A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst

by Matt Birkbeck

  Ellen stopped at every bed in the ward, but as she expected, Kathie wasn’t there. She later sent pictures of Kathie to a hospital in New Hampshire to check another lead. This one involved an amnesia victim. The description of the victim offered faint hope: a woman, around thirty years old, about five feet three inches tall, weighing a hundred pounds, wearing a Lord & Taylor jacket. But like all the other leads, this one went nowhere.

  Desperate, the women even drove to Southington to meet with a private eye, Jim Conway, a former New York cop. After four hours sipping soda with Conway at a Howard Johnson’s, the best he could offer was a suggestion to hire a psychic.

  The Dursts? Conway wanted no part of this.

  “You can’t go head-to-head with that kind of family. Too much money, too much power,” said Conway.

  Rebuffed by the private eye, Gilberte talked Eleanor into taking a late-night stroll along the grounds of the estate owned by Bobby’s brother Douglas, who lived in Westchester County.

  The women weren’t sure what they’d find as they walked gingerly through the estate grounds, their path illuminated by the moonlight. They quietly searched the carriage house, gardens, and tennis courts.

  As they huddled behind a row of bushes, preparing to make their way off the grounds before they were discovered, Eleanor tried to convince Gilberte that this was all fruitless.

  “But she’s not dead, she can’t be,” said Gilberte, who still held out the belief that her friend was either in the witness protection program or lost and unidentified in some hospital.

  “Gilberte, stop with the witness protection program stuff,” Eleanor said, thoroughly annoyed that the other woman could not, or would not, face what she believed to be the awful truth.

  Eleanor was well aware that the past few years with Kathie had been heady times for Gilberte, times when she’d join Kathie and Bobby, perhaps for dinner at Elaine’s and then dancing at Xenon or Studio 54, when Bobby would walk right in, past the velvet ropes, like Moses parting the Red Sea, his entourage right behind him. Because of his wealth and family standing in New York, it was exciting to be with Bobby, even more exciting for a woman like Gilberte, who had no business hanging out with Bobby Durst or any of his close friends.

  Without Kathie, Gilberte would have been left at the door, waiting outside the velvet ropes like the rest of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, hoping against hope that she would be extended the exclusive privilege of socializing with the rich and the powerful, if only for a few hours.

  Bobby had his own small circle of friends, which included Doug and Rachel Oliver, journalists Judy Licht and Julie Baumgold, comedian Laraine Newman, and writer Susan Berman.

  The Olivers, like Bobby, lived off of real estate money, and lots of it. They owned a town house in Manhattan filled with priceless works of art, sculptures and paintings. Rachel was the daughter of Abe Hirschfeld, a maddeningly colorful character and real estate baron whose sanity had been questioned for years.

  Doug was considered a weird sort with a short fuse. Aside from Susan Berman, no one was closer to Bobby than Doug Oliver.

  Baumgold had known Bobby growing up in Scarsdale, while Judy Licht was a local television news reporter who at one time rented the South Salem home for a few months. Laraine Newman was perhaps the most recognizable friend, an original member of the Saturday Night Live cast, a comic and one of the few people who could make Bobby laugh.

  And then there was Susan Berman, who was considered Bobby’s best friend of all.

  They had met in the 1960s when both attended UCLA, where Bobby floated through economics classes, pretending he was studying for a Ph.D. after graduating from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with a major in economics.

  Like Bobby, Susan was a child of privilege, the daughter of gangster Davie Berman and a member of the royal family of Las Vegas.

  “Davie the Jew,” as her father was called, was by Bugsy Siegel’s side as Las Vegas rose from the desert of Nevada.

  Following Siegel’s violent demise, Davie became a kingpin. He adored his only daughter, bringing in Liberace to perform for a birthday party, and inviting the children of other mobsters, kids Susan didn’t even know.

  Davie died when Susan was twelve, the cause of death determined to be a heart attack. Susan lost her mother a year later. She was told her mother swallowed a handful of barbiturates.

  Susan survived the loss of her parents, and as a young adult she was intoxicating. She looked exotic, with almond eyes slightly slanted in the corners, her jet-black hair combed straight down past her shoulders.

  She was drawn to Bobby’s quiet way, his innocence. Susan sensed that Bobby carried a deep pain. Like many other women she felt a need to mother him, nurture him, care for him.

  By the mid-1970s Susan developed a reputation as an up-and-coming writer in San Francisco, eventually moving to New York and taking a cramped, one-bedroom apartment in Beekman Place with a shower but no bath.

  She soon took a job with New York magazine, and joined Bobby on his outings throughout the city. Susan loved New York and all its trappings. She had little money, yet still found a way to host fantastic dinner parties in her tiny apartment, and she didn’t blink at paying a $300 bill following a meal for eight at a trendy New York restaurant. She could be demure and charming; at least she thought she was. She thought nothing of running into the next-door apartment of a friend, Steven Silverman, at all hours of the day and night to take a bath. He could have been butt naked on the floor, engaged in a romantic liaison, and she’d burst in, not even think to apologize, and run into his bathroom.

  Others who crossed the headlights of Susan’s life thought she was more like a Sherman tank. She could be venomous, kissing you on the lips one evening and spreading rumors and gossip about you the next day. She lived in a surreal world in which she was the queen and all others, except for Bobby, were her loyal subjects.

  She was proud to be a gangster’s daughter. It was a badge of honor and caused people to react with fear. Cross her and she’d readily remind you that she was the daughter of Davie Berman. It didn’t matter that Davie had died long ago and most people didn’t have a clue as to who or what he was.

  While others were drawn in or tossed out of Susan’s life without so much as a good-bye, Bobby was always different. They were soul mates. It was Bobby—Susan called him her brother—who threw her a party to celebrate the publication of her first book, Easy Street, which detailed the life of a gangster’s daughter.

  They had fun that night, Susan and Bobby, holding each other and posing for pictures, cheek to cheek. Kathie remained in the background, as she always did when socializing with Bobby’s friends. Out of sight. Seen but not heard. Kathie emerged only when socializing with her friends, Eleanor or Kathy Traystman or Gilberte. Kathie liked Susan—or at least she pretended to, since she knew very well how her husband felt about her. It was plainly evident that Bobby and Susan shared something Bobby could never share with Kathie. It was a deep loyalty that clearly surfaced after Kathie was reported missing. It was Susan who called Kathie’s friends, asking if there was any news to report, digging for information. Everyone knew she was calling for Bobby, especially after Susan became Bobby’s unofficial spokesperson, answering questions for the media.

  She’d tell the press that Bobby was heartbroken, and unable to cope with the disappearance of his wife.

  “He’s completely distraught and is clinging to the hope that Kathie is alive,” Susan told the Post. “He loves her very much and he’s terribly worried.”

  Those close to the case, like the McCormack family, Mike Struk, and Kathie’s friends, thought otherwise.

  Susan relished the spotlight. And she was protecting a friend. Her best friend.

  She was still a gangster’s daughter, and she wore that distinction like a medal.

  As much as Bobby loved Susan, he despised Gilberte Najamy.
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br />   To Bobby, Gilberte was a name-dropper, a hanger-on, a social climber. Gilberte was some caterer from Connecticut to whom Bobby would never have given the time of day if she hadn’t befriended his wife in nursing school. Bobby had little use for most of Kathie’s friends, especially Gilberte, whom he blamed for fueling Kathie’s cocaine use and for pushing the divorce.

  Gilberte wasn’t attractive, and Bobby questioned her sexuality, though Kathie always told him that Gilberte liked men.

  Bobby knew the main attraction was drugs. When Kathie and Gilberte socialized, the cocaine often flowed like champagne. Bobby suspected that Gilberte was dealing, though Kathie would deny that, too. During one especially outrageous party in Connecticut, instead of bringing a bottle of wine, Gilberte presented Kathie a coke spoon tied loosely around her right arm as her gift. Gilberte would stand behind Kathie and direct her through the crowd, and partygoers would stop them, reach for the nose spoon, dip it into a cellophane bag Kathie held in her left hand, and snort away.

  It was a novel idea, and it made for quite a sight. The partygoers loved it, and Gilberte loved the attention. She relished her relationship with Kathie. She would tell anyone who would listen that she was Kathie’s best friend, which was far from the truth. Kathie had lots of friends, and after spending two years in medical school while her life was falling apart and her drug use was increasing, her choice of friends mirrored this contradiction. Some she did drugs with, others she didn’t. From the latter she’d keep her drug life a secret and maintain the illusion that, at heart, Kathie was still an Irish-Catholic girl from Long Island, the kind who grows up, marries, has children, worries about paying her mortgage, and lives happily ever.

  While Gilberte absorbed Kathie’s pain like a sponge, giving ear to every single story and event, Eleanor Schwank had grown tired of listening.

  When they’d met at nursing school, they hit it off immediately, their competitiveness and desire for good grades forming a bond. Eleanor was especially impressed when Kathie once challenged the statement of a professor, something about potassium and osmotic pressure. Kathie had argued the point so intelligently, Eleanor thought.

  Eleanor knew she had found a female soul mate when Kathie challenged the administration’s rules on the wearing of those little white caps that have long identified nurses. Women had always worn those caps, so it was a great surprise when Kathie Durst questioned why.

  “Men don’t wear medical caps, and caps have contaminants,” was Kathie’s argument.

  Eleanor, a former flower child and self-professed radical, joined Kathie’s crusade, and the two women signed a letter, written by Kathie on Durst Organization stationery, to President Jimmy Carter, protesting the cap-wearing requirement, claiming it was a violation of their civil rights. The letter caused an uproar, and WCSC gave in, fearful it would lose its federal funding. Kathie won the battle, and Eleanor, her co-conspirator, couldn’t have been happier.

  But Eleanor never understood why Kathie, a member of the wealthy Durst family, was in Connecticut taking nursing courses in the first place.

  She’d broach the subject with Kathie, and the reply was always the same: her husband wanted her to have a career, and he made it clear that just because he had money, he wasn’t going to support her.

  Eleanor thought this made little sense. Married to a multimillionaire and you’re taking nursing courses because he doesn’t want to give you money? Don’t get me wrong, she’d say, but that’s not my kind of guy.

  What she really wanted to say was “what a cheap fuck.”

  Her poor opinion of Bobby was cemented when the two women set a date to meet at a restaurant in Connecticut with their husbands. Bobby was barely sociable, introverted and quiet. Eleanor could plainly see he showed little affection for Kathie, and it didn’t appear that he showered his wife with money and gifts. At Kathie’s graduation party in 1978, held in the backyard of their Lake Truesdale home, Bobby once put his arms around Kathie, but not as an expression of love or affection. Instead, Eleanor had the distinct feeling that he was showing his guests that Kathie was his possession. This little rich man with the poor personality owned this pretty, personable woman.

  Kathie didn’t seem to mind. It was the most she expected to get from Bobby, a man whose wealth, she would say, prevented him from completely trusting people.

  Besides, Kathie would add, it was tough for a man who’d seen his mother fall to her death when he was a kid to show great emotion to a woman.

  Eleanor didn’t quite understand what Kathie was talking about during another marathon session on the phone when Kathie reported this traumatic incident.

  “His mother, she fell off the roof of their home up in Scarsdale. She jumped, committed suicide,” said Kathie.

  “He saw that?”

  “Yes. He was only seven. It really screwed him up. He had a lot of psychological problems. He was sent to several doctors when he was a child, but they couldn’t treat him. He really hated his father. I have a letter. It describes what was wrong with him. It says something about a ‘decomposing personality,’ or something like that. I’ll show it to you one day.”

  “Kathie, you’re telling me that your husband had some major psychological issues as a child? Don’t you think he still has them now?”

  “He has issues, but nothing I would worry about. We have our problems, but he’s really very soft and sweet. Deep down, I feel kind of sorry for him.”

  Eleanor couldn’t respond. She knew Kathie loved being a Durst. She was part of a powerful family. People saw her differently. Imagine if she was still Kathie McCormack? Or perhaps married to a cop named O’Reilly? That wouldn’t get her into Studio 54, not by a long shot, or medical school. And it sure wouldn’t serve as a ticket to the dozens of political fund-raisers and black-tie events she routinely attended, socializing with the Helmsleys or Trumps or Rudins or any other members of New York’s real estate royalty.

  And there were the parties that drove Eleanor insane.

  One of which was hosted by the waste-management cartel. The garbage industry and its unions were owned by the mob, and they had a stranglehold on New York’s commercial garbage business.

  The party was filled with men wearing slick silk suits and pinkie rings. Seymour and Bobby moved easily through the crowd, and Kathie was like a kid in a candy store, oblivious to the politics and people she was socializing with.

  For her part, Eleanor knew better.

  “Kathie, what are you doing?” she’d say. “Do you have any idea who these people are?”

  Kathie’s innocence and naïveté prevented her from making the obvious connection, while the Dursts—Seymour and Bobby—knew very well whom they were partying with. And so did Eleanor, who’d grown up in New Jersey, the daughter of Jimmy Calabrese, a tough union leader whose mornings consisted of a cup of coffee, a loving kiss for his daughter, and a thorough inspection under the hood of his car.

  “Kathie, you really have to smarten up,” Eleanor would say, especially after she first noticed changes in Kathie’s behavior two years into medical school.

  Kathie was soon going to have a real career, and Bobby seemed to have a problem with that. He became possessive, his possessiveness manifesting itself in anger, the anger becoming abusive.

  There were times, in the months before Kathie disappeared, when Eleanor would be talking with her friend on the phone and she could hear growling noises—grrrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrr—in the background. It sounded like an animal, but it wasn’t.

  It was Bobby.

  “What’s he doing? He sounds like a rabid dog,” Eleanor would say.

  “We just had a fight. He’s over in the corner staring at me. Don’t worry about him,” was Kathie’s standard reply. “Remember, he studied Primal Therapy with John Lennon, he’s supposed to growl.”

  Eleanor didn’t buy it. Primal Therapy? A grown man growling?

 
Kathie would later whisper on the phone, “He’s crazy.” But after hanging up, she’d go back to the same bed with him.

  Eleanor recalled Kathie’s drug use picking up during her second year in medical school. She first told Eleanor she was taking Valium to help her get to sleep at night. Soon after she said she was using small amounts of cocaine to help her stay awake. Medical school was difficult, but the drugs were helping her to manage. Besides, she said, most of the students were snorting coke, so it couldn’t be that bad, just a tweak here and there to get through the long days.

  Eleanor later realized that Kathie’s drug use had become far more than recreational during the year before her disappearance. Kathie was on a downward spiral. And the drugs led to other questionable activities. Eleanor saw this for herself during one St. Patrick’s Day in Manhattan when she accompanied Kathie to the home of some friends.

  Rachel and Susan Berman were supposed to be there, but when Eleanor and Kathie arrived, they found a friend entertaining another man, and a suggestion was put out to the women that the four go upstairs to the bedroom and undress. There was plenty of coke to fuel the sex, and the friend couldn’t take his eyes off Kathie, who in turn looked at Eleanor to see if she’d be willing.

  Eleanor declined.

  “I don’t even want to know what they had in mind,” Eleanor said as they walked down the block after leaving the apartment. “And please don’t tell me you’re sleeping with these guys just for cocaine.”

  Kathie would only smile, like she always did. But it was a smile tinged with sadness. The rigors of medical school were taking their toll, and Kathie was lonely. Her relationship with her husband had soured, any real love for him a faded memory.

  There was a period in early 1980 when Kathie seemed to perk up again. Eleanor thought she had a boyfriend, and asked her about it. Kathie’s cheeks turned beet red, and she denied anything was going on, but later admitted she was, indeed, involved with someone.

  “His name is Alan Schreiber and he’s the chief resident at Jacobi Hospital,” said Kathie. “I’m in love with him.”