Robert Durst’s Wife Kathleen McCormack Cause Of Death

Durst and McCormack first met in late 1971. She was a medical student, and the two of them hit it off right away. Soon after, he invited her to share his Vermont home, where he had established a health food store.

Kathleen had moved there with him by January 1972. It wasn’t long before Durst’s father persuaded him to return to Manhattan and join the rest of his siblings in the family company. The pair married in April 1973 after returning to New York City.

The former couple’s relationship deteriorated over time. Durst mentioned the subject of having children as one of their common disagreements in HBO’s The Jinx, since he didn’t want kids.

Though she was only a few months away from finishing her pediatric degree when she vanished, the root of her stress appeared to be her romance rather than her academics.

Gilberte Najamy, one of McCormack’s closest friends, spoke at length about McCormack’s dread of her husband in the HBO docuseries. Fadwa Najamy, Najamy’s sister, testified about McCormack’s conduct the night she was last seen alive after her death in 2015.

On January 31, 1982, the medical student attended a gathering hosted by Gilberte at a friend’s house in Newtown, Connecticut, but departed abruptly, perplexing those close to her.

Jurors in the case heard pre-recorded testimony from Dr. Peter Wilk, a now-retired surgeon, prior to Najamy’s testimony. He recalled a discussion he had with McCormack a year before her disappeared in 1981.

“She had told me that she thought that her husband might kill her,” McCormack’s medical school mentor said in his testimony. “She was very emotional. She was shaking. She was traumatized. She said that she was going through a divorce, that it was a terrible time”.

Dr. Peter Wilk added, “She used a word that I have never heard before. She said there was a homicidal side to him and that was shocking to me. The concept that somebody would use that word has embedded.”

Durst claims that when McCormack left Najamy’s party, he met her at their house in South Salem, New York, before dropping her off at the Katonah station on the commuter train to New York City. He also said he had a drink with a neighbor and then called his wife that night when she got at their Riverside Drive apartment.

Her corpse has yet to be discovered, but Westchester County district attorney Mimi Rocah stated in May 2021 that McCormack’s disappearance had been reclassified as a homicide and will be reinvestigated.