Durkin grew up in the Vailsburg neighborhood in the West Ward of Newark, New Jersey.
He became purchasing agent after Peter Shapiro defeated Lerner's organization to become Essex County's first elected executive in 1978.
)[4] After his loss of the Essex party chairmanship, Durkin dropped out of politics.
On January 3, 1997 he was arrested outside the Hudson Plaza Motel in Bayonne, New Jersey with one vial of crack cocaine.
On December 23, 2014, he died clean and sober at the age of 78 from emphysema and heart failure at a hospital in Livingston, New Jersey.