He was the actual property inheritor who many suspected was accountable for the loss of life of his first spouse, Kathleen McCormack Durst, when she vanished underneath suspicious circumstances in 1982. Robert Durst‘s second spouse, nevertheless, Debrah Lee Charatan, was with him till the tip.
Durst was born in New York Metropolis on April 12, 1943, right into a rich household identified for its actual property empire. Durst’s father Seymour Durst was a distinguished property developer and the top of The Durst Group. The household was exceptionally prosperous and the younger Durst attended prestigious faculties, together with the Horace Mann Faculty in New York Metropolis and Lehigh College in Pennsylvania, the place he graduated with a level in economics.
His connection to a number of suspicious deaths was the topic of The Jinx documentary collection by Andrew Jarecki. Within the collection’ closing moments, he seemingly confesses to a few murders on a reside mic whereas within the toilet: “There it’s. You’re caught. … What the hell did I do? Killed all of them, after all.” (The quotes had been later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic impact however the manufacturing.)
When he died behind bars in 2022, convicted for the 2000 homicide of his longtime pal, Susan Berman, Robert Durst‘s spouse inherited a big fortune. Right here’s what we find out about the place Debrah Lee Charatan is now.
The place is Robert Durst’s second spouse now?
Debrah Lee Charatan at present serves as president of BCB Property Administration, Inc. in New York Metropolis. In response to the New York Instances, Durst and Charatan met in 1998, launched by a mutual pal at an actual property dinner.
In 2000, when the investigation into his first spouse Kathie’s disappearance was reopened, Durst was mentioned to have panicked and proposed to Charatan and gave her energy of legal professional over his financial institution accounts and enterprise affairs. “I wished Debbie to have the ability to obtain my inheritance, and I supposed to kill myself,” he mentioned in a 2005 deposition. “It was our understanding that except I used to be married to him, I couldn’t profit from any of the trusts,” Charatan mentioned in her personal deposition.
“She’s not some opportunistic lady who got here into Bob’s life for financial achieve. She was very profitable, a millionaire a number of occasions over lengthy earlier than she met Bob,” mentioned Amir Korangy, writer of TheRealDeal.com instructed CNN in 2015. However Susan Criss, the retired decide who presided over the 2003 trial, noticed, “It’s very clear that she solely cares concerning the cash.” In response to sources, she solely briefly lived with Durst and so they had been separated, although they had been nonetheless married.
Durst’s internet price was estimated to be $100 million, per the New York Instances, which is a drop within the ocean in comparison with that of the Durst empire—Forbes journal estimates the household’s fortune at $8.1 billion. The Durst household owns extra than 16 million sq. ft of actual property in New York and Philadelphia, together with a ten % stake in One World Commerce Middle.
When Durst died behind bars in 2022, Charatan inherited a big fortune. Not lengthy after, Kathie Durst’s household sought greater than $100 million from Durst’s property and his widow in a wrongful loss of life swimsuit. Robert Abrams, the household’s legal professional, claimed Charatan quietly married Durst in 2000 to assist him evade authorities after the investigation into Kathie Durst’s disappearance was reopened.
Abrams mentioned the swimsuit is an “necessary step towards justice for Kathie and towards exposing the corruption that allowed Robert Durst to go unpunished,” including that when Charatan was appointed executor, she would “apparently search to gather the steadiness of her husband’s curiosity within the Durst household Trusts, which we consider was promised to Ms. Charatan in change for serving to Robert Durst evade justice in reference to the murders of Kathie, Susan Berman, and Morris Black.”
He additionally instructed the Related Press: “We’re not about to let Debrah Charatan dissolve the belief and get tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} extra. You don’t get tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in America for masking up a homicide.”
