Lifetime’s The Lost Wife of Robert Durst is a dramatization about the marriage of Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack (portrayed by Katharine McPhee) and Robert “Bob” Durst (Daniel Gillies). As depicted in the film, soon after meeting in New York in 1971, McCormack moved to Vermont to be with Bob where he ran a health food store. Durst’s father Seymour, the New York real estate mogul, pressured Bob to return to the city to help run the family business. When the couple returned to Manhattan, they got married in 1973. Kathie McCormack Durst disappeared in 1982. Her family presumes she is dead.
Three years before Bob was born his father Seymour Durst joined the Durst Organization, the real estate company his father Joseph founded in 1915. In addition to growing the family business, Seymour Durst was known for creating and installing the National Debt Clock in Midtown Manhattan. The same year he joined the family business, he married Bernice Herstein, who died 10 years later at the age of 32. She either fell or jumped off the roof of their family home in Scarsdale. Robert, the eldest of their four children, said he witnessed the event. Douglas, the second child who is chairman of the Durst Organization, says none of the children witnessed the event. The Lost Wife of Robert Durst premieres on Lifetime on Saturday, November 4 at 8pm.
