DURST TESTIFIES
Acts frail, denies killing pal Susan Berman
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Millionaire murder suspect Robert Durst, who previously posed as a mute woman to avoid scrutiny, decided to speak in his own defense after all.
The heir to a Manhattan skyscraper empire was sworn in Monday as his camp’s star witness, a week after his lawyers argued for a mistrial saying he was too ill to testify.
“Bob, did you kill Susan Berman?” his lawyer Dick DeGuerin asked as his first question.
“No,” Durst said in a hoarse voice while seated in a wheelchair beside the witness box.
Durst, 78, is on trial in Los Angeles County for allegedly murdering best friend Susan Berman inside her Benedict Canyon bungalow on Dec. 23, 2000.
Prosecutors claim Durst shot Berman in the head to ensure her silence after she allegedly helped him with a bogus alibi following the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathie Durst in New York.
They claim Durst killed Kathie amid a bitter breakup and then tapped Berman to place the critical “out sick” call to Kathie’s Bronx-based medical school that made it appear Kathie was still alive a day after she disappeared.
Kathie’s body has never been found. Durst has not been charged with her murder and claims he has no idea what happened to her.
Often referring to himself in the third person, Durst listed his ailments for jurors and seemed to have trouble hearing objections from prosecutors. DeGuerin took to using hand signals to stop his physically frail but mentally sharp client from speaking out of turn.
“Douglas Durst is lying,” Durst said, referring to his estranged brother who now runs the family’s billion-dollar real estate empire in New York and previously testified during the California trial that there was “no way” Durst saw their mother on the roof of their Scarsdale home before she fell and died when they were young, as he has claimed.
Jurors sat just feet away from Durst in the courtroom and appeared rapt by his testimony, some taking notes and others leaning forward at times.
Durst was dressed in a brown jail uniform and clear plastic face shield instead of the cloth face mask he wore earlier in the pandemic-era trial.
He recalled first meeting Berman when they were both students at UCLA in the mid1960s. He said they got along because they were both “rich” and had “trust funds set up by our parents.”
During 11 weeks of prior testimony from prosecution witnesses, jurors heard the blockbuster claim that Durst once confessed to Berman’s murder as he stood outside a Harlem restaurant in 2014.
In prerecorded testimony, Durst’s longtime friend Nick Chavin said the pair had just finished a meal together when Durst muttered the mea culpa 14 years after Berman’s death.
“We walk out the door and on the sidewalk I said, ‘You wanted to talk about Susan?’ ” Chavin recalled during his 2017 videotaped exam played in court July 28.
“Bob said, ‘I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice,’ ” Chavin testified.
Beyond such potentially pivotal testimony, prosecutors also secured a stunning stipulation from Durst’s defense in late 2019 involving a key piece of evidence.
Durst and his lawyers agreed with prosecutors that Durst wrote the infamous “cadaver note” that alerted police to Berman’s dead body.
The letter, written in distinctive block lettering with Durst’s trademark green ink, shared many characteristics with a letter authored by Durst that was uncovered by the HBO documentary series “The Jinx,” which chronicled Durst’s life.
On Tuesday, shortly before prosecutors rested their case, jurors heard a recording of Durst discussing the cadaver note with Deputy District Attorney John Lewin during a jailhouse interview on March 15, 2015.
“Whoever wrote that note had to be involved in Susan’s death,” Durst said.
In the dramatic “Jinx” finale that aired a day after Durst’s March 2015 New Orleans arrest for Berman’s murder, Durst was heard uttering another alleged confession during a bathroom break.
“Killed them all, of course,” he mumbled.
After Berman’s death, Durst went into hiding in Galveston, Texas, posing as a mute woman, prosecutors have said. He then shot and killed his neighbor Morris Black in 2001 when Black uncovered his true identity, prosecutors allege.
A Texas jury acquitted Durst of Black’s murder after he testified the killing was self-defense. Durst said he decapitated and dismembered Black in a panic before dumping the body parts in Galveston Bay.
Throughout the Berman murder trial, which started in March 2020 and endured a 14-month pandemic hiatus, Durst has denied killing his confidant and insisted he is too fragile to be in a courtroom each day.
When his lawyers argued for a mistrial last week based on his ailing health, Judge Mark Windham wasn’t swayed.
“Mr. Durst is a quite active participant. He dresses for court. He listens, he writes notes, he talks to his lawyers, he waves to the friendly witnesses and acquaintances in the audience. He has endured 11 weeks of trial but remains mentally present,” Windham said.