Sante met the first of her defense lawyers that Monday, when José A. Muniz showed up to represent her during her brief appearance in AR 1, the arraignment part on the first floor of the Criminal Court Building. Sante had found Muniz through a bondsman, Renee Andrews, referred to her by one of her cellmates in Central Booking.
Muniz, an experienced criminal defense lawyer, was brought up by a single mother after his father died from a heroin overdose when Muniz was eight years old. He went on to Catholic school and then to Syracuse University, where he majored in psychology before going on to New York Law School on a scholarship. Despite 15 years in criminal law, representing those accused of murder, rape, and drug smuggling, as well as “small-time con artists,” meeting Sante Kimes “was an experience,” he said.
Muniz was initiated into Sante’s world when she innocently told him on that first meeting, “This is only about a car. The car leaked and that is why we stopped payment on the vehicle. I don’t know why we’re here. I don’t understand why we’re arrested. My son is a great kid. We just came to visit New York.”
A savvy lawyer, Muniz began to make inquiries about his strange new client. He became suspicious about her story when he learned that the joint FBI/NYPD Task Force had sent a dozen men on a holiday weekend to pick her up for a $14,000 car theft.
Sante’s appearance in court was delayed. When Muniz was called away to Albany, New York, on an emergency, he asked a colleague, Matthew Weissman, to oversee the routine appearance, which didn’t take place until the afternoon of July 7.
The 45-year-old Weissman was a novice in the criminal court arena. A graduate of Georgetown University with a master’s degree in taxation, he was a civil litigator who primarily dealt in real-estate matters. His father was at one time an NYPD police surgeon, and the family lived in Scarsdale, a posh suburb of the city. In taking on Sante Kimes, he suddenly found himself immersed in a world that he’d never seen before, which included, as he put it, “jail, criminal court and Sante Kimes.”
By the time Sante was arraigned, the front pages of the newspapers and the top story on radio and television were all about the disappearance of Irene Silverman. Weissman contacted Muniz on his cell phone with the news that the case is more than just the Utah warrant. After listening to the details, Muniz warned him, “Be careful. You must always remember who you are dealing with. You are dealing with a criminal mind, and she sounds like someone who would use us to get whatever she needs and not care what happens to us.”
Scores of police were fanning out on the Upper East Side, looking for Irene Silverman. They searched for clues in Central Park and combed hospital and morgue records. Residents in the area were canvassed, and people were stopped on the street and questioned as to whether they had seen Irene. That evening, deputy inspector Joseph Reznick held a press conference on the third floor of the 19th precinct, seeking the public’s assistance. The police were looking not only for Irene, but the tenant Manny Guerin as well.
Reznick, who was in charge of the elite Manhattan North Homicide Detective Squad when Irene disappeared, had a fearsome reputation amongst his peers. “He’s the kiss of death for anybody who’s a slacker and doesn’t work,” said an officer who fears him. “Joe is a stern, hard-nosed task master, a no-nonsense boss. He’s extremely thorough,” explained retired detective Joel Potter, one of the detectives Reznick hand-picked to work on the Silver Task Force.
“Whatever word there is beyond tenacious, that’s the word I’d use to describe Joe. He’s a phenomenal investigator,” Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said of the 50-year-old Reznick.
At a media briefing the evening of Monday, July 6, Reznick handed out copies of a photograph of the millionaire widow and a sketch of the missing tenant that a police artist made with the help of Irene Silverman’s staff.
“Right now,” said Reznick, “we have an elderly woman who has disappeared very mysteriously, and an occupant of an apartment whom she rented to less than three weeks ago who has also disappeared mysteriously. We have no clue as to where they are now.”
Shortly after 5:00 A.M. on Tuesday, July 7, Detective Thomas Hackett, working a turnaround shift, was asleep on a cot in the back of the detectives’ squad room at the 19th precinct. He was awakened by a call from Detective Eddy Murray of the Task Force. “I think we got your man,” Murray said.
Murray had seen an early morning newscast about the Silverman disappearance and on a hunch began reviewing police teletype messages. Eventually, he got to the sketch artist drawings of Manny Guerin and compared them with the arrest photos the task force had made of Kenny Kimes. Paydirt. He and Detective Ryan went to the federal building garage, checked the Lincoln car again, then notified his superiors.
Tommy Hackett beeped Reznick, who was by then on his way to work. Reznick called back and barked, “Rush downtown and talk to the Kimeses. Take the first person that comes in on the shift and get down there.” Tommy took detective Diana Rohan with him.
By the time Reznick got back to his desk, he was seething, having realized that Silverman’s tenant had been in custody since Sunday evening. He really blew his top when he learned that at no time after the Kimeses were arrested did any FBI agent or police detective from the Task Force involved in their arrest on July 5 question or even investigate further why the suspects had Irene Silverman’s personal property in their possession.
“I yelled at the arresting officer at the top of my lungs. ‘Let me get this straight. You arrested a person that had identification on them of an entirely different person and you mean to say you didn’t follow up on it?’” Reznick said. The other detectives in the 19th detective squad room ducked for cover as Reznick chewed out the officer on the phone. “As a result of this monumental foul up,” Reznick continued, “we lost a day and a half in this investigation. If we had been called on the evening of July 5, this case would have been solved much faster.”
By 7:30 Tuesday morning, Detective Murray had Sante taken out of Central Booking and brought back to his office at FBI headquarters in the Federal Building. It was here that Hackett, a 17-year veteran of the force, tried to enlist her help in locating Mrs. Silverman.
“Look, I don’t care how Mrs. Silverman got to where she is or who did it. I just want to find out where she is,” Hackett pleaded with Sante, using an interrogation technique of talking to her in a soft, soothing voice. Hackett thought that the Kimeses might have Silverman tied up someplace, and were perhaps holding her ransom. “But,” said Hackett, “she was foxy. She sat across the table from me and, when I explained why I was there, she kinda folded her hands and sat up, and I thought ‘this is gonna be easy.’ But it wasn’t. It was a game with her. Sante never slipped up at all on anything I asked. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Hackett showed Sante the front-page headline of the New York Daily News about the missing socialite. He even handed her the newspaper, but even after reading the article, Sante said she didn’t believe that the newspaper was genuine. “You could have printed this up yourself,” she told Hackett.
Hackett told her, “It doesn’t have to be a murder.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sante said. “You should really put your energy into finding this woman. Maybe she’s out walking her dog,” she added condescendingly.
Hackett lost his cool. Raising his voice, he shouted, “She’s 82 years old. This is not some bullshit car case. She ain’t out walking her fucking dog for two days.”
“Maybe after I speak to my lawyer, I can tell you what you need to know,” Sante replied coquettishly.
Before sending Sante back to Central Booking, Hackett took her handbag, and inside he found the toilet paper note she planned to smuggle to Kenny, as well as a mysterious handwritten piece of paper with the words “PALAZA” and several numbers following it. The message on the flimsy scrawled piece of paper read:
My dearest. I’m so proud of you! Fight and Win. Don’t be afraid. Real Estate LS. to be secret. In large Carmel, 20ish. Don’t be followed. Store Lincoln. Later stolen. Hide all papers at Erics or Atty. Muniz. Call Larry—he can help but don’t tell all. Get a room. Protect RV. Live on and to apt and here too.
It took detectives until the third week in July to decipher the toilet paper note, which turned out to be a very important clue that led to the Kimes’ conviction.
What the vague, difficult-to-understand message meant was that once Kenny got out of jail on bail, he was not to disclose their clandestine activities about I.S.—the Irene Silverman mansion scheme—to anyone. She also instructs him to look in the Lincoln Town Car for a caramel-colored suitcase containing about $20,000 in cash and that after removing the money, he is to report the car stolen. She cautions him not to be followed and to hide the important documents in the car at either Eric‘s—the bondman’s—office or with defense attorney José Muniz. She also tells Kenny to call Larry Ledford, a jailhouse lawyer she met while in prison years earlier, for help, but not to spill the beans as to what they’ve been up to. She also reminds her son that, once he’s out of jail, he was to get to Florida and remove important documents left in the recreational vehicle they bought with a bogus check that they stored behind the Ritz Carlton hotel in nearby Palm Beach.
Of course, what Sante was unaware of was that the Joint FBI/NIYPD Task Force had already recovered the Lincoln and that it was stored in a secure area of the basement at FBI headquarters. As New York detectives delved into the case, Florida police impounded the RV and removed the documents before the Kimeses could get their hands on it in the first month of the investigation.
By mid-afternoon of July 7, at the request of prosecutors, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder signed a search warrant authorizing the police to examine the contents of the Lincoln Town Car. The job of taking an inventory and itemizing everything found in the car was assigned to Detective Ed Wallace of the NYPD Crime Scene Unit, who spent 32 hours going over the car, a search so thorough that he even itemized a dead moth found in the vehicle. Among the items Wallace found in the rear seat were an empty stun gun box, with a receipt for it in the glove compartment, and a mason jar with liquid that contained “rooties”—a date rape drug police suspected was used on Mrs. Silverman to incapacitate her. In the back seat area was a caramel-colored suitcase that contained a 9 mm Glock, 15 cartridges, $22,000 in cash, forged social security cards, and a power of attorney in Irene Silverman’s name, plus unused syringes, disposable rubber gloves, 15 notebooks, a computer, more than a dozen wigs (including a red one that Sante used when she posed as Irene Silverman), stocking lace caps, mace, plastic handcuffs, a microcassette recorder, tapes, Glock and Baretta manuals, and sophisticated eavesdropping devices.
After poring over the interior of the luxury car, Wallace went to the back of the vehicle and opened the trunk. It was viritually empty, except for a large black duffel bag, large enough for the six-foot detective to fit into.