Robert Durst dies age 78 four months after being sentenced to life in prison

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Robert Durst, the convicted killer, real estate heir, and subject of HBO true crime documentary ‘The Jinx’ – has died at age 78 while serving a life sentence for murder at a Los Angeles correctional facility. 

He died just four months after being sentenced to life in prison for the execution-style killing of his longtime friend Susan Berman in 2000.

His lawyer Chip Lewis confirmed to the New York Times he died at San Joaquin General Hospital after going into cardiac arrest.

In December, he was seen looking frail and with a breathing tube in a mug shot released by the California Department of Corrections. 

Just months earlier, Durst – who has numerous medical issues, including contracting COVID-19 – was seen in a wheelchair throughout most his trial in California.

At his time of death, had been acquitted of butchering his neighbor in 2003, and charged by a grand jury over the mysterious disappearance of his first wife in 1982.  

Durst’s lawyers said he was suffering from a ‘myriad of life-threatening issues’ including bladder cancer last September. ‘His health deteriorated over the weeks of the trial,’ said his lawyer Dick DeGuerin. ‘He looked like death warmed over.’

Last October, Durst was sentenced to life for the execution-style killing of his longtime friend and confidant, Susan Berman. Prosecutors alleged his motive was to prevent her from revealing what she knew about the vanishing of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst in 1982.    

Throughout his trial, his defense attempted to postpone his case due to ongoing health problems, including chest pains, breathing problems, pain while dressing and from having a catheter, and urinary tract infections due to his bladder cancer. 

Despite his slipping health, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the December 2000 murder of his best friend Susan Berman and was then indicted for the murder of his first wife Kathie Durst in 1982. 

His death leaves behind many unanswered questions surrounding Kathie’s unsolved case; and renewed public interest into the deluded misdeeds of one of America’s most bizarre killers.

Durst, born on April 12, 1943, was the eldest son of a prominent New York real estate dynasty. His grandfather, the family patriarch, Joseph Durst, was a tailor from Poland who immigrated to New Yok in 1902 with $3 sewn into his lapel.

In a few short years, Joseph moved up from peddling children’s clothing on pushcarts to being a partner in a garment factory. 

He soon after expanded into real estate in 1915 with the purchase of his first building on 34th Street. He also founded Capital National Bank, which made loans to the garment district and was eventually sold – giving him seed money for his budding real-estate empire. 

Today, the Durst Organization is worth $8 billion with towering skyscrapers that dominate Manhattan’s iconic skyline. The family-run business owns more than 16 million square feet of real estate in New York City, including a 10% stake in One World Trade Center.  

Robert Durst’s childhood was marred by tragedy when he witnessed his mother, Bernice, commit suicide by jumping off the roof of their family home. (Family members would later claim that it was an accident and dispute that Robert was anywhere present at the time). 

Robert’s relationship with his brother, Douglas, only 18 months apart, was perennially fraught. 

As children, they underwent counseling for a violent sibling rivaling that often ended in physical fights. 

A psychiatrist’s report in 1953 diagnosed 10-year-old Robert with ‘personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia.’ 

Classmates described Durst as a ‘loner’ in high school. He went on to attend Lehigh University in Pennsylvania with a degree in economics before he matriculated to UCLA to enroll in a doctoral program. It was there, that he met Susan Berman, an aspiring writer who was the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster.  

In 1969, Durst left UCLA to open a health food store in Vermont which was closed after only two years. 

He moved back to New York and began dating Kathleen McCormack, a young dental hygienist who rented an apartment owned by the Durst Organization. 

After two dates, he asked Kathie to move in with him, and they married on Robert’s thirtieth birthday in 1973. 

Robert joined his father, Seymour and brother Douglas in the family business, developing a string of successful  skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan. Meanwhile, Kathie enrolled in medical school to become a doctor.  

The couple partied at Studio 54, sailed the Mediterranean and traveled to Thailand while splitting time between their penthouse on Riverside Drive and a lakeside cottage in upstate. 

But their relationship grew troubled, friends would later say, when Durst became controlling and pressed his wife to have an abortion. 

‘I was always, always, always very controlling,’ he said, matter-of-factly in the 2015 HBO docuseries, The Jinx. 

Three weeks before she went missing in 1982, 29-year-old Kathleen was treated at a hospital for facial bruises that were sustained in a physical fight with Durst.

 She had discovered that Durst was having an affair with Prudence Farrow (the younger sister of Mia Farrow and the subject of the Beatles song ‘Dear Prudence.’)  

Despite his tremendous wealth, Durst was notoriously cheap. When Kathie asked for a $250,000 divorce settlement (a pittance sum for the billionaire), he refused, removed her name from their bank accounts and cancelled all her credit cards.

The last time Kathie McCormack was seen alive was on January 31, 1982, when she showed up unexpectedly at a dinner party thrown by a friend. 

Durst claimed that he drove his wife to catch a 9:15pm train to Manhattan after having an argument in their upstate cottage. He maintained that he went back to have a drink with a neighbor and spoke to McCormack later that evening when she called from their Riverside Drive apartment. 

Durst later admitted that he lied and just went to bed. ‘That’s what I told police,’ he said in the The Jinx. ‘I was hoping that would just make everything go away.’ McCormack was never seen again and her body has never been found. 

It took Durst five days to report her disappearance to the police. By then, he had already raised suspicions among her family and friends and was considered a prime suspect by police.