I’ve been ‘Jinx’ed: detective
The ex-NYPD detective who led the investigation into Kathie Durst’s disappearance complained that he was made to look like a “f- -king idiot” in the HBO documentary “The Jinx,” court papers revealed Thursday.
“My kids are telling me that I’m getting killed on blogs,” ex-cop Mike Struk fumed in an email to producer Andrew Jarecki. “You really threw me a f- -king curve ball. I’ve been had.”
Struk’s email, date redacted, is attached to a suit alleging the NYPD probe of Kathie Durst’s 1982 disappearance was so “incompetent and compromised” that her husband, Robert Durst, wants to use Struk’s testimony to defend himself in the 2000 execution-style shooting of Susan Berman.
Los Angeles prosecutors allege Durst killed his former college pal in her Beverly Hills home to keep her quiet about his role in Kathie’s disappearance, but court papers say Struk could “raise a reasonable doubt that Durst was not involved.”
The suit notes that former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro blasted Struk in her 2015 book on Durst, “He Killed Them All.”
“I was actually stunned and horrified by Struk’s work on the case,” wrote Pirro, host of the Fox News show “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”
“Struk seemed determined to ignore vital evidence. I was convinced he had marching orders or was so prejudiced against women that he didn’t give a damn that someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, someone’s friend was missing.”
In his e-mail to Jarecki, Struk blasted Pirro as a publicity hungry “camera whore.”
“She’s lucky she never joined her husband in the can for tax evasion,” he added, referring to Pirro’s exhusband, Westchester real-estate lawyer and consultant Al Pirro, who served 17 months of a 29month sentence in the early 2000s.
Struk denied the allegations against him, calling them “so counter to what we always strive for, to solve a case, to bring justice. It just didn’t work out.”