Upstate, sixty miles away? South Salem was about sixty miles away. The place where I believed Kathie had been murdered by her husband, in the cottage they once shared that sat on Lake Truesdale.
Back in 2000, divers searched that lake for evidence. They found nothing, but there were plenty of woods and grounds around the house that might yield a breakthrough.
Cody and I locked eyes. He was thinking the same thing.
“Do you think they’re digging up Kathie’s body?” I whispered to him. Cody was a true detective. He’d never reveal what he was thinking. I understood. We just looked at each other.
Then I couldn’t resist and blurted out, “What are they doing an hour away from here?”
I eyeballed Bagli. We did that little source/reporter dance with our gaze. What does he know? What does she know? Oh, my God. The last thirty seconds of this were simply a microcosm of the whole investigation—confusion, incredulity, surprise upon surprise. Was it possible Durst had, in a fit of uncharacteristic remorse, spilled his guts and told police where to start digging?
Bagli wasn’t giving up a thing, if he knew anything. I made a mental note never to play poker with him.
Suddenly, the letters HBO and the staticky sound that we’d all become familiar with flashed across the screen. Moments later, the theme song from The Jinx—“Fresh Blood”—was playing. This was it. The beat of my heart was keeping time to the music. For weeks now, Jarecki had promised Cody and me that we’d find “some closure” tonight. Durst was already in handcuffs in New Orleans. Would there be more? I had to catch my breath.
As the episode played, the tension in the room was unbearable. They showed the handwriting expert. They showed Jarecki and Durst going back and forth on the phone to schedule a follow-up interview. Bob’s arrest for trespassing on his brother’s property. Andrew speaking with Durst’s lawyer. Andrew and Marc rehearsing for the big meeting with Robert. There were no major revelations in the first twenty-eight minutes of the show.
I thought, They’re really milking it.
Finally, on-screen, Jarecki calmly said to Robert, “I want to show you some photographs and stuff.” The ease with which he said it, knowing the bombshell that he held in his hand, was worthy of an Academy Award, or, at the very least, a gold shield accompanied by a Glock nine-millimeter.
If you were a cop, you knew that Andrew had spent a great deal of time prepping for the takedown. In fact, a great deal of time in episode six was his preparation for that takedown.
Andrew showed Robert the letter he’d written to Susan, and the telltale envelope it came in.
At that moment, all of Durst’s carefully crafted control failed him.
He’d always been an evil genius at hiding his emotions. Anyone watching his reaction to the side-by-side envelopes could plainly see terror sink in behind his beady black eyes. He started burping nervously, and put his hands over his face. Adrenaline must have been racing through his arteries at that moment.
He told Jarecki on camera that he didn’t write the cadaver note, even though he admitted to writing the letterhead envelope. Jarecki showed him the blowup side-by-side comparison of the handwriting and asked Durst, “Can you tell me which one you didn’t write?”
“No,” Durst admitted.
There you have it. The accused readily admitting that even he couldn’t distinguish his handwriting from the killer’s. Not that we needed him to do so. Any layperson with the ability to see could figure that one out.
The episode could have ended there.
Onscreen, Jarecki, clearly shaken himself, said that they were done. Robert asked to use the bathroom. The image onscreen stayed static on the empty conference room table.
I had an odd feeling. This wasn’t going to be some weird Sopranos ending, was it?
Then Durst’s raspy voice came on. He was muttering to himself—as he often had, since childhood—in the bathroom.
“There it is. You’re caught,” he said. “You’re right, of course. But you can’t imagine. Arrest him. 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.”
Fade to black.
As the lights dimmed on the screen, there was no sound. It was dead silent on TV and that silence was mimicked in the room. The shock was settling in for me and everyone else. Cody and I were holding hands, and we squeezed them simultaneously. He dropped his head. I knew how emotionally devastated Cody had been about the case. He had carried the weight of Durst’s acquittal for far too long. I let go of his hand, rubbed his back, and asked, “You okay?”
I turned to the quiet sobbing to my left. It wasn’t a wail. It was a sob of resignation. The McCormacks on the bench directly across from the screen were shaking, their heads down, and hugging. It was gut-wrenching. People reached out to comfort them.
That thirty-three years of frustration, agony, and unanswered questions were reduced to thirty-eight HBO Special minutes. The proof we had been looking for had actually been admitted by the murderer himself! That may surprise many. But I’ve always believed that we would find the truth, one way or another. And this time, in a case that had stumped so many of us for decades, that truth came out of the killer’s mouth.
Silence in the room. Probably the same silence that Durst experienced after he killed his victims. No one there knew what to do next. It was over. We were right. The only thing left to seek was the final justice.
I wanted to hear the stream of utterances again, to parse each one. Some of it didn’t make sense. But most of it was clear as glass:
“There it is. You’re caught.”
“Oh, I want this. What a disaster.”
“And the burping.”
“What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
I immediately did the judge thing in my head about whether those statements were admissible in court, whether Durst knew he was being taped, whether Jarecki and Smerling were agents of law enforcement, whether he was entrapped, was there an expectation of privacy—none of those legal niceties mattered to the people who needed closure. They just needed to know.
Then the silence and soft sobbing were pierced by a screech. As a guest in the home of the filmmaker who, along with his partner, spent eight years of his life on the documentary, with Kathie’s weeping relatives in the room, Rosie O’Donnell was freaking out. She screamed, “How could they possibly withhold this information for so long? It’s obstruction of justice! It’s illegal! They shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Based on the incredible admission by a killer on national TV, something I had never heard in my three decades in law enforcement, I started to question my hearing.
Rosie was pontificating that somehow Jarecki had done something ethically improper, if not outright illegal, by not telling the families.
I thought to myself, There’s no legal obligation for them to do anything! There’s no obstruction of justice! I couldn’t contain myself and yelled across the room, “What are you talking about?!”
I noticed that Nancy Jarecki was amazingly gracious throughout Rosie’s outburst, smiling, trying to quiet her.
Her tirade escalating, Rosie proceeded to get in the faces of the suits from HBO.
I thought, You know what, Jeanine? You don’t have to get in the middle of this. My fight had been waged for years against Robert Durst. I didn’t need to wage another with Rosie O’Donnell.
Rant on, Rosie.
The truth? We don’t have Good Samaritan laws in the United States. There is generally no obligation to report information about a crime to anyone unless you’re a mandated reporter who suspects that a child is abused or neglected.
I strolled into the dining room. Diane Sawyer had already escaped there and was standing near the buffet table. She asked me, “What do you make of all this?”
“What do I make of all this? What
I’ve always made of all this. He’s a murderer!”
She smiled politely. It occurred to me that she might have been talking about Rosie, so I added for good measure, “And by the way, there was no obligation on Andrew to do anything.” Legally, he could have sat on the bathroom confession for eternity and not broken any laws. But I did have an inkling, as I watched the meticulous way Andrew and Marc introduced the envelope evidence, the way Andrew handled the envelope when it was unearthed by Susan’s stepson, Sareb, and the video of it being placed in a safe deposit box, that they were creating a chain of custody for future introduction at trial of that envelope. Well done, boys.
Did he have a moral obligation to share the spontaneous admission with the McCormacks, other victims’ families, or law enforcement? Not for me to say. I’m a lawyer, not a philosopher. Durst was behind bars. That was good enough for me.
I later found out from Andrew that he did advise law enforcement of the admissions.
I was steamed at Rosie O’Donnell for tainting that moment for everyone in the room. Most of us, friend or foe, were all part of a journey to find out what happened to the victims of Robert Durst. Rosie made it about her. Really? And who invited you? I wanted to tell her off, but I didn’t have time for such luxuries. I had a TV show to put together in less than an hour.
Jim McCormack told me recently that while I was in the other room with Diane, he approached Rosie and quietly introduced himself as Kathie’s brother. He told her that Andrew and the FBI had their reasons for what was done, and that he was okay with it. “She reminded me of the classroom bully,” he said. “I told her, ‘This is not the time or place.’ ” He wasn’t about to back down. “ ‘It’s not your role.’ ” Nonetheless, Rosie continued to rant as if it didn’t matter what Kathie’s own brother thought about the situation.
Jim McCormack and Cody were already booked to be on my show for the hour, even though we all were unaware of what bombshell we might be discussing. I rounded them up to leave the apartment and get into a waiting car. On the way out, I grabbed Bagli by the arm. “C’mon, you’re doing my show,” I said with a smile.
Stunned, he said, “No, I’m not. I’m sick.” He was. He’d been coughing all night.
I couldn’t let him use that as an excuse. He was too important a part of this story.
“You’re not too sick to be here!”
“Oh, Jeanine . . .”
With a smile, I interrupted him. “Come on, Charlie. What, is it a Fox thing? Because you’re the New York Times?” The Gray Lady had a decidedly liberal bias. And Fox News, of course, was fair and balanced. But those at the Gray Lady believed we leaned decidedly to the right. “Come on, Charlie! The news is just too explosive not to comment on, even for you.”
I implored his wife, Ellie, standing next to him. He caved with a smile. I was thrilled, and he rode to Fox with Jim. Ellie, however, stayed at Andrew’s apartment. Cody and I took my car. As the four of us walked into the building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, I couldn’t wait to get on the air and talk about what had happened. We got to the twelfth floor, where my Justice show is filmed, and were surrounded by people who, like us, had just watched The Jinx. Their faces and eyes betrayed their innermost feelings. Camera crew, producers, makeup artists, everyone was saying, “Can you believe it? Oh, my God!”
The “Oh, my God” going on in my head was how to break down thirty years in my one-hour special, how to convey not only the disruption, the havoc, and the pain heaped on innocent victims, but also the shock of a guy who had repeatedly professed his innocence for decades admitting he killed them all.
On air, Jim McCormack, amazingly, kept his composure and talked about the time Durst got angry with Kathie at a Christmas gathering at his mom’s house. Robert didn’t like spending time with the McCormacks, and having had enough family time, he told Kathie he wanted to leave. Kathie wanted to stay. Robert then grabbed Kathie’s hair and pulled her out of the party. The guilt Jim felt for not doing something then was palpable, even all these years later. So many people carried guilt in the wake of Durst’s homicidal deeds, wondering if they could’ve changed the course of events. The only one who should have felt guilt was Durst.
When the show wrapped, we were all still so keyed up, we rode back to Jarecki’s. Andrew had returned home while we were live on Fox. I went over to him, hugged him, and said, “Damn. You did it. You’re a hero.”
He smiled a knowing smile of “I told you you’d have closure.” He immediately asked where Cody was. Marc and Cody man-hugged, and then Andrew grabbed him and made him sit next to him on the couch. Everybody loved Cody, but these guys in particular had an affection for him. They knew he was in it for the right reasons. He was the moral core, the big Texan who teared up years later because of the overwhelming guilt that the case was lost, the man who understood he worked for God.
Okay, enough boy time. “Where were you guys?” I asked.
Andrew was now sitting with his laptop open. It reflected a faint light on his face. Clearly, every news outlet in the world was trying to get in touch with him.
Marc and Andrew had been upstate, sixty miles away, with a separate camera crew—the dude doesn’t miss a trick. I later got wind of a search warrant being issued to remove boxes and boxes of Durst’s possessions from the basement of a house owned by a woman he’d befriended who’d agreed to store some of his “stuff.” The only thing that registered for me was that they weren’t digging up a body.
I was exhausted yet elated. It’d been two tumultuous days of covering the story, as a host and as a source. But the law-enforcement blood that still runs through my veins was dancing.
Cody and I smiled at each other and found a corner in Andrew’s big room. Now I had a beer. Or three.
Durst’s arrest and the admission hit me on a personal level. The relief and joy truly sank in for me. For fifteen years, he’d been outmaneuvering some very smart people all over the country, only to admit that he was a multiple murderer on national TV. Tonight life was good. Durst was in jail. He was facing charges in New Orleans and was wanted for murder in Los Angeles. I lifted my beer bottle to Cody before taking a sip as he took his.
I said, “Congratulations, Detective Cazalas.”
To which he replied, tipping his bottle against mine, “Congratulations, Madam DA.”
TWO |
| THE GUY’S ALWAYS IN THE BOX
Autumn 1999. I had already been district attorney of Westchester, New York, a county of almost one million people with forty-three separate and autonomous police departments, for over five years. Westchester is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, but money doesn’t insulate you from crime. We had our share of murder, robbery, rape, domestic violence, hate crimes, drug dealing, gangs, burglary, clergy abuse, arson, racketeering, Internet crimes, environmental crimes, economic fraud, child abuse, along with every other kind of human deviancy.
I was the first woman to hold the position, elected and reelected by then. I was a woman in a man’s job. Every one of those forty-three police departments had a male police chief who needed my approval for their cases to be prosecuted, and none of them liked reporting to a woman. My giving them directives, on the other hand, didn’t bother me one bit.
My office was huge, befitting the title. Wood paneling, mauve carpeting, formal, dead serious, and intimidating. I sat at the big mahogany desk with a badge on the wall behind it that read “District Attorney” in gold letters, just in case anyone forgot. On either side behind me were an American flag and the New York State flag. The desk was always covered in paperwork and active case files. My phone had ten lines on it, and, at any given time, most of them were blinking.
Roseanne Paniccia, aka Ro, my assistant, was the gatekeeper. She always called me “Judge” because I had been elected county judge before I was elected DA. She had long, curly dark hair—which never changed in all the years she worked for me—an easy smile, a youthful face, and damn good street smarts. A classic Ro outfit was
a short black skirt and high black boots. For accessories? A cigarette and a cup of coffee. Ro knew when to open the gate or fill the waters of the moat beneath it. In this case, the gate was a double mahogany door with four words in simple bronze block letters that read, “District Attorney Jeanine Pirro.”
One day in late fall 1999, she came into my office and said, “Clem wants to see you and he’s got Bender with him.” Part of Ro’s job was to announce anyone who wanted entry. There was no popping into my office. That doesn’t mean I didn’t walk across the hall to the trial bureau to eat lunch with my staff or to find out how their felony trial cases were going or if any of my ex-colleagues on the bench were giving them a hard time. But there was just too much going on to have a casual conversation about anything other than crime in my work zone, aka the Bermuda Triangle. Chain of command was something reinforced by my then chief assistant district attorney Francis T. Donohue—a retired two-star general. Frank and I were about as opposite, physically, as possible. He was a serious, tall, fair-skinned Irishman, well over six-foot-three, whose bible was chain of command, and I, on the other hand, was a gregarious, petite, dark-haired Lebanese, five-foot-four, who, because I was a woman in a sea of men, had made it a habit to jump chain of command whenever I could. But Frank and I did a great two-step. I often said that he was the iron fist in my lace glove. Together, we packed a hell of a punch.
Clement Patti, slim, slicked-back black hair (women swooned for him), was the second deputy DA and chief of the investigations division. Steve Bender, six-foot-two and lanky with curly brown hair and a mustache, an Errol Flynn type, was chief of homicide. Both were career prosecutors who did their job without reference to time, the weather, or the state of their marriages. Like me, they were relentless in their pursuit of justice.
He Killed Them All Page 3
