A Deadly Secret: The Bizarre and Chilling Story of Robert Durst - Softcover

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Matt Birkbeck is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of The Quiet Don, Deconstructing Sammy, and A Beautiful Child. His work has been featured in a host of publications including Reader’s Digest, Playboy, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and People magazine. He has appeared on a variety of network and cable news programs, including CNN, ABC’s 20/20, NBC, CBS, and Investigation Discovery, among others, and was celebrated by the New York Times Book Review for his “killer leads, gripping kickers, and sensational descriptions.”

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For Donna, Matthew, and Christopher With love

This book is dedicated to

Donald W. Birkbeck

NYPD

1957 to 1979

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Maria Eftimiades, the former New York bureau chief at People Magazine, Helen George, a journalist and associate professor at Northampton Community College, and Paul Moses, a former reporter and editor at Newsday, author, and associate professor of journalism at Brooklyn College, for their help and guidance with this book.

PROLOGUE

A cold wind blew easily through the thick oak trees that protected the palatial home on Hampton Road, pressing down the almost bare branches and forcing them back and forth in rhythmic fashion, blowing off the few remaining leaves, which were swept out into the open air.

Some of the leaves were hurled to the ground while others were caught in the draft and forced upward, landing on the roof of the picturesque two-story home and at the bare feet of a woman, who was standing alone in the cool, nighttime air, high above the concrete driveway, wearing only a nightgown and robe.

Below her, in the driveway, was Scarsdale police Sergeant Vincent Jural, who arrived at the house around 8:30 P.M., the wailing sounds of a fire engine not too far behind in the distance.

Jural spent several minutes trying to convince the woman to sit down, since the dark brown, ceramic roof was pitched sharply, making it almost impossible for someone to stand on it without losing her balance. But there she stood, her toes pointed downward, her weight supported by the balls of her feet, performing a kind of balancing act as she looked up toward the starry fall sky, oblivious to the elements.

Standing nervously behind Jural were three men. Just a half hour earlier they had been sitting in the living room, discussing the woman’s condition, a radio turned on in the background, a newscaster reporting that United Nations forces were battling the Chinese in Korea.

With cigar and cigarette smoke slowly rising toward the ceiling, their quiet discussion about depression and paranoia had been interrupted by a loud scream. It came from a little boy, only seven, who had ventured into his mother’s bedroom to see she if she was comfortable. Instead he found the bed empty, and he raced through the upper floors, frantically searching from room to room, then running down the stairs.

He found his mother.

“Mommy! Mommy!” he said, panting. “Mommy’s on the roof!”

“On the roof? Where?” said the boy’s father, jumping up from his seat.

“In the back. Over the garage. Hurry up,” he said. “We have to get her.”

The three men followed the boy, who ran toward the back of the home, out through the kitchen, and onto the driveway.

“Look, up there,” the boys said, pointing.

The men could see her, standing above a second floor bedroom window and far above the driveway, which was sloped downward, half a floor below the ground level.

“Bernice, Bernice, are you all right?” shouted one of the men. “You have to get down from there. Do you hear me? Walk over to the window and come back inside.”

The woman slowly turned her head and looked down towards the men, focusing on her husband, but she did not reply. She stood there, staring intensely, before taking her eyes off him and redirecting her blank gaze out beyond the trees.

“Somebody call the police,” said the husband.

The call went out at 8:18 P.M., and the husband, wearing a pained expression on his face, greeted Jural upon his arrival.

“She’s in the back, on the roof,” he said.

As the two men took hurried steps, Jural asked why she was up on the roof in thirty-five-degree November weather.

The explanation was brief: his wife had suffered what appeared to be an asthma attack earlier in the day. The doctor gave her some prescription medication, which helped her fall asleep.

The man said he was in the living room talking with his father-in-law and the doctor, thinking his wife was still asleep, when they heard his oldest son scream.

Jural was now in the back of the house looking up at the woman, knowing he had to get her off the roof.

“Ma’am. Can you just sit tight while I come up there to help you back into the house?”

“No, I’m not ready to come in,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

The woman didn’t answer.

The fire truck finally pulled up to the front of the house, and Jural yelled out for someone to tell the firemen to bring a long ladder.

The firemen unhooked an extension ladder and two of them, each carrying one end, headed down the driveway, the truck’s flashing red lights attracting several neighbors like moths to a porch light. They swarmed, gawking, from the side of the house between the swaying oak trees.

The lead fireman, Tom Langan, reached the back of the driveway, looked up, and could see that the woman was in trouble.

“Hey, Tommy,” said Jural. “We need to get that ladder up there and get her down. She’s not going to move herself.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Her husband and father were telling me that she had some kind of asthma attack and was on medication. They thought she was sleeping, but one of the kids noticed she wasn’t in her room and found her up on the roof. I don’t know what her condition is. She seems distant.”

Langan looked up and called out, telling the woman he was going to prop his extension ladder against the house, in front of the garage, and would pull the rope, raising the extension just high enough to reach over the gutters.

“What’s her name?”

“I think it’s Bernice,” said Jural.

“Ma’am, please don’t move. I’m coming up to get you,” said Langan, who locked the ladder in place and began his ascent.

“No, I’m all right,” she said. “I’m really all right.”

“Bernice, I want you to stay put. Don’t move. I’m going to climb up there and you can come down with me, okay?” said Langan

The woman peered over the gutter as Langan slowly made his way toward the roof, putting one foot on a step, then placing the other foot on the same step.

She looked down onto the driveway, where her husband and father were standing. Her eyes remained fixed on her husband. There were no words, no facial expressions, just a blank stare.

The husband looked back, but said nothing.

As Langan neared the roof, he could see that the woman had moved forward and was now teetering on the edge of the roof, her robe whipped by the cold wind.

“Ma’am, you can’t move,” said Langan nervously, extending his arm out. “You have to stay still. Let me come up there and we’ll come down together.”

Her father cried out from the driveway, “Bernice, don’t move, don’t move!”

Langan checked his feet to secure his footing, then looked up, only to see the woman falling over the edge, headfirst.

Langan could hear the screams coming from neighbors as he reached out with his left hand, hoping to grab onto a part of her robe, or maybe a limb. He touched the robe, but it slipped out of his hand. The woman fell to the cold, hard concrete pavement below with a sickening thud.

Langan raced down the ladder while Jural and the three men ran over to the woman, who lay still.

“Bernice, Bernice!” shouted her husband.

Behind him was his seven-year-old son, his oldest boy,...