Durst Eyed in Cases of 2 Missing Teens

Heir's extradition to California delayed
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 18, 2015 2:09 AM CDT
Durst Eyed in Cases of 2 Missing Teens
Robert Durst is escorted into Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in New Orleans yesterday.   (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

"What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," Robert Durst said in the finale of The Jinx, and cold-case investigators are now starting to wonder how many "them all" might mean. Police in Eureka, Calif., tell NBC that they'd like to speak to Durst investigators about Karen Mitchell, a 16-year-old who disappeared when the real estate heir was living in the area in 1997. Matt Birkbeck, author of a book about Durst, tells the New York Daily News that investigators also looked into Durst in the disappearance of Kristen Modafferi, an 18-year-old student last seen in San Francisco in 1997. He says police told him one of the "suspects they were looking at had dressed in drag, he had some odd habits," which sounds a lot like Durst, who Birkbeck says was living in the city then.

"The Durst news has created enough of a question mark in my mind that I'm going to follow up with the FBI," Modafferi's father tells the Daily News. Durst is currently in custody in New Orleans, but his extradition to face murder charges in California will be delayed for at least a week while authorities in Louisiana pursue weapons and marijuana charges against him, reports the Guardian, which notes that his attorney, who says his arrest was based on ratings, not facts, has welcomed the delay. Police officers, one of them wearing an LAPD badge, spent hours searching Durst's Houston home yesterday and left with two document boxes, the AP reports. (The AP clarified yesterday that Durst, 71, is not the lead singer of Limp Bizkit.)

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