Real Estate Heir and Convicted Murderer Robert Durst Dies at 78
By Celia Young January 10, 2022 2:48 pm
reprints
Robert Durst, the scion of the famed real estate family and suspected killer of his first wife, died on Monday at San Joaquin General Hospital while serving a life sentence for the murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman. He was 78.
Durst went into cardiac arrest at the hospital and could not be resuscitated, a few months after contracting COVID-19, The New York Times reported. He was convicted of murdering Berman in September, as part of an alleged cover-up of another grisly murder: that of his first wife, Kathleen Durst.
Durst’s story, which later became a film and a 2015 HBO series “The Jinx,” rocked tabloids and television screens alike. While he was arrested for Berman’s killing the day before the finale of “The Jinx” aired, he seemed to acknowledge in behind-the-scenes interview to having committed the murders and fabricating details of his wife’s disappearance.
His trial was like none other — not only because of its gruesome details, but because it was delayed by more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Durst’s own estranged brother — The Durst Organization Chairman Douglas Durst — testified against his older brother, saying he thought his sibling wanted to kill him. The younger Durst said he hoped his brother’s passing helped those the elder Durst hurt.
“Bob lived a sad, painful and tragic life,” Douglas Durst said in a statement to Commercial Observer. “We hope his death brings some closure to those he hurt.”
Robert Durst was suspected of killing three people in his life: his wife, who vanished in 1982, Berman in 2000 and another man named Morris Black, though he was only convicted of Berman’s killing.
Kathleen Durst’s murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years after the 29-year-old vanished near Lewisboro, N.Y., and authorities never found her body. In 1990, Durst divorced her and her family declared her legally dead in 2017. Ten years after the divorce, Durst’s longtime friend Berman was fatally shot in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home. In his trial, Durst admitted to writing a previously anonymous note alerting the Beverly Hills police of a “cadaver” at Berman’s home, after years of denying his authorship.
In 2003, Robert Durst was acquitted of a separate murder, the killing of Black, a neighbor of Durst’s while he hid in Galveston, Texas, in the early 2000s, disguised as a mute woman. Durst dismembered Black’s body and dumped it in Galveston Bay, and later jumped bail, causing a more than month-long manhunt that only ended after he was caught stealing a sandwich in a Pennsylvania supermarket, The Times reported.
Durst’s story captured the national eye through the HBO documentary and the 2010 movie, “All Good Things,” in which a character based on Durst is played by Ryan Gosling.
Durst was born in 1943 to Seymour and Bernice Durst, when his father ran an apartment and office building empire.
He grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y., alongside siblings Douglas, Thomas and Wendy, and graduated from Lehigh University in 1965 with a degree in economics. He later joined the business at his father’s insistence in the 1970s, but after his 2003 trial, he cut ties with his family and his stake in 10 Manhattan skyscrapers, The Times reported.
Celia Young can be reached at cyoung@commercialobserver.com.
