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Nancy Grace

Nancy Grace Mysteries: Robert Durst

Aired December 14, 2012 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where is your wife? Do you know where your wife is? What about Susan Berman? Did you have anything to do with her murder? Do you have anything to say at all?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What a multimillionaire from a family that`s worth billions was doing living in a $300-a-month run-down apartment in Galveston that he rented wearing a wig, disguised as a woman, and using a false name.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Robert Durst`s attorney says Morris Black`s death had to be an accident, because the New York millionaire had no motive to kill his elderly neighbor.

But prosecutors argue the motive was so Durst could become Morris Black, as a way of escaping the spotlight of New York prosecutors, who suspected he was involved in the mysterious disappearance of his first wife.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He definitely has a sick mind to be able to dismember a body, cut off the head and arms and legs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Galveston police are convinced 58-year-old Robert Durst killed and dismembered his 71-year-old neighbor, Morris Black, then threw his body parts into Galveston Bay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Black was here he`d be saying, "I`m thinking two words. Two words Robert Durst, and one of them is bull. One of them is bull." He`d probably say it that loud, too.

NANCY GRACE, HOST: When I hear the name Robert Durst, I think of a young, beautiful girl, his wife, a medical student. I think of her family wondering all these years what became of her, where is her body. Are other bones at the bottom of the ocean? Is she underneath the soil decaying somewhere?

What would her life have been? Would she have had children? Would she have been a famous doctor? Would she have saved somebody`s life?

BETH KARAS, TRUTV`S "IN SESSION": Tempestuous. What we know about those early years are allegations of domestic violence. She wanted out. She was only three months from getting her medical degree when she disappeared.

JEAN CASAREZ, "TRUTV": At one point they were a young couple that was truly in love. They met, they moved to Vermont, they started a health-food store and many say they seemed to begin to lead a hippie life.

But they came back to New York. He to be a part of the family business, she to go to nursing school and then onto medical school. But she also told her close family and friends that he began to physically abuse her.

GRACE: His wife, 29-year-old Kathy Durst, medical student, came from a background that could not have been more different than Kathy`s. She was middle class, trying to achieve a better life through education and medical school.

He came from a family of multimillionaires, real-estate moguls in Manhattan. In fact, his family, I believe, still owns 4 Times Square. It is the headquarters for Conde Nast, for Vogue magazine, many others. His family, the Durst family, owns real estate, skyscrapers, high rises all around Manhattan.

ELLIE JOSTAD, "NANCY GRACE" PRODUCER: So the Durst Organization, the company -- the real-estate company that is owned by Robert Durst`s family, has long been and still is one of the top real-estate companies in New York City. They own buildings all over Manhattan.

And it`s the Durst Organization that was sort of one of the driving forces behind this new Times Square, you know, the new beautiful, clean, family-friendly Times Square that we see today.

Robert Durst did work for his family`s company for a while, but when his father, Seymour Durst, stepped down and named Robert Durst`s younger brother, Douglas, as his successor, Robert Durst cut his ties with the family`s organization.

CASAREZ: Kathleen Durst had told her close family and friends that she feared for her life, and that her husband had begun to physically abuse her.

There was a court proceeding after she went missing to settle her assets, and there were sworn affidavits in that proceeding by her sister, by an attorney that she was talking to in case she wanted to get a divorce, and also another family friend that alleged that Kathleen had told them that she was physically assaulted by Robert Durst during the course of that marriage.

JOSTAD: So the night that Kathy Durst -- the night before she was last seen or allegedly last seen, she went to a party at her friend, Gilberta Najamy`s house. Gilberta has said since -- and she`s told this to the "New York Times," "Vanity Fair" -- that when Kathy was leaving, she said, "Promise me, if something happens, check it out, because I`m afraid of what Bobby will do."

Gilberta gave that account of Kathy Durst`s last words to her, like I said, to both "Vanity Fair" and "New York Times," and she`s contended that`s what Kathy said as she left that night.

KARAS: Robert Durst says he dropped his wife off in Westchester County to board a train for Manhattan to their apartment there, and police found three witnesses who claim they saw her within 24 hours of Durst saying he last saw her. So it was believed she was last seen in Manhattan.

But information was learned several years later that led investigators to believe that maybe she never got on a train and got to Manhattan. Maybe she disappeared in Westchester County.

GRACE: Now, different people, two to be exact, claim that they saw Kathy Durst the following day at her apartment high rise in Manhattan, but upon later questioning, they said they weren`t sure. One only saw her at a distance from behind and said all he really recognized was her coat. The other said she had a male visitor the next day, but then that wasn`t confirmed, and he couldn`t be sure.

He says that he put her on a train from the Katonah train station in Westchester County, just north of New York City. He says he put her on a 9:15 train to head back into Manhattan. She had classes the next day at medical school, so she was going to stay at their apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Says he put her on the train.

Later that night, when she was back at their apartment, their penthouse in the city, he says he talked to her. She said she was in bed. She was watching TV. That was a Sunday night.

Now, Monday, the next day, there are a couple of witnesses that claim they saw Kathy Durst. One of them was the building superintendent, although he later admitted, you know, he saw her from a half a block away. He wasn`t so sure later on that he had seen her.

There was also a man who was either a doorman, elevator operator, who also thought he saw Kathy that next day. But those appearances -- or those alleged sightings could never be set in stone. Now they seem to fall apart once more scrutiny was put on them.

GRACE: Durst also says to police that he calls her from the home phone in Manhattan at their apartment that night to make sure she`s OK. Police say, Great, we can just pull your phone records.

And what does Durst do? He says, "Oh, well, wait, wait. I`ve got it all wrong. I actually was out walking the dog, and I called her from a pay phone. Guess you cant check the phone records."

Not only that, Durst tells police he went over to a neighbors home and sat around and talked. The neighbors say they have no memory of that event, that that didn`t happen, but that they did notice a strange light, like a flashlight, a bluish light in the crawlspace of Durst`s home that night.

So why did he change his story? Why doesn`t the timeline fit? Why, upon questioning, did the two eyewitnesses change their story?

CASAREZ: There were so many inconsistencies with his story. It just didn`t add up. But Robert Durst had on his side three different potential witnesses in New York City that said, "Yes, I saw her. I not only saw her, but she called the medical school and said that she wasn`t coming in on that Monday after she had disappeared."

Two of the three of those witnesses later said, "You know what? Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe I didn`t see her. I only saw the back of someone, and I thought it was Kathy Durst."

But the person that answered the phone at the medical school still believed that it was her voice on the other end of that line.

JOSTAD: So you know, Robert Durst then waits. This is Monday, when she`s allegedly seen in New York. It`s not until the following Thursday when Robert Durst walks into a police station and reports his wife missing. He said, though, that it wasn`t that unusual for him not to see her for a few days. She was a medical student. She would be working at the hospital. She`d sometimes sleep there. She`d sometimes sleep in the dorms. So he said that`s why he waited to report her missing.

GRACE: There was a delay of many days between her husband, Robert Durst, calling police -- her disappearance, and him calling police and saying she`s missing. I believe it was four days.

JOSTAD: So once Kathy Durst was reported missing by her husband, Robert Durst, he offered a $100,000 reward for information about her disappearance that would help find her.

He said at the time that, you know, she was just about to graduate from medical school. She dreamed of becoming a pediatrician and opening her own clinic. He said that, you know, with graduation looming, her goal almost being reached, he said there`s no way that she`s just taken off somewhere.

So you know, "The New York Post" and other New York papers at the time, you know, had this splashed headline that this real-estate son`s wife was missing and that he was offering a $100,000 reward.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Wedged into the story is the murder of his longtime confidante, Susan Berman. He and Berman became closer and closer and closer. She left town and moved to California. Then just as the New York district attorney was reopening the disappearance of his wife, Kathy Durst, suddenly, Durst writes his good friend, Susan Berman, two checks for $25,000 apiece. And she cashed them. Why?

JOSTAD: Susan Berman was a very good friend of Robert Durst`s. In fact, when Susan Berman married her only husband, who later passed away -- when she married him -- his name was Mr. Margolies -- Robert Durst actually gave her away at the wedding.

CASAREZ: Susan Berman actually led an interesting life because, although she was living in Los Angeles, she was raised in Las Vegas, where her father was a mobster out of Vegas. And she writes about this in one of her books.

She had become a crime writer, a fiction novelist in her own right. She had some issues with money, not being able to pay her rent. She didn`t want to go to her own family for money, and so she was really working as hard as she could to make it on her own in Los Angeles. But more than anything, she was a confidant of Robert Durst. She knew him well. They knew each other and were very, very close.

JOSTAD: She`d fallen on hard times. She had financial trouble. She declared bankruptcy. Her husband had died of a drug overdose. She was behind on her rent. She had all kinds of, you know, problems looming, but she also was telling friends that, you know, she had big projects on the horizon.

So there was a theory that maybe, you know, she was maybe delving into the Mafia again, doing investigations. She was an investigative reporter that had worked for "The San Francisco Examiner," as well as "New York" magazine.

And it was actually "New York" magazine that ran this long piece with kind of theories about, you know, maybe she was onto something. She knew something. You know, she was investigating Vegas again, and somebody didn`t want that information out there. That was one of the theories, among many others, that were kind of floating around at the time Susan Berman was found dead right before Christmas with a bullet in her head.

GRACE: Shortly thereafter, she was found killed execution-style in her home, shot in the back of the head, the back door ajar. The front door was open. She, Susan Berman, was a security freak. Her father had been in the hotel business in Vegas. He was there during the time of Bugsy Siegel, all the big Mafia bosses in Vegas.

She was a security freak. She would even nail the windows shut. Who did she open the door for? Who went out the back door and left it ajar?

KARAS: After police reopen the investigation into Kathy Durst`s disappearance in 2000, they prepare to talk to Susan Berman, now living in Los Angeles. And on the eve of talking to her, on Christmas Eve, she`s found dead in her Los Angeles home.

GRACE: She was dead for days until the neighborhood found one of her dogs barking wildly in the neighborhood unattended, and they found her decomposing body there in her home.

CASAREZ: She was a confidante of Robert Durst. She knew him well. They knew each other and were very, very close. And it was just days before investigators were to fly out to California to talk with her about what she may have known about the disappearance of Kathleen Durst that she was shot execution-style in her living room.

GRACE: She trusted someone to come in, and someone murdered her. Why?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob Durst dismembered Morris Black after he was dead, disposed of the body and ran not once, but twice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the jury, find the defendant, Robert Durst, not guilty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Morris Black was here right now, he`d be saying, "I`m thinking two words. Two words, Robert Durst, and one of them is bull. One of them is bull."

GRACE: Years later, the case was actually reopened, about 20 years later. The pressure mounted from Kathy`s family, and the case was reopened for investigation. But what are you going to find 20 years later in a lake house? They couldn`t find forensics.

JOSTAD: The investigation into Kathy Durst`s disappearance was reopened in Westchester County based on a tip, a tip that turned out to be bogus. They searched the home where the Dursts had lived when they were married, weren`t able to find any evidence there.

They even put divers in the lake. They did a grid search of the lake bottom. And no evidence was ever found, at least nothing that we know of, that corroborated this tip that Kathy Durst never made it to Manhattan that night.

CASAREZ: The investigation into Kathy Durst`s disappearance was reopened in the year 2000. What Robert Durst do? He left New York. He actually fled to Texas at that point of time. And he later told a jury in Galveston, Texas, that he fled because he was in fear, because he knew that investigation was reopened, and he knew that he was being looked at and wrongly being accused, even indirectly, of the disappearance of his wife.

JOSTAD: Once he sort of got this taste for cross-dressing when he was on the run after the investigation into his wife`s disappearance was reopened, he not only was living as this woman, who -- the woman, his alter ego, Dorothy Ciner -- she claimed she was mute. She would actually communicate with her landlord by note. She said she had -- Dorothy had a throat condition and wasn`t able to speak.

He also wore a brunette wig and pretended to be a woman named Diane Winn when he lived in New Orleans. He had an apartment there. He also had, according to prosecutors, sort of safe houses or other places he would kind of escape to all over the country. He had a house in northern California. He had the New Orleans house. He had the Galveston house. He had another house in Houston, had an apartment still in New York City.

So you know, they say he was sort of this eccentric multi-millionaire who didn`t want anything to do with the family business that was the source of his millions. He sort of wanted to live as, you know, a free spirit.

GRACE: Not only did Robert Durst flee to Texas, to Galveston, he also went into hiding dressed as a woman. He lived dressed as "Dorothy Ciner." He shaved his head, he shaved his eyebrows, wore a wig at all times, and lived as Dorothy Ciner.

Now, Durst has a long history of cross-dressing, which is neither here nor there, but he said he dressed and lived as Dorothy Ciner in Texas in order to escape the glare of the New York media. Well, I hardly think the glare of the New York media extended to Galveston, Texas, OK? But he chose to live in hiding. Why?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: Then his 71-year-old neighbor, by all accounts a grumpy old guy, 71-year-old Morris Black, nobody in the apartment facility liked him. He was easy to dislike. He was grumpy and ill and he felt bad and he complained. So when he went missing, nobody really seemed to care.

CASAREZ: Robert Durst moved to Texas, not to one of the big cities but to Galveston, Texas, and he lived in a very, very small impoverished type of apartment. I think he paid $300 a month rent for this apartment, but he later told a jury when he testified that the reason he moved there was that he was afraid. He was afraid because they had reopened the investigation into the disappearance of his wife, Kathleen.

JOSTAD: He had this neighbor, Morris Black, who was, you know, described as this cranky old guy, and Robert Durst said that at first they were friendly. They went -- they drank Jack Daniels together. They went target shooting together at one point, but he was getting more and more afraid of his neighbor, Morris Black. And Morris Black kept letting himself into Robert Durst`s apartment, Durst said. And even though Durst had asked him not to. So he said things were kind of getting very tense between him and his neighbor, Morris Black, at this apartment building in Galveston.

BETH KARAS, SENIOR REPORTER, TRUTV: Morris Black`s body, what remained of it, was found in parts in garbage bags in a Galveston, Texas, river by a young boy. His head was never found. His head that contained the bullet which would have said a lot in terms of how he was killed and what killed him.

STACEY NEWMAN, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER: What I remember about the recovery of the body of Morris Black in Galveston bay was a family out fishing for the day. When the 13-year-old son in that family saw what he thought was a body floating in the water. You can only imagine being out fishing with your family and then you look over and see the body not knowing that that body would be connected to this unsolved crime.

CASAREZ: What became so significant about the recovery of body parts of Morris Black, Morris Black was dismembered, but there was no head. The head couldn`t be found. He was identified because of fingerprints, but it became a focal point in the case with prosecutors that the head was never recovered.

GRACE: His headless body was found by a little boy in Galveston bay, and I always wonder if a chill went up his little boy`s spine when he saw a human body decapitated floating in the water. And I wonder if that stick was that little boy for the rest of his life, if he dreams about it at night, how it has affected him because I still remember the murder scenes I went to. I was a grown woman prosecuting felonies. The smell of a dead body, the look of a dead body. It`s something you carry with you.

NEWMAN: After Morris Black`s body or I should say parts of his body, his torso, his headless torso, his arms and his legs are found in separate garbage bags floating in Galveston bay, police found some other clues in those garbage bags. They found a "USA today" newspaper that had the address of the apartment building where Black and Robert Durst lived. That led them back to the original crime scene.

KARAS: Other bizarre behavior of Robert Durst came after the killing of Morris Black. He was arrested in October 2001, charged with killing him. And he posted the $300,000 bail and then skipped out. He failed to show up on an October 16th, 2001, hearing, and a warrant for hi as arrest was issued to get and charge with bail jumping and he ended up getting arrested 45 days later, late November in Pennsylvania. When he tried to steal from a supermarket a chicken salad sandwich and a Band-Aid and some other stuff.

CASAREZ: Robert Durst may have wanted to say he had nothing to do with the murder and dismemberment of Morris Black, but the problem was in his small apartment there in Galveston, there was so much blood. Everywhere in that apartment it was blood, and it was Morris Black`s blood. So suddenly Robert Durst finds for the first time in his life, he`s charged with murder.

KARAS: Durst said he panicked. He did not believe that investigators would believe a cross dressing millionaire who fled New York when the investigation was reopened into his wife`s 1982 disappearance. So, he drank some booze and got out his utensils and tools and cut up the body.

GRACE: But police were sent on a wild goose chase. They found papers connecting the dead body in Galveston bay, without a head I might add, back to the apartment, connecting back to the apartment. There, find blood in Morris Black`s apartment. They find blood in Durst`s apartment. To them it was Dorothy signer`s apartment. So, they`re looking for Dorothy Signer, and then they realize Robert Durst is Dorothy Signer. He is arrested for homicide and posts bail.

A judge gave Durst bail. What does he do? What do you think he did? He fled the jurisdiction. He did not show up for his court appointed court date. He fled. He leads police on a wild goose chase for seven weeks, and he`s ultimately found at a Wegman`s, it`s like a 7-eleven, a convenience store, in Pennsylvania shoplifting chicken salad and a Band-Aid.

KARAS: He had $500 in his pocket when he was arrested, and police found in his car at least $37,000 cash in the trunk and two guns. So he got arrested for taking these guns across state lines, that was a federal charge, and then the Texas state charge of bail jumping. So, that was bizarre, he was trying to steal a sandwich and a Band-Aid with $500 in his pocket.

GRACE: Hard to recognized in because his head and his eyebrows are shaved but, it Durst, all right.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHIP LEWIS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This case boils down to one thing and one thing only, how Morris Black died. This case is not about what happened to Morris Black`s body after he was dead. This case is not about what Bob Durst did after Morris Black died. The sole issue for you ladies and gentlemen to decide is how Morris Black died.

DICK DEGUERIN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: And so, if you came home and you found Morris Black and Morris Black started to come at you, come up here, please, Morris Black started to point at you and you grabbed him like that and wrestled him and you have tumbled to the ground, would you be acting reasonably? Of course you would. Now, that`s how self-defense and accident happens.

GRACE: It`s amazing to me how the defense attorney Dick Dequerin got the jury in the Morris Black case to look at two events separately. The murder of 71-year-old Morris Black and the dismemberment, severing his head and throwing his body in Galveston bay, as a separate incident. But he did.

CASAREZ: When the trial was going on in Galveston, Texas, where Robert Durst was the charged defendant, everybody was saying that it was a brilliant defense. It was what is called a bifurcated defense because what the defense was able to do was to say, ladies and gentlemen, you must only look at the killing of Morris Black. You cannot take into consideration the dismemberment which happened later because that had nothing to do with the state of mind of Robert Durst when he killed Morris Black.

DEGUERIN: From the beginning we could see, and now we`ve brought to you, the common sense explanation that some of you in jury selection suggested to us that you already knew, panic, fear.

JOEL BENNETT, PROSECUTOR: You don`t cut somebody up, another human being, into pieces, bag him up, dump him in the bay when you act in self- defense. It just doesn`t happen. You don`t butcher somebody, put them in pieces, bag them up, dump them in the bay because there`s an accident. You cannot plan to have an accident, and you cannot plan to act in self- defense. It doesn`t happen.

KARAS: You know, Durst was on the stand for four days, really captivated that jury and spectators in the courtroom. But among the things that he described besides his childhood and living as a woman, as a mute woman, setting his wig on fire in a bar, was what he did with Morris Black and how he was fighting with him and the gun discharged and how he panicked and drank some whiskey and then got out his saw and cut him up and put him in garbage bags. No explanation that I`m aware of though, of what happened to the head.

CASAREZ: Robert Durst actually said, I killed Morris Black. I did it. And I also dismembered him. But I killed Morris Black because I was defending myself, number one, and, number two, it was an accident.

GRACE: So the jury said, you know what? If we don`t take into account the severing of the head and the disposal of the body, all I`ve got left is this body and we can`t tell how he was killed. We can`t tell if there was a scuffle. So, therefore, we cannot convict Robert Durst. That was their thinking.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We the jury find the defendant, Robert Durst, not guilty.

GRACE: When I heard the not guilty verdict, I was stunned.

NEWMAN: My reaction to the not guilty verdict was, first of all, I had to check to make sure that I was hearing properly, that my hearing was OK because I could not believe this jury came back with a not guilty verdict.

KARAS: A lot of people were absolutely shocked, the courtroom had gasps in Texas when Durst was acquitted of the murder much Morris Black. Jurors even said, look, you know, it wasn`t an easy decision, but there wasn`t enough proof.

CASAREZ: The jury deliberated for a long, long time. People actually thought it was going to be a hung jury. But when they got back into that courtroom, this country absolutely was shocked because the jury acquitted Robert Durst of murder in Galveston, Texas.

JOSTAD: In fact, they said that the defense consistently gave them a plausible story about what happened that day, that this was self-defense, it was a struggle, it was an excellent, Robert Durst didn`t mean for Morris Black to die. The jurors said afterwards they had a problem with the prosecution`s case. They said that the prosecution didn`t give them just one theory to follow, that they gave them several different possibilities of how Morris Black might have been killed and why Robert Durst would have wanted Morris Black dead.

CHRIS LOVELL, JUROR: It doesn`t matter if I thought he was guilty or not. I did not want to convict this man on what I thought. I wanted to make a decision on what I knew, on the evidence that was presented to me. So for me it didn`t make any difference what I thought. It`s what -- it`s the evidence that was presented to me and what I knew.

JOANNE GONGORA, JUROR: It was the actual act of what occurred in the apartment at that time. And so, based on the evidence that was presented to us, there was reasonable doubt.

ROBIN CLARIC JUROR: We took Durst`s story completely out of the picture. We took the evidence presented to us, put it on the time line. We had a time line that went around the whole room. Based on the evidence, it wasn`t there. We can`t convict someone on our thoughts or what we think or what we receive or what we speculate. We can`t do that.

DEBORAH WARREN, JUROR: I can`t even begin to tell you, my stomach is still knotted up. But we did the best with what we had, and whether it agrees to you all or to anyone else out there in America, this is what we came up with.

DONNA TROSCLAIR, JUROR: I would not come to any decision unless in front of me I looked at everything that was given by the prosecution. The prosecution deserved that respect. It`s been a very hard decision for me.

KARAS: Jurors said they felt it was entirely reasonable that Robert Durst had this state of mind and that Robert Durst accidentally shot and killed Morris Black, and when you accidentally shoot somebody, then you can panic, and that panic led to the dismemberment. This country in large part was outraged with what they heard.

NEWMAN: Well, jurors had a lot of explaining to do after that not guilty verdict, and the way that they explained it was they were able to separate the shooting from the actual cutting up of the body. They threw out worrying about cutting up the body and focused just on the shooting. They said they had no evidence other than believing it was self defense what Durst had said on the stand and that he actually did panic and was high and was drunk on Jack Daniels. So it`s possible he could have not remembered cutting up the body and it was just in panicking at it was self defense.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: I wonder what that jury thinks today. Now that they know about Susan Berman, his best friend`s murder execution style. His payoff checks to her in the amount of $25,000 each.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You remember my oldest son David.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: We all know that the Robert Durst case played out just like a movie. And of course, that`s where it ended up and made its way to the big screen with Hollywood stars Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. The movie is called "All God Things" (ph) and the actors play David and Katie, that`s a couple based on Robert Durst and his first wife Kathie.

Now, there`s reports circulating that Durst liked the movie so much he actually cried when he watched it and says that this movie "All Good Things" is the most accurate depiction of his life, expect, of course, for the parts that implicated him in three deaths.

KARAS: The investigation into the disappearance of Kathie Durst and the murder of Susan Berman are still open investigations. The trail goes cold, but they`re still technically open.

CASAREZ: It came out late last year that Robert Durst was living back in New York, he had just purchased a town home in the east Harlem area of New York city, and the neighbors when they found out who was living near them, were very scared, very concerned, publicly said so.

JOSTAD: So Robert Durst is still a free man. He was acquitted even though he admitted that he cut up his neighbor and disposed of his body. He`s acquitted of that murder case. He also has never formally been named a suspect in either his wife`s disappearance or the murder of his friend Susan Berman. Robert Durst is living the way the rest of us do. He is a free man.

We talked to both the Westchester county district attorney`s office that is investigating Kathie Durst`s disappearance and also the Los Angeles police department that is investigating Susan Berman`s murder. Both of those agencies say that they have not closed the book on either of those investigations, that both are still very open and active.

TEXT: Robert Durst has never been charge in his wife, Kathie Durst`s disappearance or in the murder of his friend Susan Berman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAZIA JAN, 2012 CNN HEROES: In Afghanistan most of the girls have no voice. They are used as property of a family. The picture is very grim.

My name is Razia Jan, and I`m the founder of a girl`s school in Afghanistan.

When we opened the school in 2008, 90 percent of them could not write their name. Today, 100 percent of them are educated. They can read, they can write. I lived in the U.S. for over 38 years, but I was really affected by 9/11. I really wanted to prove that Muslims are not terrorists.

I came back here in 2002. Girls have been the most oppressed, and I thought I have to do something. It was a struggle in the beginning. I would sit with these men, and I would tell them don`t marry them when they`re 14 years old. They want to learn. How do you write your father`s name? After five years now, the men, they are proud of their girls when they themselves can`t write their name.

Very good.

Still, we have to take these precautions. Some people are so much against girls getting educated. We provide free education to over 350 girls. I think it`s like a fire. It will grow. Every year my hope becomes more. I think I can see the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

END