Robert Durst was convicted of his best friend’s crime: portrait of a narcissistic millionaire who believed himself above the law

On Friday, a Los Angeles jury convicted Robert Durst of murdering his best friend 20 years ago. in a case that was given new life after the New York real estate heir participate in a documentary that linked him to the murder linked to his wife’s disappearance in 1982.

Durst, 78, was convicted of the first degree murder of Susan Berman, who was shot in the neck at close range at her Los Angeles home in December 2000. as she was ready to tell the police how she had helped cover up the murder of Durst’s wife.

Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas gangster, was Durst’s longtime confidante, and told her friends that she provided him with a false alibi after the disappearance of the millionaire’s wife.

Durst was arrested in 2015 while hiding in a New Orleans hotel hours before the last episode of The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst, in which he was confronted with prosecution evidence and he made what prosecutors claimed to be a confession.

Durst could be heard muttering to himself, as he was in the bathroom, but with the mic open: “There you are. You are trapped.”

Durst’s decision to testify in his own defense, in the hope that his acquittal would be repeated in the Texas murder, was counterproductive, since we saw him forced to admit he lied under oath and his credibility destroyed when questioned by the prosecutor.

The conviction marks a victory for authorities who have tried to put Durst behind bars for murder in three states. Durst has never been charged with the disappearance of his wife, who has never been found, and was acquitted of the murder in Galveston, Texas., where he admitted having dismembered the body of the victim and throwing it into the sea.

The story of Durst, the son of a New York real estate developer, has been the subject of New York tabloids since his wife’s disappearance nearly 30 years ago. It provided so many twists and turns that Hollywood couldn’t help but make a feature film about his life, which ultimately led to the documentary and new evidence of Berman’s murder uncovered.

Durst has repeatedly fled the law, disguised as a silent Texas woman and stay under a pseudonym at a New Orleans hotel wearing a latex mask for a so-called getaway. He fled to Texas and was arrested after he stole a chicken sandwich in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that he had $ 37,000 in cash, as well as two guns, in his rental car.

He later joked that it was “The worst fugitive the world has ever known.”

Durst escaped investigators’ scrutiny when his wife went missing. But her problems came back in the end 2000 when the New York authorities reopened the case.

His attorney told him to be prepared to be charged in this case and he fled a life of luxury in Galveston, Texas, where he rented a cheap apartment as “Dorothy Ciner,” a woman who also claimed she couldn’t speak. She eventually took off her costume after setbacks that included walk into a men’s room and light your wig in a bar while lighting a cigarette.

Just before Christmas he testified that traveled to Los Angeles to visit Berman for a “vacation home” with plans to see some of the sights.

Durst, who for a long time had denied being in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death, testified at trial that he found her dead on the floor of a bedroom when she arrived.

Berman, a writer who had been friends with Durst since they were students at the University of California, Los Angeles, was in serious financial trouble at the time. Durst had given him $ 50,000 and prosecutors suggested he was trying to get more money from him by telling him he was going to speak to the police.

Nine months after the death of his friend Berman, Durst killed his neighbor in Galveston, Morris Black, in what he called a self-defense accident. Durst said he found Black, who he had befriended, in his apartment with a .22 caliber Durst pistol.

Durst was acquitted after testifying that the 71-year-old was killed in a fight over a gun. Durst then cut Black’s body into pieces and threw it into the sea. He was convicted of destroying evidence for throwing body parts away.

After the trial and the gruesome evidence of dismemberment, Durst discovered he was an outcast, noted. Despite an estimated fortune of $ 100 million, several condominium associations turned him down and said the Los Angeles County Museum of Art would not accept his money unless he made an anonymous donation.

Durst believed that a 2010 feature film based on his life, All the good stuff, starring Ryan Gosling as himself and Kirsten Dunst as Kathie, had been largely accurate and painted a likeable portrayal, despite his involvement in three murders. He only objected that he was pictured killing his dog, something he would never do.

He approached the filmmaker and agreed to sit down to long talks for a documentary. He encouraged his friends to do the same and gave the filmmakers access to boxes with your files.

He came to deeply regret his decision after The Jinx was published in HBO in 2015, and awarded it a grade “Very, very, very serious mistake.”

The directors of the documentary discovered a Crucial evidence linking him to an anonymous note sent to the police directing them to Berman’s lifeless body.

Durst, that he was so sure that he couldn’t be connected to the note, he told the filmmakers that “only the killer could have written” the note.

The filmmakers confronted him with a letter he sent to Berman a year earlier. The handwriting was the same and Beverly Hills was misspelled as “Beverley” on both. He couldn’t distinguish between the two pieces of paper.

The moment provided the film’s climax as after being confronted Durst got out of the camera and whispered into a live microphone in the bathroom: “I killed them all, of course.”

During 14 days of testimony so punitive that Judge Mark Windham called it “devastating”Durst has denied killing his wife and Berman, although he said he would be lying if he did.

I tried to explain the note and what prosecutors said was a confession for a carefree moment.

For the first time, Durst admitted on the witness stand that he sent the note and that he was in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death.

Durst said he sent the note because he wanted they will find berman, but he didn’t want anyone to know he had been there because it would look suspicious.

He admitted that even he found it hard to imagine that He could have written the note without killing Berman.

“It is very difficult to believe, to accept, that I wrote the letter and that I did not kill Susan Berman”, Durst testified.

A prosecutor said that was one of the things Truer than Durst said amidst many lies.

(By Brian Melley – AP)

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