Sante and Kenneth Kimes: A Life of Crime
Mommy and Clyde
Why? Her alcoholic husband had never had his will updated and there was an old one somewhere out there that left everything to his two children from his first marriage. Although Sante could produce a marriage certificate, authorities would later doubt its authenticity, saying it appeared forged. Sante set out to grab as much of Ken Kimes Sr.'s $12 million fortune as she could.
She began by enlisting the help of an old real-estate crony of Ken's, David Kazdin. By creating a paper trail of documents, it soon appeared that Kazdin had purchased some of the Kimes' real estate empire. But Sante got greedy. She would often get a second mortgage on the properties using old documents, and then Kazdin would get a coupon book that instructed him to pay back by the month.
Kazdin didn't like that and soon threatened to tell all. That was a mistake. His body was found in a Dumpster near Los Angeles airport in March of 1998. He had been shot to death.
Kenny dropped out of college and, in an odyssey that seemed more like Bonnie and Clyde — one tabloid reporter would dub them "Mommy and Clyde"— the two began their 1998 nationwide journey that at first seemed without purpose. They began by purchasing the new Lincoln Town Car, paying with a worthless check about the time David Kazdin was killed. Sante and Kenny soon showed up in Florida to meet with the about-to-disappear island banker, Sayed Bilal Ahmed.
They were scamming as often as they could now. They had already pulled the worthless check trick on an Alabama motor home dealer and made off with an RV. It was in Florida that Sante had first met someone who told her about an elderly woman's wonderful boarding house for the rich in the Big Apple. That sounded like a good one. Mother and son left Florida and were off to New York.