Free A Deadly Secret: The Story of Robert Durst by Matt Birkbeck

Durst name plastered all over the newspapers, Seymour made it clear to all that this was Robert’s problem.
    He would handle it.

7
    The phones in the detectives’ squad room at the Twentieth Precinct were ringing out a never-ending cascade of noise, nearly all of the calls coming from a frenzied media, which had firmly latched onto the Kathie Durst story. It was on every newsstand, morning TV news show, and all-news radio station in the New York area.
    Civilian employees answered the phones while Gibbons sat on the edge of a desk in the middle of the room, having called a meeting to review the case with Struk and a half-dozen other detectives, including John Kelly, Eddie Regan, and Sergeant Tom Brady.
    Gibbons said the papers reported only part of the story, that eyewitnesses had spotted Kathie Durst in Manhattan, and that she had called in sick to school on Monday.
    “As we know, if you read the papers today, Mrs. Durst is the daughter-in-law of Mr. Seymour Durst, a very influential New Yorker. Of course, that doesn’t mean shit to us, but it does to our bosses. Mrs. Durst was last seen Monday morning in Manhattan hailing a cab. She’s a medical student at the Albert Einstein School in the Bronx. Struk has all the details. Let’s jump on this quickly, and please, don’t talk to any reporters. Refer them to me. Okay, meeting’s over.”
    A couple of the other detectives, Kelly and Regan, pulled Struk aside, asking about Bobby Durst, wondering why he’d waited five days before reporting his wife missing.
    “Put it this way, they weren’t Ozzie and Harriet,” said Struk.
    The squad room cleared out quickly as six detectives headed outside, some to the Riverside Drive area to check local bars and restaurants, others to the apartment at East Eighty-sixth Street. Struk stayed behind to work the phones and await the task-force detectives, who were due in around the same time Struk received a call from Kathie’s brother, Jim McCormack.
    Struk remembered the conversation he’d had on Saturday with Jim, the big brother who was preoccupied with a new baby and didn’t seem overly concerned that his sister might have been in trouble.
    But now, with Kathie’s picture on the front pages of the papers, he was worried.
    His sister Mary had woken him up that morning. She was sobbing uncontrollably, spitting mostly unrecognizable words, except for the dozen or so times she mentioned Bobby’s name.
    Jim was less concerned with Mary and his other sisters, Carol and Virginia, than he was with his mother, whom he called after hanging up with Mary.
    Ann was sitting at her small kitchen table sipping a cup of tea and staring out the window when the phone rang. She was calm, the news stories having less effect on her than they had on her children.
    “You know I spoke to the detective over the weekend, Jim,” she told her son.
    “I know, Mom. I think, with the stories in the paper, it’s hitting everyone pretty hard.”
    “We need to have faith, Jim. Let’s have faith that she went somewhere to clear her mind. Medical school is very difficult. Let’s have faith she’ll soon come back, with a big, happy smile.”
    “Mom, it wasn’t medical school that was bothering her. It was her husband. You know that. If she ran, it was because of him. And when she comes back, she’s going to have to leave him. Understand?”
    Ann didn’t respond. Divorce wasn’t an option in her mind. Married couples always stuck it out, even if only one of the spouses was Catholic.
    Jim left it alone and promised his mother he’d call her later in the day, or earlier if there was any news.
    Two hours later he was on the phone with Mike Struk and he had a story to tell, something he’d failed to tell Struk when they first spoke on Saturday.
    “Detective, my sister gave me a folder to mail several months ago. Inside, there were documents, Bobby’s tax returns and other financial statements,” said Jim. “She wanted me to send them to her lawyer.