A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst (10 page)

“Kathie, you’re telling me that your husband had some major psychological issues as a child? Don’t you think he still has them now?”

“He has issues, but nothing I would worry about. We have our problems, but he’s really very soft and sweet. Deep down, I feel kind of sorry for him.”

Eleanor couldn’t respond. She knew Kathie loved being a Durst. She was part of a powerful family. People saw her differently. Imagine if she was still Kathie McCormack? Or perhaps married to a cop named O’Reilly? That wouldn’t get her into Studio 54, not by a long shot, or medical school. And it sure wouldn’t serve as a ticket to the dozens of political fund-raisers and black-tie events she routinely attended, socializing with the Helmsleys or Trumps or Rudins or any other members of New York’s real estate royalty.

And there were the parties that drove Eleanor insane.

One of which was hosted by the waste-management cartel. The garbage industry and its unions were owned by the mob, and they had a stranglehold on New York’s commercial garbage business.

The party was filled with men wearing slick silk suits and pinkie rings. Seymour and Bobby moved easily through the crowd, and Kathie was like a kid in a candy store, oblivious to the politics and people she was socializing with.

For her part, Eleanor knew better.

“Kathie, what are you doing?” she’d say. “Do you have any idea who these people are?”

Kathie’s innocence and naïveté prevented her from making the obvious connection, while the Dursts—Seymour and Bobby—knew very well whom they were partying with. And so did Eleanor, who’d grown up in New Jersey, the daughter of Jimmy Calabrese, a tough union leader whose mornings consisted of a cup of coffee, a loving kiss for his daughter, and a thorough inspection under the hood of his car.

“Kathie, you really have to smarten up,” Eleanor would say, especially after she first noticed changes in Kathie’s behavior two years into medical school.

Kathie was soon going to have a real career, and Bobby seemed to have a problem with that. He became possessive, his possessiveness manifesting itself in anger, the anger becoming abusive.

There were times, in the months before Kathie disappeared, when Eleanor would be talking with her friend on the phone and she could hear growling noises—
grrrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrr
—in the background. It sounded like an animal, but it wasn’t.

It was Bobby.

“What’s he doing? He sounds like a rabid dog,” Eleanor would say.

“We just had a fight. He’s over in the corner staring at me. Don’t worry about him,” was Kathie’s standard reply. “Remember, he studied Primal Therapy with John Lennon, he’s supposed to growl.”

Eleanor didn’t buy it. Primal Therapy? A grown man growling?

Kathie would later whisper on the phone, “He’s crazy.” But after hanging up, she’d go back to the same bed with him.

Eleanor recalled Kathie’s drug use picking up during her second year in medical school. She first told Eleanor she was taking Valium to help her get to sleep at night. Soon after she said she was using small amounts of cocaine to help her stay awake. Medical school was difficult, but the drugs were helping her to manage. Besides, she said, most of the students were snorting coke, so it couldn’t be that bad, just a tweak here and there to get through the long days.

Eleanor later realized that Kathie’s drug use had become far more than recreational during the year before her disappearance. Kathie was on a downward spiral. And the drugs led to other questionable activities. Eleanor saw this for herself during one St. Patrick’s Day in Manhattan when she accompanied Kathie to the home of some friends.

Rachel and Susan Berman were supposed to be there, but when Eleanor and Kathie arrived, they found a friend entertaining another man, and a suggestion was put out to the women that the four go upstairs to the bedroom and undress. There was plenty of coke to fuel the sex, and the friend couldn’t take his eyes off Kathie, who in turn looked at Eleanor to see if she’d be willing.

Eleanor declined.

“I don’t even want to know what they had in mind,” Eleanor said as they walked down the block after leaving the apartment. “And please don’t tell me you’re sleeping with these guys just for cocaine.”

Kathie would only smile, like she always did. But it was a smile tinged with sadness. The rigors of medical school were taking their toll, and Kathie was lonely. Her relationship with her husband had soured, any real love for him a faded memory.

There was a period in early 1980 when Kathie seemed to perk up again. Eleanor thought she had a boyfriend, and asked her about it. Kathie’s cheeks turned beet red, and she denied anything was going on, but later admitted she was, indeed, involved with someone.

“His name is Alan Schreiber and he’s the chief resident at Jacobi Hospital,” said Kathie. “I’m in love with him.”

When Schreiber left New York that summer for Colorado, Kathie was despondent. Eleanor tried to assure her that she was not in love, that it was just a fling. In time, Kathie realized Eleanor was right. And deep down, she still held on to some hope that Bobby would change, that they could work out their problems and somehow remain a couple.

But then came Prudence Farrow, who would call Kathie at home, demanding that she let Bobby go. Kathie wouldn’t budge. But as the marriage crumbled even further, as the beatings became more intense, Kathie finally realized that it was over, and she decided she’d file for a divorce and seek a modest settlement to go with it.

She broke the news to Eleanor, who thought it was about time. Kathie told Gilberte during a winter vacation in Puerto Rico.

The trip was Gilberte’s idea. It was February 1981. Gilberte had bought the tickets and paid for the hotel. After they arrived Kathie told her friend she was going to divorce Bobby. Gilberte was thrilled. Things couldn’t have worked out better. Kathie was at an emotional low, and she was here, alone with Gilberte, who envisioned holding Kathie in her arms, comforting her, caressing and kissing her.

But Kathie had other plans, and they didn’t include Gilberte. Each night Gilberte waited patiently for Kathie to return to their room, but Kathie was off with a man she’d met the first day they arrived.

Gilberte was infuriated.

When they returned to New York, Gilberte reminded Kathie how much she owed her for the trip, and she’d appreciate a check. Kathie said fine. The check never came.

That summer Kathie hired attorney Dale Ragus and moved forward with her decision to seek a divorce. As the summer turned to fall, Bobby resisted, adamantly refusing to give Kathie any substantial settlement. He made her life a living hell, often waking her up in the middle of the night to argue after a long day at school. He denied her access to cash and cut off most of her credit cards.

Three months before she disappeared, Eleanor knew Kathie was a wreck. She was becoming paranoid, snorting as much as three grams of cocaine a week.

She wasn’t sleeping and her studies were suffering. She had no money, and had even turned to Seymour for a handout. Seymour knew his son and pretty wife were having problems, but it wasn’t his business, and he wouldn’t interfere. He couldn’t. He knew his son all too well. Bobby was the heir apparent, and conducted his personal life the same way he conducted his business affairs, privately.

As Kathie pressed for the divorce, she made it clear she wasn’t going to step aside without a settlement.

“Eleanor, I have papers. I have information. Stock transfers. Income-tax statements. He forged my name! I have information on Bobby. I’m not coming out of this marriage without anything!” said Kathie.

“You don’t need his money!” Eleanor would argue. “Drop it. You’re dealing with something you just can’t win. It’s much bigger than you realize. These are powerful people.”

But Kathie thought she was back in college, fighting the administration over the nursing caps.

“I’m going to win this, Eleanor. I’m going to win.”

Instead, Eleanor received a call on January 2 from a sobbing Kathie, who said she had been beaten yet again.

“Get to the hospital. You have to get this documented,” said Eleanor, who hoped this was the final straw.

Three weeks later Eleanor learned that Kathie had disappeared, and she was the first of Kathie’s friends to say that she was dead.

—

Ellen Strauss didn’t know what to think when she heard the news that Kathie was missing. Ellen was a law-school student with modellike beauty and a brain to go with it. She, too, had been a student at WCSC before turning her attention to the law. She was older than Kathie, by eight years, and was married.

Ellen carried herself well, and she knew it. She was very attractive—thin, shapely, with light golden brown hair that curled under her chin. She was meticulous and extremely organized, to the point where her friends thought she was beyond obsessive. Every meeting, every conversation would be written into a calendar book, to be recorded forever. Ellen was friendly with Eleanor Schwank and had met Gilberte only once or twice before Kathie disappeared. Ellen was one of Kathie’s non-drug friends and was unaware of Kathie’s cocaine use. She knew only that her friend was the member of a wealthy family and a medical student who had severe marital difficulties. So severe that Kathie would call Ellen at all hours of the day and night, seeking advice on how to work through the divorce and get a just settlement.

Ellen would remind Kathie that she was only a law-school student, not a full-fledged attorney, but Kathie would ramble on, hours at a time, and Ellen would patiently listen.

Meanwhile, after weeks of trying to find the answers, and with little word from the police, the patience of Kathie’s friends was running out. Eleanor, Ellen, and Gilberte decided to drive into Manhattan and pay a visit to Mike Struk.

At 7
P.M.
on Friday, March 19, the three women were led up to the third floor of the Twentieth Precinct station house and into the detectives’ squad room. They were lucky. Struk was there, though he didn’t seem pleased to see them standing there, waiting at the front gate.

Struk had already met Gilberte. He was immediately smitten with Ellen. Struk pulled two more chairs over to his desk, and the women sat down. But before the detective could offer a single word, Eleanor jumped on him, the questions coming rapid fire.

“What is going on?” she demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“Why hasn’t Bobby been arrested?”

“We’re conducting an investigation.”

“You know Kathie feared Bobby would kill her and told all of her friends, what are you doing about it?”

Ellen, the budding attorney, tried to intervene, attempting a little diplomacy. But Eleanor, the rabble-rouser, had already pounced and drew first blood.

“I’m telling you Bobby murdered Kathie, and if you’re conducting such a thorough investigation, why didn’t you trace their phone calls? You would have seen that I was on the phone with Kathie for hours and you would have called me for an interview. Instead I have to come here and ask why haven’t you called me, and why aren’t you searching the South Salem house? Bobby’s throwing her stuff out, her books and clothes, everything!”

Struk paused while Ellen cringed. She could see that the detective’s eyes were afire. And any thought Ellen had that Struk would at the least be pleasant to these women, who had barged in unannounced, went through the ventilator shaft and out onto West Eighty-second Street.

Struk wanted to put his thoughts into words, spew them out, then throw these women out of his office.
Criticize me? I’ve been working this case day and night with a dozen other detectives for two months, and you’re going to come into my building and tell me I’m fucking incompetent?

He was simmering, but regained his composure. His face, which turned a slight shade of red as Eleanor delivered her speech, returned to its pale color. Struk managed to get ahold of his emotions.

He looked at Ellen and spoke slowly, so they would all understand.

“I’m conducting an investigation, and I’m conducting it the way I think it should be conducted,” he said calmly. “I know about the clothes, and I know he beat his wife, and I know a lot of other things, but I’m not going to divulge any information to you or anyone else. As for the South Salem home, it’s not in my jurisdiction. My business is in New York City. And New York City is where she was last seen alive.”

Struk wasn’t about to tell these women that he believed them, that he believed Bobby Durst knew more than he was saying, that he wanted to arrest Bobby. He could taste it. He dreamed about it. But he just couldn’t do it. Not yet.

And he couldn’t tell them about the things he knew. A week after Bobby reported Kathie missing, Struk had received a call from a Dr. Marcia Naveh, who was a resident at Einstein working in Jacobi Hospital. The chief resident, said Naveh, was Alan Schreiber, and it was common knowledge that Schreiber and Kathie Durst were having an affair. The suggestion was that Schreiber might know where Kathie was.

Struk called Schreiber in his Denver, Colorado, office several days later. Schreiber had been in Colorado since the summer of 1980 and he didn’t say much to Struk, except that he had met Kathie during his residency and hadn’t seen her since he left for Denver. Struk didn’t press the doctor about the affair.

Struk rose from his seat and extended his hand to Ellen and Gilberte.

“Sorry, but there’s not much more I can tell you,” he said, turning to Eleanor, grabbing her hand, and tightening his grip so hard her fingers were crushed together. It was uncomfortable, but didn’t hurt. Still, the message was delivered: don’t fuck with me.

As the women walked out of the precinct, Eleanor thought she’d just met a Neanderthal.

“They’re incompetent. All of them. I don’t understand it. We all know Bobby did it,” said Eleanor.

Ellen said little. She was trying to be more pragmatic. As a budding attorney, she knew that evidence, not theory, was all the police could go on. She didn’t like the way Eleanor attacked Struk, trying to intimidate him into doing something. Ellen needed to make it up to him, get him on their side.