Kimes: Now, It Can Be Told
Convicted murderer Kenneth Kimes has made a stunning revelation.
The former New York City renter told police Wednesday he dumped the body of a missing Manhattan socialite in a building excavation hole in New Jersey after he and his mother had killed the townhouse owner in mid-1998, reports WCBS-AM News Reporter Irene Cornell.
Wednesday, after constantly deflecting authorities' questions on Silverman's whereabouts, Kimes confessed to a detective involved in the case that he and his mother, Sante Kimes, drove through the Holland Tunnel and about 40 minutes outside Manhattan to a New Jersey construction site.
"Kimes told us the building where he dumped Silverman's body was under construction, and he dumped the body inside the hole. He said he doesn't know the city or the town where he dumped the body but that it was close to the water," the detective said.
The duo dropped the corpse into a large hole, covered the body with construction materials and left the scene.
A building now stands where the 82-year-old woman was buried when she disappeared on July 5, 1998.
Kimes - now serving a prison sentence of 125 years - had been renting an apartment in the wealthy widow's Manhattan townhouse, and prosecutors say he and his mother were scheming to steal her East 65th Street mansion and money by forging documents and her signature.
Silverman had grown suspicious and was preparing to evict Kimes when she disappeared, prosecutors said.
When police arrested them, they found Silverman's personal documents, two loaded pistols and a liquid similar to a known "date rape" drug.
They also found cassettes of Silverman's telephone conversations, secretly taped by the Kimes and a forged deed that transferred her townhouse to mother and son.
Kimes, 25, also admitted he wrapped Silverman's body in heavy-duty garbage bags and stuffed it in a duffel bag, the detective said.
Another New York City Police detective, Joseph Reznick, also said authorities had talked to a witness who said she saw a car similar to Kimes' in New Jersey on the day Silverman vanished.
The detective said Kimes decided to talk in hopes of reducing the eight years he has been ordered to spend in solitary confinement.
He was ordered into solitary confinement after taking a freelance Court TV reporter hostage for several hours last month during an interview at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.
Kimes and his mother, 66, were both convicted of the Silverman murder as well as conspiracy, forgery, robbery and other charges. Sante Kimes was sentenced to 120 and two-thirds years to life in prison.
They are also charged with the March 1998 murder of David Kazdin, a former business associate, in California, and face extradition in that case.
© 2000 CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Reuters Limited contributed to this report