The following is an excerpt from a story in EW's Feb. 26, 2001, issue. For the entire story, see the magazine.
On Christmas Eve, Susan Berman's neighbors noticed her dogs running loose near her dilapidated Benedict Canyon home. They found the back door open and called the police. Inside lay Berman, 55, slain in her bedroom by a single gunshot wound to the head, a woman whose links to organized crime and to a 19 year old case would make her death one of the most baffling homicides in recent Hollywood history.
The only daughter of Davie Berman, a notorious Las Vegas mobster, Berman had written two memoirs -- ''Easy Street'' and ''Lady Las Vegas'' -- about growing up in the spectral world of casino gambling and organized crime. She was developing a new book about Vegas high rollers and had pitched a miniseries called ''The Vegas Diaries'' to ABC and NBC. Nothing appeared to have been stolen from her spartan household; indeed, there was little of monetary value to steal.
Early reports suggested that Berman had been rubbed out in a classic Mob style execution. If so, it would be an ironic end to a life that was both connected to Mob lore and sheltered from it. As Davie's daughter, Berman grew up with the run of the infamous Flamingo hotel, which her father owned with Bugsy Siegel. (Siegel died in a hail of gunfire in 1947.) Still, she remained largely cloistered from the criminal side of Las Vegas, maintains her friend James Grady, a former investigative reporter. ''She was Dave's little princess,'' he says. (Davie Berman died of a heart attack in 1957.)
So who wanted Susan Berman dead? That's a question that has baffled police on both coasts. The use of a small caliber bullet, according to sources in the LAPD, suggests that somebody went to great lengths to ensure her death looked like a hit. But why?
''Normal people don't kill each other that way,'' says Jonas McCord, a Hollywood director and a writing partner of Susan's for several years, adding: ''They go crazy, they shoot five or six times. They use really big [caliber] guns. This was, I believe, a professional killing.''
It's hard to imagine Berman's heritage catching up with her -- after all, most of the gangsters with whom her father consorted are either long dead or in wheelchairs. But facing lean times, Berman decided to poke around on both old and newer criminal turf, even planning on revisiting the glamour and corruption that swirled around her Vegas girlhood: She pitched another memoir to her former William Morris agent, Owen Laster. And with McCord's help, she was also developing ''Diaries,'' a fictionalized account of the Mob told through the eyes of the women of both historical and current Las Vegas organized crime families.
''She'd told me, 'I'm so hyped about the wives,''' says McCord. ''She said, 'I can't wait to show you what I'm getting into.' My fears are that she disturbed something that shouldn't be disturbed. Keep in mind she was a reporter, and she was going to dig. Maybe she did her homework too well.''
Others, however, are wondering about Berman's connection to a different crime based headline. At the time of her death, New York State police and the Westchester County district attorney's office had been intending to question Berman as part of their criminal investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Kathleen Durst, a 29 year old medical student and the wife of New York real estate heir Robert Durst. Berman and Robert Durst, whose father Seymour's Manhattan real estate company, the Durst Organization, has been valued at $600 million, were close friends; the skyscraper scion walked his acrophobic friend down the aisle at her wedding.
Robert Durst was never charged in his wife's disappearance, but suspicions swirled around him: According to a story in People this past December, Kathie Durst had been hospitalized at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx with bruises on her face -- suffered, she claimed, in an altercation with Durst -- three weeks before her disappearance. (At no time during the initial investigation was Robert Durst considered a serious suspect, according to the People report. In a sworn affidavit, he denied that he had ever threatened or assaulted his wife ''or caused her any physical harm or abuse.'')
Over the past 19 years, the case had turned cold. But acting on new leads, police reopened the file just over a year ago, and have since searched the lakeside house in South Salem (which Durst sold eight years after Kathie disappeared) and dragged the lake. Robert Durst declined to speak with EW about either the Berman or the Kathleen Durst cases. Durst's brother, Douglas, who runs the Durst Organization, also declined to comment; at the time of the case's reopening, Douglas offered only a simple statement to the press: ''Robert Durst continues to maintain his innocence.''
When the New York State police and the office of Westchester district attorney Jeanine Pirro tried to contact Berman for questioning about the disappearance of Kathleen Durst -- neither they nor the LAPD will specify the dates -- they were surprised at the news of Berman's death. But her link to the Durst case remains a mystery. Pirro says only that New York police were in the process of reinterviewing every friend of the Dursts who might know something about Kathleen's disappearance. ''It certainly is disappointing that we weren't able to interview a witness who might be able to provide information to us,'' says Pirro, who says that a member of her staff traveled to L.A. after learning of Berman's murder. ''We are assisting L.A. authorities however we can.''
Meanwhile, L.A. police continue to work the Berman case on their own. ''We are not going to comment on who is or is not a suspect,'' says Lieut. Clay Farrell of LAPD's Robbery Homicide Division. ''The specifics of who we've interviewed and who is or is not an interviewee are part of the investigation. We're trying to catch a killer here, so I hope you'll understand that there are things I cannot talk about.'' But those who are laboring to crack the ending to this film noir thriller do so at a distinct disadvantage: The one screenwriter who could have most helped them is dead.
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