New York Daily News

Durst eyed killing brother, tape shows

- BY NANCY DILLON

Robert Durst’s own words dogged him again Monday when jurors heard him on a recorded jail call allegedly saying he’d planned to kill his Manhattan mogul brother Douglas Durst.

“I was planning on Igor-ing BM,” Durst (photo) said in the 2001 phone chat recorded by a Pennsylvan­ia jail and played on the third day of opening statements at his Los Angeles murder trial. Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told jurors that “BM” was code for Douglas Durst and “Igor-ing” was a reference to a series of dogs belonging to Robert Durst that were all named Igor and allegedly disappeare­d mysterious­ly.

“Mr. Durst is discussing the fact that he had screwed up his plan to kill Douglas,” Lewin told the jury.

Durst, 76, is on trial for allegedly murdering his best friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles in December 2000. Prosecutor­s claim he shot Berman in the back of her head to prevent her from telling New York authoritie­s what she knew about the disappeara­nce of his first wife Kathie Durst in 1982.

They claim Durst killed Kathie amid a “nasty” divorce and that he also killed and dismembere­d Morris Black in 2001 to keep the Texas neighbor from blowing his cover while he lived undercover as a mute woman in Galveston.

Durst was acquitted of Black’s murder at trial after claiming he accidental­ly shot his neighbor in the face in selfdefens­e.

Douglas Durst, now the head of the Durst family real estate empire in New York, is expected to testify at the expected five-month trial over Berman’s death now underway in Los Angeles.

In a rare interview with the New York Times in 2015, Douglas said that before Kathie vanished, Robert Durst had a series of seven Alaskan Malamute dogs. He said they all disappeare­d, mysterious­ly, within six months of his older brother owning them. All of the dogs were named Igor.

“We don’t know how they died, and what happened to the bodies,” Douglas said. “In retrospect, I now believe he was practicing killing and disposing his wife with those dogs.”

In a motion filed early Monday, Lewin

A Brooklyn man shot his wife to death and then killed himself as they sat together in a parked SUV on Monday morning, police said.

Andre Myrtil, 49, shot 39-year-old Petula Myrtil multiple times, then shot himself once in the head as they sat in the parked Chevrolet Suburban at Louisiana Ave. and Twin Pines Drive in Starrett City about 9:15 a.m., cops said.

They were both taken to Brookdale argued for the right to bring up Durst’s alleged plot to kill his brother saying it was linked to Kathie’s disappeara­nce. The judge granted the request.

The motion pointed out that when Durst jumped bail in Galveston and ended up back in custody on Nov. 30, 2001 for shopliftin­g a sandwich from a Pennsylvan­ia supermarke­t, authoritie­s found a note in his car that said, “What DD is doing to me puts me in the same place as what Kathy did to me.”

Lewin also told jurors Monday that when he interviewe­d Durst in a New Orleans jail in March 2015 after his arrest on the Berman murder warrant, Durst talked about the 2010 film “All Good Things,” a fictionali­zed version of his life.

“What was the thing that bothered you most about ‘All Good Things’?” Lewin asked Durst in the recorded clip played Monday.

“Oh, killing the dogs,” Durst responded.

Highlighti­ng that response for jurors, Lewin said Durst “never complained about the fact that the movie depicted him as murdering three people.”

“What the evidence will show is that Bob Durst killed Kathie Durst in the midst of a nasty divorce, that he killed Susan Berman because he was afraid that Susan Berman was going to reveal what she knew” and he killed Black to eliminate “a problem,” Lewin said shortly before concluding his lengthy presentati­on.

He called Durst’s alleged crimes “cruel, illegal, immoral, homicidal, but not crazy.”

Durst’s defense team, led by Texasbased lawyer Dick DeGuerin, is expected to present a five-hour opening statement on Tuesday, DeGuerin told The News as he left the courtroom.

University Hospital but could not be saved.

The couple lived in East Flatbush, about 2 miles from the crime scene, with their two young children, relatives and neighbors said. “I‘ve never seen no altercatio­ns,” next-door neighbor Lillian Shennida said of the couple. “They had two sons — usually he [Andre] would take them to school around the corner.”

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