Robert Durst: The Billionaire Behind the Mask

Robert Alan Durst, born April 12, 1943, was the eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst—a position that promised wealth and privilege but delivered notoriety and suspicion instead. By the time of his death on January 10, 2022, the billionaire real estate heir had become one of America's most infamous murder suspects, connected to three deaths spanning four decades.

The first shadow over Durst's life came in 1982, when his first wife, Kathleen "Kathie" McCormack, disappeared on January 31. The case remained unsolved for nearly four decades, but Durst emerged as the primary suspect. When his sister Wendy tipped him off that the investigation into McCormack's disappearance had been reopened, Durst fled to Galveston, Texas, where he lived in disguise as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner.

It was in Galveston that Durst's violence escalated. On an unspecified date in 2001, he killed his neighbor Morris Black. Durst admitted to the killing but claimed self-defense. He went further—he dismembered Black's body, and parts were found floating in Galveston Bay. Despite the admission and the gruesome evidence, a jury acquitted him in 2003.

But the most consequential crime in Durst's criminal trajectory was the 2000 murder of Susan Berman, his longtime friend and confidante. Berman was shot in the back of the head at her Beverly Hills home. Prosecutors alleged she had incriminating knowledge about Kathie McCormack's disappearance. Durst later admitted to sending an anonymous "Cadaver" note to police, directing them to Berman's body—though he denied pulling the trigger.

Durst's unraveling accelerated in the public eye after the 2015 HBO documentary series *The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst*. In a moment that would haunt him, Durst was caught on a hot microphone muttering: "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."