Oddball millionaire Robert Durst is on trial for allegedly killing his best friend — yet his wife is worried about her reputation as a landlord.
Two real-estate firms owned by Durst’s second wife, Debra Lee Charatan, and her son filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against tenants for labeling the duo “abusive landlords” and calling Durst — who’s facing charges that he shot pal Susan Berman — a “murderous and animal-decapitating sociopath.”
BCB Property Management Inc., which is co-owned by Charatan, and Novel Property Ventures, partly controlled by her son, Bennant Charatan Berger, filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court late Thursday.
Durst is not directly involved in the firms, but it’s widely believed that Charatan used millions her husband received from his family’s real-estate empire to start BCB Property Management.
Durst, 72, is in Los Angeles on charges that he shot Berman after confiding to her that he’d killed his first wife, Kathleen Durst. Kathleen went missing in 1982. Her body has never been found and her husband remains the primary suspect in her disappearance.
Durst has also admitted to dismembering a Texas neighbor in 2000, but escaped conviction for the killing by claiming he accidentally shot the man then panicked.
Charatan and Berger’s real-estate companies own properties across the city. Unnamed tenants from six of the buildings — 362 Lincoln Pl., 164 Havemeyer St., 442 Lorimer St., and 101 Ocean Pwy., in Brooklyn and 409 E. 6th St., 411 E. 6th St. in Manhattan — created websites to anonymously trash their landlords, the suit says.
The disgruntled residents claim that the building owners “engage in abusive practices,” ignore bed bug infestations and refuse to clean up swastika graffiti at one of the locations.
The sites also call Charatan “the most ruthless New York City real estate mogul of her generation.”
The popular HBO documentary about Durst’s life, “The Jinx” depicted Charatan as the “mastermind” controlling her husband’s $65 million real-estate fortune.
Sources have said the marriage is one of convenience and the couple only lived together for a few years after they married in 2000.
In the documentary, Charatan tells Durst in a jailhouse phone call not to plead insanity in the trial over the Texas killing because he could lose his family money over the claim.
The “animal-decapitating sociopath” description on the sites likely refers to a claim by the Texas judge presiding over Durst’s murder trial that he left a cat’s head on her doorstep.
The suit says the various claims on the sites are false and subject the plaintiffs to “public contempt, hatred, ridicule.” The sites also damage their “character and reputation,” according to court papers.
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