He was the real estate heir who many suspected was responsible for the death of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, when she vanished under suspicious circumstances in 1982. Robert Durst‘s second wife, however, Debrah Lee Charatan, was with him until the end.
Durst was born in New York City on April 12, 1943, into a wealthy family known for its real estate empire. Durst’s father Seymour Durst was a prominent property developer and the head of The Durst Organization. The family was exceptionally affluent and the young Durst attended prestigious schools, including the Horace Mann School in New York City and Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in economics.
His connection to several suspicious deaths was the subject of The Jinx documentary series by Andrew Jarecki. In the series’ final moments, he seemingly confesses to three murders on a live mic while in the bathroom: “There it is. You’re caught. … What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” (The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production.)
When he died behind bars in 2022, convicted for the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman, Robert Durst‘s wife inherited a large fortune. Here’s what we know about where Debrah Lee Charatan is now.
Where is Robert Durst’s second wife now?
Debrah Lee Charatan currently serves as president of BCB Property Management, Inc. in New York City. According to the New York Times, Durst and Charatan met in 1998, introduced by a mutual friend at a real estate dinner.
In 2000, when the investigation into his first wife Kathie’s disappearance was reopened, Durst was said to have panicked and proposed to Charatan and gave her power of attorney over his bank accounts and business affairs. “I wanted Debbie to be able to receive my inheritance, and I intended to kill myself,” he said in a 2005 deposition. “It was our understanding that unless I was married to him, I couldn’t benefit from any of the trusts,” Charatan said in her own deposition.
“She’s not some opportunistic woman who came into Bob’s life for monetary gain. She was very successful, a millionaire several times over long before she met Bob,” said Amir Korangy, publisher of TheRealDeal.com told CNN in 2015. But Susan Criss, the retired judge who presided over the 2003 trial, observed, “It’s very clear that she only cares about the money.” According to sources, she only briefly lived with Durst and they had been separated, though they were still married.
Durst’s net worth was estimated to be $100 million, per the New York Times, which is a drop in the ocean compared to that of the Durst empire—Forbes magazine estimates the family’s fortune at $8.1 billion. The Durst family owns more than 16 million square feet of real estate in New York and Philadelphia, including a 10 percent stake in One World Trade Center.
When Durst died behind bars in 2022, Charatan inherited a large fortune. Not long after, Kathie Durst’s family sought more than $100 million from Durst’s estate and his widow in a wrongful death suit. Robert Abrams, the family’s attorney, claimed Charatan quietly married Durst in 2000 to help him evade authorities after the investigation into Kathie Durst’s disappearance was reopened.
Abrams said the suit is an “important step toward justice for Kathie and toward exposing the corruption that allowed Robert Durst to go unpunished,” adding that once Charatan was appointed executor, she would “apparently seek to collect the balance of her husband’s interest in the Durst family Trusts, which we believe was promised to Ms. Charatan in exchange for helping Robert Durst evade justice in connection with the murders of Kathie, Susan Berman, and Morris Black.”
He also told the Associated Press: “We’re not about to let Debrah Charatan dissolve the trust and get tens of millions of dollars more. You don’t get tens of millions of dollars in America for covering up a murder.”
