Westchester DA To Indict Durst In Wife's Disappearance: Report

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — News 12 reported Friday that Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah will convene a grand jury and pursue charges against Robert Durst in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, citing anonymous sources.

The case of Kathie Durst has been a thorn in the side of the DA's office since Jeanine Pirro's day.

Pirro, a former Westchester District Attorney, has been intimately connected with the eccentric millionaire's strange saga since 2000, when she began looking into the disappearance of his wife Kathie in 1982 from their weekend home in Bedford.

Pirro's investigation was stymied by the mysterious death of a witness, Durst's California friend Susan Berman, who was found shot execution-style right before investigators from the Westchester DA's office and New York State Police were scheduled to fly out and interview her.

Then Pirro found herself the center of Durst's defense when he was on trial for murdering and dismembering a neighbor in Texas.

His lawyers argued then that his reason for shooting elderly Morris Black — then cutting him into pieces and throwing the body parts into Galveston Bay while he was living there in 2001 under an assumed name disguised as a woman — was due to his fear of Pirro for hounding him a la Inspector Javert from Les Miserables.

Before that trial in 2003, Durst jumped bail, touching off a national manhunt that ended when he was caught shoplifting a sandwich (he had $520 in his pocket and $37,000 in the car, as well as Black's driver's license).

Durst was again in court in 2014 — in Texas where he took a plea deal after he urinated on a counterful of candy bars and a cash register while picking up a prescription at a CVS, and in New York City — where he was acquitted of trespassing at his estranged relatives' residences and the judge vacated the orders of protection they had against him.

After that, he consented to be part of an HBO documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Bobby Durst."

Pirro, who hosts a television show on the Fox News Channel, Justice with Judge Jeanine, predicted in 2015 that "The Jinx" was going to break open cold cases connected to Durst. She was right: the day before the last episode ran, the Scarsdale native was arrested on a warrant from Los Angeles authorities over Berman's death. FBI agents arrested Durst after he checked into a New Orleans hotel under an assumed name.

Pirro came up again in 2018 during a pre-trial hearing when a witness for Durst testified that Pirro and the homicide detective working on Black's death had an affair. She came up again this summer at the trial, when Durst testified that he hid in Galveston because of Pirro's highly publicized chase.

The jurors in LA concluded Durst shot and killed Berman just before Christmas in 2000 because he feared she would tell Pirro's investigators about his involvement in Kathie Durst's disappearance. The 78-year-old New York real estate heir was found guilty of first-degree murder in September. SEE: Prosecutor: Jurors Conclude Durst Heir 'Killed Them All'

The Associated Press contributed to this report.