Charles V. Bagli

Charlie Bagli has been covering the Robert Durst mystery for 20 years, mostly for The New York Times, but also for Los Angeles Magazine and Town & Country magazine. He covered the intersection of politics and real estate in New York, interviewing all of the city's powerful real estate billionaires, including members of the Durst family, before he even heard Bob's name. The case has taken him from Manhattan, where Durst's family owns a dozen skyscrapers, to Galveston, Texas, where Bob Durst rented a cheap room while posing as a mute woman, to Los Angeles, where Durst occasionally lived and where Susan Berman was murdered. Bagli has interviewed investigators and Durst, as well as his friends; his wife's Kathie's family and friends, and Susan Berman's far-flung network of friends and family. In a surprising coincidence, Bagli's closest friend had attended a camp in the Berkshire Mountains where Bob was a counselor. He wrote about the sale of high-profile buildings, Donald J. Trump's projects in Manhattan and his casino debacle, political contributions of the real estate industry, the battle to build a $2 billion stadium for the Jets, bid rigging in the construction industry and payoffs at the tax assessors office. He has worked for The New York Observer, the Daily Record, the Tampa Tribune and the Brooklyn Phoenix. He is the author of "Other People's Money; Inside the Housing Crisis and the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made." Prior to becoming a journalist, he worked as an EKG tech, a furnace tender at a tool plant, a bus driver and a janitor at a Kmart. He has lived in Montclair, New Jersey for 34 years with his wife Ellie Bagli and their two daughters. He ran the New York Marathon twice and coached a girls softball team for 12 years.