A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst (16 page)

A young voice called down to remind Struk that he was late for a basketball practice, and Struk looked at his watch.

“Three o’clock. Time to go. Duty calls.”

The two men rose from the couches and shook hands. Struk then reached over and took a brown notebook off the top of his television set and gave it to Becerra.

It was his personal notebook, and it included detailed thoughts and notes about the Durst case, all written during Struk’s investigation.

“Listen, if you need me for anything, call,” said Struk. “Right now all I can say is you have what I had, and that’s nothing. I would search that house upstate. See what you come up with. Maybe you’ll pull an O.J. and find your bloody glove.”

Both men laughed at the obvious reference.

“Remember,” said Becerra. “He got off.”

The dried mud on the outer edges of the old cupboard was rock hard and reddish in color, yet stood out like a shining beacon.

The cupboard was square, roughly two feet on all sides, and was inserted into the wall in the dining room. It had once been pulled out from the wall for some unknown reason, then put back in, the person pulling it out apparently leaving their partial handprints on the edges. Behind the wall was a space that opened wide at knee level. The only way to search inside the wall was to tear it down.

As forensic specialists gazed at what appeared to be partial handprints, once hidden in darkness and long forgotten, one of them told Becerra the reddish color appeared to be blood that was mixed in with the mud.

It was the first clue they had found in the home, and Becerra hoped there would be more.

Gabrielle Colquitt had given Becerra permission to search every last crevice in her pretty little home, and with the arrival of spring, he didn’t waste any time. He brought in the special units, including divers to search the murky waters of Lake Truesdale, where they waded through the water in grids, marking off sections of the lake. The lake bottom was soft, the divers’ feet sinking into the mud like quicksand.

Becerra didn’t hold out much hope that the lake would turn out to be the last resting place for Kathie Durst. She had disappeared in late January, a time when the surface was usually frozen solid.

And like the lake, the property around the house had been frozen and digging a grave would have been all but impossible. But he brought in the cadaver dogs anyway to remove any lingering doubt that Kathie’s remains were buried somewhere near the house.

Becerra thought he knew where Kathie Durst was. He just wanted to be sure.

Over the course of the spring and summer, Becerra quietly visited Hoyt Street more than half a dozen times. The forensics team examined the mud prints and searched downstairs in the crawl space, delicately digging through the loose dirt, a painstaking search that lasted more than six hours.

Each visit was a stealth mission. When the lake was dredged, nosy neighbors were told the police in the water were conducting an exercise. And when the house was searched, investigators used unmarked vans and plainclothes.

Becerra would come back to the house yet again and examine the living-room floor. Colquitt had told the investigator months earlier, during their first meeting, that when she bought the home in 1994 from David and Carmen Garceau, they had told her of the mysterious holes.

Becerra eventually found the Garceaus, who repeated their story to him.

Robert Durst had agreed to sell the house to them in February 1990, but only on the condition that they lease it back to him for three months.

Bobby had never given a reason why. The Garceaus were barred from entering the house until the last day of May.

It was an odd arrangement, said David. Even odder was the condition of the house, which was in a shambles. It hadn’t been cleaned in years.

The Garceaus intended to refurbish the house, which included replacing the dirty and stained carpeting on the main floor. When they removed the old carpeting, they found three holes in the wooden subflooring that were patched with plywood.

The living room, said David, was above the crawl space.

And there was more. When they agreed to buy the house, they saw but one piece of furniture, a cot, which was downstairs next to the entrance to the crawl space. Bobby had been sleeping on the cot; the Garceaus couldn’t figure out why. The crawl space was so small a person had to crawl on his belly to get in. The floor of the crawl space was made up of loose dirt. The couple used it as a wine cellar.

The Garceaus said they knew nothing about Kathie Durst or her disappearance until told by neighbors bearing newspaper clippings. Like many other people, they mistakenly believed that the police had long ago searched the house.

Becerra looked on as Colquitt’s furniture was moved and the carpet lifted, and he could see, right there in the center of the floor, three pieces of plywood that obviously didn’t belong. The plywood was lifted, and the holes turned out to be old heating vents.

The forensic team turned its attention to the kitchen, particularly the dishwasher, which to Becerra’s surprise was the same dishwasher the Dursts had used when they owned the home. Luminol was sprayed on the dishwasher and floor, and Becerra waited for the old blood to glow.

—

The chatter that filled Jeanine Pirro’s conference room quieted for just a second as Pirro poked her head in to say hello but left quickly. The district attorney wouldn’t take part in the meeting called by Joe Becerra on Wednesday, November 8, 2000.

It was nearly a year since he began his investigation and Becerra was sitting around the large conference table along with other representatives from the state police, John Anderson from the New York City police, John O’Donnell from Pirro’s office, two assistant district attorneys, and several guests, including Mike Struk, Gilberte Najamy, Jim McCormack, Kathy Traystman, and Ellen Strauss.

Struk was invited by Becerra, a specific request to share his expertise on the case. Struk didn’t recognize Gilberte Najamy, whom he remembered as thin, with wild, dark hair. She had since filled out and was now a large woman with short, manageable hair. She wore old clothing and no jewelry. Struk did recognize Ellen Strauss, who to his eyes looked much the same as she had twenty years earlier. Ellen had aged well, and looked every inch the woman he remembered.

All were gathered to discuss the Durst case, which Becerra was still trying to sell to Pirro and her people, who made it clear they were not ready to go to a grand jury to seek an indictment with purely circumstantial evidence.

As people drifted into the room, it became clear that this was the first time in nearly twenty years that some of them had seen one another, and there were plenty of hugs and kisses among Gilberte, Ellen, Kathy, and Jim McCormack.

There was an underlying feeling of excitement in the room, a sense of hope that, after all this time, the McCormack family, along with Kathie’s friends, would finally find closure and her killer would be brought to justice. They all looked to Becerra and thanked him for his efforts. Everyone believed they were on the verge of taking a major step forward, particularly Becerra, who thought bringing his evidence before a grand jury seemed more plausible than ever, considering the verdict that had been handed down in a similar case just two weeks earlier.

Dr. Robert Bierenbaum, forty-five, was a New York surgeon who had been convicted of killing his wife, Gail, who disappeared in 1985. Her body was never found, but prosecutors presented enough compelling circumstantial evidence to persuade a jury that she had indeed been murdered. Her husband, it was determined, strangled and dismembered her and took her remains to an airstrip in New Jersey. A pilot, Bierenbaum loaded his wife’s body, which was packed inside a duffel bag, inside a Cessna and dumped her over the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a precedent-setting case, considering that Bierenbaum was convicted solely on circumstantial evidence. Judging by the evidence he had, Becerra thought the Durst case was a slam dunk. He knew he had far more compelling evidence against Durst than prosecutors in Manhattan had had against Bierenbaum.

But repeated attempts to nudge Pirro to move forward were greeted coolly. Pirro made it clear she wasn’t about to take on a celebrity trial and all the trimmings that would go with it during an election year.

While the public had no idea who Bobby Durst was, and the press had forgotten the story of his missing wife aeons ago, the Durst Organization—the family business—was now worth more than $2 billion, and Pirro knew prosecuting Bobby would turn into a circus.

She also had other, more serious and pressing problems to deal with. Her husband, Al, was convicted on June 22 of tax fraud and was now residing in a minimum-security prison in Florida, having received a twenty-nine-month sentence. Al’s conviction was a bitter and embarrassing mark on the DA’s reputation and a career breaker. Pirro’s designs for higher office were derailed, and she now faced a tough reelection campaign in 2001. Pirro had signed several of the fraudulent joint tax returns her husband was found guilty of submitting to the IRS, and the questions from her critics were simple: How could a woman, as bright and tough as Pirro, not know what was going on in her own home?

Pirro declined to answer any questions about her husband following the verdict. She knew the issue would be a main topic of discussion during the upcoming campaign.

The meeting concerning the Kathie Durst investigation lasted about ninety minutes. Becerra directed the conversation, going around the table, listening to everyone from Ellen to Kathy to Jim to Gilberte.

Gilberte did most of the talking, relaying again the story about Kathie’s last day at her house along with a bizarre story about her encounter with a man named John Vigiani and his plan to kidnap Bobby Durst.

Kathy Traystman rolled her eyes as soon as Gilberte began to tell
that
story, knowing Gilberte’s propensity to embellish, but she was utterly astonished when Jim McCormack rose from his chair to say he, too, had met the mysterious Vigiani. He shared his story about the meeting in the diner with his sister Mary.

“You see, you thought I was crazy,” said Gilberte, pointing a finger at Kathy. “Vigiani was real. I told you he was real. You should have believed me. It was Dale Ragus, Kathie’s attorney. She brought me up to her office and left me in a room with that guy. He scared the hell out of me.”

Gilberte remembered that Ragus had said there was someone she, Gilberte, should meet, only she admitted that Ragus would deny ever making the introduction and deny knowing Vigiani.

“She just left the room, closed the doors, then in walked Vigiani,” said Gilberte. “When he told me what he wanted to do, I was shaking. I just ran out of there.”

As she continued her story, Jim nodded again and again, verifying everything Gilberte said about Vigiani, the little man with the sharp business suit and noticeable limp. Only Jim was unaware that it had been Dale Ragus, Kathie’s attorney, who was behind the meeting.

“Vigiani told us about the dogs and the drugs and the ten thousand dollars,” said Jim. “The police didn’t seem to be doing anything at the time, so at first I didn’t think it was such a crazy idea. But then I realized this was nuts, and we said no.”

Gilberte felt vindicated. She told several stories during the meeting, each one raising eyebrows throughout the room. She said Kathie had given a folder containing damaging information on the Durst family to a New York senator, but the senator passed the folder along to Seymour Durst. Her implication was that Kathie’s disappearance could be a conspiracy involving the Durst Organization.

There were two senators at the time, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacob Javits, but Gilberte wasn’t sure which one Kathie had approached.

Few in the room believed that story, so Gilberte moved on to tell about a burglary at her home a year after Kathie disappeared; the only items taken were papers and documents given to Gilberte by Kathie.

“They were the tax returns and stock documents she said Bobby forged,” said Gilberte.

Kathy Traystman confirmed this story, saying her apartment had also been burglarized, around the same time as Gilberte’s, and similar papers kept in a clothes drawer and given to her by Kathie had been stolen.

Neither Gilberte nor Kathy reported the burglaries to police, claiming they were spooked by the whole ordeal.

“It could have been a conspiracy,” said Gilberte. “Kathie was threatening to expose Bobby, and I believe the information was embarrassing, and threatening, to Seymour Durst.”

Becerra and the other law enforcement officials at the table said nothing, writing notes on their pads. They were listening, but weren’t necessarily believing any of this.

But Gilberte continued on, telling everyone how the loss of her friend had ruined her life.

“I lost my business and my money. I should never have let Kathie leave my house that night. You don’t know how guilty I feel over that. She told me if something happened to her, it was Bobby.”

“She said that to all of us,” said Kathy Traystman. “We told her to leave him. What else could we have done?”

Struk, for his part, remained quiet, but was redeveloping a strong dislike for Gilberte. She was running off at the mouth again, acting like she had in 1982, as if she were the detective and she knew the answers. Gilberte had gone overboard in 1982, breaking into the South Salem home and sneaking off with Bobby Durst’s garbage. And her stories today were just as wild and out of control as the ones she’d told in 1982.

Struk didn’t believe any of the conspiracy talk. He knew Gilberte was obsessed back then. And she seemed obsessed now. Perhaps it
was
guilt, he thought. But guilt over what? Letting Kathie leave her house that night? Here she was, years later, rambling on like she did back then, talking in a direct and accusatory manner, spitting out preposterous theories, and pointing an accusing finger at the NYPD, which amounted to pointing the finger at Struk.

For a moment the ex–NYPD detective wished Gilberte was a man, so they could go outside and settle this once and for all.

Becerra decided he’d heard enough from Gilberte and turned toward Jim McCormack, who had little to add other than questioning the role of the Durst family. It was apparent that the police weren’t buying Gilberte’s conspiracy theory, but Jim didn’t rule it out completely. Aside from that one meeting with Seymour Durst, the McCormacks had never heard from him or the Durst family again. The McCormacks were forgotten, discarded. Kathie had been a Durst for nine years, but was no more important to them than some house cat. She was disposable.

“I never understood that,” said Jim. “How callously and coldly they reacted to Kathie’s disappearance. I always believed they knew something. Or they were protecting Bobby. Take your pick.”

—

The meeting ended around 3:30
P.M.
with a reminder to everyone not to contact or speak to the press. Becerra had managed to keep his investigation under wraps for nearly a year, and he wanted to keep it that way. There would be one last search of the South Salem home next week, and then he said he would finally call Robert Durst, who had no idea a new investigation had begun.