A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst (23 page)

Police did find and freeze one of Bobby’s bank accounts, containing about $2 million, and were keeping an eye on one Debrah Lee Charaton, a real estate broker from New York who, surprisingly, happened to be Bobby’s wife.

They had met in the late 1980s, at a Christmas party. Charaton was the successful owner of Bach Realty, a commercial real estate firm with more than $100 million in sales. They married a year earlier, on December 11, 2000, little more than three weeks after Bobby arrived in Galveston. It was a simple ceremony, witnessed only by a rabbi. Bobby flew to New York, where he and his new bride exchanged vows, then he was off again, to destinations unknown.

When news filtered through to the McCormack family that Bobby had remarried, they couldn’t figure out how it could be. He was still technically married to Kathie, or so they thought. They would soon learn through news reports that Bobby had divorced Kathie in 1990, placing a single ad in a New York law magazine to fulfill a requirement to publicize the action.

It was another blow, an unexpected hit, but one that Jim took in stride. Following Morris Black’s murder, Jim wasn’t shy about expressing his theories to reporters, saying that Black’s murder only confirmed what the McCormack family had been saying for years—that Bobby had a propensity for violence.

Jim didn’t mind saying that.

He had lost patience with Jeanine Pirro, who had won her bid for reelection by only six percentage points.

Pirro spent $1.4 million on her campaign against Tony Castro, who spent little more than $100,000. Included among Pirro’s campaign contributions was $24,500 from Hushang Ansary. A former Iranian ambassador, Ansary was now a U.S. citizen and oil-field-equipment-company owner who was worth millions. A major contributor to Republican Party candidates, he was a longtime supporter of President George W. Bush. Ansary contributed $100,000 to the Bush presidential campaign in 2000.

Pirro, with her deep Republican ties, parlayed the visit to Texas for the Durst hearing into a visit with Ansary, who lived in Houston, only forty-five minutes from Galveston.

Ansary’s $24,500 check was the largest single contribution to Pirro’s campaign, making the trip to Texas a successful campaign stop, but adding nothing to the Kathie Durst investigation.

A security camera hanging on a ceiling inside the Wegman’s supermarket was pointed at the strange little bald man, who had taken a Band-Aid from a box and placed it over his upper lip.

The man looked over his shoulder, then down the aisle. Convinced that no one was watching, he took a few more Band-Aids, slipped them into his coat pocket, and moved on. Another camera in the large, upscale supermarket near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, followed the man as he walked to the front of the store, looked at a cart filled with sandwiches, reached down, and took one, placing it inside his jacket.

A security guard followed the man as he walked outside and brought him to the second-floor security office.

Officer Dean Benner of the Colonial Regional Police was in his patrol car when he received the call at 12:36
P.M.
on Friday, November 30, that a shoplifter had been detained at the Wegman’s. Benner drove down Route 512, parked in front of the store, and walked up to the security office. He entered the room and quietly listened as Wegman’s security questioned the man, who said his name was Robert Durst.

Benner, who at six-feet two-inches was built like a linebacker, was caught off guard by Durst’s appearance. His head was shaved, as were his eyebrows. He looked to be in his fifties. As Wegman’s security continued their questioning, Bobby replied that he hadn’t stolen anything in more than ten years.

“I’m just an asshole for doing this,” he said, shaking his head.

Benner interrupted the interview, asking Bobby if he had a shoplifting problem.

“Yeah, I did, until about ten years ago,” said Bobby. “I’ve always had problems stealing. I once saw a psychiatrist for help. I thought I beat it. I don’t know what made me do it.”

Bobby spoke slowly, deliberately. There was a slightly shrill quality to his voice, which seemed to proceed from somewhere other than deep inside his mouth. It sounded otherworldly. Bobby said he had been to this particular store three days in a row.

“It’s a very fine establishment,” he said. “I really don’t know what possessed me to steal this stuff.”

Wegman’s security asked Bobby for his Social Security number, which he was reluctant to give them. He had no physical identification, no driver’s license or credit cards.

“They’re in my car,” he said. “It’s a red Corsica. It’s in the parking lot.”

He finally gave them a Social Security number. Benner then pulled out his handcuffs and told Bobby to stand up.

“You mean I have to get arrested?” asked Bobby.

“Sorry, pal, but I have to take you in,” said Benner, who escorted Bobby out of the store and placed him in the back of the cruiser for the ten-minute ride to the police station in Bath.

Bobby sat there with his hands cuffed behind his back and mumbled to himself.

Benner couldn’t make out what he was saying, so he reached over and slowly turned down his police radio, wanting to hear every word.

Bobby was looking out the car window, talking about his age, and saying how stupid he was.

“I can’t believe this. I’m fifty-eight years old and I get caught for theft! What an asshole! What an asshole!”

Benner couldn’t escape that voice, that shrill. And Bobby’s strange physical appearance didn’t help either. Benner was spooked.

Once they were inside the cramped police station, Benner sat Bobby down, cuffing his hands to a chair, and repeated some of the questions Wegman’s security had asked, including his name, address, and Social Security number.

Bobby gave a New York home address and said he was here in eastern Pennsylvania visiting his daughter, who was a student at Lehigh University, which was only twenty minutes away in Bethlehem.

“I graduated from Lehigh in 1965. My daughter knows about my shoplifting problem. She’s the one who sent me into therapy. She’s really going to be disappointed with me today,” he said.

Benner explained that since Bobby was not a resident of Pennsylvania, he would have to be brought in front of a magistrate and pay a fine, probably around $300 plus court costs.

“What happens after that?”

“I let you go.”

Bobby seemed relieved and told Benner he had $500 in his pocket.

Benner would have just written Bobby up and taken him immediately to the district justice if not for Bobby’s strange ways, with his continuing rant about his shoplifting problems. And aside from the lack of hair on his head, and eyebrows, which was disconcerting, there was something about his facial expressions that kept Benner on edge. Bobby’s eyes were beady and he looked distant, vacant. His face twitched. He was beyond weird. Benner wasn’t getting a good feel from him.

Benner looked at the paperwork from Wegman’s and noticed that Bobby had given him a different Social Security number from the one he gave the store.

Benner looked over to Bobby.

“Okay, what are we doing here?”

Bobby just stared at him.

“You gave Wegman’s one Social Security number, and you just gave me a different number. Don’t play with me. Which number is it?”

“It’s the second number, the one I just gave you,” said Bobby, his face tightening.

Benner paused for a moment. He wanted to know more about this little man with the shaved head, so he called the Northampton County dispatch, giving both Social Security numbers.

Dispatch called back within seconds. Benner listened intently, quickly jotting down some notes, answering questions “yes . . . yes . . . yes,” his eyes growing wide by the end of the conversation. Benner hung up the phone and spun around toward Bobby, looking straight into his small, beady eyes.

“So, when was the last time you were in Texas?”

Bobby froze. His eyes slid back into his head and his jaw dropped to the floor.

“You going to answer me?” said Benner.

Bobby said nothing. He knew the charade was over.

Benner called out for Detective Gary Hammer, who was sitting nearby, and told him this supermarket shoplifter was wanted for murder in Texas.

Hammer walked over and looked at Benner’s notes.

“You want to tell us what’s happening here?” he said.

Bobby remained quiet. He had managed to compose himself and decided to frustrate the Pennsylvania police the same way he’d infuriated Cody Cazalas in Texas, refusing to answer even the simplest of questions.

He was placed inside a locked and secure room while Benner and Hammer called the FBI and the Galveston police, informing them that the Colonial Regional Police had just captured one of the most wanted men in America.

—

The call to the Somers barracks from Galveston was brief and to the point: Robert Durst had been captured in Pennsylvania.

The details were sketchy, but he had apparently been arrested for shoplifting, and the cop in Pennsylvania had been smart enough to run Bobby’s Social Security number.

“Bingo!” said Joe Becerra, who called Jeanine Pirro to give her the good news.

Pirro didn’t waste any time. The election was over, but the DA wasn’t finished politicking, and as the news quickly spread and the calls came in from the media, she painted a scenario that Bobby’s capture was the result of a relentless pursuit mounted by the combined forces of the Galveston police, the New York State Police, her office, and the Los Angeles police.

“There was no question in my mind that sooner or later, with the coordinated law enforcement effort, that he would be apprehended. We’ve been following a money and paper trail,” Pirro told the media.

Money and paper trail? Bobby was gone, off the radar screen, the last sighting coming from a car rental in Biloxi, Mississippi, weeks earlier.

No one had had a clue as to where he was. These were the weeks after September 11, and the FBI and every available law enforcement officer in the New York area was either working the World Trade Center probe or on the lookout for terrorists. Pirro’s comments, as usual, made good copy. But if Bobby hadn’t stolen seven dollars’ worth of goods from a supermarket, he’d have still been free.

Becerra paid little attention to what Pirro was saying, as did Cody Cazalas in Galveston, who was preparing to hop on a plane for a flight to Pennsylvania. Cazalas and the rest of the Galveston police had grown tired of Pirro’s public posturing. They wished she’d just shut up. If only she was more like the authorities in Los Angeles, who remained so tight-lipped about the Susan Berman investigation.

Pirro, on the other hand, was saying too much, but doing little. She had become a gadfly, a nuisance in their investigation.

Put up or shut up was their philosophy.

Pirro did neither.

—

After informing the district attorney, Becerra also made calls to Jim McCormack and Gilberte Najamy. Both responded with utter relief.

Najamy, the always-quotable best friend, again told every reporter who called her for comment that it was she who had applied the pressure that made Bobby fall apart. His eventual capture was the direct result of her hard work, she said.

“I made a promise to Kathie, and I kept that promise,” said Gilberte.

Jim McCormack was just happy and relieved that Bobby was finally behind bars.

Maybe now, after all this time, he’d tell the McCormacks, and the world, what had happened to his sister Kathie.

And Jim now looked to Jeanine Pirro to finally bring him and his family justice.

—

As the stunning news that one of America’s most wanted fugitives had been arrested spread throughout the country, Officer Dean Benner and Detective Gary Hammer were working the phones quarterbacking calls from police in Texas, Los Angeles, and New York when they heard a loud
boom
noise coming from the direction of the room that held Bobby Durst.

“What the hell was that!” Benner said as he ran to open the door, looked inside, and saw Bobby standing, but slumped, having slammed his head against the wall.

“Pissed off at yourself, aren’t ya?” said Benner, who sat Bobby down, warned him to stay put, and locked the door.

“What he do?” asked Hammer.

“Dumb bastard slammed his head against the wall. I’d say he’s pissed off big time that he just got busted over a chicken-salad sandwich,” said Benner. “I mean, how stupid can you be? What did he have, five hundred dollars in his pocket?”

Benner walked back into the room to check on Bobby while Hammer answered a call from the FBI.

Bobby sat there, emotionless, his eyes vacant.

Benner was alone with a man who was wanted for one murder and a suspect in two others, and he decided he’d try to pick his brain.

“So, you want to tell me what a millionaire is doing stealing a Band-Aid and a sandwich?” Benner said.

Bobby said nothing. He sat there, his face twitching, eyes focused on the wall.

Benner moved closer.

“You want to tell me why you did that guy in Texas?” said Benner. “C’mon. You were talking to me just a few minutes ago, telling me what an asshole you are. I’d say I’d have to agree.”

Bobby wasn’t going to say a word. Earlier, after he’d been brought up into the security office at the Wegman’s, he made one phone call, to Michael Kennedy’s law office in Manhattan. An hour after arriving at the Bath police station, he received a call from that office, telling him to say nothing.

By 5
P.M.
, Bobby was taken to the local district magistrate, Barbara Schlegel, for arraignment. Schlegel asked him his name, but Bobby refused to answer.

“All I’m asking is for your name,” said Schlegel.

“I’m not answering any questions,” said Bobby.

Schlegel denied bail and remanded Bobby to the Northampton County prison in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was placed in a solitary cell and declared a stage-one suicide watch.

—

Three days later, Cody Cazalas arrived in Pennsylvania, and was taken to the Colonial Regional police station. Waiting for him was Jeanine Pirro, who had driven two and a half hours from New York and surprised everyone by appearing.

Pirro needed to get out of town and was hoping to draw more publicity from the Durst case, especially after a weekend during which her husband, Al, had returned home from prison. The
New York Times
ran a lengthy story, rehashing Al’s trial and subsequent imprisonment. He had served eleven months of a twenty-nine-month sentence, his time reduced by twelve months for good behavior. He would serve only six more months in a halfway house. His law license was suspended for seven years, but there were no restrictions on rejoining his lobbying firm, Buley Public Affairs.

Pirro’s only comment to the media when asked about her husband was that she was happy her family would be together for Christmas.

Privately she lashed out at reporters who dared ask her about her husband. After the
Times
piece was published, Pirro was asked during a phone interview with a reporter if her husband had ever been employed by the Durst Organization. It seemed a logical question, given that her husband was a major lobbying force in Westchester real estate, having represented, among others, Donald Trump.

Pirro became enraged and screamed at the reporter. “How dare you ask that question! I can’t believe you would ask me such a question! This is an independent office!”

She then hung up without answering the question. Ten minutes later one of her assistants called the reporter, sheepishly asking if there were any other questions for Ms. Pirro. When the reporter said no, the assistant asked about that last question, the one about Al Pirro and the Durst Organization.

“Is that going to appear in print?” said the assistant.

“No,” said the reporter. “The story is about the Durst case, not Al Pirro.”

The assistant seemed relieved.

Two days later Pirro looked on as the red Chevy Corsica was searched, explaining that her presence in Pennsylvania was warranted since there was a possibility that evidence could be found that would be germane to the Kathie Durst case.

Joe Becerra remained behind in Westchester, scratching his head and wondering why he wasn’t in Bath, Pennsylvania, at this moment.

The search of the car produced two .38 handguns, $38,500 in cash, marijuana, a driver’s license, and Medicaid card, both in the name of Morris Black.