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Robert Durst: Family Of Millionaire’s Missing Wife Want Court To Declare Her ‘Legally Dead’ After 34 Years

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 03:33 PST, Apr 1, 2016

The family of Kathleen Durst is asking a judge to declare her legally dead, 34 years after she disappeared. She was married to real estate heir and suspected killer, Robert Durst.

According to The New York Daily News, Katheleen Durst’s sister Carol Bamonte asked the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court to put her date of death on January 31, 1982, so that the family could pursue a suit against Durst for her death.

“It is now time for this court to judicially declare Kathie died on January 31, 1982 when she was murdered by her husband,” Carol asserted in the suit.

Kathleen vanished a few weeks before she was to graduate from medical school. Bamonte’s siblings Virginia McKeon, Mary Hughes and their 102-year-old mother, Ann McCormack, are convinced that their brother-in-law murdered his wife during a weekend retreat in South Salem and disposed of her body.

Mary Hughes said their suspicions were confirmed when Durst allegedly “confessed” in the HBO documentary The Jinx. In the last episode of the series, Durst was caught saying off a live microphone, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

“There is a strong probability that Durst killed Kathie,” Bamonte continued the in court papers. She called him “a violent criminal who had physically beaten her on numerous occasions before her disappearance.” The Westchester County District Attorney’s office launched an investigation into her disappearance and left it open for decades. No one was arrested and Durst was never charged for his wife’s murder.

Kathleen’s family also believes that the declaration will help prosecutors in their homicide case against Durst, who has been charged for the murder of Susan Berman. She was shot in the head at her Beverly Hills Home after she had been contacted by the district’s attorney’s office over Kathleen’s disappearance. Kathleen’s family suspects she was killed by Durst because she knew what he did with the body.

In sworn court papers, Durst claimed that Kathie left him of her own free will, leaving him to get married to New York City real estate broker Debrah Lee Charatan in 2000. The petition queries the veracity of the marriage saying that Durst was protecting his assets in case he was arrested or had to flee the country.

Kathleen’s family are adamant and will try to file a wrongful death suit against Durst, even though he has been sentenced to seven years in prison for illegally possessing a firearm, a.38 caliber revolver. He is also awaiting trial for the murder of Susan Berman to begin on August 18.

Durst is the oldest son of Seymour Durst; his family owns over a dozen skyscrapers in Manhattan. In 1996, Durst cut of ties with his family when his father picked his younger brother as the family heir and to continue the family business. In 2006, his brother, Douglas, bought him out of The Durst Organization for $65 million.

Durst’s net worth is over $100 million, and his money appears to have helped keep him from the clutches of the law because he can afford the best lawyers in the land. In 2003, he was acquitted of murder charges even after he confessed that he had killed his neighbor, Morris Black, dismembered his body and threw the body parts into Galveston Bay. In an interview, he said, “I just threw the garbage bags off the pier. I could barely lift them, but I expected them to sink.”

A private investigator, Tim D. Wilson, also accused him of confessing that he wanted to kill his younger brother, Douglas, who managed the Durst estate business.

[Photo by James Nielsen/ Getty Images]

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