| A mystery in Manhattan Newsweek; New York; Jul 20, 1998; Sarah van Boven; Brad Stone; IRENE SILVERMAN WAS ALWAYS AN artful hostess, and the family mansion on East 65th Street in Manhattan was her canvas. After her real-estate-magnate husband bought the building in 1957, she had all four stories redone in the style of a chateau they had once visited in Versailles. She spent decades filling the place with exotic flowering plants, mementos from her days in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall and antique furniture. When Mr. Silverman died in 1984, Irene began filling the house with tenants; the petite redhead loved the company and the conversation. "You think this is about money?" she once asked a friend. "It's not." Rental brokers steered an eclectic mix of wealthy lodgers her way, each of whom paid thousands of dollars a month for one of eight subdivided apartments: An Australian publishing magnate. Assorted artists. Bankers stopping in from Zurich or Cincinnati for a week or a year. And, just last month, a mysterious and polished 23-year-old named Kenneth Kimes. Irene Silverman welcomed them all. She may have paid the ultimate price for her hospitality. Last spotted in her nightgown on the sidewalk of East 65th Street, the 82-year-old disappeared on July 5. That night, when Kenneth Kimes and his mother, Sante, were arrested at a New York Hilton hotel on a separate warrant for swindling a Utah auto dealer, police searched their 1997 Lincoln Town Car and found Silverman's passport, a Glock 9-mm handgun, wigs and various papers that suggested to police the duo were trying to bilk the socialite out of her beloved house. It could fit a pattern: mother and son are currently under investigation in the deaths of two other marks (though they have not been charged in either case). Police looking into Silverman's disappearance now have the two suspects jailed on Riker's Island. What they didn't have late last week was a corpse-or a simple task ahead of them. The Kimeses' story, and their rap sheets, stretch back many years. Despite multiple arrests for theft and forgery, Sante Kimes still managed to marry wealthy hotel and motel developer Kenneth Sr. Lawyer Charles Catterlin, who says he was stiffed for $12,000 worth of legal work he did for the Kimeses in the '70s, still remembers her imperious airs. "She'd come into a restaurant and start giving orders like crazy," Catterlin says. " `Give me this, give me that, bring me this, give me a telephone, I'll have a martini'." Son Kenneth Jr. was only 4 when his mother was arrested for stealing a fur coat while he slept upstairs in Washington, D.C.'s Mayflower Hotel in 1980. But Sante got into real trouble in 1986, when she was convicted of enslaving domestic help, the judge calling her "greedy, cunning and cruel" before sentencing her to a five-year jail term. Sante's husband died not long after her release, and investigators believe son Kenneth became her new partner in crime. The outgoing young man was a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for three years, but it wasn't until he dropped out in 1996 and started traveling with Sante that people starting disappearing around the Kimeses. Businessman Syed Bilal Ahmed befriended Sante on a trip to the Bahamas that year. He vanished; an inquiry by island police went nowhere. By the end of 1997, Kenneth had picked up his first convictions, for robbery and assault in Florida. But police really began to take note in January, when a fire destroyed a Las Vegas house the Kimeses used to own. They had put the name of friend David Kazdin on the title, then the name of a homeless man Sante picked up at a shelter-police say to obtain insurance policies and mortgages the two, with their criminal records, might not have gotten on their own. By March, authorities had ruled the fire an arson-and Kazdin was dead, found stuffed in a Dumpster at the L.A. airport. The Kimeses were on the run. In April, Utah prosecutors say Sante arranged to buy the Lincoln with a bad check. A sting set up to recover the car in Las Vegas failed, and soon the Kimeses were on their way to New York. Kenneth worked on ingratiating himself with Silverman, and two weeks ago, the Kimeses made some calls. One was to Don Aoki, a notary public who came to the house but refused to stamp a real-estate document that had been signed "Irene Silverman" before he arrived. "It seemed like a phony deal," he says, adding that he believes the older woman he saw in bed that day was actually Sante Kimes, 63, not Silverman. Another call was to a West Coast friend, whom the Kimeses summoned to New York. But the friend was also an FBI informant, who promptly called the police. Investigators are still looking for Silverman, though sources say dogs found no trace of her scent in the Lincoln. (Kenneth Kimes's lawyer points out that the Kimeses have not been charged with her disappearance, and maintains that his client did nothing wrong in the case of the Town Car.) For now, Irene Silverman's posh apartment remains empty. And many questions remain unanswered. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |