As Durst faces life in jail, grand jury called in wife’s death
A Westchester County grand jury could interview witnesses in the nearly 40-year-old disappearance and presumed death of Kathleen “Kathie” Durst as early as next week, according to sources close to the investigation.
Kathie Durst, who graduated from what was then called Western Connecticut State College in Danbury, disappeared on Jan. 31, 1982, from the couple’s home in South Salem, N.Y. The 30-year-old Durst vanished after attending a party in Newtown earlier that night. Her body has not been found.
Her husband at the time, Robert Durst, has not been charged in her death and disappearance. But he was convicted in September of killing a close friend, Susan Berman, who prosecutors believed was about to come forward with information on Kathie Durst’s death.
Robert Durst, 78, is expected to
be sentenced Thursday to life in prison in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah said during an unrelated press conference on Sept. 28 that her office had turned the case over to a newly formed cold case unit months before Robert Durst’s California trial was completed.
“They have been working very hard,” Rocah said. “I’m proud of everyone, we’re doing our job.”
But Rocah stopped short of confirming a grand jury would be convened to examine evidence in the case. She also declined to comment on whether Robert Durst was a suspect in his first wife’s death.
“The Westchester District Attorney’s Office commends all of those involved in persuading a California jury to hold Robert Durst accountable for the murder of Susan Berman,” Rocah said in a statement issued after a jury found Robert Durst guilty on Sept. 17 of killing Berman.
The statement went on to say that Rocah reopened the investigation into Kathie Durst’s death shortly after she took office in January. The investigation “remains ongoing,” Rocah said.
Kathie Durst’s disappearance was central to the evidence presented in the months-long California trial. Berman had repeatedly spoke up for Robert Durst when allegations surfaced that he may have been involved in his wife’s disappearance.
Berman was found dead in her Los Angeles home in December 2000. Prosecutors in Robert Durst’s trial claimed that Berman was about to come forward with information on Kathie Durst’s disappearance when she died.
The trial began in early 2020, but was halted for 14 months during the coronavirus pandemic.
Durst testified in August that he has changed his mind many times about whether he actually saw his wife step onto a commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in 1982 and said he lied to police when he told them he later spoke to her on the phone.
“Everyone has asked me that question, and I have changed my mind maybe a dozen times,” Durst said under questioning from his attorney Dick DeGuerin at his Los Angeles murder trial. “Did I actually see Kathie walk through the doors and onto the train? The answer is no. But there is no place else to go.”
Robert Durst testified that he never saw or heard from his wife after watching her step onto the train platform in the New York hamlet of Katonah near their home on Jan. 31, 1982. But days later, he told a detective investigating her disappearance that he had called her and spoken to her at their apartment in Manhattan, where she had gone because she had medical school in the Bronx the following morning.
“That was a lie,” Durst testified. “I wanted to convince him that Kathie had gotten back.”
Durst was charged in Berman’s homicide in March 2015 as the final episode was set to air for the HBO six-part series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which chronicled the millionaire’s life and connection to three people’s deaths over four decades.