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For Radio Host
Of the Counterculture,
It Was a Strange Trip
By COREY KILGANNON
For a half century, Bob Fass, 85,
has presided over the late-night
airwaves of New York City with a
radio show named “Radio Unnameable,”
which has aired since
1963 on WBAI-FM, the listenersupported
haven for the radical
left.
As a self-described “midwife at
the birth of the counterculture,”
Mr. Fass, in his time behind the
microphone, has borne witness to
some unusual episodes.
The second night his show
aired, a listener set the tone by delivering
marijuana to the station.
There was the time, in 1966, when
Bob Dylan showed up in the studio
and began taking callers and
cracking jokes. In 1971, Mr. Fass
essentially talked a caller out of
committing suicide while on the
air.
But lately, Mr. Fass’s life has begun
imitating the craziness of his
show, ever since he and his wife,
Lynnie, attempted to move out of
their Staten Island home to a new
house in Danbury, Conn., setting
off a misadventure worthy of one
of his distressed late night callers.
Last month, moments after he
entered his new home, as the
movers were carrying in his belongings,
Mr. Fass casually flicked
on a gas fireplace, which promptly
malfunctioned and set the house
on fire.
It was a two-alarm blaze that
left Mr. Fass, who uses a wheelchair,
inhaling smoke for several
minutes until the movers rushed
in and carried him out.
“I could have been roast D.J.,”
said Mr. Fass. “Have you ever
heard the Warren Zevon song ‘I
was in the House When the House
Burned Down?’”
And so the “Unnameable” radio
host now faces an unknowable future.
Even in adversity, though, Mr.
Fass, whose show airs Thursday
nights at midnight, can be counted
on for a pithy take on things. His
improvisational monologues and
his mix of guests and music
helped pioneer free-form radio,
and his show was a vital forum for
activists, musicians, and everyday
people to come together
around issues including the Vietnam
War, drugs and social justice.
After the fire, with nowhere else
to stay, the Fasses returned to
their empty house on Lake Avenue
on Staten Island, near the
Bayonne Bridge, where they live
with their 10 or so adopted feral
cats.
LOS ANGELES — When
Robert A. Durst was asked why he
had talked to the makers of “The
Jinx” — the 2015 HBO documentary
about the suspicions that had
dogged him for years over the untimely
deaths of his first wife, a
close confidante and a cantankerous
neighbor in Texas — he said
he had thought it was low risk.
It was unlikely, he said, that any
prosecutor would “commence a
major, budget-busting investigation”
for a couple of cold cases.
But shortly before the last
episode was broadcast, John
Lewin, a deputy district attorney
in Los Angeles, proved Mr. Durst
wrong. Mr. Lewin, who has a long
record of winning guilty verdicts
in cold murder cases, had him arrested
in New Orleans.
Mr. Lewin would eventually
charge Mr. Durst with the execution-style
murder in Los Angeles
in 2000 of his confidante, Susan
Berman. Preliminary hearings in
the case were held in a courtroom
here last week.
The prosecution contends that
Mr. Durst, the alienated scion of a
New York real estate family, killed
Ms. Berman with a gunshot to the
back of the head to prevent her
from revealing her role in helping
him cover up the murder of his
first wife, Kathie Durst, to investigators
who had reopened that
case.
In a sense, Mr. Lewin must
prove two cold cases, not just one.
“It is important to understand
that all of the defendant’s subsequent
criminal conduct can be
traced back to his original killing
of his wife Kathie decades earlier,
and his subsequent efforts to
avoid criminal culpability for her
death,” he said in court papers.
Mr. Lewin, who declined to be
interviewed for this story, has
talked to virtually every witness
in the case, which covers 40 years
and has a cast of dozens. During
court hearings over the past year,
he has displayed an encyclopedic
knowledge of Mr. Durst, his history,
his friends and his alleged
victims.
Mr. Lewin has conducted punishing
examinations of Mr. Durst’s
friends and even of the now-retired
detective who first looked
into the disappearance of Ms.
Durst.
“He’s a pit bull,” said Kathie
Durst’s brother, Jim McCormack.
There is little doubt by either
side that the hearings, which adjourned
after four days of testimony
and argument, will conclude
in October with Judge Mark
Windham binding Mr. Durst over
for trial, starting probably early
next year.
But that does not mean that Mr.
Lewin has a clear path to another
guilty verdict. Mr. Lewin and his
colleagues will still have to contend
with hazy, in some cases 40-
year-old memories; the lack of the
weapon in Ms. Berman’s shooting;
and the absence of a body or
even a crime scene in the disappearance
and presumed death of
Ms. Durst, for which no one has
ever been charged.
Mr. Durst, 75, frail and worth
$100 million, has said repeatedly
that he did not kill his first wife,
nor does he know who killed Ms.
Berman. And despite the certainty
of a trial, Dick DeGuerin,
the Texas lawyer who leads Mr.
Durst’s defense team, insists that
the prosecution has still not proven
that Mr. Durst killed either
woman.
As for the hard-charging prosecutor
with whom he has repeatedly
clashed, “He’s a bully, but
that’s not unusual for prosecutors,”
Mr. DeGuerin said of Mr.
Lewin. “And he’s not used to people
standing up to him.”
Both sides have already invested
an enormous amount of
time and money in the case. Mr.
THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2018
Bob and Lynnie Fass have
been sleeping on the couch in
Staten Island since a fire in
their new home in Connecticut.
Mr. Fass with Abbie Hoffman,
right, circa 1968.
A single couch now serves as
their shared bed as they sort out
their future. Most of their belongings
either remain in storage or
were damaged by the fire.
The bulk of Mr. Fass’s radio archive
was recently acquired by
Columbia University, with payment
for the acquisition going toward
the new house, he said.
But numerous boxes of radio recordings
that Columbia had not
acquired were damaged in the
fire, Mr. Fass said.
“There’s a lot of history in
there,” said Mr. Fass, who is no
stranger to dealing with tumultuous
events: His show became
both a communications and coverage
hub for Yippie events, the 1963
March on Washington, the 1968
Democratic National Convention
in Chicago and the 1988 Tompkins
Square Park riot.
His callers have ranged from
Black Panthers to John Lennon to
ordinary New Yorkers. One of Mr.
Dylan’s first broadcast appearances
was on Radio Unnameable.
The Yippie movement leader Abbie
Hoffman was a regular guest,
as were Hunter S. Thompson, Allen
Ginsberg and Timothy Leary.
The Danbury house fire occurred
just before the Fasses were
set to close on both the sale of the
Staten Island house and the purchase
of the Danbury home. So
the fate and details of both transactions
are in limbo, he said.
The Fasses said they signed an
agreement with the developer
buying their house stipulating
that they vacate by the original
move-out date last month or face
daily monetary penalties.
A lawyer for the buyer did not
respond to messages.
Even if they had the money to
rent a place, it might be hard to
find a landlord who would welcome
a colony of cats, said Mr.
Fass, who had already taken two
of the cats to the Danbury house.
During the fire, one of them,
Plutarch, escaped and remained
missing for several weeks, until
Ms. Fass found him.
Mr. Fass recently completed a
three-month hospital stay and is
recovering from heart problems.
The smoke inhalation from the
fire has added a chronic cough to
his health concerns.
Mr. Fass, a native of Brooklyn
who lived for decades in Manhattan,
moved to Staten Island 25
years ago, but said he had grown
weary of the increasing truck traffic
at a warehouse across the
street.
The Danbury house was an affordable
option that allowed Ms.
Fass to continue to commute to
her paralegal job in Brooklyn. Mr.
Fass had been broadcasting his
show remotely in recent years
from a studio in his house, and
planned on doing so from Danbury.
In interviews, the Fasses’ broker
and the lawyer handling the
purchase of the Danbury house
both insisted that the Fasses will
be able to move into the house after
a renovation covered by the
seller’s homeowners insurance.
But the Fasses said they have
no guarantee of this, and with
much of the purchase price for the
Danbury house in escrow, they
are being pressured to close on
the property.
“This type of thing is really not
my area, and I have no money for
a lawyer to figure it out,” said Mr.
Fass, whose radio career was depicted
in a 2012 documentary, “Radio
Unnameable.”
The seller of the Danbury home
did not respond to an email, and
her lawyer, Lawrence M. Riefberg,
said he could not comment
without her permission.
In a poetic reversal, Mr. Fass recently
called in to his own show —
which is being temporarily handled
by a colleague, Bill Propp —
and described the fire story on
WBAI (where this reporter is an
unpaid co-host of a weekly talk
show).
Mr. Fass said he stopped receiving
a salary from WBAI in 1977
and relies on Social Security benefits.
Over the years, some of his listeners
have donated to a retirement
fund for him.
After the fire, some of his longtime
listeners — the Fass “cabal,”
as he has always called them — organized
pages, which have raised
roughly $2,000.
On the radio, Mr. Fass often
helped raise funds for demonstrations
and for legal defenses for
such figures as the boxer Rubin
“Hurricane” Carter, the activist
Wavy Gravy and Mr. Hoffman, not
to mention institutions like the
East Village Other newspaper.
“Bob’s been a voice for the people
for so long, and so many listeners
have called in to his show in
their time of need,” said Jessica
Wolfson, who with Paul Lovelace,
Durst’s defense is expected to cost
well in excess of $10 million, according
to two people briefed on
the matter who requested anonymity
because they were not authorized
to discuss it publicly.
Mr. Lewin, 54, looks like an outof-shape
football lineman with a
modified crew cut. He tells jokes
at his own expense one minute
and rails at the defense the next.
But he is always about the case.
“I’m like the sloth,” he told Los
Angeles Magazine, referring to
the mammal that spend most of its
time hanging upside down in
trees. “I have this one skill.”
Since he won his first cold case
in 2002, Mr. Lewin has stacked up
16 guilty verdicts or pleas, the
magazine said.
His first cold case resurfaced
this year when a state panel ruled
that William Bradford, whom Mr.
Lewin successfully tried for the
murder of his wife after the case
lay dormant for 12 years, and who
is now 84, deserved parole, a move
that Mr. Lewin vehemently opposed.
Mr. Lewin’s decision to pick up
the Berman case was propelled, in
part, by the producers of “The
Jinx,” Andrew Jarecki and Marc
Smerling, who brought the authorities
what they believed was
new evidence about Ms. Berman’s
murder and the disappearance of
Ms. Durst.
On Dec. 24, 2000, the police
found the body of Ms. Berman, a
sometime screenwriter, in her
Benedict Canyon home in Los Angeles,
shot in the back of the head.
Someone had sent a note to the
Beverly Hills Police Department
alerting them to a “cadaver” at the
address.
Suspicion quickly passed from
Ms. Berman’s landlady to her
manager before landing on Mr.
Durst. But once again, little came
of it.
In interviews with “The Jinx”
producers, Mr. Durst admitted
that he had lied to police in 1982
about his whereabouts at the time
his wife disappeared and described
how his marriage had become
a series of “half arguments,
fighting, slapping, pushing,
wrestling.”
In a scene depicted in “The
Jinx,” Mr. Durst could not distinguish
between the handwriting on
the envelope of the “cadaver”
note, which misspelled Beverly
Hills as “Beverley,” and a note he
had sent to Ms. Berman with the
same misspelling.
The documentary ended famously
with Mr. Durst muttering
off camera, “What the hell did I
do? Killed them all of course.”
Mr. DeGuerin has dismissed the
documentary as a Hollywood concoction.
After having Mr. Durst arrested
on a murder warrant and gun
charges, Mr. Lewin hopped a
plane to New Orleans and managed
to interview him for three
hours before he was arraigned. In
the interview, Mr. Lewin complimented
and cajoled Mr. Durst,
suggesting he would never be a
free man, although he might be
able to negotiate a plea.
The defense challenged the interrogation
as “improper and deceptive.”
Mr. Lewin responded angrily
in a brief to what he described
as “baseless allegations,”
along with a video and transcript
of the entire encounter.
With no witnesses and no murder
weapon, Mr. Lewin has been
building a case out of tiny puzzle
pieces. He may have set a record
for the use of what are known as
conditional hearings, in which a
prosecutor can question witnesses
65 or older who could die or
become ill before trial — he
brought 20 witnesses to the stand
for them. A judge must determine
whether any of the testimony is
admissible at trial.
In response to a 12-page motion
from the defense to exclude any
YANA PASKOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
ROBERT ALTMAN/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES, VIA GETTY IMAGES
produced and directed the “Radio
Unnameable” documentary. “And
now he has a chance to move to a
comfortable living situation and
the whole thing literally goes up in
flames.”
Resting on his couch in the living
room, next to his walker and
his oxygen tanks, Mr. Fass disposed
of a telemarketer by feigning
a heart attack while on the
phone. Then he sighed.
“I’m just overwhelmed by everything
that’s happening,” he
said. “It might sound amusing, but
not when it’s happening in your
own life.”
The Cold-Case Specialist Who Wants to Put Robert Durst Away
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
JABIN BOTSFORD/LOS ANGELES TIMES
John Lewin, a prosecutor in Los Angeles, has an encyclopedic
knowledge of Robert Durst and a reputation as a “pit bull.”
statements Ms. Berman allegedly
made to her friends as hearsay,
Mr. Lewin responded in March
with what has become known as
“Big Boy”: a 77-page brief accompanied
by 316 pages of exhibits.
At times, the space between the
defense and prosecution tables
has crackled. Mr. Lewin once
made a remark about “these lawyers
being paid millions of dollars.”
It was not long before Mr.
DeGuerin bounced back with a
crack about Mr. Lewin driving a
Porsche.
Mr. Lewin’s full-court press has
occasionally rankled Judge Windham,
particularly when he continues
to argue a motion after the
judge has ruled in his favor.
“You’re interrupting my thinking,”
the normally Zen-like judge
said at one point last Thursday.
“Please be quiet.”
The prosecution scored two victories
last week when Judge
Windham ruled that he would accept
testimony from 13 friends
who say Ms. Berman confided to
them that she assisted Mr. Durst
in the cover-up and had been expecting
him to visit her around the
time of her murder. The judge also
accepted testimony and records
concerning incidents of domestic
violence in the Durst marriage,
pending challenges by the defense.
Karen Minutello, the former
manager of the Manhattan building
where the Dursts had an
apartment in 1982, testified during
last week’s hearing that Ms.
Durst had called her shortly before
her disappearance, saying
that she was looking for another
apartment in the building because
“she needed to get away” from her
husband.
A week after Ms. Durst disappeared,
Ms. Minutello said, she
saw the porters pulling her notebooks,
textbooks, makeup and
clothing from a jammed trash
compactor in the basement of the
building. Ms. Minutello determined
that it had all been shoved
down the chute from the Dursts’
15th-floor apartment.
“Who does that?” Ms.
Minutello said. “Their loved one
missing and you throw out their
stuff.”
She said she expected to be
questioned by the police. She “always
expected them to” call, she
went on, “and they never did.”
N
Corrections
A21
INTERNATIONAL
An article on Monday about the
number of women and Afro-Cubans
chosen to serve under Cuba’s
new president referred incorrectly
to research about the racial
balance among college students in
Cuba and the United States in the
1980s. A study by Alejandro de la
Fuente found that the proportion,
not the number, of black Cubans
with degrees compared with white
Cubans was close, and that the
proportion, not the number, of
white college degree holders in
the United States was twice that of
African-Americans. The study
also referred to graduation rates,
not attendance.
An article on Monday about protests
against social security
changes in Nicaragua misstated
the legal changes that allowed
Daniel Ortega to win a presidential
election in 2007. He was allowed
to win by a plurality, not a
simple majority.
An article on Sunday about the
reception of Miguel Díaz-Canel
Bermúdez, Cuba’s new president,
described incorrectly adjustments
to immigration policy under
the Obama administration.
President Barack Obama ended
“wet foot dry foot,” a rule that allowed
Cubans who arrived without
visas to remain in the United
States. He did not end the Cuban
adjustment act.
An article on Saturday about the
actress Natalie Portman’s decision
to skip the Genesis Prize ceremony
in Jerusalem referred incorrectly
to Scarlett Johansson’s
departure from the charity Oxfam.
She resigned as a spokeswoman;
she was not dropped.
Because of an editing error, an
article on Saturday about an auction
to sell historical objects in
Heathrow Airport misstated how
many passengers Heathrow’s Terminal
1 could accommodate when
it was dedicated in 1969. It was
nine million passengers a year, not
a day.
BUSINESS DAY
An article on Sunday about
Campbell Brown’s role as Facebook’s
head of news partnerships
erroneously included a reference
to Palestinian actions as an example
of the sort of far-right conspiracy
stories that have plagued
Facebook. In fact, Palestinian officials
have acknowledged providing
payments to the families of
Palestinians killed while carrying
out attacks on Israelis or convicted
of terrorist acts and imprisoned
in Israel; that is not a conspiracy
theory.
An article on Saturday about
President Trump’s criticism of
OPEC and rising oil prices misstated,
in one reference, a recent
increase in gasoline prices. They
have risen 33 cents in the last year,
not the last month.
An article on Wednesday about
budget airlines reinvigorating
smaller airports on the outskirts
of major cities misstated the distance
between Seattle Tacoma International
Airport and Paine
Field. They are about 37 miles
apart, not 12.
SPORTS
An article on Friday about the
hesitance of the International Association
of Athletics Federations
to allow Russian athletes to compete
in major track and field
events misstated Sebastian Coe’s
title within the organization during
an extortion scheme. He was
vice president, not senior vice
president.
THE ARTS
A picture caption with an article
on Saturday about the Actors’ Equity
Association’s decision to retire
the term “Gypsy Robe”
misidentified the “Cats” cast
member wearing the garment. He
is Jeremy Davis, not Jeremy Ford.
An opera review on Monday
about “The Metromaniacs” by David
Ives, using information from a
publicist, misstated the number of
French plays from the 17th and
18th centuries that David Ives has
translated. It is four, not three. The
review also misstated the number
of plays that were collected for “All
in the Timing.” It is six, not three.
OBITUARIES
An obituary on Friday about the
record producer and songwriter
Ronald Dunbar omitted the name
of one of his survivors. In addition
to those named, he is survived by
a daughter, Ginger Atherton.
An obituary on April 15 about
the actor Tim O’Connor misidentified
the county in New Jersey
where Glen Wild Lake, the site of
an island where he and his wife
lived for many years, is located. It
is Passaic, not Essex.
Errors are corrected during the
press run whenever possible, so
some errors noted here may not
have appeared in all editions.
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