Murder of Mafia Princess and Screenwriter Susan Berman

Rewind. On Christmas Eve 2000, Susan Berman, a talented journalist, screenwriter, and author, sadly lost her life at her home on 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. Susan, the cherished daughter of a mobster and a former dancer, was raised as part of mob royalty, celebrating birthdays with Elvis and Liberace. Her tragic passing deeply affected her friends, leaving us wondering—did Susan ever suspect her killer?

Executive Producer Kristin Overn
Executive Producer and Host Sandy Adomaitis
Producer Terry Sampson
Music by Ethan Stoller

Transcript

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Hello, my name is Sandy Adamidis, the social media director for the Page International Screenwriting Awards and your host for the Writers Hangout, a podcast that celebrates the many From inspiration to the first draft, revising, getting the project made, and everything in between. We'll talk to the best and the brightest in the entertainment industry, and create a space where you can hang out, learn from the pros, and have fun. Hey, writers and friends, it's Sandy. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had a really nice day, but unfortunately the holiday was busy and I fell behind. So I'm going to share an episode from the early days of the Writer's Hangout way back to 2022, so unbutton those Thanksgiving coma pants and get comfy, as I tell you, the true crime story of a real life mafia princess and screenwriter Susan Berman. even if you remember this episode from 2022, go ahead and give it another listen. I put together this episode by reading Susan's memoir, doing a lot of research, and I forgot large parts of her fascinating life and tragic death while I was re-editing this episode. Oh, and I also recommend her memoir Easy Street. it's about Susan's life as the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster. let's start the show. Terry, right before we started to record, you were telling me'cause it rained last night. Yeah. and you were telling me about a story of how. You and your wife go to sleep nowadays. Can you tell us about that? Yes, we choose TV to put us to sleep. Oh, do you have a special program that you listen to? Well, I like, uh, PBS, uh, I'm sorry, out there. Good for PBS people. but it's great sleep too. My wife likes the news and there's the conflict. Oh, the news is too, there's too much to it. Yeah, I understand that. So it's a delicate dance, but I'll tell you that the rain is better than either of those programs. Sure. You just open the window a teeny bit. Mm-hmm. A beautiful sound of rain. Yes. Getting effortlessly. Against the roof. Yes. I'm getting tired now. No, we can't finish this. We can't do this. No. We'll do it another day. Okay. Okay. But this story just really touched me. I'm just finding through doing these series of true crimes about writers a. I'm getting so attached to these people. This is the story of Susan Berman, the Mafia Princess, Susan Berman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1945, and she was the only child of the former traveling dancer named Gladys Evans and David Davy Berman. Davy was born in abject destitution to immigrant parents from Ukraine, and he turned to an early life of crime out of desperation and survival. His childhood was defined by merciless poverty, not the picturesque poverty, but the hungry, dirty, shameful poverty. Wrote Susan, who learned that her father and uncle were forced to endure the unforgiving prairie winters in a one room clay house with no coats or shoes as an adult. Berman was a major organized crime figure who was one of the three men who walked into the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and announced the resort was now under the direction within minutes after. Benjamin Bugsy Siegel was shot and killed in the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill. Berman died under mysterious circumstances on the operating table when Susan was 12. But all indications were that he died of a heart attack during surgery. She believed uncertainty also surrounded her mother's presumed suicide by overdose a year later. I mean, it's highly likely that. Her father died on the operating table, but also, what a perfect way to pay somebody off. If you're a mob person, right. And you're used to doing the dirty work, you could pay somebody off to botch a surgery, correct? Sure. And her mom was very fragile and was in and out of institutions for years or just hire a, a surgeon who got Ds. I mean, they're out there. It took me a moment, but you're absolutely right. I see where you're, yes, we're bringing Bob in. You bring Bob in. Yeah. Bob can't do this. Susan wrote the background sounds of my childhood were slot machines crunching. Dice clicking the songs of Sophie Tucker and the Andrew Sisters and the carping of an ever present hotel page. To this day, the desert air invigorates and exhilarates me like nothing else, and hotel coffee shops and floor shows. Give me a sense of security. I love that. Within hours of David Berman's funeral in 1957, the mob cleaned out Susan's house and gave away all her toys. She was shipped off to Idaho with a single truckload of clothes and mementos to live with her uncle Chickie Berman. I love that name. Chicky. Later she was sent away to various boarding schools. Her education broken up by regular visits with Chicky, who was then in jail. He would ask her to wear Chanel number five. She wrote so he could smell the real world. It's Wow, a little odd. That sounds like an ad campaign. Yeah. I know Uncle Chickie sent Susan to boarding schools with her own trust fund and by her account she lived her parents' values, especially their Jewish faith and abiding sense of loyalty and the importance of keeping secrets. Susan attended the Chadwick. School in Hollywood. I had never heard of the Chadwick School in Hollywood. Have you heard of it? No. No. Where, where, do you know where it's located? You know, I meant to look that up. My bad. I didn't. But it's within the Hollywood bounds. Yeah. Is it still. A place. Now again, I meant to look it up and I didn't. Sorry. So thank you for pointing that out, please. Where I had to try admit that I please. Phone in. People messed up. If you can please, please phone in with your complaints. Well, complaints and then the information. Then the information. We don't like getting goling. It's too much work. Yeah. She shared a dorm room with. Jean Martin's daughters and, uh, remembered feeling envious of BD Merrill because her mother, who was Betty Davis visited every weekend. That's wow. Um. It's odd. Usually you would go to boarding school in Switzerland or somewhere further. Yeah, She had a French class with Yu Brenner's son who spoke the language fluently because he, well, there's Switzerland because he had lived in Switzerland and she said Liza Minnelli was an adorable wave. Who improvised dances whenever there was a spare moment. Wow. That can, that can get old though. Like lunch. You don't need to dance. Yeah. This isn't fame, Liza, she received a bachelor of arts degree in 1967 from the University of California. It is here where she met Robert. Durst. Now I'm sure that name Robert Durst. Sounds familiar. Did yes. Do you know that name, Terry? I do. Okay. I know where this is going. We're gonna double back to Robert Durst, but, I will mention that Robert Durst was an American real estate heir who gained attention as a suspect in the. Unsolved 1982. Disappearance of his wife, Kathleen McCormick and the 2001 killing of his neighbor, Morris Black Durst was acquitted of murdering black in 2003. In 2012, Durst participated in the 2015 documentary mini series, the Jinx. We'll come back to Robert Durst, but I have this affinity for the Jinx in an odd way. Sadly, my sister Penny, um, got cancer and she died. But my sister Penny loved true crime. So when I went to go stay with her, I brought my, they didn't have HBO and uh, the jinx was on HBO and I brought my. Apple TV device back to Connecticut, and Penny and I and my brother-in-law watched the Jinx while she was six. Oh. And she, she loved it. Oh, we talked about it for hours and it, it just made our time normal. It was one of the times that were just so normal, sitting in her kitchen watching the Jinx. Okay, back to Susan. In 1969, Susan graduated with a master of arts and journalism from the University of California Berkeley. And at age 21, she was paid a total of 4.3 million by the mafia. I don't know if that was on the check for her father's interest in casinos and other properties. So she was flush with cash. In the seventies, Susan worked for the San Francisco Examiner and then moved to the East Coast and started working for New York Magazine in 1991. Susan's memoir, easy Street, about growing up in Las Vegas at the height of its glamor, was sold to Universal. Susan received$350,000 for the movie rights, and she decided that it was time to move to Los Angeles and start her screenwriting career. I need to lose some money. Yeah. Susan, grew up ignorant, believe it or not, of her father's mob ties and Easy Street. her memoir was a research project. It was partly filled with what she learned about him from the FBI files, that she got including his time in Sing, sing, and memories of having Liberace sing at her birthday and learning to play gin at age four with men she knew as uncles, but were in fact. Bodyguards. It's very Shirley Temple. She never knew the family's harried midnight departures to LA or anything other than her father's busy. Only available time for vacation, not flights. From the threats of assassinations, they. Actually were. Susan grew up in an emotional fog about her parents. Carolyn C wrote in her LA Times Review of Easy Street. Two months after moving to Los Angeles, Susan met her first husband in a classic cute meet. She was in line to register a script at the Writer's Guild when she met Mr. As he called himself Margoles. He was 25 and broke. She was 38. Literally. He a adopted Mr. As a first name. Correct. And he also was a screenwriter, but I, and I couldn't find any of his, anything that he wrote was ever made into a movie. Well, he was so deep in the third person. Yes, he was. That he went with Mr. He was before his time. Yes. they fell in love and got married in a lavish wedding at the hotel Bel Air Complete with ice swans like the ones her dad insisted in on having at the flamingo. Robert Durst gave her away and mega film producer Robert Evans, toasted the couple. Unfortunately, the meat cute did not have a fairytale ending. The marriage quickly ended and Mr died of a heroin overdose at 27. Susan knew when she married him that Mr had done heroin in the past, but she believed it was over. Susan was naive to the point of being. Puritanical about drugs says her friends, despite the pain in her life, she never medicated. I don't think she ever smoked a joint in her life, says a friend of hers, the only alcohol she ever drank was a glass of wine at Passover. This too came from her father who told her that drugs and alcohol were for suckers and not something. Jewish people did. In 1987, Susan started dating Paul Kaufman. He was a financial advisor with Hollywood aspirations, and he had two children, Mila and Reb. Please forgive me if I am pronouncing. Not incorrectly. Susan loved the children and they considered her their mother Berman, who once lived a flashy lifestyle from a trust fund. Her father left was left penniless towards the end of her relationship with Kaufman when they broke up in. 1992. So basically he left her when the money ran out. Sucker. I know. Yeah, I bet he drank. Friends said they believed Berman invested her money into a play with Paul Kaufman that never took off the bank, took her house. And she had to declare bankruptcy. So she a lot of highs and lows in this woman's life. Mila and Reeb would continue to be her children. Being a mother to these kids was one of the proudest and most satisfying things in her life. She was quoted to say. In 1992, a friend gave Susan now penniless use of a condo on Sunset Boulevard. While Reeb stayed with his father, Susan and Mila lived there for five years for free, and Susan started writing mysteries to pay her expenses and her daughter's private school. Tuition. By then, Susan acquired her manager, Nile Brenner, whom she met while walking her dogs on Sunset Boulevard. It would prove to be a strange relationship. Susan was the only writer, Brenner rep, and the rest were struggling actors, and it was lost on no one. That Nile was a dead ringer for Mr. Marley's. Yeah. Friends say that Susan would call him constantly to help her deal with her. She suffered from phobias, but at this point in her life, they were raging phobias. And she would ask him to take her shopping to doctor's appointments, take her dogs to the vet. He would get fed up with her. They'd have raging arguments. He would say, I'm gonna leave. And she would say, fine. And then a couple days would go by and the cycle would just start all over. That's not gonna help the phobias. No, in the year 2000, on Christmas Eve. Police Responded to a call by neighbors who'd grown alarm that one of. Three Fox Terriers so precious to Susan and such a nuisance to others was running wild and barking hysterically. at 1527 Benedict Canyon Police found the rear door open and Susan dressed in sweats in a t-shirt, was lying on the cold hardwood floor with a single bullet in the back of her head. Execution style. Bloody paw prints of the dogs surrounded her. They determined she had been lying there for a day, although a bullet casing was found, the gun was never recovered. There weren't any signs of force entry, which led some to believe. That Susan had opened her door to the acquaintance or friend that tragic day. The bizarre story doesn't end there. On December 23rd, the police received a note, even though, Susan's body had already been discovered, and all the notes said was 1527 Benedict Canyon cadaver. Whoever killed Berman, the police assumed, must have cared for her in some way, and they didn't want her body to just go undiscovered. Usually. Terry, I would turn to you at this point and say, who do you think killed? Susan Berman and I wouldn't know, but keep going. Okay. Susan's story does have a conclusion, theories that were floating around. The Godfather. Susan was executed because she wrote about mobsters. On December 19th, five days before police found her body, Susan was on the phone talking with her good friend, actress Kim Langford, who I looked up. She was on a nighttime soap opera called Nots Landing. Of course, Susan said to Kim, I have information that's going to blow the top off things. What do you mean? Kim asked? What information? I don't have it myself, said Susan, but I know how to get it. Well be careful, for God's sake. Said Kim. Susan promised they would talk after the holiday and it wasn't unusual for. Susan to be about to get information. Kim said because she was a journalist, and Susan at the time was working on three big projects, two book ideas and a television pilot. Two had to do with Las Vegas, so Kim assumed what Susan was talking about was possibly who. Killed Bugsy Siegel. And she also remembers thinking, eh, who cares at this point? Who killed Bugsy? Siegel, on a side note, at another point in the conversation, Susan told Kim, she talked to a psychic, and the psychic told Susan she was gonna die of violent death and that a gun would be involved. Wow, that's a psychic that I would not want to go to. I'd go to one. Not as good. No. Right, exactly. If this psychic charged 50, I would go to the$25 an hour. Yeah. Jerry McGuire. Susan, as I mentioned before had an obsession with her longtime manager, Nile, and he was getting to the point where he just couldn't handle Susan anymore. After Susan died, he declined to be interviewed except to say yes. Yes, I know everyone adored her. She was remarkable and incredibly talented, but she was not an easy person to get along with. Okay. Reached a second time by reporters Brenner. said I've got other clients to take care of. I don't have time for this. I was tapped out by Susan every day while she was alive, and it's the same in her death. I just can't take it anymore. Now, uh, that was my interpretation of how he sounded, but it sounded like Nile and Susan things did not end well. No. The third theory and what turned out to be the truth. The Jinx, a Los Angeles jury found Robert Durst, the notorious subject of the HBO series. The jinx, guilty of the first degree murder. Of Susan Berman. Berman's murder came just days before prosecutors had planned to meet with her about the 1982 disappearance of Robert Dursts wife Kathleen. McCormack at the end of her life, Susan was struggling both emotionally and financially. And although Durst was known for being cheap, prosecutors said he gave Berman two checks totaling$50,000. In exchange for covering up the disappearance of his wife, they claim Durst shot Berman. In hopes of silencing her in regards to his wife's case. By all accounts, everyone who knew Susan said she would never have squealed on Durst, though he had good reason to be nervous. Susan, who had casually mentioned. To several friends over the years that Durst had something to do with Kathie's disappearance, had not only provided an alibi for Durst the night McCormick went missing, Susan also acted as his media liaison. In the months that followed Dursts wife's disappearance, Susan knew where the bodies were buried, quite literally, and police contended that Robert killed her for it. Although authorities believe that Robert flew from New York to San Francisco on December 19th in the year 2000, he then took another flight to Eureka, and then the following morning drove to Los Angeles. He headed to Susan's house late on the evening of December 22nd, or early in the morning of the 23rd and shot her. The back of the head, Susan, the speed talking journalist and screenwriter with an exotic background and a career that had shriveled to the point where she couldn't pay her rent. Met a violent death. Durst said Whatever happened to Kathie was a big chunk, my fault. But with Susan, I'm ready to go before God naked and say, I don't know nothing. In October of 2021, a Los Angeles jury convicted Durst, then 78 of first degree murder for the killing of Susan Berman. Prosecutors argued that Durst had shot Susan at point blank range in her home to prevent her from telling police what she knew about the 1982 disappearance of Dursts first wife. The verdict marked the first homicide conviction of Durst who had been linked to the deaths of three people in three states. There are scars within me that will probably never heal. I have uncontrollable. Anxiety attacks that occur without warning. I am never secure and live with a dread that apocalyptic events could happen at any moment. Death and love seem linked forever in my fantasies, and the caddish will ring always in my ears. Susan Berman from her memoir Easy Street. The sources for this story about Susan Berman is an article from an LA magazine by Charles Bagley Wikipedia, a daily news article by. Kate Feldman La Times article by Carolyn Kellogg, A US Sun article by Adrian Zza, Jennifer Ach and Nina Clevenger, A New York magazine article by Lisa DePalo and. The book, easy Street, the True Story of a Mob Family, a memoir by Susan Berman. That's a wrap for the Writer's Hangout. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and thrive till we get to hang out again. Keep writing. The world needs your Stories.