Dead wife’s relatives seek part of Robert Durst’s fortune

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A quest for the fortune left behind by multimillionaire murderer Robert Durst is underway just days after his death.

A lawyer for the family of his first wife, who vanished and was declared legally dead, notified the real estate tycoon’s trust it would be seeking more than $100 million from Durst’s estate and widow.

Attorney Robert Abrams told the Associated Press he would soon be filing a new wrongful death lawsuit against the estate and would renew legal actions against others he has claimed helped cover up the killing of Kathie McCormack Durst four decades ago.

Durst, 78, died Monday 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. He was facing seconddegree murder charges in New York for his wife’s alleged slaying.

A Los Angeles County jury convicted Durst of first-degree murder in September on the theory he silenced Berman as she planned to tell authorities she provided a phony alibi to help him get away with killing Kathie Durst in New York in 1982.

Abrams sent a letter Tuesday to a lawyer who is co-trustee warning not to distribute money from the trust or destroy any records.

He singled out Durst’s second wife, Debrah Charatan, whom he said is believed to be either the sole or primary beneficiary of a trust worth tens of millions of dollars.

Echoing allegations Abrams made in a 2017 lawsuit that remains under appeal, he said Charatan quietly married Durst in 2000 to help him evade authorities after the investigation into Kathie Durst’s disappearance was reopened.

“We’re not about to let Debrah Charatan dissolve the trust and get tens of millions of dollars more,” Abrams said. “You don’t get tens of millions of dollars in America for covering up a murder.”

Charatan has never been charged with a crime in the case and her attorneys said in court papers in 2019 that she bears no responsibility related to Kathie Durst’s disappearance, which occurred six years before she met Robert Durst.

Attorney Scott Epstein said the lawsuit was 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 deadly turn from a wealthy life of ease to a series of bizarre and bungled runs from the law became tabloid fodder and the focus of a feature film and a sixpart documentary.