The 48 Hours episode ‘Murder in Beverly Hills’ investigates the murder of 55-year-old Susan Berman. She was shot in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home on December 24, 2000. Her friend of more than 30 years, New York real estate heir and multi-millionaire Robert Durst, is charged with her murder.
[LEFT: Susan Berman wrote about her mobster father Davie Berman in her 1981 book ‘Easy Street‘]
Berman was the daughter of Las Vegas mob boss David Berman aka “Davie the Jew.” David Berman was born in 1903 Odessa, Ukraine. He and his family immigrated to North Dakota and then moved to Sioux City, Iowa where David Berman launched his career as a mobster at the age of 13. While running a bank-robbing crew, Berman got close to the Genovese crime family and moved to Minneapolis, where he got married to dancer Gladys Ewald, and became a father. (Susan was their only child.) In addition to starting a family in Minneapolis, Davie also started a bookmaking operation which was later broken up by Mayor Hubert Humphrey. After the 1947 assassination of Bugsy Siegel, Berman moved to Las Vegas and declared that he was in charge of The Flamingo. Berman died at the age of 54 (during an operation) in 1957. Gladys died shortly after her husband, at the age of 39, due to an overdose of barbiturates. 48 Hours airs Fridays at 9pm and 10pm on CBS.
