When the Dursts acted as if his family didn’t exist, Jim had every right to feel rage, and many thought he would act on that rage. “Soon after the disappearance, I was approached by people who were willing to kidnap Bobby, put a gun to his head, beat him up, and find out where my sister is,” Jim confided to me recently. “But you don’t solve one crime by committing another.”
In 2000, I called Gilberte, then a caterer, into the office and interviewed her myself. She’d done all she could in ’82, and nothing happened. From 1982 to 1999 when we picked up the ball, Gilberte had been virtually alone out there in search of answers and justice for Kathie. She went through some pretty rough times, turning to drugs to dull her pain. She’d been arrested six times for narcotics possession and violating her parole, and had spent time in prison. She managed to pull herself out of that downward spiral and turned a negative into a positive.
When we found her, Gilberte worked at a shelter for battered women and children. She never gave up her mission, never stopped being Kathie’s best friend. Her life had been defined by Kathie’s absence and the lingering questions about how she met her end.
I felt this woman’s pain in my bones. It was killing her.
SOME QUESTIONS JUMPED OUT at me during our investigation:
• Why didn’t the press dig deeper? Everything that was put out in public was the spin of Susan Berman, without any backup, support, or credible evidence. Why wasn’t this story front-page news, for weeks on end? Why did the New York Times do only two stories? Imagine if real-estate developer Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law disappeared, God forbid. Does anyone out there think that the presumption would be that she ran off with another guy without any evidence to support it? Or that there would be only a handful of articles written about it? It would be a front-page story for weeks.
• Why wasn’t kidnapping on the table? I have a friend, a multimillionaire businessman, who lives in Harrison, New York. In 1979, he was kidnapped. His family had to pay a ransom to get him back. People were being kidnapped for money back then. No one considered that as a possibility. Not that the Dursts would have paid a ransom. Robert put a price on Kathie’s head with a paltry ten- or fifteen-thousand-dollar reward for tips. The man was cheap even when he knew he wouldn’t have to pay it out.
• Why was a criminal defense attorney hired when police never even suspected foul play or suspected Robert of a crime? Nick Scoppetta, Robert’s lawyer, was a big-shot, well-known, well-regarded criminal lawyer. Why even hire him in ’82? As soon as I saw his name in the files, I hit the intercom to Roseanne, “Get Nick Scoppetta on the phone.”
He took my call. Everybody took a call from the DA.
After minimal niceties—I couldn’t waste time on how he was doing or how he was feeling because I honestly didn’t care and if I did I couldn’t help him anyway—I said, “Nick, as you probably know, I’m looking at this Durst case.”
He said, “Yes?” He was very quiet, very low-key. I knew I had his attention.
I said, “Nick, what can you tell me about this? Why would they hire you? They didn’t need you.” The police bought into the wife-ran-away claim—hook, line, and doughnut.
He intimated that it was about concern for Kathie and he was there to help through a difficult time.
“How difficult was it, Nick? I didn’t see much in the press. Durst was never indicted. There weren’t tons of people combing the woods looking for her or accusing Robert of anything.”
Silence.
“Nick?”
More silence and then the “get off the phone with the DA excuse,” attorney-client privilege.
Like I needed him to remind me of that. “There may be other people in danger. If this guy is a serial murderer, and I believe that he is, his brother’s in trouble. His friends are in trouble,” I said. “Maybe you’re in trouble!”
I tried everything. I understood and respected the Constitution and the nature of privileged communications, but I kept pushing. “Did you call Detective Struk and congratulate him on how good a job he was doing?”
Nick didn’t say a word.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Just tell me if I’m on the right track?”
Silence. Then he said, “No,” and hung up.
I had always respected him, but for years after that call my stomach turned every time I saw his picture in the press.
SO, BACK TO KATHIE. Was Kathie a battered woman?
I’d seen thousands of them. There was no question in my mind she was. In fact, she was the classic battered woman.
Battering is not only about physical assault. It’s emotional, psychological, and financial. It’s about isolation and degradation. It’s about demeaning and destroying the woman’s self-concept. It was the classic power and control game that Robert played so well. Before she died, Kathie revealed classic battered woman’s syndrome traits to her friends and in her diary pages that her brother, Jim McCormack, shared with me recently.
• She was on a short leash. Geraldine MacInerney, a friend of Kathie’s, told Jarecki that Kathie was required to check in with Robert at all times. She asked Kathie why she always called Robert. Kathie responded, “He always wants to know where I am.” She told Geraldine she didn’t want to go on some outing with Robert. Geraldine asked why she didn’t just not go. Kathie said, “Are you kidding? He’d kill me.” Sharon McCormack confirmed this. One night around Christmas 1981, Kathie spent the night at Sharon and Jim’s house. They were up until four in the morning talking. Kathie was scared that something terrible would happen to her. But before Kathie turned in, she told Sharon, “I have to call Bob.” Even in the middle of the night, she felt she had to check in.
• She feared him. Gilberte would say for years that Kathie told her, “Promise me, if something happens, you’ll check it out. I’m afraid of Bobby.” Eleanor Schwank (a good friend of Kathie’s), Kathy Traystman, Sharon McCormack, even her lawyer were all told by Kathie that she feared an impending death at Robert’s hands.
• It got physical. Kathie described some of the abuse in her diary: “Spring of ’79, we returned from a party. We were both drunk. We argued and he slapped me. . . . Fall of ’79, we were both sober and argued about some minor issue. He punched me. I fell to the ground and hit my leg.” Kathy Traystman told me in August 2015 that she saw bruises on Kathie’s arms. Want proof? How about the visit to Jacobi, the bruises, the pleas to neighbors, the jumping from her balcony to a neighbor’s to escape from Robert, and of course her diary?
• She was terrorized. Gilberte told me in May 2015 that Robert routinely woke Kathie in the middle of the night to threaten her with a gun, a scenario that one could imagine in a movie about prisoners of war. And this, from her diary, about the trip home after visiting an adoption agency in the fall of 1974: “He told me how I should act and what to say at future meetings. I disagreed and he threw a half gallon of water on my head while we were driving. I felt humiliated and cried.”
• She was controlled by her batterer. After her forced abortion and couples counseling, Kathie wrote in her diary that Bob told their therapist that he “did not feel secure in his job financially to bring a child into this world.” When Kathie confronted him with this outrageous lie, as she wrote, he said, “He was not going to allow me to make him a father.”
That was when Kathie tried to change their dynamic. She decided to get her medical degree and do something for herself, by herself. Robert would admit years later he didn’t like the independent Kathie. As he said in The Jinx, when she started medical school, their fights escalated and became more frequent, with slapping, hitting, pushing, and wrestling. He showed his egocentric, narcissistic side when he admitted that he was insulted by the way Kathie told him she was going to Gilberte’s that last day. He was offended she didn’t ask his permission. As if, “How dare she make a decision before he was consulted?” As he described it, “Kathie got tired of my calling all the shots, that she wanted to be independent and didn’t want to be controlled all
the time.”
• She had no power in the relationship. Another chilling incident in the diary described Robert’s omnipotence in their marriage and lack of respect for Kathie. In May 1976, she wrote, “The mailbox key and telephone in our NYC apartment were changed. I found out when the telephone company called me with the new number and when my mailbox key no longer fit. I questioned Bob and he said he had no idea who or why the above were changed. After one day of me thinking how bizarre this was, and persistent questioning of him, he told me someone was threatening him at work. Two days later, I removed a book on the bookshelf and Polaroid pictures of our medicine cabinet and my closet fell out, also a list of articles on our desk. I confronted him with these and he told me he was involved with a woman and would change the apartment to look as if he was single.”
• She was isolated by him. She wasn’t to talk about her life without Robert’s approval. In her diary, Kathie wrote, “[Bob] insisted I never tell anyone I liked school and in particular he told me not to tell friends or family where I went to school. A few times I slipped and he became angry with me.” In the spring of 1975, Robert forced Kathie to leave Westchester to move to New York City, necessitating a transfer at work. “I felt I was being forced, leaving friends.”
• She had emergency room medical treatment. The same month she disappeared, she went to Jacobi to be treated for facial bruising.
• She tried to get away, but it was too late. When the violence was out of control, Gilberte got Kathie a divorce attorney and paid the retainer. The Thursday before she went missing, her lawyer, Dale Ragus, told her that Robert Durst had turned down her request for an agreement of divorce. The most dangerous period for a battered woman is after she announces her intention to leave. Seventy-five percent of homicides occur once the announcement is made. Robert Durst, having been offered a divorce settlement agreement by an attorney, knew Kathie was serious and was leaving him. Kathie did not have an escape plan and lost her life before she was able to make one.
All the pieces were falling into place. In 2001, Clem, Steve, John, Eddie, Mike from my office, and I developed a working timeline:
Sunday night, January 31: Robert Durst beats Kathie to death in the living room in South Salem. He takes her body down to the lower part of the house and dismembers it. He puts the parts in the crawl space for storage overnight.
Monday, February 1: Durst bags Kathie’s remains and puts them in his car. He drives to Ship Bottom, New Jersey. He is familiar with Long Beach Island—real estate was booming in the area between New York City and Atlantic City. He drives into the Pine Barrens and disposes of the body like his Mafia pals bragged about. He goes to the Laundromat to clean his clothes, items from his car, and evidence of the crime. Mr. Cheapskate identifies his location when he calls work collect from the Pine Barrens. Then he drives back to New York. He starts fielding increasingly panicked calls from Gilberte, eventually having Susan Berman talk to her and the McCormacks before he stops talking to anyone.
Tuesday, February 2: Durst cleans up the crime scene, using a blue light and a chemical spray to check for blood splatter.
Thursday, February 4: Durst rents out Kathie’s East Eighty-Sixth Street apartment.
Friday, February 5: With all of his ducks in a row, Robert Durst walks into the Twentieth Precinct and reports his missing wife directly to Detective Struk.
The rest of his story—the nutty, slutty part—was just smoke and mirrors, his despicable way of obscuring the truth.
In our effort to punch holes in Durst’s story, we were very, very careful, very careful, to start the interviews as far away from him as possible. That is how you do it. You’re quiet about it, no fanfare. You crawl up quietly. It’s no one’s business. There’s no point in trumpeting an investigation, allowing people to then rehearse their stories. Although evidence was mounting, there was not enough to charge. It wasn’t ideal that we didn’t have a body. The need for a body is not essential if there is a strong circumstantial case. But if the defendant is acquitted and you lose, there is no second trial. Game over. I wasn’t going to ask the grand jury to indict him until I had sufficient proof to convict.
You only get one shot. I wasn’t going to blow mine. We were steadily, quietly moving closer and closer to the truth.
FIVE |
| THE BECERRA LEAK
It wasn’t easy to keep our investigation quiet. We had to find and reinterview everyone—the elevator operator, the dean of the medical school, the doorman, the housekeeper, the train conductor, the neighbors, the divorce lawyer, the friends, the family, everybody. We watched. We lay low. We created a timetable. We inched closer to the core, one interview at a time. By talking to all of those people, we figured out that Susan Berman, Robert Durst’s best friend from college, was at the red-hot center of it all. She was the key. If we could get her to talk, we could nail Durst.
As in any investigation, it is important to start with generic, general-information witnesses. After that, you zero in on those closer to the person you are looking at. Everything was on track. We had gone from the periphery and were headed toward the heart of the case.
How did we know Susan was crucial to the case? We identified her as the family spokesperson who was often quoted in the press during the initial “investigation” back in ’82. We’d been monitoring Robert Durst’s bank accounts secretly for almost a year. In March 2000, he wrote Susan a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Knowing how cheap he was, we found it curious at best and a payoff at worst (as we’d later learn, he called it “a gift”). If Durst was sending her money to help her out, you had to wonder, what had she done to help him out?
We put her on the board to be interviewed. Before we could do that, though, we still had a great deal of work to do.
It was my decision that the press would not be informed in any way, shape, or manner about the reopening. For a year, not one article appeared. Good. Great. Silence bought us time. Our intent, when we showed up at Susan Berman’s door in Beverly Hills, was to know the answer to every question we asked, the better to test her credibility. We’d chip away at her story with what we already knew to be fact or fiction until we cracked it wide open.
In the best of all worlds, we could get Susan to admit Durst told her to tell the press about Kathie’s alleged late-night visitor and her drug problems. Or that she was the one who created the false narrative that made it into the news that Kathie might have been going to the drugstore Monday morning because she had a hangover. If she told us Durst put her up to those things, we were close to his short hairs. Or she might even tell us Durst killed Kathie!
We put the wheels in motion to make this interview happen.
Because we had multiple addresses for her, even in California, it was essential to find her exact present location. We were quite sure we knew it, but we wanted the LAPD to confirm. We did not ask them to speak with her or tell them what it was about. Whenever one law-enforcement agency is about to go into the jurisdiction of another, the courtesy call is always made. Our call was a heads-up to the LAPD as well.
On or about November 8, 2000, Chief Assistant Clem Patti, after meeting with investigators as well as the ADAs assigned to the case, called a meeting in the DA’s conference room adjacent to my office. Many of the players were there: members of law enforcement (NYPD, state police, my investigators) and Kathie’s family and friends.
A few more bits of information came to light, including the bombshell that Gilberte’s house had been broken into, and all her “boxes” on the case had been stolen. Kathy Traystman’s house at 160 West Sixteenth Street had been burglarized as well. The thieves had taken jewelry and a TV, along with files she’d hidden in a closet with articles about the case and evidence, including the original dig/shovel to-do list. There were copies of stock transactions, financial documents, and tax returns on which, Kathie had told Kathy Traystman, Bob had forged Kathie’s name. Kathie Durst gave Kathy Traystman copies of anything she wanted protected and told her, as s
he’d told so many others, “If anything happens to me, check Bobby.”
I’d asked Clem to let me know when the meeting would be, and told Roseanne to work it into my schedule. When I walked in, I thanked everyone for coming. I thanked them for their assistance in our cold case endeavor, and indicated to them that I would spare no resource in my office’s effort to solve the cold case of Kathie Durst. I also said that, although most of them knew each other, we were at a very sensitive point in the investigation and it was important to keep the information contained. The message was clear: Don’t talk about the case.
We didn’t want Berman to be aware of the case because it was always best to size up an individual in a nonadversarial setting and we certainly didn’t want Durst to get a heads-up. We were all in complete agreement about this. He couldn’t know.
I told them that they were in good hands, and that I’d assigned the best and the brightest in my office, as well as from other agencies—including those experts in forensics and identifying body locations—to this case. I then left the meeting to my second deputy DA Clem and homicide chief Steve. They were the fact-finders. They knew the case inside out, and their job was to find out if there were any other pieces to add so that we could tie everything together before our effort to talk to Susan Berman.
From my perspective, things looked tight.
Little did I know what was coming.
On Saturday, November 11, 2000, articles about the case appeared simultaneously in the New York Times and the New York Daily News. Both articles spoke of the work of the state police and the tip that led to the case being reopened. There was no mention of the task force of people from my office—the chief assistant, the chief of homicide, the chief of investigations, the chief investigator, the two senior investigators, as well as other investigators—who were working on this case. According to the articles, the DA’s office didn’t exist. How could the papers print articles about an investigation and not mention where it was coming from or where it was centered?
He Killed Them All Page 9
