12 Crimes of Christmas - "THE JINX: HOW ROBERT DURST GOT AWAY WITH MURDER FOR 40 YEARS - PART 1"

0:03 Caalarogus Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Reed Carter. Saturday, December twenty seventh, twenty twenty five, continuing our twelve Crimes of Christmas series. Yesterday we wrapped up the John Benet Ramsey case. Today and tomorrow a billionaire heir who got away with murder for forty years because justice isn't black or white, It's green. Robert Durst born April twelfth, nineteen forty three, eldest son of Seymour Durst, whose family owned one of the most powerful real estate empires in Manhattan, the Durst Organization skyscrapers billions of dollars old money New York Royalty.

0:43 Three people connected to Robert Durst ended up dead, his wife Kathy, who vanished in nineteen eighty two and was never found. His best friend Susan Berman, shot execution style on Christmas Eve two thousand. His neighbor, Morris Black, dismembered and dumped in Galls Elveston Bay in two thousand and one. For decades, Durst walked free, money, bought the best lawyers, status, deflected suspicion, connections, made problems disappear. The system that's supposed to protect victims instead protected him. Then came a documentary, an HBO series called The Jinx and a hot microphone that caught Robert Durst whispering to himself in a bathroom, what the hell did I do? Killed them? All of course, killed them all of course. September twenty twenty one, Durst was finally convicted of murdering Susan Berman, sentenced to life without parole, charged with Kathy's murder. Shortly after January tenth, twenty twenty two, he died in prison at seventy eight years old. Took his secrets to the grave, never revealed where Kathy's body is buried. I'm reed, Carter, This is Celebrity Trials Today, Part one. Cormick Durst, twenty nine years old, three months from becoming a doctor, told her friends exactly what would happen if she disappeared. Then she disappeared. Someone has to say her name. Kathleen McCormick was born June fifteenth,

2:19 nineteen fifty two. Grew up in New Hyde Park, Long Island, working class family. Her father was a telephone company account representative World War II veteran. Her mother, Anne, would live to be one hundred and two years old, dying in twenty fifteen, still not knowing what happened to her youngest daughter. Cathy was driven, ambitious, went to nursing school first, then decided that wasn't enough. She wanted to be a doctor, a pediatrician, help babies and children. She enrolled at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, fourth year student three months from graduating when she vanished. In nineteen seventy one, Cathy was twenty years old, working in Manhattan, living in a walk up apartment. Met a man at a party, Robert Durst, twenty eight years old, longish hair, intense, wealthy, beyond imagination. The attraction was immediate. After two dates, Durst invited Kathy to move into his house in Vermont. She did.

3:18 They opened a health food store together called All Good Things Hippy Dream, But Durst's father had other plans. Seymour Durst pressured his son to return to New York, joined the family business, stopped playing bohemian, so they moved to Manhattan. Got married on April twelfth, nineteen seventy three, Durst's thirtieth birthday. Kathy was twenty. The wedding gift was an entry into one of New York's wealthiest families, but something was wrong from the beginning. Cathy's friends and family describe a controlling, abusive husband, a man who dictated what she wore, where she went, who she saw, A man whose temper flared without warning. Eleanor Joy Schwank, Kathy's nursing school classmate, received phone calls Kathy telling her Bobby is really violent. Schwank said she never witnessed it herself, but Kathy told her it was physical. At a McCormick family gathering, Durst yanked Kathy by the hair because she wasn't ready to leave in front of her family. Didn't care who saw. Another time, he stormed into their apartment where Cathy was talking with friends and kicked an acquaintance in the face. That man later sued Durst and settled. Three weeks before Cathy disappeared, she was treated at Jacoby Medical Center in the bronx bruises, head injuries facial trauma suffered during an argument with her husband.

4:42 She refused to file charges. Kathy wanted children, Durst didn't. According to friends, He pressured her into having an abortion in the late nineteen seventies, Durst later claimed the child wasn't his anyway. By nineteen eighty two, the marriage was over in everything but paperwork. Kathy was preparing divorce documents. She was about to become a doctor, would be able to support herself, wouldn't need Durst's money anymore, and Robert Durst was losing control. Cathy told her friends something chilling, something specific, something that would haunt investigators for forty years. If anything happens to me, don't let Bob get away with it. She knew. She knew exactly what her husband was capable of, knew exactly what might happen, told the people closest to her to watch out, to not let him escape consequences, and then, on January thirty first, nineteen eighty two, Kathy McCormick Durst vanished from the face of the earth. January thirty first, nineteen eighty two, Sunday evening, Kathy attended a dinner party at the home of her closest friend, Gilbert Najami, in Newtown, Connecticut. Najami noticed something strange immediately. Kathy was wearing sweatpants, casual clothes that wasn't like her. Kathy usually dressed up took care of her appearance,

6:15 but that night she looked disheveled, upset. Around seven pm, Kathy received a phone call from her husband. They argued. Whatever Robert said on that call, it rattled her. The rest of the evening, Kathy talked to Najami about her failing marriage, about the abuse, about her fears. Then Kathy said something to her best friend that Najami never forgot, asked her to investigate if anything happened to her. If anything happened to her, investigate. Kathy left the party, said she was returning to the couple's cottage on Hoyt Street in South Salem, New York, a small town about an hour north of Manhattan. According to Robert Durst, here's what happened next. He drove Kathy to the Katona train station, boarded a train to Manhattan, headed for their penthouse apartment.

7:03 He spoke to her on a payphone later that night. She confirmed she'd arrived safely. That was the last time anyone ever saw Kathy McCormick Durst. But here's the problem with Robert Durst's story. It was a lie, all of it. Kathy never arrived in Manhattan, never got on that train. The doorman at their building never saw her. Nobody saw her after she left Gilbert Njami's house. The next day, February first, someone called Albert Einstein College of Medicine. A woman's voice claimed to be Kathy Durst said she was sick and wouldn't be attending classes that week. That call was critical. It made investigators believe Kathy had made it back to Manhattan was alive on February first, directed the entire investigation toward the city instead of where Kathy was actually last seen. South Salem. Prosecutors would later argue that call was made by Susan Berman, Durst's best friend from UCLA, posing as Kathy, creating an alibi for Robert eighteen years before Berman herself would be murdered. Robert Durst didn't report his wife missing until February fifth, five days after she vanished, only called police after the medical school dean contacted him wondering why Kathy hadn't been to class all week. When police asked Durst about the delay, he said he figured she was out someplace having fun, suggested maybe drug use was to blame. It hadn't occurred to me that anything had happened to her. His wife of nine years disappears

8:35 for five days, doesn't show up to the medical school. She was three months from graduating, and it didn't occur to him that anything had happened. Make it make sense, Gilbert Najami started calling police immediately after Kathy missed their scheduled meeting. She knew something was wrong. She'd heard Cathy say to investigate if anything happened, and now something had happened. But police focused on Manhattan because that's where Durst said Kathy was headed. That's where the phone call to the medical school came from. The investigation was derailed from day one by durst'slies. The cottage in South Salem. Police didn't conduct a thorough search, didn't treat it like a crime scene, just accepted Durst's word that Kathy had left for the train station. Najami took matters into her own hands. Every week, she drove to the Durst's cottage, went through their garbage, found some of Kathy's belongings that had been discarded, found handwritten notes from Robert. She collected everything, built her own file.

9:37 Then something strange happened. Najami's home was burglarized another friend of Kathy's was also burglarized. The files they'd been keeping about Kathy's case were among the items stolen. Those burglaries remain unsolved. The files were never recovered. Robert Durst sold the South Salem cottage in nineteen ninety Whatever evidence might have been there, whatever might have explained what ha happened to Cathy, was gone. For seventeen years, the case went cold. Kathy McCormick Durst was simply missing, presumed dead but never proven, never found, never explained, and Robert Durst went on living his life inheriting millions when his father died in nineteen ninety five, drifting across the country using aliases disguises, living among the homeless, sometimes wealthy beyond measure, but hiding from the world until nineteen ninety nine, when a state police investigator named Joseph Bessera received a tip and decided to take another look at the twenty year old disappearance of a medical student who'd warned her friends exactly what would happen.

10:47 We'll be right back with what happened when investigators reopened the case in nineteen ninety nine, and the Christmas Eve murder that followed. Just one year later, nineteen ninety nine, New York State Police investigator Joseph Bessera received a tip about Kathy Durst's nineteen eighty two disappearance. Someone claimed to know what had happened. Bessara started digging. He discovered what Gilbert Najami and Cathy's family had known for seventeen years.

11:27 The original investigation was botched. Police accepted Durst's story at face value, never properly searched the South Salem cottage, never treated Robert as the obvious suspect he was. Bessarah interviewed witnesses again, found that stories had changed over the years. Some people were willing to talk now who hadn't been before. The case needed another look. In November two thousand, the investigation became public. Media attention returned to Robert Durst. The name that had faded from headlines was suddenly everywhere again. The wealthy heir, the missing wife, the questions that never got answered, and Robert Durst panicked. The same month the investigation went public, Durst rented a three hundred dollar a month apartment in Galveston, Texas, a crummy fourplex in a run down neighborhood halfway between the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay, a place where nobody would recognize a Manhattan real estate air But Durst didn't rent the apartment as himself.

12:27 He assumed the identity of Dorothy Sinner, a real woman, his former classmate from Scarsdale High School class of nineteen sixty one. She hadn't seen him in forty years, had no idea he was using her name. Dorothy Sinner was a mute woman. That's what Durst told his landlord, communicated through handwritten notes. Wore women's clothing, a wig, dresses, high heels, complete disguise. The wealthy heir to a billion dollar real estate empire was living in a three hundred dollar apartment dressed as a mute woman because investigators were finally asking questions about his missing wife. On December eleventh, two thousand, while hiding in Galveston, Durst secretly married New York real estate broker Deborah Cheriton. They'd been dating on and off for years. The marriage was kept quiet, no announcement, no celebration, just paperwork. Two weeks later, investigators wanted to interview Susan Berman, Durst's best friend from UCLA, the mobster's daughter who'd served as his unofficial spokesperson after Cathy disappeared in nineteen eighty two, the woman prosecutors believe made that fake phone call to the medical school. Berman was going to talk to police. Finally, after eighteen years, she knew something. Everyone was sure of it.

13:49 She'd helped Durst cover up Cathy's disappearance, and now she was going to tell investigators what really happened. Susan Berman never made it to that interview. December twenty third, two thousand, the day before Christmas Eve, someone walked into Susan Berman's home in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. Found her in the living room, raised a gun, put it to the back of her head, pulled the trigger, execution style, close range single gunshot professional clean. The next day, Christmas Eve two thousand, Berman's neighbors noticed her three dogs running loose. Her back door was wide open. They called police. Officers found Susan Berman's body inside. She was fifty five years old, author, crime writer, ironically daughter of David Berman, a major organized crime figure who dominated illegal gambling in depression era Minneapolis and later ran the Flamingo Hotel. And Casino in Las Vegas.

14:47 Susan Berman had been killed just days before she was scheduled to talk to investigators about Kathy Durst's disappearance. Coincidence. Robert Durst expected people to believe it was, But a few days after the body was discovered, the Beverly Hills Police Department received a letter block letters, single word cadaver and an address Susan Berman's address, with one notable error. The sender misspelled Beverly Hills as Beverly Hills with an extra E. That misspelling would prove critical fifteen years later. Investigators suspected Durst immediately. The timing was too convenient. His best friend murdered right before she was going to talk the woman who helped him cover up his wife's disappearance.

15:34 But they couldn't prove it. No witnesses, no DNA at the scene, just a dead woman and an anonymous letter. Robert Durst remained free, remained hiding in Galveston, remained dressed as Dorothy Sinner, and nine months later he would kill again. That's part one of our Robert Durst Special. Kathy McCormick Durst, twenty nine years old, met a student three months from becoming a pediatrician, told her friends, if anything happens to me, don't let Bob get away with it. January thirty first, nineteen eighty two, she disappeared. Her body has never been found. Susan Berman, fifty five years old, crime writer, daughter of a mobster, best friend to Robert Durst since their UCLA days helped cover up Kathy's disappearance. Was about to talk to investigators. December twenty third, two thousand, shot execution style in her home the day before Christmas Eve. Two women connected to one man, both dead or missing, and Robert Durst walking free hiding in Texas, dressed as a mute woman named Dorothy Senner living in a three hundred dollars apartment while owning properties worth millions. Tomorrow, Part two, Morris Black, The Jinx, The Bathroom Confession, and the Verdict that took forty years to deliver. Kathy mcmick Durst would be seventy three years old today. Should have been a doctor for

17:05 forty years, should have helped thousands of children, should have had a career, a family, a life. Instead, she's been missing for forty three years. Her mother died at one hundred and two. Never knowing what happened. Her brother Jim has spent decades fighting for justice. Her body has never been recovered. Robert Durst never told anyone where she is. Died with that secret. Rest in peace, Cathy. Someone has to say your name. I'm reed, Carter. See you tomorrow for part two. This is Celebrity Trials.