Cathy Scott - Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Story Behind Suspicions Robert Durst Murdered Susan Berman & Her Life and Tragic Death

Also By Cathy Scott .................................................................... viiDedication .................................................................................... ixAcknowledgments ........................................................................ xiPrologue ......................................................................................xvMurder Of A \ Princess .................................................................1

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THERE ARE MANY to thank.
First, agent Frank Weimann with The Literary Group and publisher Carole Stuart with Barricade Books, who each took on Susans murder story and biography in 2002 when others chose not to because it was an unsolved case. My thanks as well to Carmela Cohen, Barricade Books art and production director, for her expert touches in preparing the manuscript for publication. My thanks to them all for getting Susans story out in the public eye.
This book would not have been complete but for those who generously agreed to be interviewed so that their friends story could be told. My warm gratitude to Susans friends, former co-workers, associates on projects, and schoolmates: Stephen M. Silverman, Ruthie Bartnof, the late Ed Bayley, Danny Goldberg, Patrick Bailey, Kevin and Don Norte, Elizabeth Mehren, Guy Rocha, Lou DeCosta, Harvey Myman, Marcy Bachmann, Juline Beier, Anita Pinchev Dash, the late Dick Odessky, Michael Greene, Deke Castleman, the late Hal Rothman, David Millman, former Governor Bob Miller, mob-attorney-turned Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, Rilo

Weisner, Kevin McPherson, Gilberte Najamy, Morgan King, and the late Mickey Freiberg for their insightful recollections of the real Susan; to her cousins Dave Davy Berman, Rosalie Bruce, Tom Padden Jr., Tom Padden III, and Shirley Ward for their family memories of Susan.

To the men and women in uniform of the Los Angeles and Galveston police departments, in particular LAPD Lieutenant Clay Farrell and Tom Thompson, detectives Paul Coulter and Jerry Stephens; and detectives with the San Francisco and Eureka, California, police departments, and the L.A. and Westchester county prosecutors offices, especially former DA Jeanine Pirro, for their help in pointing me in the right direction; the Clark County Library; and the Special Collections office at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

In addition to those who helped me indirectly, Isalute my colleagues in the press whose articles providedbackground information, in particular the New York Times,Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Galveston CountyDaily News, Texas Monthly, and New York magazine. Ishould also mention the television specials, including thosethat appeared on Foxs Americas Most Wanted, ABCNews, Prime Time Live, as well as Court TV, MSNBC,the HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deathsof Robert Durst. I also thank producers at Dateline NBC,CNN, MSNBC, the Today Show, Fox News, and ConnieMartinson Talks Books for putting me on camera to talkabout Susans investigation.

To my family, as always, for believing in me, especially: My twin sister Cordelia Mendoza and her husband Bob; my big brother Dr. J. Michael Scott and his wife Sharon; my son Raymond Somers Jr. and daughter-in-law Karen; and

Thanks also to my late mother, Eileen Rose Busby (who forever encouraged me to write, write, write), and to my late father, James Melvin Scott (who proudly published his memoir The Missouri Kid), for their erstwhile encouragement before their deaths. Did I thank them enough while they were here? Probably not. If they are listening, I thank them now, with all my heart.

Murder of a Mafia Daughter is a story about a path to murder that begins in old Las Vegas with gangsters and the boys from the Jewish Mob. It moves to San Francisco with the movers and shakers, to New York City with its literati, and ends in Beverly Hills with the glitterati.

The slaying of Susan Berman in the winter of 2000 had all the earmarks of a professional hit aimed at a person born into the Mafia. Or was that just what the killer intended everyone to think, to lead investigators to the assumption that it was a mob hit when it was not? Or was it her best friend Robert Durst who wanted her dead? If it was not a Mafia hit, then who else could have done it? And why? These are the questions Ive pursued in the many years Ive covered Susan Bermans murder, looking for evidence, clues, and the who, what, and whys of the case. The book also looks into who had motive, means, and opportunity. It invariably comes back to one person: Susans old friend Robert Durst.

In my research, I got to know Susan, an author and screenwriter. I drove the route from her Las Vegas childhood home to her final house in Benedict Canyon. I visited the restaurants and bistros she frequented in the Beverly Hills

town she loved and called home during the final seventeen years of her life. I walked through the Las Vegas house on South Sixth Street where she lived with her parents during her first twelve years. It was a bright, cheerful house. I imagined her as a child, running down the long hallway into the welcoming arms of the father she adored.

I went to the University of California, Berkeley campus where Susan got her masters degree in journalism and where protests against the war in Vietnam were rampant. Susan made lifelong friends while attending Berkeley many in the writing world who later tossed work her way.

I went to her home in Benedict Canyon where she was murdered. I stood in front of her house on the same path her killer walked before ending her life.

And, finally, I visited the Home of Peace cemetery in East Los Angeles where Susans body is entombed in a marble wall alongside her mother, father, and uncle. A recent visitor had left flowers in bud vases, one on either side of Susans shiny-brass headstone. It is where family and friends waited patiently for Robert Durst to arrive, but he didnt show for the funeral of his old friend.

Susans murder was one of three Durst was accused of committing since 1982. At the LAPDs Robbery-Homicide Division, her murder was a cold case. But it was hardly over. Police began closing in on Robert Durst.

It came to a head on an early spring evening when a visitor to New Orleans casually enjoyed a meal at Chef Emeril Lagasses NOLA restaurant on St. Louis Street.