Susan Berman’s Former House

One location that has confused me for years is the cottage where writer Susan Berman was murdered in 2000 – so much so that despite stalking it back in August 2015, I have put off blogging about it until now.  I first learned of the locale from the hit HBO docuseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which chronicles the sordid, twisted, extremely weird tale of multimillionaire Durst and the deaths of three people connected to him, including Berman, his longtime BFF.  On the show, much was made about Susan living at 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills.  When I headed out to stalk the home located there, though, I was shocked to see that it looked nothing like the pad showcased onscreen.  Figuring I might have jotted down the wrong address (hey, it happens to the best of us!), I took photos regardless and started delving into the matter further as soon as I got home.  Sure enough, what was shown in The Jinx, specifically the third episode titled “The Gangster’s Daughter,” did not match the house at 1527 Benedict Canyon.  I eventually pushed the matter to the back of my mind where it remained until a couple of days ago when I decided to rehash it.  Thankfully, this time around I was able to figure things out.

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In The Jinx, we are only shown one full shot of Susan’s former residence.  It’s below.

Several close-up images taken the night of the murder are also featured on the series, though the dark-shingled façade pictured in them looks considerably different than the white-washed exterior from the wide shot.  Since both consist of wood shake, though, I figured they were one and the same and that Susan likely had the place painted at some point during her tenure.  But, as it turns out, the photos are actually of two different properties.  The cottage above is a Brentwood residence Susan owned for a time long before she was murdered, while the pad below is her Benedict Canyon rental, where she lived during two different periods of her life, including her final years.  Because the latter was remodeled extensively in 2006 and the wood siding removed, it is not very recognizable today, which only added to my confusion.

It was not until coming across the photos here and here that I was able to piece things together.  As you can see, though the shiplap has been removed, making the home appear more ranch-like than its former Cape Cod style, it is the same place.

Hedges now obscure much of the dwelling from view, but toggling back to January 2011 on Google Street View provides better imagery.  Per the building permits I dug up, besides the wood shake removal, during the 2006 remodel a portion of the patio was also enclosed in order to expand the kitchen and both bathrooms were gutted.

It was in the quaint abode that Berman met her untimely end on December 22nd, 2001 – authorities say at the hand of her dearest friend, Robert Durst.  Susan and “Bobby,” as she called him, originally met while attending UCLA in the 1960s and became fast, yet unlikely companions – she a vibrant, talkative extrovert, he an odd reclusive scion of a prominent New York family.  They say a picture speaks a thousand words and the image of Susan and Bob below speaks volumes regarding their strikingly different personalities.  Regardless, the two were thick as thieves up until Susan’s death.  But to understand her killing, we have to go back to 1982, when Robert’s first wife, Kathleen McCormack, went missing.  As I explained earlier, it’s a very twisted tale.

Kathleen and Bob’s relationship was by all accounts tumultuous.  Married in 1973, Kathie was seeking a divorce by early 1982.  On January 31st of that year, after spending the weekend together at their South Salem lakeside cottage, Durst claims he dropped his wife off at the Katonah rail stop, where she caught a train to New York.  A doorman reportedly saw her enter the couple’s pied-à-terre at 37 Riverside Drive later that night.  The following morning, Kathie called the associate dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she was set to begin a clerkship, to say she was ill and would not be coming in.  She has not been seen or heard from since.  Because Kathie disappeared from Manhattan and Robert never left South Salem that night, he was never regarded as a suspect.  At least not officially, though most who followed the case had their suspicions.  The investigation quickly went cold and it was not until years later, November 1999 to be exact, that authorities decided to reopen it based upon a tip from a suspect in a different matter.  Though said tip turned out to be bogus, it set off a chain of events almost too bizarre to be believed.

Detectives were able to keep the reopening of the case under wraps for a full year before the media caught wind of things.  When reports finally started rolling out in November 2000, it sent Robert into a tailspin.  He promptly relocated to Galveston, Texas where he rented a small apartment and began posing as an elderly mute woman to avoid detection.  Just a couple of weeks later, on December 24th, Susan was found dead at her Benedict Canyon rental.  According to a March 2001 New York magazine article, Berman had initially leased the 1935 cottage for a few years upon relocating from NYC to L.A. in 1981.  Though small, with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, at the time it was a “lovely, cheerful place.”  As you can see below, the 2006 remodel did the exterior of the place no favors.  It looked so much better with the wood siding!

After marrying her one and only husband in 1984, Susan moved out of the Benedict Canyon property and into a home she purchased at 12030 Coyne Street in Brentwood.  It was that house that was showcased on The Jinx.

An interview was even conducted outside of the Brentwood pad for the series and, in a very confusing twist, it was made to appear as if it was the Benedict Canyon residence!  It’s no wonder I was confounded by the location for so long!

Berman’s marriage didn’t last and by 1987, she had a new love, aspiring screenwriter Paul Kaufman.  The two eventually attempted to develop a Broadway musical together, using Susan’s finances to do so, but the venture bankrupted her, put an end to the relationship, and the Brentwood house was foreclosed on.  Broke and single, she relocated to a condo at 1131 Alta Loma Road in West Hollywood, which was owned by a friend who let her live there rent-free for the next five years.  In 1997, as she started to get back on her feet, she moved back into her old Benedict Canyon rental.  But by late 2000, she found herself in dire financial straights yet again and reached out to Durst to borrow money.  He sent her two checks totaling $50,000.  He claims that around the same time she told him that she had been contacted by detectives regarding the re-opening of Kathie’s case and that she planned on speaking with them.  It turns out that was not true – something Robert did not find out until much, much later.  As recounted in a fabulous Los Angeles magazine article about Berman, Durst was shocked when L.A. Deputy District Attorney John Lewin informed him during a 2015 jailhouse interview, “They had not contacted her.  I think that Susan was trying to subtly squeeze you for money.”

By all accounts, Susan never would have squealed on Bobby, though he had good reason to be nervous.  Berman, who had casually mentioned to several friends over the years that Durst had something to do with Kathie’s disappearance, had not only provided an alibi for him the night McCormack went missing, but she also acted as his media liaison in the months that followed.  And much of what she spewed wasn’t true.  As it turns out, no doorman ever saw Kathie the night of January 31st – that was a story fed to the press by Berman.  It is also now largely believed that it was Susan, posing as Kathie, who called the Albert Einstein College of Medicine dean the morning after the disappearance.  Susan knew where the bodies were buried (quite possibly literally) and police contend that Robert killed her for it.

 

Authorities believe that Robert flew from New York to San Francisco on December 19th, 2000.  He then took another flight to Eureka and, the following morning, drove to Los Angeles.  He headed to Susan’s house late on the evening of the 22nd or early the morning of the 23rd and shot her once in the back of the head, execution-style.  Police, responding to a call from a neighbor who reported that Berman’s dogs were running loose and barking up a storm, arrived at her residence at 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve where they found the the rear door open and Susan dead on the floor of the guest bedroom.  She was 55 years old.  A horrific scenario all around, no doubt, but Kathie’s sister Mary Hughes did have this to say in the Los Angeles magazine article about Susan, “Obviously it’s horrible that Berman was murdered by Durst.  But we’ll always be mindful that she was Durst’s coconspirator in covering up Durst’s murder of our sister.”

As evidenced in the crime scene photos from The Jinx (the top one I blacked out a portion of as Susan’s body was visible) as compared to the MLS images above and below, the house looks quite different today than it did in 2000.  The interior was said to be in shambles toward the end of Susan’s life and the pictures featured on the series certainly attest to that.  Apparently, the heat had even been turned off and some of the rooms lacked flooring – there was only cement where the carpeting had once been.  The place is in much better shape since the 2006 remodel, during which doors were closed off and relocated and the kitchen opened up, as you can see.

The bizarre story doesn’t end there.  On the 23rd of December, a note was sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department that read “1527 Benedict Canyon Cadaver.”  Susan’s body had already been found by the time detectives received it, but it did provide them with a clue.  Whoever killed Berman must have cared for her in some way and didn’t want her body to go undiscovered.

The murders don’t end there, either.  On September 28th, 2001, Durst shot his Galveston neighbor, a cantankerous elderly gentleman named Morris Black, who had discovered his true identity and had been pressuring him financially.  Robert then dismembered his body, wrapped the parts in newspaper, put them in garbage bags and dumped them in Galveston Bay.  The bags wound up floating though and were discovered by a teen fishing in the area the following day.  An address on one of the newspapers led police straight to Durst and he was arrested.  He promptly posted bail and then skipped town, successfully avoiding authorities until he was detained in Pennsylvania about six weeks later for attempting to steal a sandwich and a band-aid from a grocery store.  You can’t make this stuff up!  Robert claimed self-defense at his subsequent trial for Black’s murder and was inexplicably acquitted despite having dismembered the body, though he did serve some time for bond jumping and evidence tampering.  He was eventually paroled in 2005, was rearrested for violating said parole, and served another few months.

In 2010, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki’s movie All Good Things, based on Durst’s life, premiered.  Apparently happy with his onscreen portrayal, Robert contacted Jarecki and, against the advice of his lawyers and pretty much anyone else with half a brain, asked to be interviewed by him.  Over the next few years, Jarecki compiled more than twenty hours of footage of Durst, which is how The Jinx came to be.  The series debuted to much fanfare on February 8th, 2015.  Building on evidence uncovered by Jarecki and his producing partner, Marc Smerling, police began closing in on Durst, ultimately deciding to arrest him on March 14th, 2015, the day before the final episode hit HBO.  That finale featured a chilling segment in which Robert was confronted with a letter he wrote to Susan in 1993, years prior to her death, which bore not only the exact same block handwriting as the “cadaver” note, but the exact same misspelling of the word “Beverly.”  In a stunning turn, he then walked into the bathroom of the hotel room where the interview was taking place, still miked, and uttered to himself, “What the hell did I do?  Killed them all, of course.”  His trial for Susan’s murder is set to begin in January and something tells me this time an acquittal is not in the cards.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Susan Berman’s former house is located at 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills.