Grisly slay pix in new Durst trial
Former UN leader Pérez de Cuéllar dies
Robert Durst’s signature stoicism didn’t crack Wednesday as his long-awaited murder trial kicked off in Los Angeles with graphic color photos of Susan Berman’s dead body.
Prosecutors claim Durst killed Berman execution-style on Dec. 23, 2000. The chilling photos showed her lying on the floor of her Benedict Canyon rental house in a pool of her own blood.
“She’s not moving. She’s cold to the touch,” Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told jurors on the first day of the trial that’s expected to last well into the summer.
“The evidence is going to show without question that Susan knew her killer … that she freely and voluntarily admitted this person into her house,” Lewin said.
Durst, 76, stared at the photos without any visible reaction after he shuffled into the courtroom and gave his lead defense lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, a fist-bump greeting.
Lewin said the scion of a real estate empire killed Berman to “clean up a loose end” and keep her from speaking to New York authorities about the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, in 1982.
Lewin spent much of his opening detailing the “personality quirks” that made Durst a riveting subject of the HBO documentary series “The Jinx.”
He showed several “Jinx” interview clips during which Durst boasted about “beating the government” by obtaining food stamps, shoplifting a bottle of water and belching during business meetings to show he “wasn’t going to follow the simplest of the rules.”
“Bob Durst is very honest about the fact that rules don’t apply to him,” Lewin told the jurors.
“It’s just who he is. And that idea, and that way of operating in life, dictated how Bob Durst not just treated people but how he got rid of them when they were problematic and how he chose to cover up his misdeeds,” he said.
Lewin confirmed Durst’s younger brother, Douglas Durst, now the head of the Durst Organization, is due to testify during the trial, along with their other brother, Thomas Durst.
During an in-custody interview shortly after his March 2015 arrest in Louisiana, Durst admitted he hates Douglas and considered him a “p—-y” for hiring a bodyguard to keep him away.
Friend Nick Chavin said in testimony recorded three years ago that Durst seemed to change after he was “robbed of his birthright” and the family business was handed over to Douglas.
Chavin also was introduced to jurors though video clips shown in court. He’s expected to be a star witness for prosecutors.
In 2017, Chavin made the claim Durst stood on a sidewalk outside a New York restaurant in late 2014 and confessed to killing Berman.
He further testified that before Berman’s death, she told him pointblank, “Bob killed Kathie … He told me.”
Durst was arrested on the Berman murder warrant in New Orleans the day before the dramatic “Jinx” finale.
In the final episode, Durst went into a bathroom still wearing his microphone and muttered an alleged confession to himself, prosecutors claim.
“Killed them all, of course,” he said into the hot mic.
Durst claims his words were edited to make him look bad. He also maintains he has no idea what happened to his first wife, who is presumed dead.
Lewin described Durst as an abusive husband who finally snapped and killed his beautiful young bride because he lost “control” over her as she finished a medical degree in the Bronx.
He pointed to four collect calls made from pay phones in an area of southern New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens and suggested Durst buried Kathie there.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Peruvian diplomat who served as SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations from 1982 to 1991, died on Wednesday at 100 years old, according to multiple Spanish-language news outlets.
Pérez de Cuéllar (inset) was the first and only Latin American to lead the UN, and he did so during a tumultuous and eventually optimistic time that saw the
Cold War come to an end. Pérez de Cuéllar is credited with helping resolve that conflict by focusing not on the relationship between Moscow and Washington, but on individual related problems throughout the globe that served as proxies for the larger conflict. As a mediator, he took on crises like the Soviet–Afghan war, the Iran-Iraq war, the Salvadoran civil war, and the Nicaraguan revolution.
In celebration of Pérez de Cuéllar’s centennial on Jan. 19, 2020, current UN head António Guterres sent him a letter of congratulations that put his distinguished career of diplomacy in perspective.
“I have often reflected on your example and experience for inspiration and guidance,” he wrote. “You can be assured that I speak for everyone in the United Nations in expressing our gratitude for your many contributions as Secretary-General during a period that encompassed both the Cold War and a new era that opened doors for the organization to be ever more active.”