Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. and this is morbid.
this is morbid morbid morbid morbid morbid there you go it's kind of like morbid and yeah no it's very much like morbid in the morning we woke up so early this morning that you could tell me it was 11 a .m right now and And I'd be like, yeah, totally.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, we're doing some yoga.
Some yoga in the morning.
We're yoga girls. We're yogis.
Yeah, pretty much. I felt like a yogi today.
Because sometimes the instructor, like most of the time she does it with us.
So I can look at her and be like, what the fuck are we doing?
But today, uh -uh. And I mostly knew what I was doing.
Yeah, I mostly knew.
Oh, I'm an ominous girl.
Sometimes I was like, the fuck?
Where are we? Like which warrior are we in?
Yeah the warriors I have down she - we did a lizard. I said what?
What's a lizard? I said lizard. Lizard feels great and sometimes when we were like doing that like three dog thing I was still flowing down and then like everybody else was three dogging and I was still open -hearted.
Three dogs. I don't know.
I like that, I like that a lot.
Yeah it feels good though.
It feels nice, yeah I feel good.
I feel like I'm getting stronger.
And it clears your mind.
It does. but you kind of zone out for a little while.
It's a great way to start the morning especially super early because we do it before even like anyone my kids wake up so that's nice because it's like then i'm fully awake and ready to go by the time they come rolling down the stairs and you've like had some you time yeah i think that's important as a mama sita oh it is very very recommended if you can get yourself up before your kids in the morning just to give yourself even if you don't have to do anything productive you can just sit, if you want, just sit in the silence.
I'd argue that's productive for you.
Watch something on TV that you never get to watch because you don't get the TV like even having just that hour event just an hour before your kids wake up I'm telling you it makes a difference.
Yeah and if you don't have kids it's also just nice to have to be the only one awake in your house like the other morning um I think you like overslept or something and I was like, oh, I'm not going without her.
I could have very much, but I said, no. But I stayed up and I just read some of my book for like an hour, like five to six.
I just sat in my dark living room with my mood lighting in red.
I was like, bitch. I love it.
Speaking of reading.
Oh, yes. Speaking of reading.
We're recording this well ahead of time because you know life.
But so by the time this comes out, Um, I think we'll, we'll have a whole new like ecosystem coming about by the time this comes out.
But I'm just kidding.
But by the time this comes out, the paperback of the butcher game is going to be out and available for preorder.
I'm excited. It will be out officially on August 12th I believe, but you can preorder it now.
It's so early, I don't have a link, but we'll try to throw one in the show notes.
So the link is in the show notes, right now.
Check it! So do it.
Pre -order it. Everyone loves a paperback.
The paperback is nice.
Yeah! You know? I only have the galley of the paperback, I want the fin deal.
You need the fin deal.
I have the galley, I have the hard cover, now I need the paperback.
Now you need the paperback.
A paperback is good, you can throw it in your bag, you can bend it if you want to.
She might get mad at you.
I want you know I won't get mad at you as long as you don't been my copy of it okay uh fair which is fine because I don't lend it out so well yeah I never lend out books it's true she doesn't one time you gave me a book but you made me essentially sign a contract saying I wouldn't dog ear the pages it's not worth borrowing a book from you I make it very not worth it really quickly I'm so excited i can't wait for the paperback to come out is there a date you're like really quickly forget this no I was like wait before I move on let me let me fully acknowledge how excited I am.
I'm very excited, but is there a date?
There is. And so it's already out for pre -order but it's I think it's gonna be out officially August 12th.
August 12th, I like that date.
Yeah. 9 -12? I love August. August is 8 you fucking idiot.
August is right before fall.
That's time baby! It's right before fall.
We're getting there.
Yeah, August. It's so close to fall.
August. Fall! I need...
I feel fall in my bones already.
No, let us get through the summer first, okay?
No, you know what I'm sick of?
What are you sick of?
I'm sick of any time...
Every year I get to this exact spot and I say, I need fall.
And you know what I hear from everybody?
Let us get through summer...
I'm not stopping you!
I'm not stopping a whole season from coming and going.
I'm not putting some kind of magic into the air that makes it stop.
You are putting magic into the air.
Man I want ball. You know you're manifesting.
Because John does the same thing.
He's like let us get through something.
I'm like, I'm letting you!
Oh my God. Calm down, you crazy person.
Never! Never, Mikey.
What are these weird like weird things you're doing with your vocal cords?
It's like. I'm scared.
I'm scared. I'm mad.
I'm not stopping summer.
Like you are putting magic in the air.
You're like manifesting that summer goes by fast and I don't want it to.
Yeah, too bad. That's why I said stop.
I like fall too. All I want in my goddamn life is to go.
And this is, I'm a Disney adult and I don't care.
I'm gonna say it out loud and I don't care.
All I want in my goddamn life is to go to fucking Disney World for October.
Like I crave that so badly.
So I can't wait for fall.
but then every time fall comes around it's fucking hurricane season.
in Florida? in Florida yeah so I can't go.
I mean I never want to leave New England during the fall and kind of refuse to.
I know we're just stating our wants now.
So there's that. So that's my want.
So hurricane season actually works in my favor.
I'm under biting at her.
I'm under biting this bitch right now.
That I'm not traveling during that time so.
I want to. So bad, I'm sorry.
Oh maybe this year is the year.
Maybe it's the year.
Maybe 2025? Maybe. I want to go and I want to like see like the um like it be like the pumpkin in the center and everything and get the merch yeah and the and the party I wanna go.
I want that for you.
Thank you. You know thanks.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you. I had a moment.
I won't yell at you about that.
That's good. You can't yell at me anymore you already yelled at me real big.
Because I'm not stopping summer.
I'm just gonna talk about fall also summer that's that that's the thing yeah the whole time we're all enjoying summer you're saying fall now now what did you say at the beginning of that sentence the whole time that we're enjoying we're still enjoying you're still enjoying I can talk about fall and everybody can still enjoy their summer this woman god damn this woman we're gonna get in an actual fight again we've been back recording too much like too many match recordings people are like are they gonna break up no we literally never we're not allowed um but speaking of you know things that you
don't uh no i have nothing i i don't have a way to to segway it has been too many patch recordings because i've lost my ability to segue my copy almost came through my nose no i don't have anything i don't have But I thought it was gonna, you know how sometimes when you don't have something to say?
You just keep going.
You're like just talk and it'll form itself.
Sometimes that works.
Can I tell you? That's how I get through my everyday life.
Yeah, not here though, that didn't work.
It doesn't always. So I'm just gonna go right into it.
What we're gonna cover today is the crimes of Robert Durst. Of course.
Not Fred Durst from Le Biscuit.
Different, he just wants to break stuff.
He does, he wants to break stuff.
But we're talking about the jinx.
Of course. Of course.
If you've watched the documentary, The Jinx, I highly recommend you do it, it's fascinating.
And the theme song, oh.
Oh, the theme song is A+.
Is it the eels? Yeah, it is, wow.
Wow, check me out. Impressive.
Thank you. Yeah, I immediately put it on a playlist when I watched it, but it's a really horrifying documentary.
It's scary. It's upsetting, but it's fascinating, it's all that stuff.
And they caught that very infamous chitter -chatter in the bathroom, on his hot mic there.
And at one point, the way he says, of course, in that clip, he's like, of course, it's like a very specific way he says it.
And Ash says, of course, like that.
And I've noticed it.
Not intentionally. Not intentionally.
She just, that's how she says, she'll be like, oh like, yeah, I'll drive of course.
She just says it. it just like naturally happens and every time she says it i'm like okay jinx like i can't i can't stop so that that's just in my brain right now but of course let's get to the very beginning because i think a lot of people know the jinx documentary they know the name robert durst they might know a little bit about it but like there's so this is a really scary case it's involved he's She's a very scary man.
Yeah, he did a lot.
So we're going to start with the murder of Morris Black, which is a very gruesome, very sad thing.
So on the morning of September 30th, 2011 David Avina set out for Galveston Bay for just to, you know, just to go fishing with his kids.
He had his 13 year old son James and his eight year old daughter Elise.
They were really just like, it's, this isn't like a big thing.
they were just going out to kind of like hang out together lazily fish.
So they set themselves up on the shoreline.
They just put their lines in the water and just sat down and waited for fish to bite that's how it goes.
That's how it goes.
So somewhat bored with this whole thing though.
The 13 year old James.
Uh, he was like, I'm just going to wander down the beach a little bit because I'm just staring at a fishing pole right now and at 13 you don't want to do that properly.
Yeah. Um, so he goes down the rocky beach and he hears his father calling him back because he was asking him to come help.
reel in some of the lines because shit got excited shit got excited when he left that's what that's what always happens in the fish bite exactly so as james wandered back to his father and sister he saw something in the water and he saw something floating and he was like huh so he just stared at it for a couple of seconds kind of trying to like reconcile what he was looking at yeah and he said it was just like a pinkish blob but he was like but he was weird it was weird looking it just didn't look like anything he had seen before and then it dawned on him and he said, oh, I'm pretty sure that's
a piece of a human body.
And he's 13. Like no kidding, I should have to see that.
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So James yelled to his father, and he said there's a body over here.
But David Avina was like yeah he's definitely joking, and he's probably trying to get his sister all freaked out like that's...
very 13 year old boy to do.
So David dropped what he was doing and ran over to James, and he was expecting to see you know maybe an animal in the water or something like inanimate just floating in the water, but it was not an animal, and it was not something inanimate.
Um, David Avina had been a surgical nurse.
And so, he was very well -versed on the human body.
What are the odds? And, yeah, right, and he immediately knew what was floating in the bay had definitely once been part of a human body.
Oh, man. Specifically, it was the trunk portion of a man.
Oh. But the head, arms and legs were missing.
Which must've been horrifying to see.
Yeah. So he lead his kids back to the car and immediately called the police and they arrived on the scene a few minutes later.
Now the remains were moved removed from the water, and while they were doing that police and shore patrol agents were fanning out across the beach looking for any additional evidence, any more remains, and several hours into the search, long after the sun had gone down, investigators found about 80 feet offshore, three garbage bags containing more of this victim's remains.
Oh man. A short time after that more bags were found down the shore and those contained the rest of the man's remains.
My goodness. According to the technician who performed the autopsy, the remains were that of an elderly white man in his 70s.
So sad you make it to 70 years old.
That's how you go out.
The cause of death was a 22 caliber gunshot wound to the face.
All indications were that the dismemberment had occurred post -mortem.
Okay. More interesting than the remains themselves was that there was a lot of other stuff Mixed in with these remains, there was a lot of pieces of garbage Basically cash register receipts for garbage bags a drop cloth a six dollar 99 bow saw They also in the bags They also found bloody towels one flip -flop one shower shoe a piece of tan fabric like a bunch of blue plastic cups, used paper towels, and a copy of USA Today from two days earlier.
And the address label was still on the USA Today.
When they scoured the shoreline, they also found a blue bed sheet and a pair of men's underwear.
Okay. So a lot of stuff.
Yeah, that's a lot.
So, investigators ran the victim's fingerprints and identified him as 71 -year -old Morris Black.
Morris Black was a resident of Galveston.
He did have a criminal record. but it was just minor offenses yeah um people who knew him they didn't have the kindest things to say about him they called him gruff they called him short -tempered he was very demanding that kind of thing they didn't call him like he was this horrible monster it was just like he was kind of like a grumpy dude kind of like yeah short -tempered a galveston business uh owner said of dealing with morris black no matter how busy we were he would break in and that I stop everything and see him." And Black's sister, Trudy, kind of gave a similar description.
She said of her brother, if he had a disagreement, he'd go protest. He'd march in front of the building.
He could make enemies.
So he had a little bit of a reputation, so investigators were like, all right, there's probably at least one person that might have wanted to hurt him.
Right. But the more they interviewed his neighbors and acquaintances, they realized that it wasn't that, like, he was, like, a bad guy, and it's not, like, they really didn't find, they were like I don't think he would have attracted a killer.
He seems like he's just kind of like a, like a nuisance.
Yeah. Like he just kind of, he rubs people the wrong way.
He's not like threatening people or like out in these streets making enemies.
It didn't seem like he was pissing people off to the point of like you could have attracted somebody like that.
Yeah. You know what I mean?
So when their interviews with friends and acquaintances turned up nothing, investigators visited Morris Black's home and that was the address that they found on the USA Today copy.
When they arrived there, which - it was a fourplex on a quiet street, and investigators took a look around the outside of the building just to look for anything basically and inside one of the trash cans they found an empty black garbage bag that matched the bags that Morris Black's remains were discovered in.
They also found the packaging for the drop cloth found with the body and a large amount of paper towels that matched those found in the bags, and they found a bunch of other items that connected the apartment building to the murder.
So a search of the second trashcan turned up even more evidence.
I mean it's crazy. Including a 22 caliber pistol and a spent shell casing and a receipt for an eye exam addressed to one of the residents, Robert Durst. Whose address was across the hall from Black's apartment.
Okay. Now according to the landlord Klaus Delman, no one by the name of Durst, Robert Durst, lived in that building.
He said no, the person in the place across the street of the hall from Black, that there's a, quote, nice middle -aged lady named Dorothy Sinner.
So the landlord told detectives that Sinner had lived in the apartment since 2000.
Apparently, they had moved in about a month after Morris Black, and the woman had never caused any problems. And they were like, I don't know what you're talking about.
But Dillman did add that it wasn't Sinner herself who had rented the apartment, but her brother -in -law.
Her brother -in -law had made all the arrangements over the phone because Sinner had some kind of condition with her larynx so she could not speak.
Okay. In fact, he said in the few times when Sinner and him had communicated at all, she had done so through handwritten notes.
Okay. And finally Dillman said, yes, he had met the brother -in -law once and had seen him on a few occasions and he'd never actually seen the two of them together actually weird strangely like meaning sinner and the brother -in -law strange when investigators searched black and sinner's apartments it was clear they'd found the crime scene in both apartments there was blood on the walls and floors as well as a blood trail leading across the hall from one apartment to the other well that'll tell you yep in sinner's apartment detectors found a four paring knife and a pair of bloody boots.
They also discovered blood outside the apartment building in the parking lot and one of the other tenants, Maria De Jernández, told detectives that on the night of Morris Black's murder, she had seen a man loading black garbage bags into a silver Honda in the parking lot and she didn't recognize that man.
That's terrifying. So as crime -scene technicians processed Sinner's apartment, what they found painted a very strange picture of who lived there.
Although Sinner had lived in the apartment for nearly a year there was like very little furniture in here there was a futon a small table and a television the refrigerator was completely empty and the stove appeared as though it had never once been used that's weird it also looked as though someone had gone out of their way to thoroughly scrub the floors but when they pulled up the tile on the floor they found a large amount of blood had seeped through and soaked the boards underneath.
Analysis of the blood would prove that it was Morris Black's blood.
Now, based on the statement from the neighbor, investigators ran a check for any vehicles registered to Sinner's address that matched the description of the silver Honda, and they learned that Robert Dirst had registered just such a vehicle there.
When they showed Klaus Dilmann a photo of Durst, he acknowledged that he looked like the man he'd assumed to be Sinner's b -brother -in -law.
Imagine that. But more importantly, he also bore a pretty striking resemblance to Dorothy Sinner herself.
Strange. In fact, the more Dillman looked at the photo of Durst, the more he was like, oh, that is actually him.
Like, that is Robert Durst. Dorothy Sinner's Robert Durst. Wild.
Can you imagine it?
Robert Durst had lived there how many years?
Um... Did you say four?
I think, yeah. At least, like, he had moved in right after, or Dorothy Sinner had moved in right after Morris Black.
That's wild. Which is kind of crazy.
The handful of interactions Dillman had had with Dorothy Sinner had all been quite brief and really, like I said before, only through notes.
Yeah. So it had never occurred to him that Sinner could have been anyone other than who she was saying she was.
Yeah, why would you think anything else?
Given what they found in the apartments and the information collected from witnesses, it was clear to investigators that there was no Dint Dorothy sinner and the main suspect in the murder of Morris Black was Robert Durst. Now, a few days later on October 9th a patrol officer spotted the Silver Honda and pulled the driver over.
When the officer asked for ID, the driver handed him a Holiday Inn Express hotel card with the name Jim Truss.
That is not identification, sir.
Yeah, obviously this was not what the officer was asking for, so he was like, ''Hey, step out of the car and he placed this man in custody.'' When the officer searched through the vehicle, he found a bag of marijuana, a 9 millimeter handgun, and a bow saw similar to the one purchased with the other items days earlier.
Not day -to -day travel items?
Not day -to -day travel items. At first, investigators suspected this was the saw used in the dismemberment, but when the autopsy was complete, the medical examiner actually confirmed that whoever did the dismemberment had used a paring knife to cut away the muscle, then used a hacksaw to remove the limbs.
Oh my. Now this man that was arrested on the side of the road was Robert Durst. That's crazy.
Yeah, right. That's wild.
You didn't see that coming did you?
I'd known, not at all.
The arrest of Robert Durst for the murder of Morris Black came as a surprise to just about everyone particularly because Durst hardly looked like the kind of man who was going to shoot another man in the face.
He really doesn't. Then dismembered his body.
No. But as investigators started looking into his background they discovered he was unlike anyone they had investigated before.
They were like, wow, we definitely did not know that this is what was lurking underneath.
So let's talk about Robert Durst. Who the hell is this man?
What is going on? He's lived a thousand lives, none of them good.
Robert Allen Durst was born in Manhattan on April 12, 1943.
He was the oldest child of four children.
His parents were Seymour Durst and Bernice Herstein.
I think Seymour is a great name.
That is a great name.
Like his father before him, Seymour Durst was a wildly successful New York real estate developer and partner at the Durst organization, which was a development firm recently valued at $8 .1 billion.
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I was trying to figure out how to write for a younger audience.
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our listeners always get great discounts on Masterclass of at least 15 % off any annual membership on masterclass .com slash morbid see master classes latest deal at least 15 percent off at masterclass .com slash morbid masterclass .com slash morbid since being established in 1915 by Joseph Durst and his brothers The Durst organization has owned or built some of the most expensive and most recognizable properties in New York City including the Henry Miller Theatre, the Bank of America Tower and the development of One World Trade Center.
So, yeah. So like Seymour, Robert's mother Bernice also came from New York's elite class and filled her days with social activities.
She was a lady who lunches, she did like charities, luncheons.
Very Emily Gilmore.
Yes. Bernice and Seymour married in 1940, and in the ten years after that, she gave birth to the couple's four children, Robert, Douglas, Wendy and Thomas.
Now, tragically on November 9, 1950, Bernice fell to her death from the roof of the family home, in what was later deemed an accident by the coroner.
Hmm. According to the press, Bernice had gone out on the roof for unknown reasons and someone called police and fire department to rescue her.
But as the firefighter was climbing the ladder to reach her Bernice insisted she could get back inside on her own but slipped on wet leaves and fell to the driveway below which is horrifying Yeah That's really sad Seymour told investigators that his wife had been in treatment for asthma and had taken a sedative that morning and later that day she had Seemed confused and unlike herself the family consulted a physician who recommended Bernice stay in bed to rest but later that afternoon, she climbed out the window onto the roof in her bathrobe.
Oh, man. Despite the official report of an accidental death, there are many reporters and New York socialites who believe Bernice had been profoundly depressed and had possibly intentionally ended her life.
Oh, that's really sad.
Now, this is people speculating.
Yeah, of course. Obviously, we do not know that.
Now, following Bernice's very unexpected death, the Durst children understandably struggled to adjust to life without their mother.
I can't imagine. Particularly seven -year -old Robert.
Oh so little. He claimed to have witnessed the fall.
Oh. Seymour responded to the loss of his wife by just retreating into himself and becoming very consumed with his work.
Which he can't when he got four little kids to take care of.
When he was at home he would often just disappear into his study and bury himself in books in order to just avoid all of it, avoid all the feelings, everything.
The new reality in the dirst home meant that the children were, for the most part, now being raised by nannies and other domestic workers.
Yeah. Which is like a big change for them.
Yeah. Your mom's there one day and then gone the next.
So now you're being raised by, like, people who aren't your parents.
Yeah. Now, as he grew older, Robert Durst developed a quiet and mostly shy personality.
He performed pretty, you know, adequate in school.
He had a few friends.
His life was pretty unremarkable, like, nothing crazy.
Mm -hmm. in and of itself for someone who came from such wealth and privilege, the fact that it was just kind of a chill life, like a pretty casual existence.
That said, he seemed to develop some quirks that people who knew him found a little unusual.
He is. That's one way to describe this man's is quirky.
Very quirky. According to his childhood friend Julie Baumgold she said, quote, he spoke with a drawl.
Long pauses punctuated his speech as if he were struggling to spit out the words.
No and he does have a different way of speaking, for sure.
Despite being strongly introverted Robert tried to fit in and was a member of many clubs including the camera club, the Spanish club, and being a member of the junior varsity soccer team.
Trying to just like be one with everybody.
After graduating from high school Robert went on to study business and economics at Lehigh University and intended to go into real estate like the business with his father.
Things changed though once Robert joined the anti -war movement that was growing on college campuses across the country.
While many young people became activists during this period, Robert's decision to participate didn't really sit well with his dad.
His dad insisted his son take his life and responsibilities more seriously, but by then Robert had become fully involved in the counterculture movement and wasn't interested in whatever his father was trying to tell him what to say.
Yeah. Now the shift in his priorities during this period definitely was a major change, this had marked a major change in his personality too.
Okay. Most of his life he lived up to his father's expectations and incredibly high standards, but now that he was away from Seymour Durst, he began developing his own identity and much of that identity was going to be rooted in opposition.
He told a reporter, When I was growing up, it was days of long hair and marijuana.
In terms of announcing that you were going into the family business, that was extremely uncool.
Instead he completed his studies at Lehigh and enrolled in graduate studies at UCLA where many of the counterculture ideas and philosophies were being born.
Yeah. Now it was at UCLA that Durst met one of the more important influences in his later life, 21 year old Susan Berman.
Despite their attraction to one another, Robert and Susan never became a they formed a very tight, close friendship.
They bonded over their almost unique personal histories, basically.
Like Robert, Susan came from a prominent and wealthy, but pretty troubled family.
But unlike Robert, Susan's father's wealth had come from questionable means.
In 1947, the Mob -affiliated David Berman took over the Flamingo Hotel after its previous owner, Bugsy Siegel, was shot to death by an unknown gunman in his Beverly Hills home.
I heard a Bugsy. So, uh, yeah.
That's high up shit.
Yeah, that's some shit.
So Robert and Susan would remain close until her death in 2000, but it turned out that graduate school wasn't exactly where Durst wanted to be.
After completing a portion of his program, he dropped out of UCLA in 1969 and went back to the East Coast, but he still wasn't interested in joining the family business.
Instead, he, I mean, by now he's fully immersed the counterculture lifestyle so he moved to Middlebury that's in Vermont and he opened a health food store so he went fully the other way.
Vermont plus health food store equals Robert Hurst. Yeah also my youngest calls Vermont Vermont and I love it and every time I see it I think Vermont.
I hope I hope she never grows out of that now the thing is he's it's for this it looks like he's like totally you know rebelling against the idea of the family business he's going to Vermont he's opening up a health food store it was entirely bankrolled by his father of course so it's like it's not like he's i can't stop saying of course yeah of course now as far as seymour durst was concerned the store was a waste of time but at least robert was directing his energies towards business and was moving in a more what he considered to be respectful direction okay the store which was called all good
things i love that i would go there right i mean try a store called All Good Things.
Yeah, it reminds me of the Stephen King book Needful Things, but it's not the same.
So the store, All Good Things, was opened in a darstoned building and as a condition of giving his son the money, Robert had to be responsible for the property, which included acting as a landlord to the building's one tenant, Kathy McCormick.
Now Robert first met Kathy in late 1971 when she moved in and pointed out a number of things needed repairing, and he was immediately taken by her.
Like immediately. He said, strong woman knows what she wants.
Robert wasted no time asking her for a date.
And after going out just two times, he asked her to move into his house, and she agreed and moved in in January, 1972.
He said, this is great because I love you, and because I won't have to fix those things.
I won't have to fix the shit.
So while Robert and Kathy's relationship was going well, things at the store were not.
Oh. Uh, at the same time, Seymour Durst had begun encouraging his son to close up the store and return home to join the family business.
If nothing else, Robert would be able to make much better money which would allow him to support Kathy and, Seymour hoped, their family to come.
Perhaps he was swayed by the money or the thought of an easier life but Robert finally caved and went in with his father's demands and he and Kathy returned to New York in early 1973, and a few months later, on April 12th, Robert and Kathy were married.
Nice. Now, initially Robert and Kathy moved in with Robert's brother Douglas and his wife and their newly built home in, uh, in Katona, which is about 60 miles outside the city.
The house was massive, it was spacious.
Definitely more than enough room for four people.
But Kathy quickly started feeling uncomfortable there.
According to one of her college friends, the home was more than adequate, but she just hadn't expected things to be so tense, she said.
Apparently, Eleanor Schwank said, the two brothers fought, bickered, and constantly needled each other.
So that was making it weird. And after Kathy made her feelings known about this whole thing, the couple moved out of the house and into the Durst organization's most expensive apartment, which was a penthouse on Riverside Drive, and it had panoramic views of the Hudson River.
Can you imagine? It's amazing.
So now that they've moved, they're much happier in their new apartment than they had been living outside the city.
I mean it's a penthouse honey.
It's a penthouse and Robert and Kathy settled into their new lives.
She was a nursing student and he was a real estate developer at the time.
Yes. A friend, Gilberto Najemi said, They were earthy, downright regular people.
I thought he was a caring, loving husband.
I know Kathy was in love with him.
That may have been true but it didn't take very long for the uh shimmer and shine of their marriage to wear off a little bit.
For Kathy, the idea of marrying someone from an incredibly wealthy family was exciting.
Hell yeah. It not only meant that she could finally have, you know, all the things she ever dreamed of having as a child growing up in a middle -class home.
But it also meant that she was rubbing elbows with famous and very influential people.
That's fun. What she hadn't counted on was Robert being so modest in how he lived.
not fun. Uh, or that all those famous and influential people would be more interested in him than they were in her.
Mhm. That's tough. Yeah, but most of all, Cathy didn't love how much time Robert spent with Susan Berman.
I probably wouldn't either.
I've moved to New York.
Yeah, and who moved to New York in the mid -70s to work for Us Magazine.
Okay, oh, very cool.
Yeah, with much more free time on her hands than she'd had before, Cathy enrolled in medical school and and started making friends of her own.
Wait. Good for her.
Good for her? Also, that's funny that Susan worked for Us magazine.
Wasn't that the magazine that they found at the crime scene in the beginning of this whole tale?
Was it Us magazine?
I think it was. I think you said Us Weekly.
I think you're right.
That's weird. Yeah, that is weird. Just, like, a weird coincidence.
That is very strange.
Right? Sorry. I was like, oh wow, I had to veer off there.
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But by the end of the 1980s, the once happy couple were now leading lives that appeared to be going in very different directions.
Robert wanted things to stay exactly as they had been, with Cathy always being available to him whenever he wanted.
That's not realistic.
Cathy, on the other hand, complained that, quote, they were living well below their means.
And she aspired for more.
Also Robert's jealousy and his possessiveness had become, like, pretty intolerable, which I totally, like, you can only take so much of that.
He wanted to be the most important person in his wife's life, often at the expense of all her other relationships.
That just can't. Singular focus.
That can't last. Yeah.
Kathy's brother, Jim, said, at first I liked Bob.
Yep. But then as the years went by, he said that he seemed not just uninterested in being a part of Kathy's family, but also pretty resentful of having to see or even acknowledge them at all, which is a big problem.
Yeah that's, that's big red flags right there.
Yeah finally by late 1980 Robert and Kathy's marriage had just started falling apart.
And a few months later she hired a divorce lawyer and confided to several of her friends that Robert had been physically abusive towards her.
Throughout 1981 Kathy started working with her lawyer to file divorce paperwork and continued working to finish medical school at the same time, which like she's that's what about it.
By the end of the year she was just a few months from earning that degree that in January 1982, Kathy Durst disappeared without a trace.
She was months away from earning a medical degree.
Oh, that's awful. On the morning of January 30, 1982, Robert and Kathy drove from Manhattan to Truesdale Lake in South Salem, where they were planning to spend the weekend at their vacation home.
By then, the marriage was definitely in tatters, and Robert had hoped that maybe they were still able to save things if they, you know, took some time to work on it, got away from what he saw as their problems from the chaos the the constant social stimulation of the city.
I mean at this point you're looking at it and you're like i don't know if you really could have rebounded from what was going on here.
Once you've become physically abusive there's really no moving from there's really no rebounding off of that because again like you said Robert had become physically abusive at this point and Kathy had moved out and there was really not a lot between them besides like bitterness and resentment yeah and anger which is make sense so like what was this gonna do but the following day Kathy knocked on the door of their neighbor Ruth Mayer and asked if she could borrow a hat and a scarf because she had forgotten to bring hers and she wanted to go for a walk yeah later when asked about the specifics
Ruth couldn't recall whether Kathy had mentioned if she planned to go for the walk by herself she said as Kathy began walking away she called out to say she Ruth did she called out and said she was having some friends that evening and suggested that Kathy stopped by but kathie had other plans okay the last time kathy durst was seen alive was that evening january 31st it was at a dinner party thrown by her friend uh gilbert nao jimmy earlier in the evening afternoon kathy had called nao jimmy and said i have to get out of the house can i come over oh no she arrived a short time later and appeared
very distraught um nao jimmy said she was always nicely turned out the things she wore were always nice but that afternoon she apparently showed up wearing red sweatpants and looked as though she hadn't combed her hair in days.
Aw. It was obvious she was in some sort of trouble.
Yeah. Now towards the end of Robert and Kathy's marriage, friends and family had definitely started to suspect about things were really bad between this couple.
But that afternoon, now Jimmy got a much more detailed account of just how bad it was.
It had started when she was starting to go to medical school years earlier.
Okay. a signal that, you know, to Robert, that she was becoming more independent.
Now a real man in a, like a real man, a real human, a real partner would think that's great.
Yeah, sing your praises.
And sing your praises and encourage you.
But no. Robert was like, meh.
You're not going to need me.
The abuse started gradually.
First with just some like really biting remarks, you know what I mean?
Like discouragement, just like the verbal kind of stuff.
Mm -hmm. Then it elevated to threats of cutting off her tuition payments.
Like, you know, using the financial thing against her.
Like the whole, like, this is my money kind of shit, which is like, that's when it's already done.
It's like not when you're married!
The physical abuse soon followed. At first friends were called Kathy occasionally mentioning which like she just like mentioned that Robert had slapped her.
But I can't imagine one of my friends saying that casually no and me not going to their house and taking a lot but by 1981 the term slapped was hit with was replaced with hit Implying much greater force and aggression was happening Yeah in the last two years of their marriage the cruelty Robert directed at Cathy definitely got worse He openly carried on affairs with other women Including an affair with Mia Farrow's sister Prudence.
And threw them in Kathy's face whenever he wanted to hurt her.
Yeah, at the same time his drinking and drug use had increased, which only exacerbated his volatility.
At one point when Robert thought Kathy was having an affair with a mutual friend, he violently assaulted the man, breaking a bone in his face and sending him to the emergency room.
Jesus Christ. But remember, he is carrying on affairs.
Yeah, and that's totally okay.
She can't do anything about that, right?
No. In early January, Kathy called a friend after a particularly bad fight she had with Robert in which he had hit her multiple times.
Her friend Elinor Schwank insisted Kathy go to the hospital in order to get the assault documented.
If nothing else, you know, just to get it on the record. Yeah, it's on paper.
And Kathy finally took her friend's advice.
Just a few weeks before her disappearance, the documentation of the assault would have surely been included in the divorce proceedings.
Oh. Yup. And would have likely swayed things in Kathy's favor.
Yup. But that wasn't all Kathy had on her side either.
Just a few days before she disappeared, Kathy told friends she had discovered some potentially embarrassing financial information related to Robert and the Durst organization, and she had planned to send it to someone high up in the company.
Oh. Don't ever tell people about that stuff.
You got shit. By no means this is like her fault.
That's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying like that's so scary, yeah.
Like that kind of information is scary.
She was not specific about the details of the information but she heavily implied that whatever it was, it was going to be very damaging to Robert and the Durst family.
So as Kathy talked to Najimy that afternoon, their conversation was repeatedly interrupted by phone calls from Robert, he screamed at his wife, he demanded she return to South Salem, and the last time he called was a little past 7pm, and the couple argued for a few minutes before Cathy hung up.
She told Najimy, Bobby wants me home, he's really upset.
Don't go home… So she grabbed a few things she had with her and walked to the door, but before she left she turned to Najimy and said, if anything happens to me, check it out.
I'm afraid of what Bobby will do.
My god. To think that there are what, so many women who know what that feels like and that their partner, the person that they decided to marry and that they were so in love with at one point in time and felt like was so in love with them.
To have that crumble and just explode like that is so heartbreaking.
And to say with full, like, your whole chest, if something happens to me, look into it because it's probably him.
Like to know that in your heart, that like, they are capable of that and not like potentially they could do that, but that I don't know how to get out of this, like, that's awful.
Holy shit. It's awful.
In this, her saying that, this is the last time anyone other than Robert Durst saw Kathy Durst. Wow.
Four days later on February 4th, Robert Durst walked into the 20th precinct on West Street in Manhattan and reported his wife missing.
Four days later. To detective Michael Struck, the timing of Durst's report was a little suspicious.
Yeah, one might tell.
According to Durst, he had last seen Kathy on Sunday night when he dropped her off at train station to return to Manhattan alone, which meant Robert had waited four days to report his wife missing.
Durst explained to Strzok that it was not unusual for Kathy to work three or four days straight in clinical training.
So ding -ding -ding, we're going to use her going to medical school against her, even when she's gone.
Yeah, totally. We're going to be like, well, she's just so busy, she'll be gone for three days.
Yeah. No. That doesn't make any sense.
But he said he hadn't thought of, you know, he hadn't thought she was missing until that day.
Still, Struck couldn't help but notice that for a man whose wife had been missing for four days, Robert didn't seem particularly shaken up or overly emotional about it.
Yeah, because he doesn't actually work for her.
He seemed very, like straightforward, here's what's happening.
So for Detective Struck, the case only grew more and more curioser and curiouser in the days that followed. I like that you scratched your chin when you said that.
I did, you guys couldn't see it, but I did the chin scratch, I had a beard. That was great.
In his early investigation of Kathy's disappearance, Struck found two witnesses who claim to have seen Kathy on February 1st, the day after Durst claimed to have dropped her off at the train station.
The superintendent and the doorman at the couple's Riverside Drive apartment.
Later that same day, someone identifying themselves as Kathy Durst called the associate dean's office at the medical school to say she was terribly ill and wouldn't be making it in.
So remember, we're talking.
He just said, someday she's in clinical training for like three days straight and I can't get a hold of her.
Oops, she wasn't, so she definitely wasn't.
And also who was that that called do you think?
Exactly, that's what I wonder and it's here that the trail goes cold though, at least in terms of law enforcement for Robert Durst, things were only getting started.
By the time she'd gone missing most of Kathy's friends and family were aware of how bad their relationship was deteriorating and a lot of them knew about the extent of Robert's abuse.
Mhm. That's why Robert's performance of the alarmed husband in the wake of her disappearance seemed so fake, disingenuous at best. And at worst it was coming off suspicious.
Yeah. Like he was totally, it was coming off the opposite of how he was trying to.
The week after he reported her missing, the New York press picked up on the story and everyone was clamoring to interview Robert Durst. In the meantime, he'd hired a private detective to track down his wife, who he firmly believed was still alive.
He told a reporter from the New York Post, she was going to graduate medical school in three months.
That's what makes me sure she's not hanging out at somebody's house.
Which no, she wouldn't.
What do you mean? What are you talking about?
What do you mean? You're just trying to embarrass her and like, make her sound like she runs away from you and yada yada.
So whatever concern Robert showed for his missing wife in public was all but absent in private.
So it was very clearly an act, Yeah.
When he spoke to her increasingly worried friends, he didn't come off like he gave a shit at all.
When Robert finally spoke to, um, to Jimmy a few weeks later, he said, by the way, way, Gilbert, have you seen Cathy?
And the tone was casual as though he was asking after an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time, not his wife who had mysteriously disappeared.
Yeah. Remember we're talking a few weeks later he sees a friend and he's like, Hey, um, by way have you seen kathy like why like she's been missing for weeks and he just says like in passing like you're you're talking about like oh like have you seen my like that's so weird like have you seen that that coat that i wore the other day i can't find it it's so fucking strange he creeps me out so he's just asking he's acting so fucking weird about this like so fucking weird and within a few months he had retreated from the public spotlight and never gave another interview or spoke publicly about Kathy
again. He also stopped returning Detective Struck's calls, which only made the investigator more suspicious.
And in the few months that had passed since she was initially reported missing, the supposed witness sightings from the doorman and the superintendent proved less certain than they had been.
When Struck reinterviewed them in the spring, both men confessed that they'd really only seen her from the back and from a distance.
So neither could be certain.
So that could have been anyone in New York City.
they couldn't even be certain that it was cathy d TAMI DURF from the back at a distance is crazy to be like oh yeah i saw her the other day yeah yikes they i'm sure like speculation obviously but i'm sure they were intimidated yeah by somebody by somebody and we're gonna end it there because we we're gonna do two parts of this the second part is gonna have more strange stuff in it yeah there's a lot to follow in this case so i do think it's a good idea yeah there's just yeah there's a lot of names there's a lot of stuff going on and there's a lot of We have a lot of jinx -y stuff going on.
Yes. So... Of course.
Of course. We'll get to that, don't worry.
We'll get to that...
We'll get to that whole thing.
The of course heard around the world.
So in the meantime, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you... Keep...
It... Weird. But not so weird that you don't throw it of course around.
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