Grifter’s Other Son Fled a Life of Crime

Kent Walker tools around Southern California in a rattling, old white Corvette with empty Benson & Hedges boxes on the floorboard and a how-to book on happiness tucked next to the driver’s seat.

Until a millionaire socialite vanished from her Manhattan mansion three years ago, Walker was just an anonymous vacuum cleaner salesman, husband and father, trying to stamp out as normal a life as possible from the warped one he had known as the older son of grifter Sante Kimes.

Even if that stamping sometimes took a little advice from a self-help book.

Then, in July 1998, when his half-brother, Kenny, and mother were arrested for--and subsequently convicted of--murdering wealthy socialite Irene Silverman, everything changed. The two are now preparing to stand trial for a second killing, this one in Los Angeles. This time, Walker’s mother and brother face a possible death sentence.

As details of his brother’s and mother’s lives as grifters made headlines, Walker was suddenly being asked to explain how, unlike his brother, he had managed to shed the life of crime his mother had passed down like a birthright. (He says he was shoplifting and breaking into houses at age 10 to help with his mother’s scams.)

Walker, 38, who lives in La Mesa, did what people who find themselves in extraordinary situations do these days. He hooked up with a writer, Mark Schone of Spin magazine, and wrote a book: “Son of a Grifter.” A memoir, they call it, by the other son. The good son.

Now, in addition to selling Kirbys, Walker is appearing on talk shows, telling the world childhood secrets that for years he had been so ashamed of that he hadn’t even uttered them to his wife of 17 years, Lynn.

“I get lots of reaction. A lot of it is how they are amazed I got out of it OK,” Walker said of his book, published by Harper Collins. “But also I get a lot of people who are just fascinated with my mother. How she could do the things she did and get away with it. That’s what scares me.”

Schone said it was difficult organizing the complex details of Walker’s chaotic childhood. He also said he spent a good deal of effort verifying everything, which at times seemed too incredible to believe.

“Ultimately, every time I could check anything out, it would always check out,” Schone said.

Walker said one of his motivations for the book was to try to explain how Kenny, whom he visits every few weeks in a Los Angeles jail and talks to frequently by phone, ended up a murderer. Walker claims in the book that during a visit in New York, his brother even partly confessed to the killings and agreed to cooperate with authorities before changing his mind.

Walker said his brother isn’t remorseful, but every once in a while, he sees a glimpse of the innocent little boy his mother somehow groomed into a killer. While he believes there is some hope for Kenny, he sees none for his mother, whom he will neither visit nor talk to on the phone.

“I still have a love for her. She’s my mom,” he said. “But there’s no reason to see her. If I thought I could accomplish any good, I’d do it. But there’s no turning Sante Kimes around.”

In Los Angeles, his mother and brother are charged with killing David Kazdin of Granada Hills, a longtime friend and business partner. Kazdin’s body was found in 1998 by a homeless man in a trash bin near Los Angeles International Airport.

Los Angeles police were seeking to question the two on the Kazdin murder when the Silverman killing took place. That put the Kazdin case on hold until now. No trial date has been set, but Sante Kimes, who was returned to Los Angeles, recently pleaded not guilty. Police say the two killed Kazdin after he discovered they had taken a mortgage out on a house that he owned.

Walker said Kazdin, who ran a photocopying business, was a nice man whom his mother used to call her “guardian angel.” But still, Walker said, he has no doubt his mother and brother killed him.

Kenny and Kent grew up following their mother from house to house, running from police and insurance fraud investigators. (A couple of their houses mysteriously burned down.) They lived in Newport, Palm Springs and Hawaii.

Walker said they never knew his mother’s biological family. But this much Walker is sure of. In eighth grade, his mother, known then as Sante Singhrs, went to live with Edwin and Mary Chambers in Carson City, Nev., and took the name Sandy Chambers. There are contradicting stories about how she ended up living with the couple.

In high school, she met Ed Walker and they married and had Kent.

He says his mother took advantage of his father, cheating on him, running up credit card debts and destroying his budding architectural career. The elder Walker still lives in Carson City.

Then, she moved on to Kenny’s father, Ken Kimes, “her millionaire,” as she called him, Kent Walker said.

Before landing Kimes, who built luxury hotels in Palm Springs and died in 1994 of a heart attack, Sante spent months trolling for a rich man, according to Kent Walker.

“When candidates for ‘millionaire husband’ came to visit, I put on my show and mom did her own. She projected glitz and excitement, though there was rarely anything but peanut butter in the refrigerator,” he wrote in his book. “Perhaps Sante’s dates didn’t realize that her address was always temporary and that everything in the house was either stolen, on long-term unintentional loan, or obtained via nonexistent credit.”

Even though Ken Kimes had plenty of money, Sante Kimes continued her scams--some of which Ken Kimes participated in. In 1985, Sante Kimes was arrested for treating maids, most illegal immigrants from Mexico, like slaves.

Sante Kimes, who escaped from federal custody while her case was pending, was caught and convicted of 14 charges, including slave-holding, escaping from custody and transporting illegal immigrants. She served four years. Ken Kimes pleaded guilty to a lesser crime and got probation.

By the time Sante went to prison, Kent Walker, then in his early 20s, had changed his ways.

Walker said his turning point came at age 12, while he was living in Hawaii with his mother and stepfather. He and some friends stole some surfboards, and he faced the possibility of being sent to a juvenile detention center. After getting off with community service, Walker said he began refusing to help his mother with her scams. By that time, she had Kenny to help.

At 21, after a brief stint in the Army, Walker got married and took a job selling vacuum cleaners. He also unsuccessfully tried to break away from his mother.

“There really was no tearing away from Sante Kimes. Mom had to be the center of my life,” he said.

The weekend his mother and brother were arrested in New York was a memorable one.

Walker, living in Las Vegas at the time, had returned to Newport for a wedding, and taken his wife and three children on a tour of one of his former neighborhoods. The trip brought back a flood of painful memories.

When he returned to work that Monday, his co-workers told him that Kenny and Sante had been calling nonstop. He knew something was wrong, but he refused to take their calls. He soon discovered the two were being held on suspicion of murder.

“[My reaction] was twofold,” he said. “I knew they did it, but I also knew they were capable of getting away with it.”

He said some of his friendas quit talking to him, suspecting he might have been involved. He also had problems with his wife, who couldn’t understand how he could be so convinced his brother killed Silverman, whose body was never found.

“She loved Kenny,” Walker said of his wife. “She was angry because I thought he was guilty. But she had no idea about everything I had gone through because I had hidden it from her.”

Police suspect that Kenny and Sante Kimes planned to take out a mortgage on Silverman’s Manhattan mansion and leave town before anyone realized that the socialite was missing.

Walker said the arrest threw his life and business into chaos.

He couldn’t concentrate on selling vacuum cleaners, so he sat down at a computer and began writing his life story. He wrote 800 pages before stopping and deleting the entire thing. Schone started the process from scratch.

Walker said he is preparing himself emotionally for the Los Angeles trial.

He worries that with his mother back in Los Angeles, she and his brother will find a way to communicate and concoct an escape.

“If I’m any expert on the Kimeses, they’re not going to go down quietly,” he said.

Walker said he is not worried about his 66-year-old mother facing the death penalty, because even if she is convicted, she would likely die of natural causes before she is executed. But he’d hate for his brother to ever be put to death.

A few weeks ago, Walker said he was asked by his brother’s attorney if he would testify on his brother’s behalf should Kenny be convicted of murdering Kazdin and be faced with a potential death sentence. Walker said he would, although he would dread having to stare down Sante Kimes and tell her what he really thinks about her.

“If the only way I can save him is going against her, I’d do it if I have to,” he said, taking a deep breath.

“Kenny is the victim, too. . . . I got out because I inherited my mother’s strength. Kenny didn’t.”