In person, Jeanine Pirro is exactly as she appears on TV — whip-s♔mart, personable and ready for prime time in a bold, well-tailored dress.
“I like those earrings,” she says, with the same straightforward, decisive manner she uses to evaluate 🌞legal cases as host of the Fox N🐻ews Channel show
After being told they’re vintage and that thiꦍs reporter paid $10 for them, she nods, al🃏most proudly.
“Very goodꦇ,” she says. “And now, back to Robert Durst.”
Back to Robert Durst, indeed.
If the has an obvious villain — Durst, the twitchy-eyed real estate heir suspected of murdering his wife, best friend and neighbor — its breakout sta🥃r is Pirro, the former Westchester Coun🗹ty district attorney who reopened the 1982 Kathleen Durst cold case in 2000.
In the six-part series, Pirro, 63, comes across as a kind of crus🐽ading heroine, determined to see justice done despite obstacles and legal setbacks.
And she might still get her wish.
Durst, 71, was arrested in New Orleans in March on murder charges related to the de🐻ath of his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles. He’ll be tried in New Orleans first for possession of firearms and marijuana before going to LA to answer the murder charges.
Pirro will cover Durst’s Thursday preliminary hearing for her show💜, and will likely continue to play an active role, potentially as a witness.
In conjunction with the state police, she reopened the 18-year-old Kathleen Durst case in♎ 2000, when she was the sitting Westchester district attorney. She firꩲst heard of the case when a colleague told her a state trooper had a tip. He wanted a search of Truesdಞale Lake, in South Salem, Westchester, where the Dursts had lived as a married couple.
“At the time, the na⛄me Durst meant nothing to me. What was significant to me was the fact that Kathleen Durst was a happy, beautiful, 29-year-old fourth-year medical student who just vanished off the face of the Earth,” says Pirro. “Five days lateꦛr, her husband reports her missing. I thought, ‘This doesn’t feel right.’”
She felt a kinship with the missing wওoman; Kathleen was in medical school only a few years after Pirro graduated from la🐽w school.
“She and I were bo𒁃th in professional schools where the men didn’t think we b൩elonged,” says Pirro.
“I looked at pictures oꦏf her, and we wore the same clothes. I had friends who were med students. You don’t give up a few months before [graduation].”
But nothing came of the case being reopened.
Shockingly, in 2001, Durst was arrested, accused of murdering his Galveston🎉, Texas, neighbor Morris Black. He was acquitted. His team also made the case that Pirro had harassed him, driving 🗹him out of town with her relentless focus.
“I couldn’t believe I was bein♉g cast as the bad guy,” says Pirro. “I heard the devil made me do it, but not the DA!”
In the af𒆙termath of “The Jinx” airing early this year, Pirro has gotten plenty of positive feedback, but perhaps none as positive as the accolades she’s received from her two growꦜn children, a daughter, 29, who is a lawyer and a son, 25, who works at Cantor Fitzgerald.
“They were never interested in anything I had ever done professionally,” she says. “All of a sudden they’re like, ‘Mom, this is unbelievable! We need to get dinner and hear all about this case.’﷽ It’s like, ‘Now you’re interested? You were in the house when I was working on this!’”
Does she feel vindicatedꦡ now that Durst has ♏been arrested again?
“Let me tell you straight. No!”𓆏 she says with a laugh. “I never felt I had to be vindicated. I know what I did, I know what Durst did, I knew what evidence was there, and what wasn’t, so no!”
I couldn’t belไieve I was cꩵast as the bad guy. I heard the devil made me do it, but not the DA!
- Former Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro
She watched “The Jinx” with filmmaker Andr🔴ew Jarecki and other key players in the case. When the bombshell moment aired — the part of the episode when Durst goes to the men’s room and his microphone records what appears to be a confession, him saying, “What the hell did I do? . . . Killed them all, of course.” — Pirro saw that Kathleen’s brother,ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Jim McCormack, and his wife were weeping.
“It was just a reminder to me of how i🤪mportant closure is for these families,” she saysಌ. “I wasn’t surprised with what [Durst] said, but that he said it.”
What happens next is anyone’s guess; Durst has gotten out of tight 🍌legal situations in th🌳e past.
His lawyers moved to have the “confession” declared inadmissible. There’s also the matter of the “cadaver” note — a letter that could have, by Durst’s own admission, only been sent by Berman’s killer and notifies the polic🦹e of a “cadaver” at her address.
When compared to an earlier letter that Durst had sent Berman, the handwri🧸ting appears to be identical, right down to🃏 the misspelling of “Beverley” Hills.
“𝄹When I saw it, I thought, ‘This is it,’” says Pirro. “But it’s up to LA to do this, and I wish them well.”