Long-awaited trial unfolds
Subject of ‘The Jinx’ is in court in friend’s killing after years of legal wrangling.
After years of legal wrangling and decades of suspicion, New York real estate heir Robert Durst now faces allegations of killing his close friend Susan Berman in L.A.
It was shortly after noon on Christmas Eve in 2000 when a dispatcher in Los Angeles received the call: Dogs were barking outside a home along busy Benedict Canyon Drive. The tenant’s Isuzu was in the driveway, but the back door was wide open and the woman who lived there alone was not answering her phone.
“This case started off like many cases do, with a very innocuous call,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lewin during the long-awaited opening statements in the murder trial of Robert Durst.
Police arrived and entered the shabby bungalow to find writer Susan Berman dead on the hardwood floor, a pool of blood around her head. Lewin showed jurors photos of the scene, noting there was no apparent robbery or burglary. The windows were locked. The doors showed no sign of forced entry. Nothing was out of place. Berman’s purse, wallet inside, was on the counter.
“The evidence is going to show, without question, that Susan knew her killer,” Lewin said. Berman, daughter of mobster David Berman, was not given to welcoming strangers. “She let her killer into the house, and she turned her back to him.”
Berman was killed with a gunshot to the head. “Thankfully, she didn’t see it coming,” Lewin said.
Berman was Durst’s close friend and confidant dating back to their days together at UCLA, and nearly 20 years after her body was found, Durst is on trial for her killing.
The eccentric millionaire, now 76, was charged in 2015 when the HBO docuseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” catapulted him to wider notoriety by exploring his wife’s 1982 disappearance, Berman’s death and Durst’s acquittal in 2003 on a murder charge in Galveston, Texas. Los Angeles police arrested him in connection with Berman’s death on the eve of the finale of “The Jinx,” calling him a flight risk, and Durst has been in custody since.
On Wednesday, Lewin began laying out evidence he said would prove Durst killed Berman — testimony
that spans decades, features over 100 witnesses and relies on dozens of hours of video and reams of documents.
“Much of the most damaging evidence is going to come directly from Mr. Durst himself,” Lewin told jurors, referencing interviews Durst gave to creators of “The Jinx” and audio commentary he provided for “All Good Things,” a 2010 movie loosely based on his life.
Jurors saw video of Durst admitting to using food stamps and shoplifting water bottles despite his family’s enormous wealth. He discussed his genitals in front of his mother-in-law. He spoke of his lackadaisical approach to working and warned his pregnant wife that if she kept the baby, he’d divorce her.
“Bob Durst is very honest about the fact that the rules don’t apply to him,” Lewin said.
Lewin also showed jurors video excerpts of witness testimony from earlier hearings that will be replayed during the trial. Among those witnesses was close friend Nick Chavin, who testified that in 2014, Durst said of Berman, “I had to. It was her or me” — which Chavin took to be a confession.
Lewin devoted much of his time Wednesday to Durst’s turbulent marriage to Kathleen McCormack Durst, and what preceded her 1982 disappearance.
“It was clearly spiraling downhill,” Lewin said, referring to allegations of domestic abuse. Lewin said Durst killed his wife at their vacation home outside New York City. Lewin said he would prove at trial that Durst killed her and told authorities she was missing.
Berman was central to the ruse, prosecutors say, alleging she gave Durst a “false alibi,” impersonating Kathleen Durst in a call to her medical school and giving police the impression that she was still alive.
The case grew cold until 1999, when Durst learned New York authorities had reopened it. Prosecutors say that prompted him to silence Berman forever.
Prosecutors say the 2001 shooting and dismemberment of Durst’s elderly neighbor Morris Black in Galveston marked “the violent climax of his nearly yearlong effort to conceal himself from New York authorities.” Durst was acquitted in Black’s death after claiming self-defense.
Defense attorney Chip Lewis told The Times that despite a thorough investigation in New York, there have been no charges in Kathleen Durst’s disappearance. Defense attorneys also say virtually no physical evidence ties Durst to Berman’s killing.
“Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman and doesn’t know who did,” lead defense attorney Dick DeGuerin told The Times last year.
Durst’s defense will cast doubt on whether Black, killed months after Berman, is relevant to the case. Lewis called evidence of the gruesome killing and dismemberment an “emotional hijacking,” saying it was “solely designed to predispose the jury to find Bob guilty of Susan Berman’s murder.”
It’s unclear whether Durst, 77 next month, will take the stand; he is ill and has limited mobility.
Yet in court, he has signaled defiance, fist-bumping lawyers and once raising both arms victoriously as he looked out to the audience.