The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Durst faces murder charge in wife’s death
A criminal complaint charging Robert Durst with the murder of his wife who vanished nearly 40 years ago has been filed in a New York court, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office confirmed Friday.
In a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in Lewisboro town court, Robert Durst was charged with seconddegree murder in the death of his wife, Kathie Durst, who disappeared Jan. 31, 1982 from the couple’s home in South Salem, N.Y.
Kathie Durst, who graduated from what was then called Western Connecticut State College, was 30 years old when she vanished after returning home from a gathering with friends in Newtown.
According to the onepage complaint released Friday, New York State Police investigator Joseph Becerra alleges Robert Durst killed his wife “at or near” their Hoyt Street home in South Salem, which is located in Lewisboro.
“We are very happy with this development,” Robert Abrams, an attorney representing Kathie Durst’s family, said Friday in a statement. “At this time, however, we will not be making any further comments until the grand jury process is completed.”
Robert Durst was convicted in September of killing a close friend, Susan Berman, who prosecutors believed was about to come forward with information on Kathie Durst’s death.
Robert Durst was sentenced to life in prison in a Los Angeles courtroom earlier this month. Published reports indicate the 78-year-old Durst has since been hospitalized with COVID-19 and is on a ventilator.
The office of Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah declined to comment Friday on how Durst’s health would impact the New York criminal proceedings.
According to the complaint, the murder charge was filed based on information gathered by New York and California authorities and “conversations with numerous witnesses and observations of defendant’s recorded interviews and court testimony in related proceedings.”
Kathie Durst’s disappearance was central to the evidence presented in the Berman trial. Berman had repeatedly defended Robert Durst when allegations surfaced that he may have been involved in his wife’s disappearance.
Berman was found dead in her Los Angeles home in December 2000. Prosecutors claimed Berman was about to come forward with information on Kathie Durst’s disappearance when she died.
Durst testified in August that he changed his mind many times about whether he actually saw his wife step onto a commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in 1982 and said he lied to police when he told them he later spoke to her on the phone.
Robert Durst testified that he never saw or heard from his wife after watching her step onto the train platform in the New York hamlet of Katonah near their home on Jan. 31, 1982. But days later, he told a detective investigating her disappearance that he had called her and spoken to her while she was at their apartment in Manhattan, where she was staying because she had medical school in the Bronx the following morning.
"That was a lie," Durst testified. "I wanted to convince him that Kathie had gotten back."
Durst was charged in Berman’s homicide in March 2015 as the final episode was set to air for the HBO six-part series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which chronicled the millionaire’s life and connection to three people’s deaths over four decades.
Durst, who was acquitted in the 2001 homicide and dismemberment of one of his neighbors in Texas, was alone in a bathroom in the HBO series when a live microphone caught him saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Court documents filed in 2017 by Kathie Durst’s family seeking to have her declared dead allege that Robert Durst was abusive and she had been hospitalized after one incident. The family claims that the two had argued the night she went missing.
Kathie Durst was about to finish medical school to become a pediatrician, her family said. She was close to her mother and her siblings and would have no reason to suddenly break contact with them and never be seen again, the documents said.
Kathie Durst, who graduated from what was then called Western Connecticut State College, was 30 years old when she vanished after returning home from a gathering with friends in Newtown.