Slaying May Be Tied to Missing Wife

Nov. 1, 2001 -- When a fisherman in Galveston, Texas found a beheaded torso washed up on the shore, a mystery began to unravel. Prosecutors in New York and California are investigating any links between two other cases and this apparent homicide.

"I was just shocked to see that it was just a torso," said the fisherman, "no head, no legs, no arms … It looked like it was a white male."

Later, the corpse's arms and legs were found in garbage bags, and the victim was identified as 71-year-old Morris Black, a Galveston resident.

Tangled up with Black's bloody remains were the cover of a bow saw and a newspaper with a delivery address that led police to the scene of the crime, an apartment where they found blood and a gun.

Blood in the hall led investigators next door, to a spotless apartment. But then police noticed deep knife cuts in the kitchen floor, with blood seeping through some of the slashes. A receipt in the trash led investigators to Robert Durst, the neighbor of the victim.

Neighbors told the police they had seen Durst carrying bags from his apartment to his car. "Based on that evidence," said prosecutor Kurt Sistrunk, "we then started looking for Durst."

When police arrested Durst, they say they found in the back seat of his car a bow saw that matched the bow saw cover found with Black's body. In the trunk of the car was a 9-mm handgun.

"When he was stopped … he was asked if he wanted to cooperate," said Sistrunk. "And it was a very terse 'no.' Short, sweet and simple 'no.'"

Wanted by the FBI

What Galveston authorities didn't know — until after Durst had been released on $250,000 bail — was that he was a multimillionaire New York real estate heir who has lived under a cloud of suspicion in connection with the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie Durst. A close friend of his, Susan Berman, had been found murdered in Los Angeles last Christmas Eve, just before police were set to question her about Durst's notorious disappearance 20 years earlier.

Westchester County, N.Y. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who re-opened the Kathie Durst missing-person case two years ago after receiving a tip, believes there may be useful clues to her case in the gruesome turn of events in Galveston.

Durst did not show up for his arraignment on murder charges and is now wanted by the FBI.

'If Anything Happens To Me …'

Kathie disappeared in January 1982. Though Durst denies any involvement in his wife's disappearance, Kathie's close friends and family have always been suspicious.

Kathie was visiting her friend Gilberte Najamy in Newtown, Conn. on Jan. 31, 1982, when, says Najamy, Kathie got an angry call from her husband Robert, who was yelling at her to come home.

"The last conversation that I had with Kathie was a very powerful conversation," recalls Najamy. "As she was leaving my house she turned to me and said, 'Gilberte, promise me, if something happens to me you'll check it out. I'm afraid of what Bobby might do.'"

Several other friends of Kathie told ABCNEWS she had given them similar warnings about her husband.

"It was only weeks before," says Kathy Traystman, "that Kathie had expressed to me that, 'If anything happens to me, Bob is responsible.'"

And Eleanor Schwank, a close friend of Kathie, says she told her: "Eleanor, if anything ever happens to me, don't let Bobby get away with it."

But for 20 years, Robert — who reported his wife missing five days after she vanished — has maintained that he had no direct or indirect responsibility for Kathie's disappearance.

He has said that after leaving Najamy's house, Kathie returned to the country house she and Durst shared in South Salem, N.Y. Then, says Robert, he put Kathie on a train back to Manhattan, where the couple lived during the week. He says he spoke to her later that night by phone, and never saw or heard from her again.

Signs of Strain

Kathie married Robert, whose family-owned company boasts upward of $650 million in Manhattan real estate, when she was 19 and he was 27. Friends and family say they seemed very much in love. But by the mid-1970s, only a few years into their marriage, friends and family say something changed.

"She wanted to have a family," says Jim McCormack, Kathie's brother. "But when she did get pregnant and she was so proud, he forced her to have an abortion."

According to Schwank, "The reason was because Bobby told her that he did not want the responsibility of children."

Friends and family say that after being denied motherhood, Kathie, an Irish-American Catholic who came from a large family, focused her energy by enrolling in nursing school. After earning her degree, she decided to go on to become a doctor.

By 1980, the marriage was showing signs of strain, Kathie's friends and brother say. They say the two were spending more and more time in separate apartments. Kathie had hired a divorce lawyer and started discussing possible financial settlements.

Three weeks before Kathie's disappearance, sources say Kathie sought medical treatment for injuries to her face and head. Friends and family say she told them the bruises were the result of a fight with her husband about money and a possible divorce.

In a sworn affidavit shortly after his wife disappeared, Durst denied he ever threatened or assaulted Kathie. He said Kathie made up allegations of abuse in order to get more money from him.

Investigating Any Connections

Investigators are also looking into any connection to the December 2000 slaying of Durst's best friend, Susan Berman, the daughter of a long-dead Las Vegas mob kingpin. Berman, who had helped Durst paint a picture of Kathie as an unstable woman, was about to be questioned about Kathie's disappearance when she was found dead in her Los Angeles home. New York authorities believe if Durst confided in anyone, it would have been Berman.

Kennedy, the defense attorney hired by Durst's family who has never met Durst, said that Kathie's disappearance may not be a homicide, and that the evidence against Durst in the Black case is not compelling.

"Many signs that … don't point to Mr. Durst at all, but in fact point away from him," he said. "There is evidence from which one could deduce a frame-up … And that evidence is extraordinarily strong and growing as we sit."

But Kathie's family doesn't see it that way.

"I have to believe that there is something about the way in which this man was murdered in Texas," says Najamy, "that is maybe Bob's way of … telling us what happened to Kathy."

The district attorney is investigating. "There is some striking similarities in the disappearance of Kathleen Durst and the murder of Morris Black," says Pirro. "We are trying to put together all the pieces of this case to see if they fit."