The Drag Queen Who Helped Robert Durst Steps Forward
Robert Durst is known as the “cross-dressing killer,” but how did he get that way? Durst’s “drag mother” spoke with the New York Post about how she trained him to cross dress.
Clair E. Schuler spoke with the Post from her home in Galveston, Texas, saying that she first met the “creepy millionaire sometime in the late 1990’s.”
Meet the drag queen who taught Robert Durst how to dress like a woman http://t.co/vdU56wS0YS pic.twitter.com/NhlhxLh5Xw
— New York Post (@nypost) April 8, 2015
Schuler recalled how awful Durst had been at cross-dressing, explaining, “He literally smeared blue eyeshadow and red lipstick on and called it a day. He wore a nasty, ratty wig. I think he was just trying to be more inconspicuous than noticeable. It didn’t work.”
Durst quickly turned to Schuler, a seasoned drag queen, who was performing at Garza’s Kon Tiki bar in Texas under the stage name CiCi Ryder.
Schuler referred to Durst as “very, very introverted and very weird.”
Schuler added, “He just kind of took up more of a camaraderie with me because I was the older one. I was the drag-queen mom.”
The now 50-year-old drag queen was friends with Durst only for a short while.
So, what exactly would make Durst want to start cross dressing so late in life?
Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife in 1982, although the case could never be made at the time. Around 2000, though, the case was reopened at which point Durst moved to Galveston, Texas and started cross-dressing “to avoid attention.”
It was then that Schuler, a licensed cosmetologist, aided the suspected serial killer. It was shortly after Durst got his lesson in makeup that he disappeared.
Schuler told the Post, “I think he was too far gone by then with the murders and everything.”
Schuler, of course, was referring to the three murders Durst is suspected of committing – his wife, his neighbor, and his longtime friend. The “eccentric millionaire” is currently in Louisiana facing drug and weapons charges, although his lawyers are trying to get the charges dropped, so Durst can face the murder charges in Los Angeles.
Durst’s lawyers told People, “We want to get to trial in California, where the most serious of the charges are and we’re concerned about all the delay in New Orleans.”
The 71-year-old Robert Durst is the subject of HBO’s docuseries, The Jinx, which chronicles the life of the eccentric millionaire and the murders he is suspected of committing.
[Photo by James Nielsen/ Getty Images]
