Police: Durst 'most interesting' link to Vermont case
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Investigators in Middlebury working a missing-student case from 1971 received a tip in 2012 that millionaire real estate heir Robert Durst, the suspect in several killings, had lived in town at the time.
Police revealed that detail during a briefing Tuesday afternoon about the possible link between Durst — recently arrested on murder charges following an HBO documentary about his life — and the vanishing of Lynne Schulze, an 18-year-old from Connecticut in her first year at Middlebury College.
"I don't like to use the term 'suspect' per se. This is a person that is very interesting to us," Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley said.
Durst and his wife owned a local health-food store, All Good Things, in 1971 and 1972. Schulze, who frequented the store, was last seen across the street from it.
The chief said his department has yet to question Durst but would like to. He has a lawyer, Hanley noted. The Middlebury department also has to stand in line with other police agencies.
A defense lawyer later said there is no link between Durst and the college freshman.
"Bob Durst had no connection to the case in Vermont or any other case that some law enforcement people have seen fit to draw suspicions about," defense attorney Dick DeGuerin wrote in an e-mail. "He's an easy target for this game of 'Blame it on Bob.' "
Despite developments that drew swift national media attention since police disclosed the Durst connection Monday, Hanley said investigators are "not close" to resolving the case.
Maybe the Durst connection "will take us down that path," he added. There have been plenty of media calls, but no crime tips, Middlebury Detective Kris Bowdish said.
"We don't let open cases like this where someone has died go away," Hanley said, reiterating investigators' belief that Schulze died, and not by accident or suicide.
When asked if he considered the case a homicide, the chief initially hedged.
Hanley would not characterize the Durst lead as the best the police have pursued over the years, but "it's certainly the most interesting."
Schulze, 18, of Simsbury, Conn., was last seen standing near a gas station in Middlebury at about 2:15 p.m. on Dec. 10, 1971, officials have said. The location was across from the Dursts' heath-food store.
The college freshman was scheduled to have a final exam at 1 p.m. that day and told a friend she needed to return to her dorm to grab a favorite pen. She never arrived for the exam.
Bowdish, the investigator, who took over the case in 2012, said the file showed Schulze's parents had decided to keep the disappearance under wraps initially and asked then-Police Chief Robert VanNess to do the same.
Bowdish theorized the family had hoped Schulze would come home by Christmas.
Bowdish said the disappearance became public when the Burlington Free Press published a story Jan. 24, 1972, and the Addison Independent, a Middlebury-based weekly, followed three days later.
Bowdish said Schulze's parents have died, but the victim's siblings are hoping for peace of mind to close out the case.
Schulze's brother, Tom, told the Free Press before the news conference that the family is glad Middlebury police are continuing to work the case.
He said he would defer to the Middlebury police to answer questions.
Hanley and Bowdish said police have treated the case as a new investigation and are retracing as much as possible.
Police said they have no record of having spoken with Durst at the time of the original investigation, nor with a former girlfriend Durst visited frequently in Vermont in the 1990s.
Investigators would say little about the 2012 tip, other than that the information was separate from the HBO documentary The Jinx, in which Durst seemed to confess to several killings. Durst is facing murder charges in the 2000 death of a woman in Los Angeles.
Durst is an estranged member of the wealthy New York real estate family that runs 1 World Trade Center. He was acquitted of murder after the dismembered body of a neighbor, Morris Black, was found in a Texas bay in 2001.
He was arrested earlier this month and was charged with killing Susan Berman in 2000 before she could speak with New York investigators about the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst, in 1982. He was held in New Orleans pending extradition to California.