Kathie Durst’s friend seeks justice
Ellen Strauss spent years independently investigating the disappearance of her longtime friend Kathie Durst, and the Weston attorney remains adamant about seeking justice.
Straus believes Robert Durst has gotten away with murder before, but now that the commercial real estate heir is on trial for the 2000 murder of his friend Susan
Berman in her
Los Angeles home, she thinks
“they’ll [the prosecutors] get him.”
Robert Durst pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the California case. And since his trial has resumed in California, New York authorities have reopened their investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Kathie Durst’s — a former Connecticut college student — and have categorizing it as a homicide.
“The death penalty is too quick and easy,” Strauss said, noting she wants Robert Durst to live his life out in prison and think about what he did.
Strauss was supposed to be a witness in the Los Angeles case, but after packing her bags and getting on a plane last year she returned home because her husband was concerned for her health amid the coronavirus crisis.
Kathie Durst was last seen leaving a Newtown party in 1982. Strauss had known Kathie Durst for years — the two were classmates at what was then known as Western Connecticut State College in Danbury.and they remained good friends years after.
Strauss said she still recalls getting phone calls from Kathie detailing how Robert abused and physically assaulted her. Her advice to Kathie: “Get the hell out of Dodge.”
Robert Durst has since admitted to abusing Kathie, as well as fighting with her about divorce in their North Salem, N.Y. cottage on Jan. 31, 1982. But he claims he put her on a Manhattan-bound train and never saw her again.
Durst had also admitted to leaving a note with Los Angeles police that had Berman’s address and the word “CADAVER” written on it. These admissions are just a couple Robert Durst has made over the years, in addition to him admitting he chopped up the body of his 71year-old friend Morris Black in a case in which he was acquitted.
“She told us if anything ever happens to me, Bob did it. Don’t let him get away with it,” Strauss said of Kathie, who she described as a “saucy, smart and beautiful” woman who was a “breath of fresh air.”
Soon after Kathie Durst went missing, Strauss started looking into the disappearance, spending decades investigating Robert Durst.
From sifting through his trash to tracking his movements and uncovering aliases he used, Strauss said she was like a “pit bull” chasing him, refusing to give up on the promise she made to Kathie.
“He was tying up all the loose ends and getting away with it for years,” she said, emphasizing she believes that Robert Durst “killed Susan Berman because she knew too much.”
So when authorities finally showed up at her Weston home to ask her about her investigation into the matter, she handed over all of her old files to them, glad they would finally take a look at what she compiled.
Watching the trial unfold, Strauss said she hopes the jury won’t feel bad for him because of how “frail” he looks.
“It’s hard to prove a lot of things but there are certain things that, if it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck,” she said.