Robert Durst

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Robert Alan Durst (born April 12, 1943)^[1] is a son of New York real estate mogul Seymour Durst, and brother of commercial developer Douglas Durst. He came to media attention in the 1980s when his wife disappeared, and again in the early 2000s when he was the subject of a multi-state manhunt and acquitted of murder.
In early 2015, a six-part HBO documentary titled The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst unearthed new circumstantial evidence linking Durst to the 2000 slaying in Los Angeles of writer Susan Berman, Durst's friend, who was believed to have knowledge of Durst's wife's mysterious 1982 disappearance.^[2] On March 14, 2015, Durst was re-arrested in New Orleans on a first degree murder warrant issued out of Los Angeles. Chip Lewis, a lawyer for Durst, said his client will not fight extradition to California.^[3]

One of four children, Durst grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He is the son of real estate investor Seymour Durst and his wife Bernice Herstein. His siblings are Douglas, Thomas and Wendy. Durst's paternal grandfather, Joseph Durst, a penniless Jewish immigrant tailor from Austria-Hungary, eventually became a very successful real estate manager and developer, founding the Durst Organization in 1927. His father, Seymour, became head of the family business in 1974 upon Joseph's death.^[4] At the age of seven, Durst reportedly witnessed his mother's apparent suicide; she either fell or jumped from the roof of the family's mansion. Durst, in the HBO documentary, denies this.^[5] As children, Durst and his brother Douglas underwent counseling for sibling rivalry.^[6] He attended Scarsdale High School where classmates described him as a loner.^[7]
He earned a bachelor's degree in Economics in 1965 from Lehigh University where he was a member of the varsity lacrosse team and the business manager of The Brown and White student newspaper.^[8][9] He enrolled in a doctoral program at UCLA later that year, but eventually withdrew from the school and returned to New York in 1969.^[7][10] Durst went on to become a real estate developer in his father's business; however, it was his brother Douglas who was later appointed to run the family business. The appointment in the 1990s caused a rift between Robert and his family, and he became estranged from them.^[11]

Susan Berman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

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