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By Andrew Blankstein and Phil Helsel
A Los Angeles judge on Thursday ordered his estate heir Robert Durst to be tried in the murder of his friend Susan Berman in 2000.
Durst, 75, denied killing Berman, who was found dead at her home in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles on Christmas Eve 2000, with only one gunshot wound to her head. Prosecutors think she was killed a day earlier.
Prosecutors say Durst feared that Berman was involved in the death of his first wife, Kathie, who disappeared in 1982. Her body was never found and Durst was never charged with disappearing.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark E. WIndham delivered his decision after a two-week trial in which he heard the testimony of two friends of Kathie Durst, two former New York Post reporters. who interviewed Durst after the disappearance of his wife and conducted interviews. by directors "Jinx" Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling, as well as testimonies of prosecutors and the police.
Durst was arrested in New Orleans in 2015 on the basis of a murder warrant as part of the investigation into Berman's death.
Durst is charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.
If he is convicted, he faces a maximum life sentence without the possibility of parole, the Los Angeles County Attorney's Office said.
Durst's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said in a phone interview Thursday night that the decision was not a surprise and that Durst was maintaining his innocence.
"Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman and he does not know who did it," DeGuerin said. "She was his best friend."
"It was a case that was generated by a television series," DeGuerin added.
Durst was tried in 2003 for the murder of his neighbor Morris Black, whose body was found dismembered in a bay in Galveston, Texas.
Durst was acquitted by a jury, even though he admitted to tearing the victim's body, carefully wrapping the body parts in plastic and throwing them into Galveston Bay. Durst and his lawyers claimed that the murder was committed in self-defense and that he had disposed of the body, fearing that the police would let him drag after suspicions were raised about Berman's murder and disappearance. of his wife.
In the finale of an HBO documentary, "The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst," Durst seems to confess not only the murder of Berman, but at least two others.
A microphone that he wore during his interview was live while he was going to the bathroom. He was recording, whispering to himself, "What a disaster … The question is a problem for me, what did I do?" "Damn it, all of them killed, of course."
Thursday's decision follows a request by prosecutors to use Durst's "confession of adoption" as evidence in the proceedings to determine whether Durst should be judged or not. They wanted to use the comments Durst made to the director of the movie "All Good Things" of 2010, inspired by the story of the disappearance of Durst's wife.
In the commentary on the DVD of the film, when Durst "was questioned in front of the camera about his feelings about a film claiming that he had murdered three people and a dog, he replied, not out of denial, but by declaring : The movie was very, very, very close in most cases to what happened, "wrote Los Angeles County Attorney General John Lewin in a court case this week.
This comment would eventually lead to the production of the six-part series "The Jinx," said the prosecutor. DeGuerin called the drama "All Good Things" and said that Durst liked the film, in part, because the character who represents it was played by Ryan Gosling.
Durst is currently held without bail at Los Angeles Twin Towers Prison, according to prison records.
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