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You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them. Growing up, Burman's childhood was idyllic. She was Las Vegas mob Royalty, the daughter of a mob boss who ran the Flamingo and furnished his only child with anything money could buy. But halfway through her childhood, her dream exploded. Susan's father
died without warning during a routine surgery. Next, Susie Burman's mother died by her own hand the next year when she's overdosed on drugs. Susy was whisked away from the only home she'd ever known, parentless living with an uncle and his family, and sent away to boarding school. Now fast forward to college, where Susan met her soulmate, Robert Durst.
They became best friends in each other's confidants. Durst went to work for his wealthy father at the Durst Organization in Manhattan, while Susan became a journalist, writing about women's cultural issues for newspapers and magazines. She followed Durst to New York, where he married the beautiful Kathy McCormick. Then Cathy disappeared, and Susan's did good by her best friend Robert, despite suspicions that Durst had caused the demise of his wife.
Twenty years later, as police closed in on Durst and reopened the case seeking the interview as best friends, Susan was murdered. Few clues were found. Who did it? And why was it? The mob? A trusted friend murder in Beverly Hills. An updated, revised edition of Murder of a Mafia Daughter answers those questions. Exclusive information about the investigation is included in this edition, as well as new interviews of police detectives, Susan's friends, family, and colleagues, and new
information about Robert Durst is revealed. The book that We're the book we're profiling this evening is Murder in Beverly Hills, the mob style execution of Susan Berman, her crime boss father, and the deadly secret she took to her grave with my special guest, journalist and author Kathy Scott. Welcome back to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Kathy Scott, You're welcome, Dan, thank you very much for a warm welcome.
Thank you. This is a great update of an already previously great book. So let's dive right into this. For those of us that don't know who Susan Berman is and Davy Berman in the whole connection with what Susan Berman later you claim in the book that she called it the royal family of Las Vegas, Frank Costello, Bugsy Seagull, Davy Berman and Las Vegas when it was sixteen thousand people. So tell us a little bit about who Susan Berman was first by telling us who her father was and
giving us a little bit of a historical background. At that time called him a casino hotel or hotel casino pioneer. So tell us a little bit about Davey Berman, and before we talk about Susan Berman and her life point well.
Her dad, Davy Berman, was a mobster. I mean he was with the Jewish mob absolutely, actually with Maya Lanski and that group, and did it in Sioux Falls, Iowa. A lot of rackets there. Then he went to Cincinnati, and from there he and then some he was working in casinos doing what I don't know what. In Minnesota, met met Susan's mother, Gladys, whose real name was Betty, but her stage name she was a dancer and her stage name was Gladys, and he whisked her and their
newborn baby. He married her and whisked her to Vegas. They came by train, and that was in the forties. And Susan grew up as basically mob royalty and it was spoiled little girl and happy, and her dad took her to work a lot, and she had the run of the casino and all the casino workers to please Davy, her dad. They would give her anything she wanted. And she'd got a hotel room and watched TV and order you know, room service and everything else. She swam a
lot her mom in the flim Mingo swimming pool. Used to go out there with her with some of the other mothers and then her mother her father died when she was twelve years old during surgery and it was a poll up or something in his intestines, and they sent her away to boarding school. Her mother had had nervous breakdowns off and on, and she was sort of absent that last year. She was in la and in an assisted living or whatever they used to do back then,
and for nervous breakdowns or whatever they called them. And then Susan was there part of the time, but going to boarding school. And then her mother died. Susan was convinced that she was murdered, and her cousin, Susan's cousin, her mother's first cousin, is absolutely convinced, and he worked for Davy Berman at the time. And she died and Susan was, you know, sent away to boarding school another a different boarding school, and then to Idaho to live
with her uncle. And nobody ever talked about her dad or anything. And she no one. That's from her cousin who lived with her, and no one. She never was like it never happened that part of her life, and all of a sudden she was planted elsewhere and she never got over. It was almost like her feet were firmly planted in Las Vegas. She went on to college and all of that. So that's who she was. And her dad took over this Flamingo. He was working there
as a co He was part owner. Dougsy Siegel was murdered and Davy Berman took over fifteen minutes after Bugsy was murdered and ran it, ran the Flamingo until he died.
Yes, and that was a long journey. You write in the book though, that she had this idyllic life, but she stayed almost matter of factly, that the mother was receiving shock treatments three times a week. So her mother was really not so involved with her upbringing. She adored her father.
Yeah, but she really did.
You no go ahead, no go ahead. Sorry.
Well, her first cousin, Tom or her first cousin once removed her her HER's first cousin, Tom Patten, who happens to live in Las Vegas. He's in his nineties, very you know, doing very well. And I met with him and his son several times. And he worked for Davy and so he used to drive with Susan to work, and he told me she used to get mad at him. And kick him because she wanted to go somewhere and he'd say no, and she'd start kicking him while he
was driving. But because she was kind of very, very spoiled and just a kid, but her mother was absent. I asked the cousin, how was how was you know her mother toward her? Was she affectionate? And then another friend who grew up with her and lived in the neighborhood and spent a lot of time. Her only friend really in the neighborhood was allowed to go to her house,
but they wantn't let Susie go to his house. His name was Pat, because the parents were afraid that something could happen if Susan was there, you know, mob unrest and that sort of thing. He said. You know, her childhood friend Pat told me, and Tom did too, that glad that some her mother wasn't real affectionate, but she she would always offer him cookies when he'd come over and that sort of thing, but always dressed up, and
he thought she was kind of affected. It sounds to me like she was a little distant, But I think her dad made up for that because he was very affectionate with her, and he would come he would leave work so early so he could tuck her in and then he would go back to work. So I think she got her affection and that nurturing mostly from her father. She was more broken up over his death than she was her mother's. And she was, you know, thirteen years
old and she was an orphan. It's very sad, you know, never got over it, never got over her leaving, you know, the idyllic you know, to her, it was idyllic, And you have to she wrote the book Easy Street, you had to consider Susan was writing it, you know, sort of with her memoir, sort of with rose colored glasses from a child's perspective, and she never got passed a sort of twelve thirteen year old mentality, at least when it came to her childhood.
Yeah, talked about sort of this innocence. She didn't realize what her father did till that there was this certain mob hit and then she saw overlooked someone over the shoulder and saw that the headlines and the photos and the stories. So gradually, it seemed, especially after her family, her parents were dead, that she started to slowly realize who her father was and his importance and and sort of the scary world that he inhabited. And he was a killer.
Actually, yeah, he'd got an accused of killing and he did some time he was in sing sing and she, you know, I mean, when her book came out in nineteen eighty one, she went on Jane Polly, I think it was the Today Show back then, and she just sort of and you can still view it if you search hard online. You can find the interview and she very matter of factly and almost proudly says, you know, my dad was a killer who could kill a man
with one arm. You know, she did a lot of research, went to the library, found any book, you know, with her dad's name in it. She didn't think it was mentioned enough, and she was trying to make him famous. But you know, that was typical of the Las Vegas mobsters. And you know, the Jewish mob was here before the Italian mob in Las Vegas, and it was typical of them to try to legitimize themselves. And they were very
respected here in Las Vegas. And you know, there was a rule hear that if you were going to kill you couldn't do it. You'd have to do it over the state line. Don't don't do any murders in Las Vegas,
And they didn't, none that we know of. No. Victoria Study kept a low profile, and she she she idolized him and kind of put him up on a pedestal and sort of I thought, I don't know, I mean, did you get the feeling when you read it that she thought it was okay that he was a monster, and he was notorious and a killer and all of that. She was almost proud of it.
Well, she came I think she came around to accepting it and like a neighbors, like a neighbor had said, and you capturing the book as well, that a lot of friends thought she was, you know, the life of the party, and she was quite outrageous and sort of hilarious and very dramatic. So with a with her ability to be a writer, and you know, you know, you write about what you know. I think often that there's
a certain of dramaticism in it. But then again, she certainly loved her father, So I think I think later when she came to the realization of who he actually was in the crime, some of the crimes he was accused of, and so I think she came to the realization obviously before thirteen, she didn't know anything. And then there was that you captured the book, that uncomfortable period
of time where her innocence was shattered basically. And and so I think with the idea that she became a writer, she wanted to be a journalist and she was successful. I think that she came around to accepting again she wasn't investigating maybe forgiving.
Him to maybe forgiving him.
Yeah, I would think that.
That her.
Missing him so much, you know, and missing that life that she was deprived, that she came to at least justify it under whatever pretense want. You know, that's the way things were. But her father did love her and she did have what she considered a wonderful life up to that time before her father died when she was thirteen.
So yeah, I mean she had Elvis Presley seeing Happy Birthday, Jimmy Randy, you know, gave her birthday presents, and you know, he would She didn't have a lot of friends, so her dad would invite all of the casino executives and their children to go and they would have this incredible birthday parties at the casino. And you know, she had her own flop machine at the casino. So for her, you know, she could swim anytime she wanted in the pool. She could do anything she wanted there. And then they
wrote and they held Dorado Parade. It's a very big the deal here. Year after year the held Dorado Parade and she was on a float every year. So she truly was you know, treated differently and knew and lost that, and I think she was trying to get it back. In some ways. It's sad because she had a great deal of wealth and lost it, got some back and then lost it again. And she wasn't good with money. It's like she wasn't prepared. She wasn't prepared for life, I don't think.
Now, tell us a little bit about obviously we skipped over this, her yearning to become a journalist. She becomes a journalist, she becomes a good writer, she gets a lot of attention. So tell us a little bit about some of the books that she's written in terms of content, in terms of what did she write about, even though you know, again we're you know, publishers are notorious for being a little overly dramatic too, you know, the inside on the mob and meanwhile, is it inside of the mob.
What did Susan Berman know? But of course her cache is that she was connected to the mob mob princess as they called her. So what were her books really about?
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Really was the content? Despite all the hoopla? What was the content about? And how did she write? Tell us a little bit about that?
Well, Easy Street was a good but she was a feature writer. She she was straight out of college. I had interviewed her her dean he's now passed. But she went straight from college master's degree in journalism to the San Francisco Examiner. And she was working in the women's section, which you know, back then in the sixties, that's what women would do. You know. She wasn't ambitious in that respect. Things seemed to come easy to her. School seemed to
come easy. And she didn't like working at the Examiner. But she made a name for herself there because she wrote She wrote an article in a in a weekly newspaper that was actually on by Francis Ford Coppola, and it was how to get laid in San Francisco. And that just became I mean, it just went off the top and became viral, as viral will be back there. And she was the talk of the Town, and she
decided then to move to New York. And after she moved to New York, she landed a book deal with Dial Press for Easy Street and it was her life and her parents and it is an excellent read. And there was a movie deal and she got something like three hundred and eighty five thousand dollars is something which was a lot of money back then for a movie deal.
But she insisted on writing the screenplay. She was difficult to work with sometimes and she insisted on doing the screenplay and they said no, and the deal got killed and she didn't have to return the money, so she but she hung out with all these paparazzi types, you know, Loraene Newman from UH from Saturday Night Live, and a bunch of a bunch of writers, including Robert Durst, who she met at U C l A. You know, he's the son of a big, big real estate logo in
New York. And he was her best friend and she followed him out there, so she his friends became her friends. So she hung out with rich people, lived on Beekman Place, which is real Tony. And and then her she had gone after after college. She went in between college and high school for a summer. Her uncle Santer with you know, mob money, because he was given a stipend for Susan
quite a bit. She went to Israel for a summer and she came back and after she wrote Easy Street, she wrote two novels and one was Driver Give a Soldier, and it was a love story in Israel, based in Israel, and she kind of got back to her roots and in Judaism. Her dad was from Russia Minx Russia. I believe her grandfather was a rabbi in Russia, and so she kind of was going back to her Russian roots.
Her dad didn't take her to the synagogue very often, but he did take her in Las Vegas, and up until she died, she was going to the synagogue in Hollywood. So she wrote that book. And then there was another novel, I forget the name. It didn't do very well. Easy Street did very very well. It's been a long long out of print. Someone should put it back in print. And then a high note she had lows and then a high note is she wrote Lady Las Vegas to company.
It was a It was released at the time that an A and E special three part A and E special was released, the best, really the best piece of that's ever been done on Las Vegas, and Susan was a producer on that and a writer, an instrumental in landing a lot of the interviews for it. But as a historian here in town told me, a state historian when I interviewed him, the Lady Las Vegas was such a disappointment because Easy Street was so good. Maybe it was the edit and I don't know, but she just it.
It was almost like she was trying to be It was sort of the adult Susan riding Easy Street, you know, to accompany the release of the A and E specials, and it just didn't come off, and it didn't do very well, and that was a big disappointment to her. They got an award, all the producers, including Susan, for the A and E Special, and that was in ninety six, so that was for years before she died right now, So there was not a lot of money involved in an any special, but a lot of notoriety.
Absolutely. Now, there was nothing in these books though that Susan knew or told. There was a tell all or embarrassing or humiliating or out of bounds for mobsters, no present or past. So there was nothing like that at all, was there. No?
In fact, the cops, you know, when she died in a Beverly Hills home, you know, it was just very sparse, sparsely furnished, and the cops locked in. And it was the first mistake and many that they made in the murder case. But this is the LAPD. They didn't call homicide.
It was new It was Christmas Eve morning, early afternoon, and they were greeted as they opened the door and went into the house, and she was she was in a side room with a poster, a wanted poster of her dad, wanted for murder that she probably had on above her fireplace. And so their their deal was, oh, she was shot in the back of the head, it must be a mob hit. So but no, Sue, I'm
the joke. Was I mean, even Oscar Goodman, you know, a former mob attorney here in Las Vegas and was a mayor at one time, even he said, you know, they all those monsters from that era back then, most of them are dead or you know, senile, and there's nothing going on that Susan would have known, although she did. She did confide in a couple of friends said that she had some information that she was going to blow the lid off of some things.
But that same friend said that her she had a real flair for over dramatizing things, so didn't take that particular statement which other contacts would be, Oh wow, she didn't think it was well, she didn't think it was right.
Oh, Susan, she's just being dramatic again.
And so let's go back just a little bit.
Here.
She's living in a in a place, she's renting the place, and she's renting the place from a woman named Dee Baskin. And despite her appetite for opulence and wealth and the good life, this place is not the greatest place among the affluent surrounding her, is it?
And well, no, it's a nice it's a nice neighborhood. I went there. But she was Susan was down on her luck. She had a show time series that was being accepted by about women, the wives and the mothers, and of the casino owners and the women of Las Vegas. And because of who her dad was, she had entree to all of those people on access and she had landed.
It was about to happen, and so she'd been struggling and was down on money and had to borrow it, as you know, and and she wasn't paying a rent, so she was behind three months rent and d Baskin was very very upset with her and actually threatened Susan said, you know, in a note, threatened to kill her dog and kill her if she didn't pay the rent. So
it actually was in a note. But she police looked at her, and you know, she was eighty something, I think, and she was a person of interest for a very short time.
What complicated, though, you you put in your book to at a little at least intrigued. Anyway, it was that she sent her this threatening very specific I'll kill you at her. And then right after the Susan was found, she went on vacation and was driving a rented vehicle.
If far, yes, I find it very interesting. And at that point I can tell you the homicide unit didn't get on the case for about two and a half to three weeks. And so you know, and then her manager, a quasi manager, because he was just a guy she met in an apartment she lived in previously and he would handle some things for her, so she called him her manager. Actually broke into the house, and that's a matter of record. People the police interviewed him, got a
search warrant for his house. Search wereran't for his office, but they didn't get it for several months. Actually broke into her house because she owed him money and he wanted, he said, wanted to look at her bank statements. He didn't volunteer this. Some neighbors saw after the police left the scene of the crime several hours later, he waited and once they were gone, then he he broke into
a window and went through some things. He said he removed what he returned what was removed, but we'll never know for sure. Nile Brenner so and I can say his name because he was a named person of interest for a while. They let that go. He was very angry with Susan. He was angry at the funeral. Friends said he was very upset. So there you go. You've got two. And then they I think he had an alibi.
I don't remember what it was. And they missed a lot of opportunities because they didn't get to the crime scene. Can tell you the as far as the murder scene goes, they didn't even do a fiber no fiber analysis, no picking up of anything off the floor other than a
single bullet nine milimeter shellcasing they didn't do. They did do some fingerprinting, but there was a palm print that nobody knows if they ever got that, you know, but they didn't do any fiber analysis or picking anything up, which I think was a major mistake.
Yeah, there's no hair in fiber. There was no scraping of fingernails for dem what whoever? You said? There was no rape kit, But then again, I don't know. I would just question that if there was no evidence indicating warranting that that's not so unusual.
Well, her body was soothed, and her legs were her legs were apart, she was wearing sweats, but her body
was turned over. She died, I mean she They know how she died and how she fell and ishes shot in the back of the head and her body was turned over and so and I've got a copy of the death certificate, and I've gone through the whole thing and all the the coroner's report, which I wasn't given, but I sat in the corner's office and a public information officer read it to me line by line as I took notes because he couldn't give it to me. So just some odd circumstances. It was a poor It
was a poor investigation. But like I said, they even outwardly said the mob probably did it. And this Christmas, everybody wanted to go home. And that was that. They only stayed for a few hours plus as her friends were learning about it one by one because she didn't show up at a party and they all started calling each other. They showed up at the crime scene. They
were allowed to go inside the house. So it was like the O. J. Simpson, you know and Nicole Brown crime scene almost where just everybody and their brother was walking all over the crime scene. Terrible.
Yeah, and they weren't. They didn't take fingerprints with the one. They did not, but I don't think they didn't.
No, yeah, yeah.
So there, yeah, they used to. Yes, wasn't it didn't It wasn't. It certainly wasn't a thorough investigation, as we'll find out as we proceed in the book, and another unit of the police LAPD take over the case and start looking at things. Let's a little bit a little bit later on. Now you say that the police don't say it's a mob hit. But they everyone looks at it as a professional hit. But what is their assessment of the crime scene, even though they didn't do too
much crime scene analysis? I think you say that even didn't even send a specific CSI person there.
But what is No, they were gonna they followed it up later and sentenced. They didn't even have the CSI team there, No, but they did follow it up later. But it was I mean, like the cousin said he was actually at the house and and the younger cousin, the son of the first cousin of her mother, and he said that there were chips, paint chips on the door jam that were on the floor where her body was, and was so flabbergasted that they hadn't picked those up.
I mean, why were there paint chips? You know? Also the doorknob the front door, because obviously this is a big thing. She knew whoever came into her house because there was no forest entry. She had gone to the show that night to see Best of Show with a I think it was a screenwriter or somebody in the movie business. And that was about nine o'clock when she got home. So we know it was based upon how
long her body had been there. From the corner's report, it happened sometime probably between nine and midnight, and then the neighbors were alerted the next morning. This is on the twenty second. They were alerted the next morning on the twenty third, by her dogs running around the neighborhood
and barking. Somebody whoever did it, went out the back door and left the door open, but nobody did anything until December twenty fourth, the next morning, when one neighbor woke up and the dogs were still running around and decided to go investigate, and another neighbor on the other side had one of her dogs in their house and called police. Yeah, there was some sloppiness with the investigation right from the start, Keithstone Cops.
Okay, Now, she has a neighbor I believe, named Ruth Bartnoff, and right after this, Ruth was a friend.
Ruth was a friend of hers, not a neighbor, but they went synagogue together. She's a dear, dear person and she's a friend of mine on Facebook. Actually she's like ninety two I think.
And she what was she told that the relationship was what did she think the relationship was with Niles Brenner.
She she only met him more and it was at books signing here. Ruthy had lots of contact with Susan Sara during the holiday you know, uh Hanikah and that sort of thing. And she had a book signing at Venice Beach for I think one of her novels, and Luthy went and so did Nile and it was when she met him. He was kind of office. Susan talked about him to Ruth but not to other people. There are other other friends of hers didn't even know about him.
What he would do was driver around. Susan was definitely afraid of bridges, anything that resembled the bridge, even if there was a little area on the right that dropped, you know, in a car, she was definitely afraid of that. And she didn't like to drive herself. So Nile would drive her to doctor appointments, that appointments, lunch appointments, and she kind of used him as as a driver that he Ruth at one point thought they were involved and asked and and Susan said, oh no, no, no, they
never were, and they weren't. Susan hadn't had a boyfriend since her living boyfriend and his kids lived with her, and then she raised those two kids after one of them after they separated, as her own daughter, and she lived alone with her for about five years. She was not away his stepfather.
Right now we were we have you spoke of Nile Brenner breaking into the home and he's saying to friends. I don't think he said the police, but I believe he said to friends that he was looking for evidence of money because she owed him money. And he said comments like at the funeral, like she sucked me.
Dry and ideas they tired. Ever, Yeah, he hung up on me. I talked to him on the sunny, hung up on me twice, and I never wanted to talk about her again. That sort of thing, which is odd.
Well, it's in line with the dialogue that he gives in the book, though, same kind of sort of attitude he talks about. What was interesting is he talks about he knew about and he mentioned to friends about the fifty thousand dollars that Robert Durst had loaned Susan burd and gave or or pardon me, Yeah, okay, so let's let's talk about let's talk about that money. Then let's talk about that money.
Okay, Susan needed her car. When she got her advance for the book, she bought herself a convertible and soon after she moved after scratted advance. After the movie deal fell through, she moved from New York to La wanted to become a screenwriter. She was at the top of her game. She was for New York Magazine with uh Nicholas Pelagi or however you say, is a Pelagie Pelegi. She was one of the writers with him at New
York Magazine and top of her game. And she owned She bought a place on Beakman Beakman Place, she bought a condo, but she up and moved. Wanted to become a screenwriter in Hollywood. You know, it was downhill after that, and she took the money she had, plus she had some trust fund money. Over a period of years, she was given five four million dollars or something. That's from one of her cousins who lived with her, stayed in
touch with her and was very good friends. That's Dave Berman, the her uncle, Chickie's son, and she actually moved in with them and was there during holidays and when school wasn't in she would be at their house. That's where she lived and he he said, she had all this money so she would get payments. Her last payment was when she was thirty years old, and that was then all the money from the mob and her father's interest in hotels and stuff ended that. She bought a place
in Brentwood. She had a house in Brentwood. She took the last of the money when she was with Paul Kaufman. She lived with him with his children and put that into a play that he wanted to develop and put on the stage, and there was a lot of money going into that. That was the end of her money. And when they separated and moved out and Mila, the daughter, came with her. She actually moved into an apartment owned
by a friend. It's how she met Niall. He lived down the street and they met while they were walking their dogs, and she lived there. The friend said, oh, you can live there till you get back on your feet. Five years later, Susan was still in that apartment and she had the victor and it was a very bad ending with that friend. She was a singer. I forget her name, it's in the book, but I think that
indicates that Susan sort of felt entitled, you know. She did that, you know, for free, stayed there for free. So she at that point she was very very down on her luck, and then she wanted she had moved in. She had lived in the house that she died in years earlier. So when she was kicked out of that that apartment by the friend who she kind of overstayed her welcome, Susan did, she called the landlady de Baskin and moved back into the Beverly Hills house that she
died in. She was always trying to get back. I mean, she had a good time there. It was she was high on her game when she first moved into that house and and and then moved then bought a Brentwood house instead moved out. So it's almost like she always tried to get something back, you know. So she called the landlady and moved back into that house. But it
was all downhill from there. So Bobby Durst, she needed a car, and she got ahold of Bobby Durst, you know, her friend from college, and he gave her two separate payments of twenty five thousand dollars each. And that was what Nile was looking for to if she had any of that money left to repay him whatever it was he said she owed him.
Now, when had Bobby Durst? According to do police interview him? And how do they interview him? Do they bring him in, do they talk to him?
How do they They never interviewed him. They tried to interview him, never interviewed Bobby Durst, Susan. Susan told her cousin that Bobby was going to come down from Samfruis Scho because he had a couple of houses. He lived in New York, but he had a couple of houses in San Francisco. And at the time, though Susan didn't she couldn't find him because he was not in San Francisco. He was not in New York and we'll talk about
where he was right but she couldn't find him. So she contacted the Durst organization to get ahold of him, and he immediately sent her a check. Said this isn't this is not alone. This is a gift, and she went and bought a car, paid went to court or her landlady took her to court, but she worked out a deal. She was going to have to move. This was November or so. She was killed in December. She was going to be able to live there until March, and the court allowed her to do that because she
paid back rent. She had to pay up. So the money Bobby gave her was to pay back rent and play paid the next three months and when she was going to have to move.
This was just a gift.
Gift, and some say it was a gift because when Durst wife disappeared, Susan was the spokesperson and everybody said she knew more about the disappearance of of dir'st wife,
Kathy uh Durst. Then she let was led, led people to believe, and so people the police in New York wanted to reinterview Susan and about the Durst case because the Kathy Durst case, because they reopened the investigation, and some say it spooked Bobby and that he was giving her the money to kind of pay her off for her silence, And they didn't get the interviewer, but they very publicly announced it in in the New York magazine that they were reopening it and looking to interview Susan
and had been in contact with her, and a couple of weeks later she was dead.
Well, that's very interesting. And the thing is is.
That it's called circumstantial evidence.
But the thing is, according to friends, Susan spoke about Durst and his culpability in that disappearance, didn't.
He, Yes, she was more than one, she was study. Yes, she was starting to talk about it, that there was more to it, and that some say that she was going to blow the lid off of something. She was upset with Bobby Durst because he had married someone and he had the family of Kathy Durst had her pronounced dead years later. I mean she died, she's missing since eighty one, but they she was declared dead, No nobody, no, nothing,
not heard from since. So that freed up Bobby Durst to get married, and he married this woman he had known for years and years. Susan was he wasn't calling her and talking to her. She was anymore. She was no longer his confidant, and some say that she's very disappointed in that and was upset with him and was talking about this information. She knew about the disappearance of Kathy Durst, which he's never been charged with murder, but he's certainly been his suspect and her disappearance.
Now with police, they really have these three suspects, like you write in the book, they well, okay, persons of the interest, Yeah, because they said they have no they have no viable suspect, but they really don't do much of an investigation given all of the information. You really do have three people of interest that can't possibly have done it, because.
Indeed, I mean indeed to me, they they you know, they never interviewed her again. They talked to her on the phone. And I don't know if her age had something to do with it, but the landlady who actually she was going to kill her, and then there was that cadaver note and whoever spilled her, well, whoever killed her, whoever killed her, because it was postmarked before her body was found, because her body wasn't found for two days, so it was postmarked on on you know, the next day,
which was a Saturday. It was postmarked on the Saturday, the day before her body was found, that there's a cadaver at SO and so addressed her address and it was mailed to the Beverly Hills Police. Yeah, Beverly and So that but but l A p D. I don't know what the border is but her that stretch of even though it's within the Beverly Hills city and they do have a pd L a p D had the jurisdiction of that canyon, Benedette Canyon, and so it was
an LAPD case, not Beverly Hills. So it was mailed to police that was handed over to homicide and this
cadaver there's a cadaver or all in capital letters. And they even wanted to check typewriters at at Durst at now Brenner's house to see our printers to see, you know what matched, and and handwriting they wanted it was it was handwritten as well, and they wanted handwriting samples from from Robert Durst, which his attorney refused him to do so they so they got Nile's handwriting from the guest book at the funeral, and they were hoping Durst would go and they were going to get his handwriting
as well because Nile was acting oddly. They were looking at him at the same time. But Durst was an immediate and immediate suspect because he didn't go to the There were three memorials funeral, two memorials and one was at the writer's guild where she was a member. One was the service at the mausoleum where her body is is in the mausoleum and the place, and then there
was a funeral at the synagogue. He didn't go to any of them, but he offered to pay for them, and one of her cousins declined and didn't let him do it. So odd odd stuff.
Now, you you were talking about jurisdiction, and initially, yes, they would have taken this to robbery homicide and so rob had.
To pick up the pieces afterwards.
Yeah, right, So what did they do, what did they attempt to do and what are the things that they do that the other people didn't do? In terms of investigation.
They sent a CSI team out to the house which it had just walked over. I mean, you know, some friends cleaned the floor, they'd already cleaned the floor where her blood was. They there was I guess black fingerprints, powder all over, because that's how they used to do it then instead of like the tape and stuff they do now and dust the way they do differently. And they interviewed niall. It took them a while to get him.
They interviewed him at length, got a got a search warrant, and in order to get a search warrant, you've got to have some probable cause, Durst. They went through his attorney in Texas and Dick de Garin, who's a very nice man. I know him from a trial here in Las Vegas, and I had easy access to him, and he told me Bobby had an alibi. But he didn't give them access to Bobby. You know, Bobby was going to call him, he was going to the way. They
did talk to him. They called him from the service and said where are you and he said, I'm not coming. So they talked to him, but they didn't interview him. So my question is in the alibi was that? And I would talk to Dick Garan on the phone the phone, it was almost like a Nancy Grave bombshell. He said, Bobby has an alibi. He was in the air on a plane from San Francisco to New York when Susan was killed. No, he was actually And I said what day and he said Sunday morning. I said, oh, no,
that wasn't the day she was killed. That was the day her body was found. So that was from Friday night to Sunday morning. So he clearly placed Bobby in San Francisco area a day and a half before a murder. And as you know, I mean San Francisco is like a four hour driver so to Los Angeles and an hour flight. Let's talk about you.
Talk about alibi. One thing that we skipped over is that Susan Berman was a little more crucial than apparently telling her friends that Bobby Durst told her that he did it, but also that she said that she was his alibi.
Well, what she did was she his wife was a medical student and they lived in New York, not in the city, but they had an apartment in Manhattan. So she was going to go and spend the night in Manhattan and where she would stay for several days during the week while she went to school. But she disappeared that night from a friend's house and was never seen again. And Bobby had called all angry with Kathy for not coming home, and so she left immediately to go home
and was going to catch a train to Manhattan. So Susan, everybody believes, made a phone call to the school, to the dean of the school to call in sick. Well, who when you're in college calls in sick and even the dean at the school said at the time it was so odd because college students don't call in sick, and especially to a dean. It was almost like they were trying to place Kathy in Manhattan the next day
rather than the night before. So Susan gave that was the alibi, really, because she was seen that morning supposedly and had made a phone call that morning, so she was alive and Durst was at their South Salem home,
So how could he have done it? And Susan had told and people had always clutched him that was probably Susan and police thought that to New York police sought it, so they wanted to reinterview her about it, and who knows that Susan told them, but it clearly was publicized in the media that they were looking to talk to her again. And it was a very you know, blowing the lid on that and spilling the beans that they
wanted to talk to her. It was really, you know, if he's the one who did it, that was a fatal mistake on the part of the police department because it got it killed. If if he you know, if he missed one of the scenarios possibilities.
There was talk of his lawyer presenting offering a handwritten sample, and then there was an analysis that seemed to be the verdict was inconclusive. Now the police are slowly investigating but not really making any headway. But after about ten months after this, something happens involving Bobby Durst and that heightens police interest in him. Tell us what happens.
Yeah, Susan couldn't get a hold of him when she was looking for him to borrow money. Little did she know he was living as a in disguise as a mute woman couldn't speak, in Galveston Bay in a CD three hundred dollars apartment, and with his neighbor was a man by the name of Morris Black, and he had an argument with Morris. Black said Morris came into his apartment started brandishing a gun and Bobby took it from
him and shot him. And then Bobby chopped up Saw up with a chainsaw and and and some sort of a knife saw handsaw, both chainsaw and hacks I believe, chopped him up, put him in paper in plastic bags, and dumped his remains in Galveston Bay. And a man and his son, twelve year old son found the torso floating up. How horrible for that little boy. And Bobby durst apartment was just loaded with blood and in the meantime he fled. He was gone like a bat out of hell.
So Susan didn't know that that's where he was when she couldn't find him. So he's he's on the lamb at that point. So l A p D. He is like, great, you know, will now that he's in custody. Once he's in custody, because there was a warrant for his arrest, and they got him in Pennsylvania finally stealing a sandwich. He had thirty five thousand dollars in kash or something with him and he stole a sandwich from a drug store.
And guess what was in the trunk of his car a nine million handgun same caliber as Susan was killed. And Galveston Bay, which you know is a teeny tiny town. I don't think they're forensics is all are all that great. They did some testing and said it was inconclusive, and I think LAPDS should have sent it to Quantico or something for the FDI to test that they didn't retest that gun in the bullet to see if they matched. I think that was a critical and that could still
be done. I think that was critical. So Bobby became an immediate suspect because you know, he became an immediate suspect because here he was accused of murder and then he went to trial. He said it was self defense and he was acquitted a murder. Wow. Fascinating.
No, yes, now in terms of him being investigated for the connection with Susan, do police make any headway at all?
Well, right now, the FBI, and this is just you know, several months old, the FBI because there is a woman in a young a teenager eighteen seventeen year old girl missing in San Francisco, and so Eureka San Francisco Police and then a former Eureka Copp who went to work for San Francisco PD got a search warn't because there was a they call it mister Petahad that there was a prostitute who saw the girl get in a car with an older man driving a car that Bobby Durst had been seen in and I did him in a
photo lineup. That's the man I saw. And they called the drawing mister Potato head and she said it was Robert Durst. And because they showed pictures of Bobby Durst along with some others and as she picked him out. So they got a search warrant for Robert Durst's bank records and there are receipts from him being in Los
Angeles at the time of Susan's murder. So the receipts, I'm told by two sources up in the LAPD I'm sorry, San Francisco area, and one is named in the book, the officer that the receipts that they got from a search weren't from Bobby Durst's bank records, which I don't know why the LAPD didn't get that, and they handed them over to the LAPD. So it's now a kidnapping case because the girl up there is in kidnapping. Therefore
it's a federal case. They're now the Fed's FBI agent in Los Angeles is working with the LAPD and the Susan Berman case based upon the fact that they can place Durst in LA and they're working the case in San Francisco as well. Those things take time, you know, so who knows what will come from it because it's kind of a task force right now. But they I was told that the investigation is of Robert Durst, not just of the cases, but it's an investigation of Robert Durst.
So whatever else they've got, I don't know. Fascinating right.
Yes. You write in the book though that when they had him for the murder of his neighbor, seventy year old seventy one years black, Yeah, that they had the syndrome of well, now that we have him for a major murder and he's going to be locked the way anyway, please please explain what you were told by.
He pulled out by insider. Yeah, by an insider as well as a detective on the case told me that, yes, as long as they have him in two interviews, as long as they have him, you know, for murder, well then he's gone, you know. So whether it's specifically for Susan and then lo and behold. He got acquitted. He did because he was on the lamb and he fled. He did serve three years in prison for for evading an arrest warrant, so he did serve time. He's been
out for a while. He was spotted in Las Vegas too, which is a little creepy for me, since that's whole Yeah, but he why what what he was doing here? He's got a place in in in Harlem, my house to condo, and his family gave him six billion dollars.
I believe it.
Was to never have anything to do with the Durst organization again. And so he's just kind of on his own, but with lots of money and he in his life.
Now you talk about the tough times, the up and down that everybody had. Susan had, but also Robert Durst had. From your research, was the time that he gave the fifty thousand dollars a time of that he was flush with money or does it make have some credence with that? This was money that he felt was necessary to keep her mouth shut after he heard reports.
He's stripping in money. He's stripping and he comes from the Durst organization. He worked for the Dirt organization. I think they built half of Manhattan money. He's filthy rich and then they paid him. He was living on trust and whatever else that they give people who are in wealthy families, and I mean money was he could have whatever he wanted anytime he wanted, had a couple of houses and San franciscally had a heal in New York. Money was never an issue for Bobby, so it was
like giving her five dollars. To give her fifty thousand was like giving her five. Now later when there was a falling out with the family, because they at first protected him, and they I was told that the Durst organization, when when the LAPD started calling and trying to talk to Bobby Durst, that the LAPD and the District Attorney's office we've research received very stern letters from the Dirst
organization to basically leave him alone. And I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I know that the one detective, the lead detective, took the case to the DA's office twice and was turned down.
Uncircumstantial evidence. I mean, there is less evidence in the O. J. Simpson trial that the LAPD or that the LA District Attorney prosecuted then it was in this there's lots of circumstantial evidence and especially now hard evidence, direct evidence based upon his bank records that placed him in Los Angeles, which is you know, so, I don't know, maybe they're there, maybe something will come event.
Well, it's still a circumstantial case if you don't have a lot of the other ingredients, so it becomes it's still a difficult case with a smart criminal will say experienced.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, he's got the best time. You know, dicta garin is incredible. But they could do ballistics on that gun and the case scene again the bullet, but yeah, they just might.
Because they might be hesitant going, you know, against all of their own sloppy work. So you know, his attorney could have a heyday with contaminated crime scene and lost opportunities and.
Oh yeah, it'd be as fascinating case to go to. Yeah, be assassinating to attendance, you know, if if it ever happens. But you know, I think d And and Nile are sort of interesting characters, don't you.
Oh absolutely, this is amazing, chock full of characters that come to life and real story of affluence and again it's a sort of a roller coaster for some people. Again, like Susan went through the money and then was living a little a little more modestly, a little more I would say desperately, but certainly she was.
Desperate at point yeah.
Yeah, yeah, So it's.
Yeah, somewhat where yeah, from where she came from, and Susan didn't, you know. Ruth said that she asked her once, you know, why don't you get a job, and she said it's the only time they had a disagreement. Susan was very unhappy about, saying that she sort of felt entitled. You know who me, I don't need to work. I'm Susan Berman, you know kind of thing, which is sort of you know, she didn't you know, she was going to keep doing what she was doing rather than try
to get a full time writing position somewhere. I mean, she's fifty five when she left, so she was very much working age well fifty five when she died.
Rather certainly. Now I want to I want to thank you for this. I want to get people to if they're interested in contacting you, how do you You have a website.
You have a website. They can always contact on Facebook website. They do answer emails, So they're welcome to come to my page on Facebook, Kathy Scott ten on Facebook and my Kathi Scott dot com and just hit the contact me and I'm happy to answer the questions or talk to them. And and the book is available on Amazon and and uh AuthorHouse dot com. It's also available on Kendall and on Barnes and Noble dot com.
Right and you you, uh, this is number what in terms of true crime books you've written?
This is five six tell us time, Yeah, my sixth true crime book. It's my ninth book.
And just tell us a few of the other titles of true crime books for people.
Listening pop Prince Oh, true crime books. The Millionaire's Wife, which was last year. I hit for Hire out of Manhattan, fascinating story. Saint Martin's Press published stat Murder Uh, Death in the Desert about the Ted Binion case. I wrote The Rough Guide to True Crime uh, and The Murder of Biggie Small, which is out of print. I am putting that back in print next year, so watch for that one. And of course my first book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur.
Yeah, so you've got heavy pedigree there, Kathy, thanks you very much.
Thank you, Body hip hop a lot of wrap.
Yeah.
And then Franship Katrina. I spent for four months down in New Orleans and Mississippi following the hurricane and and with a photographer and wrote Opernsive Katrine about the rescue of.
Animals Yeah, that's my chet heartbreaking. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, that's great. Well, I want to thank you very much Kathy for coming and talking about murder and Beverly Hills, and congratulations on this new updated version. It's reads like a brand new book. And the other book was great and this is this is just fabulous. So I want to thank you very much for coming on talking about that and hope now wonderful.
It's not. Thank you so much, Town, I appreciate it.
Well, thank you Kathy, and hope to talk to you again real soon about another upcoming project that you have in the works, no doubt, and I wish you the best on this and continue success. So I want to thank you and have a good evening.
My pleasure, byebye, good night.