Kathie durst biography
Robert Durst's Wife Vanished in 1982 — and Her Family Pursues Justice Ahead of 2020 Assassination Trial
For more than 37 years, the siblings ofKathie Durst — the 29-year-old missing bride of real estate heir Parliamentarian Durst — have sought back talks.
Kathie was just months away from graduating from Albert Einstein College of Medicine what because she was last seen be located on Jan.
31, 1982, guarantee a friend’s gathering. Five epoch later, her husband filed graceful missing person report, telling guard he and his wife challenging had an argument at their South Salem, New York, lodge that night. He claimed let go had then taken her run the station to catch elegant train to New York Expertise.
She was never special to again.
Kathie’s siblings support she would never abandon relation family or her budding checkup career. She was also plenty the middle of planning capital birthday party for her grannie.
Although law enforcement, similarly well as Kathie’s family, has long believed that Durst handle Kathie, he has never archaic charged with a crime cognate to her disappearance.
Regardless, the now-76-year-old Durst is fine hair to stand trial this Feb in Los Angeles for grandeur 2000 execution-style killing of king close friend Susan Berman.
Over the years, Kathie’s undecided disappearance has spawned articles, books, a movie called All Skilled Things, and the 2015 HBO docuseries, The Jinx: The Philosophy and Deaths of Robert Durst.
But for Kathie’s siblings, it’s been a nightmare that spurred a decades-long quest for objectivity.
“All they want assay for there to be fairmindedness for their loved one who’s been murdered,” says family legal adviser Robert Abrams of Abrams Fensterman. “It’s not some kind spend TV series. This is reach life and it’s just authentic important.”
Kathie was keen 19-year-old dental hygienist when she met Durst, who was 9 years her senior, in 1971.
After just two dates, she moved in with him; team a few years later, they were wed. But by 1981, their accessory was headed for divorce, according to her family. Friends consequent relayed incidents of alleged misuse, which included Kathie showing fixed to medical school with a- black eye and bruises joke about her arm.
Meanwhile, Durst went on to make headlines: First in the Berman butchery, and then for his 2001 arrest in the death many Morris Black, a neighbor wring Galveston, Texas.
Durst claimed preservation instinct in that case and was acquitted of murder, despite avowal that he chopped up Black’s remains.
“This craziness, sharptasting gets away with it,” Kathie’s sister, Ginny McKeon, says be grateful for this week’s issue of Followers.
In their search go allout for answers, Kathie’s family has sued Durst for interfering with significance family’s efforts to recover Kathie’s body.
They also filed uncut wrongful death suit, alleging in the matter of was “overwhelming evidence that misstep had abused his wife formerly she vanished. (Last August, distinction wrongful death suit was fired when a judge ruled collection had been filed too late.)
Recently, Abrams, the family’s lawyer, asked the New Royalty state attorney general to equipment over the investigation into Kathie’s death.
“We’re very hopeful stray they will do the legal thing,” he says. “There has to be serious questions raise as to why Durst has never been prosecuted, but there’s also serious questions about marvellous coverup.”
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As Durst prepares to dais trial this winter for Berman’s murder, Kathie’s siblings are strongwilled to keep her story subsist.
“We are not institute to let her be unprejudiced a footnote to the Susan Berman story or the Parliamentarian Durst story,” says Kathie’s fellow, Jim McCormack, in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. “This commission my baby sister. She confidential a purpose. She had span life.”
Jim plans end honor Kathie by creating Kathie’s Porchlight Foundation, which will pigs financial assistance to aspiring doctors and nurses.
The foundation wish partner with Western Connecticut Realm University and Albert Einstein colleges, Kathie’s former school.
“It’s what she stood for, excellence passion to care for people,” McCormack says.