Durst found guilty in murder of best friend
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — A Los Angeles jury convicted Robert Durst on Friday of murdering his best friend 20 years ago, a case that took on new life after the New York real estate heir participated in a documentary that connected him to the slaying that was linked to his wife’s 1982 disappearance.
Durst, who faces a mandatory term of life in prison without parole when sentenced Oct. 18, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Susan Berman. She was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home in December 2000 as she was prepared to tell police how she helped cover up his wife’s killing.
Durst, 78, was not in court for the verdict from the jury that deliberated about seven hours over
three days. He was in isolation at a jail because he was exposed to someone with coronavirus.
Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, was Durst’s longtime confidante who told friends she provided a phony alibi for him after his wife vanished.
Prosecutors painted a portrait of a rich narcissist who didn’t think the laws applied to him and ruthlessly disposed of people who stood in his way. They interlaced evidence of Berman’s killing with Kathie Durst’s suspected death and the 2001 killing of a tenant in a Texas flophouse where Robert Durst holed up while on the run from New York authorities.
“Bob Durst has been around a lot of years, and he’s been able to commit a lot of horrific crimes. We just feel really gratified that he’s been held accountable,” Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said.
Lewin met with jurors after the verdict and said they did not find Durst credible as a witness.
Acquittal in 2005
The conviction concludes another chapter in his attempt to cover up the 1982 death and disappearance of his first wife. The jury also upheld the allegation that Berman was killed because she was a witness.
After being warned by his attorney of New York authorities reopening his wife’s disappearance, Durst moved to Galveston in 2000 while posing as a mute elderly woman named “Dorothy Ciner.”
In 2003, he was acquitted in the 2001 murder and dismemberment of his neighbor, Morris Black. Durst was arrested after Black’s body was found floating in trash bags at Galveston Bay, resulting in a multistate manhunt.
Claiming self-defense, Durst’s attorney argued that Black was killed in a struggle between the two for a handgun.
Durst was acquitted and released in 2005, remaining in the Galveston area for a few more years. He was involved in various antics, such as in 2014 exposing himself and urinating on a cash register and candy display of a CVS store on Kirby Drive near Rice Boulevard. He lived near Rice University at the time.
The following year, Durst was arrested on a murder warrant for Berman’s death. He was arrested while in New Orleans on the eve of the airing of the final episode of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” in which he was confronted with incriminating evidence and made what prosecutors said was a confession.
Durst could be heard muttering to himself on a live microphone in a bathroom: “There it is. You’re caught.”
He was returned to California in 2016 where he awaited trial.
Lewin asked Durst point blank if he killed Berman. He said no.
“But if you had, you would lie about it, correct?” Lewin asked. “Correct,” Durst said. Durst’s Houston lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said Lewin’s question was based on a false premise, akin to asking a man when he stopped beating his wife.
While testifying, Durst wore a protective face shield and sat in a wheelchair. He labored to speak in a raspy voice, often after having read the questions posed to him from a tablet where he received instant transcripts. Lewin spent “nine days of beating up on a sick, old man who can’t defend himself,” DeGuerin said.
Durst’s decision to testify in his own defense — hoping for a repeat of his acquittal in the Texas killing — backfired as he was forced to admit lying under oath, made damning admissions and had his credibility destroyed when questioned by the prosecutor.
Defense lawyer David Chesnoff said Friday they believed there was “substantial reasonable doubt” and were disappointed in the verdict. He said Durst would pursue all avenues of appeal.
The conviction marks a victory for authorities who have sought to put Durst behind bars for murder in three states. Durst was never charged in the disappearance of his wife, who has not been found.
The story of Durst, the estranged scion of a New York real estate developer, has been fodder for New York tabloids since his wife vanished. He provided plot twists so numerous that Hollywood couldn’t resist making a feature film about his life that eventually led to the documentary and discovery of new evidence in Berman’s slaying.
‘Killed them all, of course’
Durst ran from the law multiple times. He jumped bail in Texas and was arrested after shoplifting a chicken sandwich in Pennsylvania, despite having $37,000 in cash — along with two handguns — in his rental car.
He later quipped that he was “the worst fugitive the world has ever met.”
Durst, who had long denied ever being in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death, testified at trial that he found her dead on a bedroom floor when he arrived to visit her for a “staycation” with plans to see some of the tourist sites.
Berman, a writer who had been friends with Durst since they were students at the University of California, Los Angeles, had serious financial problems at the time. Durst had given her $50,000, and prosecutors suggested she was trying to leverage more money from him by telling him she was going to speak with the cops.
After the Texas trial, Durst found he was a pariah, he said.
He thought a 2010 feature film based on his life, “All Good Things,” had been largely accurate and painted a sympathetic portrait, despite implicating him in three killings.
He reached out to the filmmaker and agreed to sit for lengthy interviews for a documentary. He encouraged his friends to do the same and gave the filmmakers access to boxes of his records.
He came to deeply regret his decision after “The Jinx” aired on HBO in 2015, calling it a “very, very, very big mistake.”
The documentary filmmakers discovered a crucial piece of evidence that connected him to an anonymous note sent to police directing them to Berman’s body.
Durst, who was so confident he couldn’t be connected to the note, told filmmakers “only the killer could have written” the note.
Filmmakers confronted him with a letter he sent Berman a year earlier. The handwriting was identical and Beverly Hills was misspelled as “Beverley” on both. He couldn’t tell the two apart.
The gotcha moment provided the climax of the movie as Durst stepped off camera and muttered to himself on a live microphone in the bathroom: “Killed them all, of course.”