Robert Durst, a millionaire sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering a confidante last week in Los Angeles, has been charged with the death of his former wife, Kathie Durst, who vanished in 1982, according to numerous media reports.
Durst is accused of second-degree murder in a criminal complaint filed on Tuesday by a New York state police investigator at a court in Lewisboro, New York.
In the murder trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, Durst, 78, was convicted of first-degree murder on Oct. 14 for shooting Susan Berman to death in her home in December 2000. Prosecutors say Durst killed Berman to prevent her from incriminating him in the investigation of his missing wife.
Durst is the grandson of Joseph Durst, founder of the Durst Organization, one of Manhattan’s largest commercial real estate firms. Prosecutors estimate that Robert Durst’s share of the family fortune was $100 million.
In the days since he was convicted of murdering Berman, Durst has been hospitalized on a ventilator after testing positive for COVID-19, one of his lawyers told the Los Angeles Times.
Kathie Durst was 29 when she disappeared on Jan. 31, 1982. Her body was never found and she was declared legally dead, at her family’s request, in 2017. Robert Durst divorced Kathie Durst in 1990 citing abandonment.
He was never charged in her disappearance despite a number of efforts to close the case. Investigators reopened the case in 1999, searching a lake and the couple’s home.
