The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (15 page)

On 30 November 2001, security guards at a supermarket in Hanover township, Pennsylvania, were drawn to the suspicious movements of a man wearing a brown wig and acting strangely. Security
cameras followed the man closely as he wandered around the store. Eventually the man took a sticking plaster from a strip and went to the rest room, emerging shortly afterwards with it placed over
what was clearly a shaving cut. Then while still under scrutiny the man took a chicken sandwich from a refrigerator cabinet and was seen to hide it inside his coat. Heading down towards the
checkouts the man picked up a newspaper and again slid it inside his coat, before walking past the cashiers and out of the store. Having been under surveillance the whole time the security guards
were ready for the task of apprehending the thief, followed the man out to the carpark and grabbed him just as he was about to get into his red Chevrolet car. Meanwhile security in the store had
already called the police who were on their way.

When the police arrived they were not aware of who they were being called to, although on arrival they could see they had an older man who was obviously dressed as a woman, with a poor looking
wig. When they asked the man his name he replied, “Robert Durst.” The social security number he provided matched his name and Durst was arrested and taken into custody. He did not
resist arrest but once again he refused to answer questions without his lawyer being present. Meanwhile examination of the red car showed that the licence plates did not belong to the car, the
Maryland plates had been stolen. In the rear of the car the police recovered an amount of marijuana, two .38 calibre handguns and $37,000 in one hundred dollar bills. The need for cash was
paramount if Durst was to remain on the run – since he had jumped bail the courts had frozen all of his bank accounts. The police were puzzled as to why he had attempted to steal what
amounted to less than ten dollars worth of goods – when his pockets were turned out at the police station he had $500 on him. If he had paid he might still have been on the run. For an
intelligent man it was these inconsistencies which demonstrated Durst’s often detached thinking – having gone to what must have seemed like great lengths to prevent detection he then
put himself in a totally unnecessary risk situation.

The media once again jumped on the case and reported in detail how the cross-dressing billionaire was arrested for stealing some meagre goods from a supermarket, they too feeling it reflected
the insanity of the man. The press gathered for the day Durst was due to be extradited back to Texas where he would face trial for the first-degree murder of Morris Black. Once again the press
bandwagon rolled and Durst seemed to endure nothing but bad publicity, a situation which the defence were rightly worried about. But if nothing else, being Robert Durst meant he could afford the
best defence money could buy. As the press reported at the time, if O.J. Simpson had been defended by the “dream team”, then Durst had employed the “supreme team”. And
supreme they would certainly need to be, for there were few Americans who believed that Durst could explain away his actions in a way that would allow him to walk away a free man – he had
after all butchered his victim and allowed his remains to be washed up for all of Galveston’s public to view; there could therefore be few expectations of sympathy. His money could buy him a
great deal of skill, but the public don’t react too well to murder and dismemberment, especially when it is carried out by a member of the exceedingly well-off club.

On 28 January 2002, Durst was placed in the back of a secure vehicle and without incident was driven to Texas, the media pack in pursuit and ready to report any little incident. After much
deliberation and discussion Durst finally entered a guilty plea at his arraignment, but claimed that he acted in self-defence. The news astounded everyone but Durst and his assembled team of
lawyers; the media and the prosecution found it hard to believe that the defence were going to go ahead on the basis of self-defence – Black after all had suffered substantial injuries, more
than anyone would need to inflict if they were simply trying to defend themselves. The outcome of this particular trial seemed pretty much a forgone conclusion.

John Springer of Court TV asked Ron Gold, a Morristown, New Jersey, lawyer what he thought of the self-defence claim. “I could see how they could try a case of self-defence, particularly
if there are no witnesses. But when you have a ton of aggravating factors – concealing what happened and throwing the body parts in the bay and things like that – insanity and
self-defence are the last resort.”

Ron Gold amongst many other qualified commentators all passed their opinions and most seemed to agree that whichever way the defence tried to play it, the outcome appeared obvious.

Meanwhile the Judge who was set to try the trial, Judge Susan Criss, had a major challenge on her hands to ensure a fair trial. If the media were allowed to run amok, if details relating to the
case were aired too early, then she would face the defence team trying to claim that their client could not be guaranteed a fair trial. Bobbi Bacha, a private investigator who was involved with
members of Black’s family in a civil case against Durst, was under the restrictions imposed by a gag order which officially prevented them from talking to the press. Others who were seen to
be acting in a way likely to reduce the opportunity of a fair trial were also warned by the Judge.

The trial was certainly high profile and the amount of media attention it was receiving meant that the Judge was under increasing pressure to allow the media to cover the proceedings in a more
direct way. She finally ruled that she would allow a single television camera to film parts of the trial, namely the reading of the charge to the jury, the final arguments and the reading of the
verdict. She would also allow one still camera to be present throughout the trial, which had been set for 25 August 2002, which would be her 212th Judicial District Court.

The proceedings and preparations did not get off to a trouble-free start for Durst; having paid a $1.2 million dollar advance to his legal team he subsequently asked permission from the Judge to
sack them as they had requested a further $600,000 to cover additional expenses. The Judge called them together and was able to bring both parties to agreement with no one apparently best
pleased.

As the defence team prepared for the impending day in court they began a frantic round of requests aimed at the Judge. They were hoping to suppress certain pieces of information they believed
could prove damaging to the defence of their client, but essentially they were out to question everything in the hope of strengthening their otherwise weak position.

Jury selection expert Robert Hirschorn recommended that certain changes be made to the questions used to select the jury in an attempt to have people selected who have been less predisposed to
Durst’s guilt, but more importantly people who were less likely to want to impose the death penalty.

Durst’s team then attempted to suppress the identification of Durst by a Galveston resident, Lorre Cusick, who claimed she had spoken to Durst a few days before Black’s body was
washed up – he had apparently asked her if the fishing was good in the area. The resident picked Durst from a photo line-up, but Durst’s team questioned that the photo used had in fact
been one which had been in the media already, making her selection less dependable.

Chip Lewis, another member of the “supreme team”, requested that the blood found at the scene, the paring knife and other evidence found at Durst’s apartment and in his trash
cans should be suppressed because the police did not have an official warrant for the searches. They had instead encouraged the landlord to instruct them to carry out the checks on the grounds of
safety. Assistant District Attorney Joel Bennett rebutted the request stating that the landlord had requested a search be made to check on the safety of Dorothy Ciner and that the trash cans were
the property of the city and therefore would have been emptied by city staff anyway. This was a blatant attempt to hide from the jurors the fact that Durst had a pistol and a butcher’s saw in
his possession at the address where the murder took place.

The situation really could not have looked much worse for Durst although his defence team were trying every trick in the book to suppress the evidence which would surely place Durst behind bars.
In spite of the fact that many people were barred from speaking to the press and media, they had all the facts and information they wanted and painted a very black picture for Durst, who was still
in custody and unable to get bail again – not because bail had been denied, which would not have been surprising given his recent bail-skipping antics, but because the Judge had now set the
bail at a staggering $2 billion dollars, making Durst America’s first billion-dollar inmate. Even Durst’s wealth could not stretch that far.

To make matters worse for Durst the New York District Attorney Jeanine Pirro began to re-examine the disappearance of Kathleen Durst. As news of this spread again through the media making him
look every inch the killer, it was left to nobody’s imagination that the authorities believed that Durst had indeed murdered the woman and disposed of the body, albeit more effectively this
time. A new book written by author Matt Birkbeck, called
A Deadly Secret
, revealed for the first time a possible motive Durst might have had for killing his wife. In the book Birkbeck claims
that a friend of Kathleen Durst had urged Kathleen to blackmail Durst into giving her a fair divorce settlement by threatening to expose his embezzlement of funds from the Durst Organisation. On
the night of her disappearance Kathleen Durst had allegedly taken two grams of cocaine and drunk two bottles of wine at the party before going home to confront her husband. She vanished that
evening or very soon thereafter.

Meanwhile more details of Durst’s personal life were emerging and again they did not paint a particularly pleasant picture. Galveston Police Department uncovered a long history of
deceptions. Long before his cross-dressing days Durst had been taking other people’s names and social security numbers, and using them to hide his own identity. Dorothy Ciner, the alias he
used in Galveston, was a real person, someone who he had known previously; he also used his wife’s identity and the name Jezowsky. His legal team would eventually try to depict a man who was
particularly uncomfortable and who simply wanted to become part of the masses, embarrassed at being so wealthy and wanting to be out of the limelight. The prosecution had another version.

When the court case began certain details were not allowed to be used by the prosecution, including the facts relating to his wife’s mysterious disappearance, because although the
authorities had their suspicions he had never been charged as there was nothing to bring a charge for. His wife’s body, if she was indeed dead, had never been recovered. The murder of his
friend Susan Berman would also be suppressed – the defence did not want to have their client found guilty by too many coincidental associations. It was unlikely however that the jury were not
already aware of the eccentric Mr Durst’s past. All of the other evidence was laid before the court and by and large both the defence and the prosecution were agreed that Durst had in fact
murdered and then butchered his victim – what they did not agree on was the plea of self-defence. It was therefore incumbent upon the prosecution to prove that Durst had acted intentionally,
but this was proving more difficult to achieve as there were no witnesses to the actual crime itself.

The defence counsel spoke glowingly of their client’s good pedigree, of his otherwise clean record. Although their client had admitted his involvement in the crime that he had fought with
Black over a gun, which had gone off accidentally, and had shot Black in the head, the autopsy did not reveal this wound as the head had never been recovered. Durst claimed Black, whom he had known
quite well, had gone over the edge one day – he was prone to bad temper and the two had got into a heated dispute which resulted in a struggle. Durst claimed that Black had lunged for the gun
and he had been forced to respond.

In terms of Durst’s disposal of the body in such a macabre way the defence described this as the actions of a scared man desperate to avoid detection. It was proof of his desire to cover
his tracks rather than proof of murder.

The prosecution described the conditions under which the accused was arrested, stealing goods from a supermarket while on the run from police. His character therefore was one of a bail-jumping
criminal who had illegally used aliases to avoid being caught. He had also considered the disposal of the body in detail and had planned his actions meticulously.

As the opposing teams began there summing up there were few people who believed that Durst would not be committed for first-degree murder, except for the jury that is. When the Judge asked each
jury member in turn what their verdict was a stunned silence spread throughout the court as each in turn declared “Not guilty”.

Outside the courthouse the press and media fed their stations and offices with the result, which was described as a shock outcome, a victory for money over justice. Everyone questioned the
outcome and wondered aloud what it would have been if the accused had been a truck driver or a shop worker instead of the wealthy real estate mogul he actually was. It was into these claims and
headlines that Durst walked following his November 2003 acquittal. The acquittal in court did not however result in his release, for he had been retained on charges of bail jumping and tampering
with evidence, namely the dismemberment and disposal of Morris Black’s body.

The jurors themselves became the target of media pressure when it was suggested that the only reason Durst was found not guilty was because they were swayed by the sheer style of Durst’s
legal team. The jurors however responded by stating that the prosecution failed to persuade them that Durst had acted intentionally and without this proof they were prepared to accept that Durst
had acted in self-defence.