Robert Durst

Robert Alan Durst (April 12, 1943 – January 10, 2022) was an American convicted murderer, serial killer and real estate heir. The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, he garnered attention as a suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen "Kathie" McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 killing of neighbor Morris Black.

Acquitted of murdering neighbor Morris Black in 2003, Durst did not face further legal action until his participation in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx led to him being charged with Berman's murder. Durst was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He was also charged with McCormack's murder shortly after his sentencing but died in 2022 before a trial could begin. Durst's conviction for Berman's murder was automatically vacated upon his death because his appeal was still pending.

Robert Alan Durst was born in New York City on April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He was the eldest son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his wife, Bernice Herstein. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Durst, originally a Jewish tailor from Austria-Hungary, immigrated to the United States in 1902 and eventually became a real estate manager and developer, founding the Durst Organization in 1927. His three younger siblings were Douglas, Tommy and Wendy Durst.

When Durst was seven years old, his mother died by suicide after jumping from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home. He later claimed to have witnessed the act, asserting that moments before her death, his father walked him to a window from which he could see her standing on the roof. However, in a March 2015 New York Times interview, Durst's brother Douglas denied that he had witnessed the suicide. As children, Robert and Douglas underwent counseling for sibling rivalry; a 1953 psychiatrist's report on Durst, then ten years old, mentioned "personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia."

Durst attended Scarsdale High School, where classmates described him as a loner. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and the business manager of the student newspaper, The Brown and White. Later that year, Durst enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Susan Berman, but eventually withdrew from the school and returned to New York in 1969.

Durst opened a small health-food store in Vermont in the early 1970s. He closed the store in 1973, when his father convinced him to return to New York and work in the Durst Organization. In 1992, due to Durst's erratic conduct, his father broke with tradition and appointed his second son, Douglas, to take over the company. As the firstborn, Durst felt entitled to run the company despite his disdain for it and accused Douglas of stealing what was rightfully owed to him. This resulted in Robert's estrangement from the rest of his family. He eventually sued for his share of the fortune, and was bought out of the family trust for $65 million in 2006.

For most of his adult life, Durst was the subject of investigation and speculation concerning three alleged crimes: the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen "Kathie" McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 death of his neighbor, Morris Black. Durst was ultimately tried and acquitted for murder in the Black case but was later convicted in the Berman case.

In late 1971, Durst met dental hygienist Kathleen McCormack. After two dates, he invited her to move into his home in Vermont, which she did in January 1972. After his father pressured him to return to New York to work at the Durst Organization, the couple moved to Manhattan, where they married on April 12, 1972.

At the time of her disappearance, McCormack was a medical student in her fourth and final year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, hoping to become a pediatrician—she was only a few months short of earning her degree. She was last seen by someone other than Durst on the evening of January 31, 1982, when she appeared unexpectedly at a dinner party, thrown by her friend Gilberte Najamy in Newtown, Connecticut. Najamy noticed that McCormack seemed upset and was wearing red sweatpants, which Najamy found odd, as she never dressed so casually in public. After receiving a phone call from her husband, McCormack left for her cottage in South Salem, New York.

Although the couple was known to have fought that evening, Durst initially maintained that he had placed his wife on a commuter train to New York City at Katonah rail station, had a drink with a neighbor and spoken to his wife at their Manhattan apartment by telephone later that evening. "That's what I told police," he later said. "I was hoping that would just make everything go away." Durst subsequently admitted he just went home and went to bed.

McCormack and Najamy were scheduled to meet the next day at The Lion's Gate, a Manhattan pub. When McCormack failed to appear, Najamy grew concerned and repeatedly called police over the course of several days. Later that week, Durst reported his wife missing. Both a doorman and the building superintendent at the couple's apartment on Riverside Drive claimed to have seen McCormack at the building on February 1, the day after she was last indisputably seen. However, the doorman admitted he had only seen her from behind and from half a block away, and thus could not be certain that it was her. A private investigator hired by Durst's lawyer later reported that the doorman said he had not seen McCormack arrive at all, and might not have been working the night she disappeared. Only three weeks after Durst had reported his wife missing, the superintendent on Riverside Drive found some of her possessions in the building's trash compactor.

Durst's notoriety inspired the film All Good Things (2010), the title of which is a reference to the Vermont health-food store of the same name set up by Durst and McCormack in the 1970s. David Marks, the character based on Durst, was portrayed by Ryan Gosling, and his wife Kathie was portrayed by Kirsten Dunst. Shortly after its theatrical release, Durst contacted director Andrew Jarecki and expressed his approval for the film, which evolved into discussions between the two of them being included on the DVD video release, and eventually resulting in Jarecki co-writing, co-producing, directing and appearing in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which was broadcast on HBO.

During filming of The Jinx, Susan Berman's stepson uncovered a 1999 letter written by Durst which contained the same "Beverley Hills" typographical error as the anonymous letter directing police to Berman's body, implicating Durst in the murder. Jarecki and producers Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier realized they had uncovered potential criminal evidence and delivered the second letter to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. The new information led to Durst's indictment for the first-degree murder of Berman. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Durst in New Orleans on the eve of the broadcast of the final episode of The Jinx.

The Jinx ends with Durst moving into a bathroom, where his microphone records him seemingly saying to himself: "There it is. You're caught! .... You're right, of course. But you can't imagine the rest of them. ... I don't know what's in the house ... Oh, I want this ... What a disaster ... He was right. I was wrong. And the burping ... I'm having difficulty with the question ... What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." It was later disclosed in 2019 that the filmmakers altered the sequence of Durst's comments, increasing the apparent severity of his musings in the bathroom. In November 2023, HBO announced that The Jinx – Part Two, a six-episode continuation of the series, was in production with the same producers and director. It premiered on April 21, 2024. Part Two covers the eight years between the original series in 2015 to present time, including new interviews, hidden material and Durst's phone calls from prison.

Days after Berman's murder, police were reportedly examining connections between Durst and the disappearances of 18-year-old Lynne Schulze from Middlebury, Vermont, and 16-year-old Karen Mitchell from Eureka, California. Investigators were also considering a possible connection between Durst and the disappearance of 18-year-old Kristen Modafferi, who was last seen in San Francisco in 1997.

Schulze, a Middlebury College freshman, visited Durst's health-food store on December 10, 1971, the day she disappeared, and was last seen that afternoon near a bus stop across from the store. Author and investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck reported in 2003, and again in his 2015 book A Deadly Secret, that credit card records placed Durst in Eureka on November 25, 1997, the day Mitchell vanished. Mitchell may have volunteered in a homeless shelter that Durst frequented; Durst, dressed in women's clothing, had visited the Eureka shoe store owned by Mitchell's aunt. Mitchell was last seen walking to work from her aunt's store and possibly speaking to someone in a stopped car; a witness sketch of Mitchell's presumed abductor resembles Durst.

Although the FBI ultimately could not connect Durst to the Long Island serial murders (in which some victims were disposed of in a similar manner to the Black killing), the bureau created an informal task force in 2012 to work with investigative agencies in jurisdictions where Durst was known to have lived in past decades, including Vermont, New York and California. In the wake of his arrest, the FBI encouraged such localities to reexamine cold cases. Texas private investigator Bobbi Bacha has also traced Durst operating under stolen identities in Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, Mississippi and Virginia.

On December 11, 2000, shortly before the Berman killing, Durst married Debrah Lee Charatan. According to The New York Times, the couple had briefly shared a Fifth Avenue apartment in 1990 but "have never lived together as husband and wife." Durst once told his sister Wendy that it was "a marriage of convenience"; "I wanted Debbie to be able to receive my inheritance, and I intended to kill myself," Durst said in a 2005 deposition. When Durst was arrested for the Black killing in 2001, Charatan wired him the $250,000 bail the court required. She also visited Durst in jail and spoke with him on the phone on a regular basis, discussing his legal strategy and other personal and business issues. Following the Black trial, Charatan reportedly distanced herself from Durst and his affairs, legal and otherwise. In particular, Charatan specifically told Durst not to involve himself with production of The Jinx, to which he disagreed at the time. Charatan's friends said that, as of Durst's arrest in 2015, she had not spoken with him since the documentary had begun airing in February.

Despite still being married to Durst, Charatan was reported to be living with Stephen I. Holm in 2015. Holm was a real estate attorney in the New York City area who handled transactions for both Durst and Charatan. Charatan and Holm were also involved with several philanthropic ventures together. It was reported in Real Estate Weekly that Holm died on October 17, 2019, and that Charatan was his wife. Charatan was identified as Holm's wife at his funeral, in his obituary online and in his obituary in the Times. Shortly after, Charatan sent the Times a letter saying she and Holm were not married and asked them to print a retraction.

Durst died of cardiac arrest at the San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, California, on January 10, 2022, at age 78. He had been undergoing medical tests when he went into cardiac arrest and did not respond to resuscitation. At the time of his death, Durst remained in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

In January 2022, McCormack's family filed a wrongful death suit against Durst's estate. This was the fourth similar civil suit the family had filed since 2015, attempting to claim all or part of Durst's assets. In response, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York froze the estate of his second wife and heir, Debrah Charatan, (worth $100 million). The court documents say Charatan and/or her attorney must appear in court on March 25, 2022, and show cause why the order should not be issued. In March 2023, a federal court judge ruled the case of wrongful death filed by McCormack's family against Durst's estate could proceed. In the ruling, the judge wrote that the lawsuit filed was not untimely because of Durst's death. A conference was scheduled for April 2023. As of August 2025, the suit remains in the pre-trial phase, with active motion practice and hearings taking place. No trial date has been set. On May 5, 2026, a federal court judge dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Kathie Durst’s family against the widow of Robert Durst, Debrah Lee Charatan. This means Charatan will legally inherit Durst's entire estate, the current value is unknown. The estate was estimated at $100 Million when Durst was arrested in 2015 for the murder of his friend Susan Berman.

Three episodes in the Law & Order television franchise gave different takes on the murders: The Law & Order episode "Hands Free"; the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Maledictus"; and the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Devil's Dissections".

Fred Armisen played Durst in a 2003 sketch on Saturday Night Live and again in 2016 on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Kate McKinnon played Durst in a 2015 SNL sketch.

The American Court TV television series Mugshots released an episode covering Durst, titled Robert Durst—Mogul in Murder Mystery.

A&E and Lifetime announced in August 2016 that they were developing a movie based on the book A Deadly Secret. The television movie, titled The Lost Wife of Robert Durst, originally aired on November 11, 2017.

Investigation Discovery network released a special miniseries titled Robert Durst: An ID Murder Mystery, containing new interviews with friends and family of Durst's alleged victims, along with his defense attorney Dick DeGuerin. Legal experts and crime reporters offer insights on evidence leading to Durst's arrest and originally scheduled for 2019 but delayed until 2021 murder trial. The series originally aired on January 21 and 22, 2019.