Books of Island Interest
Surviving Sante

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

At 38, the man who graduated from Honolulu's Mid-Pacific Institute as student body president in 1980 has spent his life sorting through the negative force exerted by his mother, Sante Kimes.

As anyone fascinated by seedy sensationalism knows, Sante Kimes and her second son, Kenny Kimes, are serving a collective 245 years for their Hawai'i-to-New York crime spree that included murder, arson and the enslavement of undocumented workers and homeless people they picked up to work as their servants. The two have been the focus of tabloid stories, true-crime TV specials and a TV movie starring Mary Tyler Moore.

This book, and Sante Kimes' life, are single-handedly responsible for resurrecting the word "grifter," a slang term dating back to the early years of the 20th century, meaning a con artist.

Kenny Kimes, recently extradited from New York to California, faces the death penalty there for murder, and extradition proceedings are going forward against his mother for the same crime. The two are suspects in at least one other murder, in the Bahamas.

"Son of A Grifter" is Walker's detailed account of a boy caught in the whirlwind nightmare of a manipulative, pathological, morally vacuous mom-gone-money-mad who tricked, deceived, abused and abandoned her son with regularity.

"My childhood was 10 times worse than Kenny's," said Walker, in a telephone interview. "I've been told by a couple of psychologists that I'm a freak of nature, that our roles should be reversed. I'm the one who should be in prison."

Kent Walker's book is the often brutal, frequently amusing, perpetually chaotic story of a young man who could be living the high life in a Portlock mansion one minute and eating out of Waikiki trash cans the next; of fleeing from his mother and repeatedly being lured back.

Always it is about a family gone frantic, staying one step ahead of the law.

Walker; his real dad, Ed Walker; his stepfather, the late Ken Kimes; and his baby brother, Kenny Kimes, are main characters. But the focal point is Walker's astonishing mother, Sante, whose swath of destruction rivals General Sherman's, and whose propensity to use and discard husbands, lovers and trusted acquaintances at every turn is the stuff of film noir.

She was, her son reports, routinely unfaithful to Ed Walker, whose houses she burned and whose considerable earnings as a developer she squandered before she left him broke in 1968.

During what appear to be happier times, "Son of A Grifter" author Kent Walker, left, with his wife, Lynn, children, Kristina and Carson, and his brother and mother, Kenny and Sante Kimes. Photo courtesy of Kent Walker

Kimes' own former lawyers have described her in monstrous terms. Dominic Gentile, who represented Kimes at the Las Vegas trial for which she got a five-year federal sentence for enslaving her Portlock maids, called Kimes "The single most evil person I've ever met." When Howard Weitzman, one-time O.J. Simpson lawyer, was asked if he had ever represented another client as evil as Kimes, he answered, "Charles Manson."

Walker says that no one will ever know the actual early background of his mother, whose own account of her origins changed nearly as often as her name. What is known is that she showed up as a homeless kid in Studio City, Calif., in the mid-1940s and was eventually adopted by Edwin and Mary Chambers, a childless Carson City, Nev., couple.

The schoolgirl known as Sandy Louise Chambers may have been born in Oklahoma in 1934 to a poor East Indian father and a mother of Dutch extraction; or to wealthy parents from Pennsylvania; she may have American Indian roots or there may be elements of truth in any or none of these or her other versions of her early life. In 1957, she married former Carson City schoolmate, Ed Walker (her second marriage), and on Sept. 27, 1962, she gave birth to Kent.

Much of the younger Walker's twisted journey has been corroborated by the courts. Veteran investigative reporter Mark Schone who wrote "Son of a Grifter" with Walker, says he went to pains to verify what he could of the rest.

"Whenever Kent was presented with what I thought were conflicting details, he didn't change a thing," Schone said. "I'd go back and look further, and everything he said checked out."

Still, Schone says Walker's multi-state existence with "the most notorious con artists in America" was not an easy thing to chronicle, mainly because the story is astoundingly convoluted and international in scope. "There's so much that didn't make it into the book," Schone said. "Sante Kimes did things every day. So you have to pick representative examples."

One telling incident was the time a female store manager chased Kimes into a parking lot and accused her of shoplifting. Walker, who was just a kid, was sitting on the car hood, waiting, as the two women approached.

Kimes, indignant, ordered the manager to call the police. The woman already had. Seconds later, as a squad car wheeled onto the scene, Kimes committed the sort of table-turning sociopathic act that became her trademark: She doubled her fist and belted the boy in the mouth with such ferocity as to split his lip wide open.

The law arrived to find a bloodied youngster and a screaming, hysterical mother accusing the manager of attacking her kid. The incident ended with Kimes racing from the parking lot to get Walker to the hospital (something she had no intention of actually doing), and the cops leading a stunned, weeping store manager away in cuffs.

Walker says his mother was a natural-born grifter who used sex, lies and charm to fulfill her desires and beguile her victims.

She could make herself look so much like Elizabeth Taylor that total strangers would ask for autographs. Outrageous and flamboyant, she lived lavishly, connived, cheated, shoplifted, forged documents and blew enormous wads of cash while stealing luxury cars and mink coats and even enlisting her son to case homes for her.

One of her favorite scams was burning houses — twice in Hawai'i, and at least 10 times on the Mainland, according to Walker (no one knows the total number) — and collecting insurance money. Sometimes she would torch part of a house, collect insurance, hire a contractor to make expensive repairs, refuse to pay and threaten to sue for shoddy workmanship.

Her constant goal, Walker said, was to land a millionaire, which she accomplished in the early 1970s. Developer Ken Kimes, worth $20 million, was a decent stepdad, though a man of dubious character who allowed Sante to bring the worst out in him and transform him into her criminal accomplice.

When Walker was 13, Sante and Ken had a son, Kenny. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Hawai'i, although to elude police the family had homes in Nevada and California at the same time and never stayed in any location long. When Walker wasn't running away from his mom or living with friends, he considered himself Kenny's protector.

Incredibly, Walker says that on three occasions he reported his millionaire parents' illegal activities to the law. In 1978, when he suspected his mother might be trying to kill him, he spent two days in protective custody, detailing her activities to the Honolulu Police Department. When nothing ever came of it, he began to believe she was invincible.

Walker says his main goal in hanging around as long as he did was "to see if I could pull Kenny out of this mess, and it wasn't until 1997 that I realized this wasn't going to happen. My single largest regret is that I wasn't able to save Kenny."

Walker, of course, had his hands full saving himself. Escaping Sante Kimes was comparable to swimming in quicksand, he says.

"One of the biggest ironies is that my mom introduced me to my wife, Lynn, and my wife is really the one who saved me from my mother."

Another irony is the fact that although Walker has cut off all contact with his mother, he says he still loves and misses her. As evil as she could be, she could come off as warm, wonderful and, yes, even loving. His own three children adored her.

"She was their jet-setting grandma who gave them money, took them to the Bahamas and was fun to be with. She was always exciting to be around."

Meanwhile, Walker stays in touch with Kenny.

"He and my mom still write each other back and forth. He told me mom's livid about the book."

Other reactions have been more favorable.

"About a third of the people who read the book feel sorry for Kenny," Walker said. "Another third wonder how I survived. And another third of the people are in complete awe of mom. That one scares me."

Walker said his half-brother has read the book: "He's starting to get the whole picture. He's starting to understand why mom and I had the conflicts that we had. He's starting to wish he had listened to me. He's not out of the woods yet, though. He's still in mom's thrall."

Sante Kimes' hold over Walker was so powerful he says he wasn't fully able to break the bonds until last year. The last time he spoke to her was in October. He doubts he'll ever see her again.

"There are lot of lessons," he said. "Sante Kimes is the way she is. I'm the way I am. I made a lot of mistakes. But I always struggled to do the right thing.

"And Kenny? He had a choice. He made the wrong one."