What Robert Durst did: Everything to know ahead of ‘The Jinx: Part 2’

With The Jinx: Aspect Two coming to Max, you could possibly be scratching your brain attempting to recall all the relevant information unfurled in the groundbreaking correct crime series’ 1st half. So let’s appear back. 

On February eight, 2015, HBO released Andrew Jarecki’s six-aspect documentary series entitled The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, about the New York true estate scion and his suspected function in the disappearance of his 1st wife, Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack Durst the death of his neighbor Morris Black and the murder of his very best pal Susan Berman. The series doggedly detailed all 3 instances, with the aid of Durst. Intrigued by Jarecki’s 2010 film All Superior Factors, which was inspired by the then-unsolved missing persons case of Kathie, he reached out to the filmmaker, providing unprecedented access to the production group. 

In November 2023, significantly less than a year soon after Durst’s death at age 78, HBO announced that The Jinx: Aspect Two would premiere on April 21, 2024. With six new episodes, the series continues with Chapter 7 and requires viewers by way of Durst’s final trial and final days. But if you have not got the time — or perhaps the wherewithal — to rewatch the 1st six episodes, here’s every thing you want to know about Robert Durst and The Jinx. 

Who was Robert Durst? 

Although born the eldest son of New York true estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst spent a great deal of his adult life identified for his alleged criminal activities. 

The Durst Organization, which was formed by Robert’s grandfather Joseph, is a sprawling true estate conglomerate, accountable for each industrial and residential properties across NYC the loved ones itself is worth $eight.1 billion. Beneath Seymour’s purview, the Durst Organization altered the city skyline, building the Bank of America Tower, the Conde Nast Creating, and 4 Instances Square. 

As for Robert, he had no interest in operating for the Durst Organization, and as an alternative opened a well being meals shop in Middlebury, Vermont, named All Superior Factors. (Yes, the title of Jarecki’s narrative film came from this shop.) Durst returned to New York in 1973, but it was his younger brother Douglas who took more than the Durst Organization when Seymour retired in 1992. By this time, Robert was currently a suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Kathie. 

Robert severed ties with his loved ones, who settled the lawsuit he brought against them in 2006 for $65 million. But his acrimonious connection with his loved ones, in specific with his younger brother, Douglas, continued. None of his siblings spoke with Jarecki for The Jinx, regardless of repeated attempts. In August of 2013, Durst was arrested for violating a restraining order placed against him by Douglas. This arrest is a key element of Chapter six of The Jinx, taking place ahead of Durst’s final on-camera interview with Jarecki. 

Durst was later acquitted on trespassing charges, effectively arguing that he could not have identified exactly where Douglas lived. 

When did Kathie McCormack Durst go missing? 

A photo of Robert Durst and former wife Kathie McCormack on their wedding day in 1973 is shown whilst Robert Durst requires the stand and testifies in 2021.
Credit: Photo by Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Instances by way of Getty Pictures

On January 31, 1982, Kathie disappeared soon after spending time with mates at a get-collectively in Newtown, Connecticut. Her pal Gilberte Najamy spoke to The Jinx producers in Aspect One particular, recounting how she noticed Kathie was not only upset but underdressed, which was out of character for her. In the doc, Najamy also notes that Kathie stated a thing cryptic ahead of leaving: “Guarantee me if a thing takes place, you will verify it out.”

Later in the evening, Kathie got a get in touch with from her husband and left Najamy’s home for the couple’s house in South Salem, New York. She was supposed to meet Najamy in Manhattan at a future date. When Kathie never ever showed up, Najamy named the police. It was later that exact same week that Robert Durst reported his wife missing. According to Durst, he dropped Kathie off at the train station on the evening of January 31, 1982, soon after an argument, and never ever heard from his wife once again. 

3 weeks later, Kathie’s possessions have been identified in the trash compactor at their Riverside Drive apartment. In The Jinx, her loved ones recall realizing Durst was throwing away her points and told producers this seemed a sign that Durst knew she wasn’t coming back. 

At the home in South Salem, Kathie’s mates identified unopened mail, as properly as a list in Durst’s garbage that study “town dump, bridge, dig, boat, other, shovel, auto or truck rental.” (This note is shown in The Jinx, and police speculate it was Durst’s murder to-do list.) The housekeeper reported not only a compact quantity of blood on the dishwasher, but becoming instructed by Durst to throw out his wife’s individual things. 

At the time of Kathie’s disappearance, the couple had been married for practically ten years. They 1st met in 1971, when 19-year-old Kathie McCormack moved into a Durst-owned creating Robert (then 28) was overseeing. On their second date, he asked McCormack to move with him to Vermont, and she agreed. In Middlebury, she assumed a great deal of the duty for the company, considering the fact that Durst had a marijuana habit that impacted his capability to stick to a schedule. By the finish of 1972, Durst decided to sell the shop. In 1973, Durst and McCormack returned to New York and got married. 

According to Kathie’s loved ones members, as properly as her diary, she suffered domestic abuse at the hands of Durst, such as becoming “slapped and punched,” as properly as a single incident in 1976 when he threw water on her head on her way to get an abortion — which she’d been ordered to get by Durst himself. In The Jinx, Durst admits to hitting her, noting he can not keep in mind the 1st time. 

At the time of her disappearance, 29-year-old Kathie was in her final year of healthcare college at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Robert Durst has stated she went back to Manhattan due to the fact she had a Monday morning class. She never ever appeared, but police believed she’d created it back to her Manhattan apartment as a lady named into the college, claiming to be Kathie. The voice on the telephone stated she was ill and would be skipping the class. It has been speculated by investigators that the get in touch with was in fact created by Berman. 

Eight years soon after Kathie’s disappearance, in 1990, Durst claimed “spousal abandonment” and divorced her. In December 2000, Durst married Debrah Lee Charatan, a New York true estate agent, and a key fixture in the The Jinx it was she who helped him post the $250,000 bail when he was arrested in the murder of Morris Black. 

Who killed Susan Berman? 

Deputy District Lawyer John Lewin starts opening statements in the 2021 trial of Robert Durst, who is charged with the murder of Susan Berman in Benedict Canyon in 2000.
Credit: AL SEIB / POOL / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

Writer Susan Berman was counted as a single of Durst’s very best mates when she was identified shot to death in her Los Angeles house on December 24, 2000. Berman supported Durst when allegations that he was involved in McCormack’s disappearance arose, and she ran interference involving him and the press. She supplied a deposition for him, and perhaps even an alibi.

The author of Straightforward Street, a memoir about increasing up as the daughter of organized crime figure David Berman, she was described as getting a “mob-infused sense of loyalty to her mates and to Mr. Durst in specific.” According to her pal Miriam Barnes, Berman told her, “I did a thing these days for Bobby. If something ever takes place to me, Bobby did it.” In The Jinx, other mates noted that at the time of her death, Berman was a failed screenwriter desperate for income, and asking to borrow from mates. 

In 2000, Berman agreed to speak with Westchester County District Lawyer Jeanine Pirro, who was reopening the investigation into McCormack’s disappearance. Weeks soon after news of the refreshed investigation hit the media, Berman was identified dead. The Jinx: Aspect One particular recommended — by way of interviews with Berman’s inner circle — that she could possibly have recommended blackmail to Durst, and in response he killed her. 

Soon after Berman’s murder, an anonymous note, which came to be identified as the “cadaver letter”  was sent to the Beverly Hills police division. Written in block letters with the misspelling “Beverley” on the envelope, this missive incorporated Berman’s address and the word “cadaver.”  

Did Robert Durst kill Morris Black? 

Following Berman’s murder, Durst moved to Galveston, Texas, in April 2001. There — as depicted by Ryan Gosling in All Superior Factors —  he lived in disguise as a mute lady named Dorothy Ciner. (The true Ciner was a classmate of Durst’s at Scarsdale Higher College). When asked why he opted to pose as mute, Durst explained, “My voice is extremely distinctive. Folks recognize my voice more than the telephone soon after getting spoken to me for years. I just could not think about attempting to make my voice sound like a woman’s.” 

Through this time, he befriended his subsequent door neighbor, 71-year-old Morris Black. When Black’s physique was later identified dismembered floating in Galveston Bay, Durst was arrested on October 9, 2001.

Durst was released on $250,000 bail. Soon after missing a hearing on October 16,  a warrant was issued for his arrest. On the run, he was picked up at a Wegmans grocery shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, soon after shoplifting a sandwich (in spite of the reality that he had $500 in his pocket). In his rental auto, police found Morris Black’s driver’s license, as properly as directions to the Connecticut house of Gilberte Najamy, Kathie’s pal who contacted police when she 1st disappeared. 

In September 2003, on trial for the murder of Morris Black, Durst argued that he acted in self-defense, soon after Black threatened him with a gun that he had stolen from Durst’s oven. As soon as he realized Black was dead, Durst explained why he chose not to get in touch with the police: “I imply, even ahead of I got to the point exactly where the police have been instantly going to appear into who am I, Robert Durst, who occurred to rent this apartment as Dorothy Ciner and locate out that I am this wealthy guy who rented the apartment properly beneath his implies and there is all this media consideration on him back in New York. I just did not feel I would be believed. I did not feel they would think me.”

The Jinx detailed how Durst’s defense demonized NY prosecutor Pirro as a ruthlessly ambitious figure chasing an innocent widower, proficiently earning sympathy for their client whilst explaining his gruesome disposal of Black’s physique. (This was reflected in testimonials from the Texan jury.) 

Durst admitted to dismembering Black with the tools he identified in the man’s apartment, soon after realizing his physique would be as well heavy to carry out of the creating. On November 11, 2003, Durst was identified not guilty in Black’s murder. Soon after later pleading guilty to jumping bail and tampering with proof, he was sentenced to 5 years with credit for time served. Durst was paroled in December 2005. Ordered to remain close to house when paroled, he was arrested once again for returning to the boarding home exactly where Black was killed Durst remained in prison till March 2006. 

Robert Durst confessed, “Killed them all.”

A screen displays a comparison of handwriting as Deputy District Lawyer John Lewin speaks for the duration of the second day of the prosecution’s opening statement in the 2020 Robert Durst trial.
Credit: ROBYN BECK / POOL / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

Through the creating of The Jinx in late 2010, director Andrew Jarecki was offered an envelope identified by Berman’s stepson, Sareb Kaufman. It was addressed to Susan from Durst. The handwriting on the envelope, as properly as a typo in the spelling of “Beverley Hills,” matched that of the “cadaver letter” sent to Beverly Hills police soon after Berman’s death. In the show, it really is an emotional moment for each Kaufman — who’d grow to be close to Durst soon after Susan’s death — and Jarecki, who had new proof to confront his topic with. 

When the climactic interview ultimately came — soon after a lot of delays, such as Durst’s aforementioned arrest for violating his brother’s restraining order — the alleged serial killer became flummoxed when confronted by Jarecki about the envelope, alongside a close to-identical instance of his personal handwriting in their final on-camera interview.

With shaking hands, he says, “The writing appears comparable and the spelling is the exact same, so I can see the conclusion the cops would draw.” Durst had admitted in a prior interview with Jarecki “only the killer could have written” the cadaver letter. But he maintained in this final interview, “I did not create the cadaver a single.”

Soon after this interview concluded, Durst asked to use the bathroom of the hotel space rented for the recording. Unaware his microphone was nonetheless on, he confessed to himself in the bathroom: “There it is, you are caught. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

The day ahead of the finale episode of The Jinx aired on HBO, Durst was arrested for the murder of Susan Berman. It really is right here exactly where The Jinx: Aspect Two picks up.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst is now streaming on Max.