Slave Case Figure Reportedly Faces Theft Sentence

A woman arrested in La Jolla last week and charged with keeping four domestic workers as slaves fled from Washington three weeks ago after being found guilty of stealing a mink coat from a fashionable hotel near the White House, authorities said Wednesday.

Charles Roistacher, an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, said a bench warrant has been issued for Shante Kimes, also known as Santee. Kimes, 41, was convicted July 18 of stealing a $6,500 mink coat from a piano bar in the city’s famous Mayflower Hotel but fled the District of Columbia Superior Courthouse while the jury was deliberating her sentence, according to Roistacher.

Her husband, Kenneth Kimes, 67, is scheduled to be tried on the same charges in Washington on Sept. 5.

The Kimeses were arrested on Saturday in La Jolla by FBI agents, who charged them with violating U.S. slavery laws. The FBI says the couple has residences in Anaheim, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Washington and Cancun, Mexico, in addition to La Jolla. They are being held without bond in San Diego awaiting a detention hearing in Las Vegas. Kenneth Kimes is the owner of Kimes Motels Inc. and Mecca Motels Inc. of Anaheim.

Physical Abuse Alleged

The couple are charged with holding four maids against their will, refusing to pay them and prohibiting them from using telephones or having contact with persons outside the Kimeses’ homes. Two of the maids allege in the complaint that they were beaten or physically abused. A third says she was burned with an iron.

One of the maids, Maria de Rosario Vasquez of Santa Ana, was the subject of a missing person report filed June 4 with the Santa Ana Police Department. When she managed to telephone her sister on Aug. 1, complaining of not being paid and working long hours, authorities traced the telephone number to the La Jolla residence and arrested the Kimeses.

Roistacher said his office would “vigorously seek” Shante Kimes’ extradition to Washington for sentencing. But Bart Sheela Jr., the San Diego attorney representing her in the slavery case, said his client would voluntarily go to Washington to face that matter.

“Once we get her back to Las Vegas, we will be anxious to also go back to Washington to straighten that out, too,” Sheela said. “Her only hope of getting out on the street again is to get all these things straightened out.”

Roistacher said the Kimeses may have had other victims. When the couple lived in Washington, he said, they were seen in the company of several Latino servants. “We’ll be looking into those to see if they were also held against their will,” he said.

If convicted of the slavery charges, the Kimeses could be sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000 each. The larceny charge for stealing the mink coat carries a maximum 10-year sentence.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Department officials said the Kimeses’ case is only the second case involving alleged violations of U.S. slavery laws in the Western United States since 1948.

The officials said there are frequent incidents in which smugglers hold illegal aliens from Mexico and El Salvador for ransom in an effort to gain payment of smuggling fees, but allegations of forced servitude are extremely rare.

“No, you do not see it happening too often,” said Enrique Romero, an attorney in the civil rights division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. “You’re not in the old days of the antebellum South with chains and whips anymore.”

Indonesians Allegedly Sold

Only 15 cases alleging violations of U.S slavery laws have been filed nationwide since 1977, said Albert Glenn, an employee with the criminal section of the Justice Department in Washington. Most of those cases involved migratory workers along the Eastern Seaboard, he said.

The only other recent case in the Western United States occurred in 1982, when FBI agents raided homes in West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills and rounded up 26 Indonesians allegedly sold for $3,000 each as indentured servants. Two key defendants in the case have yet to come to trial, partly because they have sought a ruling from the state Supreme Court concerning what constitutes forced servitude.

Romero, who is prosecuting the Indonesian slave case, said slavery statutes date from 1818, before passage of the 13th Amendment. The statutes were codified in 1873 and again in 1909 because original laws dealt with “Negroes, mulattoes or persons of color” and needed to be “brought out of the 19th-Century slave-trading era.”

Directors of several Latino legal and community service organizations in Orange and Los Angeles counties said they know of many instances where undocumented workers are exploited with the threat of deportation. But none of them recall incidents of slavery.

Ernest Gustafson, district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said there could be incidents not reported to authorities, particularly the INS.

“If they (slave victims) are out there, we don’t know about it,” Gustafson said. “But would they complain to us if they’re being held against their will and we can deport them? It’s not likely.”

Peter Schey, lead attorney for the Los Angeles Immigrants Rights Center, said his agency may attempt to locate the four maids for the purpose of filing civil action to recover damages for loss of pay, false imprisonment and involuntary servitude.