Shownotes Transcript
Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret. Have you heard of Wondery Plus? With ad-free episodes and one week early access, it's like having an all-access pass to our light-hearted nightmare. So come join us on the dark side and try Wondery Plus today. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network Podcast.
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Morbid, morbid, morbid, morbid. There you go. It's kind of like morbid in the morning. We woke up so early this morning that you could tell me it was 11 a.m. right now and I'd be like, yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we're doing some yoga in the morning. We're yoga girls. We're yogis.
Yeah, pretty much. I felt like a yogi today because sometimes the instructor, like most of the time she does it with us, like so I can look at her and be like, what the fuck are we doing? But today, uh-uh. And I mostly knew what I was doing. Yeah, I mostly knew. Oh, I'm an honest girl. Sometimes I was like, the fuck? Where are we? Like which warrior are we in? The warriors I have down, we did a lizard. I said,
What? You said, what's a lizard? I said lizard. Lizard feels great. And sometimes when we were like doing that like three dog thing, I was still flowing down. And then like everybody else was three dogging and I was still open hearting. Three dogging. I don't know. Yeah.
I like that. I like that a lot. It feels good, though. It feels nice. Yeah, I feel good. I feel like I'm getting stronger. And it clears your mind. It does. Which you kind of zone out for a little while. It's a great way to start the morning. Especially super early because we do it before even like anyone, my kids wake up. So that's nice because it's like then I'm fully awake and ready to go by the time they come rolling down the stairs. And you've like had some you time. Yeah. I think that's important as a mamacita. Oh, it is very...
very recommended if you can get yourself up before your kids in the morning just to give yourself even if you don't have to do anything productive you can just sit oh yeah if you want I'd argue sit in the silence I'd argue that's productive for you watch a watch something on TV that you never get to watch because no one you don't get the TV
The other morning. Like, just even having just that hour, even, just an hour before your kids wake up, I'm telling you, it makes a difference. Yeah. And if you don't have kids, it's also just nice to have, like, to be the only one awake in your house. Like, the other morning, I think you, like, overslept or something, and I was like, oh, I'm not going with that. I could have very much, but I said no. But I stayed up, and I just read some of my book for, like, an hour. Mm.
Like five to six, I just sat in my dark living room with my mood lighting in red. I was like, bitch. I love it. Speaking of reading. Oh, yeah. Speaking of reading. You got some stuff to tell us? We're recording this well ahead of time because, you know, life. But so by the time this comes out, I'm...
I think we'll have a whole new ecosystem coming about by the time this comes out. Absolutely. I'm just kidding. But by the time this comes out, the paperback of The Butcher Game. Ooh!
is going to be out and available for pre-order. I'm excited. It will be out officially on August 12th, I believe. But you can pre-order it now. It's so early I don't have a link, but we'll try to throw one in the show notes. So the link is in the show notes right now. Check it. So do it. Pre-order it. Everyone loves a paperback. The paperback is nice. Yeah. You know.
You know? I only have the galley of the paperback. I want the fin deal. You need the fin deal. I have the galley. I have the hardcover. Now I need the paperback. Now you need the paperback. A paperback is good. You can throw it in your bag. Yeah. You can bend it if you want to. She might get mad at you. I won't get mad at you as long as you don't bend my copy of it. Okay. Fair. Which is fine because I don't lend it out. I never lend out books.
It's true she doesn't. One time you gave me a book, but you made me essentially sign a contract saying I wouldn't dog-ear the pages. That you wouldn't dog-ear. It's not worth borrowing a book from you. I make it very not worth it. Really quickly, I'm so excited. I can't wait for the paperback to come out. Is there a date? You're like, really quickly, forget this. No, I was like, wait, before I move on, let me fully acknowledge how excited I am. No, I'm very excited.
But is there a date? There is. So it's already out for pre-order, but I think it's going to be out officially August 12th. August 12th. I like that date. Yeah. 9, 12? I love August. No, August is 8, you fucking idiot. August is right before fall.
That's time, baby. It's right before fall. We're getting there. Yeah. August. It's so close to fall. August. Fall! I feel fall in my bones already. No, let us get through the summer first, okay? You know what I'm sick of? What are you sick of? I'm sick of any time. Every year I get to this exact spot and I say, I need fall. And you know what I hear from everybody? No.
Let us get through summer. I'm not stopping you. I'm not stopping a whole season from coming and going. I'm not putting some kind of magic into the air that makes it stop. You are putting magic into the air. Man, I want fall. You know you're manifesting. Because John does the same thing. He's like, let us get through summer. I'm like, I'm letting you. Oh, my God. Calm down, you crazy person. Never, Mikey. What?
of these weird is this like weird things you're doing with your vocal cords it's like i'm scared i'm mad i'm scared i'm mad i'm not stopping no but you are putting magic in the air you're like manifesting that summer goes by fast and i don't want it to yeah too bad that's why i said i'm gonna manifest listen i like fall too all i want in my goddamn life is
is to go, and this is, I'm a Disney adult and I don't care. I'm going to say it out loud and I don't care. All I want in my goddamn life is to go to fucking Disney World for October. Like I crave that so badly. So I can't wait for fall. But then every time fall comes around, it's...
Fucking hurricane season. In Florida. In Florida. Yeah. So I can't go. I mean, I never want to leave New England during the fall. And you don't like to refuse to. I know. We're just stating our wants now. So there's that. So that's my want. So hurricane season actually works in my favor. I'm underbiting at her. I'm underbiting this bitch right now. I'm not traveling during that time. So I want to.
so bad sorry maybe this year's the year maybe it's the year maybe 2025 maybe i want to go and i want to like see like the um like it'd be like the pumpkin in the center and everything and get the merch yeah and the party i want to go i want that for you thank you you know thanks you're welcome
Thank you. Thank you. I had a moment. I won't yell at you about that. That's good. You can't yell at me anymore. You already yelled at me real big. Because I'm not stopping summer. I'm just going to talk about fall all through summer. That's the thing. Yeah. The whole time we're all enjoying summer, you're saying fall.
fall. Now, what did you say at the beginning of that sentence? The whole time that we're enjoying summer. We're still enjoying. You're still enjoying summer. We're still enjoying. I can talk about fall and everybody can still enjoy their summer. This woman. God damn. This woman. We're going to get in an actual fight again. We've been match recording too much lately. We've had too many match recordings. People are like, are they going to break up? No, we fine. Literally never. We're not allowed. Fine.
But speaking of, you know, things that you don't know, I have nothing. I don't have a way to segue. It has been too many patch recordings because I've lost my ability to segue. My coffee almost
came through my nose. No, I don't have anything. I don't have it. I thought it was gonna, you know how sometimes when you don't have something to say. You just keep going. You're like, just talk and it'll form itself. Sometimes that works. Can I tell you, that's how I get through my everyday life. Not here though. That didn't work. It doesn't always. So I'm just gonna go right into it. What we're gonna cover today is the crimes of Robert Durst. Of course. Not Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit. Different.
He just wants to break stuff. He does. He wants to break stuff. But we're talking about the jinx. Of course. Of course. If you've watched the documentary, The Jinx...
I highly recommend you do it. It's fascinating. And the theme song. Oh, the theme song is A+. Is it the eels? Yeah, it is. Wow. Bitch, check me out. Impressive. Thank you. Yeah, I immediately put it on a playlist when I watched it. So good. It's a really horrifying documentary. It's scary. It's upsetting, but it's fascinating. It's all that stuff. And they caught that very infamous...
Chitter chatter in the bathroom on his hot mic there. And at one point, the way he says, of course, in that clip, he's like, of course, it's like a very specific way he says it. And Ash says, of course, like that.
But not intentionally. Not intentionally. She just, that's how she says it. She'll be like, oh, like, yeah, I'll drive, of course. Like, she just says it. It just, like, naturally happens. And every time she says it, I'm like, okay, jinx. Like, I can't, I can't stop.
So that's just in my brain right now. Of course. But let's get to the very beginning because I think a lot of people know the Jinx documentary. They know the name Robert Durst. They might know a little bit about it, but like there's so, this is a really scary case. It's involved. He's a very scary man. Yeah. He did a lot. So we're going to start with the murder of Morris Black, which is a very gruesome, very sad thing. Yeah.
So on the morning of September 30th, 2011, David Avena set out for Galveston Bay for just to, you know, just to go fishing with his kids. He had his 13-year-old son, James, and his 8-year-old daughter, Elise. They were really just like, this isn't like a big thing. They were just going out to kind of like hang out together, lazily fish.
So they set themselves up on the shoreline. They just put their lines in the water and just sat down and waited for fish to bite. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. So somewhat bored with this whole thing.
The 13-year-old James. He was like, I'm just going to wander down the beach a little bit because I'm just staring at a fishing pole right now. And at 13, you don't want to do that, probably. So he goes down the rocky beach and he hears his father calling him back because he was asking him to come help reel in some of the lines. Oh, shit got exciting. Shit got excited when he left. That's what always happens. It's true. You leave in the fish bite. Exactly. So as James wandered back to his father and sister, he saw something in the water.
And he saw something floating and he was like, huh. So he just stared at it for a couple of seconds, kind of trying to like reconcile what he was looking at. Yeah. And he said it was just like a pinkish blob, but he was like, but he was weird. It was weird looking. It just didn't look like anything he had seen before. And then it dawned on him. And he said, oh, I'm pretty sure that's a piece of a human body. Oh. And he's 13. That's awful. Like no kid should have to see that. Yeah.
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So James yelled to his father and he said, there's a body over here. But David Avino was like, yeah, he's definitely joking. And he's probably trying to get his sister all freaked out. Like that's very 13 year old boy to do. So David dropped what he was doing and ran over to James. And he was expecting to see, you know, maybe an animal in the water or something like inanimate just floating in the water. But
It was not an animal and it was not something inanimate. David Avena had been a surgical nurse and so he was very well versed on the human body. What are the odds? And yeah, right? And he immediately knew what was floating in the bay had definitely once been part of a human body. Oh, man. Specifically, it was the trunk portion of a man. Oh. But the head, arms, and legs were missing, which must have been horrifying to see. Yeah. Yeah.
So he led his kids back to the car and immediately called the police, and they arrived on the scene a few minutes later. Now, the remains were removed from the water, and while they were doing that, police and shore patrol agents were fanning out across the beach, looking for any additional evidence, any more remains. And several hours into the search, long after the sun had gone down, investigators found...
About 80 feet offshore, three garbage bags containing more of this victim's remains. Oh, man. A short time after that, more bags were found down the shore, and those contained the rest of the man's remains. My goodness. According to the technician who performed the autopsy, the remains were that of an elderly white man in his 70s. So sad. You make it to 70 years old. And that's how you go out.
The cause of death was a .22 caliber gunshot wound to the face. All indications were that the dismemberment had occurred post-mortem. More interesting than the remains themselves was that there was a lot of other stuff...
mixed in with these remains. There was a lot of pieces of garbage, basically. Cash register receipts for garbage bags, a drop cloth, a $6.99 bow saw. They also, in the bags, they also found bloody towels, one flip-flop, one shower shoe, a piece of tan fabric, like a bunch of blue plastic cups, used paper towels, and a copy of USA Today from two days earlier. Huh. Yeah.
And the address label was still on the USA Today. Oh. When they scoured the shoreline, they also found a blue bed sheet and a pair of men's underwear. Okay. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of stuff. So investigators ran the victim's fingerprints and identified him as 71-year-old Morris Black. Morris Black was a resident of Galveston. He did have a criminal record, but it was just minor offenses. Yeah. People who knew him...
They didn't have the kindest things to say about him. They called him gruff. They called him short-tempered. He was very demanding, that kind of thing. They didn't call him like he was this horrible monster. It was just like he was kind of like a grumpy older dude. Kind of like, yeah, short-tempered. A Galveston business owner said of dealing with Morris Black, no matter how busy we were, he would break in and demand that I stop everything and see him.
And Black's sister, Trudy, kind of gave a similar description. She said of her brother, if he had a disagreement, he'd go protest. He'd march in front of the building. He could make enemies. Oof. So he had a little bit of a reputation. So investigators were like, all right, there's probably at least one person that might have wanted to hurt him. Right. But the more they interviewed his neighbors and acquaintances, they realized that it wasn't that, like,
He was like a bad guy. And it's not like they really didn't find they were like, I don't think he would have attracted a killer. He seems like he's just kind of like a like a nuisance. Yeah. Like he just kind of he rubs people the wrong way. He's not like threatening people or like these streets making enemies. It didn't seem like he was pissing people off to the point of like you could have attracted somebody like that. Yeah. You know what I mean? So when their interviews with friends and acquaintances turned up nothing, investigators visited Morris Black's home.
And that was the address that they had found on the USA Today copy. When they arrived there, which it was a fourplex on a quiet street, and investigators took a look around the outside of the building, just look for anything, basically. And inside one of the trash cans, they found an empty black garbage bag that matched the bags perfectly.
that Morris Black's remains were discovered in. They also found the packaging for the drop cloth found with the body and a large amount of paper towels that matched those found in the bags. And they found a bunch of other items that connected the apartment building to the murder. So a search of the second trash can turned up even more
more evidence. I mean, it's crazy. Including a .22 caliber pistol and a spent shell casing. Whoa. And a receipt for an eye exam addressed to one of the residents, Robert Durst. Hmm. Whose address was across the hall from Black's apartment. Okay. Now, according to the landlord, Klaus Dillman, no one by the name of Durst, Robert Durst, lived in that building. He said, no, the person in the place across the street, the hall from Black...
that there's a, quote, nice middle-aged lady named Dorothy Sinner. Mm-hmm. So the landlord told detectives that Sinner had lived in the apartment since 2000. Apparently, they had moved in about a month after Morris Black, and the woman had never caused any problems. Okay. And they were like, I don't know what you're talking about. But Dillman did add that it wasn't Sinner herself who had rented the apartment, but her brother-in-law.
Her brother-in-law had made all the arrangements over the phone because Sinner had some kind of condition with her larynx, so she could not speak. Okay.
Okay. In fact, he said in the few times when Sinner and him had communicated at all, she had done so through handwritten notes. Okay. And finally, Dillman said, yes, he had met the brother-in-law once and had seen him on a few occasions, and he'd never actually seen the two of them together, actually. Weird. Strangely. Meaning Sinner and the brother-in-law. Strange. When investigators searched Black and Sinner's apartments, it was clear they'd found the crime scene.
In both apartments, there was blood on the walls and floors, as well as a blood trail leading across the hall from one apartment to the other. Well, that'll tell you. Yep.
In Sinner's apartment, detectives found a four-inch paring knife and a pair of bloody boots. They also discovered blood outside the apartment building in the parking lot. And one of the other tenants, Maria De Hernandez, told detectives that on the night of Morris Black's murder, she had seen a man loading black garbage bags into a silver Honda in the parking lot, and she didn't recognize that man. That's terrifying.
So as crime scene technicians processed Sinner's apartment, what they found painted a very strange picture of who lived there. Although Sinner had lived in the apartment for nearly a year, there was like very little furniture in here. There was a futon, a small table, and a television. The refrigerator was completely empty, and the stove appeared as though it had never once been used. That's weird. It also looked as though someone had gone out of their way to thoroughly scrub the floors.
But when they pulled up the tile on the floor, they found a large amount of blood had seeped through and soaked the boards underneath. Analysis of the blood would prove that it was Morris Black's blood.
Now, based on the statement from the neighbor, investigators ran a check for any vehicles registered to Sinner's address that matched the description of the silver Honda. And they learned that Robert Durst had registered just such a vehicle there. When they showed Klaus Dillman a photo of Durst, he acknowledged that he looked like the man he'd assumed to be Sinner's brother-in-law. Imagine that. But more importantly...
He also bore a pretty striking resemblance to Dorothy Sinner herself. Strange. In fact, the more Dillman looked at the photo of Durst, the more he was like, oh, that is actually him. Like, that is Robert Durst. Dorothy Sinner is Robert Durst. Wild. Can you imagine? Robert Durst had lived there how many years? Did you say four? I think, yeah, at least like he had moved in right after, or Dorothy Sinner had moved in right after Morris Black. That's wild. Yeah.
Which is kind of crazy. The handful of interactions Dillman had had with Dorothy Sinner had all been quite brief and really, like I said before, only through notes. Yeah. So it had never occurred to him that Sinner could have been anyone other than who she was saying she was. Yeah, why would you think anything else? Why would you question that?
Okay. Okay.
with the name Jim Truss. That is not identification, sir. Yeah, obviously this was not what the officer was asking for, so he was like, hey, step out of the car, and he placed this man in custody. When the officer searched through the vehicle, he found a bag of marijuana, a 9mm handgun, and a bow saw similar to the one purchased with the other items days earlier. Not day-to-day travel items. Not day-to-day travel items. At first, investigators suspected this was the saw used in the dismemberment.
But when the autopsy was complete, the medical examiner actually confirmed that whoever did the dismemberment had used a paring knife to cut away the muscle, then used a hacksaw to remove the limbs. Oh, my.
Now, this man that was arrested on the side of the road was Robert Durst. That's crazy. Yeah, right? That's wild. You didn't see that coming, did you? I had known. Not at all. The arrest of Robert Durst for the murder of Morris Black came as a surprise to just about everyone, particularly because Durst hardly looked like the kind of man who was going to shoot another man in the face. He really didn't. Then dismember his body. No. But as investigators started looking into his background, they discovered...
He was unlike anyone they had investigated before. They were like, wow, we definitely did not know that this is what was lurking underneath. So let's talk about Robert Durst. Who the hell is this man? What is going on? He's lived a thousand lives. None of them good. None of them good. Robert Alan Durst was born in Manhattan on April 12th, 1943.
I think Seymour is a great name. That is a great name. Casual. Very casual. Casual.
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Since being established in 1915 by Joseph Durst and his brothers, the Durst organization has owned or built some of the most expensive and most recognizable properties in New York City, including the Henry Miller Theater, the Bank of America Tower, and the development of One World Trade Center. Damn. So, yeah.
So like Seymour, Robert's mother Bernice also came from New York's elite class and filled her days with social activities. She was a lady who lunches. She did like charities, luncheons. Ghouls. Very Emily Gilmore. Yes. Bernice and Seymour married in 1940, and in the 10 years after that, she gave birth to the couple's four children, Robert, Douglas, Wendy, and Thomas.
Now, tragically, on November 9th, 1950, Bernice fell to her death from the roof of the family home in what was later deemed an accident by the coroner. Hmm.
According to the press, Bernice had gone out on the roof for unknown reasons and someone called police and fire department to rescue her. But as the firefighter was climbing the ladder to reach her, Bernice insisted she could get back inside on her own, but slipped on wet leaves and fell to the driveway below, which is horrifying. Yeah, that's really sad. Seymour told investigators that his wife had been in treatment for asthma and had taken a sedative that morning. And later that day, she had seemed confused and unlike herself.
The family consulted a physician who recommended Bernice stay in bed to rest, but later that afternoon, she climbed out the window onto the roof in her bathrobe. Oh, man. Despite the official report of an accidental death, there are many reporters and New York socialites who believe Bernice had been profoundly depressed and had possibly intentionally ended her life. Oh, that's really sad. Now, this is people speculating. Yeah, of course. Obviously, we do not know that.
Now, following Bernice's very unexpected death, the Durst children understandably struggled to adjust to life without their mother. I can't imagine. Particularly seven-year-old Robert. Oh, so little. He claimed to have witnessed the fall. Oh, yeah.
Seymour responded to the loss of his wife by just retreating into himself and becoming very consumed with his work. Which you can't when you got four little ones to take care of. When he was at home, he would often just disappear into his study and bury himself in books in order to just avoid all of it, avoid all the feelings, everything.
The new reality in the Durst home meant that the children were, for the most part, now being raised by nannies and other domestic workers. Yeah. Which is like a big change for them. Yeah. Your mom's there one day and then gone the next. That's awful. And now you're being raised by like...
people who aren't your parents. Yeah. Now, as he grew older, Robert Durst developed a quiet and mostly shy personality. He performed pretty, you know, adequate in school. He had a few friends. His life was pretty unremarkable, like nothing crazy. Which, honestly, that's pretty remarkable in and of itself for someone who came from such wealth and privilege. The fact that it was just kind of a chill life. Like a pretty casual existence. That said, he seemed to develop some quirks.
that people who knew him found a little unusual. That's one way to describe this man's is quirky. Very quirky. According to his childhood friend, Julie Baumgold, she said, quote, he spoke with a drawl. Long pauses punctuated his speech as if he were struggling to spit out the words.
Now, and he does have a different way of speaking. Yeah. For sure. Despite being strongly introverted, Robert tried to fit in and was a member of many clubs, including the camera club, the Spanish club, and being a member of the junior varsity soccer team. Trying to just like be one. Yeah. With everybody. After graduating from high school, Robert went on to study business and economics at Lehigh University and intended to go into real estate, like the business with his father.
Things changed, though, once Robert joined the anti-war movement that was growing on college campuses across the country. While many young people became activists during this period, Robert's decision to participate didn't really sit well with his dad. His dad insisted his son take his life and responsibilities more seriously. But by then, Robert had become fully involved in the counterculture movement and wasn't interested in whatever his father was trying to tell him what to say. Yeah.
Now, this shift in his priorities during this period definitely was a major change. This marked a major change in his personality, too. Okay. Most of his life, he lived up to his father's expectations and incredibly high standards. But now that he was away from Seymour Durst...
He began developing his own identity, and much of that identity was going to be rooted in opposition. Hmm. He told a reporter, when I was growing up, it was the days of long hair and marijuana. In terms of announcing that you were going into the family business, that was extremely uncool.
Instead, he completed his studies at Lehigh and enrolled in graduate studies at UCLA, where many of the counterculture ideas and philosophies were being born. Now, it was at UCLA that Durst met one of the more important influences in his later life, 21-year-old Susan Berman.
Despite their attraction to one another, Robert and Susan never became a couple. Instead, they've just got, they formed a very tight, close friendship. Right. They bonded over their almost unique personal histories, basically. Like Robert, Susan came from a prominent and wealthy but pretty troubled family.
But unlike Robert, Susan's father's wealth had come from questionable means. In 1947, the mob-affiliated David Berman took over the Flamingo Hotel after its previous owner, Bugsy Siegel, was shot to death by an unknown gunman in his Beverly Hills home. I heard of Bugsy. So, yeah. That's high up shit. Yeah, that's some shit.
So Robert and Susan would remain close until her death in 2000, but it turned out that graduate school wasn't exactly where Durst wanted to be. After completing a portion of his program, he dropped out of UCLA in 1969 and went back to the East Coast. But he still wasn't interested in joining the family business.
Instead, he, I mean, by now he's fully immersed in the counterculture lifestyle. So he moved to Middlebury. That's in Vermont. And he opened a health food store. So he went fully the other way. Vermont plus health food store equals Robert Durst. Also, my youngest calls Vermont Vremont. And I love it. And every time I see it, I think Vremont. I hope she never grows out of that. Now, the thing is, for this, it looks like he's like totally...
you know, rebelling against the idea of the family business. He's going to Vermont. He's opening up a health food store. It was entirely bankrolled by his father. Of course. So it's like, it's not like he's...
I can't stop saying of course. Yeah, of course. Now, as far as Seymour Durst was concerned, the store was a waste of time. But at least Robert was directing his energies towards business and was moving in a more what he considered to be respectful direction. Okay. The store, which was called All Good Things. I love that. I would go there. Right? Yeah.
Who wouldn't try a store called All Good Things? Yeah. It reminds me of the Stephen King book, Needful Things. Yeah. But it's not the same. So the store, All Good Things, was opened in a Durst-owned building, and as a condition of giving his son the money, Robert had to be responsible for the property, which included acting as a landlord to the building's one tenant, Kathy McCormick. Mm-hmm.
Now, Robert first met Kathy in late 1971 when she moved in and pointed out a number of things that needed repairing. And he was immediately taken by her. Like, immediately. He said, strong woman knows what she wants. Robert wasted no time asking her for a date. And after going out just two times, he asked her to move into his house. And she agreed and moved in in January 1972. He said, this is great because I love you and because I won't have to fix those things. I won't have to fix the shit. Yeah.
So while Robert and Kathy's relationship was going well, things at the store were not. Oh. At the same time, Seymour Durst had begun encouraging his son to close up the store and return home to join the family business. If nothing else, Robert would be able to make much better money, which would allow him to support Kathy and Seymour hoped their family to come. Perhaps he was swayed by the money or the thought of an easier life, but Robert finally caved.
and went in with his father's demands, and he and Kathy returned to New York in early 1973. And a few months later, on April 12th, Robert and Kathy were married. Nice. Now, initially, Robert and Kathy moved in with Robert's brother, Douglas, and his wife, and their newly built home in Katona, which is about 60 miles outside the city. The house was massive. It was spacious. Definitely more than enough room for four people. But Kathy quickly started feeling uncomfortable there.
According to one of her college friends, the home was more than adequate, but she just hadn't expected things to be so tense, she said. Apparently, Eleanor Schwenk said the two brothers fought, bickered, and constantly needled each other. So that's uncomfortable. And after Kathy made her feelings known about this whole thing, the couple moved out of the house and into the Durst organization's most expensive apartment.
which was a penthouse on Riverside Drive, and it had panoramic views of the Hudson River. Can you imagine? It's amazing. So now that they've moved, they're much happier in their new apartment than they had been living outside the city. I mean, it's a penthouse, honey. It's a penthouse, and Robert and Kathy settled into their new lives. She was a nursing student, and he was a real estate developer at the time. Yes.
A friend, Gilberta Najimy, said, they were earthy, downright regular people. I thought he was a caring, loving husband. I know Kathy was in love with him.
That may have been true, but it didn't take very long for the shimmer and shine of their marriage to wear off a little bit. For Kathy, the idea of marrying someone from an incredibly wealthy family was exciting. Hell yeah. It not only meant that she could finally have, you know, all the things she ever dreamed of having as a child growing up in a middle-class home, but it also meant that she was rubbing elbows with famous and very influential people. That's fun. What she hadn't counted on...
was Robert being so modest in how he lived. Not fun. Or that all those famous and influential people would be more interested in him than they were in her. That's tough. Yeah. But most of all, Kathy didn't love how much time Robert spent with Susan Berman.
I probably wouldn't either. Yeah. And who moved to New York in the mid 70s to work for Us magazine. Okay. Oh, very cool. Yeah. With much more free time on her hands than she'd had before, Kathy enrolled in medical school and started making friends of her own. Wait. Good for her. Good for her. Also, that's funny that Susan worked for Us magazine. Wasn't that the magazine that they found at the crime scene in the beginning of this whole tale? Yeah.
Was it Us Magazine? I think it was. I think you said Us Weekly. I think you're right. That's weird. Yeah, that is weird. Just like a weird coincidence. That is very strange. Right? Sorry. Yeah. I was heading to know. I was like, oh, wow. Had to veer off there. Yeah.
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But by the end of the 1980s, the once happy couple were now leading lives that appeared to be going in very different directions. Robert wanted things to stay exactly as they had been, with Kathy always being available to him whenever he wanted. That's not realistic. Kathy, on the other hand, complained that, quote, they were living well below their means. And she aspired for more. Also, Robert's jealousy and his possessiveness had become, like, pretty intolerable, which I totally, like...
You can only take so much of that. Yeah. He wanted to be the most important person in his wife's life, often at the expense of all her other relationships. That just can't... Singular focus. That can't last. Yeah. Kathy's brother Jim said, at first I liked Bob, but then as the years went by...
He said that he seemed not just uninterested in being a part of Kathy's family, but also pretty resentful of having to see or even acknowledge them at all, which is a big problem. Yeah, that's big red flags right there. Finally, by late 1980, Robert and Kathy's marriage had just started falling apart. And a few months later, she hired a divorce lawyer and confided to several of her friends that Robert had been physically abusive towards her. Oh, okay.
Throughout 1981, Kathy started working with her lawyer to file divorce paperwork and continued working to finish medical school at the same time. Jeez, that's impressive. By the end of the year, she was just a few months from earning that degree. Then in January 1982, Kathy Durst disappeared without a trace.
She was months away from earning a medical degree. Oh, that's awful. On the morning of January 30th, 1982, Robert and Kathy drove from Manhattan to Truesdale Lake in South Salem, where they were planning to spend the weekend at their vacation home. By then, the marriage was definitely in tatters, and Robert had hoped that maybe they were still able to save things if they, you know...
took some time to work on it, got away from what he saw as their problems, from the chaos, the constant social stimulation of the city.
I mean, at this point, you're looking at it and you're like, I don't know if you really could have rebounded from what was going on here. Once you've become physically abusive, there's really no moving on from that. There's really no rebounding off of that. Yeah. Because again, like you said, Robert had become physically abusive at this point and Kathy had moved out and there was really not a lot between them besides like bitterness and resentment and anger. Which makes sense. So like, what was this going to do? But
But the following day, Kathy knocked on the door of their neighbor, Ruth Mayer, and asked if she could borrow a hat and a scarf because she had forgotten to bring hers and she wanted to go for a walk. Yeah. Later, when asked about the specifics, Ruth couldn't recall whether Kathy had mentioned if she planned to go for the walk by herself.
She said as Kathy began walking away, she called out to say she, Ruth did, she called out and said she was having some friends that evening and suggested that Kathy stop by. But Kathy had other plans. Okay. The last time Kathy Durst was seen alive was that evening, January 31st.
It was at a dinner party thrown by her friend Gilbert Najimy. Earlier in the afternoon, Kathy had called Najimy and said, I have to get out of the house. Can I come over? Oh, no. She arrived a short time later and appeared very distraught.
Um, Najimy said she was always nicely turned out. The things she wore were always nice. But that afternoon, she apparently showed up wearing red sweatpants and looked as though she hadn't combed her hair in days. Aw. It was obvious she was in some sort of trouble. Yeah. Now, towards the end of Robert and Kathy's marriage, friends and family had definitely started to suspect that things were really bad between this couple. But that afternoon, Najimy got a much more detailed account of just how bad it was.
It had started when she was starting to go to medical school years earlier. Okay. A signal that, you know, to Robert that she was becoming more independent. Now a real man and a like a real man, a real human, a real partner would think that's great. Yeah. And sing your praises. And sing your praises and encourage you. But no, Robert was like me. You're not going to need me.
The abuse started gradually. First with just some like really biting remarks, you know what I mean? Like discouragement, just like the verbal kind of stuff. Then it elevated to threats of cutting off her tuition payments.
Like, you know, using the financial thing against her, like the whole like this is my money kind of shit, which is like that's when it's already done. It's like not when you're married. The physical abuse soon followed. At first, friends recalled Kathy occasionally mentioning which like she just like mentioned that Robert had slapped her.
But I can't imagine one of my friends saying that casually. No. And me not going to their house and taking care of that. But by 1981, the term slapped was hit with, was replaced with hit.
implying much greater force and aggression was happening. Yeah. In the last two years of their marriage, the cruelty Robert directed at Kathy definitely got worse. He openly carried on affairs with other women. What a pig. Including an affair with Mia Farrow's sister Prudence. Oh, shit. And threw them in Kathy's face whenever he wanted to hurt her. That's...
Yeah. At the same time, his drinking and drug use had increased, which only exacerbated his volatility. At one point, when Robert thought Kathy was having an affair with a mutual friend, he violently assaulted the man, breaking a bone in his face and sending him to the emergency room. Jesus Christ. But remember, he is carrying on affairs. Yeah, and that's totally okay. She can't do anything about that, right? No. In early January, Kathy called a friend after a particularly bad fight she had with Robert in which he had hit her multiple times.
Her friend, Eleanor Schwenk, insisted Kathy go to the hospital in order to get the assault documented. If nothing else, you know, just to get it on the record. Yeah, it's on paper.
And Kathy finally took her friend's advice. Just a few weeks before her disappearance, the documentation of the assault would have surely been included in the divorce proceedings. Oh. Yep. And would have likely swayed things in Kathy's favor. Yep. But that wasn't all Kathy had on her side either. Just a few days before she disappeared, Kathy told friends she had discovered some potentially embarrassing financial information related to Robert.
and the Durst Organization, and she had planned to send it to someone high up in the company. Oh. Don't ever tell people about that stuff. You got shit, you just send it. By no means is this like her fault. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying like that's so scary. Yeah. Blackmail is scary. That kind of information is scary. She was not specific about the details of the information, but she heavily implied that whatever it was, it was going to be very damaging to Robert and the Durst family.
So as Kathy talked to Najimy that afternoon, their conversation was repeatedly interrupted by phone calls from Robert. He screamed at his wife. He demanded she return to South Salem. And the last time he called was a little past 7 p.m. And the couple argued for a few minutes before Kathy hung up.
She told Najimy, Bobby wants me home. He's really upset. Don't go home. So she grabbed a few things she had with her and walked to the door. But before she left, she turned to Najimy and said, if something happens to me, check it out. I'm afraid of what Bobby will do.
My God. She literally said that. To think that there are so many women who know what that feels like and that their partner, their person that they decided to marry and that like they were so in love with at one point in time and felt like was so in love with them. Yep. To have that crumble and just explode like that.
Is so heartbreaking. And to say with full like your whole chest if something happens to me look into it because it's probably him. Like to know that in your heart that like they are capable of that and that like potentially they could do that but that I don't know how to get out of this.
Like, that's awful. Holy shit. That's awful. In this, her saying that, this is the last time anyone other than Robert Durst saw Kathy Durst. Wow. Four days later, on February 4th, Robert Durst walked into the 20th Precinct on West Street in Manhattan and reported his wife missing.
Four days later. To Detective Michael Strzok, the timing of Durst's report was a little suspicious. Yeah, what am I saying? According to Durst, he had last seen Kathy on Sunday night when he dropped her off at the train station to return to Manhattan alone, which meant Robert had waited four days to report his wife missing. Weird.
Durst explained to Strzok that it was not unusual for Kathy to work three or four days straight in clinical training. So ding, ding, ding, we're going to use her going to medical school against her even when she's gone. Yeah, totally. We're going to be like, well, she's just so busy, she'll be gone for three days. Yeah. No. That doesn't make any sense. No.
But he said he hadn't thought she was missing until that day. Still, Strzok couldn't help but notice that for a man whose wife had been missing for four days, Robert didn't seem particularly shaken up or overly emotional about it. Yeah, because he doesn't actually love her. He seemed very straightforward. Here's what's happening.
So for Detective Strzok, the case only grew more and more curiouser and curiouser in the days that followed. I like that you scratched your chin. I did. You guys couldn't see it, but I did the chin. She did. I had a beard. That was great. In his early investigation of Kathy's disappearance, Strzok found two witnesses who claimed to have seen Kathy on February 1st, the day after Durst claimed to have dropped her off at the train station.
the superintendent and the doorman at the couple's Riverside Drive apartment. Later that same day, someone identifying themselves as Kathy Durst called the associate dean's office at the medical school to say she was terribly ill and wouldn't be making it in. So remember, we're talking... He just said, someday she's in clinical training for like three days straight and I can't get a hold of her. Oops.
She wasn't. So she definitely wasn't. And also, who was that that called, do you think? Exactly. That's what I wonder. And it's here that the trail goes cold, though, at least in terms of law enforcement. For Robert Durst, things were only getting started.
By the time she'd gone missing, most of Kathy's friends and family were aware of how bad their relationship was deteriorating. And a lot of them knew about the extent of Robert's abuse. That's why Robert's performance of the alarmed husband in the wake of her disappearance seemed unbearable.
So fake. Disingenuous at best, and at worst, it was coming off suspicious. Yeah. Like he was totally, it was coming off the opposite of how he was trying to. The week after he reported her missing, the New York press picked up on the story, and everyone was clamoring to interview Robert Durst. In the meantime, he'd hired a private detective to track down his wife, who he firmly believed was still alive.
He told a reporter from the New York Post she was going to graduate medical school in three months. That's what makes me sure she's not hanging out at somebody's house.
Which, no, she wouldn't. You're just trying to embarrass her and like make her sound like she runs away from you and yada yada. So whatever concern Robert showed for his missing wife in public was all but absent in private. So it was very clearly an act. Yeah. When he spoke to her increasingly worried friends, he didn't come off like he gave a shit at all. When Robert finally spoke to Jimmy a few weeks later, he said, by the way, Gilbert, have you seen Kathy?
And the tone was casual as though he was asking after an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time. Not his actual wife. Not his wife who had mysteriously disappeared. Yeah. Remember, we're talking a few weeks later. He sees a friend and he's like, hey, by the way, have you seen Kathy? Yeah.
Like what? Like she's been missing for weeks. And he just says it like in passing. Like you're talking about like, oh, like have you seen my, like that's so weird. Like have you seen that coat that I wore the other day? I can't find it. It's so fucking strange. He creeps me out. So he's just asking, he's acting so fucking weird about this. Like so fucking weird. And within a few months, he had retreated from the public spotlight and never gave another interview or spoke publicly about Kathy again.
He also stopped returning Detective Strzok's calls, which only made the investigator more suspicious. And in the few months that had passed since she was initially reported missing, the supposed witness sightings from the doorman and the superintendent proved less certain than they had been.
When Strzok re-interviewed them in the spring, both men confessed that they'd really only seen her from the back and from a distance. So neither could be certain. So that could have been anyone in New York City. They couldn't even be certain that it was Kathy Durst. From the back at a distance is crazy. To be like, oh yeah, I saw her the other day. Yeah. Yikes. They, I'm sure, like speculation obviously, but I'm sure they were intimidated. Yeah. By somebody. By somebody.
And we're going to end it there because we're going to do two parts of this. The second part is going to have even more strange stuff in it. Yeah, there's a lot to follow in this case, so I do think it's a good idea to break it into two. Yeah, there's a lot of names, there's a lot of stuff going on, and there's a lot of jinx-y stuff going on. Yes. Of course. Of course. And we'll get to that, don't worry. We'll get to that, of course. We'll get to that whole thing, the of course heard around the world. So in the meantime, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you... Keep...
But not so weird that you don't throw an of course around.
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I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week, we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden and how he orchestrated the
biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens, and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US government's mass surveillance. That's right, it's a story I covered at the time, and it so really gets to wider questions about what
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