A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst (6 page)

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 F
IND 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.”

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.

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 received 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.”

“What settlement?”

“Her divorce settlement. She hired an attorney and was planning to file for divorce.”

“You’re telling me that your sister was filing for a divorce?”

“Yeah, she gave me a folder and told me to send it with Purolator Courier. It went to her first lawyer, but nothing came of it. Kathie said the lawyer was bought off by Bobby, so she hired another attorney.”

“Who was the first attorney?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Who was the second attorney?”

“Her name is Dale Ragus.”

“When did your sister serve Bobby with papers?”

“She didn’t,” said Jim. “She was planning to, but never did. She should have. That guy has some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Aside from the violence? He’s loaded, right? Has more money than God, yet he has this thing for shoplifting. He just takes stuff. Remember that last transit strike? Kathie told me Bobby would go down to the lobby of their building and take the tenants’ bicycles. He’d just take them downtown to work and leave them there. I think it’s all that pot he smokes.”

“How much?”

“At least several joints a day. He’s addicted to the stuff.”

—

That same morning, some thirty miles to the northeast of Manhattan in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Eleanor Schwank was desperately trying to get her two children through breakfast and off to school when she received a call from Gilberte Najamy, who was beside herself.

“Did you see the paper? Did you see the paper?” screamed Gilberte.

“No,” said Eleanor.

“Go get the
Daily News
! She’s on the front page! Bobby is offering a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward!”

“What? Who’s in the paper?”

“It’s Kathie, it’s Kathie!”

Eleanor asked Gilberte to read her the story.

“It says that Bobby went to the police on Friday and that she was last seen in Manhattan on Monday, February first. An elevator guy saw her after she called in sick to her school.”

“Where, what elevator guy saw her?”

“Riverside Drive, the penthouse. He took her up.”

“And Bobby went to the police? Where?”

“The Twentieth Precinct, Detective Michael Struk is investigating. They’re saying it’s a missing-persons case. It says Bobby’s offering a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward to find her!”

“No, no, no!” said Eleanor, who then hung up the phone, ran out of her house with her two children, dropped them off at school, then stopped by a grocery store for copies of the
News
and
Post
. She raced home and called Gilberte.

Eleanor, like Gilberte, had met Kathie Durst while studying nursing at Western Connecticut State College in Danbury. Eleanor was ten years older than her friends and married, with two small children. Over the past week Eleanor, Gilberte, and two other friends, Kathy Traystman and Ellen Strauss, had spoken every day on the phone, hoping for some news of Kathie.

Now Eleanor held the papers out in front of her.

“How did they get these photos of Kathie?”

“I got them,” said Gilberte, who told Eleanor she had traveled into Manhattan on Monday with pictures of Kathie and visited the
News
and the
Post
, hoping they might publish her photograph somewhere in the paper.

Gilberte said she had no idea Kathie’s smiling face would be on page one.

Eleanor was equally surprised, not that the photos were on page one but that Gilberte had gone into New York the day before without telling her.

Gilberte had other secrets about her friend Kathie Durst; some she knew she could never reveal to Eleanor, others she was ready to disclose.

“Eleanor, I went to the house.”

“What house?”

“South Salem. I broke in Sunday night. I threw a rock through the side door, broke the window, and let myself in.”

“No, you didn’t do that. Please don’t tell me you did that.”

Gilberte described, in detail, how she had gone to the stone cottage with her sister, Fadwa, arriving around 7
P.M.
She rang the bell, but no one answered. She returned to the car and sat there for forty-five minutes. She wanted to get into the house, and told her sister she was going to break in. Fadwa tried to talk Gilberte out of it, but Gilberte was like a woman possessed. She got out of the car and walked through the snow and around to the side door. It was dark, the only faint light coming from several homes on the other side of Lake Truesdale.

Gilberte pushed away some snow from the ground and picked up a rock. She looked around, then flung the rock through the door window. She reached in and turned the lock, opened the door, and let herself in.

“Are you crazy?” said Eleanor.

“Eleanor, you have to hear this,” said Gilberte, who continued her story. She had been inside the house many times before and knew the layout well. It was small, to some people claustrophobically so, maybe 1,200 square feet in total. The kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom on the main floor, another bedroom and mudroom downstairs, which offered access to the backyard and pier.

While Gilberte was in the mudroom she looked inside the washing machine and dryer. They were empty. She checked the hamper, hoping to find Kathie’s sweatpants and sweatshirt, the clothes she’d worn to her party on Sunday.

The clothes weren’t there.

Gilberte then walked upstairs and through the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Everything seemed to be in order. Najamy was looking for something, any sign of a struggle, maybe even blood. But the house was crisp and clean. As Gilberte tiptoed around the kitchen, she noticed there was mail inside a plastic garbage can next to the sink. She reached over and picked it up. Her eyes opened wide. It was Kathie’s mail. And it was unopened.

“Why would Bobby throw out her mail?”

“I don’t know. But I found something, a small sheet of paper. It was an itinerary of some kind, in Bobby’s scribbled handwriting. It listed days and times, from Monday to Wednesday. And I found a receipt for boots Bobby bought on February third.”

“Why would he write up an itinerary?” said Eleanor.

Gilberte didn’t have any answers. More important to her was the condition of the house.

“Eleanor, I think there’s something very wrong. The house was clean. Too clean, pristine. It looked like someone even scrubbed the floors.”

Kathie wasn’t much of a housekeeper, that much was certain, often leaving clothes lying around or dishes in the sink.

“What about the housekeeper? What’s her name? Janet. Janet Finke.”

“I don’t know. But I’ve never seen the house like this,” said Gilberte. “There’s more, Eleanor. I spoke with Bobby this morning. He said the reward was really ten thousand dollars. Somehow the papers screwed it up. He also said he was devastated.”

“Cheap bastard. That’s all she’s worth to him?” said Eleanor. “And he’s not the least bit ‘devastated.’ I don’t believe it.”

“He thinks she had some kind of breakdown.”

“No, Gilberte. He killed her. I know he did.”

—

Michael Burns sat inside the small, mirrored room, tapping his forefinger on the thick wooden table under the watchful eye of Mike Struk.

Burns had been summoned to the Twentieth Precinct by Struk, who called Burns at his Mount Vernon home the day before. Burns knew the request to talk about Kathie Durst was more like a command, so he obliged.

Before the meeting Struk had run a background check that showed Burns had no criminal record. As he sat there tapping his finger on the table, Burns looked around the room while Struk pretended to be reading through a file. He wanted Burns to be nervous. The first few questions were perfunctory, such as age and occupation. Burns said he was thirty-two years old and unemployed.

“So, tell me how you met Mrs. Durst.”

“At a party, at the Dursts’ penthouse, last summer.”

“Who invited you to the party?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You became friendly with Mrs. Durst?”

“Yeah. She seemed lonely. We went out for dinner a couple of times.”

“Did you ever spend the night with her?”

“You mean did I fuck her? No. I spent a couple of nights there, but that was because I was too drunk to go home. We were just friends.”

“Did you ever supply Mrs. Durst with cocaine?”

Burns crunched his lips together, turned his head, and rolled his eyes.

“Detective, don’t waste my time. You called me down here, so just ask me your questions. Did we ever have sex? No. Do I deal drugs? No. Did Kathie do drugs? Yes. She used a lot of cocaine, maybe two, three grams a week. Where she got it, I don’t know. Did she have a fucked-up marriage? Yes. Bobby Durst is an asshole. He was beating the shit out of her. She kept talking about leaving him, but she never did. She had the other apartment on Eighty-sixth Street. She’d use that sometimes. But she stayed with him, even after she found out about his affair.”

“And what affair was that?” said Struk.

“Prudence Farrow. She’s the sister of that actress, Mia Farrow. You know, the Beatles song ‘Dear Prudence’? Bobby was plugging her.”

“Mrs. Durst told you that?”

“Yeah, she said Prudence would call her at home demanding that she let Bobby go. It fucked her up.”

“Is this recent?”

“Maybe a few months ago. I think Bobby was pretty hot and heavy with Farrow. At least that’s what Kathie said. She had enough. She wanted out. But she wanted some money out of it and Bobby said no. She had nothing, not even a dime. She wanted a settlement, but he wouldn’t even give her money to live on. She’s married to a millionaire and begging her friends for a few bucks. It was pathetic.”

“I understand you told one of Mrs. Durst’s friends to just leave her alone, that—what were your words?—that ‘she’s had enough.’ ”

“I told that to Gilberte Najamy. She kept pushing Kathie to get a divorce. She was a wreck. She thought Bobby would kill her. I wish I knew where Kathie was right now. I’d tell her to stay there.”

Struk nodded, closed his file, and thanked Burns for coming in. Burns left the precinct with the understanding that he might be called again for more questioning.

Upstairs, in the squad room, Gibbons was ending his phone conversation with attorney Dale Ragus. Struk had called her earlier in the day at her office, wanting to talk about the documents Jim McCormack had sent her.