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纽约富豪杀人又分尸 被判无罪 舆论哗然
纽约富豪杜斯特被控在2001年谋杀邻居布雷克，把对方大卸八块，至今头颅还遍寻不着，德州法院审理结果，接受杜斯特自卫失手杀人，又因害怕而毁尸灭迹的辩词，判他无罪，舆论哗然，纷纷以显着版面报道此一判决结果。
联合晚报编译洪伯昌综合报道，这个案子单是听取证人证词就花了近六个星期，陪审团长考五天以上，才作成无罪判决，现年60岁的杜斯特聆判后，自己都吓了一跳，不敢置信，含泪抱着律师团说：「太感谢你们了。」
辩护律师在庭上表示，杜斯特第一任妻子凯萨琳1982年离奇失踪，他担心警方指控他谋杀，2001年从纽约搬到盖维斯顿，租下一间廉价集资楼，为了避人耳目，乔装成哑妇人，后恢复男人身，与住在对面的71岁邻居布雷克结为朋友。
但年迈的布雷克越来越爱计较，两人经常争吵。2001年9月28日，杜斯特发现布雷克闯进他的住处，还拿着他的手枪，在两人抢枪的过程中，枪枝走火，布雷克脸部中枪，当场毙命。杜斯特担心警方不相信他的说词，以锯子、斧头将布雷克支解，再把尸块分装进数个垃圾袋中，拿到盖维斯顿湾弃尸。杜斯特甚至用「血流满地」形容分尸时的惨状。
部分装有尸块的袋子不久陆续被冲上岸，警方在袋中发现一张写有杜斯特姓名的收据，怀疑杜斯特涉嫌重大，因此将他逮捕。后来获准交保，顺利拿出30万美元保释金，才泄漏出他是杜斯特房地产集团继承人的富豪身分。他随后弃保潜逃，六周后他在宾州偷窃一个5美元的三明治时失风落网。
检方指控，杜斯特杀人后冷静的肢解弃尸，显见整起谋杀案事先经过缜密规画。由8女4男组成的陪审团则认为，布雷克的说词虽然不尽可信，但前后一致，毫无矛盾，而且中枪的头颅部位一直未找到，根本无从定罪。
杜斯特虽然在谋杀案中获得无罪审判，弃保潜逃的部分仍可能被判10年以下有期徒刑。另外，除了凯萨琳生死未卜，她的多年挚友苏珊・柏曼，也在纽约调查人员通知要请教她凯萨琳的下落后数天中枪身亡，调查人员怀疑两起案件中布雷克都涉嫌重大，当前正积极搜证。
GALVESTON, Tex., Nov. 11 ― Robert A. Durst, the New York multimillionaire who admitted that he had butchered his 71-year-old neighbor's body with a bow saw and dumped the parts into Galveston Bay, was acquitted of the man's murder on Tuesday. Mr. Durst told the jury that despite what happened afterward, the killing itself had been accidental and an act of self-defense.
For many in the courtroom, it was a surprise ending to a strange trial. When the judge read the verdict, in a scene televised live nationally, Mr. Durst, who had faced up to 99 years in prison, looked stunned, his mouth agape as he gazed upward. A tight smile spread across his face. Moments later, he hugged his defense lawyers, softly saying, "Thank you, so much."
In a certain sense, the verdict was no more unlikely than anything else heard over six weeks of testimony: a troubled multimillionaire, described by his lawyers as suffering from mild autism, living on the cheap disguised as a woman; the unsolved disappearance of his first wife; the unsolved murder of his confidante in Los Angeles; a secret second marriage; a fatal shooting and a grisly cover-up; a nationwide manhunt that ended with a shoplifting arrest.
Members of the jury, which deliberated over four days, said at a news conference after the verdict was read that there were holes in Mr. Durst's story, but that ultimately the prosecution had failed to prove that he deliberately murdered his neighbor, Morris Black. "The defense told us a story and stuck to it," said Chris Lovell, a juror. "The D.A. gave us multiple scenarios of what may have happened."
Asked about the defendant, Deborah Warren, another juror, said: "I wouldn't ask him to escort my daughter to her senior prom. Durst isn't the only crazy person in Galveston."
A friend said that Mr. Durst told him in a telephone conversation on Monday night that the best he could hope for was a hung jury.
On the witness stand, Mr. Durst said that in November 2000, he fled New York for Galveston, a city of 57,000 people at the end of Interstate 45, because he learned that Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, had reopened an investigation into his first wife's disappearance. He said he had feared she would indict him unfairly to further her own political ambitions. Disguised as a mute woman, Mr. Durst rented an apartment for $300 a month and disappeared among the drifters and homeless wanderers of Galveston.
Mr. Durst testified that he hated the wig he wore and soon abandoned his disguise. Mr. Black, a cantankerous former seaman, lived across the hall. Although Mr. Black frequently got into arguments with strangers and neighbors, Mr. Durst said he and his neighbor became fast friends, watching television together and target shooting. But he said Mr. Black had fired a pistol twice while visiting his apartment, much to his horror.
On Sept. 28, 2001, Mr. Durst said, he returned to his apartment shortly before dawn and found Mr. Black watching television. He said he had raced into the kitchen, where he discovered that his .22-caliber handgun was no longer in its hiding place. He turned to see Mr. Black reaching for the weapon underneath a jacket and swinging toward him, Mr. Durst said. "I was concerned that Morris was going to shoot the gun, most likely at my face," he told the jury.
He testified that they had struggled and the gun had gone off in Mr. Black's face, killing him.
Afraid that no one would believe his story, Mr. Durst testified, he panicked. In a haze of drugs and alcohol, he said, he carved up Mr. Black's body until he was "swimming in blood." He triple-wrapped the body parts in garbage bags and dumped them in the bay, where they were found bobbing in the water. Mr. Black's head has never been found.
Mr. Durst was arrested and charged with murder, but he later jumped bail, fleeing by car to Pennsylvania, where he was captured after taking a Band-Aid, a chicken salad sandwich and a newspaper from a supermarket. He still faces charges of bail-jumping, a felony, and remains in jail. Prosecutors said they did not plan to charge him with abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor.
None of his friends or family were in the courtroom today. His wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, has avoided Galveston since the trial started in August. His most loyal friends, Stewart and Emily Altman, had returned to their home in Long Island. He has long been estranged from his family, who refused his requests to come to Galveston.
"Thank God," Mrs. Altman said in a telephone interview. "There was no evidence Bob did anything wrong."
Mr. Durst's lawyers, Dick DeGuerin, Mike Ramsey and Chip Lewis, said they were gratified by the verdict. Mr. DeGuerin congratulated the jury for setting aside "what happened after" the shooting and focusing on how Mr. Black had died. As for the dismemberment, he said, "Bob was horrified at some of the things he did."
Kurt Sistrunk, the district attorney in Galveston County, said he was "dismayed, disappointed" by the verdict.
Neither the defense nor the prosecution wanted to ask the jury to consider lesser charges like manslaughter. "This wasn't a case for compromise," Mr. DeGuerin said.
Mr. Sistrunk agreed. "We were looking at all or nothing," he said
Galveston's reputation as the Wall Street of the South faded into history long ago. But Mr. Durst grew up close to the real thing, a member of Manhattan's real estate royalty. He is the oldest son of the late Seymour B. Durst, a real estate developer who built skyscrapers along Third Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.
Despite having "more money than I could possibly spend," Mr. Durst testified that he had few friends and a mediocre academic record. He said he suffered from bulimia and had been devastated when his mother fell or jumped from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home when he was 7. He acknowledged lying to friends and family members when he told them that he had a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California in Los Angeles.
Mr. Durst reluctantly joined the family business in the 1970's, after marrying Kathleen McCormack, a dental hygienist living in a Durst building. He did not fit in well in real estate society; he flouted convention by belching in public or smoking marijuana at social functions, friends and acquaintances said.
His first brush with the authorities came in 1982, when he walked into a Manhattan police station saying he had not seen his wife, Kathleen, in five days. He said he had dropped her off at a train station after the couple had dinner at their weekend home in Westchester County. But there were contradictions and discrepancies in his account. And Kathleen Durst had told many friends, "If anything happens to me, don't let him get away with it," said one of them, Marion Watlington.
But the case soon faded from the headlines.
In 1994, Mr. Durst told friends he felt betrayed when his father anointed his younger brother, Douglas, to run the family empire, the Durst Organization, a privately held billion-dollar company. But in Galveston, Mr. Durst testified that he was actually relieved by his father's decision. Nevertheless, he broke with his family, refusing to attend his father's funeral in 1995.
For the next five years, Mr. Durst crisscrossed the country, living in luxurious homes in Trinidad and San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Connecticut. In 1999, a state police investigator, Joseph Becerra, got a tip that led him to reopen the investigation into Kathleen Durst's disappearance months before she was to graduate from medical school. Mr. Durst claimed that newspaper articles about the investigation had prompted his flight to Galveston.
In December 2000, he also secretly married Ms. Charatan, a New York real estate agent who had a longtime relationship with him, though the two have rarely lived together.
Mr. Durst was back in the news when his friend and confidante, Susan Berman, a writer, was found dead that same month in her Los Angeles home, shot in the back of the head. At the time, New York investigators said they had put her name on a list of people to be interviewed because she had acted as Mr. Durst's informal spokeswoman at the time his first wife disappeared.
Mrs. Pirro has assigned a squad of investigators to Kathleen Durst's case and told witnesses that she was prepared to indict Mr. Durst, according to two people interviewed by the prosecutors' office, although it was a circumstantial case. So far, no charges have been filed. Mrs. Pirro released a statement on Tuesday saying the Galveston verdict would have no effect on her investigation.
The brother of the missing woman, James McCormack, said in a telephone interview from New Jersey that he was shocked by the verdict. "How can 12 people who heard and saw the evidence agree that he was not guilty?" he asked.
纽约富豪杜斯特被控在2001年谋杀邻居布雷克，把对方大卸八块，至今头颅还遍寻不着，德州法院审理结果，接受杜斯特自卫失手杀人，又因害怕而毁尸灭迹的辩词，判他无罪，舆论哗然，纷纷以显着版面报道此一判决结果。
联合晚报编译洪伯昌综合报道，这个案子单是听取证人证词就花了近六个星期，陪审团长考五天以上，才作成无罪判决，现年60岁的杜斯特聆判后，自己都吓了一跳，不敢置信，含泪抱着律师团说：「太感谢你们了。」
辩护律师在庭上表示，杜斯特第一任妻子凯萨琳1982年离奇失踪，他担心警方指控他谋杀，2001年从纽约搬到盖维斯顿，租下一间廉价集资楼，为了避人耳目，乔装成哑妇人，后恢复男人身，与住在对面的71岁邻居布雷克结为朋友。
但年迈的布雷克越来越爱计较，两人经常争吵。2001年9月28日，杜斯特发现布雷克闯进他的住处，还拿着他的手枪，在两人抢枪的过程中，枪枝走火，布雷克脸部中枪，当场毙命。杜斯特担心警方不相信他的说词，以锯子、斧头将布雷克支解，再把尸块分装进数个垃圾袋中，拿到盖维斯顿湾弃尸。杜斯特甚至用「血流满地」形容分尸时的惨状。
部分装有尸块的袋子不久陆续被冲上岸，警方在袋中发现一张写有杜斯特姓名的收据，怀疑杜斯特涉嫌重大，因此将他逮捕。后来获准交保，顺利拿出30万美元保释金，才泄漏出他是杜斯特房地产集团继承人的富豪身分。他随后弃保潜逃，六周后他在宾州偷窃一个5美元的三明治时失风落网。
检方指控，杜斯特杀人后冷静的肢解弃尸，显见整起谋杀案事先经过缜密规画。由8女4男组成的陪审团则认为，布雷克的说词虽然不尽可信，但前后一致，毫无矛盾，而且中枪的头颅部位一直未找到，根本无从定罪。
杜斯特虽然在谋杀案中获得无罪审判，弃保潜逃的部分仍可能被判10年以下有期徒刑。另外，除了凯萨琳生死未卜，她的多年挚友苏珊・柏曼，也在纽约调查人员通知要请教她凯萨琳的下落后数天中枪身亡，调查人员怀疑两起案件中布雷克都涉嫌重大，当前正积极搜证。
GALVESTON, Tex., Nov. 11 ― Robert A. Durst, the New York multimillionaire who admitted that he had butchered his 71-year-old neighbor's body with a bow saw and dumped the parts into Galveston Bay, was acquitted of the man's murder on Tuesday. Mr. Durst told the jury that despite what happened afterward, the killing itself had been accidental and an act of self-defense.
For many in the courtroom, it was a surprise ending to a strange trial. When the judge read the verdict, in a scene televised live nationally, Mr. Durst, who had faced up to 99 years in prison, looked stunned, his mouth agape as he gazed upward. A tight smile spread across his face. Moments later, he hugged his defense lawyers, softly saying, "Thank you, so much."
In a certain sense, the verdict was no more unlikely than anything else heard over six weeks of testimony: a troubled multimillionaire, described by his lawyers as suffering from mild autism, living on the cheap disguised as a woman; the unsolved disappearance of his first wife; the unsolved murder of his confidante in Los Angeles; a secret second marriage; a fatal shooting and a grisly cover-up; a nationwide manhunt that ended with a shoplifting arrest.
Members of the jury, which deliberated over four days, said at a news conference after the verdict was read that there were holes in Mr. Durst's story, but that ultimately the prosecution had failed to prove that he deliberately murdered his neighbor, Morris Black. "The defense told us a story and stuck to it," said Chris Lovell, a juror. "The D.A. gave us multiple scenarios of what may have happened."
Asked about the defendant, Deborah Warren, another juror, said: "I wouldn't ask him to escort my daughter to her senior prom. Durst isn't the only crazy person in Galveston."
A friend said that Mr. Durst told him in a telephone conversation on Monday night that the best he could hope for was a hung jury.
On the witness stand, Mr. Durst said that in November 2000, he fled New York for Galveston, a city of 57,000 people at the end of Interstate 45, because he learned that Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, had reopened an investigation into his first wife's disappearance. He said he had feared she would indict him unfairly to further her own political ambitions. Disguised as a mute woman, Mr. Durst rented an apartment for $300 a month and disappeared among the drifters and homeless wanderers of Galveston.
Mr. Durst testified that he hated the wig he wore and soon abandoned his disguise. Mr. Black, a cantankerous former seaman, lived across the hall. Although Mr. Black frequently got into arguments with strangers and neighbors, Mr. Durst said he and his neighbor became fast friends, watching television together and target shooting. But he said Mr. Black had fired a pistol twice while visiting his apartment, much to his horror.
On Sept. 28, 2001, Mr. Durst said, he returned to his apartment shortly before dawn and found Mr. Black watching television. He said he had raced into the kitchen, where he discovered that his .22-caliber handgun was no longer in its hiding place. He turned to see Mr. Black reaching for the weapon underneath a jacket and swinging toward him, Mr. Durst said. "I was concerned that Morris was going to shoot the gun, most likely at my face," he told the jury.
He testified that they had struggled and the gun had gone off in Mr. Black's face, killing him.
Afraid that no one would believe his story, Mr. Durst testified, he panicked. In a haze of drugs and alcohol, he said, he carved up Mr. Black's body until he was "swimming in blood." He triple-wrapped the body parts in garbage bags and dumped them in the bay, where they were found bobbing in the water. Mr. Black's head has never been found.
Mr. Durst was arrested and charged with murder, but he later jumped bail, fleeing by car to Pennsylvania, where he was captured after taking a Band-Aid, a chicken salad sandwich and a newspaper from a supermarket. He still faces charges of bail-jumping, a felony, and remains in jail. Prosecutors said they did not plan to charge him with abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor.
None of his friends or family were in the courtroom today. His wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, has avoided Galveston since the trial started in August. His most loyal friends, Stewart and Emily Altman, had returned to their home in Long Island. He has long been estranged from his family, who refused his requests to come to Galveston.
"Thank God," Mrs. Altman said in a telephone interview. "There was no evidence Bob did anything wrong."
Mr. Durst's lawyers, Dick DeGuerin, Mike Ramsey and Chip Lewis, said they were gratified by the verdict. Mr. DeGuerin congratulated the jury for setting aside "what happened after" the shooting and focusing on how Mr. Black had died. As for the dismemberment, he said, "Bob was horrified at some of the things he did."
Kurt Sistrunk, the district attorney in Galveston County, said he was "dismayed, disappointed" by the verdict.
Neither the defense nor the prosecution wanted to ask the jury to consider lesser charges like manslaughter. "This wasn't a case for compromise," Mr. DeGuerin said.
Mr. Sistrunk agreed. "We were looking at all or nothing," he said
Galveston's reputation as the Wall Street of the South faded into history long ago. But Mr. Durst grew up close to the real thing, a member of Manhattan's real estate royalty. He is the oldest son of the late Seymour B. Durst, a real estate developer who built skyscrapers along Third Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.
Despite having "more money than I could possibly spend," Mr. Durst testified that he had few friends and a mediocre academic record. He said he suffered from bulimia and had been devastated when his mother fell or jumped from the roof of the family's Scarsdale home when he was 7. He acknowledged lying to friends and family members when he told them that he had a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California in Los Angeles.
Mr. Durst reluctantly joined the family business in the 1970's, after marrying Kathleen McCormack, a dental hygienist living in a Durst building. He did not fit in well in real estate society; he flouted convention by belching in public or smoking marijuana at social functions, friends and acquaintances said.
His first brush with the authorities came in 1982, when he walked into a Manhattan police station saying he had not seen his wife, Kathleen, in five days. He said he had dropped her off at a train station after the couple had dinner at their weekend home in Westchester County. But there were contradictions and discrepancies in his account. And Kathleen Durst had told many friends, "If anything happens to me, don't let him get away with it," said one of them, Marion Watlington.
But the case soon faded from the headlines.
In 1994, Mr. Durst told friends he felt betrayed when his father anointed his younger brother, Douglas, to run the family empire, the Durst Organization, a privately held billion-dollar company. But in Galveston, Mr. Durst testified that he was actually relieved by his father's decision. Nevertheless, he broke with his family, refusing to attend his father's funeral in 1995.
For the next five years, Mr. Durst crisscrossed the country, living in luxurious homes in Trinidad and San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Connecticut. In 1999, a state police investigator, Joseph Becerra, got a tip that led him to reopen the investigation into Kathleen Durst's disappearance months before she was to graduate from medical school. Mr. Durst claimed that newspaper articles about the investigation had prompted his flight to Galveston.
In December 2000, he also secretly married Ms. Charatan, a New York real estate agent who had a longtime relationship with him, though the two have rarely lived together.
Mr. Durst was back in the news when his friend and confidante, Susan Berman, a writer, was found dead that same month in her Los Angeles home, shot in the back of the head. At the time, New York investigators said they had put her name on a list of people to be interviewed because she had acted as Mr. Durst's informal spokeswoman at the time his first wife disappeared.
Mrs. Pirro has assigned a squad of investigators to Kathleen Durst's case and told witnesses that she was prepared to indict Mr. Durst, according to two people interviewed by the prosecutors' office, although it was a circumstantial case. So far, no charges have been filed. Mrs. Pirro released a statement on Tuesday saying the Galveston verdict would have no effect on her investigation.
The brother of the missing woman, James McCormack, said in a telephone interview from New Jersey that he was shocked by the verdict. "How can 12 people who heard and saw the evidence agree that he was not guilty?" he asked.
