A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst

by Matt Birkbeck

  “You’re sure he went to Mrs. Durst’s apartment?”

  “Yeah,” said Lopez. “I see her open the door.”

  “Ever see this guy before?”

  “No.”

  Struk returned to the station house around noon and told Gibbons they had an eyewitness, an elevator operator, who saw Kathie and even brought a visitor to her apartment.

  Struk had quizzed another building employee, a doorman named Phillip Marrero, who said he thought he saw Kathie Durst leave the building Monday morning and get into a cab. When asked if he was sure it was Kathie Durst, Marrero said he saw her from behind, but was almost certain it was her.

  The two sightings were enough for Gibbons and Struk to agree that the building should be thoroughly searched. Gibbons made the call to the Emergency Service Unit and directed Struk and four other detectives from his squad to go to 37 Riverside Drive at 2 P.M.

  As Struk headed for his desk to check his messages before leaving for the search, he turned around to Gibbons, a quizzical look on his face.

  “Hey, Lou, one more thing. Durst says he never hit his wife.”

  “What guy would admit to smacking his wife around?” said Gibbons. “If that was my wife running around like that, I’d be pretty pissed off.”

  Struk agreed, returned to his desk, and decided to make several more calls before leaving for Riverside Drive.

  The state police had nothing new to report, and an admissions officer at Einstein, Noreen Kerrigan, said Kathie was thinking of traveling to North Dakota for a clinical study. If anything, it was to get away from her husband, said Kerrigan.

  Struk placed another call to Dr. David Kaufman, the course director at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, where Kathie went for several classes. Kaufman repeated the same story everyone else had, that Kathie’s marriage was shaky and she appeared to be incredibly stressed over the last year. So bad was the stress, said Kaufman, that Kathie wasn’t just doing poorly, she was on the verge of flunking out. She’d failed a urology clerkship the previous summer and was less than thrilled when informed she had to repeat the course.

  In fact, said Kaufman, Kathie had missed far too many classes and clinics. And she’d offered the most absurd reasons as excuses: things like her car breaking down, sometimes for two or three days at a time. Once for a whole week.

  The coke-fiend doctor is missing classes, thought Struk, and called Dr. Al Cooperman, a dean at Einstein, who had interesting news: he was the dean whom Kathie called early Monday morning to say she wasn’t going to make it into school, complaining of headaches and diarrhea.

  “Are you sure that was Kathie Durst?” said Struk.

  “I believe so. Who else would make a call like that?” said Cooperman.

  Struk hung up the phone and headed back over to the penthouse.

  —

  The search at 37 Riverside Drive lasted about two hours. Two detectives took the elevator to the top floor, then walked down the stairwells, stopping on every floor to check the halls. The basement, where the generator and boiler and building supplies were located, was thoroughly combed, every corner, crack, and crevice.

  The roof was searched from end to end, and a single detective checked inside the water tower. The backyard, which was between two large buildings, was clean.

  When the police left around 4 P.M., Struk was pleased that they got out of there with little notice. He wasn’t concerned so much about the neighbors, but he was leery of the press. The wife of a man like Bobby Durst reported missing? That would make the front page of any newspaper, particularly in New York, where tabloids like the Daily News and Post existed for stories like this. And Struk had firsthand familiarity with front-page news, having solved the Murder at the Met.

  But there were no reporters at the scene. The escape was clean, as was the search, which came up empty.

  By the time Struk returned to the Twentieth Precinct, he was tired. Thoughts that Bobby Durst perhaps knew more about his wife’s disappearance than he was letting on still nagged at him, but he was less concerned about Bobby Durst than about this “mystery man” who’d visited Bobby’s wife late Sunday night.

  —

  Tuesday morning, February 9, began like any other morning for Mike Struk, who pushed himself out of bed around 6:30 A.M., showered, and had a quick cup of coffee and half a corn muffin.

  The radio was tuned to one of the all-news radio stations, but he wasn’t paying attention and missed the report about the wife of a real estate tycoon who was missing and the large reward being offered for information.

  As he dressed, buttoning a wrinkled white shirt and a two-piece suit pulled from the racks of JCPenney, his phone rang, but he was busy tying a knot in his tie and let it ring.

  He arrived at the Twentieth Precinct just before 8 A.M., and once inside, he walked up the stairs to the detectives’ squad room. A couple of uniformed officers were heading down and said something to Struk about the Daily News, but Struk wasn’t paying attention. He just nodded and opened the door to the squad room, where he noticed Lieutenant Gibbons on the phone in his office, frantically pointing toward Struk to come inside.

  Gibbons pushed copies of the New York Daily News and New York Post toward Struk, who picked up the papers and saw their front pages.

  WIFE MISSING: 100G REWARD was on the cover of the News.

  There, in black and white, was a large picture of a smiling Kathie Durst next to a subhead that read Real Estate Tycoon’s Son Asks for Search.

  The Post headlined blared 100G TO FIND MISSING BEAUTY.

  “Jesus Christ,” Struk mumbled, as he flipped the page to read the full story, which detailed the search for Kathie the day before at 37 Riverside Drive.

  It was all there, in both papers, the ESU units, Twentieth Precinct detectives, and a quote from Gibbons to the effect that Kathie had been missing for more than a week.

  There was a new wrinkle: Bobby Durst was offering a $100,000 reward for information.

  “How the hell did they get this?” said Struk.

  Gibbons was still on the phone, and moved his head quickly from side to side, telling Struk not to say a word.

  “Okay, Cap,” said Gibbons as he hung up.

  “So?” said Struk.

  “So, that was the captain. He got a call from Nicastro, and they want to know who’s doing what, when, and how,” said Gibbons.

  Of course Nicastro, the chief of detectives, would stick his beak into a high profile case like this, just like he’d done with the Met Murder, thought Struk.

  But this case was even more important: the daughter-in-law of one of the city’s largest landlords, Seymour Durst, was missing.

  “You know, they called me last night. The reporters. I don’t know how they got the story,” said Gibbons. “I told the captain that you were on it, and they said you’re to have unlimited support.”

  “That’s good,” said Struk. “I’m gonna need it. Let’s call in the task force.”

  6

  The headquarters of the Durst Organization was located at 1133 Avenue of the Americas, and on Tuesday morning, February 9, Seymour Durst sat behind his desk ignoring phone calls from an impressive list of individuals who read the morning papers, offering to provide assistance in the search for his daughter-in-law.

  Seymour even received a call from Mayor Koch’s office. With a wave of the hand a secretary walked out of his office and said to thank the mayor for his concern, but explained that Seymour was on the phone with his son, helping him through this difficult time.

  Seymour spoke to no one that morning, and was content to let his oldest son set the course of family involvement. If Robert needed his father, or any other family member, he’d simply have to ask.

  The Dursts were notoriously private. It was how Seymour was raised, and it was how he raised his four children.

  Family
business remained within the family.

  That’s how the Durst Organization, and the Dursts themselves, operated since Seymour’s father, Joseph, had founded the company in 1915.

  Joseph Durst arrived in the United States at the turn of the century riding the exodus of European Jews. He had three dollars attached to the lapel of his coat. Joseph purchased his first property in 1915 on Thirty-fourth Street. By 1922, he had incorporated his business, and after World War II he had his three sons—Seymour, Royal, and David—by his side, buying and selling properties. The sons added their vision to the growing company, realizing that the postwar years would stimulate the need for more office space. In the 1950s Seymour emerged as the leader of the Durst Organization, quietly buying up properties at key sites throughout the city, mostly in Midtown along Third Avenue, changing the focus of the family business from buying and managing properties to building skyscrapers. David ran the construction end of the business, while Royal was in charge of management.

  Seymour was exceptionally clever at piecing together smaller property purchases to create parcels large enough for erecting skyscrapers. If there was a butcher’s store that he felt he needed to buy to own a whole block, he’d walk into the store himself—dressed down—and ask how much the owner would want in order to sell. If the price was right he’d buy it. The last thing he wanted was to give the owner the impression of wealth. He’d also buy up crucial properties just to keep other developers from improving them.

  By 1982, the Durst Organization was worth an estimated $500 million, owners of forty commercial buildings and forty-six residential apartment buildings. Some of their major holdings included the Lorillard building, the Random House building, the Conover-Mast building, and the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich building, all in Midtown.

  The Durst Organization was now one of the top five real-estate-development companies in the city, and Seymour was one of the city’s kings.

  In May 1980, New York magazine pictured the diminutive Seymour on its cover, sharing space with other powerful developers like Harry Helmsley and Donald Trump under the headline THE MEN WHO OWN NEW YORK.

  The story suggested their real estate holdings made these men the most important people in New York, and they were treated as such, sought after for their apartments, office spaces, and generous campaign contributions.

  Their political contacts reached the highest levels of government, and it gave them enormous power, which was needed in their sometimes never-ending battles over regulations, zoning laws, taxes, and building codes.

  They employed an entire subculture of former city and state officials to do their bidding, gaining influence wherever they could, influence that was required as the New York skyline changed with each passing decade and each multimillion-dollar deal.

  Along with his business prowess, Seymour was known as an expert on New York City, having amassed an impressive collection of some ten thousand books, pictures, and maps, all of which centered on the city he truly loved. He called the collection the Old York Library.

  Each Saturday morning he could be seen leaving his town house for a visit with a dealer to examine some new artifact or photograph or book. He was a little man with a big checkbook, and he was willing to buy most anything.

  His four-story town house was literally covered, every inch of every wall, with his collection. Students of New York City history were simply fascinated with what was universally considered the best collection of books on the city.

  Seymour was considered brilliant, yet was known for several peculiar habits, one of which was buying space, or small advertisements, on the bottom of the front page of the New York Times, touting, among other things, the virtues of Robert Moses, the master builder who was also responsible for much of the region’s road network. “Resurrect one Moses—or the other” read one ad. He’d write letters to newspapers and local public officials expressing his disdain for Section Eight requirements, which he believed would lower property values, and for new laws that hampered construction.

  Despite his prominence, Seymour’s career was not without its controversies. In 1972 the Durst Organization was identified as one of several large developers that owned buildings in the Times Square area, which leased space to massage parlors, peep shows, and brothels. Four years later Seymour was asked to step down from a committee charged with cleaning up Times Square after it was learned that the Luxor Baths, a notorious massage parlor, operated in a Durst-owned building.

  Durst sold the building to the Luxor Baths’ owners, resigned from the committee, and dropped out of the public eye.

  Seymour also endured great tragedy. On his own, he raised four children—Robert, Douglas, Wendy, and Tom—after his wife, Bernice, fell from the roof of their Scarsdale, New York, home in 1950. Seymour would always describe it as a tragic accident. His wife was taking medication to curb her asthma, became disoriented, climbed onto the roof, and fell to her death.

  Seymour never remarried, instead devoting his life to building his business and raising his children, two of whom, Robert and Douglas, were now working for him.

  Both sons managed Durst properties. Robert was given the task of overseeing residential buildings and commercial properties, including several hotels earmarked for future development. It was a midlevel job within the organization. He collected rents and attended to the daily management of the properties.

  Of Seymour’s four children Robert was the most troubled. As a child, he had witnessed the death of his mother and had later developed an intense rage, expressed particularly toward his father, whom he blamed for her death. Robert was sent for psychiatric counseling, which appeared to quiet his anger.

  Their relationship remained somewhat cool, though Robert joined his father in the Durst Organization in 1973, at the age of thirty, after he married Kathleen McCormack.

  Like his father, Robert was a private man. He said little in public and, aside from his difficulties following his mother’s death, had never been cause for concern for his father.

  Until now.

  With the Durst name plastered all over the newspapers, Seymour made it clear to all that this was Robert’s problem.

  He would handle it.

  7

  The phones in the detectives’ squad room at the Twentieth Precinct were ringing out a never-ending cascade of noise, nearly all of the calls coming from a frenzied media, which had firmly latched onto the Kathie Durst story. It was on every newsstand, morning TV news show, and all-news radio station in the New York area.

  Civilian employees answered the phones while Gibbons sat on the edge of a desk in the middle of the room, having called a meeting to review the case with Struk and a half-dozen other detectives, including John Kelly, Eddie Regan, and Sergeant Tom Brady.

  Gibbons said the papers reported only part of the story, that eyewitnesses had spotted Kathie Durst in Manhattan, and that she had called in sick to school on Monday.

  “As we know, if you read the papers today, Mrs. Durst is the daughter-in-law of Mr. Seymour Durst, a very influential New Yorker. Of course, that doesn’t mean shit to us, but it does to our bosses. Mrs. Durst was last seen Monday morning in Manhattan hailing a cab. She’s a medical student at the Albert Einstein School in the Bronx. Struk has all the details. Let’s jump on this quickly, and please, don’t talk to any reporters. Refer them to me. Okay, meeting’s over.”

  A couple of the other detectives, Kelly and Regan, pulled Struk aside, asking about Bobby Durst, wondering why he’d waited five days before reporting his wife missing.

  “Put it this way, they weren’t Ozzie and Harriet,” said Struk.

  The squad room cleared out quickly as six detectives headed outside, some to the Riverside Drive area to check local bars and restaurants, others to the apartment at East Eighty-sixth Street. Struk stayed behind to work the phones and await the task-force detectives, who were due in around the same time Struk re
ceived a call from Kathie’s brother, Jim McCormack.

  Struk remembered the conversation he’d had on Saturday with Jim, the big brother who was preoccupied with a new baby and didn’t seem overly concerned that his sister might have been in trouble.

  But now, with Kathie’s picture on the front pages of the papers, he was worried.

  His sister Mary had woken him up that morning. She was sobbing uncontrollably, spitting mostly unrecognizable words, except for the dozen or so times she mentioned Bobby’s name.

  Jim was less concerned with Mary and his other sisters, Carol and Virginia, than he was with his mother, whom he called after hanging up with Mary.

  Ann was sitting at her small kitchen table sipping a cup of tea and staring out the window when the phone rang. She was calm, the news stories having less effect on her than they had on her children.

  “You know I spoke to the detective over the weekend, Jim,” she told her son.

  “I know, Mom. I think, with the stories in the paper, it’s hitting everyone pretty hard.”

  “We need to have faith, Jim. Let’s have faith that she went somewhere to clear her mind. Medical school is very difficult. Let’s have faith she’ll soon come back, with a big, happy smile.”

  “Mom, it wasn’t medical school that was bothering her. It was her husband. You know that. If she ran, it was because of him. And when she comes back, she’s going to have to leave him. Understand?”

  Ann didn’t respond. Divorce wasn’t an option in her mind. Married couples always stuck it out, even if only one of the spouses was Catholic.

  Jim left it alone and promised his mother he’d call her later in the day, or earlier if there was any news.

  Two hours later he was on the phone with Mike Struk and he had a story to tell, something he’d failed to tell Struk when they first spoke on Saturday.

  “Detective, my sister gave me a folder to mail several months ago. Inside, there were documents, Bobby’s tax returns and other financial statements,” said Jim. “She wanted me to send them to her lawyer. She said Bobby had falsified his income tax statements and she was going to use this to get her settlement.”