DURST EVEN SCARED BRO
Tells slay trial ‘violent to me’
LOS ANGELES — Robert Durst’s youngest sibling turned emotional on the witness stand Wednesday as he told jurors he’s afraid of the bullying brother — now on trial for allegedly killing a friend in 2000 — who treated him badly since they were children.
Thomas Durst, 70, testified that he was so scared that he declined to give Robert Durst’s first wife Kathie Durst a loan because he thought it might put him in danger. Kathie had approached Thomas for the money in December 1981, saying her marriage was over and she had paperwork showing her husband was involved in some type of “impropriety” related to the family’s New York real estate empire.
“I was afraid that if Bob Durst found a check with my name on it written to Kathie he would be violent towards me,” he said, adding that Robert angrily confronted him because he knew about her request.
“I know she asked you for money!” Thomas shouted loudly on the witness stand, repeating what his brother allegedly said.
“I felt like I was about to die,” Thomas testified.
Kathie was last seen alive on Jan. 31, 1982. Her body has never been found.
Robert Durst, 76, was never charged with anything related to her disappearance, but he’s now on trial in Los Angeles for allegedly murdering his best friend Susan Berman inside her Los Angeles home in December 2000.
Prosecutors claim Durst also killed Kathie, though he’s never been charged in that case. They allege Berman knew damaging details about Durst’s involvement in Kathie’s disappearance so he killed her 18 years later to guarantee her silence amid a renewed investigation.
Robert Durst has pleaded not guilty. As he testified, Thomas Durst said he wasn’t a willing witness and had to be subpoenaed.
“I’m humiliated to be here. This is a horrible experience, and I’m fearful of my brother,” he said.
Thomas said his eldest brother treated him with disdain starting when they were children and liked to exert his “power” over people.
“We didn’t have a relationship,” he said when asked to describe his relationship with his brother growing up. “He treated me as if I didn’t belong there ... There is no warmth.”
Thomas was the fourth witness put on by prosecutors on the first day of testimony at Durst’s trial.
He followed a former Manhattan neighbor of Robert Durst who testified that he “terrorized” his first wife before she vanished, called her a “skank” and turned violent multiple times.
Anne Andersen Doyle told jurors she regularly consoled Kathie Durst in the early 1980s after the medical student who was Durst’s first wife climbed over a barricade separating their 16th-story terraces and sought shelter in her Riverside Drive penthouse.