Convicted killer Robert Durst dead at age 78


In March 17, 2015, file photo, New York real estate heir Robert Durst smiles as he is transported from Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to the Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment on murder charges in New Orleans.

Robert Durst, the eccentric New York City real estate scion who left behind a trail of corpses and the mystery of a body never found, died Monday at age 78.

"Mr. Durst passed away early this morning while in the custody of the California Department of Corrections," said Durst's lawyer, Chip Lewis, in a statement to the Daily News. "We understand that his death was due to natural causes associated with the litany of medical issues we had repeatedly reported to the court over the last couple of years."

Durst was convicted of the murder of a friend in 2000, who prosecutors said he killed to cover up the slaying of his wife nearly two decades earlier. Durst, prosecutors argued — and jurors believed — shot pal Susan Berman to keep her from singing to the cops.

The wheels of justice finally caught up to Durst in 2021, when he was convicted on Sept. 17 in the Dec. 23, 2000 killing of Berman after a trial in Los Angeles. Authorities contended Durst killed his wife Kathie in 1982. Her body was never found, and Durst took whatever knowledge he had of the crime to his grave.

"Susan Berman was a witness to a crime and was intentionally killed," the jury forewoman said when announcing the guilty verdict against Durst.

The Westchester County district attorney announced on Oct. 2 it had charged Durst in Kathie McCormack Durst's killing and had been working to transfer Durst to New York.

"After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Durst's family," Westchester County DA Miriam Rocah said in the statement.

On Oct. 14, Durst was sentenced to life in prison for the Berman slaying, with Deputy District Attorney John Lewin calling Durst a "narcissistic psychopath."

"He's 78 years old," Lewin said. "He's been walking around for a long time. He had a lot more of a life ... Kathie didn't make 30. On balance, considering what he's done, he got a lot more of a life than he was entitled to."

An appeal had been filed for Durst, but his death now vacates his conviction, Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told The News. "If a criminal defendant dies before he can exhaust all appeals, the conviction is negated ... The doctrine comes from common law and has been criticized by victims of crime, so some states have abandoned it. It remains the rule in California, though."

Durst became notorious nationally in 2015 when HBO aired "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," a six-part documentary that detailed his wife's disappearance, Berman's execution-style shooting and Durst's killing and dismembering of a Texas man in 2001.

Durst was born in Manhattan, the eldest of four children of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his socialite wife Bernice Herstein, who died in a fall when Robert was 7. He grew up in swanky Scarsdale in Westchester County.

He originally passed on going into the family business, opening a health food store in Vermont in the early 1970s. He closed it in 1973, when his father convinced him to come back to the city and work for the Durst Organization. But he was stepped over when Seymour selected Robert's brother Douglas to run the company.

Robert met Kathleen McCormack in Vermont, and they married in New York on April 12, 1973, Robert's 30th birthday. Durst and his wife lived in South Salem, Westchester County, when she was last seen alive in 1982. Three weeks before she vanished, Kathie was treated at a Bronx hospital for facial bruises. She told a friend Robert had hit her but declined to press charges.

Eight years after Kathie vanished, he divorced her, citing abandonment. At her family's request, Kathie was declared legally dead in 2017.

Her fate remained a mystery, with the theory being that Durst killed her and disposed of her body in New Jersey's Pine Barrens.

One person who might have known what happened was Berman. She was a longtime friend of Durst who helped provide him for an alibi for the time Kathie vanished. When cops began probing the case in 2000, she was a loose end too dangerous for Durst to dismiss.

On Dec. 23, 2000, he went to the L.A.-area home of his longtime ally — the daughter of mobster David Berman, a partner-in-crime of Bugsy Siegel — and pumped a slug in the back of her head.

It would take two decades for Durst to pay for that crime, which gave him time to kill Morris Black in Texas in 2001. Black was a neighbor of Durst's, until his body parts were discovered in Galveston Bay.

Durst claimed the shooting was self-defense and was acquitted of homicide. He was convicted of dismembering the corpse — doing such a good job with a knife, two saws and an ax that Black's head was never found.

As a criminal, he seemed to be leading a charmed life, until "The Jinx" changed his luck. Durst seemed eager to tell his version of the truth, speaking with director Andrew Jarecki. But the story didn't portray Durst in the light he'd hoped.

On March 14, 2015, the day before the last episode aired, Durst was arrested and charged with Berman's murder.

In the series, Berman's stepson gives the documentarians an envelope Durst sent to his mother, with the handwriting matching that of an anonymous letter sent to cops to alert them to Berman's murder. Both letters also misspelled "Beverly Hills" as "Beverley Hills."

Confronted with the letters, Durst asked the movie makers for another interview. After the interview ended, Durst went to the bathroom unaware that his microphone was still recording. In a rambling, off-camera diatribe to himself, he closed with, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

Little did he know he was writing his own epitaph.

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