9
“Greed, arrogance, and cruelty”
With the help of Kenneth Kimes’s fortune and her personal philosophy of why pay for something when you can steal it or stick someone else with the bill, Sante had managed to create quite a lifestyle for herself. This included opulent homes in Hawaii, California, Nevada, and Cancun, Mexico. But even Sante couldn’t be in all these places at once, so she had to make sure that she had people who could see to all her needs, which meant staffing all her homes with maids, cooks, and housecleaners.
Maria De Rosario Vasquez was 14 years old and living in Mexico City when Sante Kimes, after promising her parents she would educate the young girl, recruited her to work as a domestic at the fashionable two-story, three-bedroom condominium the Kimeses rented at the intersection of Via Mallorca and Caminto Ameca in La Jolla, a posh suburb of San Diego, California. Sante’s attempts at “education” were rather unorthodox, however, as Maria was punched, beaten, and forced to work long hours without any pay. Eventually, she was able to place a frantic collect call to relatives who alerted the FBI. The FBI raided the condo on August 3, 1985, freed the unfortunate young girl, and arrested Sante and Papa Kimes, charging them with slavery, conspiracy, and transporting illegal aliens for the past six years.
As it turned out, Maria De Rosario Vasquez was not alone. Over the years, Sante had helped herself to plenty of free maid service, including that of Dolores Vasquez Salgado, who was 14 when Sante smuggled her across the Mexican border from her home in Guadalajara in 1982. “We walked across the border on the beach, and once in San Diego, I was flown to Las Vegas to work in La Senora’s home,” explained Vasquez, who also said that Sante called her “stupid,” “threatened me with a pistol,” and once struck her “because I had burned hamburger bread.” A third incident occurred in a hotel suite. “I had an allergy,” Vasquez recalled. “My pressure went up and I fainted. La Senora said to go into the shower. She forced me to go in there. All of a sudden, she would steam up like that. . . . I had taken off my clothes and she told me to get in the shower. I put the water to lukewarm. She changed the water to very hot. It burned. When I moved away to a corner of the bathtub, she threw hot water on me with a little pot.”
Vasquez said she often wrote letters to her parents, but Sante never mailed them. When Vasquez discovered the letters under the seat of Sante’s car, Sante gave the maid a lame excuse that she had not mailed them because there were “problems” between Mexico and the United States. “She said mailmen couldn’t send the letters there. Mailmen didn’t speak Spanish.” Although promised a salary of $150 a month, Vasquez was never paid and never given a day off. “I worked in the house from 6:30 in the morning to nine at night or to midnight.” After three months toiling for Sante, Vasquez said she was taken to the Tijuana border crossing, given some money, and told to return to Guadalajara.
Another maid, Maribel Ramirez-Cruz of El Salvador, a 21-year-old illegal alien, said that Sante kept her against her will and threatened her if she talked about her “employment.” Ramirez said “La Senora” hired her outside a Costa Mesa, California, employment office, promising to pay her $120 “if I worked at her house.” The next day, Sante took her to Hawaii, where the hapless Ramirez remained from July to November 1984. She was given no money, no days off, and was ordered not to talk to anyone, not even to other members of Sante’s household staff. “I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t because they [the Kimeses and their tutors in the house] were all watching me,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said that in November she was taken to Sante’s Las Vegas home. According to her testimony at the slavery trial, she was ironing one day when Sante discovered a piece of paper on her with the telephone number of another maid whom Ramirez had met in Hawaii. Sante flew into a wild rage, the young woman said, and became vicious and sadistic. “La Senora made me take off my clothes so she could search me. Then she threatened to put the iron on my face, so I covered my face with my hands and the iron burned my left hand,” Ramirez said. That night she was forced to sleep on the floor of the Kimes’ bedroom. “She said she was going to call some friends to put me away for good,” Ramirez said.
Still another maid, Adela Sanchez Guzman, related similar atrocities during her 11-month ordeal while working for Sante. Sanchez, who was from Mexico, said that Sante went into a fury because she had talked to Ramirez. “She got mad and said she would kill me.” As punishment, Sante slapped her face and head, hit her feet with a wooden hanger, and, when the hanger broke, simply changed over to a hanger made of metal. On another occasion, Sanchez said that when Sante found an address label showing where they lived in Hawaii, she took Sanchez to the bathroom, slapped her, pulled her hair, and beat her with a belt. Sanchez said that these beatings took place in Sante’s Las Vegas and Honolulu homes, and that she had not been paid and was not allowed to write or telephone anyone. She testified that she escaped from the Hawaii house in December 1984 and sought refuge in a church, where a priest took the maid to police.
Shortly before she was to go on trial on slavery charges, Sante feigned a multitude of garden-variety medical complaints and was taken to the Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital by federal authorities. On December 30, still wearing her hospital gown, Sante escaped from the facility.
Sante gave varying accounts of where she spent her days of freedom, one of which had her sleeping under trees to escape the elements. In her six-page personal handwritten diary found with the other details of her slavery trial, Sante offered her own incredible explanation of her escape. She began by explaining that she was “handcuffed or footcuffed to a wheelchair, having been made sick by the shots necessary for tests she was undergoing.” She wrote:
Joella, the guard, with absolutely no warning . . . literally pushed me to an exit and out the door. I did not willfully escape. I was in a sickened, drugged state. No matter what her reason, she pushed me out and I couldn’t get back in. I ran with no clothes and I was very disoriented. I was trying to get to a phone and get help when the dog attacked me. I got really bloodied up and fell out of a tree. They say I stayed out intentionally to avoid being caught. The next day, I was sick, injured, bloody, and frightened out of my wits. I literally was frightened to death. Joella pulled the escape. I was the victim. I did not plan it or want it. The government endangered my life by hiring a crooked guard who did this for money reasons. The egg is on the goat’s face. They hired Rent-a-Cops and this one was after money.
After escaping, Sante turned up on the doorstep of a friend, Sheila Bishop, asking for help in contacting Kimes to obtain financial assistance. Sante made several calls to Kimes, and he showed up on January 2 at the Huddle Lounge, where Bishop worked, and gave her $100 for Sante. The next day, Sante appeared at the lounge, got the money, and was then captured by federal marshals and FBI agents in the parking lot of the Elbow Room Bar on East Flamingo Road, about eight blocks east of the Las Vegas strip. She was wearing a blouse and jumper and vehemently claimed she got no help from family or friends during her escape.
Sante went on trial, charged with recruiting and smuggling young girls, as young as 14, from the ghettoes of Mexico City and El Salvador and bringing them to her homes in California, Nevada, and Hawaii. There, according to the charges, she had locked them in her walled compound like prisoners, torturing them and working them seven days a week without pay. Federal prosecutors charged that both Sante and Kenneth Kimes, Sr., were present during these trips to Mexico, when these young girls were smuggled into the country. Both were named in a 16-count Nevada indictment on August 8, 1985, which charged them with conspiracy and holding as many as seven young women as slaves by preventing them from leaving their employ.
“These were unsophisticated young women who were in the country illegally. They didn’t speak English and many of them didn’t know what city they were in. They were subject to physical abuse: slapping, kicking. And sometimes they were burned with a hot iron,” argued Stephen Clark, one of the U.S. Justice Department attorneys prosecuting the case, in his opening statements to the jury. “This case involves greed, arrogance, and cruelty. It involves the cold and calculating use of people as if they were pieces of furniture.”
In outlining the government’s case, Clark said that Sante ordered the maids not to answer the door, and she forbade them to use the telephone. She instructed her other employees—tutors, secretaries and house sitters—not to talk to the maids or let them use the telephone, mail letters, or leave Sante’s home. She stole their identification papers and any letters that they tried to write to their families. The victims were also kept in line with threats that, because they were illegal aliens, the police were going to come and take them away, torture them (as if Sante wasn’t providing enough of that), and abuse them sexually if they tried to get away.
Defense lawyer Dominic Gentile argued that none of the maids were forced to accept the employment. “The evidence will show they were not beaten and were left alone a lot,” he said. “They got all the necessities of life for compensation. If they were paid money, they couldn’t have done as well.” He suggested that the maids who came from “hungry and desperate” backgrounds were bending the truth to stay in the United States.
At the trial, seven of Sante’s Spanish-speaking maids testified against her through interpreters, offering poignant accounts of how the seductive sociopath had lured them to the United States with promises of a good life and then brutally smashed their dreams and spirits once they got over the border.
Beverly Bates-Stone, Sante’s former neighbor, also testified. When she saw that Sante’s son, Kent, was in the courtroom, she became frightened. “I was scared to death that he was going to do something to me because I was testifying against his mother,” she said.
Perhaps Bates-Stone had good reason to be apprehensive. Another Kimes neighbor described Kent as “a very devious child ... always spying, listening in on our conversations. He was his mother’s little soldier. Kent was Sante’s stand-in and was in charge of the slave maids when it came to bossing them. He acted like a little general when his mother wasn’t around. He took her orders and carried them out exactly. He would not speak in her presence unless she directly asked him a question. He was not very popular and didn’t have many friends. He also resented and appeared jealous of his baby brother.”
Bates-Stone has vivid memories of a young Mexican maid that she rescued from the Portlock Road house. “The girl cried and sobbed as she related how she had been sexually molested by Ken Kimes, Sr., inside the Kimes house. Sante had warned the girl that if she left, she would go to prison, because police would be informed she was illegal. She was shaking as she described the incidents,” Bates-Stone said. Despite making the allegations against the Kimes family, when the maid reached the mainland, where she had family, she never filed charges against them.
One of Kenny’s tutors also testified against Sante. Teresa Richards said that Sante told her to cross the border “one way or another” and bring young Mexican maids to the United States. Once at the Kimes home, Richards said they were not free to leave or contact their families. “Mrs. Kimes told me to treat the maids as if they were chairs,” Richards testified. When asked by Sante’s defense lawyer why she didn’t leave her job, she replied she was scared and thought she’d be hurt. “I was being brainwashed,” she added.
Yet another tutor, Cynthia Montano, said she got her job with the Kimes by answering an ad that promised “travel, excitement, and lots of opportunities,” but like Richards, she, too, worked only for living expenses and was not paid a salary. Montano said that after a maid escaped from the household, Sante sent her to Tijuana, Mexico, with instructions to bring back “some girls as maids who wore no makeup, no jewelry, and were very subservient.” When she was caught at the Mexican border with the girls in her car trunk, Montano called Sante about her unsuccessful trip. “You can’t come home empty-handed. Go back,” Sante ordered the tutor.
This time, Sante, who always managed to find someone else to blame for her troubles, laid the blame on her “slaves” for her problems with the law. Personal notes she wrote during the trial reveal that she accused the maids of “walking off the property and filing a $24 million civil suit” against them.
Our lifestyle and theirs would be envied by most well-off Americans. The maids’ charges sound like a “repeat robot” tape. They were being told what to say. The beatings, not being able to get out—lies. Maids are saying what they are being told or brainwashed into saying. They are telling terrible closet stories. The letters are sometimes checked for stolen money and jewelry.
Sante’s 30-page personal manifesto shows how controlling and obsessed she was with contriving her own scenario as to what happened, blaming every prosecution witness for her maniacal nonsense. She also claimed the teachers were prejudiced against her.
[because] they could not get to us monetarily. They are lying, giving identical statements. They are obviously brainwashed. They are acting like frightened people who are in danger of the Kimes[es]. As if they were innocent little children, raped by us.
In truth, all the teachers came to us begging for the position, gave us written contracts, swearing loyalty and protection and confidentiality. They were there to protect us from problems and dangers and they knew there was no salary. As teachers, they had a professional duty to protect us and instead they did not do their job of teaching or were not nice people. They tried to rip us off any way they could.
Throughout her manifesto, she blamed the tutors and the employment agency for her criminal charges.
They contend I did all the directing and no one else. The tutors ran the maids. They ran the house, not us. They should be blamed. They were in charge. They say my personality is up and down. I fly off. I have to have my own way. That’s just trying to make criminal a person’s personality. The only thing we are guilty of is allowing unscrupulous, money-hungry maids and tutors into the privacy and protection of our home. They had a beautiful life and could leave whenever they wanted. We did not know they were illegal. We certainly didn’t know we were doing anything wrong.
Sante’s strategy was to also claim that “the employment agency gave us illegal maids, took our money, and then acted as if he didn’t even know us to protect himself. I was going to turn him in if he didn’t give use back a refund.” She was convinced that the only way to win the case was to have at least 35 credible witnesses. “They are trying to steamroll us with guilty verdicts with a great number of witnesses . . . and we have to steamroll back. Seeing is believing,” she wrote in a four-page February 20, 1986, letter to her son Kent. “They set the battleground and attacked. We have to go in with at least as many soldiers. ”
Sante prepared for her slavery trial as though she were a drill sergeant organizing the troops for battle. In dozens of letters to Ken Kimes and her son Kent, Sante meticulously outlined each and every detail of her court strategy plan and how it was to be implemented. They were to oversee what defense lawyer Dominic Gentile was doing to make sure what her witnesses would say on the stand to rebut prosecution witnesses. “I cannot stress enough the importance of reaching the witness list I have given you, my dearest precious husband,” she wrote in an August 24, 1985, letter to Kimes from her cell shortly after her arrest. “Study my letter closely. All of them. Do it this way,” she urged, reminding him not to “forget the birthday ‘gifts’ . . . 300 notes to each . . . for the people in the East.” She never explained who the people in the east could be, but the “notes” she refers to was obviously $300 in cash, to be given to the witnesses, emphasizing, “They are vital to a fair trial.”
In writing the specific slavery alibi letter, Sante’s approach was to draft it in such a way as to suggest to Kimes her “party line,” making it easy for him to grasp her “officially correct” answers. “
We never transported anyone. Nor did we know if they were illegal. They told us they were legal and that was that. Even when they went to Hawaii, they went home first, got clothes, and met us at the Marriot or the airport—so we did not actually transport them. They transported themselves voluntarily—we just accompanied them. We did not force them or take them.
We are truly innocent—all we did was provide a beautiful home full of everything anyone could want, pay the bills, and be beautiful to all, that’s all we did—that’s not a crime. They’re after money. They entrapped us—got our own people to help them. Our civil liberties have been abused—the liberty to have people in our home—the liberty to have privacy in our homes—free from government intervention—We didn’t know they were illegal. If they are trying to kill us, why not the millions of others in California who have them in their home?
The next month, when Sante realized she was not getting out of jail on bail, she pressed Kimes to start selling property. In a September 27 letter, she said:
The more you sell and hide quickly, the less money is there dangling for the vicious enemies to gobble up. The more you have they can lien or attach, the more incentive they have to keep suing—This is our money. It always has been, so if you hide the money—they can’t find it. It’s not half as attractive. No money or property, no bloodthirsty devils to try to literally suck our blood out of our bodies.
In December, before escaping from the prison hospital, she wrote Kent a six-page letter marked “IMPORTANT” in which she instructed her son to “put this document in your safe deposit box and no one should ever see it. Be very careful with it—don’t even leave it in your car—Papa gets up at 3 and 4 and you know how he searches.”
She further informed her son:
Papa is very sick and he is at his worst at night ... that drinking is a serious disease—as brilliant as he is—he’s a different person when he drinks. With Papa drinking and refusing to admit the truth, we are really in danger. Watch out for Papa closely. He just scares me to death when he’s over drinking. There is an end to the nightmare—that’s why I am being so submissive and quiet. I don’t want to upset him where he goes off—it could destroy us all.
Sante then promised Kent that “very soon my darling, you shall receive all—all there is—all I can give is yours very soon.”
With the slavery trial underway in February 1986, Sante sent Kimes an urgent six-page letter, itemizing a list of 16 points of further instructions and ordering him not to talk to certain witnesses “until they are shown letters she has written to them. All they have to do is get up and remember they worked for us in vegas in 1979 and 1980 and all was fine.” She also directed Kimes to purchase “a kitchen wall phone in the Vegas house so Kent can take movies of it and of all the doors in back and driveway and mailboxes” that would be shown to jurors as proof that the maids could make phone calls. She then orders Kimes in this note to “My Sweetheart” that she doesn’t think he should come to court too much. “You’re supposed to be sick. Please get your hair whiter. It really helps if you look sick and tired, etc.—the jury is watching you!”
The extent of Sante’s obsession to control was absolute. For instance, she wanted Kent to perjure himself at her federal trial, even if it meant subjecting him to prosecution. In a letter to her son during the slavery trial, she penned an eight-page script for him as to what areas he should emphasize on the witness stand.
Kent Honey—As an eye-witness I think it would be helpful for you to bring out . . . what is being lied about and how to confront. You are the best witness we have to prove 1. The house was wide open, lots of doors and exits, both houses—Hawaii? Jump over fence. 2. They could leave anytime and did if they wanted to. 3. About half the time or more, all maids and tutors alone, free to do what they wanted. 4. Both houses had wall phones that could not be unplugged. We did ask not to call around the world for hours and that’s all.
She goes on to suggest how he should reply to questions when asked:
Maids treated like family, ate the same food, swam, played with Kenny, started work about 7-ish—finished about 2 and then sewing, swimming . . . How did Mom treat maids? Like a Mom—kindly, tried to teach them to do things right and look nice—Bought clothes, presents—Took them out to dinner and shows—treated them like family. Very nice, happy style of living—Had everything, lovely homes; they had own bedrooms, TV. You Kent, think the tutors took advantage of your parents. Nothing was ever enough for them. First they wanted more money, then their teeth capped, then more clothes, finally if pressed too hard or taken too much, we’d fire them—then they would be angry—they had a really soft life and unbelievable deal—they kept wanting more and more and did not do their duties.
What was personality of your Mom? Bubbly happy, funloving, loved a happy home but wanted things done well. Liked a clean house. You saw letters mailed . . . they were paid . . . they usually wanted cash. Did your folks know maids were illegal? No, all maids came from agency and folks paid a lot of money to Surfside Agency. The tutors you saw were very self-centered and our lifestyle went to their head. A lot of maids would steal a lot—would take advantage—seemed to be very happy and loved the life we led. Most people would like to be Mom’s maids—spoiled but then took advantage.
The letter rambles on and on in the same repetitive vein with constant reminders that Kent was “next in line.” She also talked about his “rightful inheritance,” urging him to “get closer and closer and take over diplomatically from Papa because he’s older and tired and very sick.”
In yet another letter to Kent, she reminds him again that David Kazdin was an important witness for her. She also asks her son to visit her in jail, as she will have ready “the little preparation letters for all the witnesses—about 20 of them or 30—then take them to each witness . . . they need help and preparation,” so they will know how and what to say when they testify, she wrote.
Sante did not testify in her own defense. Instead, her defense attorney Dominic Gentile argued that jurors didn’t have to like Sante to acquit her of the charges. He suggested that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her on slavery charges because the maids voluntarily entered their employment and there was no retaliation after they left. His explanation to jurors as to why Sante was strict and secretive with her maids was that she feared that her husband’s relatives, whom she referred to as “The Creeps,” were trying to harm her and her young son.
In closing arguments, assistant U.S. Attorney Karla Dobinsiki called Sante “a greedy, cunning, and cruel woman” who lied to the maids, coerced them into staying at the Kimes’ homes, and made promises to them that she never kept. Sante cried softly during the prosecutor’s arguments and at one point yelled out dramatically, “It’s all lies!”
The jury began deliberations the afternoon of February 27. As deliberations dragged into a second day, Sante, the non-stop schemer, wrote her “Papa, Love” a four-page note late that night, saying:
[If] we lose, then we have won 2 years time for appeal which gives you time to liquidate. You have the Magic Saving Solution—Liquidate. You know they will win the civil suit. The money is what they are after. If you protect the money, they lose, no matter what. With the other maids coming in to sue, it’s going to be in the millions. Remove the money and there won’t even be pennies for them to get and it will all fade away.
Finally, after nine hours of deliberations, the slavery case jury found Sante guilty of 14 felony counts, including her escape from federal custody.
While she awaited sentencing, Sante next turned to the insurance company that carried her homeowner’s policy, demanding that they cough up the millions of dollars her former maids were seeking from her in a civil suit for enslaving them.
“You can be insured if somebody trips and falls on your front step, but we don’t insure people for keeping slaves,” said Jeffrey Portnoy, a Honolulu civil attorney who represented the insurance company in the case. A former New Yorker, Portnoy has 25 feet of files related to Sante’s slave case and also the second arson in 1990 involving the Portlock residence. Portnoy recalled that a group of lawyers were sent from the insurance company in Hawaii to take Sante’s deposition while she was serving her slavery sentence at the Pleasanton Correctional Facility in California. After taking her statement under oath, the lawyers wound up at a restaurant that evening, where they were surprised to find Kent Walker, who had earlier been tailing them. When the lawyers left the restaurant, a car came swerving around the corner and forced all of them to jump out of the way to avoid being hit by the car. “It was Kent. He didn’t want to hit them, he merely wanted to threaten them, scare them. If Kent has suddenly found religion now, it’s because it will make a good book, but he was part of it. No doubt about it. You don’t grow up in that environment without becoming part of it. He may be trying to distance himself from his mother, but I find it very ironic,” said Portnoy, who has practiced law for 30 years. “She is dangerous to the point where people feel for their personal safety and property,” he said.
At one point during the lengthy litigation, Portnoy said he found himself opposing not just Sante, but “scores of lawyers she had hired, including people pretending to be lawyers who did not exist,” he said.
In deposing the tutors, Portnoy said they described in detail “bizarre conduct” at the house, including Kenny’s temper tantrums when he didn’t get his own way. They also described how Sante demanded that she be “treated like Queen Elizabeth.” The household staff was not permitted to speak to her unless given prior permission. The maids were banished to small rooms when they weren’t performing their duties. The tutors were brought in because Sante did not want any outside influence on Kenny, who was totally isolated.
“There is nothing anyone can tell me about Sante and what she did to Kenny as a young boy that I wouldn’t believe. I have never met anyone more diabolical, more evil, more sinister, and more manipulative, and she had the money to make these things happen,” Portnoy said. “The court proceedings went into the millions of dollars on a case that should have been a joke from the beginning. Sante managed to tie up this case for years in court by calling in all kinds of legal talent and ignoring court orders. With the money at her disposal, she manipulated the legal system and scared these insurance carriers into paying some money, which clearly was wrong, but at some point they had to make an economic decision to settle the matter. She made her evilness work for her.”
By the time Kenneth Kimes was arrested with Sante in 1985 on the slavery charge, it was too late to help him. He had withered and lost the vigorous look he had when he first met Sante. “The muscle tissue in his body was beginning to give way, and his abuses of alcohol and the drugs Sante slipped him in his food took its toll. No longer did he look like Jimmy Stewart or have the build of a Burt Lancaster with a David Niven sort of face. His dyed hair looked awful,” one of his nephews said.
When one of his brothers visited Kimes at the jail before his release on bail, he was overheard telling him that he couldn’t get away from her. “Where could I go? There’s no family to go to. There’s nothing left,” Kimes said sadly. He was right. “But don’t worry, I never did marry her and I never will. I just can’t get away from her,” Kimes reassured his brother.
Before sentencing in the slavery trial was meted out for Kenneth Kimes, the millionaire motel mogul sent Judge McKibben a four-page letter relating his early background growing up on a 140-acre farm in the rural district of Prague, Oklahoma. Kimes told of attending school two miles from home, of his paper route, and of his subscribers, who paid him for the Oklahoma Daily News with chickens, eggs, butter, vegetables, and fruit. He described how he got interested in building homes after his family moved to Salinas, California, and how he saved $300 to buy a lot and build a home that cost $1,700, which he later sold for $2,700. Serving in the U.S. Army interrupted his budding building career, and after being honorably discharged in 1945, he returned to Salinas where he was attracted to the motel industry. After building his first motel in Monterey, Kimes went on to develop 50 more motels up and down the coast of California, until his motels made him a millionaire, many times over.
He also told the judge of his 15-year marriage to Charloette Taylor, which ended in divorce, and that he was awarded custody of his two then teenage children. Then he related how he was introduced to Sante Walker in Palm Springs. “It became obvious that almost every place I went, she was close by,” he said. He described how his family “developed a positive dislike for her. I believe they felt that she was not sincere about my welfare, but was more concerned about her own.
“I decided that the family needed time to adjust to Sante, so I refrained from forcing her on them. As I look back and analyze the situation, my feeling is that Sante, with her motives, was trying to separate me from my family, mainly because she never had a family. She developed resentment toward them because of their closeness and love for each other. I’m sure our relationship would not have survived, except for our ten-year-old son, Kenny.”
Kimes bared his soul to the judge, admitting that he did nothing to stop Sante from hiring illegal aliens. “I have spent too much time with business concerns and too little with concerns about the operation of my home.” He conceded he ran the business, while “Sante took care of the home. My crime, if any, is one of omission, rather than commission, for I have never in my life knowingly broken the law.”
On May 15, Judge Howard McKibben sentenced Sante Kimes to five years in prison on each count, but ordered the sentences to run concurrently At the same time, he chastised Ken Kimes and told him that while he did not directly commit any of the acts, he did nothing to stop Sante from abusing the women. “I can’t condone your activities,” he said. “I think the message sent out by this court is that it will not tolerate this kind of conduct.”
The judge fined Kimes $70,000 and gave him a suspended three-year prison sentence, except for a 60-day period in an alcohol treatment center.
McKibben called the case “one of the most unusual cases he had ever presided over.” He said it was obvious that Sante “suffered from fairly substantial emotional disturbances. You engaged in long-standing activity of bringing in illegal aliens to the country. You have little concern for the laws of the United States and continued to violate the law.”
McKibben was right on target. Sante wasted no time while in federal prison or when she was released in December 1989, in continuing the work of the devil.