I don't necessarily believe that in life "everything happens for a reason."
And certainly a reason can be found for anything that happens.
I do believe that "there are no coincidences" in life.
And that somehow, even though we may not know the reason at the time, life has it's own odd way of balancing itself out.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Timeless Classics
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/index.html
Timeless Classic
An American Tragedy
The real story behind Theodore Dreiser's wildly popular novel was the murder of lovely (and pregnant) Grace Brown by her boyfriend, Chester Gillette.
Andersonville
A massive graveyard where the corpses were still breathing and graves were yet to be covered. A shameful American model for Auschwitz.
Fatty Arbuckle
Beloved comedian is charged with the rape and murder of the beautiful, but promiscuous, actress Virginia Rappe. It takes three different trials to sort out what really happened at the wild party at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel.
Taylor Behl
Seventeen-year-old Virginia college student disappeared without a trace, until her remains were found a month later. A former friend, Ben W. Fawley, claims he killed her accidentally. Fawley, a 38-year-old amateur photographer, faces grand jury Jan 17.
Harlen Coben's Murder by the Book
Mark Winger, a husband and father, catches a man in the act of bludgeoning his wife to death. Winger shoots and kills the man, and the ensuing investigation reveals the intruder was a mentally troubled cab driver, against whom the wife had filed a complaint after a harrowing drive with him a few days earlier. Police find that Winger had acted justifiably in the shooting. A few years later, Mark Winger files a civil suit against the cab company. But amazingly, this suit results in the husband's own arrest for the double murder. Author Harlan Coben guides viewers through the incredible twists and turns of a real-life page-turner.
Biloxi Confidential
When a Biloxi state judge and his politician wife were found murdered gangland style, it remained the biggest news to hit the Gulf Coast until hurricane Katrina. The huge investigation that followed soon led detectives to suspect the involvement of an underground network of criminals known as the Dixie Mafia. But as if the uncovering of this new criminal organization wasn't shocking enough, investigators were forced to deal with the swirling rumors that none other than the Mayor of Biloxi himself was involved. As the story unraveled, years of intense police work revealed a million dollar phone scam run by Angola prisoners and its secret ties to the most powerful figures in Biloxi.
The Birdman of Alcatraz
Robert Stroud, self-taught prison inmate spent most of his adult life in jail becoming an expert on birds, their breeding and diseases. Stroud was a very controversial prisoner who fought until his death for the freedom to pursue his scientific achievements.
Robert Blake
The full story behind the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley and the trial of her celebrity husband.
The Black Dahlia
Hollywood's most famous murder case took place in post-war Los Angeles. Elizabeth Short, an engagingly attractive young woman was found brutally murdered and dumped in a vacant lot. She was called the "Black Dahlia" because she always dressed in black. This unsolved case became an obsession and will continue to be legendary when the Black Dahlia movie comes out this fall with an all-star cast.
Lizzie Borden
This classic has to be one of the most enduring murder mysteries America has ever produced. Elderly Andrew Borden, still in his heavy morning coat, reclines on a mohair-covered sofa, his boots on the floor so as not to soil the upholstery. As he naps, his wife, Abby, is on the floor of the guestroom upstairs, dead for the past hour and a half, killed by the same hand, with the same axe, that is about to strike him, as he sleeps.
The bloodiness of the acts is startling. Along with the gruesome nature of the crimes is the unexpected character of the accused, not a hatchet-wielding maniac, but a church-going, Sunday-school-teaching, respectable, spinster-daughter, charged with parricide, the murder of parents, a crime worthy of Classical Greek tragedy. Many people believed she killed her father and stepmother, but recent forensic research suggests that she didn't.
Thomas Capano
An upstanding citizen, the eldest son of a family who had risen to wealth and influence, he'd been a trusted political strategist, the city attorney, a successful prosecutor and legal counsel to one of the governors.
Anne Marie Fahey, a beautiful young woman who worked in the Delaware governor's office, was the latest of Capano's mistresses. She had tried to break off the secret affair, but he could not tolerate the idea that she initiated the break-up. She belonged to him. Her act damaged his belief in his omnipotence and he couldn't live with that.
When she disappeared, suspicion fell on him, but there was no evidence to arrest the wealthy and well-connected Capano until a year later when there was a major break in the case. The amazing and highly publicized murder trial was the subject of Ann Rule's best selling book, "And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano, The Deadly Seducer."
Rick Chance
Like in F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal novel, everything Rick Chance did was bigger than life. His rise from farmer to millionaire came faster than most; his marketing style was more brash, his marriages more passionate, his divorces more rancorous, his death more violent. A paradox of personalities, Chance was part huckster, part born-again Christian, part genius, part fool. Labels didn't seem to fit Chance and he was constantly shedding one persona for another. People loved him or they hated him, or they loved to hate him.
Mark David Chapman
The assassin who snuffed out the life of John Lennon and ended an era
Anita Cobby
Anita Cobby, former beauty queen and nurse, was killed by a gang of spineless cowards who preyed on women and other people's property between prison terms. Between the five of the them they had over 50 convictions for offenses including larceny, illegal drug use, car theft, breaking and entering, armed robbery, escaping lawful custody, receiving stolen goods, assault and rape. Her murder united the public in outrage, with many Australians calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty.
Dr. David Cornbleet
When a successful New York dermatologist is brutally murdered, surveillance footage helps reveal the murderer's identity. But will his killer ever be brought to justice?
Bob Crane
The star of Hogan's Heroes and subject of the new movie Auto Focus was a sex addict and a blabbermouth about his myriad of sexual conquests. His murder remains mysterious.
Deadly Delivery
A proud day for Donald and Marsha Levine is brutally ended by a hired gunman.
Doctors Who Kill
Dr. Katherine Ramsland explores cases of doctors who kill and why they do it. Includes new case file on Dr. Robert Bierenbaum.
A Double Life
Daniel Williams left his Georgia home to live in LA where he believed he could live the lifestyle that he wished, but pretending to be a woman led to his death when an unsuspecting sex partner discovered the truth. Plucked from the cold case files, two detectives solve the case with new technology.
David F. Downey
Troubled Philadelphia area teenager Ashley Burg tries to straighten out her drug addiction, but slips up and accepts a night of fun and sex from technology consultant David F. Downey. Downey plies her with more cocaine than she can handle and she becomes dangerously ill. Instead of calling an ambulance, he tries to get his procurer to take care of the situation. Precious time is lost as Downey negotiates a deal and Ashley's young life slips away.
New chapters show Downey as a man without boundaries.
Dominick Dunne's: "Maternal Instinct"
A Murdered Prostitute Found in a Sleazy Las Vegas Motel Leads Investigators to the East Coast and into the Heart of one of America's Richest Families
Robert Durst
Rich and powerful, eccentric and very arrogant, he shoplifted a chicken sandwich and was apprehended for the mutilation murder of an old man. This millionaire cross-dressing killer may have murdered his best friend and others as well.
Tanya Flowerday
Twenty-five-year-old Edward Grimsley admits that under the influence of illegal drugs he abducted, raped and murdered 18-year-old Tanya Flowerday and dumped her body on the street. The rumor that her murder was the subject of a "snuff film: that was sold outside of South Africa," has been discounted.
Ginny Foat
When Ginny Foat walked out of the Jefferson Parish Courthouse in Gretna, Louisiana a free woman on November 16, 1983, she and others who sided with her during her high-profile trial on murder charges were quick to proclaim it a victory for the feminist cause.
But was it a victory for a noble cause or was it merely a personal triumph for an abused, formerly battered woman who found herself on the dark end of a bad situation? Was Ginny Foat truly "innocent" in the 1965 bludgeoning death of an Argentine businessman visiting New Orleans or was she found "not guilty" simply because there was too much reasonable doubt in the minds of a sympathetic jury?
Deborah Gardner
Dubbed the most beautiful girl in the Peace Corps, it seemed that everyone loved Deborah Gardner.
She was smart, alluring, funny and free-spirited. Her life was a wide-open adventure and she loved teaching in the Pacific island of Tonga. Unfortunately, someone as attractive as she was had unwelcome suitors: one, a fellow Peace Corps worker became relentless, obsessed pursuer who attacked her in a jealous rage.
Perhaps even more shocking than her brutal murder is that fact that her killer is alive and free in New York City.
Bonnie Garland
Wealthy Scarsdale student is brutally bludgeoned in her sleep by her Mexican-American boyfriend. A bizarre public relations campaign orchestrated by the Catholic clergy results in a trial that portrays the killer as the victim.
Barry George
Stalker targets popular British television personality Jill Dando for death.
Genore Guillory
Kind black benefactor is killed by white trash family that she helped.
Captain Charles Hall
Famous Arctic explorer is murdered. Did the German Dr. Bessels do it and, if so, why?
Hall-Mills Murders
Fascinating classic unsolved mystery of minister and his choir singer lover
Brooke Hart
The Lindbergh-vintage kidnap/murder of this popular & attractive young man drove the people of San Jose to lynch the suspects.
Haunted Crime Scenes
Dr. Katherine Ramsland tours "America's Most Haunted" — scenes where ghosts of past crimes still roam the earth.
Haunted Crime Scenes, Part 2
Spirits of the murdered and the murderers are often trapped in the circumstances of their death or of the crime they committed. Originally published as a sequel to the very popular first Halloween special called Haunted Crime Scenes, our second special tour has just been updated with the story of a famous serial killer's ghost which is haunting another killer.
Carl Hall & Bonnie Heady
Alcoholic couple tricks school into releasing Bobby Greenlease into their custody. A classic murder/kidnap case.
Patty Hearst
Impressionable young newspaper heiress robs banks with Kathleen Soliah and the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped her.
The Heiress and the Hitman
When Phoenix investigators found the wife of the cattle baron Ed Tovrea murdered, her stepson became an immediate suspect. It was well known that he despised the victim for marrying his late father and receiving most of the family fortune. But without any hard evidence, the suspicions of the police remained just that- suspicions. For seven long years, the case remains unsolved until an anonymous caller pointed the finger at one of the stepson's former business partners, accusing him of being one of the killers at the scene. While prosecutors managed to convict the business partner, they couldn't get him to talk, leaving a chilling question. Who was the other killer? Could he be enjoying his inheritance to this day?
Glenn & Justin Helzer
Two "nice" Mormon boys become murdering monsters when they create cult called the Children of Thunder.
Internet-assisted Suicide
The Sharon Lopatka case is a new twist in deviant behavior.
Helen Jewett
Beautiful and cultured New York City prostitute fell in love with her wealthy client. Suddenly, Helen is murdered and her lover suspected.
David and Carol Keeffe
Who killed David and Carol Keeffe and why? After over a year authorities have made no arrests. Will the killer ever be caught?
The Keystone Diamond
A kind and generous grandfather is found murdered in his bedroom, a victim of gunshots. LAPD investigators discover that a family diamond is the key to revealing a killer close and familiar.
Sante & Kenny Kimes
Sante Kimes and son Kenneth lived the same outrageously bold life of crime that made their predecessors Bonnie and Clyde famous for generations. This incestuous duo meticulously planned elaborate multimillion dollar scams and executed their wealthy victims without a scintilla of remorse.
Andrew Kissel
Hated embezzler found murdered in his empty Greenwich mansion after his wife left him with just a bed to sleep on just before his date with federal prison. With so many enemies, police have many potential suspects his estranged wife, a Columbian "Man Friday," and the many people who were Kissel's victims. Could his death have been a staged suicide?
Marleen Konings
Lovely foreign exchange student murdered by habitual criminal, who was released early only to kill two people and break his parole repeatedly.
Ervil LeBaron
He grimaced as he looked down at the body of his pregnant daughter in the trunk of his car. Rebecca's neck was chafed raw from the rope her killers had used to strangle her, and a stream of blood had dripped from her nose onto the mat under her head. He slammed the trunk shut.
The green-and-white Ford LTD was new, and it was the spiffiest car Ervil had ever owned. Not only had his daughter's blood soiled his precious car, it was also an indication of sloppy work by the murderers whom he'd contracted.
Bruce George Peter Lee
Troubled 19-year-old arsonist sets fire to the home of the Hasties in Hull, England. Called a one-family crime wave, the Hastie family murders suggested revenge by some criminal associates. Attention focused on Lee who surprised police by confessing to 23 murders by arson, including the killing of a baby.
Leopold and Loeb
It was called the "Crime of the Century." Two incredibly wealthy and brilliant young Chicago men with IQs almost off the chart decided to execute "the perfect crime." Their arrogance convinced them that they were so superior intellectually superior to the that they would never be discovered. Their kidnap victim would be random, the first boy they found walking home from the prep school they had gone to. As it happened, the first boy they saw was a cousin of Dickie Loeb's named Bobby Franks. Bobby willing jumped into the car with his cousin and his friend and took the last ride of his life.
The next day, a ransom note was sent to his terrified parents telling them that to ensure Bobby's safe return, $10,000 a very large sum in 1924 must be produced by noon. "George Johnson" called to give the Franks family instructions on where to leave the ransom money, but in the meantime, Bobby's body had been found in a culvert.
As the investigation of Bobby's brutal murder went into high gear, suspicion increasingly focused on the two young college men. Amazingly, despite their intelligence a few stupid mistakes handed prosecutors a powerful case. Public sentiment in Chicago, exacerbated by anti-Semitism in the heartland, was to hang them.
But then the legendary Clarence Darrow took on their defense, but even so there were very serious doubts that even the great lawyer could save them from the hangman's noose.
Mary Kay Letourneau
Bizarre case of married teacher who raped her young student and eventually had two children by him. Now out of prison, she has married her victim. Happy ever after? Not entirely.
Sylvia Likens
Sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens was found murdered with "I'm a prostitute and proud of it" burned onto her stomach. The perpetrators of her slow, tortured death turned out to be the family that was caring for her and several neighborhood children.
A new attempt to bring the story of this 1965 murder to the screen is underway for 2007, but does it give us any insight into how mother and group of children could commit such a horrible crime?
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
Son of an American hero kidnapped and murdered
The Main Line Murders
Affluent Philadelphia suburban school system experiences an unusual staff problem- a principal who is a pervert, and two flaky English teachers, who have an affair. One of them and her two children are murdered. Who did it: the other English teacher or the principal who has a "thing" for animals?
Charles Manson
Many hardened criminals blame their crimes on their parents, but few have as clear a case as Charles Manson. His mother was an alcoholic prostitute who sold him for a pitcher of beer. In and out of reform school as a youngster, he had an IQ of 109 and became a kind of institutional politician and manipulator by age 19.
From then on his continuous scrapes with the law landed him in prison. His record there described Charlie as having "a tremendous drive to call attention to himself.
On March 21, 1967, Charlie was released from prison in California. He was 32 years old and more than half of his life had been spent in institutions. He protested his freedom. "Oh, no, I can't go outside there...I knew that I couldn't adjust to that world."
Charlie started to attract a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general.
This was the core of the Manson Family execution team who he ordered to kill pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her wealthy house guests, and the well-to-do LaBiancas.
Charlie was trying to start a race war and vet himself as a prophet of doom.
Philip Markoff, Crime and Craigslist
Craigslist's large social network makes it a powerful tool not only for those seeking the exotic or obscure, but for those with darker appetites as well.
Ken McElroy
Shootist, rapist and consummate intimidator, he terrorized his community until the people took the law into their own hands. Twenty-five years later, the daughters of his victims give their first joint interview about what really happened in the famous "candy incident" that put the town in the center of a media circus.
Dr. Josef Mengele
Nazi death camp doctor specializes in horrible experiments on Jewish twin children.
Dean Milo
The execution-style shooting of the head of a rapidly growing, family-owned beauty products discounter leads police into a tangled web of sibling rivalry, greed and bargain-basement hitmen.
Dr. William Minor
After murdering a man, brilliant American surgeon contributes to literary masterpiece from an insane asylum.
The Martha Moxley Murder
Ineptitude or slanted justice? With updates posted regularly!
Murder in Old Port -- The Amy St. Laurent Case
Attractive and independent Amy St. Laurent disappears. What follows is a vast, multi-jurisdictional effort, with unprecedented collaboration between law enforcement agencies. Over the course of their tireless efforts, investigators are led through multiple suspects, conflicting stories and cover-ups, and eventually, to a dangerous sexual predator who's been hiding in plain sight.
Murder in Tennessee
Some people believe that politicians will say and do anything to win. In Tennessee, bizarre politician, Byron "Low Tax" Looper, tries to win the election by murdering his opponent. Fortunately, this daring campaign strategy has not caught on nationwide.
Murder in Woodstock
Judy Nilan, an outstanding member of a safe, upscale Connecticut community, goes missing while she's jogging. Excellent detective and forensics work leads to the handy man on the estate of Carroll Spinney, known to the public as "Big Bird."
Murder of Betty Gore
Housewife and church-member Betty Gore is found murdered in her own home. She has been axed to death 41 times. Wylie Police Department's investigation tracks down Betty's friend Candace Montgomery. On trial for murder, Candace admits to killing Betty and claims self-defense. In one of the most shocking verdicts delivered by a Texas jury, Candace is cleared of murder.
Murder of Dr. Howard Appledorf
A popular professor of nutrition at the University of Florida was suffocated by two killers and a sixteen-year-old accomplice who fled the scene before the killing. The killers were bent upon taking the doctor's money, goods and car.
Murder of Karyn Slover
When Karyn Hearn Slover's car is found abandoned near her Decatur, Illinois workplace, nobody expects the tragedy that is to follow. When her dismembered corpse is found in a nearby lake, investigators must find a motive for murder. In a case with few leads, it is the hard work of forensic scientists from across the continent that catches the killers. That forensic evidence leads back to the family of Karyn's ex-husband vengeful, domineering grandparents who will stop at nothing to keep Karyn's son for their own.
Murder on Rue Dauphine
When New Orleans police discover the butchered body of a Roman Catholic priest, their investigation into his bizarre death uncovers a secret life of sex, lies, and videotape.
Mystery Couple
Two handsome, affluent young adults are murdered one night on a dark country road. Who are they?
Russell Obremski
Alcohol & drug-fuelled binge results in the brutal murder of two women. Instead of serving his two life sentences, quirks in the Oregon prison system let this dangerous man out after a few years.
Dr. George Parkman
The murder and dismemberment of this prominent Bostonian by a Harvard Medical College professor creates a major trial event where expert medical testimony is used extensively for the first time in the U.S.
JonBenet Ramsey
Beautiful and talented child was found dead in the basement of her doting parents' Boulder, Colorado home. Police immediately assumed that either John or Patsy Ramsey are guilty of their daughter's death. The media demonized the parents for entering her in beauty pageants and destroyed the Ramseys' excellent reputation by promoting unsubstantiated rumors and distortions of fact. Finally, retired investigator Lou Smit analyzes the evidence that helped vindicate the long-suffering parents, but stubborn wrong-headed law enforcement in Boulder let the trail of the real killer get cold. This case ranks as one of the worst travesties of justice in recent times.
Kathy Reichs' Murder by the Book: Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Once pegged "The Most Hated Woman in America," Madalyn and her family disappear from their Austin, TX home, never to be seen again. Intrepid newspaper reporter John MacCormack takes it upon himself to find the truth. After an arduous 5-year investigation, and with the help of the IRS and the FBI, can MacCormack get his story and justice for Madalyn?
Mary Rogers
The enduring mystery of Mary Roger's murder is the basis for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget." Poe actually knew the pretty young woman who worked in a New York cigar store that he frequented.
Michael Rockefeller
Wealthy young man entered American lore, joining a pantheon of missing persons that includes Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and D.B. Cooper. As with each of the other lost luminaries, various theories about his fate have been floated over the years. Did he simply drown, as his family concluded? Or did he decide to go native and lose himself in the jungles of New Guinea? Was he a meal for a shark or a crocodile? Or, in the most sensational speculative twist, was he a pale human trophy for New Guinean headhunters?
Gladys Towles Root
Eccentric & flamboyant lady lawyer defends rapists when the law was a man's world. She also defended the accused in the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.
Exclusive Interview With Stephen Singular
JonBenet Ramsey case expert and author of "Presumed Guilty"
The Marquis de Sade
This famous French aristocrats name coined the word sadism. His often violently pornographic writings, espoused a hedonistic lifestyle, free from the restraints of ethics and morals. His libertine behavior and writings earned him significant prison time, but created a legacy that has lived for centuries. Countless books and movies have been inspired by his controversial philosophies.
The Sandwich Shop Murders
Two teenagers, best friends since grade school, are gunned down execution style in a Northridge sandwich shop. The community is outraged and it is up to LAPD to find the killer. Once they find him, it will take a special forensic technique to bring him to justice.
Otto Sanhuber
Can you imagine hiding your lover in your attic for many years without your spouse knowing about it? This amazing story did not fail to get Hollywood's attention. The real story of the man and the woman that kept him which inspired The Man in the Attic and The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom.
Edouard Stern
Aging enfant terrible of international finance with decades of personal and business enemies is found shot in his Swiss apartment clad in a latex bodysuit and fetish restraints—a lethal intersection of obsession and greed.
Sex in the Suburbs
Troubled Philadelphia area teenager Ashley Burg tries to straighten out her drug addiction, but slips up and accepts a night of fun and sex from technology consultant David F. Downey. Downey plies her with more cocaine than she can handle and she becomes dangerously ill. Instead of calling an ambulance, he tries to get his procurer to take care of the situation. Precious time is lost as Downey negotiates a deal and Ashley's young life slips away.
New chapters show Downey as a man without boundaries.
O. J. Simpson
This may be considered the crime of the last century. t became the most publicized case in US history. It cost over $20 million to fight and defend, ran up 50,000 pages of trial transcript and called 150 witnesses.
No movie or television courtroom drama would have dared to unfold the way this one did, and it was not without coincidence that it evolved in Los Angeles, so often referred to by cynics as "La La Land." The rest of the country became obsessed with the empty, celebrity-dominated West Los Angeles backdrop to the crime.
To many, particularly in minority communities, the trial of Orenthal James Simpson became not so much a determination of his guilt or innocence of murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether or not a black man could find justice in a legal system designed by and largely administered by whites. To others, many of whom were white, the key question was whether a mostly minority jury would convict a black celebrity regardless of the weight of evidence against him.
More than 10 years after the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, the former football star continues to stir controversy. Analysis of the murder and road rage trials, and forensics.
Dru Sjodin
Vivacious and beautiful North Dakota college student is abducted, tortured, raped and murdered. Level 3 sex offender Alfonso Rodriquez goes to trial and could become first person executed in ND in over 100 years. Dru's Law, if enacted, would create a national sex offender registry.
Madeleine Smith
Did Madeleine Smith poison her lover? A Victorian mystery.
The Starbucks Shooter
On the morning of July 7, 1997, the day-shift manager of a Georgetown Starbucks Coffee Shop arrives and finds the bodies of employees Emory Evans, Aaron Goodrich and Caity Mahoney who had worked the night before. All three have been shot to death. Metro Detective James Trainum and FBI Special Agent Bradley Garrett team up and spend nearly two years tracking down one of D.C.'s most notorious and elusive career criminals: Carl Derek Cooper.
Charles Starkweather
The inspiration for movies Natural Born Killers, Badlands, and Wild at Heart
William Desmond Taylor
One of Hollywood's most successful directors is murdered. Before police arrive, a studio exec goes through his house searching for evidence of scandal, may have planted monogrammed underwear with a famous actress's initials. What is the studio trying to hide? Who of the many suspects had a motive for murder? The detailed story. But some experts discount the rumors that swirled around the popular director and the cast of characters. Another view of the case focuses on confirmed facts.
Crystal Todd
Ken Register- clean-cut, polite and religious young man shocked his small town of Conway, SC, when he raped & murdered his best friend, Crystal Todd.
Top Ten Haunted Places
Just in time for Halloween, Crime Library investigates America's creepiest locations. With mob killings, fraudulent burials, unsolved cases, serial killers, sadistic sexual torture, mass murders, greed and the occult—if these places aren't haunted, nowhere is.
Trial of Jesus
Mel Gibson's The Passion has stirred up age-old controversies. Get the facts before you go.
Typhoid Mary
Mary Mallon was a New York cook who unknowingly gave typhoid to the families who hired her. When health authorities realized that she was the typhoid carrier, they quarantined her for several years. Then when she agreed not to work as a cook, they let her go, but after several other typhoid outbreaks which were traced to her cooking, health authorities took more drastic measures.
Unholy Homicide, Part One
A shocking number of clergymen have committed murder. Motives range from covering theft, getting rid of an unwanted wife or son, retribution, and even the termination of an abortion doctor.
Unholy Homicide, Part Two
Cult-like rituals inside the church, a nun murdering another nun for ministering to the prostitutes, a preacher beating his wife to death with a chair leg. The tip of the iceberg in the stories of violent clergy members.
The Vengeful Heart
Major true crime authors Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth tell the most amazing story of a dominating doctor who did the unthinkable to his long-time mistress.
Stanford White Case
Great beauty, enormous wealth and murder. He was the architect for the homes of the super rich, but his scandalous seduction of the beautiful actress at age 16 came back to haunt him when her millionaire husband took revenge. This was the famous case that inspired the movie Ragtime.
Hans Vorhauer
Son of Nazi SS officer, he deals meth and operates as a contract killer. Forensic sculptor Frank Bender takes expert aim & brings him in.
Joseph Wambaugh's Murder by the Book
A gunman in a black mask ambushes 70-year-old William Overson and shoots him to death in his vehicle outside of a golf course in San Diego on April 12, 2004. San Diego Police Department's search for the gunman uncovers a vicious organized crime unit that planned to rob Overson of $60,000
Where There's Smoke...
A small brush fire near the LA airport reveals a horrific discovery — a burning body bound and gagged with duct tape. Near the unidentified victim are bullet casings and unusual tire tracks, but investigators are stymied. What they do next is a remarkable forensics case study.
The Wichita Horror
On the chilly night of December 8, 2000, the strapping bachelor feared his life would come to an abrupt end.
He was at a convenience store when two young men approached him and brandished a gun. They ordered him into his own car. As his heart hammered, the men told him to drive to various ATMs where they forced him to withdraw $800. Later Andrew Schreiber said, "I was just hoping if I did what they said, they'd let me live."
They did. The assailants released him in a field, physically unharmed but badly shaken. They shot out the tires of his vehicle, then jumped in another car and sped away.
But this was just the beginning. Soon the city would be shocked by the brutal murders of a teacher and several college-age young people and then plunged into a crisis when the case was finally solved.
Christa Worthington
She had reached the top of her game: the daughter of a prominent New England family and Vassar graduate, she lived a very glamorous life as a fashion writer for Women's Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times, traveling to Paris and London, interviewing celebrities.
While Christa's career had soared to new heights, she was not content in her personal life. She longed to have children, but she was unmarried. She wanted to have the time to make a serious mark with her writing, perhaps a play. So right around her 40th birthday, she left New York and went to live in the quaint little town of Truro on Cape Cod, where a couple years later after an affair with a married man, she had a daughter. Motherhood changed Christa's ambitions and she found contentment raising her little girl.
All that came to an abrupt end when Christa was brutally murdered with her daughter as witness. The toddler was found days later trying to revive her mother and sustain herself by suckling her mother's breast and eating bits of cereal.
The investigation focused on the Christa's relationships and even the heroin-addicted prostitute that was her father's mistress, but when the real killer was found through DNA evidence 3 years later, it was a real shock. The trial of this fashion-writer mom's killer leaves many troublesome questions unanswered.
Yahweh ben Yahweh Cult
Intelligent and educated, the Black Messiah styled himself into a religious leader who preached love and black empowerment but his followers practiced murder, intimidation and extortion. Those who joined the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult included fraternity boys, sheriff's deputies, grandmothers and ex-cons fresh out of prison. They allowed Mitchell to control every aspect of their lives, from their diet to their finances to their sexual liaisons.
Timeless Classic
An American Tragedy
The real story behind Theodore Dreiser's wildly popular novel was the murder of lovely (and pregnant) Grace Brown by her boyfriend, Chester Gillette.
Andersonville
A massive graveyard where the corpses were still breathing and graves were yet to be covered. A shameful American model for Auschwitz.
Fatty Arbuckle
Beloved comedian is charged with the rape and murder of the beautiful, but promiscuous, actress Virginia Rappe. It takes three different trials to sort out what really happened at the wild party at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel.
Taylor Behl
Seventeen-year-old Virginia college student disappeared without a trace, until her remains were found a month later. A former friend, Ben W. Fawley, claims he killed her accidentally. Fawley, a 38-year-old amateur photographer, faces grand jury Jan 17.
Harlen Coben's Murder by the Book
Mark Winger, a husband and father, catches a man in the act of bludgeoning his wife to death. Winger shoots and kills the man, and the ensuing investigation reveals the intruder was a mentally troubled cab driver, against whom the wife had filed a complaint after a harrowing drive with him a few days earlier. Police find that Winger had acted justifiably in the shooting. A few years later, Mark Winger files a civil suit against the cab company. But amazingly, this suit results in the husband's own arrest for the double murder. Author Harlan Coben guides viewers through the incredible twists and turns of a real-life page-turner.
Biloxi Confidential
When a Biloxi state judge and his politician wife were found murdered gangland style, it remained the biggest news to hit the Gulf Coast until hurricane Katrina. The huge investigation that followed soon led detectives to suspect the involvement of an underground network of criminals known as the Dixie Mafia. But as if the uncovering of this new criminal organization wasn't shocking enough, investigators were forced to deal with the swirling rumors that none other than the Mayor of Biloxi himself was involved. As the story unraveled, years of intense police work revealed a million dollar phone scam run by Angola prisoners and its secret ties to the most powerful figures in Biloxi.
The Birdman of Alcatraz
Robert Stroud, self-taught prison inmate spent most of his adult life in jail becoming an expert on birds, their breeding and diseases. Stroud was a very controversial prisoner who fought until his death for the freedom to pursue his scientific achievements.
Robert Blake
The full story behind the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley and the trial of her celebrity husband.
The Black Dahlia
Hollywood's most famous murder case took place in post-war Los Angeles. Elizabeth Short, an engagingly attractive young woman was found brutally murdered and dumped in a vacant lot. She was called the "Black Dahlia" because she always dressed in black. This unsolved case became an obsession and will continue to be legendary when the Black Dahlia movie comes out this fall with an all-star cast.
Lizzie Borden
This classic has to be one of the most enduring murder mysteries America has ever produced. Elderly Andrew Borden, still in his heavy morning coat, reclines on a mohair-covered sofa, his boots on the floor so as not to soil the upholstery. As he naps, his wife, Abby, is on the floor of the guestroom upstairs, dead for the past hour and a half, killed by the same hand, with the same axe, that is about to strike him, as he sleeps.
The bloodiness of the acts is startling. Along with the gruesome nature of the crimes is the unexpected character of the accused, not a hatchet-wielding maniac, but a church-going, Sunday-school-teaching, respectable, spinster-daughter, charged with parricide, the murder of parents, a crime worthy of Classical Greek tragedy. Many people believed she killed her father and stepmother, but recent forensic research suggests that she didn't.
Thomas Capano
An upstanding citizen, the eldest son of a family who had risen to wealth and influence, he'd been a trusted political strategist, the city attorney, a successful prosecutor and legal counsel to one of the governors.
Anne Marie Fahey, a beautiful young woman who worked in the Delaware governor's office, was the latest of Capano's mistresses. She had tried to break off the secret affair, but he could not tolerate the idea that she initiated the break-up. She belonged to him. Her act damaged his belief in his omnipotence and he couldn't live with that.
When she disappeared, suspicion fell on him, but there was no evidence to arrest the wealthy and well-connected Capano until a year later when there was a major break in the case. The amazing and highly publicized murder trial was the subject of Ann Rule's best selling book, "And Never Let Her Go: Thomas Capano, The Deadly Seducer."
Rick Chance
Like in F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal novel, everything Rick Chance did was bigger than life. His rise from farmer to millionaire came faster than most; his marketing style was more brash, his marriages more passionate, his divorces more rancorous, his death more violent. A paradox of personalities, Chance was part huckster, part born-again Christian, part genius, part fool. Labels didn't seem to fit Chance and he was constantly shedding one persona for another. People loved him or they hated him, or they loved to hate him.
Mark David Chapman
The assassin who snuffed out the life of John Lennon and ended an era
Anita Cobby
Anita Cobby, former beauty queen and nurse, was killed by a gang of spineless cowards who preyed on women and other people's property between prison terms. Between the five of the them they had over 50 convictions for offenses including larceny, illegal drug use, car theft, breaking and entering, armed robbery, escaping lawful custody, receiving stolen goods, assault and rape. Her murder united the public in outrage, with many Australians calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty.
Dr. David Cornbleet
When a successful New York dermatologist is brutally murdered, surveillance footage helps reveal the murderer's identity. But will his killer ever be brought to justice?
Bob Crane
The star of Hogan's Heroes and subject of the new movie Auto Focus was a sex addict and a blabbermouth about his myriad of sexual conquests. His murder remains mysterious.
Deadly Delivery
A proud day for Donald and Marsha Levine is brutally ended by a hired gunman.
Doctors Who Kill
Dr. Katherine Ramsland explores cases of doctors who kill and why they do it. Includes new case file on Dr. Robert Bierenbaum.
A Double Life
Daniel Williams left his Georgia home to live in LA where he believed he could live the lifestyle that he wished, but pretending to be a woman led to his death when an unsuspecting sex partner discovered the truth. Plucked from the cold case files, two detectives solve the case with new technology.
David F. Downey
Troubled Philadelphia area teenager Ashley Burg tries to straighten out her drug addiction, but slips up and accepts a night of fun and sex from technology consultant David F. Downey. Downey plies her with more cocaine than she can handle and she becomes dangerously ill. Instead of calling an ambulance, he tries to get his procurer to take care of the situation. Precious time is lost as Downey negotiates a deal and Ashley's young life slips away.
New chapters show Downey as a man without boundaries.
Dominick Dunne's: "Maternal Instinct"
A Murdered Prostitute Found in a Sleazy Las Vegas Motel Leads Investigators to the East Coast and into the Heart of one of America's Richest Families
Robert Durst
Rich and powerful, eccentric and very arrogant, he shoplifted a chicken sandwich and was apprehended for the mutilation murder of an old man. This millionaire cross-dressing killer may have murdered his best friend and others as well.
Tanya Flowerday
Twenty-five-year-old Edward Grimsley admits that under the influence of illegal drugs he abducted, raped and murdered 18-year-old Tanya Flowerday and dumped her body on the street. The rumor that her murder was the subject of a "snuff film: that was sold outside of South Africa," has been discounted.
Ginny Foat
When Ginny Foat walked out of the Jefferson Parish Courthouse in Gretna, Louisiana a free woman on November 16, 1983, she and others who sided with her during her high-profile trial on murder charges were quick to proclaim it a victory for the feminist cause.
But was it a victory for a noble cause or was it merely a personal triumph for an abused, formerly battered woman who found herself on the dark end of a bad situation? Was Ginny Foat truly "innocent" in the 1965 bludgeoning death of an Argentine businessman visiting New Orleans or was she found "not guilty" simply because there was too much reasonable doubt in the minds of a sympathetic jury?
Deborah Gardner
Dubbed the most beautiful girl in the Peace Corps, it seemed that everyone loved Deborah Gardner.
She was smart, alluring, funny and free-spirited. Her life was a wide-open adventure and she loved teaching in the Pacific island of Tonga. Unfortunately, someone as attractive as she was had unwelcome suitors: one, a fellow Peace Corps worker became relentless, obsessed pursuer who attacked her in a jealous rage.
Perhaps even more shocking than her brutal murder is that fact that her killer is alive and free in New York City.
Bonnie Garland
Wealthy Scarsdale student is brutally bludgeoned in her sleep by her Mexican-American boyfriend. A bizarre public relations campaign orchestrated by the Catholic clergy results in a trial that portrays the killer as the victim.
Barry George
Stalker targets popular British television personality Jill Dando for death.
Genore Guillory
Kind black benefactor is killed by white trash family that she helped.
Captain Charles Hall
Famous Arctic explorer is murdered. Did the German Dr. Bessels do it and, if so, why?
Hall-Mills Murders
Fascinating classic unsolved mystery of minister and his choir singer lover
Brooke Hart
The Lindbergh-vintage kidnap/murder of this popular & attractive young man drove the people of San Jose to lynch the suspects.
Haunted Crime Scenes
Dr. Katherine Ramsland tours "America's Most Haunted" — scenes where ghosts of past crimes still roam the earth.
Haunted Crime Scenes, Part 2
Spirits of the murdered and the murderers are often trapped in the circumstances of their death or of the crime they committed. Originally published as a sequel to the very popular first Halloween special called Haunted Crime Scenes, our second special tour has just been updated with the story of a famous serial killer's ghost which is haunting another killer.
Carl Hall & Bonnie Heady
Alcoholic couple tricks school into releasing Bobby Greenlease into their custody. A classic murder/kidnap case.
Patty Hearst
Impressionable young newspaper heiress robs banks with Kathleen Soliah and the Symbionese Liberation Army who kidnapped her.
The Heiress and the Hitman
When Phoenix investigators found the wife of the cattle baron Ed Tovrea murdered, her stepson became an immediate suspect. It was well known that he despised the victim for marrying his late father and receiving most of the family fortune. But without any hard evidence, the suspicions of the police remained just that- suspicions. For seven long years, the case remains unsolved until an anonymous caller pointed the finger at one of the stepson's former business partners, accusing him of being one of the killers at the scene. While prosecutors managed to convict the business partner, they couldn't get him to talk, leaving a chilling question. Who was the other killer? Could he be enjoying his inheritance to this day?
Glenn & Justin Helzer
Two "nice" Mormon boys become murdering monsters when they create cult called the Children of Thunder.
Internet-assisted Suicide
The Sharon Lopatka case is a new twist in deviant behavior.
Helen Jewett
Beautiful and cultured New York City prostitute fell in love with her wealthy client. Suddenly, Helen is murdered and her lover suspected.
David and Carol Keeffe
Who killed David and Carol Keeffe and why? After over a year authorities have made no arrests. Will the killer ever be caught?
The Keystone Diamond
A kind and generous grandfather is found murdered in his bedroom, a victim of gunshots. LAPD investigators discover that a family diamond is the key to revealing a killer close and familiar.
Sante & Kenny Kimes
Sante Kimes and son Kenneth lived the same outrageously bold life of crime that made their predecessors Bonnie and Clyde famous for generations. This incestuous duo meticulously planned elaborate multimillion dollar scams and executed their wealthy victims without a scintilla of remorse.
Andrew Kissel
Hated embezzler found murdered in his empty Greenwich mansion after his wife left him with just a bed to sleep on just before his date with federal prison. With so many enemies, police have many potential suspects his estranged wife, a Columbian "Man Friday," and the many people who were Kissel's victims. Could his death have been a staged suicide?
Marleen Konings
Lovely foreign exchange student murdered by habitual criminal, who was released early only to kill two people and break his parole repeatedly.
Ervil LeBaron
He grimaced as he looked down at the body of his pregnant daughter in the trunk of his car. Rebecca's neck was chafed raw from the rope her killers had used to strangle her, and a stream of blood had dripped from her nose onto the mat under her head. He slammed the trunk shut.
The green-and-white Ford LTD was new, and it was the spiffiest car Ervil had ever owned. Not only had his daughter's blood soiled his precious car, it was also an indication of sloppy work by the murderers whom he'd contracted.
Bruce George Peter Lee
Troubled 19-year-old arsonist sets fire to the home of the Hasties in Hull, England. Called a one-family crime wave, the Hastie family murders suggested revenge by some criminal associates. Attention focused on Lee who surprised police by confessing to 23 murders by arson, including the killing of a baby.
Leopold and Loeb
It was called the "Crime of the Century." Two incredibly wealthy and brilliant young Chicago men with IQs almost off the chart decided to execute "the perfect crime." Their arrogance convinced them that they were so superior intellectually superior to the that they would never be discovered. Their kidnap victim would be random, the first boy they found walking home from the prep school they had gone to. As it happened, the first boy they saw was a cousin of Dickie Loeb's named Bobby Franks. Bobby willing jumped into the car with his cousin and his friend and took the last ride of his life.
The next day, a ransom note was sent to his terrified parents telling them that to ensure Bobby's safe return, $10,000 a very large sum in 1924 must be produced by noon. "George Johnson" called to give the Franks family instructions on where to leave the ransom money, but in the meantime, Bobby's body had been found in a culvert.
As the investigation of Bobby's brutal murder went into high gear, suspicion increasingly focused on the two young college men. Amazingly, despite their intelligence a few stupid mistakes handed prosecutors a powerful case. Public sentiment in Chicago, exacerbated by anti-Semitism in the heartland, was to hang them.
But then the legendary Clarence Darrow took on their defense, but even so there were very serious doubts that even the great lawyer could save them from the hangman's noose.
Mary Kay Letourneau
Bizarre case of married teacher who raped her young student and eventually had two children by him. Now out of prison, she has married her victim. Happy ever after? Not entirely.
Sylvia Likens
Sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens was found murdered with "I'm a prostitute and proud of it" burned onto her stomach. The perpetrators of her slow, tortured death turned out to be the family that was caring for her and several neighborhood children.
A new attempt to bring the story of this 1965 murder to the screen is underway for 2007, but does it give us any insight into how mother and group of children could commit such a horrible crime?
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
Son of an American hero kidnapped and murdered
The Main Line Murders
Affluent Philadelphia suburban school system experiences an unusual staff problem- a principal who is a pervert, and two flaky English teachers, who have an affair. One of them and her two children are murdered. Who did it: the other English teacher or the principal who has a "thing" for animals?
Charles Manson
Many hardened criminals blame their crimes on their parents, but few have as clear a case as Charles Manson. His mother was an alcoholic prostitute who sold him for a pitcher of beer. In and out of reform school as a youngster, he had an IQ of 109 and became a kind of institutional politician and manipulator by age 19.
From then on his continuous scrapes with the law landed him in prison. His record there described Charlie as having "a tremendous drive to call attention to himself.
On March 21, 1967, Charlie was released from prison in California. He was 32 years old and more than half of his life had been spent in institutions. He protested his freedom. "Oh, no, I can't go outside there...I knew that I couldn't adjust to that world."
Charlie started to attract a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general.
This was the core of the Manson Family execution team who he ordered to kill pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her wealthy house guests, and the well-to-do LaBiancas.
Charlie was trying to start a race war and vet himself as a prophet of doom.
Philip Markoff, Crime and Craigslist
Craigslist's large social network makes it a powerful tool not only for those seeking the exotic or obscure, but for those with darker appetites as well.
Ken McElroy
Shootist, rapist and consummate intimidator, he terrorized his community until the people took the law into their own hands. Twenty-five years later, the daughters of his victims give their first joint interview about what really happened in the famous "candy incident" that put the town in the center of a media circus.
Dr. Josef Mengele
Nazi death camp doctor specializes in horrible experiments on Jewish twin children.
Dean Milo
The execution-style shooting of the head of a rapidly growing, family-owned beauty products discounter leads police into a tangled web of sibling rivalry, greed and bargain-basement hitmen.
Dr. William Minor
After murdering a man, brilliant American surgeon contributes to literary masterpiece from an insane asylum.
The Martha Moxley Murder
Ineptitude or slanted justice? With updates posted regularly!
Murder in Old Port -- The Amy St. Laurent Case
Attractive and independent Amy St. Laurent disappears. What follows is a vast, multi-jurisdictional effort, with unprecedented collaboration between law enforcement agencies. Over the course of their tireless efforts, investigators are led through multiple suspects, conflicting stories and cover-ups, and eventually, to a dangerous sexual predator who's been hiding in plain sight.
Murder in Tennessee
Some people believe that politicians will say and do anything to win. In Tennessee, bizarre politician, Byron "Low Tax" Looper, tries to win the election by murdering his opponent. Fortunately, this daring campaign strategy has not caught on nationwide.
Murder in Woodstock
Judy Nilan, an outstanding member of a safe, upscale Connecticut community, goes missing while she's jogging. Excellent detective and forensics work leads to the handy man on the estate of Carroll Spinney, known to the public as "Big Bird."
Murder of Betty Gore
Housewife and church-member Betty Gore is found murdered in her own home. She has been axed to death 41 times. Wylie Police Department's investigation tracks down Betty's friend Candace Montgomery. On trial for murder, Candace admits to killing Betty and claims self-defense. In one of the most shocking verdicts delivered by a Texas jury, Candace is cleared of murder.
Murder of Dr. Howard Appledorf
A popular professor of nutrition at the University of Florida was suffocated by two killers and a sixteen-year-old accomplice who fled the scene before the killing. The killers were bent upon taking the doctor's money, goods and car.
Murder of Karyn Slover
When Karyn Hearn Slover's car is found abandoned near her Decatur, Illinois workplace, nobody expects the tragedy that is to follow. When her dismembered corpse is found in a nearby lake, investigators must find a motive for murder. In a case with few leads, it is the hard work of forensic scientists from across the continent that catches the killers. That forensic evidence leads back to the family of Karyn's ex-husband vengeful, domineering grandparents who will stop at nothing to keep Karyn's son for their own.
Murder on Rue Dauphine
When New Orleans police discover the butchered body of a Roman Catholic priest, their investigation into his bizarre death uncovers a secret life of sex, lies, and videotape.
Mystery Couple
Two handsome, affluent young adults are murdered one night on a dark country road. Who are they?
Russell Obremski
Alcohol & drug-fuelled binge results in the brutal murder of two women. Instead of serving his two life sentences, quirks in the Oregon prison system let this dangerous man out after a few years.
Dr. George Parkman
The murder and dismemberment of this prominent Bostonian by a Harvard Medical College professor creates a major trial event where expert medical testimony is used extensively for the first time in the U.S.
JonBenet Ramsey
Beautiful and talented child was found dead in the basement of her doting parents' Boulder, Colorado home. Police immediately assumed that either John or Patsy Ramsey are guilty of their daughter's death. The media demonized the parents for entering her in beauty pageants and destroyed the Ramseys' excellent reputation by promoting unsubstantiated rumors and distortions of fact. Finally, retired investigator Lou Smit analyzes the evidence that helped vindicate the long-suffering parents, but stubborn wrong-headed law enforcement in Boulder let the trail of the real killer get cold. This case ranks as one of the worst travesties of justice in recent times.
Kathy Reichs' Murder by the Book: Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Once pegged "The Most Hated Woman in America," Madalyn and her family disappear from their Austin, TX home, never to be seen again. Intrepid newspaper reporter John MacCormack takes it upon himself to find the truth. After an arduous 5-year investigation, and with the help of the IRS and the FBI, can MacCormack get his story and justice for Madalyn?
Mary Rogers
The enduring mystery of Mary Roger's murder is the basis for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget." Poe actually knew the pretty young woman who worked in a New York cigar store that he frequented.
Michael Rockefeller
Wealthy young man entered American lore, joining a pantheon of missing persons that includes Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and D.B. Cooper. As with each of the other lost luminaries, various theories about his fate have been floated over the years. Did he simply drown, as his family concluded? Or did he decide to go native and lose himself in the jungles of New Guinea? Was he a meal for a shark or a crocodile? Or, in the most sensational speculative twist, was he a pale human trophy for New Guinean headhunters?
Gladys Towles Root
Eccentric & flamboyant lady lawyer defends rapists when the law was a man's world. She also defended the accused in the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.
Exclusive Interview With Stephen Singular
JonBenet Ramsey case expert and author of "Presumed Guilty"
The Marquis de Sade
This famous French aristocrats name coined the word sadism. His often violently pornographic writings, espoused a hedonistic lifestyle, free from the restraints of ethics and morals. His libertine behavior and writings earned him significant prison time, but created a legacy that has lived for centuries. Countless books and movies have been inspired by his controversial philosophies.
The Sandwich Shop Murders
Two teenagers, best friends since grade school, are gunned down execution style in a Northridge sandwich shop. The community is outraged and it is up to LAPD to find the killer. Once they find him, it will take a special forensic technique to bring him to justice.
Otto Sanhuber
Can you imagine hiding your lover in your attic for many years without your spouse knowing about it? This amazing story did not fail to get Hollywood's attention. The real story of the man and the woman that kept him which inspired The Man in the Attic and The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom.
Edouard Stern
Aging enfant terrible of international finance with decades of personal and business enemies is found shot in his Swiss apartment clad in a latex bodysuit and fetish restraints—a lethal intersection of obsession and greed.
Sex in the Suburbs
Troubled Philadelphia area teenager Ashley Burg tries to straighten out her drug addiction, but slips up and accepts a night of fun and sex from technology consultant David F. Downey. Downey plies her with more cocaine than she can handle and she becomes dangerously ill. Instead of calling an ambulance, he tries to get his procurer to take care of the situation. Precious time is lost as Downey negotiates a deal and Ashley's young life slips away.
New chapters show Downey as a man without boundaries.
O. J. Simpson
This may be considered the crime of the last century. t became the most publicized case in US history. It cost over $20 million to fight and defend, ran up 50,000 pages of trial transcript and called 150 witnesses.
No movie or television courtroom drama would have dared to unfold the way this one did, and it was not without coincidence that it evolved in Los Angeles, so often referred to by cynics as "La La Land." The rest of the country became obsessed with the empty, celebrity-dominated West Los Angeles backdrop to the crime.
To many, particularly in minority communities, the trial of Orenthal James Simpson became not so much a determination of his guilt or innocence of murder in the first degree, beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether or not a black man could find justice in a legal system designed by and largely administered by whites. To others, many of whom were white, the key question was whether a mostly minority jury would convict a black celebrity regardless of the weight of evidence against him.
More than 10 years after the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, the former football star continues to stir controversy. Analysis of the murder and road rage trials, and forensics.
Dru Sjodin
Vivacious and beautiful North Dakota college student is abducted, tortured, raped and murdered. Level 3 sex offender Alfonso Rodriquez goes to trial and could become first person executed in ND in over 100 years. Dru's Law, if enacted, would create a national sex offender registry.
Madeleine Smith
Did Madeleine Smith poison her lover? A Victorian mystery.
The Starbucks Shooter
On the morning of July 7, 1997, the day-shift manager of a Georgetown Starbucks Coffee Shop arrives and finds the bodies of employees Emory Evans, Aaron Goodrich and Caity Mahoney who had worked the night before. All three have been shot to death. Metro Detective James Trainum and FBI Special Agent Bradley Garrett team up and spend nearly two years tracking down one of D.C.'s most notorious and elusive career criminals: Carl Derek Cooper.
Charles Starkweather
The inspiration for movies Natural Born Killers, Badlands, and Wild at Heart
William Desmond Taylor
One of Hollywood's most successful directors is murdered. Before police arrive, a studio exec goes through his house searching for evidence of scandal, may have planted monogrammed underwear with a famous actress's initials. What is the studio trying to hide? Who of the many suspects had a motive for murder? The detailed story. But some experts discount the rumors that swirled around the popular director and the cast of characters. Another view of the case focuses on confirmed facts.
Crystal Todd
Ken Register- clean-cut, polite and religious young man shocked his small town of Conway, SC, when he raped & murdered his best friend, Crystal Todd.
Top Ten Haunted Places
Just in time for Halloween, Crime Library investigates America's creepiest locations. With mob killings, fraudulent burials, unsolved cases, serial killers, sadistic sexual torture, mass murders, greed and the occult—if these places aren't haunted, nowhere is.
Trial of Jesus
Mel Gibson's The Passion has stirred up age-old controversies. Get the facts before you go.
Typhoid Mary
Mary Mallon was a New York cook who unknowingly gave typhoid to the families who hired her. When health authorities realized that she was the typhoid carrier, they quarantined her for several years. Then when she agreed not to work as a cook, they let her go, but after several other typhoid outbreaks which were traced to her cooking, health authorities took more drastic measures.
Unholy Homicide, Part One
A shocking number of clergymen have committed murder. Motives range from covering theft, getting rid of an unwanted wife or son, retribution, and even the termination of an abortion doctor.
Unholy Homicide, Part Two
Cult-like rituals inside the church, a nun murdering another nun for ministering to the prostitutes, a preacher beating his wife to death with a chair leg. The tip of the iceberg in the stories of violent clergy members.
The Vengeful Heart
Major true crime authors Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth tell the most amazing story of a dominating doctor who did the unthinkable to his long-time mistress.
Stanford White Case
Great beauty, enormous wealth and murder. He was the architect for the homes of the super rich, but his scandalous seduction of the beautiful actress at age 16 came back to haunt him when her millionaire husband took revenge. This was the famous case that inspired the movie Ragtime.
Hans Vorhauer
Son of Nazi SS officer, he deals meth and operates as a contract killer. Forensic sculptor Frank Bender takes expert aim & brings him in.
Joseph Wambaugh's Murder by the Book
A gunman in a black mask ambushes 70-year-old William Overson and shoots him to death in his vehicle outside of a golf course in San Diego on April 12, 2004. San Diego Police Department's search for the gunman uncovers a vicious organized crime unit that planned to rob Overson of $60,000
Where There's Smoke...
A small brush fire near the LA airport reveals a horrific discovery — a burning body bound and gagged with duct tape. Near the unidentified victim are bullet casings and unusual tire tracks, but investigators are stymied. What they do next is a remarkable forensics case study.
The Wichita Horror
On the chilly night of December 8, 2000, the strapping bachelor feared his life would come to an abrupt end.
He was at a convenience store when two young men approached him and brandished a gun. They ordered him into his own car. As his heart hammered, the men told him to drive to various ATMs where they forced him to withdraw $800. Later Andrew Schreiber said, "I was just hoping if I did what they said, they'd let me live."
They did. The assailants released him in a field, physically unharmed but badly shaken. They shot out the tires of his vehicle, then jumped in another car and sped away.
But this was just the beginning. Soon the city would be shocked by the brutal murders of a teacher and several college-age young people and then plunged into a crisis when the case was finally solved.
Christa Worthington
She had reached the top of her game: the daughter of a prominent New England family and Vassar graduate, she lived a very glamorous life as a fashion writer for Women's Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and the New York Times, traveling to Paris and London, interviewing celebrities.
While Christa's career had soared to new heights, she was not content in her personal life. She longed to have children, but she was unmarried. She wanted to have the time to make a serious mark with her writing, perhaps a play. So right around her 40th birthday, she left New York and went to live in the quaint little town of Truro on Cape Cod, where a couple years later after an affair with a married man, she had a daughter. Motherhood changed Christa's ambitions and she found contentment raising her little girl.
All that came to an abrupt end when Christa was brutally murdered with her daughter as witness. The toddler was found days later trying to revive her mother and sustain herself by suckling her mother's breast and eating bits of cereal.
The investigation focused on the Christa's relationships and even the heroin-addicted prostitute that was her father's mistress, but when the real killer was found through DNA evidence 3 years later, it was a real shock. The trial of this fashion-writer mom's killer leaves many troublesome questions unanswered.
Yahweh ben Yahweh Cult
Intelligent and educated, the Black Messiah styled himself into a religious leader who preached love and black empowerment but his followers practiced murder, intimidation and extortion. Those who joined the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult included fraternity boys, sheriff's deputies, grandmothers and ex-cons fresh out of prison. They allowed Mitchell to control every aspect of their lives, from their diet to their finances to their sexual liaisons.
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.
Bibliography
Campbell, Duncan. "Journalist's Murder Recalls Mob Mysteries." Guardian Unlimited. January 10, 2002.
Donat, Hank. "Notorious San Francisco: Robert Durst."
"Fugitive Heir Used Victim's Name to Rent Car." The Galveston County Daily News. December 5, 2001. http://www.galvnews.com/report.lasso?wcd=5489.
Long, Steven and Andy Geller. "Grisly Death of Durst Victim." NYPost.com. April 5, 2002.
"Robert Durst Capture Report." America's Most Wanted. November 30, 2001.
"Special Report: The Search for Robert Durst." The Galveston County Daily News.
Streuli, Ted. "Durst Leads Emerge In California, Louisiana." November 12, 2001. http://www.galvnews.com/report.lasso?wcd=5205.
Streuli, Ted. "Ex-FBI Profiler: Killer Probably Knew Victim." The Galveston County Daily News. October 3, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Island Homicide Victim Had Sketchy Past." The Galveston County Daily News. October 24, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Private Investigator: Durst Has Alias." The Galveston County Daily News. October 31, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Search for Missing Head Turns Up New Evidence." The Galveston County Daily News. February 26, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Accused Killer Returns to Island." The Galveston County Daily News. January 28, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Autopsy: Murder Victim Suffered Heart Attack." The Galveston County Daily News. April 5, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Durst Nabbed in Pennsylvania." The Galveston County Daily News. December 1, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Fugitive Dust Has Wife in New York." The Galveston County Daily News. November 10, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Judge Orders Durst Handwriting Sample." The Galveston County Daily News. April 25, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Lawyer Says Durst to Change Plea." The GalvestonCounty Daily News. March 28, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Murder Suspect on the Run." The Galveston County Daily News. October 17, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Police Find Guns, Drugs, Cash in Durst Car." The Galveston County Daily News. December 8, 2001.
Zeman, Ned. "The Fugitive Heir." Vanity Fair. February 2002: 60-71.
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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.
Bibliography
Campbell, Duncan. "Journalist's Murder Recalls Mob Mysteries." Guardian Unlimited. January 10, 2002.
Donat, Hank. "Notorious San Francisco: Robert Durst."
"Fugitive Heir Used Victim's Name to Rent Car." The Galveston County Daily News. December 5, 2001. http://www.galvnews.com/report.lasso?wcd=5489.
Long, Steven and Andy Geller. "Grisly Death of Durst Victim." NYPost.com. April 5, 2002.
"Robert Durst Capture Report." America's Most Wanted. November 30, 2001.
"Special Report: The Search for Robert Durst." The Galveston County Daily News.
Streuli, Ted. "Durst Leads Emerge In California, Louisiana." November 12, 2001. http://www.galvnews.com/report.lasso?wcd=5205.
Streuli, Ted. "Ex-FBI Profiler: Killer Probably Knew Victim." The Galveston County Daily News. October 3, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Island Homicide Victim Had Sketchy Past." The Galveston County Daily News. October 24, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Private Investigator: Durst Has Alias." The Galveston County Daily News. October 31, 2001.
Streuli, Ted. "Search for Missing Head Turns Up New Evidence." The Galveston County Daily News. February 26, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Accused Killer Returns to Island." The Galveston County Daily News. January 28, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Autopsy: Murder Victim Suffered Heart Attack." The Galveston County Daily News. April 5, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Durst Nabbed in Pennsylvania." The Galveston County Daily News. December 1, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Fugitive Dust Has Wife in New York." The Galveston County Daily News. November 10, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Judge Orders Durst Handwriting Sample." The Galveston County Daily News. April 25, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Lawyer Says Durst to Change Plea." The GalvestonCounty Daily News. March 28, 2002.
Williams, Scott E. "Murder Suspect on the Run." The Galveston County Daily News. October 17, 2001.
Williams, Scott E. "Police Find Guns, Drugs, Cash in Durst Car." The Galveston County Daily News. December 8, 2001.
Zeman, Ned. "The Fugitive Heir." Vanity Fair. February 2002: 60-71.
HELPING YOUNG CHILDREN COPE WITH ANGER
HELPING YOUNG CHILDREN COPE WITH ANGER
National Network for Child Care's Connections Newsletter
Diana S. DelCampo, Ph.D.
Family Life Specialist
Human Development and Family Studies
New Mexico Cooperative Extension
Ruth S. Herrera, M.S.
Graduate Research Assistant
Human Development and Family Studies
New Mexico State University
Copyright/Access Information
Children become angry in a variety of situations. Suzie may be angry with Mom because she won't let her go to a friend's house to play. Paco gets angry with his Dad because he won't let him buy gum at the store. In our role as caregivers, we can give parents some skills for dealing with these situations.
Many adults have learned to ignore their feelings of anger, or to express these feelings by hitting or yelling at someone. Therefore, adults often deal with a child's anger by demanding that he or she stop being angry. They might send a child to his or her room until the child can behave better, and sometimes, an adult may hit a child. However, these actions do not help children learn to handle strong emotions such as anger.
Although feeling angry is a part of life that no one can avoid, we can teach children positive ways to cope with anger. Adults can teach children the difference between feeling angry and acting on anger. Children need to be told that feeling mad is neither good nor bad, but hitting someone out of anger is not OK. In the short run, life at home will be easier when children learn how to work through anger. In the long run, children will continue developing ways to cope with anger as they become teenagers and adults, and will pass these skills along to their own children.
SPECIFIC WAYS CHILDREN CAN COPE WITH ANGER
Children can learn to handle their anger in several ways. Give children several choices so they can pick those that work best for them. Remember that some angry episodes take longer than others to solve.
DO SOMETHING PHYSICAL. Do something with your body such as stomp your feet (the "Mad Dance"), run around the house, or punch a pillow. Or, play with play dough, clay, or bread dough, which can be rolled out, pounded, twisted, and pulled apart. Any of these physical activities can help children focus their anger on something else and help them to calm down.
TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. Some young children can talk to a parent, brother or sister, grandparent, a child care provider or a friend about what is making them angry. Talking helps some people work through their anger so they can accept what is making them angry, or solve the problem in a positive way. If children can't or won't talk to a person, they can be encouraged to talk to a family pet, a puppet, or an imaginary friend.
SING AN "UN-MAD" SONG. Help children make up words to a song or poem that expresses what they're feeling. Words from a favorite song can be substituted with this "un-mad" song. For example, the words "I'm so mad 'cause I can't play. Go away, go away, day!" can be sung to a familiar or made-up tune.
ASK OTHER PEOPLE HOW THEY COPE WITH THEIR FEELINGS OF ANGER. Help children collect ideas from other people on how to cope with anger. Help the child decide which ones are OK based on the information in this publication. For example, some people take a fast walk to drain off anger, while others take deep breaths when they get angry.
DRAIN THE ANGER FROM YOUR BODY. Let children relax with some water play activities or finger-painting. Or let the child scribble as hard as she can on a scrap of paper and throw the paper away as if throwing the anger away. Or encourage the child to dictate a story about what has made her angry to an adult and have the adult read it back. The child can then crumple up the paper and throw it away.
For more information on how to respond to children's anger, suggest parents request the following books at their local library:
Crary, E. (1992). *I'm Mad*. Seattle: Parenting Press.
Guhl, B. & Fontenelle, D. (1987). *Purrfect Parenting*. Tucson: Fisher Books.
National Network for Child Care's Connections Newsletter
Diana S. DelCampo, Ph.D.
Family Life Specialist
Human Development and Family Studies
New Mexico Cooperative Extension
Ruth S. Herrera, M.S.
Graduate Research Assistant
Human Development and Family Studies
New Mexico State University
Copyright/Access Information
Children become angry in a variety of situations. Suzie may be angry with Mom because she won't let her go to a friend's house to play. Paco gets angry with his Dad because he won't let him buy gum at the store. In our role as caregivers, we can give parents some skills for dealing with these situations.
Many adults have learned to ignore their feelings of anger, or to express these feelings by hitting or yelling at someone. Therefore, adults often deal with a child's anger by demanding that he or she stop being angry. They might send a child to his or her room until the child can behave better, and sometimes, an adult may hit a child. However, these actions do not help children learn to handle strong emotions such as anger.
Although feeling angry is a part of life that no one can avoid, we can teach children positive ways to cope with anger. Adults can teach children the difference between feeling angry and acting on anger. Children need to be told that feeling mad is neither good nor bad, but hitting someone out of anger is not OK. In the short run, life at home will be easier when children learn how to work through anger. In the long run, children will continue developing ways to cope with anger as they become teenagers and adults, and will pass these skills along to their own children.
SPECIFIC WAYS CHILDREN CAN COPE WITH ANGER
Children can learn to handle their anger in several ways. Give children several choices so they can pick those that work best for them. Remember that some angry episodes take longer than others to solve.
DO SOMETHING PHYSICAL. Do something with your body such as stomp your feet (the "Mad Dance"), run around the house, or punch a pillow. Or, play with play dough, clay, or bread dough, which can be rolled out, pounded, twisted, and pulled apart. Any of these physical activities can help children focus their anger on something else and help them to calm down.
TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. Some young children can talk to a parent, brother or sister, grandparent, a child care provider or a friend about what is making them angry. Talking helps some people work through their anger so they can accept what is making them angry, or solve the problem in a positive way. If children can't or won't talk to a person, they can be encouraged to talk to a family pet, a puppet, or an imaginary friend.
SING AN "UN-MAD" SONG. Help children make up words to a song or poem that expresses what they're feeling. Words from a favorite song can be substituted with this "un-mad" song. For example, the words "I'm so mad 'cause I can't play. Go away, go away, day!" can be sung to a familiar or made-up tune.
ASK OTHER PEOPLE HOW THEY COPE WITH THEIR FEELINGS OF ANGER. Help children collect ideas from other people on how to cope with anger. Help the child decide which ones are OK based on the information in this publication. For example, some people take a fast walk to drain off anger, while others take deep breaths when they get angry.
DRAIN THE ANGER FROM YOUR BODY. Let children relax with some water play activities or finger-painting. Or let the child scribble as hard as she can on a scrap of paper and throw the paper away as if throwing the anger away. Or encourage the child to dictate a story about what has made her angry to an adult and have the adult read it back. The child can then crumple up the paper and throw it away.
For more information on how to respond to children's anger, suggest parents request the following books at their local library:
Crary, E. (1992). *I'm Mad*. Seattle: Parenting Press.
Guhl, B. & Fontenelle, D. (1987). *Purrfect Parenting*. Tucson: Fisher Books.
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