A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst

by Matt Birkbeck

  The man exploded.

  “So this is like every other goddamn place that gives you the runaround!” he yelled, talking with his hand on his forehead, partially covering his face. Hanley, at first, didn’t think much of him, probably just another poor soul with a few marbles floating around somewhere in his head. His short hair was scraggly. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties.

  But as his visitor continued to talk, Hanley sensed something about him, and the conversation. He realized the man didn’t need fifty dollars. Instead, Hanley felt as if he was being tested, that the visitor was trying to push his buttons, get him riled and excited. For what reason, Hanley didn’t have a clue.

  The man huffed out of the Jesse Tree without his fifty dollars or any vouchers, and without giving his name.

  It was two months later when Hanley spotted Morris slumped against the wall, the same way as last spring, and again asked if he could help.

  “No! No! Nobody can help me. I can never talk about it,” said Morris. “Just leave me alone.”

  Hanley told Morris again that he would pray for him, went back to his car, and drove away.

  He would never see Morris Black again.

  20

  Janet Finke’s heart began to pound when she saw the name Robert Durst on the caller ID. She hadn’t spoken to Bobby in years, and couldn’t believe that he was calling her now in late August 2001.

  Her first thought was to wonder how he had gotten her home number. No one from the old crowd knew where she lived or what she was doing.

  The phone rang three times. Janet hesitated before picking it up on the fourth ring, when the answering machine would come on.

  “Hello?”

  “Janet?” came the distinctive voice on the other end of the line. “It’s Bob.”

  Janet was terrified. What would she say? And what if it was true, that Bobby had killed Susan Berman? Janet already had her own theories about what had happened to Kathie. Her mouth moved, but the words couldn’t come out. She tried to remember the good things about Bobby, the kind, sweet man who had taken her in when she was down-and-out.

  “Bob, how are you?” were the only words Janet could nervously muster.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Despite what you may have been reading, I’ve been fine.”

  The voice on the other end didn’t sound like the crazed psychopath described in the media. He sounded like . . . Bob. That quiet, reassuring, pleasant voice Janet had known so well so many years before.

  It took but a few minutes for Janet to feel at ease. Bobby was still a friend, a long-lost friend, and in no time the conversation began to flow, with Janet telling him about her new life and Bobby recounting his recent difficulties thanks to the new investigation into the disappearance of his wife, Kathie.

  As he spoke, he was more than cordial—he was downright pleasant. The more Janet talked, the more comfortable she felt. They talked about Kathie, with Bobby expressing fond memories for his long-deceased wife, saying he believed all along that drug dealers had sealed her fate. He vehemently denied having anything to do with Susan Berman’s murder, saying he felt only grief that his very good friend was dead.

  “How can anyone think I could kill Susan?” Bobby said.

  “Then why don’t you say something?” said Janet. “Why don’t you fight this?”

  “Because my lawyers told me not to say anything. I have to stay quiet. Believe me, it’s not easy. I also think my phone is tapped. Some things I can talk about, others I can’t.”

  Bobby said he had seen the ABC Vanished special in July, and the conversation took a stranger, darker turn as the topic shifted to Gilberte Najamy. The pleasantness was gone. Bobby was now angry, and bitter, and Janet could hear the sudden change in his voice when he mentioned Gilberte’s name.

  “Nobody knows what that woman did to Kathie,” said Bobby. “And she sits there on television accusing me!”

  Janet said nothing as Bobby ranted on. This was the weird Bobby whom Janet told Joe Becerra about a year and a half earlier. He was still there, deep inside.

  The ranting soon subsided, and the questions came, one after another, all focused on Becerra’s investigation. Who were the police talking to? What kind of information had they received? Had they found anything in the South Salem home? And did Janet agree to an interview?

  Janet was unsettled by the last question. She acknowledged that she spoke to Becerra in January 2000, but said she gave him nothing.

  “What could I tell him? I don’t know a thing,” she said. “All I told them was we were supposed to have dinner that night, you and me and Kathie and Alan. I told them I canceled and you were fine with it, that Kathie was at Gilberte’s and you were just going to hang out. Bob, what could I do? They’re talking to everyone. I couldn’t say no.”

  “What do you mean talking with everyone?” he said, the last word drawn out in a nasal whine.

  “Bobby, the police were hounding people. They’ve either interviewed or are getting ready to interview anyone who knew you. It’s what they do, especially now, after Susan’s murder. When she was killed, the story was in the papers every day. The district attorney just about said that you did it.”

  “But I didn’t do it!” said Bobby. “How could that bitch say that? And how could I ever do something like that? Susan was my friend. I loved her.”

  Janet didn’t reply. She didn’t want to answer any more of Bobby’s questions about the investigation. The conversation ended with Bobby asking her if she’d meet him for coffee the next time he flew into New York.

  “Are you in town often?” she said.

  “No, not really. Every now and then.”

  “Can you tell me where you are?”

  “No, nowhere special. I’m traveling and I was thinking about you. It’s been a long time, so I thought I’d give you a call.”

  They agreed to meet at some future date, though Janet had no intention of ever meeting Bobby for coffee, or dinner, or anything.

  She was scared and unnerved. She knew Bobby was probing her. He was nervous, and that made Janet nervous.

  She looked at the caller ID. The area code was 409.

  Bobby was calling from Galveston, Texas.

  —

  The summer went by slowly for Joe Becerra. The weekend duty played havoc with his social life, which was picking up a bit, with a date here and there. He was working other cases, and aside from infrequent calls to the Los Angeles Police Department for Susan Berman updates, nothing was happening with the Durst investigation.

  The L.A. police were being cautious, and secretive, a new tact taken following the O. J. Simpson fiasco. Since then they’d begun to take their time with major murder investigations, saying little, even to fellow investigators from other jurisdictions.

  Becerra didn’t mind. If detectives in L.A. were being patient, then that was their business. He did learn that Susan had apparently been shot with a nine-millimeter handgun at close range. And he learned that there were two suspects, Bobby Durst and Nyles Brenner. Brenner had served as Susan’s manager, and Susan not only owed Brenner money, but was draining the very life force from his body. She’d been calling him at all hours to take care of a host of chores unrelated to being a manager, such as helping Susan move a couch into her house.

  Susan was the drama queen of all drama queens, and when she had a problem, no matter how minor, she had called Brenner.

  His reaction to Susan’s death appeared to be one of relief, as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Considering how Susan depended on him for most everything, including money, it wasn’t hard for many of Susan’s friends to understand why Brenner was less than distraught to hear that Susan had died. Still, many found it inconceivable that Brenner had ended Susan’s life over money, or anything else for that matter. And the more the L.A. police studied Brenner, the less they tho
ught of him as a suspect.

  Becerra knew what direction the L.A. police were taking, but he remained mum and focused on his own case, though there wasn’t much happening.

  His days were filled with routine calls, and an occasional homicide. Becerra was making most of his Durst calls at night, from home, on his own time. He’d usually talk with Jim McCormack, who was growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of the investigation.

  Becerra would also, on occasion, speak with Gilberte, who was decidedly beginning to become a problem.

  Reporters would call Becerra seeking confirmation on information passed along quietly by Gilberte, important information like the blood evidence that had been found inside the South Salem home, and the itinerary Bobby had written twenty years earlier, of which Gilberte had a copy.

  Becerra knew that Gilberte had become a media darling during the past ten months, the one person reporters would turn to for the best quotes on the Durst case. Her name appeared prominently in People magazine, New York magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and New York Post.

  And as good as she was in print, she was even better on television, as evidenced by her appearance on the ABC special about Kathie. Gilberte was articulate and could cry on demand. The tears flowed whenever she spoke about Kathie and that last day they spent together at Gilberte’s house.

  When Becerra did receive a call from a reporter concerning something Gilberte may have said, his standard line was that he couldn’t and wouldn’t discuss the case. He’d then call Gilberte and tell her to keep quiet.

  “You’re going to singlehandedly jeopardize my case,” Becerra said.

  Gilberte would deny everything, saying the reporters were calling her to discuss the information, which they must have gotten elsewhere.

  “I bet they got it from Pirro’s office,” was Gilberte’s quick response. “There definitely is a leak, and it has to be coming from someone in her office.”

  Becerra would sigh, remind Gilberte to be quiet, and hang up. He had begun to distance himself from her, keeping her close enough to maintain a dialogue, but out of the loop of information.

  Privately he wondered if it mattered at all if Gilberte was talking.

  He’d seen the Vanished program, along with millions of others, and, like Jim McCormack, he hoped that it would lead to someone calling with some new information on the Durst case.

  The call never came.

  As the summer wound down past Labor Day, the Kathie Durst investigation all but came to a stop. And aside from his visit to South Salem in April, Bobby Durst had all but disappeared and Becerra was beginning to believe that Bobby would again escape arrest, just as he had done in 1982. Becerra was resigned to the fact that it would take an incredible break for the case to move forward, a break he now believed would never come.

  21

  Dusk had yet to settle in Galveston, the sun hovering over the causeway that serves as a conduit to the mainland and an exit sign for the giant supertankers, their hulls filled with fresh crude, as they sailed slowly beneath the bridge toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  It was hot and humid, which is how it usually is along the Texas coast in late September.

  Not far in the distance, on the Galveston side of the bay, four silver garbage bags floated in the water near a concrete pier while a human torso bumped against a rock jetty, mixed in with some garbage that had washed in with the high tide.

  A thirteen-year-old boy, James Avina, was staring down at the water, putting his fishing pole to the side while trying to figure out what something he thought was a dead pig was doing in the water.

  Avina lived around the corner, on Channelview Drive, part of a secluded two-block neighborhood of nondescript houses bordered by the bay and a marsh that served as a perfect hiding place for a family of alligators.

  The fishing in this part of the bay, off this stretch of pier, was good, so good that a sign warned anyone who didn’t live in the neighborhood to stay away.

  James had come to fish at dusk on this Sunday night with his little sister, Elyse, and stepfather, David. Only he didn’t realize that he wouldn’t need his fishing pole to reel in the biggest catch of his young life.

  As he stared down at the water, it soon became apparent to him that the fleshy mass wasn’t a pig at all, and he called out to his stepfather.

  “Hey,” he said. “There’s a body over here.”

  —

  The silver 1998 Honda CR-V was heading east on Broadway, Galveston’s main thoroughfare, when police officer Gary Jones spotted the car and pulled it over, his lights flashing.

  It was 9:30 A.M. on Tuesday, October 9, and Jones had been waiting for the Honda. As the officer approached the car, his gun pulled from its holster and aimed at the driver’s side, he barked commands for the driver to step out. The man obeyed, placing his hands and arms over the roof of the car. Jones approached him slowly, looked inside the car to make sure the driver was alone, and then pulled the driver’s hands behind his back and slapped the cuffs on him.

  The man said nothing and refused to answer any questions. He wouldn’t even confirm that his name was Robert Durst after Jones reached into his wallet and pulled out his credit cards.

  Durst would now be taken to have a chat with Sergeant Cody Cazalas, a strapping Galveston police detective who sported a buzz cut and a hearty laugh. A thirteen-year veteran, Cazalas was the detective who had been charged little more than a week earlier with investigating the murder of Morris Black, who rented apartment number one at 2213 Avenue K.

  Police had found the address because Black’s killer had been sloppy, leaving a newspaper with a sticker stamped Resident at 2213 Avenue K, Galveston, TX in one of the garbage bags found floating in the bay along with one of Black’s legs.

  Other items were found in three of the bags, including a second leg in one bag and two arms in another. The fourth bag was empty, but the end of that bag was sliced open wide. Whatever had been inside had fallen out.

  Along with the body parts police found a receipt dated Saturday, September 29 from Chalmers True Value, a hardware store on Broadway not far from Black’s residence. The time of sale was 4:17 P.M. The receipt listed trash bags and drop cloths; the cost was $22.17. Inside the trash bags police also found wet and bloodied towels, a cover for a Green Thumb twenty-one-inch bow saw, two Metamucil packets, blue plastic cups, a shower flip-flop shoe, paper towels, a blue bedsheet, and underwear briefs.

  The body parts were laid out in the morgue after they washed up in front of the Avina family. They hadn’t been in the water long, as evidenced by the fresh-cut wounds around the torso. Fish and other marine life would have had a field day had the torso been in the water longer than forty-eight hours.

  But the wounds were clean, the torso relatively untouched while in the water, and rigor mortis had yet to set in, leading Cazalas to conclude that the slaying occurred on Saturday, September 29, or Sunday morning, September 30.

  Cazalas noticed something else. He was a hunter and knew a thing or two about cleaning animals. Judging by the cuts around the torso, whoever chopped up Morris Black had known what he was doing. Cazalas followed the cut lines and reasoned that the killer first sliced the outer skin, probably with a small sharp knife, maybe a scalpel, then peeled the skin away before continuing to cut through the tissue, blood vessels, and muscle. The arms were easy, like cutting through a wood two-by-four. They were removed right below the shoulder. But severing the legs was much more difficult. Once the killer reached the bone, he had switched tools, using something bigger, with teeth. Judging by the saw marks, Cazalas didn’t need an autopsy report to determine that someone had sweated as he sawed through the thick femur bones in the center of the thighs, the blood splattering in all directions with each stroke.

  The most disturbing part, at least to Cazalas, was the removal of the head.


  His first thoughts were that a person would have to be not of this world, or at least not of sound mind, to take a human body and slice the skin around the neck, then dig deep with a saw, cut through the thick muscle and spinal cord, and pull the head off.

  What the hell did I walk into? thought Cazalas.

  His question was partially answered the next day when he visited 2213 Avenue K.

  The brown house, which resembled a two-story Cape Cod with a front porch, was in the middle of a nondescript block, a church on the corner. Cazalas, along with Officer Jones, looked around the front of the house and then walked to the back. They peeked inside a trash can and found two trash bags, similar to the ones that had been floating in the bay, packaging for a number four paring knife, a bloody sock, a Band-Aid, a Bank of America cash envelope, a .22-caliber handgun, a spent .22 shell casing, and a receipt for an eye exam for one Robert Durst.

  Cazalas contacted the landlord, Klaus Rene Dillman, who informed him that he didn’t know any Robert Durst. There were four apartments in the house, and the two in the front had been rented by a nasty old fart, Morris Black, and a woman, Dorothy Ciner, a deaf-mute who traveled often and was rarely seen.

  Dillman said Ciner and Black had arrived around the same time in November 2000. Black was a cantankerous fellow who was about to be evicted. He argued with everyone, making life miserable for his tenants. Dillman just wanted him out.

  Ciner, he said, was a bizarre-looking, flat-chested woman who communicated by scribbling notes. She paid her rent months in advance, always in cash or money order. They had an agreement that since she often traveled Dillman could check on the apartment. With Cazalas behind him, Dillman knocked on Ciner’s door, but there was no answer. They went outside and looked through a front window into Ciner’s apartment. They could see a drop cloth spread out on the floor.

  Cazalas obtained a warrant to search Black’s apartment and later that day entered the house with Jones and other police officers. The place was empty. Whatever Black owned, including his clothes, was gone. It was evident that someone had mopped the kitchen floor in a hurried attempt to clean the apartment. The police brought in Luminol and sprayed it throughout the apartment, finding a glowing, bloody trail that led from the kitchen, kitchen sink, bathroom floor, sink and shower to the carpet in the front room.