Real estate mogul Robert Durst, who was serving a life sentence for murder after eluding justice for decades, died Monday at age 78 in a California hospital.
“We understand that his death was due to natural causes associated with the string of medical problems that we had repeatedly reported to the court over the past years,” explained his attorney, Chip Lewis, in a statement.
Durst was for years the target of authorities as a suspect in several murders, including that of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, and that of a neighbor in Texas named Morris Black, whose body he ended up admitting to having dismembered and dumped in Galveston Bay. .
However, he ended up being arrested for killing Susan Berman, daughter of a well-known Las Vegas mob boss and who was his lifelong friend.
His fall took an unexpected and eccentric turn to his case: he was arrested a day before the end of the broadcast of the HBO documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst , in 2015, in which he seemed to confess: “I killed them to all, of course. “
The billionaire has pleaded not guilty to the murder of his friend, but was found guilty last year and sentenced to life in prison. In November 2021, he was also charged with the death of his first wife.
Durst died without regret. “It is a shame that someone dies, however, it is important to keep in mind that Bob Durst lived to be 78 years old, more decades than two of his victims,” said John Lewin, a Los Angeles County Deputy Attorney General, in a statement. prosecuted for the death of her friend.
“Until the end he was hostile, without regret and without remorse. My thoughts and sympathies are with his victims,” he added.
A trail of the dead
Durst, born April 12, 1943, was the eldest son of Seymour Durst, who ran the Durst Organization, one of the most powerful real estate empires in Manhattan. His fortune at the time of death was around 100 million dollars.
The tycoon always claimed to have witnessed how his mother died after falling or jumping from the roof of the family home when he was 7 years old, although his brother Douglas always denied this version.
Durst met his first wife, then a medical student, in 1971. After living in Vermont for a time, family pressure caused them to move to New York and marry in 1973.
Nine years later the woman disappeared and suspicions fell on her husband, after he gave the police conflicting accounts of when he had last seen her.
His body was never found and the police did not charge him with the crime.
“When Kathleen Durst disappeared on January 31, 1982, her family and friends were left with the pain, anguish and questions that have contributed to her relentless search for justice for the past 39 years,” said the Westchester County prosecutor. , Miriam Rocah.
Berman, on his side, was found dead from a single gunshot to the head at her home on December 24, 2000. This occurred just over a month after it was learned that the New York State Police had reopened their investigation. about the disappearance of Durst’s wife.
Los Angeles police announced in February 2001 that their detectives were trying to talk to the mogul about Berman’s death, but fell short of calling him a suspect. By then, Durst had fled to Galveston, Texas, and disguised himself as a woman to mislead the police.