'The Jinx - The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst' on HBO (4 Viewers)

[Ken H]

From Long Island News 12.com

Family of Kathie Durst asks DA to pursue charges against Robert Durst’s current spouse

News 12 Staff, September 28, 2021

There is growing pressure on Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah to bring the cold case investigation into Kathie Durst's disappearance four decades ago before a grand jury, but now it looks like the probe is quickly picking up pace.

News 12's senior investigative reporter Tara Rosenblum has been told that there are four prosecutors and investigators working on the case full time, and that the Cold Case Unit has conducted interviews and had discussions with at least 10 people in recent weeks.

Sources close to the investigation tell News 12 that the names on the list include Andrew Jarecki, the filmmaker behind the HBO documentary, "The Jinx," retired criminal investigator Ed Murphy, Pennsylvania businessman George Kearns, former celebrity publicist and newscaster Geraldine McInerney and six members of Kathie Durst's family.

Her siblings have long suspected that Kathie's husband, real estate baron Robert Durst, was responsible for her death back in 1982. So far, he hasn't been charged with any crime. They are hoping that will change soon following Durst's guilty verdict two weeks ago in the murder of his best friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles.

Prosecutors built their case on the theory Robert durst shot Berman to death to stop her from talking to investigators about what she knew about the disappearance of Robert Durst's missing first wife, Kathie.

As for a timetable of when this decades old cold case might land in the hands of a grand jury in Westchester, sources tell News 12 that early October is the likely target date.

The Westchester District Attorney declined to comment, calling the case an "active investigation."

There are also potential new legal problems now for Durst's current wife, Debrah Charatan. News 12 just learned that Kathie's family attorney sent a letter to the Manhattan district attorney Tuesday, morning accusing the couple of staging a sham marriage to help cover up Kathie's murder.

The attorney representing Robert Durst's wife denied all the allegations, sending in a statement that reads in part, "Ms. Charatan was never married to another person while married to Mr. Durst. It is sad that attorney Robert Abrams is misleading the McCormack family and the public. The McCormack family deserves better."

Family of Kathie Durst asks DA to pursue charges against Robert Durst’s current spouse

There is growing pressure on District Attorney Mimi Rocah to bring the cold case investigation into Kathie Durst's disappearance four decades ago before a grand jury, but now it looks like the probe is quickly picking up pace.

longisland.news12.com

 

[Ken H]

From Bronx.News12.com

Sources: Westchester DA to pursue charges against Robert Durst in disappearance of his wife​

News 12 Staff, Oct 08, 2021

News 12's Tara Rosemblum reported two sources close to the investigation just shared a stunning development - Westchester DA Mimi Rocah has reportedly decided to go to a grand jury, pursuing charges against Robert Durst in the 1982 disappearance of his 1st wife, Kathie Durst.

News 12 was told that subpoenas are now going out and a jury could be empaneled by the end of next week. Rocah’s team had no comment for News 12.

News 12 is also waiting to hear back from the attorney who represented Durst at his murder trial in California.

A Los Angeles jury convicted Durst in September for fatally shooting his friend Susan Berman in 2000.

Prosecutors say the Hudson Valley real estate heir killed Berman to keep her from speaking to Westchester police about the disappearance of his first wife, Kathie Durst.

Kathie Durst’s case is now being treated as a murder in Westchester County, even though her body was never recovered. This is news Kathie Durst's family waited nearly four decades to hear.

Whether or not Durst will actually stand trial for her death remains to be seen.

The 78-year-old is terminally ill and battling cancer behind bars in California, where he is awaiting sentencing in a few days on Berman's murder.

Sources: Westchester DA to pursue charges against Robert Durst in disappearance of his wife

Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah will convene a grand jury and pursue charges against Robert Durst in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, sources tell News 12.

bronx.news12.com

 

[Ken H]

The Associated Press has confirmed the Westchester County NY DA is going to take the Durst case to a grand jury in the next week or two, and the process is expected to take about a month.

 

[Ken H]

From The New York Times

Robert Durst Sentenced to Life in Prison for Friend’s Murder

A jury found that Mr. Durst, subject of the HBO series “The Jinx,” killed a longtime friend in 2000 because of what she knew about his wife’s disappearance nearly 40 years ago.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham read the sentence.

"As to Count 1, the first-degree murder of Susan Berman, with the special circumstance of intentional killing of a witness pursuant to 190.2.(a)(10) of the Penal Code, it’s the judgment and sentence of this court, Mr. Durst, that you be imprisoned in the state prison for the term prescribed by law — that is life in prison without the possibility of parole. As to the special allegation that the defendant intentionally killed Susan Berman by means of lying in wait, as described in 190.2(a)(15) of the Penal Code, the same sentence is imposed and stayed pursuant to Section 654 of the Penal Code. As to the allegation that the defendant personally and intentionally used a firearm in the commission of this offense, causing great bodily injury and death, pursuant to 12022.53(d) of the California Penal Code, the court imposes a term of 25 years to life in prison."


By Charles V. Bagli
Published Oct. 14, 2021
Updated Oct. 15, 2021

Nearly four decades after his wife’s abrupt disappearance cast a cloud of suspicion that would make his case one of the most notorious in the country, Robert A. Durst was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison for the execution-style killing in 2000 of a close confidante.

The 78-year-old Mr. Durst, whose life story inspired a Hollywood movie and an HBO documentary, will not be eligible for parole. The jury that convicted him of first-degree murder in Los Angeles last month found that the prosecution had proven special circumstances: Namely, that Mr. Durst shot Susan Berman, a journalist and screenwriter, because he feared she was about to tell investigators what she had learned as his liaison with the news media after the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst.

For the first time since the trial resumed in May, the courtroom was full on Thursday, with most of the jurors in attendance.

Mr. Durst, who sat slumped in a wheelchair, wore a brown jailhouse jumper and a surgical mask. He did not address the judge, and because of his difficulty hearing, he followed along by watching a tablet display the words spoken in court.

“I was robbed, and my beautiful son was robbed, of an absolutely extraordinary brilliant person whose life was savagely taken,” Deni Marcus, one of Ms. Berman’s cousins, said during the four victim-impact statements that were delivered to the judge.

Another of Ms. Berman’s cousins, Dave Berman, fought back tears while saying, “I visited her and told her she could rest easy, that justice has been done.” He added that Mr. Durst should say where Ms. Durst’s body is so her family could get some closure.

Judge Mark E. Windham called Ms. Berman’s death a witness killing and “a horrific crime” that was also “a denial of justice to the McCormack family.” Before pronouncing the sentence, he denied a request by the defense for a new trial, citing “overwhelming evidence of guilt.” The defense is expected to appeal.

Since his wife vanished without a trace, Mr. Durst, born into a family whose Manhattan real estate empire is valued today at about $8 billion, has led a peripatetic existence. He moved between New York, California and Texas, where he stood trial in 2003 for the murder and dismemberment of Morris Black, a man who lived across the hall from him in a Galveston rooming house where Mr. Durst was posing as a mute woman.

Mr. Durst claimed self-defense, and a jury acquitted him, despite his testimony about sitting in a pool of blood while carving up Mr. Black’s body.

Ms. Berman, who had been Mr. Durst’s close friend for many years, was found dead in her home on the edge of Beverly Hills on Christmas Eve in 2000. After neighbors saw her two dogs running free, the police were called and found her back door open. Ms. Berman had been shot in the back of the head; there were no signs of forced entry, and her purse was untouched.

“I think she was kind of in love with Bobby,” Dave Berman said in an interview before the sentencing. Ms. Berman had met Mr. Durst, he said, when she was in journalism school in California. “She had him give her away at her wedding. There are more pictures of her hugging Bobby than of her and her husband.”

Even as Mr. Durst was sentenced on Thursday, the investigation of his wife’s disappearance was moving forward once again.

Miriam E. Rocah, the district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., where the couple lived in 1982, announced this year that her office had reopened the case. Prosecutors are interviewing witnesses and are expected to seek a first-degree murder indictment from a grand jury in the coming week.

A high-profile murder. On Oct. 14, Robert A. Durst was sentenced to life without parole for the 2000 killing of Susan Berman, a journalist and close confidante. Mr. Durst, onetime heir to a New York real estate empire, was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury in September. Here is what else you should know:

The verdict. The jury found that Mr. Durst shot Ms. Berman after he entered her home at the edge of Beverly Hills, acting out of fear that Ms. Berman would tell investigators what she knew about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst.

“The Jinx” factor. Some of the most damaging evidence in the Berman case came from interviews that Mr. Durst had given to the producers of an HBO series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” The documentary, which aired in 2015, led to Mr. Durst’s arrest in the same year.

His wife’s disappearance. Kathie McCormack and Mr. Durst married in 1973, but their union was soon rocked by emotional and physical violence. Mrs. Durst vanished on Jan. 31, 1982. She was later declared legally dead. Prosecutors said that Ms. Berman had helped Mr. Durst cover up his wife’s disappearance and death.

A case spanning decades. Despite several investigations, Mr. Durst has never been charged in connection with his wife’s disappearance. The Westchester County district attorney announced in May that her office had reopened the case.

Yet another murder. In 2003, Mr. Durst stood trial for the murder of Morris Black, a neighbor in Galveston, Texas. A jury acquitted him, despite his testimony that he had carved up Mr. Morris’s body. Mr. Durst fled to Texas, posing as a mute woman, after investigators reopened the case into his wife’s disappearance.

That could be a challenge given that there are no witnesses, weapon, fingerprints or a body.

Mr. Durst has acknowledged in the past that he was a “bad husband” but has always insisted he did not kill his wife. He also continued to deny involvement in Ms. Berman’s death.

He might still be a free man if he had not, against all advice from his lawyers, talked and talked about both cases, providing investigators with a trail of bread crumbs. He gave 20 hours of interviews containing many damaging admissions to the producers of the 2015 HBO documentary series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” (The maker of the documentary had previously directed a movie, “All Good Things,” starring Ryan Gosling as a character based on Mr. Durst.)

After he was arrested in New Orleans in 2015 and charged with Ms. Berman’s murder, Mr. Durst gave a nearly three-hour interview to a Los Angeles deputy district attorney, John Lewin. The talkative Mr. Durst is also on record on hundreds of prison phone calls, making not-so-guarded statements that prosecutors used against him in court.

The trial began in March 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic brought life across America to a halt. When testimony was set to resume in May, defense lawyers called the 14-month delay the longest adjournment featuring the same jury in U.S. history.

After weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for about seven and a half hours before finding Mr. Durst guilty last month. He was not in the courtroom for the verdict; he was in quarantine, officials said, after being exposed to someone who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

After the verdict, his wife’s family issued a statement calling for Mr. Durst to be prosecuted in her disappearance as well. “Kathie,” they wrote, “is still waiting for justice.”

Robert Durst Sentenced to Life in Prison for Friend’s Murder (Published 2021)

A jury found that Mr. Durst, subject of the HBO series “The Jinx,” killed a longtime friend in 2000 because of what she knew about his wife’s disappearance nearly 40 years ago.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Ken H]

From NBC News

Robert Durst sick with Covid-19, and on a ventilator, following life sentence, lawyer says

“All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator," his attorney told NBC News.


Oct. 16, 2021, 3:52 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 16, 2021, 4:39 PM EDT

By Nicole Acevedo and Diana Dasrath

New York real estate heir Robert Durst has tested positive for Covid-19 and is currently connected to a ventilator, his attorney said.

“All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator," Dick DeGuerin told NBC News on a phone call. "He looked awful Thursday, worst I’ve ever seen him. He was having difficulty breathing, he was having difficulty speaking."

His diagnosis comes the same week he was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a friend more than 20 years ago, in a slaying possibly tied to the killer's missing wife.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Windham handed down that punishment one month after jurors convicted Durst, 78, of first-degree murder for the Dec. 23, 2000, death of Susan Berman. Berman was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head inside her Benedict Canyon home. Durst's lawyers plan to appeal the judge's decision.

DeGuerin said he believes Durst was vaccinated, but didn’t know if he had a Covid-19 vaccine booster.

Grace Medrano, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, told NBC News in an email that they can't answer medical questions related to Durst's health citing HIPAA privacy rules, which establishes national standards to protect an individual's medical records and other personal health information. Medrano also declined to disclose Durst's vaccination status.

This is not the first time Durst’s health has been an issue since during the trial.

He was briefly hospitalized in June following "some incident this morning involving his health," Windham said at the time. The judge also denied DeGuerin's request to postpone the trial because Durst was battling bladder cancer and other health problems, according to DeGuerin.

Durst was also not in court the day jurors convicted him of Berman’s murder last month because he had been exposed to someone who tested positive for Covid-19, according to the Los Angeles Times, who first reported Durst's latest Covid-related hospitalization.

Robert Durst sick with Covid-19, and on a ventilator, following life sentence, lawyer says

“All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator," his attorney told NBC News.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Ken H]

Due to COVID-19 protocols, the courtroom was empty since the trial resumed in May of this year. I'm not sure why this changed for the sentencing, but according to all the reports I saw, the courtroom was packed.

With Durst being in court on Thursday, he's now exposed a full courtroom of people, including his lawyers who were right next to him, to COVID-19.

 

[Ken H]

From The New York Times

Robert Durst Charged With Murder in 1982 Disappearance of His Wife

Mr. Durst was recently convicted of murdering a friend because of what she knew about his wife’s disappearance from their Lewisboro, N.Y., home.

By Charles V. Bagli, Oct. 22, 2021

When Kathie McCormack Durst, the young wife of a Manhattan real estate heir, vanished from her Westchester County, N.Y., home on a cold, rainy night in 1982, she left an enduring mystery that has tormented her family and friends and fascinated investigators and the public ever since.

On Tuesday, Joseph Becerra, a State Police investigator, quietly filed a criminal complaint in Lewisboro, N.Y., charging the man who many had long suspected of killing her: Ms. Durst’s husband, Robert A. Durst, the notorious estranged son of the storied family that built some of New York City’s most recognizable buildings.

The second-degree murder complaint, which precedes a formal murder charge, was filed only days after Mr. Durst, who is 78 and frail, was sentenced to life in prison for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman in Los Angeles.

The jury in Los Angeles also found that the prosecution had proven special circumstances in the execution-style murder of Ms. Berman, who was Mr. Durst’s confidante and had served as his spokeswoman when his wife died: Mr. Durst killed her because he feared that she was about to reveal to investigators what she knew about the disappearance and murder of Kathie Durst.

Ms. Durst’s disappearance nearly 40 years ago marked the beginning of a long, strange, cross-country saga as the authorities sought to ensnare Mr. Durst, who was eventually tried for two other murders. But Mr. Durst proved a cunning, if odd, foe for investigators. Until this month, he had never been convicted despite decades of suspicion and occasionally incriminating behavior.

Mr. Becerra, who declined to comment, has been involved with the case for more than 20 years, and is one of the investigators who has been working on a case against Mr. Durst that is being pursued by Miriam E. Rocah, the Westchester district attorney. Her office is bringing about two dozen witnesses before a grand jury with the goal of charging Mr. Durst with murder, according to three people with knowledge of the proceedings.

Mr. Becerra’s single-page complaint is short on details. It says that the grounds for the allegations against Mr. Durst are contained in the files of the Westchester district attorney, the New York State Police and the Los Angeles district attorney, as well as “conversations with numerous witnesses and observations of defendant’s recorded interviews and court testimony in related proceedings.”

The charge offers the promise of a resolution to a case that has long been the focus of speculation, but has provided precious little real evidence; Ms. Durst’s body was never found, and there was no official crime scene. But whether the new charge, and an eventual indictment, will provide new details of Ms. Durst’s disappearance remains unknown.

Robert Abrams, the attorney for Kathie McCormack Durst’s family, expressed surprise at the news of the complaint. “My clients, Kathie’s siblings, and I were unaware of this development,” he said. “Sometimes it takes 40 years for justice. We are grateful for the work, dedication and commitment of District Attorney Rocah and her staff.”

In an email, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office confirmed that the criminal complaint had been filed but declined to comment further.

The new murder charge comes as Mr. Durst’s survival appears to be in question. Mr. Durst, who has been held in the medical ward of Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles for the past five years, recently tested positive for Covid-19 and was put on a ventilator.

Mr. Durst’s lawyers have filed notice that they intend to appeal the Los Angeles conviction. Mr. Durst has yet to retain a lawyer in New York.

Over the course of four decades, Mr. Durst has crisscrossed the country under a cloud of suspicion, inspiring a film, a documentary, books and numerous TV specials.

He is the eldest son of a New York real estate titan, Seymour Durst, and the family empire is now valued at about $8 billion. But Mr. Durst has been estranged from his family since the mid-1990s, when his younger brother Douglas was tapped to take control of the family business.

He met Kathie Durst, the youngest daughter of a lower-middle-class family from Long Island, in 1971. He was nine years older and a wealthy bachelor, and they married after a whirlwind romance. After several years, their relationship started splintering. Kathie began taking a more independent path, attending nursing school before entering the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

But after a January 1982 weekend at their stone cottage on Truesdale Lake about 50 miles northeast of Manhattan, Ms. Durst was never heard from again. Mr. Durst told the police that he put his wife on a Manhattan-bound train in nearby Katonah. Kathie Durst, who was months away from graduating from medical school, planned to start a clinic rotation the next day.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles said that Ms. Berman, at Mr. Durst’s behest, made a crucial phone call pretending to be Ms. Durst that made it appear as if she was still alive and redirected the investigation away from Westchester.

At first, with no charges filed, Kathie Durst’s disappearance fell from the headlines.

But in 1999, Mr. Becerra got a tip. The tip did not pan out, but he became engrossed in the case and interviewed many witnesses, leading the Westchester district attorney to reopen the investigation in 2000.

Mr. Durst fled New York after learning that the investigation was once again live.

Mr. Durst has since admitted that he lied to police about his whereabouts at the time his wife vanished. Evidence and testimony presented at trial in Los Angeles indicated that Mr. Durst had engaged in an escalating pattern of emotional and physical violence against Ms. Durst. He has insisted he did not kill her.

Ten months after Ms. Berman’s death, Mr. Durst was arrested in Galveston, Texas, in the murder and dismemberment of a man who lived across the hall from him in a rooming house where Mr. Durst was posing as a mute woman. At trial, Mr. Durst claimed that the man died as a result of an accident as they grappled over a gun. He was acquitted of murder.

Mr. Durst has proved to be a compelling figure since 1982, when the front- page headline of the New York Post announced: “Vanishes! Search for beautiful wife of developer.”

The mysteries surrounding him would fade from time to time, only to resurface again with new details. Mr. Durst’s flat affect, dry humor and penchant for skirting so close to the truth in interviews proved irresistible.

But the case was also plagued by a flawed investigation in New York and overconfident prosecutors in Texas. When he finally stood trial in Los Angeles, Mr. Durst was eager to engage with John Lewin, a prosecutor, on the first of 14 days on the stand. As his own lawyer prepared to begin his questioning, Mr. Durst signaled a sly confidence: “Why don’t you let John tell you what questions he wants me to answer,” Mr. Durst remarked.

During his cross-examination, Mr. Durst’s testimony was full of stories overflowing with detail that often conflicted with the evidence or prior statements that he seemed to have forgotten. In one instance, he admitted writing an incriminating message known as the “dig note” — a possible to-do list found in a wastebasket in his Westchester house in 1982. He testified that the word “dig” in the note referred not to digging a hole for his wife’s body, but to “digital,” though that word was not commonly used 39 years ago.

In the end, Mr. Durst met his match in Mr. Lewin, a cold case expert with a winning record who told the jury that he would prove that Mr. Durst had killed not just Ms. Berman but two other people: Ms. Durst and Morris Black, his friend in Galveston.

After a grueling trial interrupted by a 14-month hiatus because of the pandemic, the jury agreed with Mr. Lewin’s account. Jurors acknowledged afterward that they did not know exactly what happened to Kathie Durst in Westchester County, but they were convinced that Mr. Durst was responsible.

Mr. Durst became something of a national sensation in 2015, after the broadcast of a six-part HBO documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” He provided the filmmakers with 20 hours of interviews and access to 60 cartons of personal papers, legal documents, credit card bills and phone records. The raw tapes from “The Jinx,” in which Mr. Durst made a number of damaging admissions, were played in court in Los Angeles.

Robert Durst Charged With Murder in 1982 Disappearance of His Wife (Published 2021)

Mr. Durst was recently convicted of murdering a friend because of what she knew about his wife’s disappearance from their Lewisboro, N.Y., home.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Ken H]

From News 12 The Bronx.com

Kathie Durst's siblings, brother-in-law take stand before Robert Durst grand jury

October 27, 2021

There are new developments in the murder case involving real estate heir and convicted killer Robert Durst.

Sources tell News 12 that several key witnesses in the grand jury case took the stand Wednesday.

News 12's Tara Rosenblum first broke the news and was at the County Courthouse. Rosenblum confirmed that the grand jurors heard directly from the family members of Robert Durst's missing wife, Kathie, who provided testimony they have waited four decades to deliver.

As News 12 has reported, prosecutors in Westchester first began presenting evidence to the grand jury a week ago in the 1982 disappearance of Kathie Durst in South Salem.

She was 29 when she vanished. Her siblings say she was trapped in a volatile and abusive marriage with the scandalized real estate heir.

Kathie's brother Jim McCormack, her sister Mary Hughes and brother-in-law Tom Hughes all took the stand Wednesday.

While grand jury proceedings are kept secret, News 12 has spoken to all three of them at length about this case and why they believe without a doubt Durst killed their sister.

There are a lot of moving parts with this case, but one unusual aspect is that a state police investigator already filed a murder charge against Durst last week last week, despite the fact the district attorney is in the middle of grand jury proceedings. This could be because Durst is terminally ill and battling COVID-19 and cancer in a California hospital.

Grand jury proceedings are expected to continue Friday.

Kathie Durst's siblings, brother-in-law take stand before Robert Durst grand jury

Sources tell News 12 that several key witnesses in the grand jury case took the stand Wednesday.

bronx.news12.com

 

[Ken H]

From CTV/Associated Press

Robert Durst transferred to prison medical facility

October 28, 2021

LOS ANGELES -- Convicted murderer Robert Durst has been transferred to state prison less than two weeks after being hospitalized on a ventilator with COVID-19 following his sentencing for the slaying of his best friend.

Durst, 78, the estranged heir of a New York real estate empire, was moved from the Los Angeles jail system Wednesday and taken to the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, prison spokeswoman Terry Thornton said. The Northern California facility treats inmates with the most severe and long-term medical needs.

A mug shot showed a bearded Durst with a mask under his chin and his head on a pillow, Thornton said. She said said she can't discuss his condition.

Durst suffered from a variety of serious health problems before his hospitalization just after he was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Oct. 14 in the first-degree murder of Susan Berman.

Defense attorney Dick DeGuerin said Durst had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and was on a ventilator two days after sentencing. DeGuerin, who represented Durst over a period of about 20 years, said he had never seen him as sick as he had been in Los Angeles Superior Court at his final hearing.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Berman's loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved, and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

Durst silenced Berman in December 2000 to keep her from telling authorities how she helped him cover up the killing of his wife, Kathie Durst, in New York in 1982, prosecutors said.

New York authorities charged Durst last week with second-degree murder in the killing of Kathie Durst. Her body has never been found.

Robert Durst was acquitted of killing a neighbor in Texas in 2003 after testifying he shot the man in self-defense during a struggle for a handgun.

Robert Durst transferred to prison medical facility

Convicted murderer Robert Durst has been transferred to state prison less than two weeks after being hospitalized on a ventilator with COVID-19 following his sentencing for the slaying of his best friend.

www.ctvnews.ca

 

[Ken H]

News 12 Long Island

Robert Durst parts ways with lead defense attorney

Oct 29, 2021

New York real estate heir Robert Durst recently parted ways with his lead defense attorney. Dick Deguerin tells News12 that, as far as he knows, Durst does not currently have New York counsel.

The shakeup comes fresh off the news that Durst was transferred to a California state prison medical facility. News 12 is told that the facility treats inmates with the most severe and long-term medical needs. The move comes less than two weeks after Durst was hospitalized on a ventilator with COVID-19. His diagnosis came just days after he was sentenced for the murder of his best friend.

There is no word now of how Durst will progress in his legal proceedings without New York counsel.

Robert Durst parts ways with lead defense attorney

New York real estate heir Robert Durst recently parted ways with his lead defense attorney.

longisland.news12.com

I'm not entirely sure this report is accurate. Although DeGuerin says he isn't Durst's attorney in New York, it doesn't mean he isn't handling the appeals in California, and won't be hired at some point for the New York charges. We shall see.

 

[Ken H]

From TMZ

First mug shot of Robert Durst since state prison transfer

 

[Ken H]

From The New York Times

Robert Durst Charged With 2nd-Degree Murder in His Wife’s Disappearance

Mr. Durst, who was sentenced to life in prison in California two weeks ago, now faces another trial in New York.

By Charles V. Bagli

Kathie McCormack Durst, the young wife of a real estate scion, returned to the couple’s weekend cottage in South Salem, N.Y., on the evening of Jan. 31, 1982, and after yet another argument with her husband, she vanished.

There was no note to her mother, Ann, to her sisters and brother, or her friends. Her disappearance started a nearly 40-year-long saga that has included criminal investigations, breathless media coverage, books, a film and a documentary, much of it centered around her now-notorious husband, Robert A. Durst.

Now, decades after her disappearance — and just weeks after Mr. Durst was convicted of murder in another woman’s death in Los Angeles — prosecutors in Westchester, N.Y., say they can finally prove what many have long suspected.

Mr. Durst, a one-time heir to a real estate empire whose towers are strung across Manhattan, was indicted in White Plains on Monday on a single count of second-degree murder that accuses him of killing Kathie Durst when she was 29 and months away from fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor.

“For nearly four decades there has been a great deal of speculation about this case, much of it fueled by Robert Durst’s own highly publicized statements,” Miriam E. Rocah, the Westchester district attorney, said in a statement. “An indictment is a crucial step in the process of holding wrongdoers accountable for their actions.”

Mr. Durst, who has since been tried for two different murders and convicted once, has long insisted that he did not kill his wife, whose body has never been found. Chip Lewis, a Houston criminal defense lawyer who represented Mr. Durst at trials in Texas in 2003 and Los Angeles in 2021, called the new charge “fake news.”

But Mr. Durst has acknowledged that he was violent toward his wife on the night of her disappearance. He told the producers of the 2015 documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” that he engaged in a “pushing, shoving argument” with Kathie Durst that night in South Salem, about 50 miles northeast of Manhattan.

The case, the first in which Mr. Durst was implicated, in some ways represents a fitting conclusion to the long, strange legal odyssey surrounding him. Over the years of suspicion that followed his wife’s disappearance, his bizarre affect and disarming manner in interviews made him an irresistible subject for true-crime stories.

For the investigators who long pursued him, Mr. Durst proved to be a challenging adversary. Only this year was he finally convicted of murder. Just two weeks before the Westchester County indictment, Mr. Durst, 78 and frail, was sentenced in Los Angeles to life without parole for the murder of his confidante Susan Berman in December 2000. The jury in that case found that Mr. Durst had shot Ms. Berman in the back of her head because he feared she was about to reveal to investigators what she knew about the disappearance and murder of Kathie Durst.

Ms. Berman, a journalist and screenwriter who was living in New York in 1982, arranged interviews with the city’s tabloids for Mr. Durst at the time his wife disappeared. Both of them told police and reporters that Ms. Durst was drug-addled and in danger of flunking out of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, contrary to school officials and academic records.

Absent new physical evidence in Ms. Durst’s disappearance, the Los Angeles case is likely to provide a road map of sorts for prosecutors in New York.

Many of the prosecution witnesses in Los Angeles are likely to show up in Westchester, including Mike Struk, the now-retired detective who first got the case; Karen Minutello, the building manager who said that Mr. Durst threw out Ms. Durst’s textbooks and other belongings days after she disappeared; medical school classmates in whom Ms. Durst confided her fears about her husband’s violence; and Ms. Durst’s sister Mary and her husband Tom, who discovered the so-called Dig Note in a wastebasket in the South Salem cottage.

Mr. Durst testified in Los Angeles that the note was not a to-do list for getting rid of a body, but rather shorthand for “digital,” an uncommon word in 1982.

Fadwa Najamy, one of the last people to see Ms. Durst alive, testified in Los Angeles that Ms. Durst had shown up at her family’s house in Connecticut before she disappeared and that Mr. Durst had phoned there asking her to come home. After Ms. Durst’s disappearance, her close friend, Gilberte Najamy, Fadwa Najamy’s sister, frantically searched for clues to what happened to Kathie and told police that Mr. Durst was responsible.

“May he live to be 100 so he can spend more time in jail after what he did to Kathie and my sister,” Fadwa Najamy said in an interview last week. Gilberte Najamy is no longer alive.

Ruth Mayer, who lived next door to the Dursts in 1982, said she was fond of Ms. Durst and has long felt “an obligation to do whatever I can do.”

On the Sunday morning when Ms. Durst was last seen, Ms. Mayer brought her a hat to fend off the icy temperature, she said.

“It is justice delayed,” she said of the indictment.

Robert Abrams, a lawyer representing the McCormack family, declined to comment.

Mr. Durst, who was briefly on a ventilator after testing positive for Covid-19, was transferred Oct. 27 from Twin Towers Correctional Facility to the California Health Care Facility, a prison for inmates with long-term or severe health problems in Stockton, Calif., 90 miles east of San Francisco. It is the same prison where Phil Spector, the once-celebrated music producer, spent his final years after his conviction for killing a woman in his home.

Now, Mr. Durst faces the prospect of extradition to New York and a cell in the New York prison system. His credibility has been shredded by the conflicting accounts that he offered to investigators and interviewers, especially after he admitted in Los Angeles that he lied five times in sworn testimony and twice while testifying in a separate trial in Texas.

The story of Robert Durst is as much a string of mysteries stretching over four decades as it is a story of wealth and privilege. His marriage to Kathie McCormack in 1973 had a fairy-tale quality, her family said. She was from a lower middle-class family on Long Island. He was the son of a wealthy New York family, who showed her exotic vacations and the best tables at restaurants and discos.

But after he forced her to have an abortion, their marriage descended into bickering, multiple affairs, pushing and violence.

After Ms. Durst disappeared, Mr. Durst said he had put her on a Manhattan-bound train because she planned to attend a clinic rotation the next day. He waited until Friday to report her missing at a police precinct on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

An elevator operator at their penthouse apartment in Manhattan reported seeing Ms. Durst; and a woman who identified herself as Ms. Durst — but who police came to believe was Susan Berman — called Ms. Durst’s medical school to say that she was ill.

“It’s clear that Berman and Durst duped us,” the retired detective, Mr. Struk, said in an interview. “I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

There was never a forensic search of the Dursts’ cottage in 1982, because the investigation was centered in Manhattan, where Mr. Durst reported his wife missing.

The case against him in New York is circumstantial. There is no witness, no weapon and no body. And Mr. Durst has acknowledged lying to police about his whereabouts at the time his wife disappeared. “I wasn’t used to anyone questioning my veracity,” Mr. Durst told The Jinx.

Robert Durst Charged With 2nd-Degree Murder in His Wife’s Disappearance (Published 2021)

Mr. Durst, who was sentenced to life in prison in California two weeks ago, now faces another trial in New York.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Ken H]

From News 12 The Bronx

EXCLUSIVE: Ex-girlfriend shares insight into early mindset of Robert Durst

News 12 Staff Nov 04, 2021


Long before the mayhem and murder associated with Robert Durst, a Westchester woman says she saw a side of him that scared her to death.

The former girlfriend of Robert Durst says she saw troubling warning signs - long before Durst was convicted of killing his best friend, admitted to dismembering his neighbor and faced charges for the murder of his first wife. She says it has haunted her for years.

Penny Goldsmith is sharing her story publicly for the first time with News 12 senior investigative reporter Tara Rosenblum.

The billionaire developer's son was smitten with the 20-year-old student from Rye back when they were college sweethearts in the 1960s.

"He was unlike anybody I've ever met," she says.

Both were from Westchester, but the couple first crossed paths on a mission trip to Israel.

Goldsmith was a student at Wheelock College in Boston. Durst was a graduate student at UCLA. The couple dated long distance for a year and a half, including a memorable 10-day visit to California during which she says Durst couldn't wait to introduce Goldsmith to his best friend, Susan Berman.

Soon after the introduction on the West Coast, the couple traveled to the East Coast and introduced one another to their families.

"My mother perceived him to be an unhappy human being, and it really concerned her," she says.

A few months later, Goldsmith says Durst did something that confirmed those concerns.

"I got a letter from him, and it started out he was driving, and he stopped a hitchhiker. and there was a gun in the car. The hitchhiker picked the gun up and pointed it at Bob and said, 'I'm going to kill you,' and Bob said 'So kill me. I'll be dead. What's dead? I don't care.' And it went on and on, and I found it really frightening. You know, it was that life had no meaning," she says.

She remembers showing the letter to her psychology professor at the time, the noted author A. Nicholas Groth, who told her exactly how to respond.

"He said, 'You can't see him again, he is a sociopath,'" she says.

Goldsmith says she broke up with Durst the next day.

Later that year, she claims she received a phone call out of the blue that still haunts her today.

"He called me one night at 10 o'clock and said, 'I want you to come up to South Salem now.' And he said, 'Take a train to Grand Central. I'll pick you up at the Katonah train station,'" she says. "I've always wondered what would have happened to me had I gone that night. I'm sure I would not be sitting here. I think had I gone up to South Salem that night, he would have killed me."

A few years later, Durst went on to marry Kathie McCormack, who vanished after he says he dropped her off at the same train station he asked Goldsmith to meet him at.

Durst is now facing a murder charge in Westchester four decades later.

Durst could not be reached for comment on this story.

EXCLUSIVE: Ex-girlfriend shares insight into early mindset of Robert Durst

Penny Goldsmith is sharing her story publicly for the first time with News 12 senior investigative reporter Tara Rosenblum.

bronx.news12.com

 

[Ken H]

From the New York Post

Kathie Durst’s family wants probe of 40-year-old ‘cover-up’

November 9, 2011 By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon


The family of disgraced real estate scion Robert Durst’s slain wife is calling on Westchester County prosecutors to investigate the “nearly four-decade-long cover-up” of her 1982 disappearance and murder.

Robert Abrams, an attorney for Kathleen Durst’s family, bemoaned decades of “prosecutorial cowardice” in the case and chided “the sloppy, incompetent investigation” that kept Durst off the hook until this month, when he was finally indicted in his ex-wife’s murder.

Abrams, speaking outside the Westchester County Courthouse on Tuesday, praised DA Mimi Rocah for the indictment — but said it took too long and leaves many unanswered questions.

“As much as we appreciate what District Attorney Rocah has done by indicting Robert Durst for Kathie’s murder — and we do appreciate it,” Abrams said. “But I want to be really clear. What she did is what her job requires her to do. She indicted a murderer for killing somebody.”

“Kudos to her, because that was not done for the past 40 years and she did it. She didn’t do us any favors for doing what she’s supposed to do.”

Abrams added that Rocah “has an obligation under the law” to determine whether Robert Durst’s brother, Douglas, used his wealth and influence to stifle the investigation.

Rocah reopened the cold case in May.

In a letter to the district attorney, Abrams asked that the office “correct the mistakes made by your predecessors” and launch “a meaningful investigation into the coverup.”

Kathleen Durst, 29, disappeared from the couple’s South Salem home on Jan. 31, 1982, and was declared legally dead by her family in 2017.

Her body was never found.

The Westchester indictment came just two weeks after Robert Durst was sentenced to life in prison in Los Angeles for the 2000 murder of pal Susan Berman, who prosecutors contend was about to come clean on Kathleen Durst’s slaying.

The ailing real estate scion was also tried for killing and chopping up neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas, but was acquitted after claiming self-defense.

A spokesperson for the Westchester District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

A spokesman for the Durst Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post on Tuesday.

In a statement Tuesday, a spokesman for the Durst Organization dismissed Abrams’ claims as “baseless.”

“Mr. Abrams has a long history of leveling hollow, baseless attacks without ever providing a single shred of documentation to substantiate his wild claims,” the statement said.

“In the last two years, Abrams has named the Durst Organization or Douglas Durst more than 30 times in court filings,” it said. “Time and time again these accusations have been summarily dismissed and thrown out by courts.”

Kathie Durst’s family wants probe of 40-year-old ‘cover-up’

The family of Robert Durst’s slain wife is calling on Westchester County prosecutors to investigate the “nearly four-decade-long coverup” of her 1982 disappearance and murder.

nypost.com

 

[Ken H]

From the New Haven Register

Attorney: Family seeks justice in 'cover up' of Kathie Durst homicide

November 9, 2021 By Peter Yankowski


A week after Robert Durst was indicted for murder in his wife’s death, few details have emerged about the case against the former real estate mogul.

But on Tuesday, an attorney representing the family of Kathie Durst vowed to hold those accountable whom he said helped “cover up” the homicide for the last four decades.

“I think we basically made it very clear that we’re gonna go after everybody — lawyers, prosecutors, police, friends of Durst — who got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in this cover up. Sometime in December, we’re going to present all of the evidence that we have,” said attorney Bob Abrams, the family lawyer who called the news conference outside the Westchester County courthouse.

He said much of that evidence has been shared with Westchester District Attorney Miriam Rocah.

He credited Kathie Durst’s brother, James McCormack, along with her other siblings and their spouses for seeking justice in her disappearance for 40 years.

“For them, for their children, for their grandchildren, nobody should have to ever go through that,” Abrams said, addressing a row of television cameras and reporters from local and national news media.

McCormack also spoke during the brief news conference, thanking Rocah for helping to bring the indictment against Robert Durst.

But McCormack said he and the family have “serious questions” about the case, including why authorities, including past district attorneys, did not act sooner.

“These questions and so many others need to be answered not just for Kathie and the McCormack family, but for every family that has been victimized by prosecutorial misconduct and corruption,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the McCormack family’s claims.

Documents charging Durst, 78, in his wife’s killing have not been made public after a New York grand jury indicted him last week on a second-degree murder charge.

“We want both closure and justice for Kathie and our family which has suffered from her disappearance, murder and the concealment of her remains,” McCormack said.

Kathie Durst, who graduated what was then known as Western Connecticut State College in Danbury, was 30 years old when she disappeared on Jan. 31, 1982. She was last seen leaving a friend’s home in Newtown to return the couple’s home in South Salem, N.Y.

“When Kathleen Durst disappeared on January 31, 1982, her family and friends were left with pain, anguish and questions that have contributed to their unfaltering pursuit of justice for the last 39 years,” Rocah said last week when the indictment was returned.

Rocah credited her office, which she said “reinvigorated its investigation” and launched the Cold Case Bureau that helped to bring the charge decades after the disappearance.

In a letter to Rocah, Abrams criticized her office, claiming former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro met with Robert Durst’s brother, Douglas Durst, in 2003.

In the letter, which was released to the media, Abrams wrote that the meeting was “of grave concern to us.” Abrams said it was “particularly disturbing as Ms. Pirro’s decision to ‘drop’ the investigation was made after this meeting occurred.”

“To state the obvious, securing evidence of the cover up of Kathie's murder will help ensure, inter alia, that Robert Durst is convicted and that those who helped him are held accountable for deceiving Kathie's family and the public,” the letter states. “Rich and powerful people should not be able to get away with criminal conduct, and what happened to Kathie's family should never happen to another family ever again.”

In September, Robert Durst was convicted of killing his friend Susan Berman in her California home in December 2000. He has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killing.

Prosecutors in that case contended Robert Durst killed Berman to silence her from coming forward about his wife’s disappearance.

Durst was arrested in 2015 in Berman’s homicide after he appeared in “The Jinx,” an HBO documentary about his life. Durst was alone in a bathroom in the HBO series when a live microphone caught him saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

In 2001, Durst was accused of killing his neighbor in Galveston, Texas, where prosecutors said he was living in hiding when investigators renewed their interest in Kathie Durst’s disappearance.

Robert Durst, who was accused of shooting and dismembering the neighbor, was acquitted of that killing after pleading self-defense, claiming he panicked and hid the body.

Court documents filed in 2017 by Kathie Durst’s family seeking to have her declared dead allege that Robert Durst was abusive and she had been hospitalized after one incident. The family claimed the two had argued the night she disappeared.

Kathie Durst was about to finish medical school to become a pediatrician, her family said. She was close to her mother and siblings, and had no reason to suddenly break contact with them and never be seen again, the documents said.

Attorney: Family seeks justice in ‘cover up’ of Kathie Durst homicide

An attorney for Kathie Durst’s family said Tuesday, “we’re gonna go after...

www.nhregister.com

Image of Bob Abrams, McCormack family attorney in the foreground, Kathie McCormack Durst's brother Jim in the background, at the press conference, 11/9/2021.

 

[Ken H]

From CNN

Convicted murderer Robert Durst's health is improving, appeal pending

By Paul Vercammen, 12/7/2021

The health of convicted murderer Robert Durst, 78, subject of the HBO crime documentary "The Jinx," has been upgraded to fair condition, California prison officials say.

The report seems to mark an improvement in Durst's health, as just two weeks ago prison officials told CNN Durst's condition was considered serious. The heir to a New York skyscraper empire is being housed at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton and is battling bladder cancer, among other health ailments.

"The facility cares for the state's sickest incarcerated men," said Terry Thornton, spokesperson for the California Bureau of Prisons.

Thornton said Durst arrived at the prison medical center on October 27 directly from Los Angeles County Jail.

His legal team reported the 78-year-old convict had contracted Covid-19 in October.

"He looked like death warmed over," said his former long-time attorney Dick Deguerin. "He was laying back in his wheelchair and was gasping for breath."

Deguerin says he is no longer representing Durst. The pair go back two decades to Galveston, TX, where the tycoon beat a charge of murdering his neighbor, Morris Black.

Deguerin and his legal team received accolades by legal experts for helping to convince a Texas jury Durst acted in self-defense, though Durst admitted to killing Black and cutting up his body afterward.

Durst was convicted in September in Southern California of murdering his longtime confidante Susan Berman in 2000. Now Durst will try to get the conviction overturned without Deguerin and the path forward through the courts appears murky.

"Robert Durst's appellate issues will be resolved in one of two ways," said Dina Sayegh Doll, a Southern California legal analyst.

"Either it will be decided by the Court of Appeal justices or eventually rendered moot by his failing health."

In a letter to the second district court of appeals in California obtained by CNN, Christopher Garcia says he is an attorney for Durst but does not represent Durst in his appeal.

Garcia wrote Durst "will retain appellate counsel" but has not made any progress toward getting an appeal lawyer because he is being "treated for serious medical issues... he cannot meet with an attorney or anyone else for that matter."

Garcia did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.

"Additionally, no one has provided any information about his current medical condition to his wife, who holds his power of attorney and medical proxy," the Garcia letter continued.

Durst married Debrah Lee Charatan, a New York real estate broker, in December 2000. Authorities alleged they wed so Charatan could handle Durst's business affairs while he dealt with his numerous brushes with the law.

Weeks after the wedding, Durst's good friend Susan Berman was found dead in her Los Angeles area home.

Prosecutors argued Durst executed Berman, because he thought she was going to implicate him in the decades-old disappearance of his first wife Kathie.

On November 1, Durst was indicted on a murder charge in the death of Kathie Durst in New York City suburbs in 1982.

Convicted murderer Robert Durst's health is improving, appeal pending | CNN

The health of convicted murderer Robert Durst, 78, subject of the HBO crime documentary "The Jinx," has been upgraded to fair condition, California prison officials say.

www.cnn.com

 

[Ken H]

For reasons unknown, the California Department of Corrections released a new mug shot of Robert Durst. The picture was taken December 15, 2021. From Law & Crime.com

 

[Ken H]

From The New York Times

Robert Durst, Real Estate Scion Convicted as a Killer, Dies at 78

He was a suspect in three lurid murders and became a fugitive. In September, he was found guilty in the fatal shooting of a confidante and sentenced to life in prison.

By Robert D. McFadden, Jan. 10, 2022

Robert A. Durst, the scion of a New York real estate dynasty whose life dissolved in a calamity of suspicions over the unsolved disappearance of his first wife, the execution-style murder of a longtime confidante and the killing and dismemberment of an elderly neighbor, died early Monday as a prisoner in Stockton, Calif. He was 78.

His lawyer Chip Lewis confirmed his death, at the San Joaquin General Hospital, where Mr. Durst had been taken for testing. He then went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived, Mr. Lewis said. Mr. Durst had been serving a life sentence at the California Health Care Facility in the killing of his longtime confidante Susan Berman.

He was convicted of the murder last September and shortly afterward tested positive for Covid-19 and was briefly put on a ventilator. Mr. Lewis said the virus had worsened a host of already existing medical problems.

In a story made for supermarket tabloids, Mr. Durst, a small, rail-thin man, was a cross-dressing fugitive from justice with $100 million in assets. On the run, he became a vagrant urinating in public, sometimes disguising himself as a mute woman. He beat his wife and forced her to have an abortion; beheaded a man he had killed as he sat in a pool of blood, and once wrote a “cadaver note,” telling the Los Angeles police where to find a woman who had been shot in the head. Distraught and alone in a bathroom, he unwittingly confessed to all the killings on a live recording used in a 2015 HBO mini-series about himself.

Over four decades Mr. Durst was suspected of having killed three people: his wife, Kathleen Durst, who vanished on Jan. 31, 1982, after a fight at their home in South Salem, N.Y., and was never seen again; his friend Susan Berman, who was shot in her Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles in 2000; and Morris Black, a neighbor who was shot in Mr. Durst’s Galveston, Texas, apartment in 2001.

In each death, investigators found circumstances pointing to Mr. Durst as the perpetrator.

There was only one relatively clear-cut case against him. It was the killing of Mr. Black, a 71-year-old cantankerous former merchant seaman who lived across the hall from him in a Galveston rooming house. Mr. Durst lived there in the guise of a sometimes mute woman. One night, the two men argued, Mr. Durst pulled a .22 caliber handgun, and they grappled for the weapon. As Mr. Durst told it, they fell to the floor, the gun went off and the bullet struck Mr. Black in the face, killing him.

Mr. Durst dismembered the victim and dumped the body parts in Galveston Bay. Arrested on a murder charge, he jumped bail and fled. After a 45-day manhunt, he was caught in a Pennsylvania supermarket stealing a chicken sandwich. In his rented car, the police found two guns, $37,000 in cash, marijuana and Mr. Black’s driver’s license. At his 2003 trial, he claimed he had acted in self-defense and disposed of the body, then fled in panic, fearing that no one would believe his story. He was acquitted.

But in the baffling case that made Mr. Durst a nationally-known and deeply distrusted celebrity — the disappearance of his wife, Kathleen, in 1982 — there was for decades insufficient evidence to file charges against him. There were only abundant grounds for suspicion: the couple’s frequent public fights, the bruises for which she was treated, her family’s account of an abortion forced upon her, and the fact that she was months from graduating from medical school when she vanished. Mr. Durst divorced her eight years later, and she was declared legally dead, though her body was never found.

For all the garish headlines that attended his wife’s disappearance and the gruesome killing of Mr. Black, it was the slaying of Ms. Berman that finally wrote an end to one of America’s longest running true-life crime thrillers, the case of a wealthy man who used many aliases in an odyssey that spun off books, films, television dramas and avalanches of online commentaries.

For years, Ms. Berman, a journalist, had been Mr. Durst’s spokeswoman and staunchest defender in confrontations with reporters and his wife’s family and friends after her disappearance. Yet Mr. Durst was belatedly charged with Ms. Berman’s murder in 2015 in a reinvestigation of her killing, which had occurred 15 years earlier.

Prosecutors asserted that Mr. Durst had fatally shot Ms. Berman because she was about to tell investigators that Mrs. Durst’s disappearance had been a hoax — that he had actually killed his wife and disposed of her body. Ms. Berman, the investigators said, had also been prepared to confess that she had helped him cover up the crime.

Mr. Durst had always denied involvement in his wife’s disappearance and in the murder of Ms. Berman. After his arrest in the Berman case, he was not brought to trial for nearly six years. Held in custody at a medical facility of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, he underwent surgeries for esophageal cancer and fluid on the brain.

Undone by His Own Words

The long-delayed trial finally began in Los Angeles in early 2020, but after the selection of a jury and opening statements, it was postponed again in March, this time because of the coronavirus pandemic. The trial resumed in May 2021, and like almost everything else in the Durst saga, it was bizarre, with jurors spread across the courtroom gallery, prosecutors occupying the jury box and everyone, including the judge, wearing masks as a precaution against Covid-19.

During the trial, Mr. Durst’s brother Douglas, who oversaw the family’s $8 billion real estate empire, and Nick Chavin, a longtime friend of Mr. Durst’s, were both witnesses for the prosecution. Mr. Chavin testified that in a 2014 sidewalk conversation in New York, Mr. Durst admitted that he had killed Ms. Berman, saying: “It was her or me. I had no choice.”

Prosecutors called 80 witnesses and introduced nearly 300 exhibits. But the most damaging evidence came from Mr. Durst’s own mouth, as the jury heard him make a series of recorded acknowledgments — in an interview with John Lewin, a deputy prosecutor, after his arrest in 2015; in hundreds of jailhouse phone calls; and in 20 hours of interviews with a producer of a documentary on Mr. Durst.

The documentary became a six-part HBO mini-series in 2015, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier.

(Earlier, Ryan Gosling had portrayed a character based on Mr. Durst in a 2010 movie, “All Good Things,” about a man suspected of killing his wife, played by Kirsten Dunst.)

While he had never cooperated with journalists or filmmakers, Mr. Durst sat with Mr. Jarecki for 20 hours of recorded interviews and professed admiration for “The Jinx,” although he was arrested in Ms. Berman’s killing the day before the finale aired.

In the last interview, Mr. Jarecki confronted Mr. Durst with two envelopes, each with block-letter handwriting — one sent by Mr. Durst to Ms. Berman in 1999, the other sent anonymously to the L.A.P.D. telling detectives where to find her body. A handwriting expert said both were written by one person. Both misspelled “Beverly Hills” — with “Beverley” — seemingly conclusive evidence that he had killed Ms. Berman.

After the interview, a shaken Mr. Durst went into a bathroom, unaware that his wireless microphone was still on, and made a rambling off-camera confession, ending with: “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” His lawyers later conceded that he wrote the “cadaver note,” but insisted that it only proved that he knew of the killing, not that he had committed it.

In his summation to the jury, one of the prosecutors, Habib A. Balian, repeated Mr. Durst’s words: “It was her or me. I had no choice.” Mr. Balian added, “That says it all.”

After seven and a half hours of deliberations, the jury on Sept. 17 found Mr. Durst guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced in October to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Two days after the sentencing, a New York State Police investigator, Joseph C. Becerra, filed a criminal complaint in Lewisboro, N.Y., accusing Mr. Durst of second-degree murder in the long-unsolved disappearance of his wife, Kathie McCormack Durst. It was the first inkling of a break in a mystery that had tormented her family and friends and fascinated investigators since she vanished in 1982.

A criminal complaint often precedes a formal murder charge, and it seemed to presage further developments in a case that, after 40 years without movement, was widely regarded as all but moribund. Mr. Becerra had been involved in investigating Ms. Durst’s disappearance for more than 20 years. The case was being pursued by the Westchester County District Attorney, Miriam E. Rocah.

The murder complaint came as Mr. Durst’s survival appeared to be in question. Frail and 78 years old, he had been in custody in the medical ward of Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles for five years and was put on ventilator after testing positive for Covid-19.

Born Into an Empire

Robert Alan Durst was born on April 12, 1943, in Manhattan, the oldest of four children of Seymour B. and Bernice (Herstein) Durst. His father was the patriarch of a Manhattan office and apartment building empire founded in 1927 by Robert’s grandfather, Joseph Durst, an Austrian emigrant.

Robert and his siblings, Douglas, Thomas and Wendy, grew up in the Westchester suburb of Scarsdale, but their comfortable childhood was punctured in 1950 by the death of their mother, who fell or jumped from the roof of their home. The family was devastated, and 7-year-old Robert, who may have witnessed her plunge, was shattered.

He and Douglas had fist fights and were sent for psychiatric counseling. At Scarsdale High School, Robert was a loner. The 1961 yearbook had only one picture of him and mentioned no extracurricular activities.

He graduated from Lehigh University in 1965 with a degree in economics, but dropped out of postgraduate studies at U.C.L.A., where he met Susan Berman, an aspiring writer and the daughter of a reputed Las Vegas mobster.

As a young man, Mr. Durst’s conduct often seemed merely impulsive and eccentric. After two dates, he invited Kathleen McCormack, a medical student living in a Durst building, to move with him to Vermont, where he had opened a health-food store, “All Good Things.” They lived frugally, settled into a hippie pad and drove a Volkswagen Beetle.

A year later, his father insisted that he return to New York and join the family business. Mr. Durst and Ms. McCormack were married in 1973. She was 19; he was nine years older. The couple partied at Studio 54, the celebrity disco in Manhattan, sailed in the Mediterranean and went to Thailand.

In 1976, the marriage began to disintegrate. They quarreled about having a child. She wanted one, he did not. Her family said he forced her to have an abortion. Seeking independence, Ms. McCormack studied nursing, then medicine at Albert Einstein Medical College in the Bronx. In 1981, she hired a divorce lawyer. Shortly before her disappearance, she was treated at a hospital for bruises that she said had been inflicted by her husband.

“Mrs. Durst told her sister, her friends and virtually anyone who would listen, ‘If anything happens to me, don’t let Bob get away with it,’” The New York Times wrote in 2017.

Mr. Durst, who reported his wife’s disappearance to the police after five days, claimed he had driven her to the Katonah, N.Y., station and saw her board a train for Manhattan, where she had a medical school appointment the next day. He said he went back to South Salem, had a drink with neighbors and later reached his wife by phone at their penthouse on Riverside Drive in Manhattan.

Phone records showed no calls from the South Salem home to their penthouse that night. Mr. Durst said he had called from a pay phone while walking his dog. But the nearest pay phone was several miles away, and the night was rainy and cold. Neighbors said they could not recall having had a drink with Mr. Durst that night.

After 16 Years, a Tip

But the evidence was inconclusive. Leads dwindled. The case languished for 16 years. Mr. Durst divorced his missing wife in 1990, and left his family’s business when Douglas was put in charge in 1994. For years he drifted around the country. In 2000, he married a Manhattan real estate broker, Debrah Lee Charatan, calling it a platonic “marriage of convenience.”

In 1998, a tip from a suspect in an unrelated case revived interest in Mrs. Durst’s disappearance. Confidential financial records that Mrs. Durst had given two friends for safekeeping before she vanished had been stolen from them in burglaries. And there were questions about Susan Berman’s role as something more than a spokeswoman for Mr. Durst. Mr. Becerra, the state investigator, and the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro revived the 1982 inquiry.

In 2000, investigators in Los Angeles decided to question Susan Berman. But shortly before their scheduled interview, they received an anonymous letter handwritten in block letters. It cited a “cadaver” and an address. Ms. Berman was found there, shot dead. Mr. Durst denied involvement, and no one was arrested.

In 2006, he cut the last ties to his family and his stake in 10 Manhattan skyscrapers in return for a $65 million payout to settle a longstanding lawsuit against the Durst family. Besides additional assets estimated at $100 million, he had a trust fund that paid him $2 million annually. But his legal problems were hardly over.

In 2014, Mr. Durst was arrested in Houston for urinating on a rack of candy in a CVS pharmacy. He paid a $500 fine, and a lawyer representing him called it “an unfortunate medical mishap.”

After his 2015 arrest on the charge of killing Ms. Berman, Mr. Durst remained in custody in Los Angeles for years, fighting medical problems while his legal team, led by the Texas lawyer Dick DeGuerin, honed a defense strategy.

In 2019 they filed a court brief conceding that Mr. Durst had written the “cadaver note,” but added: “What the note demonstrates is that the person who mailed it was aware that there was a body at the house, not that the individual murdered Susan Berman.”

Charles V. Bagli contributed reporting.

Robert D. McFadden is a senior writer on the Obituaries desk and the winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He joined The Times in May 1961 and is also the co-author of two books.

Robert Durst, Real Estate Scion Convicted as a Killer, Dies at 78 (Published 2022)

He was a suspect in three lurid murders and became a fugitive. In September, he was found guilty in the fatal shooting of a confidante and sentenced to life in prison.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Ken H]

I wonder what will happen to his estate, and how much remains. And I wonder about Debrah Lee Charatan.

At the time of his death, Durst was most likely still married to Debrah Lee Charatan, who he met in NYC real estate circles in 1988. Charatan owned a real estate company that failed, and when she met Durst he helped bailed her out, and helped finance her new real estate company. When he got married to Charatan in 2000, Durst told his sister Wendy that he got married primarily so that his family wouldn't get his estate when he died. The estate consisted of the $65 million dollar settlement Durst received after suing his family in 2006 for his share of the family fortune, and income from his own and Charatan's real estate transactions. It was estimated at the time of his arrest for the Berman murder in 2015 that he was worth between $100 and $110 million by various sources, and that Charatan had received $20 million as her share.

Durst found out in October 2000 that investigators in New York State had reopened the investigation into his first wife’s disappearance. Panicking, he quickly proposed to Charatan and gave her power of attorney over his bank accounts and business affairs, moved to Galveston, TX where he posed as a deaf mute woman and rented a cheap apartment, to hopefully evade any new interest the investigation would develop.

Charatan supported Durst during the Morris Black murder trial in 2001, and up to his decision to participate in the HBO mini series, The Jinx: The Lives and Deaths of Robert Durst, which aired in 2015. Both Charatan and Durst's lawyers told him his decision to cooperate in the making of The Jinx was a bad idea, and Charatan's friends said she cut off communication with him after The Jinx episodes began to air.

After Durst's acquittal in the Morris Black murder trial (he was convicted of bail jumping and tampering with evidence), Durst and Charatan eventually drifted apart. Then Charatan became known to become involved with Steven I. Holm, a noted NYC real estate attorney, who had worked for both Durst and Charatan. It was public knowledge that Holm and Charatan lived together for years, were introduced as husband and wife at public events, and participated in joint philanthropic ventures. When Holm died in 2019, his obituaries and The New York Times all listed Charatan as Holm's wife. Charatan sent a letter to The Times saying she wasn't Holm's wife and asked for a retraction, which The Times did not give.

 

[Ken H]

From The New York Times

Robert Durst’s Death Comes With a Bizarre Legal Twist

Mr. Durst’s murder conviction in California could be vacated because he died while an appeal was pending. A murder charge in New York appears to be moot.

By Charles V. Bagli, Jan. 10, 2022

The bizarre life of Robert A. Durst, the wayward scion of a vast New York real estate dynasty, ended on Monday when he died at 78 in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for murder.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his death came with a twist.

In a potentially fitting coda to the notorious biography of a man who spent four decades eluding investigators as a suspect in three killings, his lone conviction in those crimes could well be vacated: He died before his appeal could be heard.

Under California law, the state’s Courts of Appeal can dismiss the appeal and order the trial court to set aside his September conviction, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of a treatise on the state’s criminal laws.

“The whole world knows the jury found Durst guilty,” Professor Levenson said, “but that’s not what the legal record will show. He didn’t finish his appeal.”

John Lewin, the deputy district attorney in Los Angeles and the lead prosecutor of the case that led to Mr. Durst’s conviction on charges of killing his close friend Susan Berman in 2000, echoed Professor Levenson’s view of what the public will remember.

“Bob Durst was convicted by a jury who came to the conclusion that he was responsible for the deaths of three people,” said Mr. Lewin, who sought during the trial to tie Mr. Durst to the killings of Ms. Durst, Ms. Berman and a third victim. “His death in no way changes what happened.”

He added: “Bob Durst is a murderer and he died a murderer no matter what the status of his legal position.”

Lawyers for Mr. Durst, said they planned to file a motion with the Courts of Appeal asking that the conviction be vacated.

Separately on Monday, the district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., Mimi Rocah, suggested in a statement that Mr. Durst’s death rendered moot a murder charge filed against him there in November in connection with the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen.

“I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Durst’s family,” Ms. Rocah said. “We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleen’s murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.” More information about the case would be made public soon, she said.

Robert Abrams, a lawyer for Kathleen Durst’s family, said that her accused killer’s death would not halt their quest for justice.

“Although Robert Durst has died, the ongoing investigation into those who helped him cover up her murder continues,” Mr. Abrams said of Ms. Durst, adding that “a further update” would be provided on Jan. 31, the 40th anniversary of her disappearance.

“In the interim,” he added, “please say a prayer for Kathie and his other victims.”

Mr. Durst, long an object of fascination in wealthy New York circles because of his status as the pariah of a powerful family, became a national sensation after the broadcast of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” a 2015 HBO documentary.

The film explored in detail the deaths of the three people Mr. Durst was suspected of killing: his wife, who vanished after a fight at the couple’s South Salem, N.Y., home; Ms. Berman, who was shot execution-style at her Los Angeles home; and Morris Black, a 71-year-old neighbor who was shot in Mr. Durst’s Galveston, Texas, apartment in 2001 and then dismembered. In each case, investigators found reason to believe Mr. Durst was involved.

The case involving Mr. Black appeared to be the most clear-cut, but Mr. Durst was acquitted after claiming he had acted in self-defense. Ultimately it was the slaying of Ms. Berman that produced the legal reckoning that had long loomed over Mr. Durst.

For years, she had been his fiercest ally, acting as his spokeswoman with reporters and as his staunchest defender against those who accused him of killing his first wife.

Fifteen years after Ms. Berman’s body was found by the police, who had been told where to look in a note that Mr. Durst himself wrote, he was charged with her murder. Prosecutors said he fatally shot her because he feared she would tell investigators that his wife’s disappearance had been a hoax — that Mr. Durst was responsible for her death and the disposal of her body.

The trial began in March 2020, then paused for 14 months because of the coronavirus pandemic, before resuming last May. Shortly after he was convicted, Mr. Durst tested positive for the virus. The illness exacerbated his existing medical problems, his lawyers said, and doctors could not revive him after he went into cardiac arrest on Monday.

“Bob lived a sad, painful and tragic life,” his brother Douglas said in a statement. “We hope his death brings some closure to those he hurt.

Robert Durst’s Death Comes With a Bizarre Legal Twist (Published 2022)

Mr. Durst’s murder conviction in California could be vacated because he died while an appeal was pending. A murder charge in New York appears to be moot.

www.nytimes.com