Robert Durst indicted for murder 39 years after wife Kathie Durst disappeared
Robert Durst was indicted on Monday for murder in the death of his first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst, who disappeared nearly four decades ago.
The multimillionaire real estate heir is currently serving a life sentence in California for the murder of Susan Berman, his friend and confidante who prosecutors say helped him cover up Kathie Durst’s killing.
Durst was hospitalized on a ventilator with Covid-19 after his 14 October sentencing in the Los Angeles case and was transferred last week to a state prison hospital. His current medical condition was not released.
A grand jury in the New York City suburbs returned the second-degree murder indictment on Monday. “When Kathleen Durst disappeared on January 31, 1982, her family and friends were left with pain, anguish and questions that have contributed to their unfaltering pursuit of justice for the last 39 years,” the Westchester district attorney, Mimi Rocah, said in a statement announcing the indictment.
Rocah said her office had “reinvigorated its investigation” into Robert Durst when she took office in January, launching a cold case unit and dedicating necessary skill and resources. She decided to take the case to a grand jury in early October. Rocah said Durst’s indictment was a “huge step forward in the pursuit of justice for Kathie Durst, her family and victims of domestic violence everywhere”.
Asked by a reporter if he had any reaction to the indictment, Durst’s lawyer Chip Lewis replied in an email: “Fake news!” Asked in a subsequent email if he would be representing Durst in the New York case and whether there were health concerns about moving him to New York, Lewis responded: “Not sure he will make it. But if he does, I’ll let you know.”
A lawyer for Kathie Durst’s family said they were still processing the news of the indictment and would speak more about the matter in the coming days.
Kathie Durst’s 1982 disappearance garnered renewed public interest after
HBO aired a documentary in 2015 in which Durst appeared to admit killing people, stepping off camera and muttering to himself on a live microphone: “Killed them all, of course.”
Kathie Durst was 29 and in her final months of medical school when she was last seen. She and Robert Durst, who was 38 at the time, had been married nearly nine years and were living in South Salem, a community in Lewisboro,
New York. Her body was never found. Robert Durst divorced her in 1990, citing abandonment. At the request of her family, she was declared legally dead in 2017. Robert Durst had never previously been charged in her disappearance.
In December 2000, Durst shot and killed Berman as she was preparing to tell police about her involvement in Kathie Durst’s death, prosecutors said. She had told friends she provided a phony alibi for him after his wife vanished, according to prosecutors.
Durst was convicted in September of killing Berman. Afterward, the Los Angeles prosecutor John Lewin described him as a “narcissistic psychopath”, saying Durst had “killed his wife and then he had to keep killing to cover it up”.
Durst, testifying in the Los Angeles trial in August, denied killing Kathie Durst. After her medical school called to report that she hadn’t been going to class, he said he figured she was “out someplace having fun” and suggested that perhaps drug use was to blame.
“It hadn’t occurred to me that anything had happened to her,” Durst said, speaking slowly in a strained, raspy voice. “It was more like: what had Kathie done to Kathie?”