Durst-case judge facing ethics probe
The Manhattan judge overseeing the estate of Robert Durst’s long-missing wife, Kathie, is facing a potential ethics probe by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Bob Abrams, attorney for Kathie Durst’s sister, Carol Bamonte, has reported Surrogate’s Court Judge Nora Anderson to the commission for refusing to investigate conflict-of-interest claims.
Kathie Durst was the first wife of the eccentric realestate heir.
She vanished from the couple’s Westchester weekend home in 1982. Her former husband remains the only suspect in her disappearance and is currently awaiting a murder trial in Los Angeles over a friend’s 2000 death.
Abrams said in a letter to the commission Tuesday that Anderson appointed a lawyer, Charles Capetanakis, as guardian to protect Kathie’s interests in a proceeding to have her declared dead.
Her family needs the declaration to pursue a $100 mil- lion wrongful-death case against Robert.
Capetanakis issued a report last month recommending that Kathie’s date of death be set at Jan. 31, 1987 — five years after she disappeared. Attorneys for Robert had argued for the same time frame.
Abrams countered that the date should be Jan. 31, 1982 — when Kathie was last seen leaving the country home she shared with her husband. That date would boost the family’s claim that her husband killed her.
Anderson ultimately ruled the date of Kathie’s death to be Jan. 31, 1987.
Abrams grew suspicious of the report and learned that Capetanakis had ties to Stephen Holm, an attorney for Robert Durst who runs a foundation with Robert’s second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, his letter says.
Capetanakis’ firm and Holm were co-defendants in a $10 million legal malpractice lawsuit that was dismissed in 2015.
Reps for the judge and Capetanakis declined to comment.