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Robert Durst, real estate heir convicted of murder, dead at 78

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Wealthy New York real estate heir and convicted murderer Robert Durst has died at age 78. For decades he was dogged by suspicion in several disappearances and deaths before he was convicted last year of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison.

Durst died of natural causes Monday in a hospital outside the California prison where he was serving a life sentence, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Durst had been held in a hospital lockup in Stockton due to a litany of ailments.

In September, Durst was convicted of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Oct. 14. Two days later, he was hospitalized with COVID-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead.

But only after Los Angeles prosecutors proved that Durst silenced Berman before she could tell police she helped him cover up Kathie’s killing was he indicted by a New York grand jury in November for second-degree murder in his wife’s death.

Westchester County prosecutors, who had been trying to get Durst transferred there to face the charge, said they planned to reveal new details about the case in coming days.

“After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Durst’s family,” District Attorney Miriam Rocah said in a statement.

“We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleen’s murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.”

Los Angeles prosecutors also told jurors that Durst got away with murder in Texas after shooting a man who discovered his identity while he was hiding out in Texas after Berman’s killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot the man as they struggled for a gun.

Deputy Los Angeles District Attorney John Lewin said jurors told him after the verdict that they believed Durst killed his wife and murdered Morris Black in Texas.

Documentary renewed scrutiny

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements — including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment — in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

The 2015 show introduced Durst’s name to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities.

He was arrested in Berman’s killing the night before the final episode — which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing a live microphone: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect, but the production — done with Durst’s co-operation and against the advice of his lawyer and friends — dredged up new evidence, including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Berman’s killing and incriminating statements he made.

Mysteries of 2 deaths and a disappearance surround the eccentric real estate heir 2:39

Police had received a note directing them to Berman’s home, bearing the word “CADAVER” in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of The Jinx that while he didn’t write the note, whoever did had killed Berman.

“You’re writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written,” Durst said.

His defence lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note. Prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Durst admitted lying under oath

Clips from The Jinx and the 2010 movie All Good Things, in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, played starring roles at trial.

So did Durst himself.

His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didn’t work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by Lewin, Durst admitted he had lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

” ‘Did you kill Susan Berman?’ is strictly a hypothetical,” Durst said from the stand. “I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.”

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

Former fugitive

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wife’s disappearance. He rented a modest apartment in Galveston, Texas, and disguised himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbour, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pa., where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He would later testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered Black’s body and then disposed of it.

Durst was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit.

But the judge refused to grant further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

Durst is sentenced in Los Angeles on Oct. 14, 2021, to life without the possibility of parole for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. (Myung J. Chun/Pool/Getty Images)

 

Family drama

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. He would later say that at the age of seven, he witnessed his mother’s death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Bethlehem’s Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a real estate developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother and rival Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

Douglas Durst testified at trial that he feared his brother wanted to kill him.

“Bob lived a sad, painful and tragic life,” he said in a statement Monday. “We hope his death brings some closure to those he hurt.”

1st wife disappeared in 1982

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friend’s dinner party in Newtown, Conn., then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, N.Y.

Durst told police he last saw his wife when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her family’s request, she was declared legally dead.

Durst is survived by his second wife, Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Attorney Chip Lewis said Durst had appealed.

 

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Here are some facts about British Columbia’s housing market

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Housing affordability is a key issue in the provincial election campaign in British Columbia, particularly in major centres.

Here are some statistics about housing in B.C. from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2024 Rental Market Report, issued in January, and the B.C. Real Estate Association’s August 2024 report.

Average residential home price in B.C.: $938,500

Average price in greater Vancouver (2024 year to date): $1,304,438

Average price in greater Victoria (2024 year to date): $979,103

Average price in the Okanagan (2024 year to date): $748,015

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Vancouver: $2,181

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Victoria: $1,839

Average two-bedroom purpose-built rental in Canada: $1,359

Rental vacancy rate in Vancouver: 0.9 per cent

How much more do new renters in Vancouver pay compared with renters who have occupied their home for at least a year: 27 per cent

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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B.C. voters face atmospheric river with heavy rain, high winds on election day

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VANCOUVER – Voters along the south coast of British Columbia who have not cast their ballots yet will have to contend with heavy rain and high winds from an incoming atmospheric river weather system on election day.

Environment Canada says the weather system will bring prolonged heavy rain to Metro Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Whistler and Vancouver Island starting Friday.

The agency says strong winds with gusts up to 80 kilometres an hour will also develop on Saturday — the day thousands are expected to go to the polls across B.C. — in parts of Vancouver Island and Metro Vancouver.

Wednesday was the last day for advance voting, which started on Oct. 10.

More than 180,000 voters cast their votes Wednesday — the most ever on an advance voting day in B.C., beating the record set just days earlier on Oct. 10 of more than 170,000 votes.

Environment Canada says voters in the area of the atmospheric river can expect around 70 millimetres of precipitation generally and up to 100 millimetres along the coastal mountains, while parts of Vancouver Island could see as much as 200 millimetres of rainfall for the weekend.

An atmospheric river system in November 2021 created severe flooding and landslides that at one point severed most rail links between Vancouver’s port and the rest of Canada while inundating communities in the Fraser Valley and B.C. Interior.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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No shortage when it comes to B.C. housing policies, as Eby, Rustad offer clear choice

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British Columbia voters face no shortage of policies when it comes to tackling the province’s housing woes in the run-up to Saturday’s election, with a clear choice for the next government’s approach.

David Eby’s New Democrats say the housing market on its own will not deliver the homes people need, while B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad saysgovernment is part of the problem and B.C. needs to “unleash” the potential of the private sector.

But Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said the “punchline” was that neither would have a hand in regulating interest rates, the “giant X-factor” in housing affordability.

“The one policy that controls it all just happens to be a policy that the province, whoever wins, has absolutely no control over,” said Yan, who made a name for himself scrutinizing B.C.’s chronic affordability problems.

Some metrics have shown those problems easing, with Eby pointing to what he said was a seven per cent drop in rent prices in Vancouver.

But Statistics Canada says 2021 census data shows that 25.5 per cent of B.C. households were paying at least 30 per cent of their income on shelter costs, the worst for any province or territory.

Yan said government had “access to a few levers” aimed at boosting housing affordability, and Eby has been pulling several.

Yet a host of other factors are at play, rates in particular, Yan said.

“This is what makes housing so frustrating, right? It takes time. It takes decades through which solutions and policies play out,” Yan said.

Rustad, meanwhile, is running on a “deregulation” platform.

He has pledged to scrap key NDP housing initiatives, including the speculation and vacancy tax, restrictions on short-term rentals,and legislation aimed at boosting small-scale density in single-family neighbourhoods.

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, meanwhile, says “commodification” of housing by large investors is a major factor driving up costs, and her party would prioritize people most vulnerable in the housing market.

Yan said it was too soon to fully assess the impact of the NDP government’s housing measures, but there was a risk housing challenges could get worse if certain safeguards were removed, such as policies that preserve existing rental homes.

If interest rates were to drop, spurring a surge of redevelopment, Yan said the new homes with higher rents could wipe the older, cheaper units off the map.

“There is this element of change and redevelopment that needs to occur as a city grows, yet the loss of that stock is part of really, the ongoing challenges,” Yan said.

Given the external forces buffeting the housing market, Yan said the question before voters this month was more about “narrative” than numbers.

“Who do you believe will deliver a better tomorrow?”

Yan said the market has limits, and governments play an important role in providing safeguards for those most vulnerable.

The market “won’t by itself deal with their housing needs,” Yan said, especially given what he described as B.C.’s “30-year deficit of non-market housing.”

IS HOUSING THE ‘GOVERNMENT’S JOB’?

Craig Jones, associate director of the Housing Research Collaborative at the University of British Columbia, echoed Yan, saying people are in “housing distress” and in urgent need of help in the form of social or non-market housing.

“The amount of housing that it’s going to take through straight-up supply to arrive at affordability, it’s more than the system can actually produce,” he said.

Among the three leaders, Yan said it was Furstenau who had focused on the role of the “financialization” of housing, or large investors using housing for profit.

“It really squeezes renters,” he said of the trend. “It captures those units that would ordinarily become affordable and moves (them) into an investment product.”

The Greens’ platform includes a pledge to advocate for federal legislation banning the sale of residential units toreal estate investment trusts, known as REITs.

The party has also proposed a two per cent tax on homes valued at $3 million or higher, while committing $1.5 billion to build 26,000 non-market units each year.

Eby’s NDP government has enacted a suite of policies aimed at speeding up the development and availability of middle-income housing and affordable rentals.

They include the Rental Protection Fund, which Jones described as a “cutting-edge” policy. The $500-million fund enables non-profit organizations to purchase and manage existing rental buildings with the goal of preserving their affordability.

Another flagship NDP housing initiative, dubbed BC Builds, uses $2 billion in government financingto offer low-interest loans for the development of rental buildings on low-cost, underutilized land. Under the program, operators must offer at least 20 per cent of their units at 20 per cent below the market value.

Ravi Kahlon, the NDP candidate for Delta North who serves as Eby’s housing minister,said BC Builds was designed to navigate “huge headwinds” in housing development, including high interest rates, global inflation and the cost of land.

Boosting supply is one piece of the larger housing puzzle, Kahlon said in an interview before the start of the election campaign.

“We also need governments to invest and … come up with innovative programs to be able to get more affordability than the market can deliver,” he said.

The NDP is also pledging to help more middle-class, first-time buyers into the housing market with a plan to finance 40 per cent of the price on certain projects, with the money repayable as a loan and carrying an interest rate of 1.5 per cent. The government’s contribution would have to be repaid upon resale, plus 40 per cent of any increase in value.

The Canadian Press reached out several times requesting a housing-focused interview with Rustad or another Conservative representative, but received no followup.

At a press conference officially launching the Conservatives’ campaign, Rustad said Eby “seems to think that (housing) is government’s job.”

A key element of the Conservatives’ housing plans is a provincial tax exemption dubbed the “Rustad Rebate.” It would start in 2026 with residents able to deduct up to $1,500 per month for rent and mortgage costs, increasing to $3,000 in 2029.

Rustad also wants Ottawa to reintroduce a 1970s federal program that offered tax incentives to spur multi-unit residential building construction.

“It’s critical to bring that back and get the rental stock that we need built,” Rustad said of the so-called MURB program during the recent televised leaders’ debate.

Rustad also wants to axe B.C.’s speculation and vacancy tax, which Eby says has added 20,000 units to the long-term rental market, and repeal rules restricting short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo to an operator’s principal residence or one secondary suite.

“(First) of all it was foreigners, and then it was speculators, and then it was vacant properties, and then it was Airbnbs, instead of pointing at the real problem, which is government, and government is getting in the way,” Rustad said during the televised leaders’ debate.

Rustad has also promised to speed up approvals for rezoning and development applications, and to step in if a city fails to meet the six-month target.

Eby’s approach to clearing zoning and regulatory hurdles includes legislation passed last fall that requires municipalities with more than 5,000 residents to allow small-scale, multi-unit housing on lots previously zoned for single family homes.

The New Democrats have also recently announced a series of free, standardized building designs and a plan to fast-track prefabricated homes in the province.

A statement from B.C.’s Housing Ministry said more than 90 per cent of 188 local governments had adopted the New Democrats’ small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation as of last month, while 21 had received extensions allowing more time.

Rustad has pledged to repeal that law too, describing Eby’s approach as “authoritarian.”

The Greens are meanwhile pledging to spend $650 million in annual infrastructure funding for communities, increase subsidies for elderly renters, and bring in vacancy control measures to prevent landlords from drastically raising rents for new tenants.

Yan likened the Oct. 19 election to a “referendum about the course that David Eby has set” for housing, with Rustad “offering a completely different direction.”

Regardless of which party and leader emerges victorious, Yan said B.C.’s next government will be working against the clock, as well as cost pressures.

Yan said failing to deliver affordable homes for everyone, particularly people living on B.C. streets and young, working families, came at a cost to the whole province.

“It diminishes us as a society, but then also as an economy.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.

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