The root of all evil?

t the dawn of 1982, fourth-year student Kathleen McCormack Durst was just months from graduating medical school. A young, beautiful and wealthy 29-year-old, Kathleen had a promising future ahead of her. Her sights were firmly set on becoming a paediatrician and opening a clinic in a deprived area of New York, to care for children who had limited access to a doctor. Kathleen was married to billionaire Robert Durst, who hailed from a prominent New York real-estate family. Keeping out of the limelight in which

Aher in-laws found themselves, Kathleen’s name only made national headlines when she disappeared without a trace on 31 January 1982.

It took five days for her husband Robert to report her missing.

Friends said they last saw Kathleen at the Connecticut home of one of her closest friends Gilberte Najamy on the evening she vanished.

Robert and Kathleen had had a colourful argument on the phone before Kathleen spoke at length to Gilberte about her failing marriage. Before she left, she told Gilberte that she was returning to the couple’s cottage in South Salem, New York.

And she had some disturbing words for her friend before she left. ‘If something happens to me, check it out. I’m afraid of what Bobby will do,’ she reportedly told Gilberte.

Those were the last words

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Gilberte ever heard her say.

When Robert was questioned by authorities, he denied having anything to do with Kathleen’s disappearance. He said that he had driven Kathleen to the station to catch the 9.15pm train to Manhattan later that evening.

She had apparently chosen to return to the couple’s penthouse there.

Then, Robert claimed, he had spoken to her on the phone after she’d arrived in Manhattan, around 11pm. He said that, like Kathleen’s family and friends, he never saw his wife again.

Her siblings insisted that

‘I’m afraid of what Bobby might do,’ she told her friend

The 2010 film

is based on the life of Robert Durst.

It focuses on the troubled marriage of heir to a real-estate dynasty David Marks (Ryan Gosling) and his wife Katie McCarthy (Kirsten Dunst) prior to her disappearance.

Years later, a novel written by David’s best friend Deborah Lehrman details a murder with parallels to the Marks case.

The case into Katie’s disappearance is reopened, and not long after, Lehrman is shot at her home.

David then stands trial for the murder of his neighbour Malvern Bump, in Texas. He is later acquitted.

The film’s director was contacted by Durst after the film was released.