Police Probe Possible Link Between Robert Durst & Disappearances Of 2 Teens In California
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- New York real estate heir Robert Durst has been placed into a mental facility after being deemed a suicide risk.
This after California police say the accused killer may also be linked to the disappearance of two teenage girls.
As CBS2's Mary Calvi reported, police cars were seen at Durst's Houston apartment on Tuesday. Witnesses reportedly described officers carrying out two cardboard boxes.
These events unfolding days after the finale of a HBO documentary detailing the 71-year-old's life of privilege and links to three deaths: his friend in Los Angeles, Susan Berman; his wife in New York, Kathleen Durst; and Morris Black, an elderly neighbor in Texas.
Durst is now charged in the 2000 shooting death of Berman in California.
Outside a New Orleans courthouse on Tuesday, Durst's attorney maintained his client's innocence.
"Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman. He doesn't know who did," attorney Dick DeGuerin said.
Durst was never charged for the 1982 disappearance of his first wife Kathleen in New York. In 2003, he was acquitted of murder in the dismemberment of his neighbor in Texas.
That same year, investigators reportedly looked at Durst in the disappearance of two teenage girls in northern California in 1997, Calvi reported.
Kristen Modaferri, 18, disappeared in June of 1997 after leaving her job in San Francisco. Investigators placed Durst in the Bay Area around that time.
Five months later, 16-year-old Karen Marie Mitchell was never seen again after leaving her aunt's store in Eureka, California. Durst allegedly visited that store multiple times while dressed in drag, Calvi reported.
A police sketch of a suspect appears similar to Durst.
Author Matt Birkbeck, who has reported extensively on Durst, insists there's a connection.
"Durst had visited with or seen Mitchell at a homeless shelter that she had volunteered at," he said. "Before these cases even came up before the public, he had been living this random bizarre lifestyle."
Durst was arrested in New Orleans over the weekend after a murder charge was issued against him in Berman's death. He has been charged with first-degree murder, with the special circumstances of the murder of a witness, prosecutors said.
Berman, 55, a writer who became Durst's spokeswoman, was killed at her home near Beverly Hills with a bullet to the back of her head on Christmas Eve 2000.
Prior to her death, investigators were about to question Berman about the unsolved disappearance of Kathleen Durst back in 1982.
The capital murder charge makes Durst eligible for the death penalty in California, but prosecutors must decide whether to seek it.
