In September 2001, the headless body of an elderly man washing ashore in Galveston, Texas. Also recovered were garbage bags containing the severed limbs of the victim—and a newspaper with a home delivery address that left arresting officers to the downscale apartment of Robert Durst, an unkempt transient who dressed in drag.

Incredibly, his bail was posted the following morning. New York authorities were quick to make the unbelievable connection. This was the Robert Durst, the dashing real estate scion whose family's fortune was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He was also the Robert Durst who was a "person of interest" in the number of a prominent woman journalist, as well as a high-profile suspect in the mysterious disappearance of his first wife 20 years earlier.

How could Robert Durst degenerate from a powerful New York City businessman to a cross-dressing fugitive wanted in a murder investigation? The answer was more startling than anyone who knew him could ever have imagined . . .

Marion Collins