(Bloomberg) -- About a month before Robert Durst’s first wife vanished in 1982, she confessed to being afraid he’d sue her for abandonment if she left him, his younger brother told the jury at Durst’s murder trial.
Thomas Durst, who had come to the couple’s Upper East Side apartment for a rare visit, testified he knew Robert to be a cheapskate. When Kathie confided in Thomas about getting a divorce, he gave her almost all the cash he had in his wallet, he said.
“She didn’t say thank you,” Thomas Durst told the Los Angeles jury during the first day of witness testimony in a case that may take five months. “She said she needed more.”
Thomas said Robert Durst confronted him some time after Kathie had gone missing. Prosecutors believe Durst killed her and they’re seeking to prove that he murdered an old friend in 2000 because she knew too much about what happened to Kathie.
“I know she asked for you for money,” Thomas Durst yelled in an angry voice on the witness stand, mimicking how his brother spoke to him.
“I felt I was about to die,” Thomas Durst said.
Robert Durst’s lawyers laid out his defense Tuesday, telling the jury that he panicked when he found Susan Berman’s corpse at her Beverly Hills home, sent a note to police about a “cadaver” at Berman’s address and ran because he feared he would be considered a suspect.
Thomas Durst left New York for San Francisco in 1973 and hasn’t had anything to do with his family, one of the most prominent owners of New York real estate, since the death of their father in 1995, he testified.
He recalled how Robert and Kathie came to stay with him in San Francisco shortly after their wedding and how Kathie needed to flee his apartment by the fire escape after a fight with her husband.
His description of the couple’s stormy relationship echoed testimony from a 1980s neighbor of the Dursts -- at their Upper West Side home -- about providing shelter to Kathie when she fled in fear of him.
“She was escaping from a very emotionally abusive relationship,” Anne Doyle said. “I think he would beat her up.”
Doyle recalled when Kathie came across the terrace on a cold and windy night in 1981, wearing only pajamas with short pants and short sleeves. Kathie and Robert had been in a “massive fight” because he wanted her to sign a paper that she wouldn’t be entitled to any money or property from him if she left, the neighbor testified. Kathie was so terrified, she only wanted to sit in the bathroom where it was impossible to see her from the terrace, Doyle said.
According to Doyle, Kathie looked disheveled and appeared “pushed around” that night.
“I know she was terrified of him and it wasn’t just emotional abuse,” Doyle testified.
Doyle couldn’t recall on the witness stand whether Kathie told her about Robert Durst having a gun.
Thomas Durst said that during his 1982 visit, Kathie spoke in a very high-pitched voice he had never heard her use before and talked rapidly without pause.
“It was either fear or drugs,” he said. “There was something going on.”
Thomas Durst, who was called as a witness by prosecutors, said he was “humiliated” to be in court and that he was there against his will.
He described his 76-year-old brother -- who may be worth as much as $100 million -- as a “minus 50” on a scale of 1 to 100 in terms of cheapness.
“I never knew him to be generous,” Thomas Durst said. “He came to my house with his wife and he had her on food stamps.”
He told jurors that he was invited to visit his brother and his wife for dinner at their Upper West Side apartment in December 1981. Kathie greeted him in her nightgown and Robert Durst came up behind her and started lifting up her gown against her will, he said.
“It was a power trip of some sort,” Thomas Durst said, adding that he immediately turned around and left.
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