A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst (17 page)

But Becerra had another problem. No one knew where Bobby was.

Bobby had gone back to work in 1983 but left the Durst Organization in a huff ten years later after Seymour selected Bobby’s younger brother Douglas to take over the business. Seymour, who was then in his eighties, had drawn a clear line of succession, and Bobby had been passed over. When he was informed of the news, Bobby stormed out of the Durst offices, cutting all ties with his family and close friends.

He wouldn’t see his father again until two years later, in 1995. Seymour was on his deathbed, and Bobby visited him after assurances that no other family members would be present. He said his good-byes there, alone with his father, later skipping the funeral.

For the past five years Bobby had remained virtually out of sight, listing addresses in New York, Connecticut, California, and Texas. Just what he was doing, nobody seemed to know. There were rumors that he was involved in several real estate transactions, but it appeared that he had just dropped off the face of the earth, contacting no one. Not even his closest friends, like Doug Oliver, heard from him.

Bobby maintained a New York phone number, but the only way to reach him was to leave a message and hope he’d return the call.

Becerra figured he’d eventually track him down and even surprise him, hoping to sit him down and lock him into another story. He even spent the summer preparing the questions. Let him explain his way out of buying the shoes, or making the phone calls from Ship Bottom, or the itinerary he drew up, or the Burberry raincoat, or the records from Jacobi Hospital, or, of course, the handprints on the cupboard and blood on the dishwasher. And what about the rental car, the Rent-A-Wreck he drove some 450 miles to God knows where a month after Kathie disappeared. What was that about?

All Becerra wanted was ten minutes alone with Bobby Durst, and then he figured he’d have his man.

—

On a Saturday morning, three days after the meeting in Pirro’s office, Becerra had run his usual four miles, fed his dogs, and had just sat down in his living room when his phone rang.

It was Henry Luttman, his newspaper-reading colleague at the Somers barracks, and he asked Becerra if he’d seen the morning papers yet.

“No, I’m getting dressed. What’s up?” he said.

“The Durst investigation, it’s in the papers. Everything. And even worse, they talked to Durst himself.”

“Jesus,” said Becerra. “What did he say?”

“He said he didn’t know anything, and he wouldn’t have any comment.”

Becerra had had an idea something was wrong when he received a call the day before from Barbara Ross, a reporter at the
New York Daily News
, who asked about the investigation. Becerra said, “What investigation?”

Ross pressed Becerra, who said that the Durst probe was still a missing-persons case and hung up.

But someone had talked, someone at that meeting on Wednesday had leaked word about the investigation. And not only to the
Daily News
. The
New York Times
ran a lengthy story the same day, including a Durst family statement: “Robert Durst continues to maintain his innocence.”

And there was even more bad news. Both papers credited Becerra, not Pirro, with reopening the case, which was true, but here in Westchester County, that’s not how things were done. In Westchester County, this was Pirro’s investigation; Becerra just happened to be along for the ride.

Becerra cursed his bad luck, and he cursed the media. He knew Bobby wasn’t going to talk, not now, not after the world knew that police had searched the house in South Salem. Bobby would lawyer up again and say nothing.

As he sat there on his couch, Becerra rolled his head back and closed his eyes, trying to figure out who was the one who had leaked the story to the press.

On November 15, 2000, four days after the revelations about the renewed investigation into the disappearance of Kathie Durst were reported in the New York papers, Klaus Rene Dillman of Galveston, Texas, received a phone call from a man with a pleasant voice who said he was an assistant to a deaf-mute named Dorothy Ciner.

Dillman had placed an advertisement in the local newspaper for an apartment he had available in a home he owned at 2213 Avenue K in Galveston. There were four apartments in the home, including the two in the front of the house, that had been available. Dillman had just rented one of them to an elderly man named Morris Black.

The assistant, who did not give his name, said Ms. Ciner was in her fifties and was interested in renting the two-room apartment.

The caller agreed to the $300 monthly rent and said Ms. Ciner would pay three months in advance upon her arrival, which would be in several days.

The assistant said Ms. Ciner traveled often, and would have someone come by from time to time to maintain the apartment during her absence.

The assistant spoke smoothly and assuredly, had a slow drawl, and paused before each sentence.

Dillman agreed, and the apartment was rented.

—

Ellen Strauss was sifting through two large folders, both several inches thick, as a curious Gilberte Najamy anxiously looked on.

Ellen, the meticulously organized attorney, had always kept fastidious notes, some going back as far as 1978. She’d write daily accounts of meetings and conversations with friends as well as the time of day they occurred. The notes were maintained in books stamped with each year.

The women were in Ellen’s home going through the thick folders, hoping to find some information on Susan Berman.

As Ellen scrolled her finger down each page of each book, she’d stop at any mention of a phone conversation with Kathie Durst, even the late-night calls that had come in long after Ellen had fallen asleep, when Kathie wanted to talk about her never-ending problems with Bobby.

Some of Ellen’s friends considered her obsessive-compulsive, but it was just part of her nature. Along with the phone logs, there were notes and assorted documents, numerous news reports, and pieces of scrap paper, all contained in two manila folders that Ellen had kept over the years, hiding them in various parts of her home—under her bed, in a closet.

Just in case, she figured.

After hearing Gilberte and Kathy Traystman relay their stories about the burglaries in their homes, Ellen had decided to put her folders in a safe-deposit box.

During the meeting at Jeanine Pirro’s office two weeks earlier, Ellen had whispered to Gilberte that she had plenty of old documents and newspaper clippings, and Gilberte wanted to see them, saying there could be something that might help the investigation along, the intensity of which had grown immeasurably now that the press had the story.

Ellen’s papers and notes were now spread out on an antique wooden table. It was only 10
A.M.
on a dreary Saturday, and it was wet outside. As they worked through the folders, a steady rain pelted against the windows. Ellen, as usual, looked like a million bucks. Her hair, makeup, and clothes were all in order, as if it were 10
P.M.
and she was dressed for a late dinner.

Gilberte arrived wearing a wrinkled gray sport coat and sweater.

As she sat at the table, Gilberte raced through each document, ignoring the little scraps with random notes like “gay massage parlor” and “Mike Burns.”

“Is any of this making sense?” said Ellen. “And who was Mike Burns?”

“Oh, nobody. Just some guy who hung around with Kathie,” said Gilberte, who quickly dismissed the question and continued to shuffle through the papers, stopping dead in her tracks when she pulled out the doctor’s letter.

“Oh, my,” said Gilberte, hastily reading every line. “How did you get this?”

“I don’t remember,” said Ellen, looking over the table at the document. “I’m not sure if Kathie gave it to me or not.”

Gilberte held the letter up, moving it over the table so Ellen could see. “You know, if this ever gets out he’ll plead insanity when he’s finally arrested. They’ll put him in a nice, safe mental institution, not a jail cell where he belongs. We can’t have that. Do you understand?”

Gilberte wasn’t just pleading; she was issuing an order.

Ellen hemmed and hawed. She remembered the letter, but hadn’t read it in years.

“I know what you’re saying, Gilberte, but I think we should forward a copy to Joe Becerra. I think he should be aware of this.”

Gilberte was adamant.

“No, Ellen, no. Let’s hang on to this for a while, keep it here. I don’t want anyone to know about this, at least not now. Okay? At least not now.”

As she made her forceful plea, she grabbed Ellen’s arm. Ellen decided there wasn’t any rush to bring the letter to Becerra’s attention, so she acquiesced, taking it from Gilberte’s hand and placing it back into her folder.

Gilberte looked down at the table, at some of the other papers lying before her. She studied each of them closely, making sure nothing escaped her eyes. The letter had been a shock. What else did Ellen have? she wondered. It didn’t take Gilberte long to find another piece of paper. Her eyes opened wide for a split second when she recognized it, a time line, written down by Gilberte and Ellen several weeks after Kathie disappeared. It traced Kathie’s movements that last Sunday when she had visited Gilberte’s house.

Ellen was trying to slip the doctor’s letter into a clear, plastic covering when Gilberte held up the small piece of paper.

“And you can put this away, too,” she said, holding it up high. “You can’t show it to anyone, not the police, reporters, or anyone, okay?”

Gilberte wasn’t as dogmatic in her tone as she was with the letter. She spoke softly and directly.

Ellen leaned over and took a quick look at the paper.

“Is this significant?”

“No, but let’s just put it away. No one needs to see this,” said Gilberte, now leaning over the table and looking directly into Ellen’s eyes. “This is about putting Bobby in jail, not tainting Kathie’s memory. Promise me that no one will ever see this.”

Ellen shrugged her shoulders and agreed, placing the paper back in the file.

The two women searched through what was left on the table, Gilberte paying careful attention to every little scrap. She was unnerved by what she found so far. She didn’t want anything else to escape her attention.

The two women were also hoping to find something, anything, that would be useful in their search for Susan Berman.

Because Susan had been considered Bobby’s best friend, Gilberte, Ellen, and Kathy Traystman had made it clear at the meeting that they thought she should be interviewed. Susan loved Bobby. He was her “brother,” and if he were in a bind, she’d be there to help him. That was the nature of their relationship.

At the meeting, the women told those gathered that it was Susan who had served as Bobby’s mouthpiece to the press during the weeks after Kathie’s disappearance, and it was Susan who called Kathie’s friends, wanting to know what was going on behind the scenes and what people were thinking.

It had been obvious that during many of those calls Bobby was right by her side, waiting to hear what new information Susan managed to glean.

And most important, it had to be Susan, they theorized, who had made the phone call to the dean at the Albert Einstein Medical School pretending to be Kathie.

The last anyone knew, Berman had moved to California. She had written several books, and she claimed to have made some money selling the film rights to
Easy Street
, her chronicle of the life of a mobster’s daughter.

She drove off to California in a brand-new convertible soon after Kathie’s disappearance, looking forward to a life as a screenwriter and esteemed member of Hollywood society. It was a life she had envisioned for herself all along.

Becerra had feigned immediate interest in Berman. She was one of Bobby’s friends, and Bobby’s friends were last on his interview list. Then Ellen did her own search, finding five Susan Bermans in the Los Angeles area. She e-mailed all of the information—complete with Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers—to Becerra, who thanked her for her efforts but did nothing with the information. He was more interested in the
People
magazine story on the Durst investigation.

When it was published in early December, the
People
story was long, five pages, with happy pictures of Bobby and Kathie from the old days, the house in South Salem, and even Gilberte Najamy, sitting in a diner looking old and forlorn.

The
People
reporter contacted Becerra, but the investigator had had little to say. Privately he hoped that with its millions of readers, the
People
story would produce a witness—or several witnesses.

If he was really lucky, he thought, he’d get a good, unexpected break. Something totally out of the blue. Perhaps Bobby himself would read the story.

If anything, Becerra reasoned, it would make Bobby nervous.

—

The barking wirehaired terriers had always been an annoyance to the neighbors on Benedict Canyon Road, but even more annoying today because it was Christmas Eve 2000. Those damned dogs from that run-down house at 1527 had been barking all morning long. One of them, Lulu, was even running up and down the block.

The Los Angeles police were called, and upon arriving, they found the front door unlocked. They called into the house, but there was no answer. Two officers went around to the back and discovered a door that had been opened. They looked inside and saw red paw prints speckling the floor. They pulled their guns and slowly entered the house, following the paw prints to a back bedroom. There, lying facedown on the floor wearing only sweatpants and a T-shirt, was a woman, probably in her fifties. She had been shot, a single bullet to the back of the head. There were red paw prints all around the body, particularly around her blood-matted head.

The policemen searched through the remainder of the house, and everything seemed in order. It didn’t appear that the woman was the victim of a robbery. They found her identification. Her name was Susan Berman.