Robert Durst Part II

  

2020 trial

Durst's trial concerning the Berman killing was scheduled to begin in Los Angeles after Durst was arraigned in California, but his transfer was delayed by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons due to "serious surgery," according to DeGuerin. A conditional hearing was convened in February 2017, where Nick Chavin, a close friend of Durst's and at whose wedding Durst served as best man, testified that Durst had personally confided to having murdered Berman. A preliminary hearing was initially scheduled for October 2017, but was postponed to April 2018 to accommodate Durst's defense team, some of whom suffered damage to their homes and offices from Hurricane Harvey.

The pretrial hearings included extensive testimony from a number of older witnesses who potentially would not be available when the trial itself began. In October 2018, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark Windham ruled that enough evidence existed to try Durst for the murder of Berman, and that he would be arraigned November 8, 2018. During his court appearance the following day, Durst pleaded not guilty. In January 2019, Windham set Durst's trial date as September 3, 2019.

At the same time, Judge Windham ruled that prosecutors could present evidence involving the Black murder. Prosecutors would try to connect Berman's death with McCormack's disappearance, which they argued was the foundation for the motive for the murder. In his ruling that prosecutors could use evidence from the Texas case, Judge Windham said the killings of Black and Berman seemed "to be intertwined." The murder charge against Durst included the special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and killing a witness to a crime. It was further alleged that Durst had used a handgun to carry out the murder.

In May 2019, a motion filed by Durst's attorneys claimed two handwriting samples (the anonymous "cadaver note" to Beverly Hills police, and a letter in 1999 from Durst to Berman), along with other evidence from his 2015 arrests, were obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, thus moving for their exclusion. On May 8, Los Angeles County prosecutors filed an affidavit replying to the motion, charging that Durst was creating an elaborate conspiracy theory between the HBO filmmakers, law enforcement officers, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office to make Durst "incriminate himself." On May 17, Windham granted Durst's defense team a four-month postponement of his trial after they raised concerns about the volume of evidence in the case and conflicts with attorney schedules.

On September 3, 2019, Windham rejected an attempt by Durst's attorneys to strip the producers of The Jinx of protection under California's journalist shield law by having them declared "government agents." A number of other procedural rulings also went against Durst. Lewin set another hearing on discovery and other matters for October 28. Additional evidential hearings were held in December 2019 regarding the admissibility of statements Durst made in March 2015 just after his arrest in New Orleans, in an interview with Lewin.

In a surprise move on December 24, 2019, Durst's lawyers contradicted his previous statements and filed court documents admitting that Durst wrote the "cadaver note." In all previous statements Durst consistently had denied writing the note, although the handwriting appeared to be similar to his own as is the misspelling of the word "Beverley" contained in a prior letter to Berman that Durst admitted to authoring. During the filming of The Jinx, Durst told the filmmakers that the person who wrote the "cadaver note" was taking a "big risk" because it was something "that only the killer could have written". He told his godson, Howard Altman, "The person who wrote the note killed her". However, in August 2019, Durst's attorneys also argued, "What the note demonstrates is that the person who mailed it was aware that there was a body at the house, not that the individual murdered Susan Berman".

On March 2, 2020, Durst appeared in court to begin his trial, which was expected to take several months.  However, the proceedings were postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, a motion by the defense for a mistrial because of the delay was denied. The following month, Windham ruled that a further delay until April 2021 was necessary due to the pandemic, but he would allow the trial to proceed if Durst agreed to a bench trial, without a jury. Durst declined this option and the trial was scheduled to resume on April 12, 2021. It was then postponed until May 17, 2021.

On May 13, 2021, Durst's lawyers filed a motion with the court saying Durst had developed bladder cancer, and moved that the court postpone the trial indefinitely and to release him on bail to receive medical treatment that was currently being provided. The motion was denied by the court and the trial resumed on May 17, with Windham questioning jurors about whether they could still remain neutral in the case after a fourteen-month break. On June 10, 2021, Durst was hospitalized after being found "down and not in his wheelchair". Windham sent the jury home with plans to resume on June 14. Lewin expressed suspicion that the defendant was faking a medical crisis to force a mistrial because he was "on record" in his calls from county jail saying he intended to feign dementia or seek a mistrial due to COVID-19. "I have no idea whether this is legitimate or not, but obviously, given his history, it's certainly suspect as to what his actual condition is", Lewin said. Noting that Durst's lawyers had twice sought mistrials during the previous day's testimony, the prosecutor added, "It's very clear the defense and the defendant want this trial to go away". Jail doctors determined Durst was able to appear in court after the emergency hospitalization, which was for a urinary tract infection and sepsis, and Windham reconvened the trial on June 14. Durst was unable to dress himself and was in court in his wheelchair, jail uniform, with catheter bag and covered in a large blanket.

As testimony continued, Durst's brother Douglas appeared as a prosecution witness on June 28, 2021. Saying he was reluctant to appear at the trial and was doing so under threat of subpoena, Douglas was asked about his relationship with his brother: "He'd like to murder me, I hired security today. I have feared that my brother has threatened to kill me, and I have feared that he may have the means to do so".

On July 29, 2021, Durst's defense team asked again for an emergency halt to the case based on his poor medical condition, saying he was not able to testify on his own behalf, but was again rejected on August 2, with Windham giving numerous examples of Durst's competency. The prosecution closed its case against Durst after eleven weeks of presenting evidence primarily consisting of friends and associates of Berman's saying she told them she was the alibi for Durst when his wife disappeared and that he had done something and she needed to do something as well. Chavin testified that Durst told him, "I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice."

The defense opened up its case with extensive testimony from "false memory" expert Elizabeth Loftus, questioning the decades-ago recollections of prosecution witnesses. Although highly unusual for a murder case, Durst himself was expected to testify on his own behalf on August 5, 2021, but court was adjourned until August 9 due to a positive COVID-19 test of a relative of Durst's legal team who had been attending the trial. Durst appeared on the stand for fourteen days, under questioning from Lewin, who gave seemingly endless examples of Durst's propensity to lie. Lewin cornered Durst to the point he admitted lying while under oath in the Morris Black trial in 2003, and that he lied five times while on the stand in the present trial. Durst and Loftus were the only witnesses the defense called. On September 14, 2021, the jury was charged with reaching a verdict by Judge Windham.

On September 17, 2021, the jury convicted Durst for the first-degree murder of Susan Berman; Durst thus faced the possibility of a life sentence. He was also found guilty of multiple special charges. Durst's lawyers said they were disappointed and would pursue "all avenues of appeal". On September 24, Durst's lawyers filed a motion with Windham to request a new trial. The reasoning was basically the same as they gave in Durst's trial defense: no physical evidence was presented, witnesses for the prosecution were not to be believed, and the entire prosecution case was nothing but an unproven theory.

On October 14, 2021, Durst was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for Berman's murder. The request from Durst for a new trial was denied by the court in view of the abundance of evidence of Durst's guilt. Following the murder conviction, Durst's legal team immediately filed appeals in the California legal system. As such, Durst's appeals may be dismissed by the California Court of Appeal, and the conviction set aside, as his death prevented the appeals from being heard.

Additional cases

Days after the Berman murder, police were reportedly examining connections between Durst and the disappearances of 18-year-old Lynne Schulze from Middlebury, Vermont, and 16-year-old Karen Mitchell from Eureka, California. Investigators were also considering a possible connection between Durst and the disappearance of 18-year-old Kristen Modafferi, who was last seen in San Francisco in 1997.

Lynne Schulze

Schulze, a Middlebury College freshman, visited Durst's health-food store on December 10, 1971, the day she disappeared, and was last seen that afternoon near a bus stop across from the store. Author and investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck reported in 2003, and again in his 2015 book A Deadly Secret, that credit card records placed Durst in Eureka on November 25, 1997, the day Mitchell vanished. Mitchell may have volunteered in a homeless shelter that Durst frequented; Durst, dressed in women's clothing, had visited the Eureka shoe store owned by Mitchell's aunt. Mitchell was last seen walking to work from her aunt's store and possibly speaking to someone in a stopped car; a witness sketch of Mitchell's presumed abductor resembles Durst.

Although the FBI ultimately could not connect Durst to the Long Island serial murders (in which some victims were disposed of in a similar manner to the Black killing), the bureau created an informal task force in 2012 to work with investigative agencies in jurisdictions where Durst was known to have lived in past decades, including Vermont, New York, and California. In the wake of his arrest, the FBI encouraged such localities to reexamine cold cases. Texas private investigator Bobbi Bacha has also traced Durst operating under stolen identities in Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia.

Personal life

On December 11, 2000, shortly before the Berman killing, Durst married Debrah Lee Charatan. According to The New York Times, the couple had briefly shared a Fifth Avenue apartment in 1990, but "have never lived together as husband and wife." Durst once told his sister Wendy that it was "a marriage of convenience"; "I wanted Debbie to be able to receive my inheritance, and I intended to kill myself," Durst said in a 2005 deposition. When Durst was arrested for the Black killing in 2001, Charatan wired him the $250,000 bail the court required. She also visited Durst in jail and spoke with him on the phone on a regular basis, discussing his legal strategy and other personal and business issues. Following the Black trial, Charatan reportedly distanced herself from Durst and his affairs, legal and otherwise. In particular, Charatan specifically told Durst not to get involved with The Jinx, to which he disagreed at the time. Charatan's friends said that, after Durst's arrest in 2015, she had not spoken with him since the documentary had begun airing in February.

Despite still being married to Durst, Charatan was reported to be living with Stephen I. Holm in 2015. Holm was a real estate attorney in the New York City area who handled transactions for both Durst and Charatan. It was reported in Real Estate Weekly that Holm died on October 17, 2019, and that Charatan was his wife. Charatan was called Holm's wife at his funeral, in his obituary online, and in the obituary in The New York Times. Shortly after, Charatan sent the Times a letter saying she and Holm were not married and asked them to print a retraction. Charatan and Holm were involved with several philanthropic ventures together. Shortly after Durst was convicted of murdering Berman in September 2021, a lawyer for the family of Kathleen McCormack sent Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. a letter claiming the marriage between Durst and Charatan was a sham solely to aid and abet Durst's financial crimes and murders, and to conceal those acts and frustrate investigation into same. The letter asked Vance's office to investigate these claims, and also the issue of Durst's being a bigamist because of Charatan's publicly claimed marriage to Holm. The letter was the second time the McCormack family asked for the Manhattan District Attorney's office to look into these issues, the first time being March 2020.

Durst traveled and lived less than dozens of aliases over the years, using different identities to buy cars, rent apartments, and open credit card accounts. "He had a scanner, copier, and a laminating machine," a former office employee of Durst told Newsweek. "What I didn't realize is that I unwittingly saw what would have allowed Robert Durst to make a fake driver's license." Durst was "a prolific user of private mailboxes," and apparently conducted business under a number of canine-themed names: Woofing LLC, WoofWoof LLC, and Igor-Fayette Inc.

In the early 1980s, Durst owned a series of seven Alaskan Malamutes, all of which were named Igor and all of which died in mysterious circumstances, according to his brother Douglas. In December 2014, prior to the airing of The Jinx, Douglas told the Times, "In retrospect, I now believe he was practicing killing and disposing [of] his wife with those dogs." Durst was once recorded saying he wanted to "Igor" Douglas. Durst, however, has disputed the assertion that he owned seven dogs named Igor; he owned three, he said, one that was run over and another that died in surgery after eating an apple core, "before the Igor that lasted forever."

From 2015 on, Durst had a number of significant medical issues, including major surgeries for esophageal cancer, having a shunt installed in his brain for hydrocephalus, and cervical spinal fusion. When arrested in New Orleans in 2015, he was found to be in possession of a variety of drugs, including the sleep aid melatonin, a muscle relaxant, and medications for high blood pressure, blood flow, and acid reflux. During the Berman murder trial, Durst's lawyers told the court he had bladder cancer.

On October 16, 2021, Durst tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed on a ventilator. At his sentencing two days prior, his defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said Durst was in "very bad condition", having hard time breathing and speaking. It was unknown how Durst contracted the virus and whether anyone else at the sentencing had been infected.

Financial status and residences

In mid-2002, Durst signed over a power of attorney to Charatan, and their holdings are thought to have remained closely intermingled. In 2006, Durst gave Charatan around $20 million of his $65 million trust settlement. In 2011, Durst purchased a $1.75 million townhouse on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. A source close to the Durst family confirmed that he was living there at least some of the time and that they were keeping him under surveillance. Durst also owned three condominia in a multistory complex in Houston, and after filing suit, received a $200,000 settlement in 2006 from a Houston developer who refused to let him move into a unit newly purchased by his wife, which she had then immediately resold to Durst for $10. At the time of Berman's murder in Los Angeles, Durst had just sold a home in Trinidad, California, but maintained an office in Eureka while renting in nearby Big Lagoon.

Media outlets variously reported Durst's financial status as "real-estate baron", "rich scion", "millionaire", "multimillionaire", and "billionaire". As of 2021, the Durst family's real estate holdings are worth more than $8 billion, but Durst's brother Douglas has been in control of the Durst Organization since the early 1990s. From about 1994 to 2006, Durst waged a legal campaign to gain greater control of the family trust and fortune. During that time, he received $2 million a year from the trust. In 2006, the case was settled, with Durst giving up any interest in his family's properties and trusts in exchange for a one-time payment of about $65 million. How much of that went to legal fees and taxes is unknown. Durst remained active in real estate; he reportedly sold two properties in 2014 for $21.15 million after purchasing them in 2011 for $8.65 million. At the time of his 2015 arrest, the FBI estimated Durst's net worth at approximately $100 million; The New York Times estimated his net worth at $110 million.

On May 1, 2015, the New York Post reported that Douglas Durst had settled litigation against Andrew Jarecki, having confirmed that Robert Durst was the source of videotaped depositions that appeared in The Jinx. Durst's disclosure apparently violated the terms of his 2006 agreement with the family, which had disbursed to him a lump sum of trust assets. Whether Jarecki confirmed Durst as his source was unclear—The New York Times reported in March 2015 that he was given "unrestricted access" to Durst's personal records, including the videotaped material— but the settlement paved the way for Douglas to reclaim as much as $74 million of his brother's assets, effectively freezing those assets pending court judgment. This would potentially affect Durst's ability to pay for high-caliber legal representation without tapping into real estate or other investments. The Post reported that Douglas was "mulling his next move", but no legal action had been taken.

In November 2015, McCormack's three sisters and 101-year-old mother sued Durst for $100 million, citing his apparent role in her murder and his denial to her family of the "right to sepulcher", a New York law that grants immediate relatives access to a deceased person's body and the opportunity to determine appropriate burial. If successful, the lawsuit would have relieved Durst's estate of most or all of the fortune he inherited. McCormack's brother James had attempted in October 2015 to file a wrongful death suit against Durst on behalf of his mother, but was challenged by one of his sisters, who held her mother's power of attorney. On December 7, 2015, the same family members filed a suit asking the court to freeze Durst's assets. The McCormack family's attorney, Robert Abrams, called Durst the "poster child" for why courts block defendants from disposing of assets while civil lawsuits are pending.  In July 2016, the family asked the Surrogate's Court in Manhattan to "declare that Kathie died on January 31, 1982, when she was murdered by her husband, Robert Durst" so the sepulcher lawsuit could proceed.[190] The court granted the request and Kathleen was declared dead in absentia in 2017. In 2021, Durst was among those listed in the Pandora Papers leak, exposing the offshore sheltering of financial assets by hundreds of political, business, and celebrity people.

Other legal issues

In 2012 and 2013, Durst's family members sought and received restraining orders against him, saying they were afraid of him. Durst was charged with trespassing in New York City for walking in front of townhouses owned by his brother Douglas and other family members. He went on trial and was acquitted in December 2014. The judge also vacated the thirteen orders of protection his family members had taken out on him.

In July 2014, Durst was arrested after turning himself in to police following an incident at a Houston CVS drug store in which he allegedly exposed his genitalia without provocation and urinated on a rack of candy. He then left the store and casually walked down the street. Durst was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief. In December 2014, he pleaded "no contest" and was fined $500. His lawyer described the incident as an "unfortunate medical mishap". A recording of the incident was released on videotape in 2015.

Death

Durst died of cardiac arrest at the San Joaquin General Hospital in French Camp, California, on January 10, 2022, at age 78. He had been undergoing medical tests when he went into cardiac arrest and did not respond to resuscitation. At the time of his death, Durst remained in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

In January 2022, McCormack's family filed a wrongful death suit against Durst's estate. This was the fourth similar civil suit the family had filed since 2015, attempting to claim all or part of Robert Durst's assets. In response, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York ruled that Durst's second wife and heir, Debrah Charatan, may not do anything with his $100 million estate. The court documents say Charatan and/or her attorney must appear in court on March 25, 2022, and show cause why the order should not be issued. In March 2023, a federal court judge ruled the case of wrongful death filed by Kathie Durst's family against the estate of Robert Durst could proceed. In the ruling, the judge wrote that the lawsuit filed was not untimely because of Robert Durst's death. A conference was scheduled for April 2023.

In popular culture

Three episodes in the Law & Order television franchise gave different takes on the murders: The Law & Order episode "Hands Free"; the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Maledictus"; and the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Devil's Dissections".

Fred Armisen played Durst in a 2003 sketch on Saturday Night Live and again in 2016 on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Kate McKinnon played Durst in a 2015 SNL sketch.

The American Court TV television series Mugshots released an episode covering Durst, titled Robert Durst—Mogul in Murder Mystery.

A&E and Lifetime announced in August 2016 that they were developing a movie based on the book A Deadly Secret. The television movie, titled The Lost Wife of Robert Durst, originally aired on November 11, 2017.

Investigation Discovery network released a special miniseries titled Robert Durst: An ID Murder Mystery, containing new interviews with friends and family of Durst's alleged victims, along with his defense attorney Dick DeGuerin. Legal experts and crime reporters offer insights on evidence leading to Durst's arrest and originally scheduled for 2019 but delayed until 2021 murder trial. The series originally aired on January 21 and 22, 2019.

The Jury Speaks dedicated an episode to his trial in Galveston, Texas.

The progressive metal band Intronaut wrote the song "Fast Worms" for their 2015 album The Direction of Last Things about Durst and his crimes.

ABC aired a two-hour episode of their TV newsmagazine 20/20 on March 18, 2022, about Durst and his bizarre life titled "The Devil You Know". It includes interviews and comments from friends, relatives, reporters, journalists, law enforcement, lawyers, prosecutors, all involved with Durst and his legal issues.

The movie All Good Things (2010) stars Ryan Gosling as David Marks, a character inspired by Durst.

In 2024, Oxygen True Crime network presented "Robert Durst: The Lost Years", an examination into Durst's whereabouts and activities between his various crimes and trials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Durst

Robert Durst Part I

  

Robert Alan Durst (April 12, 1943 – January 10, 2022) was a convicted murderer and an American real estate heir. The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, he garnered attention as a suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 killing of neighbor Morris Black. Acquitted of murdering Black in 2003, Durst did not face further legal action until his participation in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx led to him being charged with Berman's murder. Durst was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He was also charged with McCormack's murder shortly after his sentencing, but died in 2022 before a trial could begin.

His conviction for Berman's murder was automatically vacated upon his death because his appeal was still pending.

Early life

Robert Durst was born in New York City on April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He was the eldest son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his wife, Bernice Herstein. His paternal grandfather, Joseph Durst, originally a Jewish tailor from Austria-Hungary, immigrated to the United States in 1902 and eventually became a real estate manager and developer, founding the Durst Organization in 1927. Robert's three younger siblings were Douglas, Tommy, and Wendy Durst.

When Robert was seven, his mother died by suicide by jumping from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home. He later claimed to have witnessed it, asserting that moments before her death, his father walked him to a window from which he could see her standing on the roof. But in a March 2015 New York Times interview, his brother Douglas denied that Robert had witnessed the suicide. As children, Robert and Douglas underwent counseling for sibling rivalry; a 1953 psychiatrist's report on 10-year-old Robert mentioned "personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia."

Durst attended Scarsdale High School, where classmates described him as a loner. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and the business manager of the student newspaper, The Brown and White. Later that year, Durst enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Susan Berman, but eventually withdrew from the school and returned to New York in 1969.

Durst opened a small health-food store in Vermont in the early 1970s. He closed the store in 1973, when his father convinced him to return to New York. In 1992, due to Robert's inappropriate conduct, his father broke with tradition and appointed his second son, Douglas, to take over the Durst Organization. As the firstborn, Robert felt entitled to run the company, despite his disdain for it. He claimed that Douglas had stolen what was rightfully owed to him, leading to Robert's estrangement from the rest of his family. He eventually sued for his share of the fortune, and was bought out of the family trust for $65 million in 2006.

Capital crimes for which Durst was investigated

For almost his entire adult life, Durst was the subject of investigation and speculation concerning three alleged crimes: the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen "Kathie" McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 death of his neighbor, Morris Black. Durst was ultimately tried and acquitted for murder in the Black case, but later convicted in the Berman case.

Disappearance of Kathleen McCormack Durst

In late 1971, Durst met dental hygienist Kathleen McCormack. After two dates, he invited her to share his home in Vermont, where she moved in January 1972. After his father pressured him to resettle in New York to work at the Durst Organization, the couple returned to Manhattan, where they married on April 12, 1973.

At the time of her disappearance, McCormack was a medical student in her fourth and final year at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx, hoping to become a pediatrician—she was only a few months short of earning her degree. She was last seen by someone other than Durst on the evening of January 31, 1982, when she appeared unexpectedly at a dinner party, thrown by her friend Gilberte Najamy in Newtown, Connecticut. Najamy noticed that Kathleen seemed upset and was wearing red sweatpants, which Najamy found odd, as McCormack never dressed so casually in public. After receiving a phone call from her husband, McCormack left for her cottage in South Salem, New York.

Although the couple was known to have fought that evening, Durst initially maintained that he had placed his wife on a commuter train to New York City at Katonah rail station, had a drink with a neighbor, and spoken to his wife at their Manhattan apartment by telephone later that evening. "That's what I told police," Durst said. "I was hoping that would just make everything go away." He subsequently admitted he just went home and went to bed.

The two women were supposed to meet up the next day at The Lion's Gate, a Manhattan pub. When Kathleen failed to appear, Najamy grew concerned and repeatedly called the police over the course of several days. Later that week, Durst reported his wife missing. Both a doorman and the building superintendent at the couple's apartment on Riverside Drive claimed to have seen McCormack at the building on February 1, the day after she was last indisputably seen. The doorman additionally said he had only seen her from behind and from half a block away, and thus could not be certain that it was her. A private investigator hired by Durst's lawyer later reported that the doorman said he had not seen McCormack arrive at all, and might not have been working the night she disappeared. Only three weeks after Robert had reported his wife missing, the superintendent on Riverside Drive found some of her possessions in the building's trash compactor.

Three weeks before her disappearance, McCormack had been treated at the Bronx's Jacobi Medical Center for facial bruises. She told a friend that Durst had beaten her, but did not press charges over the incident. McCormack asked Durst for a $250,000 divorce settlement. Instead, he cancelled her credit card, removed her name from a joint bank account, and refused to pay her medical school tuition. At the time of McCormack's disappearance, Durst had been dating Prudence Farrow (Mia Farrow's sister) for three years and was living in a separate apartment. Durst initially offered $100,000 for his wife's return, then reduced the reward to $15,000. When one of McCormack's friends and her sister learned that she had been reported missing, they broke into her South Salem cottage, hoping to find her. Instead, they discovered the residence ransacked, McCormack's mail unopened, and her belongings in the trash.

Investigation and aftermath

After McCormack's disappearance, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) said that Durst had claimed to have last spoken to her when she called him from the Riverside Drive apartment. He maintained that the last time he had seen her was at Katonah station, where she was planning to board a 9:15pm train to Manhattan. He also claimed that on February 4, the supervisor at her medical school telephoned him to say she had been absent from class all week after calling in sick on February 1. Whether McCormack herself had made that call is unknown.

Durst divorced McCormack eight years after her disappearance, claiming spousal abandonment. In 2016, her family asked to have Kathleen declared legally dead, a request that was granted the following year. Kathleen's mother, Ann McCormack, attempted to sue Durst for $100 million, alleging that he had killed her daughter and deprived her parents of the right to bury her. The parents are now deceased. Kathleen's younger sister, Mary McCormack Hughes, also believes that Durst murdered her. The New York State Police quietly reopened the criminal investigation into the disappearance in 1999, searching the South Salem cottage for the first time. The investigation became public in November 2000.

In August 2019, a wrongful death lawsuit against Durst, filed by another of McCormack's sisters, Carol Bamonte, was dismissed on the grounds that she had waited too long to sue. In 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals had revised the date of McCormack's death to match the January 1982 day she disappeared. On May 17, 2021, during Durst's trial for Berman's murder, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah announced that McCormack's disappearance had been reclassified as murder and would be reinvestigated. In October 2021, shortly after Durst's first-degree conviction in the Berman case, Westchester County prosecutors announced they would empanel a grand jury to explore charges against Durst in the McCormack case. He was officially charged with her murder on October 22, 2021.

Murder of Susan Berman

Susan Berman, a longtime friend of Durst's who had facilitated his public alibi after McCormack's disappearance, was the daughter of David Berman, a major Jewish-American organized crime figure who dominated illegal gambling in Depression-era Minneapolis and later took over the Flamingo Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. On December 24, 2000, Berman was found murdered execution-style in her home in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, California, after her neighbors called the police to report that her door was open and one of her dogs was loose.

A few days later, a letter addressed to the Beverly Hills Police Department, postmarked December 23, contained Berman's address and the word "cadaver". On the envelope, "Beverly" was misspelled as "Beverley". Durst is known to have been in northern California days before Berman's death and to have flown from San Francisco to New York the night before Berman's body was discovered. Berman had recently received $50,000 from Durst in two payments. Although Durst confirmed to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that he had sent Berman $25,000, and faxed investigators a copy of her 1982 deposition regarding his missing wife, he declined to be further questioned about the murder.

Durst said in a 2005 deposition that Berman called him shortly before her death to say that the LAPD wanted to talk to her about McCormack's disappearance. A study of case notes by The Guardian cast doubt on whether the LAPD had made such a call, or whether then-Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro had scheduled an interview with Berman at all. After being tipped off by his sister Wendy that the McCormack investigation had been reopened, Durst went into hiding and moved to Galveston, Texas, disguising himself as a mute woman to avoid police inquiries. Berman biographer Cathy Scott has asserted that Durst killed her because she knew too much about his wife's disappearance.

Killing and dismemberment of Morris Black

On November 15, 2000, Galveston landlord Klaus Rene Dillman was contacted via telephone by a man claiming to serve as aide to a deaf-mute woman named Dorothy Ciner. On October 9, 2001, Durst was arrested in Galveston shortly after body parts belonging to his elderly neighbor, 71-year-old Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay. He was released on $250,000 bail and missed a court hearing on October 16, and a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of bail jumping.

On November 30, Durst was caught inside a Wegmans supermarket in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, after trying to shoplift Band-Aids, a newspaper, and a chicken salad sandwich, despite having $500 in cash in his pocket. Among the items discovered in his rental car were $37,000 in cash, two guns, marijuana, Black's driver's license, and directions to Gilberte Najamy's home in Connecticut. Durst also used his time on the run to stalk his brother Douglas, visiting the driveway of his home in Katonah, New York, while armed. Durst employed defense attorney John Waldron while he was held on charges in Pennsylvania. He was eventually extradited to Texas for trial.

Black trial

In 2003, Durst was tried for the murder of Morris Black. On the death of Black, the prosecution presented the jury with only a charge of capital murder, with no lesser murder or manslaughter charges. Durst employed defense attorney Dick DeGuerin and claimed self-defense; DeGuerin conducted two mock trials in preparation for the case. Durst's defense team found communicating with him to be difficult and hired psychiatrist Milton Altschuler to investigate. After spending 70 hours examining him, Altschuler diagnosed Durst with Asperger syndrome, saying, "His whole life's history is so compatible with a diagnosis of Asperger's disorder." His defense team argued at trial that the diagnosis explained his behavior.

Durst claimed that Black, a cranky and confrontational loner, grabbed his .22 caliber target pistol from its hiding place and threatened him with it. During the struggle for the pistol, the weapon discharged and shot Black in the face. During cross-examination, Durst admitted to using a paring knife, two saws, and an axe to dismember Black's body before bagging and dumping his remains in Galveston Bay. Black’s head was never recovered, so prosecutors were unable to present sufficient forensic evidence to dispute Durst's account of the struggle. As a result of lack of forensics, the jury acquitted Durst of murder on November 11, 2003.

On December 21, 2004, Durst pleaded guilty to two counts of bail jumping and one count of evidence tampering (for his dismemberment of Black's body). As part of a plea bargain, he received a sentence of five years and was given credit for time served, requiring him to serve three years in prison. Durst was paroled on July 15, 2005. The rules of his release required him to stay near his home; permission was required to travel. That December, Durst made an unauthorized trip to the boarding house where Black was killed and to a nearby shopping mall. At the mall, he ran into former Galveston trial judge Susan Criss, who had presided over his trial. Due to this incident, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles determined that Durst had violated the terms of his parole and returned him to jail. He was released again from custody on March 1, 2006.

Asked in March 2015 whether she believed Durst murdered Black, Criss commented: "You could see that this person knew what they were doing and that it was not a first time. The body was cut perfectly like a surgeon who knew how to use this tool on this bone and a certain kind of tool on that muscle. It looked like not a first-time job. That was pretty scary." Private investigator Bobbi Bacha argues Morris Black had known Durst years prior and was likely involved in the disappearance of Durst's wife Kathleen in 1982.

Jarecki programs

Durst's notoriety inspired the 2010 film All Good Things, the title of which is a reference to the Vermont health-food store of the same name set up by Durst and McCormack. David Marks, the character based on Durst, was portrayed by Ryan Gosling, and his wife Katie was portrayed by Kirsten Dunst. Shortly after its theatrical release, Durst contacted director Andrew Jarecki and expressed his approval for the film, which evolved into discussions between the two of them being included on the DVD video release, and eventually resulting in Jarecki co-writing, co-producing, directing, and appearing in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which was broadcast on HBO.

During the production of The Jinx, Susan Berman's stepson uncovered a 1999 letter written by Durst which contained the same "Beverley Hills" typographical error as the anonymous letter directing police to Berman's body, implicating Durst in the murder. Jarecki and producers Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier realized they had uncovered potential criminal evidence and delivered the second letter to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. The new information led to Durst's indictment for the first-degree murder of Berman. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Durst in New Orleans on the eve of the broadcast of the final episode of The Jinx.

The Jinx ends with Durst moving into a bathroom, where his microphone records him seemingly saying to himself: "There it is. You're caught! .... You're right, of course. But you can't imagine the rest of them. ... I don't know what Oh is in the house ...; I want this ... What a disaster ... He was right. I was wrong. And the burping ... I'm having difficulty with the question ... What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." It later became known in 2019 the filmmakers altered the sequence of Durst's comments, increasing the apparent severity of his musings in the bathroom. In November 2023, HBO announced The Jinx – Part Two, a six-episode continuation of the series, was in production with the same producers and director, and premiered on April 21, 2024. Part 2 covers the eight years between the original series in 2015 to present time, including new interviews, hidden material, and Durst's prison calls.

Berman trial

2015 arrest

On March 14, 2015, a few days after a first-degree murder warrant was signed by a Los Angeles judge alleging a role by Durst in relation to the Berman killing, Durst was arrested by FBI agents at the Canal Street Marriott in New Orleans, where he had registered under the false name "Everette Ward". Durst, who had been tracked to the hotel after making two calls to check his voicemail, was observed wandering aimlessly in the lobby and mumbling to himself, having driven to New Orleans from Houston four days before.

In addition to a .38 caliber revolver loaded with four live rounds and one spent shell casing, police recovered five ounces of marijuana; Durst's birth certificate and passport; maps of Louisiana, Florida and Cuba; a "flesh-toned" latex mask; the fake Texas I.D. card used to check into the hotel; a new cell phone; and cash totaling $42,631. Police discovered a UPS tracking number, which led to additional $117,000 cash and a pair of shoes in a package sent to Durst by a friend in New York, which was seized after his arrest. Bank statements found in one of Durst's Houston condominia revealed cash withdrawals of $315,000 in little more than a month. Durst is believed to have planned to flee to Cuba after the HBO documentary aired, since the United States and Cuba have no extradition treaty.

On March 15, 2015, New York State Police investigator Joseph Becerra, long involved with the McCormack case and said to have been working closely with the FBI and Los Angeles detectives, removed some sixty file boxes of Durst's personal papers and effects from the home of Durst's friend, Susan T. Giordano, in Campbell Hall, New York. All of these items had been sent to Giordano for safekeeping three years prior by Durst's then-wife, Debrah Lee Charatan. Also stored at Giordano's residence were videotaped depositions of Durst, his brother Douglas, and Charatan, all of which were related to the Black case.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, in charge of prosecuting Durst, immediately flew to New Orleans after his arrest. With Durst's permission, Lewin interviewed him for three hours without a lawyer present. The recorded questioning was later introduced as evidence in the Berman trial. In regards to the investigation, Lewin claimed to have found information uncovered by the filmmakers of The Jinx to be compelling, and repeatedly flew to New York to interview witnesses, including friends of Durst and Berman's.

Firearm charge

On March 16, 2015, Dick DeGuerin advised court authorities in New Orleans that Durst waived extradition and would voluntarily return to California. Later that same day, Louisiana State Police filed charges against Durst for being a felon in possession of a firearm and for possession of a firearm with a controlled substance, forestalling his immediate return to California. Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro commented, in light of prior convictions that could influence Durst's sentencing, "[j]ust for those gun charges here in Louisiana, [Durst] could face up to life in prison".

On March 23, Durst was denied bail by a Louisiana judge after prosecutors argued he was a flight risk. In an effort to hasten his extradition to California and avoid a protracted court battle in Louisiana, DeGuerin raised questions about the validity of the New Orleans arrest and hotel room search, observing a local judge did not issue a warrant until hours after his client was detained. While communicating with the LAPD and conducting an inventory of Durst's hotel room possessions, "[t]he FBI ... held him there, incommunicado, for almost eight hours". According to DeGuerin, Durst was questioned extensively by a Los Angeles prosecutor and detective, without a lawyer present, on the morning after his arrest.

In failing to produce the arresting officers subpoenaed for a probable cause hearing, Durst's attorneys charged that Louisiana prosecutors engaged in a "misguided attempt to conceal the facts from the court, the defendant, and the public". Peter Mansfield, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, said that his office instructed the two FBI agents and arresting officer not to appear, arguing that DeGuerin's subpoenas were issued in an attempt to conduct "actions against them in their official capacities for the purpose of obtaining testimony, information and material maintained under color of their official duties".

On April 8, a day after the U.S. Attorney filed an independent federal weapons charge, Durst was formally indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for carrying a weapon with a controlled substance and for the illegal possession of a firearm by a felon. Later that month, Durst's lawyers requested that more than $193,000 seized by authorities during their searches be returned, saying the cash "is not needed as evidence, is not contraband, and is not subject to forfeiture".

After negotiations with Durst's defense team, Louisiana authorities ultimately dropped weapons charges against Durst on April 23, 2015. Durst's trial on the federal weapons charge was scheduled for September 21, 2015. DeGuerin confirmed rumors Durst was in poor health, stating he suffered from hydrocephalus and had a shunt put into his skull two years before, as well as spinal surgery and a cancerous mass removed from his esophagus.

Durst's attorneys requested a later date for the federal weapons trial, saying they would need more time to prepare after rulings on pending motions. U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan later rescheduled the trial to January 11, 2016. On November 16, 2015, a New Orleans federal judge ordered Durst rearraigned on the weapons charges and scheduled a hearing for December 17. When asked, Durst's attorney said only that Durst did not kill Berman, and that he wanted to resolve the other charges to expedite Durst's extradition to Los Angeles to face that charge.

On December 16, 2015, prosecutors and defense attorneys told Berrigan in a joint motion that scheduling conflicts ruled out all dates before a January 11 trial date. Berrigan ultimately rescheduled the trial for February 3, 2016, and Durst changed his plea to guilty to the federal gun charge and received an 85-month prison sentence.

Murder of Vincent Chin

 

Vincent Jen Chin (Chinese: 陳果仁; May 18, 1955 – June 23, 1982) was an American draftsman of Chinese descent who was killed in a racially motivated assault by two white men, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz. Ebens and Nitz assailed Chin following a brawl that took place at a strip club in Highland Park, Michigan, where Chin had been celebrating his bachelor party with friends in advance of his upcoming wedding. Against the backdrop of high anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States at the time – known as "Japan bashing" – Ebens and Nitz assumed Chin was Japanese, and a witness described them using anti-Asian racial slurs as they attacked him, ultimately beating Chin to death.

Although accounts vary, the men were expelled from the club following a physical altercation. Ebens and Nitz eventually found Chin in front of a nearby McDonald's, where Nitz held Chin down while Ebens repeatedly bashed him with a baseball bat until Chin's head cracked open. Chin was taken to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where he died of his injuries four days later. In their first trial, Ebens and Nitz accepted a plea bargain to reduce the charges from second-degree murder to manslaughter.

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced Ebens and Nitz to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine, but no jail time. Explaining his rationale, Kaufman said that Ebens and Nitz "weren't the kind of men you send to jail ... You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal." Described by the president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council as a "$3,000 license to kill", the lenient sentence led to an uproar from Asian Americans and spurred the community into activism. The advocacy group American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) was formed to protest the sentencing. The case has since been viewed as a critical turning point for Asian American civil rights engagement and a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation.

Background

Vincent Jen Chin was born on May 18, 1955, in Guangdong province, Mainland China. He was the only child of Bing Hing "David" Chin (a.k.a. C.W. Hing) and Lily Chin (née Yee). Chin's father earned the right to bring a Chinese bride into the United States through his service in World War II. After Lily suffered a miscarriage in 1949 and was unable to have children, the couple adopted Vincent from a Chinese orphanage in 1961.

Throughout most of the 1960s, Chin grew up in Highland Park. In 1971, after the elderly Hing was mugged, the family moved to Oak Park, Michigan. Vincent Chin graduated from Oak Park High School in 1973, going on to study at Control Data Institute and Lawrence Tech. At the time of his death, Chin was employed as an industrial draftsman at Efficient Engineering, an automotive supplier, and waiting tables at the Golden Star restaurant in Ferndale, Michigan, on weekends. He was engaged to be married on June 28, 1982.

During an economic recession in the early 1980s, the decline of the auto industry provoked resentment toward imported Japanese cars in Detroit, which was the center of the automotive industry in the United States. "Japan bashing" became popular with politicians, such as U.S. representative from Michigan John Dingell, who blamed "little yellow men" for domestic automakers' misfortune. Nationwide, Anti-Asian racism often accompanied campaigns urging consumers to "Buy American".

Killing

On June 19, 1982, Chin was having a bachelor party at the Fancy Pants Club in Highland Park to celebrate his upcoming wedding with three of his friends: Jimmy Choi, Gary Koivu, and Robert Siroskey. Seated across the stage from them were two white men, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz. According to an interview by American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore for the Detroit Free Press, after Chin gave a white stripper a generous gratuity, Ebens shouted, "Hey, you little motherfuckers!" and told an African-American dancer, "Don't pay any attention to those little fuckers, they wouldn't know a good dancer if they'd seen one." Racine Colwell, a dancer at the bar, later testified that Ebens said, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work." This statement later provided the evidence for civil rights litigation against Ebens. He later claimed the argument was not about Chin's race but the Black dancer's gratuity. Another witness said he heard the anti-Chinese racial slur "Chink" being used towards Chin, while another man said Ebens told him "I'll give you $20 if you help us catch the Chinaman."

Ebens claimed that Chin walked over to him and Nitz and threw a punch at his jaw. The fight escalated as Nitz shoved Chin in defense of his stepfather, and Chin countered. One of the dancers reported that Ebens and Chin picked up chairs and started swinging them at each other. Nitz suffered a cut on his head from a chair that Ebens had intended to use to strike Chin. Chin and his friends left the room, while a bouncer led Ebens and Nitz to the restroom to clean up the wound. According to Ebens and Nitz, one of Chin's friends, Robert Siroskey, came back inside to use the restroom and apologized to the group, stating that Chin had had a few drinks due to his bachelor's party. Ebens and Nitz had also been drinking that night, although not at the club, which did not serve alcohol.

When Ebens and Nitz left the club, they encountered Chin and his friends, who were waiting outside for Siroskey. Chin called Ebens a "chicken shit", at which point Nitz retrieved a baseball bat from his car and Chin and his friends ran down the street. Ebens and Nitz searched the neighborhood for 20 to 30 minutes and paid another man 20 dollars to help look for Chin, before finding him at a nearby McDonald's restaurant. Chin attempted to escape, but was held by Nitz while Ebens repeatedly bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat until Chin's head cracked open. Ebens was arrested and taken into custody at the scene of the crime by two off-duty police officers who had witnessed the beating. One of the officers said that Ebens wielded the bat like he was swinging "for a home run". Michael Gardenhire, one of the police officers, called for an ambulance. Chin was rushed to Henry Ford Hospital and was comatose on arrival. He never regained consciousness and died four days later on June 23, 1982; Chin was only 27 years old.

Legal proceedings

State criminal charges

Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder, but accepted a plea bargain to reduce the charges to manslaughter. They were sentenced by Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman to three years' probation and were each ordered to pay a $3,000 fine plus $780 in court costs, but received no jail time.

Kaufman explained his light sentences based on Ebens' and Nitz's lack of previous criminal records, their stability in the community, and his opinion that the two would not go on to harm anyone else. He said in justifying his decision that Ebens and Nitz "weren't the kind of men you send to jail" and "[y]ou don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal". Kaufman argued that the assault was "the continuation of a fight that Mr. Chin started", and that had the incident been a case of self-defense, Ebens and Nitz "would not be guilty of anything." Kaufman had been a Japanese-held prisoner of war during World War II, but denied that any anti-Asian sentiment had influenced his ruling.

The Detroit Free Press argued in an editorial that "the overall handling of the Chin case seems disturbingly casual", remarking on the limited evidence presented at sentencing, the reduced charges due to plea bargaining, the lack of a prosecutor at the hearing to argue for a harsher sentence, and Kaufman's disregarding of the pre-sentence report's recommendation of imprisonment. The editorial concluded that the "result was a process that made Vincent Chin's life seem cheap and the criminal justice system either callous or perverse".

The lenient sentencing of Ebens and Nitz enraged the Asian-American communities in the Detroit area and across the United States, who saw it as a sign of public indifference toward racism directed at Asian-Americans. The president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council said the verdict amounted to a "$3,000 license to kill" Chinese Americans. Others across the country were spurred into activism; the advocacy group American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) was formed to protest the sentencing and began working toward a judicial appeal. The ACJ quickly gained the support of diverse ethnic and religious groups, advocacy organizations, and politicians such as the Detroit City Council president and Congressman John Conyers.

Federal civil rights charges

Government officials, politicians, and several prominent legal organizations dismissed the theory that civil rights law should be applied to the death of Chin. The Detroit chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild did not consider Chin's killing a violation of his civil rights. At first, the ACJ was the only group that supported applying existing civil rights laws to Asian Americans. Eventually, the national body of the National Lawyers Guild endorsed its efforts.

Journalist Helen Zia and lawyer Liza Chan led the fight for federal charges, which resulted in the two killers being accused of two counts of violating Chin's civil rights under Title 18 of the United States Code.

The 1984 federal civil rights case against the men found Ebens guilty of the second count and sentenced him to 25 years in prison; Nitz was acquitted of both counts. Ebens's conviction was overturned in 1986—a federal appeals court found that an attorney for the ACJ had improperly coached witnesses. Chin's friend Jimmy Choi had at first supported Ebens' version of no racial animosity or epithets, and that Chin threw a chair that injured Nitz, but he changed his statement after meeting the ACJ attorney.

After the verdict, the ACJ once again mobilized to press the Department of Justice for a retrial, which took place in Cincinnati. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor explained that Ebens could not be given a "fair and impartial trial" in Metro Detroit due to the "saturation of publicity" surrounding the case. This trial, before a mostly white and male jury, resulted in Ebens being acquitted on all charges.

Civil suits

A civil suit for the unlawful death of Chin was settled out of court in March 1987. Michael Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000. Ronald Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million, at $200/month for the first two years and 25% of his income or $200/month thereafter, whichever was greater. This represented the projected loss of income from Chin's engineering position, as well as Lily Chin's loss of Vincent's services as a laborer and driver. Ebens left the state and stopped making payments in 1989.

In November 1989, Ebens reappeared in court for a creditor's hearing, where he detailed his finances and reportedly pledged to make good on his debt to the Chin estate. However, in 1997, the Chin estate was forced to renew the civil suit, as it was allowed to do every ten years. With accrued interest and other charges, the adjusted total became $4,683,653.89. Ebens sought in 2015 to have the resulting lien against his house vacated.

Aftermath and legacy

Chin was interred in Detroit's Forest Lawn Cemetery.

In September 1987, Chin's mother, Lily, moved back to her hometown of Guangzhou, China, reportedly to avoid being reminded of her son's death. She returned to the United States for medical treatment in late 2001 and died on June 9, 2002. Before her death, Lily Chin established a scholarship in Vincent's memory to be administered by the ACJ. In 2010, the city of Ferndale, Michigan, erected a milestone marker at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and 9 Mile Road in memory of the killing of Chin.

Chin's case has been cited by some Asian Americans in support of the idea that they are considered "perpetual foreigners" in contrast to "real" Americans who are considered full citizens. Lily Chin stated: "My son is beaten like an animal, and the killer is not in jail. If this happened in China, [Ebens and Nitz] would be put in an electric chair. Is this freedom and democracy? Why isn't everybody equal?" and "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail; maybe for their whole lives [...] something is wrong with this country."

The attack was considered a hate crime by many, but it predated the passage of hate crime laws in the United States. Sociologist Meghan A. Burke writes that Chin's killing prompted the creation of activist coalitions and a shared sense of pan-Asian identity for the first time in U.S. history. The case has since been viewed as a turning point for Asian American civil rights engagement and a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation.

In June 2024, the FBI released part of its case file on Vincent Chin's death.

Documentaries

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988), documentary by Renee Tajima and Christine Choy. Nominated for a 1989 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Vincent Who? (2009), a documentary written and produced by Curtis Chin and directed by Tony Lam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin

Murder of Annie Le

 

On September 8, 2009, 24-year-old Annie Marie Thu Le was murdered on the New Haven, Connecticut, campus of Yale University. Le was a doctoral student at the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology. She was last seen working in a research building on the New Haven campus. On September 13, the day that she was to be married, she was found dead inside the building.

On September 17, police arrested the perpetrator, Raymond J. Clark III, a Yale laboratory technician who worked in the building. Clark pleaded guilty to the murder on March 17, 2011. Clark was sentenced to 44 years' imprisonment on June 3. The case generated frenetic media coverage.

Disappearance and death

On the morning of September 8, Le left her apartment and took Yale Transit to the Sterling Hall of Medicine on the Yale campus. At about 10 a.m., she walked from Sterling Hall to another campus building at 10 Amistad Street, where her research laboratory was located. Le had left her purse, cell phone, credit cards, and cash in her office at Sterling Hall. She entered the Amistad Street building just after 10 a.m., as documented on footage from the building's security cameras. Le was never seen leaving the building. At approximately 9 p.m. that night, when Le had still not returned home, one of her five housemates called the police to report her missing.

Because the security footage did not show Le exiting the building at Amistad Street, police closed the whole building for investigation. Police also searched through refuse at the Hartford dump, where Yale's garbage is incinerated, looking for clues as to Le's whereabouts. The FBI, the New Haven Police Department, and the Connecticut State Police were all involved in the search.

On Sunday, September 13, her planned wedding date, authorities discovered Le's body in a cable chase inside the wall of a basement laboratory in the Amistad Street building. Bloody clothes had previously been found above a ceiling tile in the same building, which is monitored by about 75 security cameras. The entrance and the rooms inside the building require Yale identification cards to be opened and accessed. The basement where Le's body was found houses animals that are used for experiments and research. Due to the high security measures in the building, authorities and Yale officials maintained that it would be extremely difficult for someone without a Yale ID card to enter the basement lab, leading them to focus their investigation on Yale employees and students.

The Connecticut medical examiner's autopsy found that Le's death was a result of "traumatic asphyxia due to neck compression". On September 17, police arrested Raymond Clark, a 24-year-old laboratory technician who had been working in the same building. The previous day, he was taken into custody after police obtained a warrant to collect his DNA; he was released after providing a sample.

Memorials were held in California and Huntington, New York, and the funeral was broadcast live on the Internet. The Yale community also publicly mourned Le's death. The Yale Daily News reported that professor and Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis called September 14 the "saddest day to open class" since the day after the 9/11 attacks.

Personal life

Le was born on July 3, 1985, in San Jose, California, to a Vietnamese-American family. She spent her childhood in Placerville, California, with her aunt and uncle. She was valedictorian of her graduating class at Union Mine High School in El Dorado, California, and voted "most likely to be the next Einstein". After earning approximately $160,000 in scholarship money, she attended and graduated from the University of Rochester in New York. Her major was cell developmental biology with a minor in medical anthropology.

In September 2007, Le was accepted into a graduate program at Yale that would have led to her earning a doctorate in pharmacology. Her research had applications in the treatment of diabetes and certain forms of cancer. Since July 2008, Le was engaged to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student in applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and was due to be married on September 13, 2009, in Syosset, New York.

She had previously written an article for Yale Medical School's B Magazine titled "Crime and Safety in New Haven", published in February 2009.

Media coverage

The case of Annie Le generated frenetic media coverage, with a news producer trampled in a rush to a briefing. Some commentators suggested that the attention given by the media was inappropriately disproportionate to that given to other murder victims. Slate contributor Jack Shafer opined that "Journalists almost everywhere observe this rough rule of thumb: Three murders at a Midwestern college equal one murder at Harvard or Yale." Connecticut Post columnist MariAn Gail Brown argued that there is a "pecking order in many things", including the investigation of crimes, and that Le's murder attracted media attention because she was an Ivy Leaguer and "[s]omeone who might earn beaucoup bucks, [s]omeone who possesses sky 's-the-limit potential, [v]ivacious and attractive, too."

Prosecution

After his arrest, Clark was held on $3 million bail at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Suffield, Connecticut. He appeared in Connecticut Superior Court on October 6, 2009, but did not then enter a plea to the charges. His hearing was delayed until January 26, 2010, since not all of the materials in the case had been made available to the lawyers. Clark initially pleaded not guilty on January 26. His pretrial hearing was scheduled for March 3, 2010, in New Haven, with pretrial evidence processing scheduled for July 26.

In October 2010, Clark's case was continued, and another hearing was scheduled for February 9, 2011. In March 2011, Clark entered a guilty plea to Le's murder in exchange for a 44-year prison term. On an additional charge of attempted sexual assault of Le, he entered an Alford plea, a guilty plea that does not admit the facts but concedes the sufficiency of the evidence against him. Clark officially entered the pleas on March 17, and he was formally sentenced to 44 years' imprisonment on June 3. At his sentencing, Clark took responsibility for his actions and expressed remorse for the murder.

Clark is serving his sentence at the Cheshire Correctional Institution and is scheduled for release on September 16, 2053. Under a 2023 law expanding parole eligibility for youthful offenders, however, he will become eligible for parole after serving 60% sentence, or 26.4 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Annie_Le

Coast to Coast Killer: Tommy Lynn Sells

 

Tommy Lynn Sells (June 28, 1964 – April 3, 2014) was an American serial killer who became known as the Coast to Coast Killer. Although he was convicted of only two murders, one of which he was sentenced to death and eventually executed for, Sells claimed to have killed up to 70 victims in various states. Investigators have been able to conclusively pinpoint Sells in at least 22 cases.

Early life

Sells was born in Oakland, California, on June 28, 1964, as one of five children to an unwed mother. Sells’ presumed biological father, Joe Lovins, died when Sells was 11. Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis when they were 18 months old; Tammy died from the illness. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Walpole, in Holcomb, Missouri. When he was 5, he was returned to his mother after she discovered that Walpole wanted to adopt him. At the age of 7, Sells began regularly drinking alcohol obtained from a supply stash belonging to his maternal grandfather. Within a year, he was socializing with an adult man named Willis Clark, who Sells alleged began molesting him. Sells also claimed his mother encouraged the relationship, which traumatized him greatly.

Sells said he would later relive those experiences while committing his crimes. At age 10, Sells started using narcotics. Three years later, he entered his grandmother's bed nude while she was sleeping, leading to him being banned from the house. Shortly after that, his mother and siblings abandoned him by abruptly leaving town. A few days later, in a fit of rage, he shot a woman and assaulted her, although she survived. Sells began living as a nomad permanently in 1978, at the age of 14. When Sells visited family in Little Rock, Arkansas, in May 1981, his mother threw him out after he tried to molest her in the shower. Thereafter, he failed to receive mental health assistance; his drinking worsened, and ultimately led to his first arrest in 1982 for public intoxication.

Criminal history and psychology

Homeless, Sells hitchhiked and train-hopped across the United States from 1978 to 1999, committing various crimes along the way. He held several very short-term manual labor and barber jobs. He drank heavily, abused drugs, and was imprisoned several times. In 1990, Sells stole a truck in Wyoming and was sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment. He was diagnosed with personality disorders, addictions, and psychosis.

On May 13, 1992, Fabienne Witherspoon, a 19-year-old woman in Charleston, West Virginia, was driving when she saw Sells panhandling under an overpass with a sign that said, "I will work for food.” She felt sorry for him and took him to her home, asking him to wait outside. She went into her home to get some food for him, and by the time she got back to her front door, he was inside. When she walked away to get something else, he got a knife from her kitchen, trapped her in a bathroom, and attempted to rape her. She hit him in the head repeatedly with a ceramic duck, got control of his knife, and stabbed him, nicking his kidney and liver. In addition, his testicle was sliced.

In retaliation, Sells beat her over the head with a piano stool. Sells tried to get away but his injuries landed him in the ICU and in police custody. Witherspoon sustained significant injuries herself, including a gaping head wound and a severe hand laceration that required surgery. After this attack, Sells took a plea deal on malicious wounding charges and served five years in prison. While serving this sentence, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and married Nora Price. He was released in 1997 and moved to Tennessee with his wife. He then left her that same year and resumed his cross-country travels.

Murders

Police investigators believe Sells murdered at least 22 people. Retired Texas Ranger John Allen said, "We did confirm 22... I know there's more. I know there's a lot more. Obviously, we won't ever know." Sells said he committed his first murder at age 15 in Mississippi, after breaking into a house. While in the house, Sells claimed to have discovered a man performing fellatio on a boy and killed the man in a fit of rage. This confessed crime has not been confirmed. Furthermore, Sells claimed he killed a man in 1980 with an ice pick near a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles which has also never been confirmed. Nonetheless, Sells has been linked to or has confessed to multiple crimes.

July 5, 1979, Port Gibson, Mississippi: John Cade, 39, was killed with a .32 calibre pistol during a home invasion. Near the crime scene, a man who resembled Sells was observed. He may have been in the area around this period, according to investigators.

April 27, 1982, St. Louis, Missouri: In November 2015, Melissa DeBoer contacted police after watching an episode of Crime Watch Daily which featured Sells. In 1982, DeBoer's mother, JoAnne Tate, 35, was murdered in her St. Louis home; Melissa DeBoer's testimony as a 7-year-old assaulted in the sexual attack helped identify Rodney Lincoln as the killer. However, DeBoer came to believe Sells, not Lincoln, murdered her mother in 1982. In 2018, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens commuted Lincoln's sentence to time served, and he was released from prison.

July 31, 1983, St. Louis, Missouri: Tiffany Gill, 4, and Colleen Gill, 33, were discovered at their house on Washington Terrace in the West End neighborhood. They had both been battered to death with a blunt weapon. A man matching Sells’ description was seen leaving the crime scene. Sells, who at the time of the double homicide resided in the 3300 block of Edmundson Road in Breckenbridge Hills, had relatives who lived in the St. Louis region.

July 26, 1985, Springfield, Missouri: In July 1985, 21-year-old Sells worked at a Forsyth carnival, where he met 28-year-old Ena Cordt and her 4-year-old son Rory Cordt. Cordt invited Sells to her home that evening. According to Sells, he had sex with her, fell asleep, and awoke to find her stealing from his backpack. He proceeded to beat Cordt to death with her son's baseball bat. He then murdered her son because the child was a potential witness. The bludgeoned bodies were found three days later, by which time Sells had left town.

May 1, 1987, Lockport, New York: Suzanne Korcz, 27, disappeared after leaving a Lockport nightclub alone. Her body was found on September 5, 1995, at the foot of an embankment near Niagara Falls, two miles away. Her cause of death was unknown due to decomposition. In 2004, Sells confessed that he had murdered a woman in the area at the time, and his presence in the city was confirmed; he was even able to identify her and photographs from the crime scene. Since he had already been sentenced to death, he was not prosecuted.

October 15, 1987, Lovelock, Nevada: Stefanie Kelly Stroh, 21, was last seen at the Four Way Café and Truck Stop in Wells, Nevada. Sells confessed to Stroh's murder. He said he picked her up while she was hitchhiking after he offered her a ride to Reno, Nevada. They took LSD together, and then he strangled her in Lovelock, covered her body in concrete, and dumped it in a hot spring. Her body was never found.

November 17, 1987, Ina, Illinois: Sells confessed to the murders of four members of the Dardeen family. While he was hitchhiking, Sells was picked up by Keith Dardeen, 29, who brought him to his home for dinner. When they arrived at the residence, Sells pulled out a handgun and shot Keith in the head twice. He then emasculated him before shooting him once more in the head. Keith's 3-year-old son, Peter Dardeen, was bludgeoned to death and Sells also attacked Elaine Dardeen, Keith's 30-year-old pregnant wife. It was such a severe beating she went into labor and gave birth to her daughter; Sells beat the newborn to death.

December 18, 1988, Tucson, Arizona: Kent Alan Lauten, 51, was stabbed and buried in a shallow grave near a homeless camp. Sells claimed he killed Lauten because he refused to pay for drugs. His body was found two days later.

December 9, 1991, Marianna, Florida: Teresa Hall, 25, and her daughter, 5-year-old Tiffany Hall, were both bludgeoned to death with a wooden table leg in their home. The killer had kicked the front door in, smashed a wooden table to pieces, and used one of the legs as a murder weapon. Serial killer Ángel Maturino Reséndiz was suspected of the crime originally but Sells later confessed to the double-murder.

October 13, 1997, Lawrenceville, Illinois: 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick was stabbed to death in his bedroom while he was sleeping at night. His mother, Julie Rea-Harper, ran to her son's bedroom, encountered an intruder wearing a ski mask, and then fought off the intruder before fleeing. The murder weapon, a steak knife from Rea's kitchen, had been left on the floor outside Joel's bedroom. She was convicted of Joel's murder, but was eventually exonerated.

October 15, 1997, Springfield, Missouri: 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney was found in 1997 in a farm pond west of Springfield. According to Sells, he pulled her from her bed in her home at night, drove her to a field, injected her with cocaine, raped her, and strangled her to death.

December 14, 1997, Las Vegas, Nevada: 19-year-old Yvette Sophia Mueller was last seen in an RV park in Las Vegas. Sells claimed to have raped and killed a blonde-haired woman in Las Vegas, chopped her body up with an axe, and buried her next to the Snake River. The body was never found because it had been swept away by a landslide, but officials’ suspect Sells was referring to Mueller.

April 15, 1998, San Antonio, Texas: Thomas Brose, 40, was a carnival worker who was shot to death in his motorhome. He was seen with a man matching Sells’ description. Sells initially confessed to the crime but later recanted it.

April 4, 1999, Gibson, Tennessee: Debra Harris, 31, and her 8-year-old daughter Ambria Halliburton were both killed after Sells broke into their house at night and raped Harris in her bed. She was stabbed repeatedly with her own kitchen knife, which was left in her chest. Halliburton was stabbed three times after she witnessed Sells murder her mother.

April 18, 1999, San Antonio, Texas: 9-year-old Mary Beatrice Perez was kidnapped from a market festival, driven to a stockyard, raped, and strangled to death with her T-shirt. Her body was found in a creek ten days later. Sells was convicted of murder in 2003 and sentenced to life.

May 23, 1999, Lexington, Kentucky: Haley McHone, 13, was kidnapped from a swing by Sells, dragged into a wooded area, and raped. She was then strangled to death with her T-shirt and covered with debris. Her body was found ten days later. Sells was arrested in the area around that time for an unrelated charge.

July 5, 1999, Kingfisher, Oklahoma: Bobbie Lynn Wofford, 14, was picked up from a Love's Convenience Store by Sells, who drove her to a secluded area, sexually assaulted, struck repeatedly with a hatchet, and then shot her in the head with a large calibre revolver when she tried to escape. He dumped her body off the side of the road and kept two of her earrings.

December 31, 1999, Del Rio, Texas: Kaylene Harris, 13, was sexually assaulted, stabbed sixteen times, and her throat slashed by Sells after he broke into her trailer. Sells also attacked Krystal Surles, 10, who was at the same property, but she ultimately survived.

Arrest and confessions

On December 31, 1999, in the Guajia Bay subdivision, west of Del Rio, Texas, Sells sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed 13-year-old Kaylene "Katy" Harris before slitting the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles. Krystal survived and received help from the neighbors after traveling a quarter-mile to their home with a severed trachea. Sells was apprehended after being identified from a sketch made from the victim's description. Sells was housed on death row in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice received him on November 8, 2000. In 2004, Sells confessed that on October 13, 1997, he broke into a home, took a knife from a butcher block in the kitchen, stabbed a little boy to death, and scuffled with a woman. Those details corroborated the account of Julie Rea Harper, who was initially convicted for the murder of her son, and then acquitted in 2006.

Police, over time, came to suspect him of "working the system" by confessing to murders he had not committed. Sells confessed to several crimes and supposed murders which were never able to be corroborated. Sells said he and an accomplice kidnapped a woman in 1982 in Little Rock, Arkansas who Sells raped, tortured, and killed, then dumped her body in a quarry. Law enforcement chose not to explore the deep quarry lake Sells led them to due to financial concerns. Sells revealed that in 1986 while he was working for Atlas Towing in St. Louis, he received a call from a prostitute whose car had broken down. When he arrived at the vehicle, he suggested sex instead of paying for the towing cost. When she declined, Sells said he shot her and threw her body in a river. Sells also divulged that in 1988 he met a woman and her son in Salt Lake City, Utah, and travelled with them to go on a camping trip. Sells claimed he killed her and her son by an unclear method and dumped both of their bodies in the Snake River in Gooding County, Idaho. Sells once stated to investigators that he had killed a black man and dumped his body in a dumpster in Chicago. He named the specific street intersection this allegedly occurred at, but no such murder was ever discovered.

Sells also claimed he killed a 20-year-old woman, who he originally thought was a man, in a drug deal gone wrong in Truckee, California on January 27, 1989. A report of an unrelated incident established that Sells was in the area, and an unidentified female body was found in the area at that time. In addition, at one time, Sells claimed to have killed two unidentified female hitchhikers in May 1989 in Roseburg, Oregon. Finally, Sells referenced other additional victims whom he was said to have killed and dumped in the Florida swamps while he worked there as well as several gay men at various rest stops along the interstate in Pennsylvania. The state's attorney in Jefferson County, Illinois, declined to charge Sells with the Dardeen family homicides in 1987 because his confession to the quadruple killing, while generally consistent with the facts of the case as reported in the media, was inaccurate with concern to some details that had not been made public. He also changed his account three times regarding how he had met the family. Investigators wanted to bring Sells to Illinois to resolve their doubts, but Texas refused, due to its law forbidding death-row prisoners from leaving the state.

Execution

On January 3, 2014, a Del Rio judge set Sells' execution date for April 3, 2014. Sells' death sentence was carried out at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. When asked if he would like to make a final statement, Sells replied, "No." As a lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered, he took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and began to snore. Less than a minute later, he stopped moving. Thirteen minutes later, at 6:27 p.m. (CDT), he was pronounced dead. Krystal Surles and members of both the Harris and Perez families attended the execution.

In media

Eight years before his execution, Sells was one of the featured interviewees on episode two ("Cold-Blooded Killers") of season one on the Investigation Discovery documentary series, Most Evil. The interview was done by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone. In the interview, Sells claimed to have killed more than 70 people. ABC News created a 10-minute mini-documentary, Tommy Lynn Sells – The Mind of a Psychopath. In 2021, A&E Networks original show I Survived a Serial Killer made an episode about the Fabienne Witherspoon story.

Pop culture

Japanese doom metal band, Church of Misery, released a track on their 2016 album "And Then There Were None" titled "Murderfreak Blues (Tommy Lynn Sells)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Lynn_Sells