beautiful upstairs neighbor. it was like prince charming and a princess. kathie was the love of his life. reporter: but it didn t last. the altmans attended their wedding and then a few years later, watched their prince and princess grow apart. she became more independent. it wasn t the fairy tale anymore. reporter: no. in fact, kathie s brother jim told us it was more like a horror movie. there s a dark side of bob that, you know, was fairly well camouflaged when they were first, you know, going out and getting married. but it escalated ultimately into psychological abuse, economic abuse and physical abuse. reporter: remember that doctor s letter warning that the 10-year-old bob suffered from severe hostility issues? kathie gave a copy to her friends including ellen strauss. evidence, she said. just in case. kathie warned all of us that if anything ever happened, look
investigators also working the case, a possible connection. there were credit card records that placed durst in the eureka area the day that this girl disappeared. reporter: the transaction was just up the coast in trinidad, maybe 20 minutes or so by car from that spot where the witness saw a girl picked up on the road in eureka. and then, before the trial in galveston, birkbeck heard this. i have a really good source that was close to the defense team. and i was told that durst, he was extremely concerned about karen mitchell. and was so concerned that he thought he was going to get charged. durst brought this up on his own for with his defense attorney? yes. and dick deguerin apparently said to him, bobby, let s worry about one case at a time. reporter: not true, said dick deguerin. i ve never had any concern about it. reporter: did bob? no. reporter: but when durst was arrested in new orleans, the case was reborn.
california, where bob durst came to what? get lost himself? it was 1995, after he was dumped from the company, 13 years after kathy disappeared. bob walked into the office of local real estate broker gene davenport. he told me he was a writer for the wall street journal. he said he wanted to have a place with an ocean view. reporter: bob forked over nearly $400,000 in cash for a big family house in the town of trinidad, overlooking the pacific, where he lived like a hermit. nobody really seen him around. he never really had contact or didn t really have any best friends. reporter: in that personal account of his, he explained why. i hated to have more than a brief conversation with someone because i immediately found myself being asked, what do you do? the true answer was nothing, i live off the family estate.
reporter: or los angeles, where he d look in on susan berman, who you ll remember spoke for him after kathie disappeared, and was now trying to make it as a hollywood screenwriter. she and bobby i always felt were very tight. reporter: this is susan berman s friend kim lankford. she was very protective of bobby. reporter: susan lived in a slightly rundown cottage in l.a. s benedict canyon, and occasionally bob would stop by. but, like a gypsy, would soon be gone again, sometimes flying back to trinidad, where he d question his shuttle driver ross vitale. he would kind of specifically ask questions about, has the sheriff s department been out here? you seen anything going on? reporter: and in 1997, while bob lived here, something did happen. a local teenager named karen mitchell vanished after leaving a women s shoe store that,
jinx at the same time as everybody else did. and according to jarecki, the filmmakers had given evidence to the authorities two years before the show aired. which, to bob s attorney dick deguerin, meant the show was far from objective reporting. they edited probably 50 or more hours down into a few minutes. and i think the editing job was designed to make him look bad. reporter: but it was a simple comparison of handwriting samples that, on its own, seemed to condemn robert durst. it was episode five of the jinx series, in which a letter he admitted sending to susan berman was compared to the infamous cadaver note her presumed killer sent the cops. soon after seeing that episode, bob packed up and left houston. but the cops were monitoring his cell phone and eventually tracked him to the jw marriott hotel in new orleans.