Durst’s wife: Stop calling me slumlord
Oddball millionaire Robert Durst is on trial for allegedly killing his best friend, yet his wife is worried about her reputation — as a landlord.
Two real-estate firms owned by Durst’s second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, and her son filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against tenants for labeling the duo “abusive landlords” and calling Durst — who is facing charges that he fatally shot pal Susan Berman — a “murderous and animal-decapitating sociopath” on online sites.
BCB Property Management Inc., co-owned by Charatan, and Novel Property Ventures, partly controlled by her son Bennant Charatan Berger, filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court late Thursday.
Durst is not directly involved in the firms, but it is widely believed Charatan used millions of dollars her husband received from his family’s real-estate empire to start BCB.
Durst, 72, is in Los Angeles facing charges that he shot Berman in the head after allegedly confiding to her that he had killed his first wife, Kathleen Durst.
He has also admitted to dismembering a Texas neighbor in 2000 but escaped conviction.
The “animal-decapitating sociopath” description on the sites likely refers to a claim by the Texas judge in Durst’s 2003 murder trial that the real-estate scion had left a cat’s head on her doorstep.
Charatan owns 1 million square feet of real estate across the city. Unidentified tenants from six of the buildings — 362 Lincoln Place, 164 Havemeyer St., 442 Lorimer St., and 101 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn and 409 E. Sixth St. and 411 E. Sixth St. in Manhattan — created sites to anonymously trash their landlords, the suit says.
They claim the building owners “engage in abusive practices,” ignore bedbug infestations and refuse to clean up swastika graffiti at one of the locations A resident of 101 Ocean Parkway in Windsor Terrace said the criticism is justified.
“This place has gone to the dogs sincence they’ve owned it,” she said, citing a trashsh compactor that has not worked for nearly a year.
“I don’t want to give you my name be-because the woman who owns it is married to Robert Durst. It’s pretty wild. I don’t want to end up dead,” she said.
Nilda Morales, who lives at 164 Havemeyer in Williamsburg, said management refuses to fix problems, from electric issues to a leaking ceiling and broken door.
“How can they sue us for things they are not fixing? It doesn’t make sense,” Morales said.
The suit says the claims on the sites are false and subject the plaintiffs to “public contempt, hatred [and] ridicule.”