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Robert Durst, the real estate heir, pleaded not guilty to murder on Monday in the death of a friend who reportedly stated that the authorities did not want to talk to investigators who were investigating the disappearance of his first lady. (November 7th)
AP

Robert Durst is sitting in an audience hall during a hearing in Los Angeles on December 21, 2016.(Photo: Jae C. Hong, AP)

LOS ANGELES – Robert Durst, the heir to real estate in New York who was the subject of a series of television documentaries, was sentenced on Thursday for his lawsuit for murder from his close friend in Los Angeles 18 years ago.

A judge ruled there was enough evidence to judge the 75-year-old eccentric multimillionaire who shot Susan Berman at home. Durst pleaded not guilty.

Durst reportedly killed Berman, his college friend and the daughter of a Las Vegas gangster, to prevent him from telling the police what she knew about The disappearance of his wife in 1982 in New York, say the prosecutors. Kathleen Durst has been missing for more than 35 years and is presumed dead.

Robert Durst, who has never been charged with a crime related to the disappearance of his wife, denied killing him.

Durst remains imprisoned without bail and was returned to court on November 8 for indictment. The charge of murder against him includes the allegations of special circumstance of waiting and killing a witness of a crime. It was also alleged that he had personally used a handgun to commit the murder.

At the end of the preliminary proceedings that continued for several months, Durst's lawyer, David Chesnoff, argued that there was no hard evidence – DNA, fingerprints or witnesses – linking him to the murder of Berman. A call asking for more comments from Chesnoff was not sent back on Thursday.

Durst was arrested in New Orleans in March 2015, just hours before the release of HBO's latest episode of "The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst." The documentary focused on the disappearance of his wife and the murders of Berman and Morris Black, a Texas neighbor, in 2001. A jury acquitted him of Black's murder after finding that the murder was in self-defense. .

The HBO series caused a sensation after being heard in the final mumbling on a live microphone: "You're caught! What did I do? All killed, of course. "

Prosecutors will attempt to link Berman's death to the mystery surrounding Kathleen Durst's disappearance, which they want to show as the basis for the motive for Berman's murder.

After the disappearance of Kathleen Durst, Berman was the unofficial spokesperson for Robert Durst. But prosecutors and witnesses at a series of previous hearings said that she had done a lot more.

Over the years, Berman told his friends that Durst had admitted to killing his wife and helping her to cover her tracks. Prosecutors hope to use these hearsay statements at trial, which defense lawyers vigorously challenged.

Berman told a friend who had testified at a previous hearing that if anything happened to him, Durst would be the culprit.

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