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District Attorney Mimi Rocah said that she has assigned her top investigators in the recently formed cold case unit to investigate the alleged slaying of Durst's first wife, who hasn’t been seen in decades.
Durst - whose life and case was made famous by the HBO miniseries “The Jinx” - has been accused of killing Kathie after she suddenly disappeared at their home in New York, in the hamlet of South Salem in Northern Westchester County, in 1982. Her body has never been located.
Kathie Durst, who graduated from Western Connecticut State with a nursing degree in 1978, disappeared from the couple's Northern Westchester home, located in South Salem, after an argument in 1982 and according to New York State Police investigator Joseph C. Becerra.
Durst married Kathie McCormack in 1973 when he was 28 and she was only 20.
“The Westchester DA’s Office Cold Case Unit was established to review and reinvestigate unsolved homicides,” Rocah said in a statement on Monday. “It is reviewing a number of cases, including the death of Kathie Durst.”
Now 78 years old, Durst has long been suspected in his wife’s death but has never been charged.
Rocah said that the investigators will bring fresh eyes to the case, and bring a different perspective regarding domestic violence that has evolved since the early 1980s.
The announcement the case was being reopened came on the same day that Durst’s trial for the murder of confidant Susan Berman resumed following a 14-month COVID-19 delay.
“At the time that this alleged homicide occurred … we did not have the same understanding of domestic violence, and how that kind of abuse could play into relationships and how it could frankly color law enforcement — and by that I mean police and prosecutors’ perspectives,” Rocah said to News12.
“So we will investigate this. It is challenging to do it after so long and we want to do it right,” she added. “This has been around, and the family obviously wants and needs closure, I think, a whole community wants and needs closure.”
Durst, a Scarsdale High School graduate, remains in prison in Los Angeles on murder charges. He has also been linked to several other murders, outside of his first wife. Since his arrest, he has repeatedly denied the charges.
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