LOS ANGELES — Sante Kimes, a 69-year-old con woman on trial for the murder of a California businessman, will not have to endure her son's testimony against her — for at least one more day.

On Wednesday, the day Kenneth Kimes was scheduled to take the stand against his mother, Sante woke up complaining of chest pains and was transferred to the Los Angeles County jail's medical ward. The judge delayed her trial until Thursday.

Sante and her 29-year-old son are charged with the 1998 malice murder of David Kazdin, 63, who was a former friend of the Kimeses.

At about 9:30 a.m., Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy-Powell announced that Sante Kimes would not make it to court Wednesday due to her recent medical issues.

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Coincidentally, the court also received a message from Sante's co-counsel Ray Newman, stating that he was ill and could not make the trial on Wednesday. The court clerk said that Newman left the message on the court's answering machine at about 4 a.m.

Judge Kennedy-Powell told jurors only that the defendant and her co-counsel had both taken ill.

"Hopefully, everyone who is under the weather will have recovered by tomorrow," she said, releasing the jury until 9 a.m. Thursday.

The buzz in the courtroom among Kazdin's family members was that Kimes' sudden illness was just another staged effort to garner sympathy from jurors while prolonging her trial.

Kenneth Kimes is expected to testify that he shot Kazdin on March 13, 1998, in Kazdin's Granada Hills home and then disposed of the body in a trash bin near Los Angeles airport — all at his mother's bidding.

Years before his death, Kazdin allowed Sante to put his name on the deed to a house she owned in Las Vegas. Prosecutors say that, greedy for easy money, Sante then took out a fraudulent $280,000 bank loan, using the Vegas house as collateral, and forging Kazdin's name on the application.

Kazdin was murdered weeks after alerting the bank that his identity was being used — and after receiving numerous threatening phone calls from the Kimeses to cooperate in their scheme.

The inseparable mother-son grifters fled across the country after Kazdin's death, but were finally captured in New York in the summer of 1998.

In May 2000, the pair pleaded not guilty, but then Kenneth unexpectedly changed his plea in November. As part of his agreement with prosecutors, he'll escape a potential death sentence by testifying against his mother.

Yesterday, Judge Kennedy-Powell admonished Kimes for trying to "manipulate the courtroom" with continual delaying tactics, the latest of which was a request on Monday to fire her counsel and be allowed to defend herself.

That motion was denied, based on what the judge called a "totally bogus claim" that Sante had a conflict of interest with co-counsel Newman.

In 2000, a New York jury convicted the Kimeses of the July 1998 killing of Irene Silverman, a Manhattan socialite whose $7 million dollar townhouse was allegedly the target of their next scam after Kazdin's death.

Authorities captured the mother and son on July 5, 1998 — the same day Silverman disappeared.

Although detectives never found her body, there was enough incriminating evidence in the Kimeses' Lincoln towncar — including Silverman's passport, real estate transfer papers, blank social security cards, guns, and a notebook in which Sante had been practicing Silverman's signature — to win a murder conviction.

Sante was sentenced to 120 years in prison, and Kenneth received 125 years. Although they were steadfastly devoted to each other throughout their New York trial, Kenneth's guilty plea in November marked their parting of ways.

For his role in Kazdin's murder, Kenneth will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sante faces the same if convicted.