Murder Defendant Called Good Tenant

New York real estate heir Robert Durst posed convincingly as a woman and was an excellent tenant before he killed his neighbor and chopped up his body, his former landlord testified Tuesday in Durst’s trial for murder.

Klaus Dilmann said Durst, whom he knew as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner, was rarely seen and paid his $300-a-month rent for a run-down apartment months in advance.

“A good resident is one you never see. That would be Mr. Durst,” he said in the second day of testimony in the bizarre case.

“Mrs. Ciner was a very convincing middle-age woman,” said Dilmann. But “she wasn’t my type,” he added, prompting laughter from Durst and others in the courtroom.

Durst, 60, is one of four siblings to share the New York real estate empire built by their late father, Seymour Durst.

Durst has admitted killing neighbor and friend Morris Black, 71, on Sept. 28, 2001, then cutting his body into pieces and throwing them into Galveston Bay in plastic bags.

His lawyers said the killing was an accident that occurred as the two struggled over a gun in Durst’s apartment. Instead of calling the police, Durst decided to cover up the death because of his own past, they said.

Durst, they said, had gone to Galveston and posed as a woman to get away from allegations that he had been involved in the disappearance of wife Kathy Durst in 1982 and the shooting of his friend Susan Berman in 2000.

Black, defense lawyers said, brought on his death because he was violent and dangerous.

But his landlord disagreed. Black frequently complained and had disputes with his neighbors, but Dilmann did not view him as dangerous, he testified.

“He never threatened me in any way nor did I have the feeling he wanted to do harm to me in any form,” Dilmann said.