New Updates and Viewer Questions

Hi everybody, I'm Josh Manikowitz and we're talking dateline today with Keith. Hi, Keith. Oh hello Josh So this episode is called The Devil War White, and it's the kind of story that we almost never do at Dateline because It's less about the relationship between killer and victim and almost entirely about the relationship between killer and other killer And Now this is the story of a criminal mastermind, someone you might have heard of Her name is Sante Kan. She became famous back in the nineties when investigators who were looking for a missing millionaire uncovered a Very, very dark history of crimes and her surprising partner in those crimes and those murders Her youngest son, Kanny Now, if you've not listened to this broadcast yet, it is the episode right below this one in the list of podcasts that you've chose from. So you can go there, you can listen to it and laun it on peeacock. And then when you come back, Keith has an extra clip that he wants to play from more of his interview back in two thousand one. Kent Walker, who was, you know, sort of the heart and soul of this show in a lot of ways Later, Keith is going to be joined by dateline producer Anne Prisman, who covered this story and worked on this broadcast and they will discuss some new updates to the case Before answering your viewer and listener questions on social media So let's talk dateline So as I said in the intro, this is the kind of story we don't usually do here at Dateline That is that leterout This is less about killer and victim and more about killer and killer and it's Crazy Crazy story. That's exactly what it is, the craziest story ever Um, and one we, you know, I became a It was there in New York to cover it way back in ' ninety eight or whatever the heck it was When you hear the story of Sante Kimes and her two sons, particularly the youngest one, Kenny, And what they got up to over the years, my goodness. The whole circus of activities that she was involved in was quite extraordinary It's just a story that I I hate to say it, but I really enjoyed living in it again, even though It's really dark in many respects It's it's it's a it's the kind of story that makes people want to get into journalism. I mean, it's a long, endless twisting yarn touches on all different localities different different crimes U I mean, you know, her big talent clearly is that she doesn't come off as being as dangerous and as homicidal as she actually was She was charismatic. She was the sort of person you love to be with. She was friendly and open She looked like Elizabeth Taylor. She she looked fabulous all the time When she could carry on a conversation with anybody high or low cameame from low She came from very, very, very modest beginnings So Iffy beginnings, we don't really know what's true and what isn't true because you lied about everything Um Her backstory is pretty murky Yeah, it is intentionally on her part. She was an oakie, supposedly and a poor one Um, was her story She got to the point where she could carry on a Um A sophisticated and charming conversation with the Vice President of the United States And you know, was able to persuade her or orb help persuade an official of the United Nations to make her husband into an honorary ambassador. I mean, it was just phenomenal. the sorts of things she was able to get away with. And then along the way, she was trying, of course, to Um to get her son Kent to be her acccolyte, her Train him to be just like her T beome criminal. to be a sort of to be I'm criminal And she was making fine progress until he, you know, he got scared straight in his mid teens both by the efforts of a girlfriend and by the recognition that He would probably spend most of the rest of his life in prison if he kept doing this sort of thing. Let's talk for a second about Kent's girlfriend because I don't think she understands Maybe she does now. I don't think she understood for a long time. One, what a huge service She did for him. B talking him out of that life. and second, how how lucky she was to be finished with him and her and Kenny and that world. That's right. because could she could have been in a landfill somewhere. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, I have no doubt she would have been. I mean, they take that threat very seriously. U Sply, you cannot cross Sante and get away with it. And she didn't want somebody coming between her and either one of her sons is simply not going to be allowed. Well, what's interesting is that Sante was arrested a few times and had a criminal record and that didn't slow her down. But the possibility that that might happen to him clearly did slow Kent down. It did. because I think he was smart and never recognizeed the, you know, the logical outcome of this sort of behavior And she felt that she was smarter than than any authorities who would try to catch her. But one of the other things about those that bunch that fascinated me, and I'll include Kenneth Sr, her husband with this, the millionaire was How good they were at persuading otherwise normal people to engage in criminal behavior at their behest You know, they could persuade them to burn a house down. They could persuade them to illegally signed their their their name to a deed. They were just phenomenally good at doing that sort of thing and she was. And I think it was her charisma and charm that really you know led that parade. You know, frequently on Dateline, we cover stories we cover the stories of murders and the murder is the point of the person's criminal activity, which is like they want to get rid of their husband or wife or, you know, a boyfriend or whatever, right? or whatever. But in this case, Frequently the murders were to cover up other crimes financial crimes, insurance fraud, check kiting, when they would be found out like they were with that bank examiner Right Yeah Like they killed that guy. Like they didn't gain anything from his death except that he was no longer investigating them And, you know, they they they they clearly killed that that poor old woman in New York City just because they they wanted to either what live in her house or sell it and cash it out. They had two ideas. One was that they were going to take it over and rent the apartments for A lot of money And then you know, second idea was to sell it. Obviously, it was a pretty valuable piece of property U and the thing the antics that she went through poor old Irene Silverman, you know didn't see what was coming, but the antics that Sante went through to try to getet a notary public to sign the right kind of paperwork so that you could take over the property not. she found one that would Yes, right And she was posing as Irene at that point. She was lying in bed like the Like the big bad wolf in in grandma's house with the wig on and the little frilly cap. she was trying to pretend to be Irene Silverman. And actually at one point appeared to be succeeding. I think she would have succeeded had she not been police work in this one U You know, and also some incredible luck in which one officer recognizes sketch put out by a different part of the department. Yes. I think, you know, would they have they probably would have figured that out in, you know not long a period of time. the luck in my mind was the fact that the The LA cps cops decided it was worth chasing down this woman who had stolen this car because they thought that she was good for the murder of David Casden and they persuaded the fugitive task Force that this couple, the mother and son should be arrested on a car theft warrant. you know, can you imagine just just twelve person or whatever it was New York Task Force spending a lot of time planning and arranging for the capture of these two people based on a car theft warrant. Um, That must have taken some persuading, even if they knew there was a murder in the background. Yeah, I mean, one sense is there must have been a conversation in which they said, lookook, this is a car theft warrant. these two are on whole lot moreers. Yeah. Yeah. ye When we come back, Keith has an extra sound that did not make the broadcast that he's going to play for us from his first interview with Kent Walker Most moms don't lead their kids into lives of crime, but that is a position of some colossal influence. I hear my mom's voice when I have not made the bet I hear my mom saying, go make the bed And I do and and I'm good at it too Uh, and that's all That's all Hollymanquotets Most moms don't groom their kids for a life of crime, you know? and The idea that one son couldn't break away and the other one knew he had to is such a great part of this story It is. You know, when the older son wouldn't cooperate the younger son became, u next. Mark and u He was so attached to his mother. I think she made sure of that from the very beginning of his life. coddled him. She he was her little prince. She, you know, she did everything imaginable for him and she attached him to herself From such an early age, she wouldn't let him out of her sight except to go very brief sojourns with. I don't brother. I don't excuse his behavior at all. and I don't he's right where he belongs. He's a killer. Yeah, exactly. But one does sense that he sort of never had a chance Right prettyretty much It would have taken a lot for him to break free And the continuing relationship or non relationship between those two brothers I found fascinating I don't even know exactly how to describe it. I'm not a psychiatrist, so I couldn't go there Um One who loved her U even as he recognized that she was a terrible person, And he couldn't possibly associate with her The other one who loved her in a way that a person You cannot break away from somebody loves them Por Kenny I, you know I say poor Kennedy, he did some terrible things. So in a way, I don't feel sorry for him at all. He's exactly as you say where he belongs U But he's trying so hard to make it look like he's amend, you know, he's making amends for his past behavior. Yeah Kent doesn't buy it. I don't know what I buy it thinkink about it here exactly. I don't think I buy it either. Well, I mean, first of all, you do this he does this interview, you know, but I don't want to talk about my mom, right? Exactly. Yeah. The only thing he wanted to talk about was I'm, you know, I want to raaise a million dollars and you're going to help me raise that million dollars. And then well come. We'll spend it on education because education needs to be better and maybe I'll take a course in being a good military guy That's I didn't want to talk about it very much of anything else. That's a guy who's sort of as disconnected from reality now as he was when he was under his mother's throng Yes And as I'm sure you have encountered frequently in doing these stories, Josh, as I have When people go into prison They tend to stay the same age in some weird way They'll come out twenty years later and they're still the you know twenty year old to win in in the first place. intellectually you know, emotionally And and you think that's that's Kenny Sems to me, ye. I mean, you know, he he has done some things in there. He had a girlfriend for a while, though She passed away. He had a girlfriend Wh was while he was incarcerated Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. That wouldn have been able to have one before he was incarcerated Right I will never understand that. Although I did work years ago with a woman Oh who was dating a guy. Um And, uh And he was locked up. And I assumed wrongly that they'd been together before he got locked up. She's like, no, I met him. you know, after he was and I'm like, why are you Why are you dating somebody who is incarcerated? And she said to me, Well, you always know where he is. act It's right. That's one of the more interesting factlets about Criminal justice in America and a lot of these people who have done really terrible things have whole fan clubs full of people who would like to have relationships with them. And they say that our culture is flawed. Just imagine. Yeah. Yeah All right, so this is the first interview that Kenny has done in a very long time But Well, ever since he tried it appeared to try to you know either strangle or stab the CNN reporter back in two thousand or whatever it was. That was a harrowing story. Do you hear anything from Kenny that sounded like remorse to you? Oh, you heard the usual the kind of practiced remorse. Sometimes I feel sorry for people who are in situations like that. when society around them demands that they be remorseful before that they are able to Achieve anything like forgiveness or even understanding whether they're forgiven or not And so they'll go through all the motions of remorse and U And then the reaction is more often than not is I don't believe You're not really remorseful, you're just saying that. So In some ways, somebody who is locked up in his situation would say, Well, you know, what do you have to do to be believed? I feel terrible about all this stuff and I really We'd like to make amends somehow. But' you just don't know Is it real or not real? Not sure. Yeah. Yeah, we're big on we're big on, uh on that in this country on confession and redemption and yeah. Oh yeah. and not believing confession. for a long time, maybe more cynical. So was was it difficult to get Kent to sit down and talk about this? Well, no, K I wouldn't say difficult. Kent has Kendis has actually written a book about this case. and has been interviewed before. you know, we interviewed him a couple of times before. So he he's happy to tell the story. I think he is getting to a point where he would like some sort of resolution with his brother, but he's not quite there yet I think once he achieves that, maybe he'll be You'll move on from the story But that's been the cornerstone of his life This feels like a good time to play the extra sound from Kent Walker. This is a piece of piece of the interview that did not make the broadcast and he's talking about some early memories with Sante You're a kid You're in a drug store or something with your mother. What happens Well, it's got big purse real big proof. and we're going up and down the aisles I'm usually a few feet in front of her. and when she comes out, the firstur is half full of stuff. It might be oysters, might be lipsticks, might be a roast. A roast? Yeah, We got caught one time in Newport Beach. and Storm Mager Cotter, Deada Rits. And she turned around and just how dare you accuse me of this after about five minutes, he's apologizing to her, saying, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We get in the car and she reaches into her purse and pulls out a big roast, not a little roast, a big roast someome oysters, She love some my oysters.. Oysters and a roast A roast beef. I mean, it roast beef I mean, you can put it in the oven cookking for dinner. Sunday dinner Yeah, we ate well. It's not like six days a week, she was a good girl and then one week she went bad. No, that was always there. Was it for a thrill, you think? I think in my early years it was more of a necessity. I don't know if the thrill was part of it or not. She always loved beating the system. She loved you know maybe a little bit of a thrill to it That's how we ate. I mean, she didn't do that, we didn't eat. I think I always held out hope and. Mbe she'd be okay. you know, you fall in love with the good stuff that she was, and you know I was never going to be replaced. and it made it too easy to forgive the bad stuff sometimes. You know, you kind of held out hope that mayaybe she calm down, maybe she'd become rational. Mbe maybe she'll outgrow this, maybe, you know Once Shante Kimmes got in your blood, she never laughed. never completely. Wow. that tells you something. That's actually a very good way of describing it. That's a good bit to use Police have anything to say about whether or not Sante and Kenny are suspects in any uncharged murders. There are other people out there that they killed I didn't hear anybody saying they think there are more. I think that probably is it posossible there's another one, but You know, it's never it's never been anything that any police department has been chasing down that I know of. So You know They're both on the hook for these murders, Kenny confesses to save her. L it's like the last act of this ing relationship that they had. Well, yes, Kenny confessed to all the murders to save her from Dath row save her from the death penalty, save himself too at the same time But really, I think the more important thing to him was saving her. As you pointed out earlier, Kenny really didn't have a chance. He was up against it from the beginning U His brother Kent feels bad for not doing a little bit more to save him, but I'm not sure he could have, you know, because Sante, you know, she loved this boy and she was enveloping him in her protective arms And I guess the way of describing it from the outside is that she was trying to make him Make herself his whole world Yeah, that that's that that part was super creepy Okay, after the break, we will answer some of your questions from social media Hello everybody. I'm Keith Morris. I'm here with Anne Prisman, the producer of this episode. as anyone watching can probably tell some time has passed since we initially shot this program And we talked to Josh about the case. that was last year. But Anne and I wanted to get together to talk about an update, which is really quite remarkable We never really thought that it would go this far, At least I didn't. Did you expect that they would identify? and the person who was G and out of the blue. Yeah. It surprising this many years later Ken Honggren, the sn thought his father was murdered in Costa Rica, never to be found, never to be investigated You know, the guy found in a dumpster and sure enough, that's what happened to There are other victim So tell me how they figured it out. A former FBI agent joined the Innglewood PD and he was picking up some cold cases and was looking This one trying to ID the body they had good shot, good autopsy photos. They've done a decent crime scene analysis. but that many years ago, there was not DNA was not where it is now. So he opened up the case, hooked up with his old colleagues at the FBI and they did a genealogy search and they found some distant cousins and eventually made their way to Ken Holmgren in Texas, who is the son of Elmer Holmgren. uh, and he sees these autopsy photos and immediately es them as a stamp. It's amazing how many cases are now, you know, being resolved this way. It's It's like they're all sitting out there in these cold case files and In many cases, all they have to do is just pluck out the DNA and If they could do the genealogy work, that's the complicated part. And the FBI is particularly helpful in this area, I gather with Lcal police department They essentially, as they put it, offer a service to smaller or u police departments with less resources and the FBI offers these resources free of charge. Yeah. The FBI does amazing work and I think sometimes they don't always get credit for it. But in the regional offices around the country There are dedicated professionals who are you really eager to help local police departments solve crimes and do the sort of work that local police departments simply can't do And they're extremely helpful with a number of investigations One of which was this one, right? There we are, Yeah. All right, let's get to some questions and some comments from viewers on social media Dawn on Facebook says, I'll never understand how she got away with so many crimes for so long She probably wouldn't get away so easy today You know, I' I'm not so sure that's true, actually. Some people do get away with things for Quite a long time Yeah. I mean, I think the only difference would be They they weren't They were noton what's the phrase? The digital footprint might be easier to trace in terms of the money, but they were if somebody actually knew to look for them They were very smart and they managed to avoid being chased. If somebody knows, you know who the criminals are, it's easier to catch them nowadays. but If you have no idea who's whether somebody's a criminal, yeah. There's another question here's fromarah Sarah's life on TikTok who says, why is it we tend to watch these more When we can't sleep, We as women. She says us as women can't sleep. Have you done any studies on this? LOL HelloL. Well. studies I don't know. the studies that I know about are the ones that involve us doing one story after another for thirty some years now and you know, have discovered along the way Because more often than not, women are the victims of these kinds of crimes It's understandable that women would be more interested in the mysteries and in the resolution of those mysteries and in what happens in in true crime. You know Anybody who has a group tends to be more of the victim than some other group is apt to be more interested Do that seem reasonable to you An Yes Everything you say is resum. You are reasonable in years. You are a saint. A final question in is from Sergeant Marti who took a poll on X people responded. The poll was is Sante Kimes, A a psychopath, B a sociopath See both. And the answer not surprisingly is that most people thought she was both I don't know if you can be both a sociopath and a psychopath. I looked it up They are slightly different. it is. Psychopath, you're born to it and sociopath You're socialized to it. However, I'm not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional although No, no, neither one of us is. But if I had to guess, Sante certainly had the characteristics of the psychopath as far as I was concerned in the She Change seemed to have been born to it and she certainly had No remorse about any of the things that she did Keeen to do more Well, that is it for Dateline this week and Talking in Dateline. and thank you for listening. Remember, if you have any questions about our stories, you can DM us your audio or your video on socials at Dateline NBC, or leave us a voicemail at two one two, four one three, five, two, five two for a chance to be featured right here And you can watch the video version of Talking Dadline on Peacock or YouTube or subscribe to the NBC News app. And of course we'll see you Fridays on dateline NBC