A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst

by Matt Birkbeck

  Cazalas also found blood in the hallway separating Black’s apartments from Ciner’s.

  It didn’t take the police sergeant long to figure out that he wanted to get a look inside Ciner’s apartment. He obtained another search warrant, and the next day, October 4, found Ciner’s place was just as blood-soaked as the one across the hall.

  Cazalas found bloody boots, blood on the carpet, on the kitchen floor, even on the kitchen walls. There was blood underneath the floor in the kitchen, which had seeped up through a small cut in the linoleum.

  Police also found a bloody paring knife and a drop cloth that had been spread out in the living room.

  It was a slaughterhouse, some sick scene from a slasher movie. Cazalas didn’t know what to think at first: Was this the apartment of an elderly woman or Hannibal Lecter?

  A photo of a man was found inside Ciner’s apartment and shown to the two neighbors who lived upstairs. They identified the man as Robert Durst.

  Dillman, the landlord, didn’t know Durst. All he knew was that he had rented the apartment nearly a year before to Ciner, who had written a note about traveling a lot and about a friend who was to come over to check on the place from time to time.

  The other tenants told Dillman that Durst had spent a lot of time in the apartment, engaging in loud arguments with Black, a daily ritual that ended with each slamming his door.

  Cazalas took fingerprints from the number one apartment, traveled to the morgue, and matched them to Black.

  Durst’s name was run through the Texas Motor Vehicles Department and checked for any criminal record; the scan revealed no prior arrests. Cazalas did retrieve a VIN number for a 1998 silver Honda CR-V owned by a Robert Durst.

  During interviews, several neighbors said they remembered Durst, whom they described as a quiet and strange man who spent his time sitting on the front porch smoking marijuana and was once seen barking back at a dog. The neighbors recalled hearing a loud pop sound around noon on Saturday afternoon, September 29, coming from inside 2213, but didn’t think anything of it.

  Later they saw Durst loading garbage bags into his car.

  He was arrested as he drove down Broadway, on his way to pick up a new pair of eyeglasses, the receipt for which was found in the garbage pail behind the house on Avenue K.

  Bobby was now sitting in the Galveston police station, handcuffed, wearing a gray T-shirt. His hair was cut very short, yet looked wild, like thin weeds run amok.

  He said nothing, responding to Cazalas’s questions with a blank stare, which only served to anger the veteran detective, who was of the opinion that a man who’d just been arrested for murder should be somewhat more agreeable to talking with the police.

  “Sir, I’m going to ask you if you are going to cooperate with us,” said Cazalas.

  Bobby remained silent.

  “Can you give me your name?”

  “No,” said Bobby, staring at Cazalas.

  Perhaps Mr. Durst didn’t realize he was in serious trouble, or didn’t care. Whatever the case, Cazalas was at his wit’s end with his suspect.

  “Sir, I’m going to take you downstairs and put you in a cell. Do you have any questions?”

  Bobby looked up, his casualness overwhelming Cazalas.

  “What did I do?” he said.

  “What did you do?” said Cazalas, now thoroughly irritated with this little man who was dressed like a refugee from the Salvation Army. “I don’t know, you got two hundred and fifty thousand in cash?”

  Bobby didn’t flinch. He looked into Cazalas’s eyes, a faint smile apparent at the corners of his mouth.

  “No, not on me,” he calmly replied.

  The big Texan was rattled. The eye contact Bobby had made was smooth and cohesive. Cazalas knew he was being played. He also knew this wasn’t some itinerant, some bum on the street who, for whatever reason, had carved up another human being like a Thanksgiving turkey. He was something more. Cazalas couldn’t imagine just what that could be. Maybe a drug dealer?

  As Bobby sat there amusing himself at the expense of Sergeant Cody Cazalas, another search warrant was obtained and police combed through the Honda CR-V. Inside they found a nine-millimeter handgun, three joints, yet another bow saw, the key to a Galveston Holiday Inn Express where Durst had apparently spent several nights under the name of Jim Turss, and a receipt from a dry cleaner in New Orleans.

  Robert Durst was charged with murder in the second degree of Morris Black and possession of narcotics.

  At his hearing, bail was set for $250,000, plus an additional $50,000 slapped on for the drug-possession charge, bringing the grand total to $300,000, which was considered high in Galveston, even for a murder charge.

  Judging by his motley appearance, from his sneakers, shorts, and T-shirt, no one thought Bobby had that kind of cash.

  Call it experience, but Cazalas had a hunch that Bobby’s cool response to his questioning meant he’d certainly be gone the next day, that he’d somehow come up with the money, make bail, and be off, which is exactly what happened.

  Bobby made one phone call that night, to New York, telling the woman on the other end of the line that he had been arrested in Galveston, Texas, and was charged with murder. He needed to post bond.

  The call was short, to the point, and the money was there the next morning.

  22

  Gilberte Najamy couldn’t believe what she was hearing when she received a sudden phone call from Andy Geller, a reporter from the New York Post, informing her that one Robert Durst was arrested for murder in Galveston, Texas.

  “Are you sure that’s our Bobby?” she said over and over again.

  Geller assured her that it was, indeed, our Bobby, that a source had called the Post with the information on the arrest, that Bobby was said to have dismembered a senior citizen, and that the Post had confirmed it.

  In fact, it was the Galveston police, realizing that the bail money had come from New York, who called the New York City police, informing them that one Robert Durst had been arrested for murder. Someone within the NYPD called the Post with the tip, and the Post called Galveston district attorney Mike Guarino and asked him to send a photo of the man in custody. Guarino refused, so the Post sent a picture of Bobby to the Galveston police, who identified the man in custody as the same man in the photo.

  There was one other shocking detail.

  Bobby had, it seemed, spent some of his time in Galveston walking the streets dressed as a woman, wearing dresses, wigs, and makeup.

  “Oh, my God!” said Gilberte, trying to digest the news that Bobby not only stood accused of a horrific murder, but had also become a cross-dresser. “He flipped. That’s what happened. He just flipped,” she continued. “I knew we’d get him. I knew he’d see my picture in People magazine and he’d know that we were onto him. The pressure was too much. He killed Kathie, he killed Susan Berman, and now he’s killed again. Oh, my God!”

  Gilberte was beside herself, utterly shocked at the latest turn of events, yet at the same time crediting herself with provoking what she described as Bobby’s total breakdown.

  She was thrilled with the news of his arrest and saw it as a total validation of everything she had said over the past twenty-two months.

  And she was pleased with the fact that Geller’s first call had been to her. She knew, when it came to the Durst case, that she had the ears of all the major papers in New York.

  Gilberte had been the most talkative of Kathie Durst’s old friends, and her conversations with reporters, including Kevin Flynn of the New York Times and Barbara Ross of the Daily News, were clear, succinct, and often patronizing.

  When a reporter came up with a theory to run by Gilberte, she’d take a deep breath, as if impressed, and say, “Oh, you’re good! I never thought of that!”

  She’d also direct reporters in different directions, telling
them who they should talk to and who not to talk to.

  When one asked about Ellen Strauss, Gilberte said not to bother, since she really hadn’t been that close with Kathie and didn’t have much to offer.

  “She thinks she knows a lot, but doesn’t really know anything. I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  A circle of trust developed between Gilberte and the press, and reporters on the story believed most everything that she said. She was still “golden,” perhaps the source of all sources. She claimed to know everything about Kathie and Bobby and offered details to prove it.

  So when Geller began working on his story, the first person he called was Gilberte.

  Following the call from the New York Post, Najamy quickly paged Joe Becerra. When the state police investigator returned the page, his tone was one of utter disbelief. Texas? A dismembered body? Bobby masquerading as a woman?

  “He was cornered. That’s what happened, he was cornered. He knew we weren’t going to stop,” said Gilberte.

  Becerra didn’t reply. His mind was racing. Susan Berman’s death had been a shock, a wild left hook to the chin. But this? It didn’t make any sense. Why would Bobby kill some old drifter? And why would he be dressing as a woman, and in Galveston, Texas, of all places? Becerra hung up with Gilberte and called Jeanine Pirro, who was equally stunned.

  The Durst case had been all but forgotten following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. Many of those who died at the World Trade Center lived in Westchester County. Pirro even went so far as to announce that she had suspended her reelection campaign to deal with the tragedy.

  But with less than a month to go before Election Day, Pirro couldn’t resist an opportunity for publicity. She also realized that this was perhaps the luckiest of breaks, another solid reason to avoid debating her challenger, Democrat Tony Castro, who was clamoring for a chance to meet the incumbent DA face-to-face and run her family problems through the mud and across Westchester County’s television screens.

  But Pirro would have none of it.

  As the news of Bobby’s arrest raced through newsrooms across New York, reporters called Pirro’s office, asking what the murder charge in Texas meant for the Kathie Durst investigation. Unlike the Los Angeles police, who continued to remain tight-lipped about the Susan Berman investigation, Pirro didn’t just speak, she spoke volumes. She even went so far as to say that she saw striking similarities in the death of Morris Black and what she believed had happened to Kathie Durst.

  That statement in and of itself was a shock to reporters who had been covering the Durst case. If she really saw similarities and if she meant by this that she believed Kathie had been dismembered, then why hadn’t Bobby been indicted?

  The next morning, Becerra called the Galveston Police Department. He missed Cody Cazalas, who had risen early in order to make a six-hour drive to New Orleans to trace the receipt with Bobby’s name on it—the one that had been found in the garbage pail behind the house on Avenue K—to the dry cleaner who had issued it.

  Cazalas was near the Louisiana border when his cell phone rang. It was Lieutenant Mike Putnal from his office, and he had some news.

  “How we doing, partner?” said Cazalas.

  “You’re not going to believe who this Durst guy is,” said Putnal.

  “Go ahead.”

  “He’s some rich guy from New York. His family has billions. They own buildings in Manhattan. Even better, he’s a suspect in the murder of his wife.”

  “You shitting me?” said Cazalas, pulling the car over to the side of the road.

  “No. She disappeared twenty years ago. The New York police opened the case again last year. And there’s more. A close friend of his in Los Angeles was found murdered, shot in the head, last Christmas. Whoever killed her used a nine-millimeter, same type of gun we found in his car.”

  “Where you getting this all from?”

  “New York reporters. They’ve been calling all morning. They’re like goddamn buzzards. I told them they had to talk to you.”

  “Jesus. Where is the little bastard now?”

  “Don’t know. He made bail this morning. His hearing is set for October sixteenth.”

  “Damn. I knew it. I could tell last night that he’d get the money. He’s not going to show for the hearing,” said Cazalas. “No way he’s going to show. He’s gone.”

  —

  Cazalas returned to Galveston after midnight. The trip to New Orleans had produced an interesting piece of information: Bobby had driven to a dry cleaners there to have blood removed from a comforter. The clerk at the store didn’t remember much about Bobby, and Cazalas couldn’t find an address or telephone listing for a Robert Durst or Dorothy Ciner anywhere in the metropolitan New Orleans area.

  He was back at his desk the next morning at 7:30 rubbing his tired eyes, with a stack of phone messages waiting to be dealt with, all from the New York media and all inquiring about Robert Durst.

  Cazalas ignored the messages. He knew what the main question was going to be: How could he let a guy like Durst go free?

  He looked over to Lieutenant Putnal.

  “Eighteen phone messages. Can you believe that? Eighteen, all from New York,” said Cazalas.

  He wasn’t about to return the calls. What was he going to tell them, that the Galveston police had run a criminal check on Durst and it came up clean? That unless there was a capital crime involved, bail had to be set? That’s exactly what had happened, but Cazalas knew the New York media wouldn’t buy it.

  Here we go, he figured. The hicks from south Texas are going to get roasted as a bunch of bumpkins that wouldn’t know a multimillionaire murderer from a homeless jaywalker.

  “They’re going to fry our balls and hand them to us on a platter,” said Cazalas, who noticed that one of the messages was from the New York State Police.

  “I was wrong. They’re not all from the media. There’s one here from a Joe Becerra, an investigator from New York. What do you think he’s calling for?”

  “The dead wife?” said Putnal.

  “Well then, let me give him a call and find out,” said Cazalas.

  —

  Ted Hanley sipped on a cup of coffee in a conference room at the Jesse Tree while reading the Galveston County Daily News, his eyes frozen on the mug shot of Robert Durst, the man who’d been arrested for the brutal killing of Morris Black.

  Hanley already knew that Morris was gone; the news of his death had been reported several days earlier. Hanley said a prayer for the troubled man.

  But as he stared at the paper, reading about the man who’d been charged with the murder, he suddenly recognized the photo on the front page: this was that creepy guy who’d come into the Jesse Tree during the summer pretending to be a mute and then demanded fifty dollars for gas money to drive to Beaumont.

  Hanley read that Durst was a member of a wealthy family in New York, and if this was so, it made absolutely no sense to him that he’d be living in a $300-a-month apartment in Galveston, of all places. Hanley’s life was about dealing with the down-and-out, the lost and confused. He knew people, and knew them well. But this, even he couldn’t explain.

  And what about Morris, that cranky, combative limping fool of a man who aggravated everyone he came into contact with? What could Morris possibly have done to deserve this kind of fate? Hanley noticed that both the accused murderer and his victim lived at the same address. He paused after he finished the rest of the story and went back to the beginning, to the part about Durst having money. Hanley couldn’t figure it out, how Morris could have known that Durst had money.

  Would a man like Durst tell some crazed fool like Morris that he had millions? Or was there more to their relationship? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Durst stopped by the Jesse Tree just days after Morris had said he knew someone who could offer Hanley a loan to purcha
se that new building.

  Hanley did come to one conclusion, aside from the fact that Morris and Durst had been living among Galveston’s homeless. He realized that Durst had come to see him not in order to borrow money, but to check out the Jesse Tree.

  —

  Joe Becerra arrived in Houston on Monday, October 15, with John O’Donnell, the senior investigator from the Westchester DA’s office, renting a car and driving south on I-45 into Galveston. Jeanine Pirro arrived in Galveston that same day, having taken a separate flight with Lisa DePaulo, a writer who had filed one story on Susan Berman for New York magazine back in February and was now on assignment for Talk magazine to write another.

  Becerra drove over the causeway and made a left onto Broadway, heading downtown and straight for the Galveston Police Department. There, he and O’Donnell met Cody Cazalas and Mike Putnal. Becerra liked them immediately, especially the much-taller Cazalas, who greeted his visitors from New York with warm handshakes and a big smile.

  As they sat down to talk, Becerra briefed the Texans on the Kathie Durst case, and Cazalas told him and O’Donnell all he knew about the still-unclaimed remains of one Morris Black, who two weeks into the investigation remained a riddle. He apparently had no family and only one prior address that the police knew about—in North Charleston, South Carolina, where, in 1998, he had been arrested for threatening to blow up a local utility company over a disputed bill.

  “The other tenants in the Avenue K house said he was a bitter pill to take. Always arguing, shutting off lights. Being a general pain in the ass,” said Cazalas.

  Morris was an enigma, said Cazalas, but an enigma with a hefty $137,500 in savings, which police found in six accounts in a South Dakota bank.