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Robert Alan Durst (April 12, 1943 – January 10, 2022) was an American real estate heir and convicted murderer. The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, he garnered attention as a suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 killing of his neighbor, Morris Black. He was convicted of murdering Berman. Acquitted of murdering Black in 2003, Durst did not face further legal action until his participation in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx led to his being charged with Berman's murder. Durst was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He was charged with McCormack's murder shortly after his sentencing but died in 2022 before a trial could begin. Early life Robert Durst was born in New York City on April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He was the eldest son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his wife, Bernice Herstein. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Durst, originally a Jewish tailor from Austria-Hungary, immigrated to the United States in 1902 and eventually became a successful real estate manager and developer, founding the Durst Organization in 1927. Robert's three younger siblings were Douglas, Tommy, and Wendy Durst. When Robert was seven, his mother committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home. He later claimed to have witnessed it, asserting that moments before her death, his father walked him to a window from which he could see her standing on the roof. In a March 2015 New York Times interview, however, his brother Douglas denied that Robert had witnessed the suicide. As children, Robert and Douglas underwent counseling for sibling rivalry; a 1953 psychiatrist's report on 10-year-old Robert mentioned "personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia." Durst attended Scarsdale High School, where classmates described him as a loner. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and the business manager of the student newspaper, The Brown and White. Later that year, Durst enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he met Susan Berman, but eventually withdrew from the school and returned to New York in 1969. Still, Durst had no interest in working for his father at the Durst Organization, preferring instead to open a small health-food store in Vermont in the early 1970s. But he closed the store in 1973, when his father convinced him to return again to New York. Later, however, due to Robert's inappropriate conduct, his father broke with tradition and appointed his second son, Douglas, instead, to take over the Durst Organization in 1992. As the firstborn, Robert felt entitled to inherit the company, despite his disdain for it—he claimed that Douglas had stolen what was rightfully owed him, leading to Robert's estrangement from the rest of his family. He eventually sued for his share of the fortune, and was bought out of the family trust for $65 million in 2006. Capital crimes for which Durst was investigated For almost his entire adult life, Durst was the subject of investigation and speculation concerning three alleged crimes: the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen "Kathie" McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 death of his neighbor, Morris Black. Durst was ultimately tried and acquitted for murder in the Black case, but later convicted in the Berman case. Disappearance of Kathleen McCormack Durst In late 1971, Durst met dental hygienist Kathleen McCormack. After two dates, he invited her to share his home in Vermont, where she moved in January 1972. After his father pressured him to resettle in New York to work at the Durst Organization, the couple returned to Manhattan, where they married on April 12, 1973. At the time of her disappearance, McCormack was a medical student in her fourth and final year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in The Bronx, hoping to become a pediatrician—she was only a few months short of earning her degree. She was last seen by someone other than Durst on the evening of January 31, 1982, when she appeared unexpectedly at a dinner party, thrown by her friend Gilberte Najamy in Newtown, Connecticut. Najamy noticed that Kathleen seemed upset and was wearing red sweatpants, which Najamy found odd, as McCormack never dressed so casually in public. Later, after receiving a phone call from her husband, McCormack later left for her cottage in South Salem, New York. Although the couple was known to have fought that evening, Durst initially maintained that he had placed his wife on a commuter train to New York City at Katonah rail station, had a drink with a neighbor, and spoken to his wife at their Manhattan apartment by telephone later that evening. Durst later admitted he just went home and went to bed. "That's what I told police," Durst later stated. "I was hoping that would just make everything go away." After McCormack left Najamy's house, the two women were supposed to meet up at The Lion's Gate, a Manhattan pub. When Kathleen failed to appear, Najamy grew concerned and repeatedly called the police, over the course of several days. Later that week, Durst reported his wife missing. Both a doorman and the building superintendent at the couple's apartment on Riverside Drive claimed to have seen McCormack there on February 1, the day after she was last indisputably seen, but the doorman also said that he had seen her only from behind and from half a block away, and thus could not be certain that it was her. A private investigator, hired by Durst's own lawyer, later reported that the doorman said he had not seen McCormack arrive at all, and may not have been working the night she disappeared. Only three weeks after Robert had reported his wife missing, their super on Riverside Drive found her possessions in the building's trash compactor. Three weeks before her disappearance, McCormack had been treated at the Bronx's Jacobi Medical Center for facial bruises. She told a friend that Durst had beaten her, but did not press charges over the incident. McCormack asked Durst for a $250,000 divorce settlement. Instead, he cancelled his wife's credit card, removed her name from a joint bank account, and refused to pay her medical school tuition. At the time of McCormack's disappearance, Durst had been dating Prudence Farrow (Mia Farrow's sister) for three years and was living in a separate apartment. Durst initially offered $100,000 for his wife's return, then reduced the reward to $15,000. When one of McCormack's friends and her sister learned that she had been reported missing, they broke into her South Salem cottage, hoping to find her. Instead, they discovered the residence ransacked, McCormack's mail unopened, and her belongings in the trash.... Discover the Debbie Levy popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Debbie Levy books.