A Conversation With Jeanine Pirro, Dog on a Bone About the Bobby Durst Case

Editor's note, March 15: Durst was arrested Saturday on a warrant for first degree murder.

In 2000, Jeanine Pirro, now the host of Fox News’ Justice With Judge Jeanine, was the DA of Westchester County when, acting on a tip, she reopened the then-17-year-old very cold case of Kathleen Durst. Kathie was a beautiful medical student—and wife of Bobby Durst, heir to one of the biggest real-estate fortunes in New York City—who mysteriously vanished (not that there’s any other way to vanish) on a cold February night in 1982. It was her husband’s story then that he put her on a train from South Salem, New York, to the city, spoke to her later that night when she got to their Manhattan apartment, and never heard from her again. Pirro never believed that Kathie got to Manhattan that night, and when she went through the case file, she discovered that not even the rudimentary basics of an investigation were done. Her decision to reopen the case got a bit of coverage, albeit in the pre-Internet era, which is to say: not that much. But Bobby Durst, as he’s since admitted, didn’t miss a headline.