Jeanine Pirro handled countless cases as the district attorney and first female judge on the Westchester County bench. But the one involving Kathleen “Kathie” Durst, missing since Jan. 31, 1982, would become something of an obsession for Pirro over the next few decades — her great white whale.
Kathleen’s husband, Manhattan real estate scion Robert Durst, was a suspect in her disappearance, although her body was never found, and the case never went to trial.
Based on a tip that ultimately proved fruitless, Pirro reopened the cold case in conjunction with the New York State police in the fall of 2000.
Panicked over the ensuing media attention, Durst fled New York for Galveston, Texas, where he tried to pass himself off as a deaf, mute woman.
This incognito new life didn’t last long; on December 23, 2000, Durst’s longtime friend, Susan Berman, was shot and killed in her Los Angeles home — a shocking development that put Durst once again in the middle of a criminal case.
Then, in October 2001, he was arrested on accusations of having murdered and dismembered a Galveston neighbor, Morris Black. Durst was acquitted after claiming he shot Black in self-defense and dismembered the body in a panic.
More than a decade passed. Durst remained free. But it all came to a stunning climax last February, when the HBO docu-series “The Jinx” aired. In the final episode, Durst, unaware that his microphone is still on, wanders off to the men’s room and mutters, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
In this excerpt from Pirro’s new book — “He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice,” out Tuesday — she details meeting Durst’s current wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, who was seen briefly in “The Jinx” and became a source of fascination to viewers.
People wondered what kind of woman would marry Durst — and so did Pirro.
Pirro recalls being driven through Manhattan in October 2001, shortly after Durst was arrested for the murder of Morris Black, when her phone rang. It was John O’Donnell, a senior investigator in her office.
“Boss, we found Robert Durst’s wife.”
My heart stopped. They found the body. I said, “Where?”
He said, “She’s living in New York City.”
Kathie was alive? I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “He’s got another wife — Debrah Lee Charatan.”
My head was reeling. Who in her right mind would marry Robert Durst?
Durst had quietly been granted a divorce from Kathie on the grounds of spousal abandonment in 1990. He and Charatan had married in December 2000. Upon hearing the surprising news, Pirro immediately had her driver change direction and head to the Madison Avenue offices of Debrah Lee Charatan Realty, Inc., on Madison Avenue.
The receptionist might not have recognized my face, but the name clicked. Her eyes got big. “One minute,” she said, and went through a door. She came back and said, “I’m sorry. Debrah can’t see you. You don’t have an appointment.”
“Well, you tell her she can talk to me now or she can come to the grand jury,” I said, which was my number-one favorite threat.
The receptionist went back in, then came out and said, “Follow me.”
We were brought to a large, sunny office. The woman behind an impressive desk said, “I’m Debrah Lee Charatan.”
“Are you married to Robert Durst?”
In her gravelly smoker’s voice, she answered, “Yes.”
I took one look at her and knew two things. One, she was not a woman you could mess with. And two, she was my kind of broad. She was impeccably dressed in high-end designer clothes. Great jewelry. She was fit and obviously worked out. Here’s a woman who spends a lot on clothes and lifestyle. Money is very important to her. She oozed confidence and was, as I’d realize quickly, sharp as a whip.
It was just bizarre to be standing in front of my nemesis’s wife. If Debrah Lee Charatan and I had happened to meet in the 1980s at a restaurant like Elaine’s or Michael’s, I could see talking to her over a cocktail and thinking, “This is one smart cookie”. . .But we weren’t meeting under pleasant circumstances.
Why marry him? Robert didn’t make a move unless he had a damned good reason, so their secret marriage had to serve a larger purpose. Knowing him, and getting to know her, I concluded that reason could only be one thing: money. It sure as hell wasn’t love.
“When did you marry Robert?” I asked.
“Last year,” she replied.
“Do you remember the date?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember the day you got married?”
She said, “Not really.”
She was giving me the run-around while two men with guns stood behind me. This woman had seriously big, clanging balls.
But so did I. “Why don’t you get your calendar and we’ll take a look?” I asked.
She called in the receptionist to get her calendar. Debrah flipped through it and said, “We got married on Dec. 11.”
Twelve days before Susan Berman was murdered.
I said, “Were any people at the wedding?”
“It was a small ceremony.” As my team later discovered, Debrah had opened a phone book and picked a rabbi, one Robert I. Summers. He performed a 15-minute ceremony in a conference room.
Robert gave her a $78,000 ring. It might sound like a lot. But consider that Durst received $3 million a year from his trust. If you used the one-month-salary rule, Durst should have spent $250,000.
The betrothed couple next went to a lawyer’s office, and he signed over power of attorney, giving her control of his vast fortune. Durst would himself describe the union to his sister, Wendy, as a “marriage of convenience. I had to have Debrah to write my checks. I was setting myself up to be a fugitive.”
I said to her, “You do realize that Robert Durst is a dangerous man.”
“He’s not dangerous at all. If he came home, I’d open the door.” He was on the lam at the time, having jumped bail in Galveston, Texas.
At the time, Durst was a suspect in the murder and dismemberment of Morris Black. After being charged with the murder, he posted $300,000 bail and fled Texas. He was later caught in Pennsylvania shoplifting a sandwich from a Wegman’s grocery store.
Clearly, Debrah didn’t scare easily. I would find out that she grew up a butcher’s daughter in Howard Beach, Queens. Her parents were among the few Polish Holocaust survivors — her father lost a foot on a landmine during the war — so you can only imagine how tough they were. Their daughter came with a survivor’s instinct preinstalled. It was in her blood.
“Do you have kids?” I asked.
“A son.”
“Would you let Robert in if your son was home?”
“I didn’t get custody,” she said.
Her first marriage, to attorney Bradley Berger, ended in 1985. The divorce, and the custody battle for her then 5-year-old son, was brutal. Her husband got full custody. After losing numerous appeals, Debrah didn’t visit or speak to her son for 15 years.
“Let’s back up for a second. How’d you meet Robert?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve known him for years,” she said.
As it turned out, they met at the Rainbow Room at a real-estate-industry party in December 1988. I can totally understand why Robert Durst would have zeroed in on her. She was 16 years his junior, striking and elegant with an unmistakably hard edge.
But she was having a rough time. She was buried under lawsuits and legal bills, recently divorced. Her first firm, Bach Realty, Inc., had been an all-female firm founded in 1980.
It was, initially, a huge success, with annual billings of $200 million. Charatan was obsessed with money and fame. In a profile for Manhattan Inc. magazine in the mid-’80s, she was quoted as saying, “If I couldn’t be a star, I wouldn’t be happy.”
By the late ’80s, her star had fallen. The Labor Department was investigating her on three cases, and at least four lawsuits were filed by ex-employees [who claimed the firm failed to pay commissions]. They used words like “tyrannical,” “greedy” and “shark” to describe their former boss.
Debrah lost most of the suits and had to pay hundreds of thousands in fines and commissions. The firm dissolved in 1987.
Enter Robert, Debrah’s savior, in 1988. Somehow, he overcame his chronic cheapness and gallantly paid off her lawyers. He showered her with Durst Organization perks like car service vouchers.
Practically overnight, she went from down-and-out to living large.
In 1990, two years into their relationship, Charatan moved into Durst’s Fifth Avenue apartment.
After the altruistic, naïve Kathleen, Robert must have seen Debrah as appealingly ruthless and savvy. His murky past and personality quirks — burping, farting and smoking pot in public —wouldn’t faze her. She could handle him.
Debrah must have looked at Robert and seen dollar signs. . .She was, it seemed, the only person in the world he trusted.
I said, “You know, his wife is missing. Susan Berman was murdered. And he chopped up a guy.”
She said, “Yeah. I’m not afraid of him at all.”
“What’d you do for Christmas?” I asked. Susan was killed Dec. 23.
She said, “We don’t celebrate Christmas.”
“What’d you do for Hanukkah?”
“I don’t really remember.”
I said, “What’d you do for New Year’s Eve?”
“I was probably in the Hamptons. He was wherever.”
“Where did you go on your honeymoon?”
“We didn’t go on a honeymoon,” she replied.
“Well, that’s weird,” I said.
“Look,” she said. “I’m a businesswoman. I have a business to run. I have a lot of other things going on.”
“Okay,” I said. She got me there. “So you get married, you don’t go on a honeymoon, you don’t spend Hanukkah or New Year’s together. Are you guys living together? Did you consummate the marriage?”
Before she could answer that gruesome question, a man came into the room. “Steve Rabinowitz. She’s represented by counsel. No more questions.” He started making noises about asking us to leave.
I could tell by Debrah’s voice that she was a smoker. I was a smoker then, too. I said, “Where can we have a cigarette?” Apparently, she was jonesing for one, and she took me out onto the fire escape.
The two of us — in our skirts and heels — climbed out the window. I asked again about their intimate relationship, but she danced around the details. From her expressions, though, it was obvious that she wasn’t a real wife and theirs wasn’t a real marriage. She was a front, a beard.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would you stay with Robert after what he’s done?”
“You’re a stand-up woman,” she said. “You stood by your man.”
Pirro’s husband, Al, was convicted in 2000 of federal tax evasion and conspiracy.
She was equating my loyalty to Al, the father of my children, with her loyalty to Robert Durst?
I said, “My husband never laid his hand on me or anybody else.”
I stayed with Al because I believe in family. Al was a great father, a great provider, and a decent, wonderful man. There was a difference between an accountant’s screwup and dismembering a human.
“Well, I’m not afraid of [Robert] and I’ll take him back.” But by the time we finished our cigarettes, her lawyer [had returned]. “She’s done talking,” he said.
Durst, now 72, was arrested on first-degree murder charges in the death of Susan Berman in March 2015 and is awaiting trial in a New Orleans prison.
Charatan, 58, remains married to Durst, but a New York Times story from March 2015 states that she hasn’t spoken to Durst since February, when “The Jinx” aired. She is currently expanding her NYC investment office.
From “He Killed Them All” by Jeanine Pirro. Copyright 2015 by Jeanine Pirro. Reprinted by permission of Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.