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A documentary producer whose work helped convict Robert Durst of murdering his best friend 20 years ago believes the 78-year-old New York real estate scion may have feared he was a serial killer and wanted to be stopped.
“Durst is where he belongs and probably deep inside where he wants to be,” Marc Smerling, who produced The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a film by director Andrew Jarecki, told The Guardian.
“He had a huge urge to confess. “
Durst’s participation in the documentary played a key role in reopening the case in which he was ultimately convicted on Friday: the murder of Susan Berman, a friend Durst feared, could link it to the disappearance of his wife, Kathie Durst, in 1982.
Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas gangster, was shot at close range in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home in December 2000.
Authorities believe Durst also killed his wife, although her body has never been found and he has never been charged with her death.
Durst was also charged with killing a neighbor, Morris Black, in Galveston, Texas, while in hiding from authorities the year after Berman’s death. He claimed self-defense and was found not guilty, but was convicted of tampering with evidence – for cutting up Black’s body and throwing parts overboard.
Famously, towards the end of The Jinx, the documentary’s sound recordist captured Durst off camera, in a bathroom, muttering, “This is it. You are caught! What did I do? Killed them all, of course. Transcripts of the full audio recording revealed the quotes were edited in a new order, The New York Times reported.
Durst claimed he was “rich in methamphetamine” while filming and said that cooperating with filmmakers was a “very, very, very big mistake”.
He was not in Los Angeles court on Friday when the verdict came after seven hours of jury deliberation because he was in solitary confinement in jail after being exposed to Covid-19. When sentenced on October 18, he faces life imprisonment without parole.
“Bob Durst has been around for many years and he was able to commit many horrible crimes,” said John Lewin, Assistant District Attorney. “Considering what he did, he got a lot more life than he was entitled to.”
Lewin said jurors believed prosecutors proved Durst killed Kathie Durst and then murdered Berman and Black in an attempt to evade justice.
Smerling said: “Durst contacted us, he sat down for these interviews, offered us boxes of files and ignored the advice of his lawyers. He opened his world to us.
In doing so, he added, Durst opened up to the arrest that took place in New Orleans in 2015, the day before the documentary’s final episode aired.
“Bob Durst obviously knows he’s not in control,” Smerling said, “and he’s somewhere between a serial killer and a passionate murderer. Honestly, he’s probably a little relieved to be in control of the prison system.
Durst’s decision to testify in his own defense backfired. During cross-examination, he denied killing his wife and Berman. He also said he would be lying if he did. After denying that he was in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death, he told trial he found her dead on the floor of a bedroom.
“Incredibly, he decided to take his defense against [an attorney] who probably knew the facts of the case better than he did, ”said Smerling. “It was an amazing cross-examination.”
The filmmakers also uncovered evidence that linked Durst to an anonymous note sent to the police, directing them to Berman’s body. Durst told them that “only the killer could have written” the note. They then confronted him with a letter he had sent to Berman a year earlier in the same handwriting and with the same misspelling of “Beverley” for Beverly Hills.
On the witness stand, Durst confirmed that he sent the note to the police.
“It is very difficult to believe, to accept, that I wrote the letter and that I did not kill Susan Berman,” he admitted.
Durst’s attorney David Chesnoff said he believed there was “substantial reasonable doubt” and was disappointed with the guilty verdict. He said his client, who has an estimated fortune of $ 100 million, would appeal. The conviction could also give new impetus to a civil wrongful death suit brought by the family of Kathie Durst.
Smerling said the case and its review in The Jinx offered important instructions on how American justice works.
“If you look at it again, it’s about how the rich get away with murder,” he said, “how they get vaccinated against what normal people can’t.
“They can afford to hire the most expensive and connected legal and private investigative talents who are related to law enforcement. They see everything that prosecutors see.
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