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Wealthy eccentric Robert Durst could face death penalty in California

 
This booking photo provided by the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office shows Robert Durst after his arrest Saturday in New Orleans on an extradition warrant to Los Angeles.
This booking photo provided by the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office shows Robert Durst after his arrest Saturday in New Orleans on an extradition warrant to Los Angeles.
Published March 17, 2015

LOS ANGELES — Suspicion has shadowed Robert Durst at every odd, bloody turn.

Three times people close to the eccentric New York real estate scion have vanished or been killed. He has played the role of suspect, person of interest, or defendant, each time confounding authorities as they have tried and failed and tried again to build murder cases against him.

Now, once again, police think they have the goods on Durst.

Los Angeles County prosecutors filed a murder charge Monday against Durst in the December 2000 execution-style killing of his longtime friend Susan Berman. The filing accuses Durst, 71, of lying in wait and killing a witness — accusations that would make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

FBI agents arrested Durst Saturday afternoon in a New Orleans hotel at the behest of Los Angeles officials.

The arrest came a day before HBO was to air the last episode of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. He agreed to lengthy interviews for the series and spoke about Berman, who was shot execution-style in her Los Angeles home just as New York authorities were preparing to interview her about the 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen Durst.

Dressed in an orange jumpsuit with his hands and feet shackled in chains, Durst agreed in a court hearing Monday to waive extradition to California.

Outside court after the hearing, his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said Durst may also face charges in New Orleans related to items found in his possession at the time of his arrest, which could delay his extradition.

"We're frustrated because local authorities are considering filing charges against him and holding him here," he said, declining to be more specific. "We're ready to go to California."

According to court records, Durst had a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver when he was arrested on Saturday, one day before HBO aired the final episode of its documentary.

Durst has been the subject of suspicion long before the documentary began filming, a suspicion dating back to the disappearance of his wife.

He reported her missing in 1982 after the couple spent a weekend at their country home in Westchester County. No charges were ever brought against Robert Durst, and his wife was later declared legally dead.

Durst maintained his innocence, but his behavior grew increasingly eccentric as he cut ties with his family and later sued for a $65 million share of the family fortune.

One of the people who had stood by his side was Berman, a friend from graduate school. The two were so close that Durst walked her down the aisle at her wedding. She would go on to serve as his spokeswoman after his wife's disappearance.

Berman was widely thought to have been one of the few people that Durst confided in over the years.

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In December 2000 — a little more than one month after prosecutors in New York stated that they were reopening the investigation into Kathleen Durst's death — Berman was found dead in her Beverly Hills home, shot once in the back of the head.

Durst was once again considered a suspect, but prosecutors could not place him in Los Angeles at the time of the killing.

Around the same time, Durst moved to Galveston, Texas, and posed as a mute woman when he rented an apartment.

On Sept. 28, 2001, Durst's neighbor, Morris Black, was shot and killed. The man's arms, legs and torso were later found in Galveston Bay.

Durst was arrested and charged in the murder. After posting bail, he disappeared, which led to a nationwide manhunt before he was arrested in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, after trying to steal a $5.99 chicken salad sandwich.

During his trial, Durst confessed to shooting Black but said that they had been grappling over a gun and it discharged as they fell to the floor. He testified that he carved up the body and disposed of the remains because he thought no one would believe the shooting was an accident.

He was acquitted by a jury, who found that he acted in self-defense.

Durst remained a suspect in the murder of Berman, however, and during the course of researching the six-part documentary, the producers uncovered a letter that seemed to implicate him in her murder.

Shortly after her death, the Los Angeles police received an anonymous letter saying that they would find a "cadaver" at Berman's home in Beverly Hills. It was written in box letters and the word "Beverly" was misspelled "Beverley."

The producers obtained a letter written to Berman by Durst that appeared nearly identical in style to the "cadaver" letter and also contained the misspelling "Beverley."

While cameras were rolling, Durst was shown the letter. He then walked off-camera and into a bathroom. But a microphone was picking up his every word.

"What the hell did I do?" he can be heard whispering in the final episode. "Killed them all. Of course."

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki says he turned the audio over to authorities "months" ago.

Whether this audio is a "confession" admissible in court is undetermined. Durst didn't know he was being recorded.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Jarecki said more than two years passed after the interview before the filmmakers even found the audio.

But on Monday morning, Jarecki instead used the words "months."

"It wasn't until months later that we had an editor listening to material that we had left behind, thinking, now we have to listen to everything we got, we're about to finish the series and we discovered that we had this shocking piece of audio," Jarecki said in an interview with CBS This Morning."

"The truth is we hoped that Robert Durst would be arrested as soon as possible, and we were sort of amazed ourselves that he hadn't be been arrested for so long, but the authorities were never communicating with us other than in their normal cordial way," Jarecki told CBS. "They were going through their investigation."

Information from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post was used in this report.