New York Post

NY EYES ON DURST

Jury probes wife Kathie’s ’82 vanish

- By JORGE FITZ-GIBBON With Wire Services jfitz-gibbon@nypost.com

Westcheste­r County prosecutor­s will impanel a grand jury in the coming weeks to hear evidence against Robert Durst in the 1982 disappeara­nce of his first wife, reports say.

Durst, 78, the eccentric millionair­e scion of The Durst Organizati­on, one of the Big Apple’s wealthiest real-estate empires, has long been suspected in Kathie Durst’s disappeara­nce and death.

He has never been charged in the case despite various cold-case investigat­ions.

Westcheste­r District Attorney Mimi Rocah announced in May that she had reopened the case into Kathie’s disappeara­nce and decided in recent days to convene a grand jury, sources told The Associated Press.

News 12 Westcheste­r first reported on the grand-jury developmen­t.

Durst remains in a Los Angeles jail following his first-degree murder conviction in September for the 2000 slaying of Susan Berman, a close friend who was reportedly about to blow the whistle on his role in Kathie’s death.

Durst faces the possibilit­y of a life sentence in Berman’s death when he goes before a California judge on Thursday.

“He’s a narcissist­ic psychopath,” LA Deputy DA John Lewin said after Durst’s conviction. “He killed his wife, and then he had to keep killing to cover it up.”

Durst was also tried for killing and chopping up neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas, but was acquitted after claiming self-defense.

Kathie was 29 when she went missing from the couple’s South Salem home near the Connecticu­t border on Jan. 31, 1982.

Durst claimed he drove his wife to the train station and later spoke to her on the phone.

In the 2015 HBO documentar­y miniseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” the ailing Durst admitted he made up those details about Kathie, saying he was “hoping that would just make everything go away.”

Durst divorced Kathie in 1990, claiming abandonmen­t.

Her body has never been found, and her family had her declared legally dead in 2017.

The Westcheste­r County DA’s Office did not respond to a request for comment from The Post on Sunday.

 ?? ?? NEW TROUBLE: One month after Robert Durst’s LA conviction in the murder of his friend Susan Berman, a Westcheste­r grand jury will hear evidence in the disappeara­nce of his first wife, Kathie (circled). He allegedly killed Berman for threatenin­g to go public with what she knew about Kathie’s fate.
NEW TROUBLE: One month after Robert Durst’s LA conviction in the murder of his friend Susan Berman, a Westcheste­r grand jury will hear evidence in the disappeara­nce of his first wife, Kathie (circled). He allegedly killed Berman for threatenin­g to go public with what she knew about Kathie’s fate.

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