![]() Silverman's keys, passport, Social Security card and bank books. Silverman's disappearance on an unrelated warrant for passing a bad $14,000 check in Utah, the Kimeses were carrying Mrs. When they were arrested in Midtown Manhattan shortly after Mrs. Silverman, a woman the pair had heard about at an anti-aging conference in Las Vegas. Once in Manhattan, the Kimeses tracked down Mrs. By mid-June, the Kimeses were in New York. The motor home was found abandoned in Florida. In Baton Rouge, La., they bought a $80,000 motor home from a dealer with a rubber check. Kimes's late husband and dumping his body near the Los Angeles Airport, prosecutors there said. They left the West Coast in April 1998, after killing the longtime former business partner of Mrs. In September 1996, the mother and son fled Nassau, the Bahamas, before the Bahamian authorities could question them in the disappearance of a banker. Hardy said.īut prosecutors said the Silverman plot was the culmination of a wide-ranging crime spree by the couple. ''That made it impossible for her to testify and have the jury see her testimony as having any integrity,'' Mr. Uviller of State Supreme Court on June 27. They both face 25 years to life in prison on the most serious charge of murder and will be sentenced by Justice Rena K. The Kimeses were found guilty of murder, robbery, burglary, conspiracy, grand larceny, illegal weapons possession, forgery and eavesdropping. ![]() Kimes turned to his mother, said ''Mom, it'll be O.K.,'' then frantically talked with his lawyers. Kimes, 25, who struggled to contain his emotions throughout the trial, winced and swallowed as the first guilty verdict for murder was read.Īs the jury forewoman continued announcing guilty verdict after guilty verdict for 20 minutes, Mr. Kimes, 65, blinked, rocked forward slightly and then sat motionless as the first of a total of 118 guilty verdicts for her and her son were read aloud in a packed courtroom in the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building yesterday afternoon. ![]() Silverman and steal her $7.7 million Upper East Side townhouse. ![]() Prosecutors contended that the notes pointed to an elaborate scheme to murder Mrs. The jurors said the most damning pieces of evidence presented by prosecutors during the three-month trial were 14 notebooks with detailed lists and notes written by Mrs. Silverman was last seen on July 5, 1998, and the Kimeses were charged with murder in December 1998 in an indictment that outlined a plot involving disguises, false identities, tapped telephones, forged deeds, false addresses and burglaries. They said their first vote for a murder conviction was unanimous, even though the body of the victim has never been found. Interviews and a review of court records revealed a story of a tyrannical mother and a malleable son caught in a bizarre relationship, living a life of scams and aliases.Īfter reaching yesterday's verdict, jurors called the evidence against the Kimeses overwhelming. They now face a murder trial in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said it was the first case in New York, and one of only a handful in the nation, in which murder convictions were won without a body, an eyewitness, a confession or any forensic evidence.īut investigators said that the pair's murder of the woman, Irene Silverman, 82, was just one of a number of crimes: by the time the Kimeses arrived in New York in June 1998, they had left behind what investigators described as a huge mosaic of fraud, theft, arson, identity theft and murder that stretched from Hawaii to Las Vegas to the Bahamas. The conviction of the mother and son, Sante and Kenneth Kimes, was a triumph for Manhattan prosecutors who brought a rare type of murder case: one in which the body was never found, and one built entirely on circumstantial evidence. A mother and son described by prosecutors as a prolific and pitiless con artist team were convicted yesterday of murdering a wealthy socialite as part of an intricate scheme to steal her Upper East Side townhouse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |