The family of Kathie McCormack Durst, the first wife of the late disgraced real estate heir Robert Durst, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his second wife.
New York officials charged Durst with the murder of his first wife last year, nearly 40 years after she disappeared under mysterious circumstances. But his death in a California prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of his friend, brought the case to a halt.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday, the McCormack family alleges that Debrah Lee Charatan, Durst’s second wife who stands to collect millions from his estate, helped him avoid justice for years in connection with McCormack’s death and two other killings.
Charatan is believed to be the sole or primary beneficiary of a trust worth tens of millions of dollars and is now the nominated executor of Durst’s estate, said Robert Abrams, a lawyer for the McCormack family.
The lawyer alleges the money was promised to Charatan in exchange for her help and recently notified Durst’s trust that the McCormack family would be seeking more than $100m from Charatan and Durst’s estate. Filed in federal court on the 40th anniversary of McCormack’s disappearance, the lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $75,000.
Robert Durst died on 10 January in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for shooting his best friend, Susan Berman, in the back of the head at her Los Angeles home in 2000 as she was preparing to tell police what she knew about McCormack’s death. Just weeks after he was sentenced for Berman’s killing, a New York grand jury indicted him on a second-degree murder charge in McCormack’s case.
But the 78-year-old’s death upended both cases, bringing the McCormack charges to a halt and, thanks to a quirk in the California law, seeing the Berman murder conviction rendered void because the case was under appeal when Durst died.
Durst was suspected in his first wife’s disappearance for years, and the Westchester county district attorney’s office has long faced criticism for waiting decades to file charges against him in the matter.
A civil lawsuit against his estate was one of the only remaining legal avenues for McCormack’s family, according to Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who was not involved in the case.
“No one was willing to prosecute and try the case. Unfortunately, because of this long delay, Kathie Durst and her family will never receive the criminal justice that she deserves,” Rahmani said last month.
The McCormack family previously filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Durst in 2019, but the case was thrown out because it was filed too late. The judge in that case said, however, the case could be revived if Durst were to face criminal charges in connection with his first wife’s death.
McCormack disappeared in 1982 and her body was never found. At the time of disappearance, she was a medical student, who was preparing to become a pediatrician. Her family has said Durst was abusive, and that she had previously required treatment in a hospital for injuries he caused.
Durst married Charatan in December 2000. Abrams alleged in a previous lawsuit, now under appeal, that Charatan wed Durst to help him evade authorities after the investigation into McCormack’s disappearance was reopened.
Charatan has never been charged with a crime in the case, and her lawyers said in court papers in 2019 that she bears no responsibility related to McCormack’s disappearance, which occurred six years before she met Robert Durst.
Attorney Scott Epstein said allegations against her were based on rumor “more suitable for a work of fiction”.
“The plaintiffs’ claims are at best an example of the most extreme form of speculation and at worst nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to publicly embarrass and extort money from Ms Charatan, an innocent party, who is perceived by the plaintiffs as a deep pocket,” Epstein wrote.
Durst’s suspected involvement in three killings in three states was documented in the 2015 HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. The series chronicled McCormack’s disappearance, Berman’s murder and the 2001 death of Durst’s neighbor, Morris Black, in Galveston, Texas, where Durst was hiding out while disguised as a deaf-mute woman.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
