Douglas's mother died when he was a child, in a fall from the roof of the family's three-story house; the exact circumstances were never clarified.

He attended New York University's Urban Studies program for two years and then joined the family business then run by his father and two uncles, Roy and David.

[5] Located on 14th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, the New School University Center was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and developed by The Durst Organization.

[6] In 2010, the Durst Organization bid on and won the right to invest $100 million in the One World Trade Center development becoming a co-developer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

[7] In May 2010, Douglas Durst, former Vice President Al Gore, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially opened the Bank of America Tower.

The 55 story, 2.1 million square foot building located on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street was designed by Cookfox Architects.

[9] In the early 2000s, architect Bjarke Ingels met Durst when he was in Copenhagen with his wife, Susanne, a native of Denmark.

[1] In 1987, Durst purchased a piece of land from Ray McEnroe, the owner of an organic farm in Dutchess County, New York, some 100 miles north of Manhattan.

[15][16] They have three children:[1] Douglas Durst suffered a severe leg injury in 1972 when a coal-fired water heater exploded in a Newfoundland house where he was then living with his wife and young family.

After suffering more than four decades of pain, despite many years of surgery, part of Durst's lower right leg was amputated in 2015.

[3] Douglas was interviewed by The New York Times in January 2015, and was quoted as saying about Robert: "There's no doubt in my mind that if he had the opportunity to kill me, he would.

Contrary to his brother's assertions to the documentary filmmakers of The Jinx, he was never privy to his father's meetings with a lawyer and private detective tasked with investigating Kathleen's disappearance.

Robert told him and his wife that Kathie had vanished a couple of days after he put her on a train to New York City from their lakeside house in Westchester County, and that was the last time he saw her.