On this day, Oct. 9, 2001, the cross-dressing heir to a Manhattan real estate fortune was arrested after body parts of his Texas neighbor, Morris Black, were found in the Galveston Bay.
A year earlier, Robert Durst, 59, had been questioned about the 1982 disappearance of his wife and the execution-style slaying of a friend who might have had information about the wife’s vanishing.
Durst skipped bail in Galveston, and was declared the nation’s first billion-dollar fugitive. He was captured at a Wegmans supermarket in Pennsylvania, trying to steal a chicken sandwich and Band-Aids.
A police search of his car found $37,000 in cash, two guns and marijuana.
Durst was acquitted of Black’s slaying, but sentenced to five years for bond jumping.
-Scott McCabe
