Robert Durst Sued for $100 Million in First Wife's Disappearance

Twenty-nine-year-old Kathleen McCormack, the first wife of Robert Durst, went missing in 1982 and now her family is suing the man they believe killed her.

Kathleen’s mother, 101-year-old Ann McCormack, and her sisters Carol Bamonte, Mary Hughes and Virginia McKeon, have filed a $100 million lawsuit Monday against Durst, the notorious subject of the recent HBO documentary series “The Jinx.”

“The family’s priority has been and continues to be to provide Kathleen with a proper and dignified burial,” attorney Robert Abrams, who represents the McCormacks, told The New York Times.

Kathie Durst, as she was known, and Robert Durst argued on the night she disappeared, according to police, who dragged the nearby lake and searched all around the South Salem home where the two lived. The cottage, which Durst sold in the 1990s, recently was re-listed for sale.

News that the McCormack family was preparing a wrongful death lawsuit was first reported by New York Magazine in October. Durst, a real estate heir who is now 72 years old, is estimated to be worth about $100 million.

The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Durst’s first wife has lingered for decades. It picked up steam with the release of the HBO series, which also appears to implicate him in the 2000 murder of former friend Susan Berman.

Toward the end of the series Durst utters the now infamous words, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

“That, sadly, was the closure we’ve been chasing after for years and years,” Jim McCormack, Kathie’s brother, told New York Magazine. “After 33 years of hell — really, there’s no other way to describe what our family has been through — we decided it’s time to sue.”

Click here to read the full story on The New York Times website.