“To grift” is defined by Webster's as a method for obtaining money falsely through swindles, frauds, dishonesty, or rigged gambling. Certainly Sante Kimes (rhymes with crimes) has spent much of her adult life as a confidence artist or grifter, as well as being a convicted thief and keeper of slaves. In recent years, her son Kenny appears to have joined her, replacing her late husband in what had become a family enterprise.
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THE MOTHER Once mistaken for a young Elizabeth Taylor, the weathered,64 -year-old Sante Kimes may have lost her movie-star good looks, but she never lost her pathological ambition--to con,steal, possibly murder, and to use her emotionally explosive son as a pawn in her twisted schemes. THE SON Friends said Sante Kimes had a Svengali-like psychological hold on her handsome but troubled 23-year-old son Kenneth.Completely dominated by his controlling mother, Kenneth would express a Norman Bates-esque love/hate for Sante,who seemed to call the shots in the most notorious and bizarre mother-and- son crime team in history. THE SOCIALITE 82-year-old Irene Silverman was suspicious of the surly young man she had just rented a $6000-per-month apartment to in her Manhattan mansion and was planning to throw Kenneth Kimes out. Then she suddenly disappeared without a trace--except for the bloodstains outside of her luxury townhouse. THE CRIME SPREE OF THE CENTURY Linked to an unbelievable cross-country crime spree that may have included as many as four brutal murders, police finally caught the Kimeses, who are the leading suspects in the disappearance of Irene Silverman. Did this macabre team carve a bloody trail of bodies that finally ended at a posh New York townhouse？ Is this the case of an Oedipus complex gone horribly out of control？ And will their sensational trial pit mother against son for the ultimate family feud between two warped criminal minds？

Introduction
Part One
Prologue
Chapter One: A Millionaire's Mansion
Chapter Two: The Dancer Departs
Chapter Three: Trail of Terror
Chapter Four: Many Clues, No Body
Part Two
Chapter Five: High Plains Hustler
Chapter Six: Sante, Sandra, and Sandy
Chapter Seven: Kimes v. Kimes
Part Three
Chapter Eight: A Capital Caper
Chapter Nine: A Capital Crime
Chapter Ten: The Boy Slave
Chapter Eleven: The Slave Girls
Chapter Twelve: A Body (or Two)
Disappears
Chapter Thirteen: The Son (Also) Rises
Part Four
Chapter Fourteen: Journeys of Death
Chapter Fifteen: End Came
Epilogue
Appendixes
Exhibits
Notes on Sources and Acknowledgments