The Half Of It
The Half of It is what happens when two sisters who found each other later in life realize they have a lot more in common than DNA — including a love of crime, weird stories, family mysteries, dark humor, and asking way too many questions.
Chelsea and Kate share the same biological father, but grew up completely separate. Now they talk every day, usually about something bizarre, suspicious, hilarious, or all three.
Some episodes dig into cold cases and strange crimes. Some unravel stories from their own family. Some are just the two of them trying to understand how two people who barely knew the other existed can somehow sound alike, think alike, and have an alarming number of the same quirks.
They may not know the whole story.
But they’ve got The Half of It.
The Half Of It
Dig. Shovel. Cadaver
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Robert Durst had money, power, a famous last name — and a trail of death and disappearance that followed him for decades.
In this episode of The Half of It, Chelsea tells Kate the unbelievable story of the New York real-estate heir connected to the disappearance of his wife, Kathie Durst, the murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman, and the death and dismemberment of his neighbor Morris Black.
We get into the lies, the disguises, the bizarre behavior, the infamous “cadaver” note, the shocking moments from The Jinx, and the question that followed Durst for years: how did he keep getting away with so much for so long?
This is the disturbing true story of Robert Durst.
Written and produced by Chelsea & Kate for The Half of It.
Executive Produced by Lisa Sydney
Photos, documents, and references connected to all episodes can be found at PumpkinSparklesCreations.com.
The Half of It is hosted by half-sisters Chelsea and Kate, who found each other through DNA and are now making up for lost time — one unbelievable story at a time.
Before we get into this episode, I do want to give a quick trigger warning. We're going to be talking about suicide, murder, domestic violence, and some of the really disturbing details surrounding Robert Durst and the people connected to his story. So please take care of yourself while listening and skip this one if you need to. Also, a very important production note. There are going to be parts of this episode where the audio sounds great. And then there's parts where it absolutely does not. That is because my dumbass recorded basically the entire thing through my webcam microphone instead of the microphone that was sitting right in front of my face that I was talking into. I cleaned it up as much as I could, and I appreciate you sticking with it. Just consider it part of the charm of the half of it. Okay, let's get into it. My name is Chelsea, and my name is Kate. You think you know, but you only know the half of it. This is the disturbing true story of Robert Durst, a wealthy real estate hair whose name became connected to three deaths spanning more than two decades. His wife, Kathy Durst, vanished without a trace in 1982. His longtime friend, pretty much best friend, Susan Berman, was found shot to death inside her Los Angeles home in 2000. And in 2001, his neighbor, Morris Black, was killed, dismembered, and his remains were dumped into Galveston Bay. For decades, Durst lied, disappeared, changed identities, and somehow continued walking free. This is the story of Robert Durst. I want to read you a list. Somebody wrote this down on a piece of paper and it got thrown in the garbage. And somebody else fished it back out. Are you ready? Town dump, bridge, dig, boat, other, shovel, car, or truck rental. That's it. That's that's the whole list. It's like the it's like the notes I leave myself and then have no context and exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, and don't know what I was trying to tell myself. Yes, but like you you wrote it in code for some reason. Only you really know what that means. Oh yeah. So only past me knew what it meant. That piece of paper was found in the trash at a cottage in South Salem, New York, in early February of 1982. The handwriting was believed to be the husband's, and the wife had been missing for a few days. And this note was actually retrieved by the wife's good friend. Because she was just digging through the trash because she did not believe a word that he said. That's a good friend. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm saying. Jit trust me, it it gets better. She's would you dig through my trash? Oh, you can't. I would live in your trash if I had to. I I would dig in your trash. Are you serious? Come on. Would you? Wouldn't it you dig in my trash? Yeah. I would. We've already had this conversation. Like, if I didn't pick up for a couple days, you would know there was something wrong. Oh yeah. So was there a body? She just disappeared. She just disappeared. Okay. She just she literally just disappeared. And and her body was has never been found. So most people, when they hear Robert Durst, they automatically think of Fred Durst from Lip Biscuit. And it's not Fred Durst. Robert Durst. And they may know him from the movie All Good Things, starring Kirsten Dunce and Ryan Gosling. Or maybe they've heard the term the jinx moment. But seriously, if you've heard some things in passing, I can promise you you really only know the half of it. Robert Alan Durst was born April 12th, 1943, in New York City. He was the oldest of four. Douglas comes next, then Tommy, then Wendy. There's no disputing the fact that Robert came from a very rich family. Literally, his money had money. And I wrote that line, by the way. He never earned it. He just was born into it. And his grandfather Joseph was a tailor from Austria, and he came over in 1902. And by 1927, he'd founded the Durst organization. His son Seymour, Robert's father, built it into one of the great New York real estate empires. If you've ever looked at the Manhattan skyline, you've looked at their buildings. His mother's name was Bernice, Bernice Hurstein, and she was born in 1918. On the night of November 8th, 1950, somebody at the house realized that Bernice had climbed out onto the roof, and it's a very high roof. They called the police, and more than a dozen police officers and firemen came out to the house in Scarsdale, and they spent about half an hour on the lawn just trying to get her to come down the ladder without her jumping. A fireman started up the ladder towards the roof, and at that point she jumped off past him. And he tried to grab for her bathrobe and it slipped. And she was dead on arrival at the hospital. And she was 32, and Robert was seven years old. Papers at the time said different things. One called it a suicide, and the local paper called it a fall from the garage roof. Officially, it was never resolved, and privately the family accepted it was a suicide. And for the next 70 years, he told a story about that night. He told it to filmmakers and he told it on the witness stand in 2021 at 78 years old. He said his father walked him over to the hall window and showed him his mother standing up on the roof in her nightgown. He said his dad told him to wave to her. He said he didn't know if she saw him. He said it never once occurred to him to wonder what she was doing up on the roof. Then he said he was walked to his bedroom, and a few minutes later he heard his father yell and he heard the maid shouting that she was off the roof. It's very sad when he tells it and it elicits a lot of emotions for people. So he definitely uses it to manipulate. But yeah, that never happened. His brother Douglas said he was never there at all. Douglas told the New York Times in 2015 that all four kids were at the neighbor's house that night and that Robert wasn't there and he didn't see any of it. Oh, so he's just like using it to like completely manipulate people. And he's so good at telling the story too. You feel really bad for him because it's a tragic thing. It's horrible. This case is full of stories that got repeated so many times that they've turned into facts, and that's one of them. We don't know who's telling the truth, but given Robert's track record, I'm gonna say that it was Douglas who's telling the truth. I mean, why would he lie to say he wasn't there? I mean Right.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00I just sent you a link to the house, by the way. Oh, cool. Okay, I'll get in a minute. Um, so he and Douglas were in counseling for sibling rivalry, because I guess it was like really, really bad. And there's this psychiatrics report from 1953 when Robert is 10 years old that uses the phrase personality decomposition and raises the possibility of schizophrenia. And this is when he was 10. That was at 10? Yeah. Wow. Because that usually doesn't like show up until like way later. Somewhere in that area. Holy cow. He masks so well that people view him as just a really like funny, sweet man that has had the worst luck ever, you know. Yeah, yeah. Like he just is the the charismatic thing, you know. Yeah, what does that sound like? Weird. Gee, weird. Yeah, I'm gonna interrupt one more second. The house has a sweeping marble circular staircase that was salvaged from the original Waller Vastoria. The taxes on this house are $62,000 a year. Seriously? Yeah. Oh my god, look at that. It's gorgeous in high school, classmates remember him as a loner, the Lehigh University economics degree class of 65, Garsling Across. He was the business manager of the student newspaper, and then he was in a doctoral program at UCLA, but he never finished it. But UCLA is a very important part of the story because at UCLA, Poolside, which is a detail that he always tells, in 1966, he meets a woman named Susan Berman. Remember her, okay, Kate? She's very important because she literally is the last person in the story who loves him and would have done anything for him. Let's talk about Kathleen. Kathleen McCormick, Kathy for short, was from New Hyde Park, and she was from a big Irish Catholic family, five kids. Mom's name was Anne, and her dad's name was James. And she went to New Hyde Park Memorial High School, and she was in the process of becoming a dental hygienist. And people who describe her bubbly, warm, funny, somebody who just lit up the room. And she meets Robert Dursum in late 1971, and she is a teenager, and he is 28. Oh. After two dates, one, two dates, he invites her to move into his house in Vermont. Oh, okay. I guess that's moving a little fast there. And she does. In January of 1972, she moves in and they open a health food store together up there, which is very, very new. Health food is barely a thing in 1972. And they were running a little shop in Vermont, and they named it All Good Things. And that's a throwback to the title of the movie, by the way. That was the name of the movie that talked about Robert Durst's life. So oh, okay. Okay, so they get married on April 12th, 1973, and that's his 30th birthday. She's 20. The wedding is four people and two clergy, Kathy's mother, Anne, and Bob's father, Seymour, a priest and a rabbi. That's literally the guest, the guest list. Sounds like a bad joke. Did they walk into a bar? So, from all accounts, for a while, it's a quote unquote fairy tale. I'm not sure like what type of fairy tale we're talking about, but Seymour pulls Bob back into the family business. And Robert never wanted anything to do with the business in New York City. He just didn't. He didn't want to be wearing a suit. He didn't want to, you know, be told what to do. He hated it. Kathy goes from that little Vermont store to Studio 54, to two apartments in Manhattan, to a cottage up in South Salem in Westchester, to Thailand, to the Mediterranean. She's living this like, you know, luxurious life, and she's barely in her 20s. But she's just, but she's also extremely ambitious. And she goes back to school and she graduates from Western Connecticut State College in 1978. And then she gets into medical school at the Albert IMC College of Medicine in the Bronx, and she's wants to be a pediatrician. She obviously was smart. By 1982, she is in her fourth and final year, and she is just a few months away from being Dr. McCormick. And by then, the marriage is a literal nightmare. Three weeks before she disappears, Kathy is treated at Jacoby Medical Center in the Bronx for bruising on her face. And she tells a friend that her husband beat her, and she doesn't press charges, nor does she name him at the hospital. Her sister, Mary, watched him pull Kathy out of a family gathering by her hair. Oh my God. Yeah. Because he wanted to leave and she didn't want to leave. And he said, We're leaving and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out of the house. Is this one of the moments maybe we we would have arrested him? Something, maybe? Yes. Yes. Yeah. How about this one? He walked into their apartment while she had friends over and kicked one of them in the face. Oh my god. A man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00She said in the face. Should have been arrested at that point. The man later sued and ended up settling. Good. She got pregnant. They had made a decision early on that they weren't going to have children. And she made that decision when she was what, like 19, 20, and she got pregnant and she wanted to keep it. And he forced her to have an abortion. He admitted decades later that he had forced her to get the abortion, that if she had kept the baby, he would have written her off. She would get no money, no house. He would have just essentially kicked her out. Things were going badly. And this report is from the district attorneys. And it was a release in 2022 that neighbors in the Riverside Drive building told investigators that on at least one occasion, Kathy came pounding on their door and they let her in. The neighbor described her as hysterical and scared. And she told them that her husband had beaten her, and she told him that he had a gun. She told him she was afraid he was going to shoot her. Okay. Again, why is he not arrested? When police talked to Robert, because they were called, he denied it. And that was the end of it. Awesome. She was trying to get out, and she asked him for $250,000 in a divorce sentiment. And I feel like that's a very fairly worth at this point. Exactly. I think at this point it was just about control. His response was to cancel her credit card, take her name off their joint accounts, and refuse to pay her medical school tuition. Four months from her medical degree, he cut off the tuition. His estimated worth in 1982 was $43 million. Yeah, you don't think he could have like friggin' spared $250,000? On January 31st, 1982, something happens that I really want you to picture in your mind. Because I think it tells us a lot about Kathy's state of mind on that day. Gilberta Najami wasn't expecting Kathy to come over to her house. This was New Year's Eve, after all. It wasn't a planned girls' night or a party, and it wasn't Kathy coming over for New Year's Eve drinks or doing Coke that Robert later said that's what she did at Gilberta's house. Gilberta was at home in Newton, Connecticut with her family. Her sister Fadwa was there, their parents were there, and another couple was there, and they were getting ready to sit down to dinner. And Kathy just shows up uninvited, and she is clearly not okay. She's upset, she's frantic, and even the way that she's dressed immediately stands out to the people who know her. Kathy Durst, the woman her friends described as someone who would normally be very put together, someone who dressed nicely when she went out, shows up to this family gathering wearing red sweatpants. And I know that sounds like such a tiny detail. They're sweatpants, like who cares? But that's why it's so important. And that's why it stood out, because this wasn't normal for her. She hadn't gotten dressed up to go to a party and she hadn't planned some social visit, like to surprise Gilberta or something. Everything about the way she arrived suggested that getting out of the house was more important to her in that moment than where she was going or what she looked like. And when she got to Gilberta's, she was so upset that the two women went off into the kitchen to talk while everyone else was waiting for dinner. And remember where Kathy had just come from? She had been at the South Salem cottage with Robert. So at some point in the evening, the phone rings. And guess who's on the phone? Was it Robert? Yeah. And Gilberta later says that she sees Kathy respond in real time. And she is terrified, very quiet, very stoic. And she just turns to Gilberta and says, I have to go. And then before she leaves, she tells her, if something happens to me, look into it. I'm afraid of Bobby. By the end of the night, Kathy Durst would disappear. And that red pair of sweatpants would become part of the description of her last clothing her friend ever remembers seeing her wear. Robert Durst seriously told so many stories about Kathy missing and what may have happened to her. And he gives alibis and he has a whole bunch to say about where he was, and it's a lot. So let's take it apart piece by piece. This man, what he said. He said, End I quote, they had a fight, but it was fine. He said he drove her to the train station and he put her on the 915 to Manhattan. He said he then went next door and had drinks with the neighbors. He said he called her later from a payphone and she picked up at the Riverside Drive apartment. So he knew that she got home safe. Is that anything about that sound off to you? Just a little, yeah. Like, why are you why wouldn't you just call her from your home? Like, why are you using a payphone? That's weird. That's a weird detail that you threw in there. Right. So as many cases that I watch and and and know about, the friend always seems to be the one that is basically being like, no, none of this is right at all, and starts calling people out. Because Gilberta was supposed to meet Kathy the next day at a pub in Manhattan, and Kathy does not show. And Galberta starts calling the police, and she calls them for days, but they don't take her seriously, right? Because what did Robert Durst say that she was in Manhattan? That she got on that train and went there. So he reports his wife missing on February 5th, five days. And he reports it in Manhattan, not in Westchester, because his story is that she got on a train and went to the city. So the entire investigation, like the entire thing, goes to the wrong county because this is back before they shared information. A longer. Let me tell you what was going on that nobody paid attention to andor asked about. For example, the neighbors that he claimed he had drinks with, not true. Never happened. They said he never came over. And like that's such a Bobber Dursa's not a social person. That would have been the first thing I would have flagged. He he just made that up. So he never went over and had drinks with them? Nope. So this isn't even like a viable alibi. He never actually did this? Okay. Nope. And two, the cleaning woman, when police came out to the South Salem house shortly after he reported Kathy missing, she showed them what she said was a small amount of blood on the dishwasher. She also told them that there was a wood panel in the dining room that was sitting crooked and there were like grimy fingerprints around it. And she told them that Durst had instructed her to get rid of Kathy's belongings right after she disappeared. Oh, just get rid of everything. Okay. Yeah, because you know, she's probably not coming back. I don't know that or anything, but you know, she's probably not. Did the police write any of that down? No. There are no 1982 reports documenting anything. Anything. About three weeks after he reports her missing, the superintendent at the Riverside Drive building finds the trash compactor clogged. And inside are Kathy's personal belongings, including her medical textbooks. Oh, those ones she might possibly need. Right. She's months away from becoming a doctor. Like graduation is right there. She's in fact starting, I believe, her rotation residency. Yeah. Yeah. Um it was said in the Jinx documentary that Gilberta and Najami literally stood on the platform at that train station asking any passenger getting on or off. That they had seen Kathleen on January 31st and nobody had. And when she found out about the medical textbooks, she decided to go and dig through Robert Durst's trash. At South Salem, and that's where they find the two notes, the schedule for the week, and the town dump, bridge, dig, boat, other, shovel, car or truck rental. And they handed that to the NYPD in 1982. So are we arresting him? Probable cause right now or what? I mean, at least bringing him in and talking to him. They do nothing. I don't know that. I mean, he no, I'm not surprised. But they, I mean, it might not be enough to arrest him at this point for murder because there's nobody. But I mean, they at least should be talking to him. Up on his alibi and stuff like that. Right. A friend of Kathy's sister broke into South Salem cottage looking for her. Then they found it torn apart, her mail unopened, her things in the trash. And also, this is really weird. He offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for her return, and then he lowered it to 15,000. He lowered it. He lowered it. That's not the way you're supposed to go. No. The case in Manhattan dies. It's the it's gone cold. And because first, the staff at Riverside Drive building said that they saw her that night, which seemed to back up his story. Second, the day after she vanished, somebody called Kathy's medical school and told the dean that she would be out sick. This is her first day of rotation. And she called the dean of the school, which is so stupid. Because I mean, the dean? Really? I mean, that's not what you would have done. That's like if if Allie had to call in a Kroger and she called like the president of Kroger or like the district manager or something like that. And she said that she was having diarrhoea and she wouldn't be able to make it. And that call is what convinced everybody that she was alive and in the city on February 1st. Okay. There was a person who went around talking to the press about on Durst's behalf. And she was a very well-known author, and she had a lot of credibility. And she put out the version of events where Kathy was flighty and that she was a cokehead and she was difficult, and where maybe Kathy had just run off with another man or was wearing really expensive jewelry and got mugged and killed. And that person was Susan Berman. Do you remember her? Okay, yep. 18 years goes by and nothing. In 1990, eight years after Kathy vanished, Robert Dursk divorces her. Grounds abandonment. Now he divorces her. Yeah, he doesn't tell her family, they find out later. So he divorced her for abandoning him. And a guy gets arrested on something unrelated and tells police he knows where Kathy Durst's body is. The tip is garbage, but it lands on the desk of a New York State police investigator named Joseph Brissera. And Brissera does the thing that nobody did in 1982. He pulls the actual file and he reads it. Wow. So he looks at this file and he's like, okay, thank you. He goes and he re-interviews the witnesses. The building staff at Riverside Drive, the ones whose statements sent the whole case to Manhattan. Uh, worker number one tells Brissera he was mistaken. He never saw her. No, he didn't see her. Worker number two says he thinks he saw somebody in a coat like hers, but he can't say it was her. And the elevator operator who was on duty that night, the man who had taken her up to her own apartment tells Brusera flat out, no, she did not come home that night. 18 years, and it took one person asking. On January 6th, 2000, state police search the South Salem house. Durst has sold it years before, and it's been remodeled. The cleaning woman goes with them and she walks them over to that crooked panel in the dining room, and they open it. And there is a hidden compartment behind it. But there's nothing. There's nothing there. Oh my god. I know. I had to there for a second, didn't I? Nothing in the compartment, nothing in the rest of the house, nothing in the lake. 18 years is a long time. And there's there's no evidence. There's nothing. In October of 2000, the press gets hold of this the case, and the Kathy Durst case is reopened and is in the papers. And of course, Robert Durst finds out. And what do you think he does? What did our father do? He runs. Yeah, he disappeared. Mm-hmm. And he turned up in Galveston, Texas. And rents a cheap room, like a really disgusting, really rundown room in a boarding house under a fake name. And he lives there as a mute woman. I wish I was joking. Oh wait. What?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry. He lives there as a mute woman. Yes. And her name, and he goes by Dorothy Siner. Yes. Dorothy Siner? He wears a wig. He wears one wig. Mute Clone's name is Dorothy Siner. This is editing, Chelsea. I just realized that I didn't get Kate's joke in the moment, but I get it now, and I'm laughing. So yes, I want to acknowledge Kate. That was funny. I'm sorry that I don't get jokes. Yep. He bought a handbag. He was a woman, and he doesn't speak, so nobody could hear his voice. So he's a multimillionaire real estate hair with a hundred million dollars, living in a $17 a week room in Texas, pretending to be a woman who can't talk. That's where his life has gotten. That's a that's kind of beautiful. Yeah, I know. So Brusera is working his way through Kathy's family and all of her interactions and what was happening at the time of her death. And there's one person he really, really, really wants to sit down with. And who do you think that is? Susan Berman. Correct. Gosh, you're smart. Susan was the one shaping the story in 1982. And if anybody knows what Robert Durst was doing that week, it's her. 100%. So Brisara makes plans to interview her. Two checks go out from Robert Durst to Susan Berman after the case reopens for $25,000 each. And on or around December 23, 23rd, 2000, before Brissera ever gets to her, Susan Berman is shot in the back of the head in her own house in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. Oh my god. No forced entry. There's nothing stolen. Her door is open, and one of her dogs is loose in the streets. And that's how the neighbors know there was something wrong. And like we were talking about, I had written stuff about Susan. Her father was David Berman. He was a genuine organized crime figure who ran gambling in Minneapolis in the 30s and later ran the Flamingo in Las Vegas. And she wrote a book about growing up as a mop daughter. She and Bob had bonded at UCLA over both being rich, but also both losing their parents really young. Susan Berman is dead now. And a few days after her body is found, the Beverly Hills Police Department gets a piece of mail postmarked December 23rd before she was found. Inside is her address and just one word. Cadaver. Okay. Whoever sent that note knew there was a body in that house before the police did. And there's one very important thing about this envelope. Whoever addressed it misspelled Beverly Hills. They wrote it B-E-V-E-R-L-E-Y. October 9th, 2001, Galveston Bay, Texas. Body parts start washing up in garbage bags. They belong to a 71-year-old man named Morris Black. He lived in the same boarding house as Dorothy Steiner. Jeez. Please work out fast that that mute woman is Robert Durst. They find out that it's Robert Durst because in the in the trash bags. I can't. In the trash bags, he was like, oh well, now that you know I have all these body parts in the bags, I'm just gonna clear out some of the trash, right? In my house. And in it was an eyeglass pickup receipt for Robert Durst. Versara's like, okay, well, I had this name. So he goes to the eyeglass place. And if this guy comes and picks up his glasses, I want you to page me. And he didn't really expect anything to happen. But lo and behold, he gets a page and he goes and he pulls out at like almost the same time as Robert Durst is pulling out. And and he pulls him over and he walks up to the back of his car and he sees a bosaw in the back of his car. And he's like, okay. Seriously? Yes. Like just yeah. And then it's very obvious that Morris Black was like, he was hacked like a chicken with a bosaw. I mean, it's yeah. And by the way, his head was missing. It was just, it was just his body, his head was gone. He gets arrested, and Robert Durst is like, well, what are I, what happens now? And he's like, Well, do you have $250,000? And Robert Durst says, Well, not on me. Woof. And he made a phone call, and the next day he posts, bail. Yeah. He was accused of dismembering his neighbor with a missing wife in New York and a dead best friend in LA. And he got bail.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Unreal. And he skips his next hearing and vanishes again. No, seven minutes on the run. Yep. They catch him on November 30th. This is the best. They catch him on November 30th, 2001, in a Wegmans supermarket in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, shoplifting. Oh my god. First of all, it's a Wegmans. That's great. He'd taken a newspaper, a box of band-aids, and a chicken salad sandwich. He had $500 cash in his pocket at the time. Why shoplifting? Because he feels like he can do whatever he wants. So what what year is this? This is 2001, November 30th. Oh my god. So this is basically right after 9-11, right? Yeah. And uh in the in the rental car outside, when the police search it, he had $37,000 in cash, two loaded handguns, marijuana, and Morris Black's driver's license. And this is a fun fact, had directions to Gilberta Najami's house in Connecticut. Kathy's friend, the one who wouldn't stop calling the police in 1982. Oh. Yeah, so he'd also at some point during those seven weeks sat in his brother Douglas' driveway with a gun. Did Douglas or was this Douglas hired a private security guard for many years because he was afraid of his brother for good reason, right? Yeah. Yeah. In 2001, Robert Durst, his estimated net value was a hundred million dollars. And this guy is shoplifting a sandwich from Wigman's. Yeah. He also shaped his head at his eyebrows. I gotta send you a picture. Hold on. Because he in in they asked him, look, why didn't you do that? He's like, because you look weird like that. That's his picture. In 2003, Texas puts him on trial for capital murder. Yay! Yay! Yay! Um, but Kate, he's found not guilty. How? How? He's got body parts and a thank you. Yeah. It might be a Texas thing. Because Texas has a lack stand your ground, right? That there isn't pretty much nothing that you can't do if somebody is on your property. And he's like, I feel like chopping them into little bits might. Yes. But he was on trial for the murder. They had to prove that he intentionally murdered Morris Black. What he did after was irrelevant. The prosecution charged capital murder and nothing else. So there was no manslaughter, no lesser charge. So the jury's only options are execute him or let him go. Oh. His lawyer, Dick Degarion, ran a self-defense story. He said that Durst said Morris Black had grabbed his 22 target pistol and it went off in the struggle, of course, and shot Black in the face. And like I said, Morris Black's head was never found. So there was no way to prove that, right? There was no way to prove how he died. And the interesting thing is that once when Robert Durst is eventually telling his story because he's stupid like that and did this, um, he said that when he drove by and saw that the bags were floating on top of the water, he panicked and went back and took the head out and disposed of the head separately because he knew that the head was the evidence of how he died, right? On the stand, he testifies and he admitted under cross-examination out loud to a jury that he had used a pairing knife, two saws, and an axe to cut up his neighbor's body. He bagged him and dumped him in the bay. He said all of that. And on November 11th, 2003, the jury acquits him of murder. Wow. He's a free man. He's a free man. That is a that is a gross mistake. He later pleads guilty to bail jumping and evidence tampering, the tampering being the dismemberment, by the way. And gets five years with credit for time served. And he's paroled in July of 2005. Susan Christ, the judge who presided over his trial. Said something years later, as to whether she thought he'd kill Black, she talked about the dismemberment. She said the cutting was clean like a surgeon, the right tool for each bone and each muscle. And she said it didn't look like a first-time job. Oh my god. Yeah. I'm wondering where Kathy is now, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I've said when the collarbomber thing happened with the evil genes, that whole thing, and you know, and they found the the body in the freezer cut up and everything. You know, I said, I think all of us have it in us to kill someone under the right circumstances. You know, like if they were messing with your child or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Or protecting your child or somebody you loved or something. We all have it in us at some point. But to make the choice to then cut that person up into tiny little pieces and put them in your freezer, that takes a whole different kind of special. I mean, he a paring knife, a pairing knife, come on, that blades like the size of my pinky. Durce has a problem with talking. He loves to talk, and he will talk and talk and talk and talk. And some days he's telling you one thing and then he'll forget that he told you that. And he's like, Well, I shouldn't have said that. In 2010, a movie comes out called All Good Things, and it was directed and produced by Andrew Derecki. Loosely based on Robert Durce. It's named after that health food store in Vermont. And Robert Durce, the narcissist little man that he is, he's like, oh my gosh, they made a movie about me. This is so exciting. And he calls up the director, Andrew Derecki, and asks if he can see it. And Derecki sets up a private screening. And Durce watches a movie about him killing his wife. He calls Derecki, tells him that he liked how he came off, and he offers to sit down for interviews. He likes how he came off in the movie. Where he kills his wife. And there's a scene where he comes in, pulls Kirsten Dunce by her hair out of the house. And he's like, Yeah, that's that sounds pretty much right. Yep. The only thing that he said that bothered him about the movie was the fact that Derecki implied that he had killed his dog. And he had not done that. And that really upset him.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00Well, Elise, at least he has morals. He didn't kill the dog. So he's like, I want to sit down and maybe you can interview me. Because, you know, you you know, you know Robert Durst better than anybody, he says. And nobody asked him, nobody subpoenaed him. He literally volunteered to do this. Three days of recorded interviews, these are the things that he admitted on tape. That he had physical altercations with Kathy, including on the night she disappeared. He then tried to walk that back. But, you know, things about cameras filming it. That he lied to police about calling her and speaking to her out of the Riverside Drive apartment. Like he never made that call, even on the payphone. It never happened. And that he never had drinks with the neighbors. And that he puts in the little detail that he just said that because he figured that, you know, that gave him an alibi and they would just leave him alone. He said his lies were just meant to point the search in Manhattan. That's why he did it.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00I looked up the dogs. What? Dogs? Who killed the dogs? They think he used a total of seven dogs. Wow. To practice dismemberment on. Oh. Okay. That's fun. They were in Alaskan Malamots. And every single one of them was named Igor. Oh yes. So when he is on the phone with people and he refers that he was going to Igor this person. Igor is is is code for murdering. Yeah, he was using it as he would use it as a verb. I'm sorry. Go ahead. He left a dead cat on the judge's doorstep. Uh it was a cat's head. Former judge said Robert Durris left a mutilated cat's head. On her doorstep. Oh, so it was one in Galveston then? Probably. Huh. Yeah, Susan Chris. So during the interview, Andrew Direcki asks him about the cadaver note, and he says, What do you think about that? And he's like, Oh, it's this this huge risk. This is a letter that only the killer could have written. And he adamantly denies anything having to do, or even being in LA. Like he Susan Burman was killed by somebody, and it's very sad and tragic. And it wasn't him.
SPEAKER_01Might write a note like that. I can't imagine. You're writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written.
SPEAKER_00Then Susan Berman's stepson finds something in her old papers, and it's an envelope Durst had mailed to Susan. The handwriting is in blocked capital letters, the same style as the cadaver note, and on it, Robert Durst's own handwriting spells Beverly. Letters B E V E R L E Y Hills. It's literally like the same. It looks exactly the same as a cadaver note. So same handwriting and same misspelling. They're so careful about it that they put in a safety lockbox. Like, because this is evidence that is literally tying him to the murder of Susan Bremer. So for months, Derecki is trying to get this moment with Durst to call him on it.
SPEAKER_01We interview Bob, we bring it up. Now we've got Bob reacting clean to this hugely important piece of evidence.
SPEAKER_00And Durst just starts dodging him over and over again. There's just this montage of him lying to Derecki, saying that he's in Madrid, but he's really actually in New York. And he finally, finally does agree to sit down and finish the docuseries and have one final interview. So Durst comes in and he sits down, and Derecki puts the two envelopes side by side in front of him. And Bob Durst admits the writing is very similar, and he admits the misspelling of Beverly is the same. Direcki is holding up both of the spellings of Beverly that are blown up, and he says, Can you tell which one you didn't write? And Durst says, No. So there's just like this awkward ending, and the interview is over, and Durst gets up and he says, I'm gonna use the bathroom, which is right here, like in a Sing Song voice. And he goes into the bathroom and completely forgets that he has a microphone on.
SPEAKER_01Or maybe this is the bear. Yeah, that's you're all right. This is the bear.
unknownOf course.
SPEAKER_00And the first thing he says is, There it is, you're caught. And he said, he's peeing while this is happening. You're right, of course. But you can't imagine the rest of them. And he's peeing and burping, and he says, What a disaster. And he says, He was right, I was wrong. He's whispering. And he goes, What the hell did I just do? And then he says, killed them all, of course.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Circuit doesn't know he's still like hot micing himself. When Robert Durst takes the stand, he has an explanation for kill them all, of course. According to Bob, that wasn't the entire sentence. He claimed what he had actually said, or possibly said so softly that the microphone didn't pick it up was, they'll all think I killed them all, of course. Which obviously changes the meaning completely. Except prosecutor John Lewin had a problem with that explanation. He played the recording for Durce, then he played it again, and essentially asked him, Where are those words? Because you don't hear, they'll all think. You hear, kill them all, of course. The version we saw on HBO was edited. The filmmakers rearranged portions of the Durce bathroom ramblings for the documentary, including separating and repositioning things he said. So when you hear, what the hell did I just do? kill them all, of course, as though those two thoughts immediately followed one another, that's not how the raw recordings actually unfolded. The prosecution and Durst's own defense attorneys entered into a stipulation concerning the original recordings played in court. They agreed that those recordings were true and accurate copies, and that the audio and video being presented to the jury had not been edited, altered, or modified. And that stipulation specifically included the bathroom recording. So, Durst was not arguing that the prosecutors had cut the words, they'll all think, out of the recording. His argument became that he either said those words too quietly for the microphone to capture them, or that they were part of what he was thinking but didn't actually say out loud. That's a very different argument because there, I guess, is a legitimate criticism to make about the way the Jinx edited the scene, but there is also an unedited recording. And on that recording, the words, the microphone capture, are kill them all, of course. The series is called The Jinx on HBO, and there's two seasons. And so episode five airs, and it's the episode with the handwriting. And Robert Durst is watching it, and he's a little concerned. He knows he's already been confronted with this, right? He knows that he's been confronted. He doesn't know that he was on a hot mic, but he knows that people are kind of on to him. So when he sees what they're planning, bless you, what they're trying to do, he's like, well, I'm gonna get out of here. And he and he, of course, he runs. He runs. He has, yes, he he gets one of those fake, really expensive latex masks. Like that looks it is the freakiest looking shit you've ever seen in your life. Oh man. The night before the final episode is due to air, the FBI arrests him in a hotel in New Orleans. He's checked in under the name Everett Ward. In the room, he had a loaded 38 revolver, four live rounds, and one spent shell, five ounces of marijuana, his passport, and a birth certificate, a fake Texas ID, and forty-two thousand dollars in cash, and a flesh-tone latex mask. Also in the rooms were maps of Louisiana, Florida, and Cuba. They pull up a UPS tracking number out of his stuff and find another $117,000 in a parcel a friend had shipped him. His Houston bank records show $315,000 in cash withdrawals in about a month. The Susan Berman trial begins in Los Angeles. The prosecutor was John Lewin. His one purpose was to make sure that this man was convicted of murdering all these people. So in order for him to prosecute for the death of Susan Berman, he also had a special circumstance in the fact that he was also able to prosecute him for the death of Kathleen Durst, which is amazing. Because they intended to prove that the only reason why Susan Berman was dead was because she was the one that covered for Robert Durst during the time that Kathy Durst was missing. She's the one that made the phone call. She's the one that was in the coat and, you know, was telling people that she was still alive. Like she posed as Kathy to make people think that she was still alive. Oh my God. In December of 2019, after nearly 20 years of denying it, his own lawyers filed paper admitting that he wrote the cadaver note. But he didn't kill her. He just wrote it. He just wrote the note. He just knew she was there dead somehow. Right. He just happened to like walk in on her, and instead of calling the police, he said that the phone didn't work. Yeah, John Lewin took him apart, got him to admit he committed perjury after perjury after perjury back, not only like in this trial, but in the Texas trial, that he actually lied on the stand. September 17th, 2001, he is convicted on first-degree murder. But unfortunately, Robert Durris had COVID, so he was not there to hear it. And he gets sentenced to life without parole. But he's already in a hospital facility. So he's 78, he's in a wheelchair, he has a catheter bag, and after he's test positive for COVID, he goes on a ventilator. He was convicted specifically of killing a witness to shut her up. Susan's statements became legally admissible in New York, and her death is what finally let them charge Robert with killing Kathy in 1982. So Susan helped him cover it up and he killed her for it, and her death is literally what convicted him. Isn't that a bitch? That This is editing Chelsea chiming in. I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that the reason why Susan Berman was killed, according to John Lewin, was because Susan Berman was asking Robert for more money. She told Robert that the police wanted to come and talk to her. And she implied that she was broke and basically saying that she knew a lot of stuff, so she wasn't surprised that they wanted to come and talk to her. I believe Robert Durst took that as a threat that she was going to be extorting him for money forever, and it was always going to be hanging over his head. He needed her to stop doing that, so that's why she got shot in the back of the head. Because his appeal was still pending when he died under California law, his murder conviction was automatically vacated. Wiped. Legally. It never happened. So it's almost like he got the last laugh. That bothers me a lot. That's insane. Kathy McCormick was declared legally dead in 2017, 35 years after she vanished, at her family's request, because they had to ask for it. Her mother Anne died without ever getting to bury her daughter, and so did her father. And her body still has never been found. For all the attention Robert Durst received over the years, I didn't want the final word in the story to belong to him. It belongs to Kathy Durse, to Susan Berman, and to Morris Black. They were real people with families and friends and plans and lives that existed long before their names became attached to the story of Robert Durst. And they deserve to be respected and remembered far more than what happened to them. Thank you so much for listening to The Half of It. This episode was written and produced by Chelsea and Kate, an executive produced by Lisa Sidney. If you would like to see the photographs, documents, and other images associated with this episode, visit Pumpkin Sparkles Creations.com. Because this episode included discussions of suicide and domestic violence, I want to leave you with a couple of resources. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or experiencing a mental health crisis, you can call or text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline. Help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. That's 1-800-799-7233. Or text start to 88788. Information for this episode was gathered from the HBO's The Jinx, The Life and Death of Robert Durst, and the Jinx Part 2. We'll see you next time. You want me to say something smart? Really? Was it in the ballroom? Oh my god, I'm stopping it.