A retired editor who wrote a book about an American murder duo is to appear in a major television documentary about their lives of crime.
John Marquis, who was editor of both the Falmouth Packet and the Bahamas daily The Tribune, is a ‘talking head’ on the Discovery Channel programme due for screening on 4 September, as part of a murder series which began on Monday.
John, 79, who was London sports editor and chief boxing writer for Thomson Regional Newspapers in the 1970s and early 1980s, wrote a book, Evil and Son, about the killers Sante and Kenny Kimes after interviewing Mrs Kimes at a women’s high security prison in New York in 2011.
John became interested in the Kimes family, known as ‘Mommie and Clyde’, while editing The Tribune.
Sante and Kenny, who lived in the Bahamas between 1992 and 1996, drowned a banker in the bath of their home after he flew from the Cayman Islands to investigate “irregularities” in her late husband’s accounts.
Mrs Kimes had kept her husband “financially alive” for two years by using his credit and debit cards.
After the drowning, she and son Kenny fled Nassau and embarked on a con-and-kill spree across America.
They were arrested after murdering New York socialite Irene Silverman in 1998 while trying to steal her $10m Manhattan mansion. Both were sentenced to 120 years without parole.
Sante Kimes died in her cell in 2014. Kenny continues to serve his sentence in Los Angeles.
John said: “She asked to see me because she misguidedly thought I could help her secure a new court hearing.
“I spent three hours with her and, although she confessed to nothing, she provided great material for my book.
“To say she was an interesting character would be an understatement. A judge described her as the most degenerate person they had ever met.”
John, a journalist for 50 years, worked for the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, and the Nottingham Evening Post before becoming a political reporter in the Bahamas during the 1960s.
He returned to Nassau 30 years later as The Tribune’s managing editor and retired in 2009.
During his time with Thomson, he won the Provincial Journalist of the Year award.
He also worked for Reuters as a staff journalist and freelance for 12 years.