Ryan Goslinghas been a household name for over 20 years, thanks to an acting catalog that spans several different genres and countless box office hits. Most recently, fans will have seen him as Ken inBarbie(2023) and Colt Seavers inThe Fall Guy(2024). Like all actors, however, among all the hits and critically acclaimed work, he has his fair share oflesser-known and forgotten films.
One of these films,All Good Things(2010), was a thriller that was based on a disturbing true story.All Good Thingsstars Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst as the two leads and was directed by Andrew Jarecki. The two men who wrote the film, Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling, were inspired by a real-life crime, and the real story ended up intertwining with its fictional adaptation in surprising ways.
What ‘All Good Things’ Is About
The movie is set in 1970s New York, where David Marks, played by Ryan Gosling, meets and falls for Katie McCarthy, played by Kirsten Dunst. While David is the son of a high-powered real estate mogul, Katie is a working-class woman from a very different background. Despite their differences, David is drawn to Katie and the two start dating and, eventually, get married. As the story progresses, audiences watch disturbing behaviors begin to emerge from David, including a violent temper and a pathological need for control within his relationship with Katie.
Eventually, Katie is pushed far enough that she considers leaving – but when she makes an actual attempt to leave David, her funds are cut off. Having started medical school and needing the money to pay for it, she finds herself trapped in her marriage. Desperate to escape, Katie starts looking for proof of the family’s questionable financial activities for leverage, but she disappears shortly after she starts this search.
The case goes cold, but 15 years later a district attorney decides to reopen the case after reading a book – written by an old friend of David’s – in which a murder with a striking resemblance to the Marks case takes place. Shortly after the announcement of the case being reopened, the friend who wrote this book is found shot to death and David Marks is the prime suspect. The movie ends rather ambiguously, with the details of exactly what happened to Katie unknown and David never having to face real consequences for what he did.
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The Real-Life Case
David Marks is based on real-life real estate heir Robert Durst. The movie is very closely based on the disappearance of Durst’s first wife – Kathleen McCormack. Kathleen went missing in 1982, and although Durst was a person of interest in her disappearance, he escaped the consequences of her murder for over 20 years. The two met in the early 70s and had a whirlwind romance – with Kathleen moving in with him shortly after they started seeing each other, and the two getting married within a year and a half in 1973. Although no one can know exactly what went on within their marriage, it is alleged by many people who knew the couple, in particular friends of Kathleen’s, that the marriage was tense and that Durst was controlling.
When Kathleen went missing, it was clear who the most likely suspect was. It was known that the two fought the evening of her disappearance, and that they fought often. For the week after she first went missing, Kathleen’s friend, Gilberte Najamy, called police repeatedly to voice her concerns over Kathleen’s whereabouts. As the last person to see Kathleen, other than Robert, Najamy was very concerned when Kathleen didn’t show up for a planned lunch, and she couldn’t get ahold of her. It wasn’t until a week after that last night that Kathleen was seen, that Robert officially reported his wife missing.
Three weeks before her disappearance, Kathleen had been treated at a hospital for injuries to her face and she had told a friend that Robert had beaten her. Despite all of the suspicious behavior of Robert before and after her disappearance, there was allegedly never enough evidence to arrest him and the case went cold for over 20 years.
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How ‘All Good Things’ Helped Convict Robert Durst
Although the main focus of the film was based on Robert Durst’s marriage to Kathleen and her subsequent disappearance, near the end of the movie there are two more murders that Marks is a suspect in, which also mirror Durst’s reality. In late December 2000, Susan Behman, an old friend of Durst’s who served as his alibi for the night of Kathleen’s disappearance, was found shot to death in her home in LA.
Less than a year later, in October 2001, Durst also became a suspect in the murder of his 71-year-old Morris Black in Galveston, Texas. The Black murder would be the first time he was ever actually arrested and sent to trial. He ended up running while out on bail, but was eventually re-captured. Although he wasn’t found guilty of the murder, he did plead guilty to two counts of bail jumping and to tampering with evidence. He served three years in jail and was out by 2005.
Although he had been running from the truth of his crimes for a long time, something about the movieAll Good Thingsgot to him – enough that he decided to allow the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki, to interview him about the three murders he had been a suspect in. Before this, he had always avoided talking about these crimes and had refused to be interviewed about them. Jarecki would go on to create the HBO limitedThe Jinx,from his interviews with Durst. That title might be familiar to many, as it’s the show in which Durst accidentally confessed to his crimes – admitting to killing all three victims when he didn’t realize his mic was still on.
The Jinxultimately led to him facing real, legal consequences for at least one of the murders he committed – he was officially convicted in the murder of Susan Behman in 2021 and sentenced to life without parole. He was eventually charged in Kathleen McCormack’s murder in 2022, but unfortunatelyhe passed on before he could face trial for his wife’s murder.
