Robert Durst - Millionaire Murderer

Robert Durst - Millionaire Murderer

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Robert Durst - Millionaire Murderer
By Anthony Bruno

Chapters

1. Prologue
2. What Happened to Kathleen Durst?
3. Death of A Mob Princess
4. The Crank and the Cross-Dresser
5. On the Run
6. The Deadly Shoplifter
7. New Chapter - The Morris Black Murder Trial
8. Bibliography

Prologue

Robert Durst mugshot
Robert Durst mugshot

In the end, accused millionaire murderer Robert Durst was done in by a chicken salad sandwich on pumpernickel. On October 9, 2001, with more than $500 in his pocket, he decided to steal a sandwich, a newspaper and a Band-Aid from a supermarket in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania. He was caught by security guards who called the police. A routine background check on Durst revealed that the odd-looking 58-year-old shoplifter was wanted for a mutilation murder in Texas, was a prime suspect in another murder in Los Angeles, and was also wanted for questioning in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife in New York.

Younger Robert Durst

When Durst was apprehended he was wearing a woman's brown wig and a false blond mustache. Underneath the wig, his head was shaved clean like his eyebrows. By all accounts Durst had always been something of an oddball, but a very rich oddball. He is one of the heirs to the Durst Organization, a New York real-estate empire that owns nine major properties in midtown Manhattan and is worth billions. The oldest of four siblings, Robert Durst was set for life, but in 1994 when his father chose his younger brother Douglas to run the business, Robert Durst quit in a huff. As Ned Zeman reported in Vanity Fair, Durst "walked out of the office and never returned." Durst apparently refused to be second fiddle to anyone.

Durst is 5-foot-7, fit and trim. He exudes a quiet edginess and sometimes growls like a dog when crossed. He's a habitual marijuana smoker, and marijuana was found in his car when he was arrested. When he was younger, he would think nothing of hopping a plane to Europe or Asia on a lark, and he frequented New York City's infamous celebrity disco palace of the '70s, Studio 54, but Durst was hardly a shallow party boy. He loved to sculpt, and architecture was his passion. Friends and acquaintances have described him as an erratic and sometimes difficult personality, but his quirks never kept him from being with beautiful women. He knew Jackie Kennedy Onassis well, and for a time he dated Mia Farrow's younger sister Prudence. He also spent time with Beatle John Lennon during a period when they were both into primal scream therapy.

What brought him from the Manhattan high life to life on the run, hiding out in modest to run-down quarters all across the country, remains a mystery. While living in Texas, he wore women's clothing and posed as a mute woman named "Dorothy Ciner." In New Orleans, his cross-dressing alter ego was known as "Diane Winn." He was arrested for the murder and dismemberment of Morris Black, a cranky old man who lived across the hall from "Ms. Ciner" and her frequent visitor, Robert Durst. Released on $300,000 bail, Durst fled and proceeded to zigzag across the country until he was finally nabbed for shoplifting near his alma mater, Lehigh University, in eastern Pennsylvania.

Perhaps it was the habitual marijuana use that influenced his strange behavior. Or perhaps he was permanently traumatized by his mother's suicide, which he witnessed when he was 7. (She jumped off the roof of the family home.) Authorities from New York and Los Angeles are still trying to sort out the extent of his criminality. While he is not an official suspect in the disappearance and probable death of his first wife Kathleen, a number of her friends believe that he might have been responsible, just as he might be involved in the gangland-style murder of his best friend, author Susan Berman. One thing authorities know for sure is that he is responsible for the murder and beheading of Morris Black in Galveston because Durst confessed to that crime, claiming self-defense. What remains a puzzle, however, is his motive.


What Happened to Kathleen Durst?

Kathleen Durst was a fourth-year medical student at Albert Einstein School of Medicine when she disappeared in January 1982. Her marriage to Robert Durst had been deteriorating, and he'd been beating her, but according to her friends, she lived in denial. Many of them pleaded with her to leave Durst, to get out of the house before he did something drastic, but Kathleen always had an excuse for staying, either minimizing the severity of his abuse or saying that the prenuptial agreement he'd made her sign was "unfair" and she wouldn't leave him without getting what was rightfully hers.

Unlike Robert, she did not come from money. Kathleen was the product of a middle-class Irish Catholic family from New Jersey. She had been renting an apartment in a building that Durst owned on East 52nd Street. They'd met when she stopped by his office one day to drop off her rent check. She apparently found his quiet intensity attractive.

The problems with their marriage seemed inevitable. Durst's eccentric charms impressed her less and less as she matured from an adoring 19-year-old bride to a self-confident woman on the brink of becoming a physician. Having graduated from college with a degree in nursing, Kathleen had decided to pursue her dream of becoming a pediatrician. Consequently she no longer had time for partying long into the night and jetting around the world on a whim.

Robert and Kathleen maintained three homes in the New York City area—an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, another on the Upper East Side, and a house in the small Westchester County town of South Salem—and by moving from one address to another, they managed to avoid each other a good deal of the time. Naturally she was preoccupied with her heavy course load, but Durst apparently felt that he was losing his control over her. At the time Durst drove a Volkswagen Beetle and seldom went anywhere without his husky, Igor. He was also undergoing primal scream therapy, which encourages patients to scream loudly and repeatedly to release their underlying fears and frustrations, but people who had heard Durst's primal scream claimed that it was closer to an animal's growl.

A friend of Kathleen's, Gilberte Najamy, threw a party one Sunday night in late January 1982 at her apartment in Manhattan. Kathleen went alone; Durst was at the South Salem house. Not long after she arrived, Durst called, looking for her. When Kathleen got off the phone, she told Najamy that she had to leave because her husband was very upset, but she also told her friend, "If something happens to me, check it out. I'm afraid of what Bobby will do." As Ned Zeman reports in his Vanity Fair article, Kathleen had been saying this to many of her friends for quite some time.

Four days after Najamy's party Durst walked into the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to report that his wife was missing. The detective who spoke to him was immediately suspicious. Why did Durst wait four days to report this? Durst explained that with her studies and their three residences, it wasn't unusual for them not to see each other for several days in a row. Durst admitted that they had argued when she returned from the party. She had consumed a bottle of wine while they fought, he said, after which he drove her to the Katonah, New York, train station. She'd taken the 9:15 p.m. train back to the city, he said. The detective felt that Durst was oddly calm for someone who couldn't locate his wife.

Witnesses claimed that they saw Kathleen at the Upper West Side apartment on Monday, the day after the party, and a woman who identified herself as Kathleen had called the dean's office at Albert Einstein School of Medicine that day to say that she was sick and wouldn't be in class.

Kathleen Durst reward poster
Kathleen Durst reward poster

The next week Durst told the New York Post that he was offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of his wife. Her friends found this bitterly amusing because they were convinced that Durst had done something terrible to her and was trying to cover it up. They retraced her steps on the night of the party and theorized that, given the train schedules, Kathleen would have had no more than 40 minutes to drink an entire bottle of wine if she had indeed made the 9:15 train back to Manhattan.

Westchester County D.A. Jeanine Pirro investigates Kathleen Dursts disappearance
Westchester County D.A. Jeanine Pirro investigates Kathleen Dursts disappearance (AP/WideWorld)

Police efforts to find Kathleen Durst were unsuccessful, and no substantial leads were uncovered. Her friends, however, kept her memory alive, assembling as much information as they could in the hope that they would someday find out what really happened to her. Many of those files were lost when the homes of two of Kathleen's friends, Najamy and Kathy Traystman, were broken into and ransacked. Among the items stolen were all their files relating to their friend's mysterious disappearance.

The search for Kathleen Durst became Gilberte Najamy's personal mission, and she made sure that Durst knew that she was keeping track of him. Najamy's intense desire to get to the truth consumed her life and drove her to alcoholism.

Robert Durst, on the other hand, went on with his life, dating new women, globetrotting, gambling, living the good life. Durst had apparently put his first wife behind him. On December 11, 2000, almost 19 years after Kathleen had disappeared, he remarried. His new wife was his long-time girlfriend, Debrah Charatan, a successful real-estate broker.

The case of Kathleen Durst remains unsolved.


Robert Durst - Millionaire Murderer
By Anthony Bruno
Death of A Mob Princess

Thirteen days after Durst married for the second time, one of his closest friends was found murdered in her Los Angeles home. On Christmas Eve 2000, Susan Berman, 55, was discovered in her house facedown in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by bloody paw prints made by her cats. A single bullet had pierced her skull. Berman, a crime writer, had known Durst since college when they had both attended UCLA.

Given Berman's background and the cold-blooded nature of the crime, her murder was initially assumed to be a gangland hit. After all, she was the daughter of Davie Berman, partner of the legendary mobster Bugsy Siegel in the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and an associate of the infamous Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky. Susan Berman had written two books about her experiences and observations as a Jewish Mafia princess, Lady Las Vegas and Easy Street, and she was in the process of putting together a television documentary series on Las Vegas for A&E. Some felt that she was about to reveal secrets that the mob wanted to keep buried, so they had her rubbed out.

But the police didn't put much stock in the gangland-slaying theory. What privileged information could Berman have had that she hadn't already revealed in her books? Also, the children of mobsters are relatively minor players in the underworld. What they have to say usually consists of kitchen-table memories, not exposés of the schemes and scams cooked up in the smoky backrooms where the real deals went down. Plenty of other mob children had published books and none of them had been executed for it, so why would the mob single out Susan Berman?

An effusive personality with a gift for telling stories, Berman was prone to falling into fits of depression. According to Ned Zeman, "she was famously phobic. She wouldn't cross bridges or ride elevators alone. She felt unsafe. She nailed closed her bedroom windows. She bolted her doors, even if you just stepped out for a smoke." Her list of eccentricities rivaled her good friend, Robert Durst's. She and Durst had been confidantes for many years, and they shared a unique bond—both of their mothers had committed suicide. Like a surrogate parent, Durst had given Berman away at her wedding.

Berman's paranoid behavior could have been caused in part by the continual frustrations of a career that never seemed to get off the ground. Her books sold poorly. The proposed movie that was going to be made of her book Easy Street fell through as did the Broadway musical she wrote based on the Dreyfus Affair. She was struggling financially as well as mentally, borrowing money from friends, promising to pay them back as soon as her life turned around. In 2000, her old car was breaking down, and she wrote to her friend Robert Durst, asking if she could borrow $7,000 to buy a used Isuzu. For months she waited for his reply, then out of the blue in November she received a check from him for $25,000. He told her it was a gift, not a loan.

The police in Los Angeles believe that Berman's killer was someone she knew well. There was no sign of forced entry, and she had always been very careful about keeping her house locked, so she had probably invited her killer in. The fact that she was shot in the back of the head indicates that she had trusted her killer enough to turn her back on him. Someone as paranoid as Susan Berman would have only done that with a close friend.

Further investigation revealed that Berman had been contacted by the New York State Police near the time of her killing. She was scheduled to be interviewed by them regarding the 1982 disappearance of Kathleen Durst. Shortly before Berman's murder, New York magazine reported that she had told a friend she had information that was "going to blow the top off things." Strangely before she died, she had received a second check for $25,000 from Durst. Was this more good will from her friend or something else?

Gilberte Najamy suggests that this largesse from Durst might have been hush money to keep Berman quiet. In Zeman's article Najamy claims that someone other than Kathleen Durst had made the call to the dean's office at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in 1982, saying that she was sick. After all, why would a student have called the dean's office to report something so mundane? Najamy believes that it might have been Susan Berman who made the call. Najamy raises the possibility that Berman was blackmailing her old friend with what she knew about his involvement in Kathleen's disappearance.

No matter what the nature of these payments were, the timing of Berman's murder casts suspicion on Robert Durst, and the authorities in Los Angeles would like to talk to him, after his case in Texas has finished.

The Crank and the Cross-Dresser

On September 30, 2001, a 13-year-old boy was fishing with his family on a slip near his home on Channelview Drive in Galveston, Texas, when he spotted something floating in the water. He called to his father, who initially thought the object was a dead pig. It was, in fact, a human torso with the head and limbs removed.

That same day nearby residents reported seeing trash bags floating in with the tide. The police checked these and found the legs and arms that belonged to the torso. The head, however, was not recovered. The bags contained other items as well—a plastic sheath for a bow saw, a drop cloth, a receipt from a local hardware store dated September 28, and a copy of the Galveston County Daily News with a mailing label addressed to 2213 Avenue K, Galveston. Days later another washed-up trash bag yielded a .22-caliber automatic with two loaded clips. Fingerprints were taken from the dead man's hands, and a match was found on file in South Carolina. The prints belonged to a man named Morris Black who had been convicted of a misdemeanor there in 1997.

Morris Black, victim
Morris Black, victim

By all accounts, 71-year-old Morris Black was just a cranky old man with a quick temper. He was a loner and a drifter who'd been estranged from his family for many years. He'd worked at various times in his life as a merchant seaman, a maintenance man, and a watch repairman, always on the move, never setting down roots. He'd lived in places as diverse as Long Beach, Mississippi; Malden, Massachusetts; North Charlestown Beach, South Carolina; and several towns in Texas. His last address was 2213 Avenue K in Galveston, which is a four-unit apartment building. Though he lived very modestly there, he had nine bank accounts at a bank in South Dakota with balances totaling almost $137,000.

While living in South Carolina, he'd been convicted of making threats to a utility company. After receiving an electric bill that he felt was excessive, he'd called the utility and threatened to blow up their offices.

As cantankerous as he was, Black did have a charitable side. He'd found a source for discount reading glasses on the Internet and purchased five cases of them, which he then gave to the Jesse Tree, a Galveston charitable organization, with strict orders that they be given away to the needy. When he found out that the Jesse Tree was trying to raise funds to a buy a building for its headquarters, Black told the director that he knew someone who might be able to help them out.

"Dorothy Ciner" lived across the hall from Black at 2213 Avenue K. According to the landlord, Ciner suffered from a debilitating throat condition and communicated exclusively through written notes. She was about five feet seven and flat-chested, and wore glasses held together with tape and what was obviously a wig. Her apartment usually seemed unoccupied, but she did have a friend who stayed with her from time to time, a man who had introduced himself as Robert Durst. In hindsight, the landlord had to admit that he had never actually seen Ciner and Durst together.

Durst's Texas home
Durst's Texas home (AP/WorldWide)

When the police went to Black's apartment to investigate his murder, they found a trail of blood leading from the victim's apartment to Ciner's. When they searched her apartment, they discovered a pair of blood-encrusted boots and a bloody knife. There were traces of blood on the kitchen floor, the carpets and the apartment door. "Dorothy Ciner" could not be located, but the police did track down another Dorothy Ciner who lived in another state. She said that she had been a classmate of Robert Durst's once, but she'd lost contact with him years ago.

Robert Durst mugshot
Robert Durst mugshot (AP/WorldWide)

The police ran a check on Durst's name with the Division of Motor Vehicles and learned that Durst had a silver Honda CRV mini-SUV registered under his name in Texas. Nine days after Black's body was found, Durst's car was spotted by a Galveston patrolman and pursued. The silver Honda was pulled over, and Durst was behind the wheel. The patrolman noticed a bow saw on the floor of the vehicle. Durst was arrested and charged with the murder of Morris Black.

The authorities were certain that Durst had committed the murder, but they didn't know why. Had the meddlesome Black been too nosy about his peculiar neighbor "Ms. Ciner?" Had he discovered that the lady across the hall was in fact Robert Durst? Had Black threatened to expose Durst? Investigators were stumped as to Durst's motive for the murder, but they hoped to get to the bottom of it before Durst went on trial.

Durst's case, bail was set at $300,000, a high figure for Galveston but not much of a sacrifice for a multimillionaire. Durst's wife Debrah Charatan posted bail through a bondsman, and Durst was free to go, pending his arraignment, which was set for October 16. As part of the terms of his release, he had to promise to be in court that day.

On the Run

Robert Durst did not show up for his scheduled arraignment in Galveston. The slippery billionaire was long gone, and investigators had to pick up his trail and find him before he killed again. The autopsy performed on Morris Black revealed a particularly brutal murder. Black had died of a heart attack brought on by a vicious beating as evidenced by the extensive bruising on his chest, shoulders, back, left leg, and elbows. X-rays showed four breaks in his upper right arm. Cuts in his right and left index fingers indicated that the killer had tried to cut them off, most likely to eliminate fingerprint evidence. The killer had apparently changed his mind and opted for cutting off both arms as well as Black's legs and head. The head has yet to be recovered.

If Robert Durst was the murderer, as all the evidence seemed to indicate, then the police had a violent fugitive on their hands. Unlike shootings that can be done from a distance, Black's murder showed a cold-blooded killer who had no problem getting his hands dirty. Durst's history of erratic behavior and sudden rages made him a danger to the public. If he had killed Susan Berman nine months earlier, Durst's pattern of violence was escalating. He had to be found and apprehended before he lashed out again.

With all his wealth, Durst was not the average fugitive from justice. Durst maintained residences all across the country. A private investigator hired by the Galveston County Daily News discovered addresses for Durst, who sometimes used the alias "Robert Deal Jezowski," in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California; New York City and Maldenbridge, New York; and Coral Gables, Florida. Later investigations uncovered an apartment in San Francisco and a house in Trinidad, California, 300 miles north of San Francisco.

Phone records from yet another Durst residence in Dallas showed a series of calls received from an apartment in New Orleans. Investigators interviewed the landlord of that apartment building who said he had rented the unit to a man who dressed as a woman, who called himself "Diane Winn," and claimed to be mute. In the apartment the police found a wig, a video tape of a news program about Kathleen Durst's disappearance, and a silver medallion that had once belonged to Susan Berman's father Davie Berman. Susan had bequeathed it to Durst in her will. The investigators also found a set of keys to the Honda CRV that Durst had been driving when he was arrested in Galveston. The police had found a 9mm handgun in the car at the time of his arrest. Susan Berman had been shot with a 9mm.

Further investigation revealed that Durst had traveled to Mobile, Alabama, after he skipped bail in Galveston and rented a red Chevrolet Corsica under the name of Morris Black, using Black's driver's license and Medicare card. Durst had shaved his head and eyebrows by this time to look more like a 71-year-old. Now dressed as a woman, he went from Mobile to Plano, Texas, to visit a friend. Seven weeks passed before he was spotted again, this time in Pennsylvania.

The Deadly Shoplifter

On November 31, 2001, a suspicious-looking man wearing a brown wig and a false blond mustache entered the Wegman's supermarket in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania. Surveillance cameras captured him taking a single Band-Aid from a box on the shelf, then going into the rest room and putting the Band-Aid over a shaving cut. Upon leaving the rest room, he wandered over to a refrigerated case and took a $5.49 chicken salad sandwich as well as a newspaper from the rack, hid them in his jacket, and walked out of the store. Security guards, who had been tracking his movements through the store on closed-circuit television screens, quickly went after him and stopped him in the parking lot as he was getting into a red Chevrolet Corsica.

Durst lawyers Michael Kennedy & Daniel Alterman
Durst lawyers Michael Kennedy & Daniel Alterman (AP/WorldWide)

The police were called in, and they asked the man his name. "Robert Durst," he said. They asked for his Social Security number, but the number he gave did not match the name. They took him into custody, and he did not resist, but he refused to answer any more questions until he spoke to his lawyer. According to Ned Zeman's Vanity Fair article, Durst's New York attorney Michael Kennedy called the police station soon after his client's arrest, even though Durst hadn't yet been given the opportunity to call him.

The police quickly ascertained that the Maryland license plates on the Corsica were stolen. In the trunk of the car they found a quantity of marijuana, two .38-caliber handguns, and $37,000 in hundred dollar bills. All of Durst's known bank accounts had been frozen as soon as he failed to show up for his arraignment in Galveston.

Robert Durst escorted by deputies
Robert Durst escorted by deputies (AP/WorldWide)

Oddly, Durst, whose head and eyebrows were shaved clean when he was arrested, had more than $500 in cash in his pocket while he shoplifted merchandise worth less than $10. Durst knew the area because he had been an undergraduate at nearby Lehigh University, but why he decided to go there is unknown.

Texas prosecutors Joel Bennett and Kurt Sistrunk
Texas prosecutors Joel Bennett and Kurt Sistrunk (AP/WideWorld)

Durst was extradited to Texas on January 28, 2002. He was a model prisoner and went without incident. At his arraignment he entered a guilty plea in the death of Morris Black, but claimed that he had unintentionally killed Black in self-defense, a claim that will be hard to support given the extent of Black's injuries. Durst's trial is set to begin on September 9, 2002. In the meantime, investigators in New York and Los Angeles are actively pursuing their own cases involving Durst, and a judge in Texas has ordered Durst to supply a handwriting sample to the Los Angeles Police Department.

But even if Robert Durst is convicted in the murder of Morris Black, many perplexing questions might still swirl around him. What was his motive for killing Black? Were Durst and Black involved in some way that investigators have yet to uncover? Had Black figured out that his neighbor "Dorothy Ciner" was in fact Robert Durst and threatened to expose him? Had Black discovered something else about his strange neighbor?

Is Durst insane, and does that account for his bizarre and violent behavior? Or is he crazy like a fox? Perhaps his ongoing and escalating eccentricities were part of a deliberate plan to lay the groundwork for a future insanity plea.

And of course questions still remain concerning Durst's possible involvement in Susan Berman's murder. Did he have a reason to kill his closest friend?

Kathleen Durst, victim
Kathleen Durst, victim

But the biggest mystery of all has to be the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen. Did he kill her? Did their problems go beyond the typical marital strife? If he did kill her, what did he do with her body? Or did something else befall Kathleen Durst? Will we ever know?

The Morris Black Murder Trial by Rachael Bell

Robert Durst in custody
Robert Durst in custody

On August, 19, 2003, Courttv.com reported that "prominent jury selection expert Robert Hirschorn has recommended - that several changes be made in the questions used to pick jurors."

Durst's attorneys argued over the validity Lorre Cusick's identification of Durst from a photo lineup. Chip Lewis claimed that the photo lineup contained a mug shot of Durst which had appeared in the media.

Cusick, who lived near the place where Morris Black's body parts were found. She testified that Durst was asking if the area was good for night fishing. Prosecutors believe that Durst was looking for a place to dump Black's body before he killed him.

Juan A. Lorenzo of the Austin American-Statesman wrote that Chip Lewis argued that blood, a paring knife and other evidence found in Durst's apartment and trash cans should be suppressed because police did not have a warrrant for the searches. Instead, they gained access by convincing the landlord to grant access as a tennant "safety check."

Assistant District Attorney Joel Bennett rebutted Lewis, saying that the trash cans are property of the City of Galveston, not Durst, and that when police came asking about the apartment rented by Dorothy Ciner, who was really Durst in disguise, the landlord had suggested that they check on "her" apartment to see if she was okay.

Lorenzo wrote that Durst's attorneys want to keep jurors from learning that he had a butcher's saw and a pistol in his possession when arrested.

The Galveston County wrote that Lewis asked the judge to suppress Durst's arrest, the search of his vehicle and all the evidence taken from it, maintaining that the initial stop was illegal.

Police say they arrested Durst to serve a subpoena for driving with an expired inspection sticker and had probable cause to search the car without the warrant that they obtained later in the day.

Judge Criss did not rule on any of the defense's motions, but may when the hearing resumes on Tuesday, August 26.

For full coverage of the trial, check with courttv.com :

On August 8, 2003, the New York Post reported that Durst asked Judge Criss for permission to fire his defense lawyers. Durst wrote that he "had already paid $1.2 mil in retainers to cover all costs relating to his trial," but now they were trying to "squeeze him for another $600,000 in legal fees." The judge called the parties together and resolved the conflict.

In January of 2002, Robert Durst faced Texas Judge Susan Criss in the State District Court in Galveston County on the charge of murder of 71-year-old Morris Black who lived across the hall from him . "I am not guilty, your honor," he stated. Durst claims that he killed Black in self defense.

In April of 2002, Morris Black's autopsy report was available to the court indicating that while Black had suffered a heart attack, it was not what killed him. Wounds that he had experienced prior to death had caused blood to enter his lungs. Black had also suffered several bruises on his body. Officially, Morris Black was classified as a homicide. Black had been dismembered post mortem and thrown into Galveston Bay, but his head was not recovered.

John Springer of Court TV reported on the feasibility of Durst's self-defense claim:

"'I could see how they could try a self-defense, particularly if there are no witnesses,' said Ron Gold, a Morristown, N.J., lawyer who has followed the Durst case in the media. 'But when you have a ton of aggravating factors — concealing what happened and throwing the body parts in the bay and things like that — insanity and self-defense are the last resort.' Gold won an acquittal in a self-defense case last year. Convicted murderer Ambrose Harris killed a fellow New Jersey Death Row inmate, during what amounted to a death-cage match as prison guards and inmates looked on. But in the Harris case, Gold said, there were multiple witnesses and Harris did not even have to take the witness stand in his own defense. In Durst's case, there were apparently no witnesses to the killing. Only physical evidence can point to what happened between him and Durst, who moved about the country disguised as a mute woman long before he even got to Galveston."

Also in April, Scott E. Williams of The Daily News reported that Judge Criss expanded her December, 2001, gag order to include private investigator Bobbi Bacha and members of Black's family who have been involved in a civil case against Durst. Williams also reported that one television camera would be allowed during parts of the trial.

"Judge Susan Criss ruled she would allow one pool television camera during her reading of the charge to the jury, the final arguments and the reading of the verdict in the murder trial of Robert Durst. She also said she would allow one still camera to record most of the trial, which has been scheduled for Aug. 25 in her 212th Judicial District Court."

Another key event is the revival of the investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Kathie Durst, Robert Durst's wife, in Westchester County, N.Y. Westchester D.A. Jeanine Pirro put the case back on the front burner. Kathie Durst's disappearance was very suspicious, and Robert was clearly a suspect, but there was no evidence at the time of her disappearance to charge her husband with a crime. Also, he was the son of a very wealthy real estate magnate and could marshal the best defenses that money could buy.

A Deadly Secret, by Matt Birkbeck
A Deadly Secret, by Matt Birkbeck

In 2002, a provocative new book was published: "A Deadly Secret" by Matt Birkbeck. According to Robert Ingrassia of the New York Daily News, "Birkbeck says a friend urged Kathie Durst to tell her husband that if he didn't give her a fair divorce settlement, she would turn him in for embezzling from his family's company. The book suggests that Kathie Durst, after ingesting 2 grams of cocaine and two bottles of wine at a party, arrived at their Westchester County home Jan. 31, 1982, to find a violence-prone spouse who was more mentally disturbed than anyone knew." Several days later, Durst reported her missing.

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