As one of Wall Street’s pioneering female executives, Muriel Siebert has had many close calls. But the closest one of all had little to do with her high-pressure career.
By Hall Lux, with Jenny Anderson, Rich Blake, Lucy Conger, Justin Dini, Kevin Hamlin, Jeffrey Kutler and Justin Schack
December 2000
Institutional Investor Magazine
Police say her name was on a hit list of potential victims compiled by the mother-son grifter team of Sante and Kenneth Kimes, who were convicted earlier this year of killing elderly heiress Irene Silverman in her Manhattan town house. “I was contacted by the New York police,” says Siebert, confirming information revealed in a new book on the case, Dead End, by Reuters reporter Jeanne King. “In looking into the Kimeses, they had come across a diary, and apparently my name was in it. After I went over it again and again in my mind, I came to the conclusion that had they contacted me, it’s highly unlikely they would have been able to weasel their way into my life. It’s not as if I’m sitting around with nothing to do.” Mel Sachs, attorney for Kenneth Kimes, disputes the book’s charge: “To my knowledge, there is no reason to believe there was any such hit list.” Best known as the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, the 68-year-old Siebert says her brush with danger won’t change a thing: “I’m not going to let it bother me.”
