Scarsdale in the News

Scarsdalians made headlines this week for reasons good and bad. Here are four of your neighbors in the news:

SHS Alumni Zachary Seward, age 29, married Kate Laurie Lee at the Liberty Warehouse in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve. While attending SHS, Seward was a champion debater who later went on to Harvard where he was the managing editor for the Harvard Crimson. At Harvard, Seward co-wrote a story for the Wall Street Journal breaking the news that President Larry Summer would resign. He is now the product director and senior editor at Quartz, a business news website owned by Atlantic Media. His parents still live in Scarsdale where his dad, Stephen Seward serves as the executive director of the Scarsdale Schools Education Foundation which is now raising money to support a new design lab and fitness center at Scarsdale High School.

Rob Fishman, a 2004 graduate of SHS was named to the Forbes Magazine 4th annual list of "30 under 30" millenials who the magazine calls "young game changers, movers and makers." Fishman is a co-founder of Niche, a network of more than 5,000 creators across 16 social-media networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and Tumblr, in 2013. Has an ongoing relationship with Hewlett-Packard, which began after an initial Vine campaign collaboration became a nationally aired TV spot consisting solely of Vines. In its first year, Niche grew to 34 employees with $9 million in revenue. While at SHS Fishman was also a top debater and editor of the Maroon. Before forming Niche, he worked as the Social Media Editor of the Huffington Post. (Full disclosure, Fishman is the son of the founder of Scarsdale10583.com.)

Last, In February, HBO will air a six-part documentary about an infamous Scarsdale man, Robert Durst, who is a suspect in the murder of his wife Kathie in 1982, the killing of friend Susan Berman in 2000 and the dismemberment of a merchant seaman in 2001. Durst grew up in Scarsdale, one of four children of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his wife Bernice. It is reported that at the age of 7 Durst witnessed his mother's suicide when she jumped or fell off the roof of the family's home. A NY Times article from 2001 says that Bernice "became disoriented by an overdose of medication for asthma and fell from a rain-slick roof -- but family members acknowledged that Bernice had committed suicide." We have been unable to find out the address of the Durst's family home in Scarsdale, but if you know the location, please share it in the comments section below.

The HBO series, called "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" is based on nearly 10 years of research by the filmmakers who reviewed documents and conducted more than 100 interviews with friends, investigators, journalists, lawyers and relatives. The film was made with Durst's cooperation and includes more than 25 hours of interviews with him.

Durst, now 71, lives in Texas and owns a townhouse in Harlem, In 2006 he was awarded $65 million in a settlement of a lawsuit over his share of the family fortune.