Susan Berman

Susan Berman
Born Susan Jane Berman
May 18, 1945
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Died December 23, 2000(2000-12-23) (aged 55)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place Home of Peace Cemetery
Occupation Writer
Language English
Education Bachelor's, master's
Alma mater University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Berkeley
Genre Fiction, nonfiction
Subject Mob, Las Vegas
Notable works Easy Street
Spouse Mister Margulies (divorced)
Relatives Davie Berman, father

Susan Jane Berman (May 18, 1945 – December 23, 2000) was an American journalist and author, the daughter of Davie Berman, a Las Vegas mob figure. She wrote about her late-in-life realization of her father's role in that criminal empire. She was found murdered on Christmas Eve 2000 in her Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, California home.[1]

Fifteen years later on March 14, 2015, Berman's friend Robert Durst was arrested in New Orleans and charged with first-degree murder[2] in connection to Berman's slaying.[3]

Early life

Berman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1945, the only child of the former Betty Ewald, a traveling dancer who had adopted the stage name Gladys Evans,[4] and Davie Berman. Her father was born into a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, during the Russian Empire, the son of a former rabbinical student.[5] Berman moved with her parents to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1946.[4] She always maintained that her father — a mob figure who replaced Bugsy Siegel at the Flamingo Hotel after Siegel's gangland murder — died under mysterious circumstances on an operating table when Berman was 12, but all indications were that he died of a heart attack during surgery.[6] She also believed uncertainty surrounded her mother's presumed suicide by overdose a year later.

Berman grew up in Las Vegas and, later, in Hollywood, California, where high school classmates included Jann Wenner and Liza Minnelli.[7] She received a bachelor of arts degree in 1967 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she met Robert Durst. In 1969 she graduated with a master of arts in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.[8] At age 21, 25 and 30, Berman was paid a total of $4.3 million by the Mafia for her father's interests in casinos and other properties.[9]

Career

Berman was a novelist and author of two memoirs. She was a reporter for The San Francisco Examiner[10] and also wrote for Francis Ford Coppola's City Magazine, the Westinghouse Evening Show on KPIX and the "People" show on CBS. She was a contributing writer for New York Magazine,[11] Cosmopolitan and Family Circle.

According to Online Nevada Encyclopedia, "Despite neuroses and irrational anxieties, Berman was a versatile writer in many literary genres."[8][12]

Berman wrote Driver, Give a Soldier a Lift! and Lady Las Vegas, accompanying the 1996 release of an A&E documentary, for which she was a co-writer and nominated for a Writers Guild of America award.[13]

Known affectionately as a "Jewish Mafia Princess," Susan Berman published the 1981 memoir Easy Street about life as a mobster's daughter. While representing her in the 1970s, the William Morris Agency talked with several Hollywood producers interested in adapting her book into a screenplay. The movie rights were ultimately sold for $350,000, but no film project ever got off the ground.[14] For a time, Berman attempted to finance a musical based on the Dreyfus Affair, in which her wealthy friend Robert Durst declined to invest.[7]

At the time of her death, she was working on a project for Showtime with attorney Kevin Norte. Entitled Sin City, it was being planned as Showtime's version of the HBO hit The Sopranos.

Personal life

Berman lived just off the Sunset Strip on Alta Loma Road in West Hollywood for several years prior to her final residence in Benedict Canyon. Nyle Brenner, her manager, told the Los Angeles Times days after her murder that "many details of Ms. Berman's personal life are unclear" and added "she had been married once in the 1980s, and later helped rear the two children of a boyfriend." Her only husband, Mister Margulies, would die of a heroin overdose in 1986;[1][15] at their June 1984 wedding, held at the Hotel Bel-Air, Durst walked Berman down the aisle.[14][16] Berman kept close ties to friends on Alta Loma Road where she once lived, the Las Vegas Strip and in New York City, including Robert Durst.

Murder

She was found murdered execution style with a nine-millimeter hand gun on Christmas Eve, 2000, in her rented Benedict Canyon, California home, and presumed to have been dead at least a day.[1]

On March 14, 2015, Berman's long time close friend Robert Durst was arrested in New Orleans on a first degree murder warrant issued out of Los Angeles. Although Durst's presumed victim was not immediately named by authorities, the Los Angeles Times first reported that he had been detained in connection to Berman's slaying.[3] Three days after his arrest, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said that if convicted, Durst could face the death penalty in California for "special circumstances of murder of a witness and lying in wait."[17] On February 3, 2016, Durst pleaded guilty to a federal weapons charge and received an 85-month sentence, stemming from his arrest on the Berman murder charge. The plea agreement calls for Durst to be transferred to a California federal prison before August 18, 2016 to await going on trial for the Berman murder charge. Durst's lead legal representative Dick DeGuerin has repeatedly said "Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman and doesn't know who did."[18][19]

Various published accounts, including Murder of a Mafia Daughter by author Cathy Scott, have reported possible connections between Berman's murder and the 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife Kathie Durst. Berman became a confidante of Durst,[4] an heir to a New York real estate fortune, at UCLA in the late 1960s,[1] and came to know Kathie after later moving to New York.[20] In a review of Scott's book, True Crime Zine wrote that "detectives came to suspect one of (Susan's) long-time friends but have never been able to charge him with murder."[21] Durst was also considered a prime suspect in his wife's disappearance but was never charged in the case. Berman initially acted as a media spokesperson for Durst and is believed to have facilitated his public alibi.[10][14] Berman supplied a deposition in the case in 1982, which Durst faxed to investigators after Berman's murder.[22]

Berman had remained Durst's friend and received two large cash gifts totaling $50,000 from him in the months before her death; Berman had last written to Durst on November 5, 2000, expressing hope that her financial entreaties would not ruin their friendship.[1][22][23] Earlier in 2000, New York State Police, at the request of Jeanine Pirro, the district attorney at the time in New York's Westchester County, had re-opened an investigation into Kathie Durst's 1982 disappearance, and friends of Kathie had urged Pirro to contact Berman for an interview.[23] Berman was killed weeks after the re-opened investigation was publicized.[23]

Durst's March 2015 arrest warrant mentioned a previously undisclosed typewritten letter, mailed from New York on January 9, 2001 to the west Los Angeles Police Station, titled "Possible motive for Susan Berman murder." The letter said Berman suspected Durst was involved in his wife's disappearance,[24] and specified that Durst was planning to visit Berman in late December.[22]

Berman was interred at Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles, California.[25]

Books

Nonfiction

Fiction

In popular culture

In 2010, Lily Rabe played the character Deborah Lehrman, inspired by Susan Berman, in the film All Good Things.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 DePaulo, Lisa (March 12, 2001). "Who Killed the Gangster's Daughter?". New York Magazine.
  2. ↑ Holly Yan and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN (16 March 2015). "Robert Durst of HBO's 'The Jinx' charged with murder - CNN.com". CNN.
  3. 1 2 Richard Winton, Matt Hamilton and Shelby Grad (March 15, 2015). "Robert Durst arrested in slaying of L.A. writer". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 Paul Walsh (March 18, 2015). "Robert Durst confidante Susan Berman was only child of Twin Cities mobster". Star Tribune. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Las Vegas mob boss had ties to N.D.". bismarcktribune.com.
  6. ↑ "Minnesota history: Recent arrest brings to life a Minneapolis mobster". startribune.com.
  7. 1 2 Ned Zeman (February 2002). "The Fugitive Heir". Vanity Fair. Retrieved March 17, 2015.
  8. 1 2 "Susan Berman". Online Nevada Encyclopedia. 2009-03-20. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
  9. ↑ Tom Hawley. "Video Vault - Murder of a Mafia Daughter, Part 1". mynews3.com.
  10. 1 2 Kevin Fagan (March 16, 2015). "Durst case slaying victim had titillating Bay Area history". SFGate. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  11. ↑ Susan Berman (November 14, 1977). "Bess Myerson Is One Tough Customer". New York Magazine. Retrieved March 18, 2015.
  12. ↑ Susan Berman | ONE - Online Nevada Encyclopedia
  13. ↑ "Mobster's Kin Killed: Writer was daughter of Bugsy's partner". 5 January 2001. Retrieved 2012-12-14.
  14. 1 2 3 Carolyn Kellogg (March 17, 2015). "The literary life (and death) of Susan Berman, alleged Robert Durst victim". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 17, 2015.
  15. ↑ "Mister Margulies". FindAGrave. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  16. ↑ Charles V. Bagli, Vivian Yee (March 15, 2015). "On HBO's 'The Jinx,' Robert Durst Says He 'Killed Them All'". The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2015.
  17. ↑ John Bacon and William M. Welch (March 17, 2015). "Prosecutors charge Durst with murder; death penalty possible". USA Today. Retrieved March 18, 2015.
  18. ↑ "Is Robert Durst moving closer to answering a murder charge in L.A.?". LA Times. 2015-11-16. Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  19. ↑ "Robert Durst Pleads Guilty in Gun Case, Setting Up Possible Murder Trial". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-07-22.
  20. ↑ Book Probes New Evidence in Mob Daughter's Murder | Psychology Today
  21. ↑ Susan Berman book: Murder in Beverly Hills by Cathy Scott | True Crime Zine
  22. 1 2 3 "Search Warrant for Robert Durst's Houston Home". Los Angeles Times (link to online public document). March 18, 2015. Retrieved March 20, 2015.
  23. 1 2 3 Andrew Gumbel (March 29, 2015). "Did Robert Durst's nemesis ignore clues before following his trail to California?". The Guardian. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
  24. ↑ Andrew Blankstein and Hannah Rappleye (March 18, 2015). "Robert Durst Had Latex Mask, Fake ID and $42,000 Cash When Arrested". NBC News. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  25. ↑ "Susan Berman". FindAGrave. Retrieved 20 March 2015.

External links

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