He Killed Them All Read online

  • My office had a 98 percent conviction rate for felony cases at the superior court level.

  • Under my watch, there was a 15 percent increase in convictions . . .

  • And a 10 percent drop in crime.

  • I founded the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Unit, the first of its kind in the nation.

  • I founded the High Technology Crimes Bureau, the first of its kind, to catch Internet pedophiles, and did. Over a hundred of them.

  • I created the “no-drop” policy of pursuing domestic violence crimes, even if the victim wanted to drop the case.

  • I prosecuted rapists, murderers, wife-beaters, deadbeat dads, embezzlers, slumlords, racketeers, wiseguys, white-collar criminals, animal torturers, sexual deviants, crooked cops, hate criminals, pedophile priests, robbers, thieves, kidnappers, and drug dealers, among other scumbags.

  Of course, there was one case I wasn’t able to indict, let alone prosecute. Durst was my white whale.

  I’d been accused of being politically ambitious by every one of my critics without having made any noise about seeking higher office. But after decades in law enforcement and four political campaigns, the attorney general’s race seemed like a logical next step.

  I’d chased a psychopath for years, and the chase had taken a toll on me. At no point did I ever think, “Just drop it. Forget about it. Distance yourself from it.” Absolutely not. If there was any stone to turn over to get Durst, any worms under that stone to pick through, I’d do it, in or out of office.

  Naturally, when my term as DA ended, no-level Ellen Strauss blasted me in the press for leaving office without indicting Durst and for caring more about my relentless pursuit of publicity in other states than meeting with the McCormack family in New York.

  All police investigation is a team effort. We were all doing our part. Everybody was. For my part, I interviewed Debrah. I created the tristate task force and searched Durst’s Chevy personally. I met with Douglas, as uneventful as that was. I got the DAs in Los Angeles and Galveston on the phone. I kept the money flowing into the investigation. And, yes, I spoke to the press. There were times when the McCormacks were frustrated and disappointed by the pacing of our investigation. They wanted an arrest ASAP, but we weren’t in a position to make one. They’d been waiting since 1982, seventeen years longer than my office had been involved. Despite my assuring the family we were doing everything we could, Jim McCormack in particular would complain, “You’re not doing enough.”

  He didn’t understand the legal ins and outs. There was no point in indicting until I knew I could get a conviction. Meanwhile, Joe Becerra was encouraging the McCormacks’ impatience, telling them, “We’re ready.”

  If there was such a solid case, why didn’t the DA who followed me indict Robert? She’s got more evidence than I had in 2005. I didn’t indict, and she hasn’t either, because until Durst’s bathroom confession, there was no way in hell we could get a unanimous guilty verdict for intentional murder on the evidence we had.

  The worst possible outcome would be for Robert Durst to be acquitted. That would mean we would lose all chance to get justice for Kathie. And Robert Durst would skate on another one.

  Even as a private citizen, no longer a member of law enforcement, I vowed to track Durst and keep both eyes peeled. If he so much as pissed himself in public (which he finally did, and got arrested for, in 2014!), I’d know about it. If he came into my neck of the woods, I’d hear about it.

  Another twist: When Durst did come to Westchester, he stayed at the Ritz in White Plains, in the same complex Al was living in for a while. A friend then always called to give me the heads-up, “Durst’s in town.” He came often. I learned he was there in July and December 2009 and March 2010. Whenever Durst was a guest at the Ritz, female staff were not allowed on his floor without security. A source who works there told me about this precaution and Durst’s gruff manner and secrecy. He rarely went out and talked to no one.

  Still, time to lock the doors, set the alarm, and load the guns.

  THE DAY AFTER I lost the election for attorney general of New York State, Warner Bros. Productions called. I didn’t even have an agent. They wanted me to do a courtroom show called Judge Jeanine Pirro.

  I’d been thinking about doing TV for a while. In fact, as a sitting DA, I’d been approached. That would have been inappropriate, of course. But the timing of the Warner Bros. call was serendipitous. With law enforcement and politics behind me, I turned to entertainment. I wasn’t concerned about being unemployed. I just saw it as my next great adventure.

  We developed the show for a year, and then premiered in 2009. Judge Jeanine Pirro was syndicated and did quite well. I even won an Emmy for it in 2011. At the same time, I started working for Fox News as a commentator. When Judge Jeanine wasn’t renewed, I created a one-hour news-format show called Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News.

  Andrew Jarecki’s feature film All Good Things was released in 2010.

  I’d practically forgotten about that guy.

  He’d come to our offices in 2003 after the acquittal and met with David Hebert. He said he was working on a movie about the case. He wanted access, records, interviews, our entire file on an open case. After meeting with Jarecki, David didn’t think this project was an attempt to understand and explain the reality and banality of evil. Jarecki was captivated by the psychology and morality of a scheming, violent individual and he wanted to explore that creatively. It sounded to David like Jarecki’s movie might show Durst in a sympathetic light, and we wanted nothing to do with it. It would not further the interests of law enforcement, period. So David gave Andrew the brush-off, saying, “Thank you for coming in. It’s an open and pending case and we generally do not release investigative material. We’re going to pass, but do stay in touch.”

  And that was that.

  Or so I thought.

  A nosy ADA in our office named Kevin Hynes got wind of the Jarecki inquiry and asked a lot of questions about it. I should have known to be wary.

  Some background on Kevin Hynes: He worked in my office from 2002 to 2004. When I hired him, Durst was in prison in Texas, awaiting trial. Kevin was not in my office in 1999 when the lake and the South Salem cottage were searched, or when we interviewed Kathie’s friends and family. He missed the murders of Susan Berman and Morris Black. Given that he had some previous experience as a prosecutor, we had him take a look at the Durst file when he started in my office. He had fresh eyes. He might see something.

  As it turned out, he had nothing to offer about Durst, or to law enforcement in general. I never should have hired him.

  To my misfortune, after I’d hired him, I learned he was peddling a book project about John F. Kennedy Jr. Hynes and Kennedy worked in the Manhattan DA’s office together. After John died in that horrific plane crash, along with his new wife and her sister, Hynes intended to exploit their supposed friendship for profit. I have since gotten my hands on a copy of his book proposal. The entire package was a sick exploitation of Hynes’s just-buried so-called best friend. Not too surprisingly, it went nowhere.

  I should’ve been on alert when I heard this story and questioned Hynes’s character. But his father was Charles “Joe” Hynes, the Brooklyn DA, a friend of mine. He said his son was smart and would be an asset to my office. I had a great deal of respect for Joe and believed him. I had met Kevin several times socially and found him to be impressive, quick, witty, and articulate. Coincidentally, Kevin had also written a letter of support for Al after his conviction. He’d done good work with defense attorneys in Westchester. At first glance, he was extremely ballsy, a not-afraid-of-anything, outgoing guy.

  You hire different people for different reasons. He wouldn’t be a good investigator, but I thought he would be great in a courtroom. I was always on the lookout for a fearless prosecutor with the gift of gab who could convince a jury to convict. So I hired him.

  Terrible mistake.

  Almost immediately, he managed to ma
ke enemies out of just about everyone. It’s telling that a truckload of fancy furniture arrived before he did. He cared a lot about the trappings. How his office looked was more important than what he did in there. He cut corners, and took shortcuts, which you don’t do in law enforcement when you have to chase down every tiny lead and present precise facts and figures. The ballsy quality I liked? It had an aggressive edge.

  And then there was an incident with Hynes that had me boot him—with both Manolos—out of my office.

  One night in July 2004, Hynes took out one of the county’s cars, a 1997 Mercury, crashed it into an embankment in Armonk, and left the scene of the accident without reporting it. The police found the wrecked car with the airbags deployed and an empty Heineken bottle on the seat.

  He left the scene of an accident with alcohol in the car. My staff and I had spent the last decade visiting high schools in Westchester, lecturing kids about the dangers of drunk driving. I was known as a notoriously tough judge when it came to teens and alcohol, and anyone arrested for DWI.

  That one of my own had been engaged in such conduct was a black mark on my office, and I was livid.

  It gets worse.

  At 5:00 a.m.—one hour before the police found the crashed car—Hynes walked into a nearby Texaco station. According to the police interview with the man working the late shift there, Hynes walked in and tried to buy beer but was refused (in Westchester, we had a cutoff time for alcohol purchases). He had a black burn mark on the right front pocket of his pant leg. He then asked for a straw, while shifting on his feet nervously and repeatedly wiping his nose.

  We all know what that means.

  The station cashier said Hynes looked intoxicated, on drugs, or both. He took his straw and left, only to come back in later to buy a Coke, and then loiter in the parking lot in a daze for half an hour. It seemed shady to the cashier, so he reported it.

  It gets even worse.

  Hynes was picked up in the Texaco parking lot by another investigator, who denied doing so. Did these two really think that as the DA, I couldn’t figure out what happened? I learned the truth about their movements from pings on their cell phones.

  Hynes would claim he left the scene of his accident because he was afraid for his safety—in Armonk, a wealthy suburb. Ridiculous. He was the most dangerous man in Armonk that night. He eventually did call in the accident and admit to being the driver, but he didn’t go to the police station for a Breathalyzer test for a period of time that would have allowed alcohol, if any, to be metabolized out of his system. Leaving the scene of an accident was a lesser charge than DWI, which he knew all too well.

  Chief investigator Casey Quinn unearthed that Hynes wasn’t alone that night. He was with another person. Many suspected it was a married female ADA with whom he had an extremely close friendship.

  I moved the Hynes matter to another prosecutor’s office because I clearly had a conflict. Eventually, he was charged only with leaving the scene. Although witnesses had attested to his drunken appearance that night, the prosecutor couldn’t prove how drunk he was given the time lapse, so no additional charges were filed against him.

  Hynes wisely resigned a few days later. He knew I never wanted to see him again. I ended up asking the investigator who lied about picking him up at the Texaco to leave the office, and got his retirement paperwork on my desk promptly.

  In my press statement, I said, “It is well known that my office has been at the forefront of combating the problem of the illegal use and sale of alcohol. As public servants we are held to a higher standard.”

  Months later, I went to see my dermatologist, Amy Newburger, whose brilliant daughter was an intern in my office. She said, “Too bad about Kevin Hynes.”

  I said, “What’s bad about it? He was drinking and driving and he lied about it. Good riddance.”

  She said, “I thought you knew he had a drinking problem. He used to drink at lunch. He took my daughter to the Cheesecake Factory in White Plains and drank heavily.”

  She thought I knew? I had no idea! I would have fired him as soon as I found out! It wasn’t bad enough that he was drinking at lunch. He took a young intern with him.

  Kevin told people I’d be sorry for firing him one day. He and Joe Becerra were best pals (perhaps Kevin should write a book about their friendship?), and I’m sure they bonded over their common hatred of me.

  Hey, I didn’t get drunk and drive a car into a shrub. I didn’t leave the scene and wander, wasted, into a Texaco and ask some kid behind the register for a straw while repeatedly wiping my nose. But here’s another guy who had it out for me because I refused to clean up his mess.

  I was not the cleaning lady.

  I was the Boss.

  It was difficult for some fully grown boys to accept that. If anyone disrespected the office of the district attorney, he was gone. Kevin had a truck come get his furniture, and that was the end of him. I never liked that furniture anyway.

  So fast-forward to 2010. All Good Things (the name of the Vermont health food store that Robert and Kathie once owned) was released. My son Alex saw it and was furious. “It made you look really bad, Ma,” he told me. “Really bad.”

  Alex lived through those years with me, and he knew what it was really like. How hard I worked, how frightened Al was for our safety. Apparently, Jarecki reduced it all to a cliché. He turned me into a cartoon character of a media-obsessed dragon lady. He was Dick DeGuerin in a Hollywood hoodie and goatee.

  I didn’t see the movie in theaters. But then curiosity got the best of me, and I bought the DVD.

  About halfway through, actor Diane Venora made her first appearance as “Janice Rizzo.” The name alone was Italian baiting. Why not have my character carry around a box of spaghetti and a jar of tomato sauce instead of a briefcase? Really?

  If only I had the power to indict, I’d charge Diane Venora for overacting.

  Jarecki made the character look shady. There was a scene when she was barking demands at her office lackey with her high heels up on her desk, like she had nothing better to do than schedule television appearances and file her nails. The last time I filed my own nails was when I was in grammar school. This character wasn’t me. She wasn’t on a mission to protect women from domestic violence. She wasn’t a passionate advocate for the underdog. And if you saw what my desk really looked like in 2004, covered in case files, the phone lighting up 24/7, you’d know how absurd laid-back “Janice Rizzo” was.

  I worked my tail off. Try spending fourteen hours working in Manolo Blahniks and not put your feet up.

  I was furious about the depiction of my breakfast meeting with Douglas.

  I can’t prove it, but I believe Hynes reached out to Jarecki on his own after he resigned in 2004 and told him about that meeting. No one outside my office knew it’d taken place. Kevin sat in an office adjacent to mine. I must have told him something about the meeting. But what was presented in the movie was nothing like what actually happened.

  The actor who played me walked into a deserted restaurant and sat down at the table with the actor who played Douglas. Then “I” said, “How can I help you?” It suggested to the viewer I was there to play ball with the Dursts, and that he bought me off to stop the investigation into Robert’s crimes.

  Hog.

  Wash.

  It was infuriating that my career in law enforcement had been reduced to a vapid, one-dimensional caricature. “Janice Rizzo” was a cartoon in an okay suit.

  I couldn’t have expected Jarecki to make me a three-dimensional character. But even in his vulgar depiction, he could have given the character some depth. The movie was just another example of a man slamming a woman in power. He played into the public’s fear of an “ambitious LADY.” Not just me. Any woman in power was someone to be feared—and criticized out of existence. It was easier to make Durst sympathetic than to make a powerful woman decent.

  But I didn’t dwell on it. I had a TV show to do and many other things to deal with. I thought
, Done thinking about that. Moving on.

  Everyone got a bad shake in All Good Things.

  Jim McCormack, played by Nick Offerman, came off as a bumbling idiot.

  Susan Berman was portrayed as a strung-out party girl.

  Douglas was portrayed as a vain, cold, heartless schemer. That didn’t ring true to me. My take on Douglas was “brilliant coward.”

  The worst offense: Kirsten Dunst as “Kathie Marks” was a coke-snorting glutton for punishment.

  My stomach turned watching love scenes between Kirsten Dunst and Ryan Gosling as “David Marks.” Was Jarecki going for a psycho-romance?

  Never before or since has a shirtless Ryan Gosling made me throw up in my mouth.

  As a whole, the movie made a lot of leaps over some perilous chasms. Spoiler alert: “David Marks” was portrayed as a misunderstood victim of his domineering father and helpless in his fight against his worst impulses. Jarecki implied that Seymour Durst, played by Frank Langella, helped Robert dispose of Kathie’s body. We don’t know that he didn’t, but it did seem like a bit of a stretch that the old man would do the dirty work. The Morris Black character, “Malvern Bump,” was construed as the shooter of Susan Berman. That was just preposterous.

  Who in his or her right mind would actually pay to see this (besides me)?

  Not a lot of people did, actually.

  It didn’t annoy me that the few who did buy a ticket or rent the disc got the wrong impression of me. What disappointed me was that my son saw it and felt offended on my behalf.

  The one word that has always motivated me is not “ambition.” It is “justice.” I used my high profile to get justice. It was an arrow in my quiver, one of many. Jarecki bought into the superficial narrative that some had been pushing.

  Apparently, Andrew’s erroneous opinion of me changed when he confronted the facts of the case, put aside the fiction, and made The Jinx.

  YOU CAN’T TAKE A psychotic, entitled, narcissist serial killer anywhere.

  Postprobation Robert Durst seemed hell-bent on getting himself in trouble. His latest flare-ups with the law were bizarre and gratuitous.