start. He wasted no time stirring up trouble by
telling Irene's employees that she spoke badly about them and
encouraging them to quit and come work for him. He
kept his head down whenever he passed the security cameras
at the front door, and he refused to let the

(36:16):
cleaning staff into his apartment. But the strangest part was
his behavior when he was inside his room all day.
Every day, Manie stood at his front door, watching through
the peep hole as people came and went. It was
obvious to the tenants and the staff what was going on.
There was a small space between the floor and the

(36:36):
bottom of his door, and his shoes were always visible
in the gap. What they didn't realize was that it
was Irene he was watching. He tracked her every move
and wrote down her exact schedule, who she went out with,
and anyone who visited her. Tenants and staff told Irene
that Manny made them uncomfortable, and she seemed to be

(36:56):
wary of him too. And even though he never handed
over his paper work, she didn't tell him to leave.
On Sunday, July fifth, nineteen ninety eight, Irene's hotel was empty.
There was just one maid in the building and one tenant, Manny.
That morning, Irene's maid brushed her hair and walked her
dog before heading down to the basement to get prepared

(37:18):
for the week. Around mid morning, Mannie called to say
he wanted his room made up. There was no maid
service on Sunday, and Manny had refused any cleaning since
he had checked in three weeks earlier. The maid told
Manny he would have to wait until Monday, and he
hung up the phone. A few minutes later, he called
back and again demanded that his room be cleaned. He

(37:41):
also offered an excellent tip. The maid refused again. Then
she watched on the security monitor as a person left
the building with their back to the camera. There was
no one in the building except Manny, the maid, and Irene,
so she naturally assumed it was him. A few hours
passed and the maid received another call, but that time

(38:02):
it was from a woman named Lucy. She told the
maid that she had been asked by Irene to pass
on some instructions. The woman said the maid needed to
take Irene's dog home with her and not speak to
any authorities who asked where Irene was. Lucy said Irene
wanted some time alone and she would be out of
town for a few days. The phone call immediately set

(38:26):
off alarm bells, because why wouldn't it Irene never left
the building alone, and she certainly wouldn't have someone else
relay instructions about her personal affairs. Something was wrong. The
maid rushed upstairs, but there was no sign of Irene
in her apartment. She called the building manager, who was
equally spooked, and together they notified the police that Irene

(38:49):
was missing. As the authorities began their investigation, both the
maid and the building manager agreed on one crucial point.
The first person the police needed to look at was
their strange tenant, Manny. He was nowhere to be found
after leaving the building earlier that day. Inside his room,
officers found hundreds of sheets of handwritten notes detailing Irene's

(39:13):
every move for the past three weeks. What immediately stood out, though,
was that not every page was the same handwriting. Someone
else had been in the room watching with him. Outside,
police launched a full scale search for Irene. They checked
hospitals and reached out to her known acquaintances, but no
one had seen or heard from her. They were also

(39:35):
searching for Manny, but checks on their system told them
the name was likely to be fake. By the following night,
Irene's disappearance was being talked about across New York. The
Nightly News broadcast a police press conference asking for tips
from the public, alongside a photograph of Manny. It was
only then that the connection was made. Manny gear and

(39:58):
shared a face with Kenny Kimes, and Kenny Crimes was
currently locked up an FBI custody at the Federal Plaza
in downtown New York, right alongside his mother, Sandra. He
was an FBI agent who recognized the face on TV
and matched it to the arrests they had made the
prior evening the same day Irene went missing. Kenny and

(40:19):
Sandra had been on the FBI's radar since David's body
was found in a dumpster in la and their names
had been linked to a string of crimes across the
United States. Agents had tracked the forged loan application to
a homeless man who said Sandra and Kenny had set
a fire in the Las Vegas property that led to
a false insurance claim. Then they spoke to a man

(40:41):
who claimed to have sold a gun to Kenny which
was the same caliber as what was used to shoot David.
When agents threatened the man with charges for his involvement
in the case, he agreed to help them set up
a sting to bring Sandra and Kenny to justice. A
couple of months later, Sandra called the man to offer
him a job manager a five story mansion in New York.

(41:03):
She told him the building was home to an eighty
two year old retired ballerina who danced around in her
neglige at eleven PM. She also asked him for help
with a real estate transfer she needed to make. Enough
time had passed that the FBI had been able to
connect Sandra and Kenny to the warrant for the bounced
check at the car dealership. On Sunday, July fifth, the

(41:25):
man met the mother son duo at the New York
Hilton Hotel. Agent swept in and arrested Kenny and Sandra
without incident. In her handbag was ten thousand dollars in cash,
as well as pages of documents and passports belonging to
Irene Silverman. Even though Kenny and Sandra were wanted for
questioning in relation to a murder, a disappearance, and countless

(41:49):
other frauds and crimes, the FBI never thought to check
if the woman named on the documents was okay. It
was only when Irene's face came up on the news
report alongside me that the agents finally made the connection
between the cases. Investigators from New York went to Federal
ap Plaza to speak to Kenny and Sandra. There was

(42:10):
no doubt they were involved in Irene's disappearance, but at
that point the FBI were unaware of the full extent
of the destruction the duo had left in their wake.
But they should have known that Sandra and Kenny weren't
the giving type. They had spent years stealing, manipulating, and
conning their way through life, and that wasn't about to change.

(42:31):
When Sandra was confronted with the newspaper photo of Irene,
she claimed she had no idea who the woman was.
She even accused the officers of fabricating the newspaper just
to set her up. Kenny was equally defiant. He told
investigators he couldn't reveal Irene's location without his lawyer's approval. Meanwhile,

(42:53):
the search for Irene intensified. Fifty officers were assigned to
the case. They combed through trash bins, garbage dumps, and swamps.
Cood averdogs were also brought in to scour wooded areas
of Central Park. Investigators also obtained a warrant to search
Sandra and Kenny's Lincoln town car. Inside were thirteen spiral

(43:16):
bound notebooks filled with aliases, detailed notes about David Kasden
and Sayid b La Lahmed, and a step by step
guide outlining how to illegally transfer ownership of Irene's mansion
into their own names. It was clear that Sandra and
Kenny's latest scheme wasn't just about getting their hands on
some fast cash. It was about stealing Irene's home. As

(43:40):
per usual, Sandra was the brains behind the scheme. She
had learned about Irene's multimillion dollar manchin after reading a
social column in a New York magazine. She made a
title search and discovered the property didn't have a mortgage.
She wanted to get her hands on the mansion, and
she knew the best way to do it was to

(44:01):
either assume the identity of its eighty two year old
owner or get rid of her altogether. First, she needed
an inside man to figure out what made Irene tick.
She set Kenny up with a false identity and backstory,
and spoke to Irene about letting a room to him.
Once he had signed the paperwork, they began their surveillance.

(44:22):
Kenny would sneak Sandra into the apartment, and together they
watched and took detailed notes of Irene's every move. They
also installed recording devices on the building's phones to listen
in on her private conversations. After Irene's disappearance, previous tenants
came forward to say they had found Manny snooping on
the higher floors of the building, and an ex employee

(44:44):
admitted showing the tenant through Irene's own apartment in exchange
for a few hundred dollars. Sandra also spent her time
figuring out how to transfer the building's title over to
an offshore corporation she controlled. She kept meticulous notes of
every phone call she made, as well as a list
of her aliases and who she had used them with.

(45:06):
When she was sure of the process, she contacted a
real estate lawyer to put her plan into motion. Sandra
was at the final stage of being able to transfer
ownership of the mansion to herself when she hit a snag.
She needed Irene's Social Security number, but none of their
snooping had given them what they needed, so Sandra set

(45:26):
up another scam. She posed as a casino employee and
called Irene to say she had won an overseas trip.
All she needed to do to claim the prize was
hand over her Social Security number, but Irene refused, so
Sandra contacted Irene's account and, claiming to be doing a
background check. They also refused to hand the number over.

(45:49):
In the end, Kenny and Sandra went for the most
basic trick of all. They made a fake Social Security
card for Irene and used her signature for Mannie's rental agreement.
By July nineteen ninety eight, Sandra and Kenny had used
the fake documents to secure a property tax form, a
preliminary residential property transfer, a power of attorney in a

(46:10):
rental agreement. They were well on their way to transferring
ownership of the seven million dollar mansion to their dummy corporation.
All they needed was the seal of a notary public
to make it official. With a healthy cash bribe, they
got the document notarized and waited for the building to
be empty so they could take ownership. The fourth of

(46:31):
July weekend gave them the perfect opportunity. After Irene disappeared,
the FBI combed through Kenny's apartment and uncovered a treasure
trove of disturbing items. There were rolls of duct tape,
oversized plastic garbage bags big enough to hold a body,
a nine millimeter semi automatic handgun, ammunition, handcuffs, brass knuckles,

(46:55):
a knife, pepper spray, syringes, a receipt for a stun gun,
and even a jar of moldy date rape drug. The
items painted a clear picture of what had likely happened
to Irene. Kenny and Sandra were ready to move the
owner out permanently. When the building was empty. They drugged her,
restrained her, and murdered her. Then they wrapped her body

(47:18):
in plastic bags and stuffed it into the trunk of
their car. Although investigators believed Irene was dead before she
left the building, the search for her body continued. Walls
in her mansion were torn down, construction sites were combed
through an Investigators scoured Laguardian John F. Kennedy Airport. Even

(47:38):
a recycling plant was searched at that location. They did
find a body, but it wasn't Irene's. It belonged to
a different murder victim. Sandra and Kenny had been arrested
at the Hilton Hotel just after six pm on Sunday,
July fifth. The last call from Kenny's room to demand
cleaning was at two thirty pm, which meant if they

(48:00):
were responsible for Irene's death, they had just three hours
to murder her and dispose of her body. So state
troopers examined every highway within a three hour radius of
New York City. But despite the exhaustive effort, search teams
came up empty. Somehow, Kenny and Sandra had done the impossible.
To this day, Irene's body has never been found. Kenny

(48:23):
and Sandra may not have been willing to talk, but
in the end, it was Sandra's own words that led
to her undoing. In the notebooks, she had kept records
connecting her and Kenny to the disappearance of Sayid, the
murder of David, the disappearance of Irene, and countless insurance
frauds across at least three states. In December of nineteen

(48:44):
ninety eight, Sandra and Kenny were indicted on eighty four
counts of second degree murder, conspiracy, robbery, attempted robbery, burglary,
grand larceny, attempted grand larceny, forgery, eavesdropping, and possession of weapons,
stolen property, and forged documents. If convicted on every count,

(49:05):
they were facing one hundred and thirty one years in prison.
Sandra was sixty four years old and Kenny was twenty
three at the time. They appeared together in court several times.
On almost every occasion, they held hands, whispered, and looked
into each other's eyes as they attempted to proclaim their innocence.
During one of Sandra's court appearances, while she was being sketched,

(49:29):
she said, quote, please don't make me look like a monster.
I'm a mother, not a monster. Even from behind bars,
Sandra refused to let anyone else control the narrative about her.
She used her time and custody to run a full
scale pr campaign. From behind bars, she spent hours on
the phone with newspaper reporters repeating the claim that she

(49:52):
and Kenny had been framed. She never wavered from her
declaration that they were both victims of a corrupt system,
but Kenny's lips weren't so tightly sealed. In November of
two thousand, he agreed to come clean about everything in
exchange for prosecutors removing the possibility of the death penalty
for him and his mother. He told investigators that Sandra

(50:14):
had confessed to killing Elmer Holmgren, the man who burnt
down their estate in Hawaii. Kenny also admitted that he
and his mother were responsible for Sayid's death in the Bahamas.
According to his statement, they had drugged him at dinner,
then drown him in a bathtub before hiring a boat
and dumping his body off the coast. No charges wherever

(50:36):
filed in the murder, and Sandra claimed Kenny made the
stories up purely to avoid the death penalty. But Kenny's
statement went on. He confessed that Sandra had ordered him
to murder David cast In so he couldn't reveal the
loan forgery for the property in Las Vegas, and he
offered insights into the specifics of Sandra's schemes. All those

(50:57):
random strangers were homeless people Sandra had plucked off the street.
She would pick them up, offer them food and drink,
then dress them in nice clothes and send them off
to meet with insurance investigators for one of her various scams.
She also collected their documentation, including passports, birth certificates, and
social Security cards, that gave them a steady supply of

(51:20):
aliases she and Kenny could use in other scams. Kenny's
confession gave prosecutors enough evidence to secure a conviction against
both of them. During their first trial in New York,
Sandra and Kenny were found guilty of one hundred and
seventeen charges of murder, conspiracy, robbery, illegal weapons possession, forgery,

(51:42):
and fraud. During their sentencing hearing, Sandra said she and
her son were innocent, and she compared their treatment to
the Salem witch trials. In response, the judge called her
a sociopath and a degenerate. That's a bit of an understatement.
Sandra Cimes was sent to one hundred and twenty years
in prison and Kenneth Cimes received one hundred and twenty

(52:05):
four years. During a prison interview with Court TV a
few months later, Kenny held a reporter hostage by holding
a ballpoint pen to her neck. He demanded that his
mother not be extradited to California to face trial for
the murder of David Casden. The woman was able to
break free unharmed, and Sandra was indeed extradited to Los Angeles.

(52:28):
In two thousand and one, Sandra and Kenny stood trial
for David's murder. To everyone's surprise, Kenny changed his plea
to guilty and testified against his mother, but once again
it was only in exchange for the death penalty being
taken off the table. During the trial for David's murder,
Kenny confessed that they had disposed of Irene's body in

(52:49):
a dumpster. Sandra once again made a long statement about
being innocent and complained of being mistreated in prison, and
once again the judge had to tell her to be quiet.
She was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole,
but that would only start after she finished her sentence
in New York, which was unlikely. Sandra died in prison

(53:10):
on May nineteenth, twenty fourteen, at the age of seventy nine.
Kenny remains incarcerated at the Richard J. Donnovan Correctional Facility
in California. Fortunately for Sandra's first son, he was left
in the care of his far more stable father. When
she married Kenneth Kimes Senior. He grew up and started
a family far removed from the chaos and crime his

(53:32):
mother had raised him in. Even from a distance, he
understood exactly who she was. He said quote, there was
absolutely no one who was easier to love than Chante Kimes,
and no one was easier to hate. She was a
walking contradiction. In news reports, Sandra and Kenny were referred
to as grifters, but monsters seems more accurate. If you're

(53:58):
the victim of domestic abuse, please reach out to someone
for help. Please talk to your local shelter, Call the
National Domestic Abuse Hotline at one eight hundred seven nine
nine safe that's one eight hundred seven nine nine seven
two three three, or you can go to the hotline
dot org to chat with someone online. If you're having
feelings of harming yourself or someone else, or even just

(54:19):
need someone to talk to, please contact your local mental
health facility call nine one one, or call the National
Suicide Prevention Hotline by simply dialing nine eight eight In
the United States, they're available twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, and we'll talk to you about
any mental health issue you might be facing. If you're
a member of the LGBTQ plus community and suffering from discrimination, depression,

(54:42):
or are in need of any support, please contact the
LGBT National Hotline at one eight eight eight eight four
three four five six four, or go to LGBT Hotline
dot org. Thanks so much for letting me tell you
this story. If you're a fan of true crime, you
can subscribe to this show so you don't miss a episode.
My other show, Somewhere Sinister is no longer getting new episodes,

(55:04):
but you can check it out if you like interesting
stories from history that aren't necessarily true crime, but true
crime adjacent. It's available anywhere that you listen to podcasts.
You can also check out my personal vlog, Giles with
a Jay, which is sporadically updated with stuff about my
personal life, travel and music. It's available on YouTube. If

(55:24):
you'd like to support the show, check out our merchandise
at thisismonsters dot com. A link is in the description.
Thanks again, and be safe.