Durst admitted to murder, pal testifies
A NEW YORK ad executive’s bombshell claim that Robert Durst delivered a murder confession on a New York sidewalk led to a fierce cross-examination Friday — and praise from Kathie Durst’s brother.
During two days of stunning testimony, Nick Chavin said that Durst stood outside a Harlem restaurant in late 2014 and admitted to killing their friend Susan Berman 14 years earlier.
“I had to,” Durst allegedly told Chavin, according to the friend’s sworn testimony in Los Angeles. “It was her or me. I had no choice.”
Chavin, 72, said he believed Durst (in photo at right) murdered Berman (at left) because he feared she was about to tell New York prosecutors that he killed Kathie, his first wife, in 1982, disposed of her body and then reported her missing.
Kathie’s brother said Friday he hopes the damaging testimony eventually makes it to a jury and is found credible.
“Right now, I’m in a cautious state of enthusiasm,” Jim McCormack told the Daily News. “My hopes are much more buoyed.”
Durst, 73, has pleaded not guilty to killing Berman and is expected to stand trial next year. Chavin was called in for an unusual early hearing to preserve his testimony.
Defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin repeatedly attacked Chavin Friday over inconsistent statements he gave to Los Angeles prosecutors in 2015, including one in which he claimed Durst only shrugged and “mumbled” something unintelligible as he left the restaurant that night.
“It took seven months for you to come up with the story,” DeGuerin said.
Chavin started talking to authorities in April 2015, but didn’t recount the alleged confession until that October.
“I wasn’t prepared to get specific (that April), and I didn’t know how to say it,” Chavin explained. “I felt strange saying, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’”
DeGuerin also targeted Chavin’s ongoing ties to Durst’s estranged younger brother Douglas Durst, who runs the family’s real estate empire.
Chavin testified Thursday that his wife now works at the Durst Organization and that Douglas Durst “is scared to death of Bob and certainly wants to see Bob put away.”
Kathie Durst’s brother, meanwhile, said he’s never met Chavin and had no idea he was the “secret witness” that prosecutors called early for fear Durst might try to have him killed.
“I think the guy has got good reason to be found credible,” McCormack said. “If he’s willing to take the slings and arrows, then God bless him. And God bless Kathie, because she might finally get some peace.”
Asked why Durst might confess to Chavin 14 years after Berman’s murder, McCormack said it might have been “a moment of weakness.”
“I think sometimes he’s on the edge of wanting to get the monkey off his back,” McCormack said.