Robert Durst

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 he was seven, Robert's mother died by suicide by jumping from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home; he later claimed that, moments before her death, his father walked him to a window from which he could see her standing on the roof.

Robert Alan Durst (April 12, 1943 – January 10, 2022) was an American real estate heir and convicted murderer.

Robert Durst was born in New York City on April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York.

He was the son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his wife, Bernice Herstein.

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.

Durst enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) later that year, where he met Susan Berman, but eventually withdrew from the school and returned to New York in 1969.

Durst had no interest in working for his father at the Durst Organization, instead preferring to open a small health-food store in Vermont in the early 1970s.

In the fall of 1971, Durst met dental hygienist Kathleen McCormack.

After two dates, he invited McCormack to share his home in Vermont, where she moved in January 1972.

However, Durst's father pressured him to resettle in New York to work in the Durst Organization.

Durst closed the store in 1973 when his father convinced him to return to New York.

The couple returned to Manhattan, where they married on April 12, 1973.

At the time of her disappearance, McCormack was a student in her fourth and final year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, studying to become a pediatrician; she was only a few months short of earning her degree.

The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, he gained 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.

For most of his adult life, Durst was the subject of investigation and speculation concerning 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 tried and acquitted of murder in the Black case but was later convicted in the Berman case.

McCormack 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 McCormack was upset and was wearing red sweatpants, which Najamy found odd; McCormack never dressed so casually in public.

McCormack later left for her cottage in South Salem, New York, after receiving a phone call from her husband.

Although the couple are known to have argued and fought that evening, Durst initially maintained that he placed his wife on a commuter train to New York City at Katonah rail station, had a drink with a neighbor, and spoke 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 had left Najamy's house, the two women were supposed to meet at a pub called The Lion's Gate in Manhattan.

When she failed to appear, Najamy became concerned and repeatedly called the police for 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 Durst reported McCormack missing, the superintendent at the Riverside Drive apartment found her possessions in the building's trash compactor.

Due to inappropriate conduct by Durst, however, his father broke tradition and appointed Douglas to take over the Durst Organization in 1992.

Durst–who felt he was entitled to inherit the company despite his disdain for it–claimed that Douglas had stolen what he believed he was owed, leading to his estrangement from the rest of his family.

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 him being charged with Berman's murder.

Durst was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

He was charged with McCormack's disappearance shortly after his sentencing but died in 2022 before a trial could begin.

Durst eventually sued for his share of their fortune and was bought out of the family trust for $65 million in 2006.

In a March 2015 New York Times interview, however, his brother Douglas denied that Robert had witnessed her death.