MURDER OF A MAFIA DAUGHTER: Expanded and Updated 20th Anniversary Edition-Cathy Scott

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mogul and notorious mafia leader. After her father died, she learned about his mob connections. Susan then dedicated her life to learning about Vegas and its underworld chiefs. Her life took a bizarre turn in nineteen eighty two, when Kathy Durst, the wife of her good friend Robert Durst, mysteriously disappeared. Kathy's husband was a prime suspect, but the case was

never solved. After the Kathy Durst case reopened, the media leaked that the phone call that appeared to be Kathy calling her medical school dean saying she was sick and wouldn't be at school. The call was placed the morning after she disappeared. Soon after the Kathy Durst case was reopened, Susan Berman was found dead, shot in the back of the head. No forced entry, no robbery, nothing missing from her home. This expanded and updated book covers what led

to Durst's twenty fifteen capture. Police records placed Durst in California at the time of his good friend Susan Berman's murder. HBO filmmakers discovered an envelope unknown before, written by Durst to Susan. The handwriting and spelling of Beverly Hills was dead on match to the cadaver letter police say the killer mailed to police informing them of Susan's death before her body was discovered. This new release covers Durst's lengthy

murder trial and the slang of his best friend. The book we're featuring this evening is Murder of a Mafia Daughter Expanded and Updated twentieth anniversary edition, Robert Durst and Susan Berman, the shocking inside story with my special guest journalist and investigative and Gaive journalist and author Kathy Scott. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Kathy Scott.

of it is Robert Durst. You know, he thought he was the smartest man in the room, and he testified on his own behalf, and so I was able to include some of just the absurdities, and he laughed, he mocked people. It was really pretty sad, but he you know, I said he was too mean to die, but he

did after the trial. But so it's gone full circle now the book, you know, the twenty fifteen I had an addition come out with his arrest and now the conviction, and then the New York District Attorney filed charges against Robert Durst before he died for the murder of his wife, Kathy, So that's also included in the book, and a whole

lot more details. And Kathy Durst's brother I interviewed him for it as well, just a lot of details as well, things that like the forty thousand dollars masks that he was going to wear and go out, you know, try to go become a fugitive again. He testified about that, he admitted it. So there's a whole lot more in the book. And as I said, it's complete now. So I'm very happy about that.

her big brother. And then Susan's background was her dad was Davey Berman, who became a He was a mobster in the Midwest and came out to Las Vegas in forty six, I think it was to nineteen forty six to be partners with Bugsy Siegel and Davy Berman ran the Riviera and the skim you know, you know, the mob gets as much the owners get that much, so he ran the casino for the skim for the mob, Chicago Mob, and she grew up in She grew up in luxury and spoiled, rotten and had an and she

adored her father and he died when she was twelve, and then her mother committed suicide when she was thirteen. She went to live with her uncle, Chickie, who was also in the mob, and went to private school and then went to college and that's when she met Robert durs.

she devoured it. And she very proudly said on National TV that her father could kill a man with one hand behind his back. And when her body was found in her house greeting police in the house above her fireplace, Mantle was a wanted poster for murder for her father, and she carried around his police mugshot in her wallet.

She was quite proud of who he was and thought he didn't get enough notice as a big monster in Vegas, that others got more notice, and he did, and she was trying to put his name out there and give him notoriety.

house away she was. She was raised until her parents died. And and because she had she had a family, you know, a core family in Las Vegas was with lots of She had a bodyguard, you know growing up you know who is a mobster who was assigned to her and he stayed with her until she graduated from high school. And so she just relished that life. But she and her husband got into a theater deal and Susan took

all the money she had left. She she inherited a lot of money over the years, and she took all the money she had left and put it into this project that bombed in New York. She went and spent time in New York, and she and Paul they lived together. They did it. They weren't married. But when they splad up over the film and the loss of the money or the theater production and the loss of the money, Meli stayed with her and stayed with Susan, and Susan

finished raising her until the girl entered college. So for Susan it was a dream come true meeting him because she had the children she wanted that she'd always wanted.

as well. Tell us a little bit about the deal that happened where she got a lot of money from the world from the casino, so in effect, the organized crime partners that he had took care of her and then gave her a significant amount of money. You talk about five point two five million and significant. So tell us a little bit about this deal. And regardless of that money. What kind of financial situation was she in most of the time.

in the book. And so they gave her payments and her uncle Chickie, until she was twenty one, he got paid to take care of her and provide her with things, and her cousin who she grew up with her that part of her childhood, her older childhood, her cousins were in same household where their father was doting Susan with all these things. Well, he was doing it because he was getting paid to do it and told to do it. It was part of the trust because of his interest.

So it wasn't really the mobsters who were paying him. It was the casinos. He had an interest, and there was a business manager who took care of it for all of them, and so they would dole out the money. I think it was. She got three large payments, one when she was twenty one one, when she was twenty five, I believe, and then another when she was thirty, and that ended it, and it added up to the five

point something million dollars. And so Susan, instead of investing the money, which she could have lived off of the interest for the rest of her life and lived very well, she spent it. She also got one hundred and eighty five thousand dollars advance for her book Easy Street, and she got a movie deal that was lucrative, fell through, but she got to keep She got to keep the money,

which was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. She bought a house in Los Angeles and lost it because over after the theater deal fell through with her boyfriend Paul, she went into foreclosure and lost her house. She would hit up all of her friends, and her friends didn't know Susan didn't tell them that she was, that she had come into money, and that she had had all

this money until she was thirty. And she she would go to Elaine's when she was living in New York in her in her twenties, she would go to Elaine's, you know, the big Tony restaurant there and buy everybody dinner.

everything was done for her. And she was you know, she was a poor, little rich girl basically, and who should have been able to maintain an incredible lifestyle with the money she was given. But she squandered at all. And she lived her house when she died was sad. I mean she she had pulled the carpet up in

the floor. She was living on concrete floors and unfinished, and the heat didn't work, and her half furniture was gone or broken, and she had a bed that wasn't even on a box spring that was on the floor. It was sad. But Robert Durst, she'd turned to him for money, and we know that twice he gave her twenty five thousand dollars payments. One right before she died because her car died and she needed a new new car.

So it's a story of I mean, she joked in a letter that she had written to Robert Durst, which became part of the court record in this trial. She joked that she was going to write a new book and it was going to be called rich Girl Broke. She didn't mind that people knew that she was broke. She hit up all her friends for fifteen hundred, five hundred, you know, one thousand. They would give her money, not knowing that she at one time had a lot.

So I don't she got along with Kathy from from all appearances people said that they got along. She wasn't really a friend of Kathy. She was, you know, he was a wife of her best friend and of Susan's best friend. I've talked to friends who got together and saw them together, her with Bobby and Kathy, and she always voted on Bobby, but Kathy didn't seem to mind.

But at the same time, Kathy was going through a period where she was being abused by Robert Durst and was reached out to a couple of friends, but felt very isolated and was kind of into herself quite a bit, going to medical school and trying to survive her marriage at the same time. And I think she had plans to leave Robert Durst, and that that's why ultimately Kathy Durst got killed.

And Susan's role in that and ultimately I believe got her killed. And maybe I'm jumping ahead, but Susan was his media person. So when the media wanted to talk to Robert Durst because he's with this great, big real estate mogul family, I mean, his family built a towers in New York, and Susan he needed to talk to the media. They were requesting, you know, interviews with him over his missing wife, and Susan became his media spokesperson. Also a phone call was made to the school, which

is unusual for a medical student at her level. She was about to graduate, and Kathy Durst was about to graduate for a medical student to call in sick. And so a woman called in sick the next morning on behalf of saying she was Kathy Durst. Only she called the wrong office. So obviously whoever called in didn't know the right place to call, and the police believed for years that it was Susan who made that call, and because she would have done anything for Bobby Durst.

days to go. He walked into the Manhattan Bureau. I went there and interviewed them, the detectives in Manhattan, and he walk in with his dog and told him his wife was missing and from Manhattan from their apartment in Manhattan. And there was no follow up with the New York Police Department Manhattan and then Westchester County was she lived there, but she wasn't reported missing from there And basically the case just stalled.

She worked with Nicholas Plagy at a magazine, and she could have had an incredible career had she continued on but in writing books. But I think she got spooked because of Kathy Durst, and she knew what happened to her, I believe, and she went to New La shows liked LA. Susan did because her dad took her there on weekend trips. And in the meantime, the police were investigating Durst. He was walking, you know, walking as a free man, and he was supposed to take over the Durst organization, but

he was getting, you know, crazier and crazier. His behavior was odd. Durst was in his family and his father didn't want to give him the business anymore and wanted to give it to his brother. So Durst, as as the police in Westchester close in on him, just takes off and goes to Galveston Bay and lives as a woman, a mute woman, in a three hundred dollars a month bungalow, and his next door neighbor is Morris Black. Morris Black figures out who Durst is and then he gets dead.

So Durst chops him up his body, shoots him, says it was self defense because they were fighting over a gun and accidentally went off. So Durs chopped up his body and dumped it in bags in Galveston Bay. Well, it floated up, so he got charged with murder, and a Galveston, a Galveston jury believed him that it was self defense, and he was acquitted of murder.

he ends up being you know, killing three people. Meantime, in two thousand, Susan was killed and Durce was supposed to visit her house, visit her in la and go to her house sometime before the holidays. She was killed on December twenty third, we think at night or in the twenty fourth in the morning, and her dogs were out for twenty four hours, and that's how that's how her body was found. Neighbors complained about her dogs and

called police and said something was wrong. Her back door was open and she was rigor Mortis was already gone when her body was found, so they figure it was anywhere from twelve to twenty four hours earlier. Durst happened to be in town and the LAPD though didn't They said he wanted to cooperate, they couldn't get him to interview with them. There was a funeral waiting for him to attend his best friend's funeral. He didn't show and the case went cold. So Bobby Durst continued living a freeman.

And so Robert Durst lived a free man, had property in San Francisco, bought houses in New York, harassed his brother. He became really a strange from his own family and kind of just did his own thing. And Susan had difficult time getting a hold of him when he was in Galveston and being living as a mute woman trying to hide from the Westchester County police, and her case went cold until a deputy district attorney by the name of David Lewin came along and wanted to reinvestigate the case,

and then everything turned upside down for Robert Durst. Also Durst because he was a narcissist and thought he was the smartest person in the world. He wanted a documentary done about himself. So he approached a documentary filmmaker who'd done the book, who'd done a movie was based on a true story Kathy Durst's disappearance. Robert liked it. Robert Durst liked that movie, and so he approached a producer and said, hey, you know, would you do a movie?

Would you do a documentary on my life? And they did, and that's when he made a partial admission in the film. And then the police at the same time in Los Angeles were closing in on him, and he admitted on a documentary that I killed them all and he he was still Mike, and he was in a bathroom and said that, and then he was rested I think two days later in twenty fifteen, and he was never released

until and then went to trial. It was supposed to go to trial in two thousand and nineteen, started the trial, COVID happened. They put it on hold for at least a year. He went back to trial.

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Visit ritual dot com slash murder and turn healthy habits into a ritual that's ten percent off at ritual dot com slash Murder. Now, Cathy, you talked about finally closing in on Robert Durst. The thing is that many and you you explain this in the book. You talk about that many people that watched that documentary called the Jinks and where on the as you mentioned, the last episode, he was already in custody, but in the episode he he has this mic as you as you mentioned, and

he says things, what have I done? How did I What did I do? I killed all of these? I guess something to that effect. The thing is is that police didn't really look at that JINX documentary and get the information that a lot of people thought was derived from that. You talk about two other women that they were police were seriously investigating in other jurisdictions that had it looked like the signature of Robert Durst. Tell us about that, please.

and charged him. So there's kind of a nebulous It depends on who you talk to what came first, the police or Jinks. So the problem is Dick Dick de Geary, the attorney. He said to me, and I included in my book that Durst was in the air at the time Susan was killed. No, Durst was in the air

twenty four hours after Susan was killed. He was in California, had plenty of time to drive back and forth to from San Francisco to La kill her, turn around, go write the letter about a body being in her house cadaver letter, and then have enough time to drive back to San Francisco and fly out to New York a day later. So, yes, two girls were missing, and that gave and one girl who was seen with Durst. I interviewed the police in both towns where those girls were missing.

They're pretty sure of the one. They didn't have enough evidence on the other. But that gave the Los Angeles Police, working with other police departments to hone in a little bit more on him and question him. So they were the walls were closing in on Durst, which is why

he left. The reason the reason he took off for New Orleans was because, as someone leaked to the media that Westchester County was reinvestigating the murder of Kathy Durst or the miss disappearance of Kathy Durst, and they wanted to talk to Susan Berman because she was his spokesperson, and they wanted to talk to her about whoever called, claiming they were, you know, Kathy Durst to the UH to the school. That was the alibi she made for him. They wanted to talk to Susan. That was all that

came out, Susan. It came out in court, Susan told when she finally was able to reach Durst, she told him what do I do? Westchester County police have called me and want to interview me and about Kathy's disappearance. What do I do? And Durst said, well, do what you want. And on the stand when he was testifying in Susan's murder case, he said, what was I supposed to do? Say no, don't talk to them. So that Susan saying the police had called her, they hadn't called her.

They put out the word that they wanted to reach her, but they hadn't called her, and that I believe is the reason he killed her. And that's what the deer believes as well.

benefit from the largess of her friends. But the thing is that Robert Durst, and especially the timing of these payments, had sent twenty five thousand dollars and then another twenty five thousand dollars and saying that it was not alone, it was a gift, so that it did feed into the idea that there was a motivation for Susan to be able to be his spokesperson, his alibi and to keep her mouth shut all those years.

he sent it to her. She also, and this is a key point that came out in the trial and hadn't been known until then until Dur's testimony, she sent when he told her he was going to come to town, which was going to go there and kill her. But when that's what police believe in that seems to be the motive is and then paying her money to try to keep her quiet. He was afraid though she would talk and his I mean, but that does that does appear to be the I'm sorry, I got a track

he sent She sent him a set of keys. And that's one thing. No, I couldn't figure it out. The police couldn't figure out. How did he get in the house?

parked his he uh. Then he returned to the house the next morning, he said, and parked his car in front of the driveway. Just odd, just odd circumstances all the way around. But her telling him that, you know, police wanted to talk to her. I think is what God had killed, and then he was trying to give her money to pay her off. But Susan talked a lot. She talked too much sometimes and sort of stream of

consciousness told him what she was thinking. And I think he thought she was going to talk to the police and spill the beans, and the money he gave her didn't shut her up, and so he did the dirty d.

Fourteen days. So when we talk about some of these things that you learn, we all learn about this case, it's from that fourteen days of a blistering cross examination that he puts himself under that some of this information, a lot of this damning information leaks out during that testimony, doesn't it It does.

But there are people who believe in the district attorney had said it at one point that they were making him his attorneys the way they dressed him, the way you know, he was in a wheelchair, he slouched down, trying to look pitifall at times, you know, and he was, but he have a really strong voice during the trial, and then sometimes his voice would go up like he didn't have enough error to speak. But I do believe it was he was his own worst enemy because he

thought he was so smart, smart as a fox. He did himself in because I don't know if that testimony. Without his testimony, I don't know that he would have been convicted. He was not. He was not as sympathetic sympathetic witness at all. He laughed at people, he made fun of them. He's a very unlikable person. And it came across real well to the jury.

And you know one thing, you know, murder, as you know, you cover it so much, and it is it is the ultimate thing you can do. It is just taking someone's life is a huge thing for the person who commits it sometimes and and for Durst was so monumental. I think he just had to share it. And then that guy was the one who testified against him was one of his closest friends. Bobby didn't have very many friends, and it stunned him so much that he had to tell someone.

the Morris Black murder, Well Morris Black Murder dismemberment. Regardless of the acquittal. That couldn't have helped Robert Durst look sympathetic or less guilty at all at that trial.

But the judge they had certain things they were allowed to say, in certain things the defense was not allowed to say. Otherwise it could have very easily turned into a mistrial. But the Eureka case, and I interviewed all the people up in that area too. The Eureka case was important for because there was a lot of evidence. Was important for the Los Angeles investigation because it basically

called them a serial killer. You know three or more and you're a serial killer, and so wide, and if they couldn't get them on Susan they would help Eureka and try to get them on another case. But what it also did for them is that it gave them because they were investigating diursts up in the San Francisco area and the Eureka area in northern California, they were able to follow his footsteps a little bit more and that gave them They shared evidence, and that gave them

more fodder to bring an indictment against Durch. So two departments working together was greatly in favor of the Susan Berman case.

they didn't know who he was. And he left and he thought it was funny because he had fake IDs, he was fake identities, he was fake masks and all kinds of things and wigs that he would wear. So Durst was actually getting to kick out of the fact that police had him and they let him go. But eventually, of course they you know, he did end up in the Galveston courtroom.

was in custody. Uh, just tell us about the how many how much, how long it was and what he did die from in prison.

he liked to shock people. But so he his health

continued failing. They actually he was hospitalized and the trial had to stop again, and then he got COVID and couldn't have attend some of the hearings, and everybody thought he was going to die of COVID and he did it, and he ended up being convicted and then sent to the correction Center's hospital, which was far worse than you know, he was at the UCLA hospital before that, I think, right well, in La But then then he was in prison until he wh when did he die in December

tenth January tenth. So the trial ended and he went to prison for a couple of well a few weeks, a couple of months, and they were taking him for an appointment. He was in the Priston Hospital. They wheeled him over and took him to an appointment for testing and for some sort of medical tests. And in the testing in the in the in the doctor's office is when he went into cardiac arrest and they couldn't they couldn't revive him, and he died. So he died in custody,

which is what the family wanted. But but they were I mean, I talked to families with Kathy, theirs family and Susan Berman's cousin several times, and they were so afraid he was going to die during the trial and that there would be no conviction. And and it was a relief when he was he was convicted and he

was still alive. And then he Westchester County Whorking because some evidence came out during his own testimony into Kathy Durst's case and they were able to take that new evidence for themselves and and file file charges in a diet Robert Durser Kathy Kathy Durst murder and so for the family, for the McCormick family, which was Kathy Durst

made a name. I talked to her brother. For the family, they can now that nobody ever has to ever refer to Kathy's case, Kathy Dursts case as the disappearance of Kathy Durst, because he was charged with murder, not convicted,

but charged. Now they officially can call it the murder of Kathy Durst, and that gives them, you know, quit calling you couldn't saying she disappearedly knows she was murdered now matter of fact, and that brought great, great relief to the family and some closure for Kathy Durst's family.

because of this past involving her father. But at least with Robert Durst's conviction of her murder, that was all put to rest at the mob or anything she said or wrote about the mob or was going to say about the mob had really nothing to do with this. And it was just the murderous Robert.

the story took off. But then they they didn't when they couldn't get a hold of Robert Durst. And I mean, you don't give up just because you can't get a hold of somebody, the person who's assesspect. And they looked at other they looked at one of her friends and manager is that he was a person of interest for a little while. And he didn't do it, of course, and Susan had some relationships that she you know, she

fell out. You know, she would she would cut people off, or she'd have a falling out with someone, either they really liked her or they didn't like her. She was quirky and eccentric, and those who really stuck with her were diehard fans or friends, and so they looked at different people. But then it just sort of they didn't because they couldn't reach him. You know, why does that stop an investigation? Because you've got a powerful man with money and his father makes phone calls. They should have

continued pursuing it. And I can tell you over the years, I would follow up regularly. I went to Parker Center where they used to be the LAPD and it would interview the new homicide cop because her case. The homicide cops, I've never counted them, but there were a lot of them on her case. And it's like, oh, we're continuing, we're doing this, we're doing that. But nothing was being done. And it really did take that latest detective who jumped

on it. And because of the phone call from Eureka Police and David Lewin, the Deputy District Attorney, gets a huge credit along with the detective they are the men responsible for getting the conviction for Robert Durst. It's a monumental moment that this was finally put to rest and Kathy durst murder along with it, because everything sort of has gone hand in hand. So it's quite a full circle.

acclaimed book and the subsequent documentary Easy Street. So at least that legacy, the thing that she wanted to be known for, the thing that she tried to achieve her whole life, this recognition for writing in death and post death, at least she has some of that respect that she tried to earn throughout her career.

fine school, and stayed in touch with her. She got a master's degree in journalism, and you know, and made a big splash in San Francisco as a journalist there. You know, she rose to the top if there's a pecking order and when it comes to journalism careers. So it is nice to see that she's looked at as a person instead of the person who got murdered by Robert Durst.