EASTON, Pa. — Robert Durst, not seen in Galveston since October, is on his way back to the island.
The cross-dressing scion of a wealthy real-estate family in New York signed an extradition waiver Friday in an Easton, Pa., courtroom.
As he walked into the courtroom, Durst barely resembled the shaggy-haired, clean-shaven man Galveston police arrested on Oct. 9, or the bald man Pennsylvania police arrested two months ago. He wore thick glasses and a gray suit that nearly matched his close-cropped gray hair and beard and his gray and white sneakers. He jerked his head often as he walked to and from the table where his attorney waited, glancing at many of the spectators in the crowded courtroom.
Durst, 58, has been in the Northampton County, Pa., Prison since Nov. 30, when police arrested him and charged him with shoplifting a newspaper, a small bandage and a hoagie sandwich.
“When he was arrested, he identified himself as Robert Durst,” said Northampton County, Pa., Criminal District Attorney John Morganelli. “When we ran a background check on him, we learned of his murder warrant in Texas.”
The arrest quietly punctuated a nationwide search for the man charged with murder in the death and dismemberment of Morris Black, Durst’s Galveston neighbor.
In exchange for waiving extradition back to Galveston County, Morganelli agreed to drop the shoplifting charges, as well as marijuana and gun possession charges from a police search of the rental car Durst had been driving at the time of his arrest.
“We exercised prosecutorial discretion not to pursue those charges now, or at any time in the future,” Morganelli said. “The serious charge Mr. Durst faces in Texas is paramount.”
While searching the car, which had been rented in the name of Morris Black shortly after Durst left the island, police also found numerous pieces of identification bearing Black’s name.
New York defense attorney Michael Kennedy, echoing comments made earlier this month in Galveston’s 212th State District Court by Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin, said his client was eager to face the charges against him in Galveston.
“Robert Durst is prepared this morning to waive his extradition hearing rights and go voluntarily back to Texas,” Kennedy told Pennsylvania Judge James Hogan.
An extradition hearing is one in which officials seek to identify whether a person arrested in one state is the same person wanted in another.
The search for Durst began Oct. 16, when he did not appear at his arraignment. A week earlier, police arrested him, but he left jail the same night after posting $300,000 bond.
Black, 71, lived in an apartment house in the 2200 block of Avenue K, in the apartment across the hall from Durst, who had rented his apartment disguised as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner.
A 13-year-old boy found Black’s torso floating in the waters near 81st Street and Channelview Drive on Sept. 30.
Police later found a batch of trash bags in the water near the torso. Inside the bags were two severed arms and two severed legs. Police also found a receipt from Chalmer’s Hardware Store for trash bags and a drop cloth, a cover for a saw and a copy of The Galveston County Daily News with a label indicating it had been delivered to 2213 Ave. K, according to a police affidavit.
The body parts were later identified as having belonged to Black, a former South Carolina resident who had lived on the island for about a year.
The county’s medical examiner’s office ruled Black’s death a homicide by unspecified means, and doctors there said they could not determine a cause without the victim’s head, which was still missing as of Friday.
Two days after the discovery of Black’s remains, police searched trash cans behind 2213 Ave. K and found an empty box of trash bags and a drop cloth cover, both of which had come from Chalmer’s Hardware Store, according to the affidavit.
A subsequent search of the apartment where Durst had been staying turned up a bloody knife and boots. Police also found blood on the apartment’s front door, the carpet, the kitchen floor and the kitchen’s walls, according to the affidavit.
After the hearing, Morganelli said he would have been ready if Durst had contested extradition, and said many misinterpreted a report that competency could play a role in the proceedings.
“We had Cody Cazales, the Galveston detective, here, just in case,” he said. “As for competency, that was really misunderstood. We never had any indication his attorneys would make that an issue. I think that might have come up because when he was arrested, he was put on suicide watch, and to get him off of that, it was necessary to have a psychiatrist examine him for his own safety.”
New York state police and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office also want to question Durst about the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen.
Gilberta Najamy, Kathleen Durst’s self-described best friend, attended the hearing and said she believed Durst knew more about the disappearance than he had said.
“Kathy left my home on Jan. 31, 1982, and the last thing she said to me was, ‘Gilberta, if something happens to me, I hope you’ll check it out,’” she said. “Kathy needs a proper burial, and Bobby’s the only one who can make that happen. I hope he has some compassion.”
As Durst walked out of the courtroom and passed her seat, Najamy said to Durst, “Tell me what happened to Kathy, please.”
Durst glanced briefly at her, but said nothing and continued walking out, as Najamy sobbed.
Westchester County Criminal District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who was also at the hearing, said Kathleen Durst’s friends and family should remain hopeful, despite the length of her disappearance.
“More and more people are coming forward, and we will get to the bottom of it, one way or another,” she said.
Members of the New York agencies were days away from questioning a longtime Durst friend, crime author Susan Berman, in 1999, when she was found murdered in her Los Angeles home. She had been shot once in the head.
Durst will arrive at the county jail sometime this weekend. His next scheduled court appearance is Thursday, when State District Court Judge Susan Criss will ask him if he is willing to waive a 60-day limit prosecutors have to try him on bail-jumping charges. The limit exists because the charge allows for a setting of no bond.
If he waives the limit, Criss said in a Jan. 11 hearing that the murder trial could begin in March.
Durst’s legal defense team includes Kennedy, DeGuerin and another high-profile Houston attorney, Mike Ramsey.
Ramsey defended Houston City Councilman Ben Reyes against bribery charges in 1998. DeGuerin represented Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh in the weeks leading up to Koresh’s 1993 death, which resulted from federal agents razing the group’s compound in Waco.
