The Jinx Season 2 finale turns attention to Robert “Bob” Durst’s wife Debrah Lee Charatan, raising the question of where she is now.
Prior to this, the true crime docu-series transports us back to 2015. By the time the penultimate episode of Season 1 debuted, Bob Durst realized he was in trouble. The police had evidence implicating him in the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman, and so the New York real estate heir went on the run.
When authorities caught up to him, he was hiding out in a hotel in New Orleans, planning an escape to Cuba. The Jinx’s latest chapter shows the interrogation of Durst immediately after he was captured, as well as footage of a prison visit with his second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan.
Durst’s involvement in the 1982 disappearance of his ex-wife Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack has long been suspected, but he died in prison before the trial could go ahead. Despite all of the evidence against him, Charatan stayed by his side.
Where is Debrah Lee Charatan now?
Debrah Lee Charatan is reportedly serving as the president of BCB Property Management, a real-estate firm in Manhattan, New York City.
Charatan met Durst at a real-estate event in 1988, six years after his first wife McCormack disappeared. The pair got married in 2000 and stayed together until Durst died in prison in 2022.
She continued to support her husband as he went through the case, with The Jinx Season 2 Episode 1 showing a conversation between the two after Durst was arrested. In the clip, he compliments Charatan’s “bushy hair,” and they joke about his orange jumpsuit. They then discuss selling some of Durst’s properties in order to pay for his legal fees.
Charatan was also seen supporting Durst in 2001 as he went on trial for killing and dismembering his neighbor, Morris Black. This trial ended with Durst’s acquittal, having successfully argued self-defense.
According to a 2015 report by The New York Times, Charatan and Durst bonded over their family tragedies. The latter’s mother died by suicide in 1950, while his wife’s parents survived Nazi-occupied Poland in WWII.
The outlet went on to state that Durst helped her out financially while going through a messy divorce and custody battle. Charatan lost custody of her son, Bennat Charatan Berger, who she didn’t reconnect with until 15 years later.
As Durst went through his own family struggles and darted from home to home, Charatan remained a constant figure in his life. Durst wanted her to inherit his share of the family fortune, and so the couple got married.
NYT stated that in 2015, Charatan continued to invest Durst’s money but she had distanced herself from him. She has an active X/Twitter page, although the latest tweets were made just before Durst’s death on January 10, 2022.
The Jinx Season 2 finale spends much time on Charatan. A former employee at her old real estate firm claims Charatan started cheating her staff out of their commissions, leading to a number of lawsuits. But before they were settled she filed for bankruptcy.
Although Charatan declined appearing in the documentary series due to an active case, Episode 6 shows clips from her depositions and audio recordings from her phone calls with Durst.
In one shot, she’s asked what it says about her character that she stayed with him even after he’d been accused of three murders, to which she replied: “I’m a loyal person.”
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In another, she’s asked whether she recalls speaking with Durst about the possibility that he might be sued for wrongful death by the McCormack family, to which she says, “Not really, no.”
Following this, an audio from one of Durst’s prison calls is played in which he asks if anything’s happening on the “wrongful death front.” Charatan responds, “I would say her [Kathie’s] family could start a lawsuit. Whether they would win or not, I don’t know.”
What is Debrah Lee Charatan’s net worth?
Reports state that Debrah Lee Charatan’s net worth was estimated to be $10 million in 2022, but there are no up to date figures for 2024.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Robert Durst’s net worth when he died in 2022 was over $65 million, although prosecutors estimated it to be around $100 million.
As per Durst’s will, he left all of his trusts and property to Charatan, who was set to collect millions from his estate. However, the surviving McCormack family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2022 after Durst’s death brought Kathie’s murder case to a halt.
The lawsuit claims that Charatan helped Durst avoid prosecution and that she should pay monetary damages to the McCormack family. In March 2023, a federal judge gave the lawsuit the greenlight, and as of 2024, the case is ongoing. Until it is settled, Charatan is unable to do anything with Durst’s multi-million-dollar estate.
Following the release of The Jinx Season 2 finale, creator Andrew Jarecki spoke to The Hollywood Reporter to reveal that he had an off-screen conversation with Durst’s wife.
The filmmaker said, “Someone sent me someone saying, ‘She’s the new jinx!’ I said to her, ‘I think it might be a compassionate thing for you to be the first Durst to do the right thing by the McCormacks.’ And she said to me [mimicking her voice], ‘Not one dolla.’ I don’t know how to reconcile that.”
What happened to Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack?
As of April 2024, it’s currently unknown what happened to Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack as a body has never been found. In 2017, she was declared legally dead.
McCormack vanished without a trace in 1982 when she was 29 years old. Up until that point, as is explored in The Jinx Season 1, she and Durst had been experiencing issues in their marriage.
In a diary uncovered by authorities, she described the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of Durst. They also fought about having children, with Durst making it clear he didn’t want to be a father. When McCormack fell pregnant, he gave her an ultimatum: get an abortion or he’d divorce her. She went with the former.
In 2021, Durst was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering Berman. He was subsequently charged with McCormack’s disappearance but died before he could go on trial. To this day, although many believe Durst killed his ex-wife, no one knows exactly what happened to her.
The Jinx Season 2 is streaming on Max now. You can read about where Robert’s brother Douglas Durst is now here and what he said to his friend Nick Chavin. For more true crime, here’s what you need to know about the ‘Man With 1000 Kids’ Jonathan Meijer, who Smegma is in relation to the Sherri Papini case, and where Janie Lynn Ridd is now.