Robert Durst was formally charged with the murder of Susan Berman today in Los Angeles. Currently he is being held in New Orleans—where he was arrested by LA investigators—for illegal possession of a firearm and marijuana. The heir to a skyscraper fortune, Durst was the subject of a scorching HBO documentary series, The Jinx which, maybe you heard, just concluded in mind-blowing fashion on Sunday night—one day after he was arrested as a suspect for Berman's unsolved murder.
On The Jinx Durst was confronted with some new evidence that Berman's stepson supplied the Jinx filmmakers with, and after being noticeably flummoxed (even gassy), Durst went to the bathroom—possibly forgot that he was still mic'd—and grumbled non-sequiturs, beat himself up for belching when a question made him uncomfortable, and then asked himself, "what the hell did you do?" His response to his own question? "Killed them all, of course."
Durst's attorney Chip Lewis appeared on Jeanine Pirro's Fox News' Show Justice With Judge Jeanine and said—after all the fuss in the media about the audio clip—that he was "underwhelmed." Lewis added to Judge Pirro: "You've said things under your breath that you probably didn't mean."
Pirro had previously tried to reopen the case of the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie; Kathie Durst went missing in 1982. Pirro had been in contact with Robert Durst's close friend Berman prior to Berman's murder in 2000. Pirro had also appeared in the program as an interview subject and believes that Robert Durst murdered Berman because she was contacted by Pirro. Durst was also acquitted of a murder in Texas in 2001.
Pirro's panel on her Durst segment also included the Galveston, Texas homicide detective who led the Durst case, Cody Cazalas, who said that he was "not surprised (by the audio) because I've always felt like he was responsible for these three deaths but to hear him actually say it out loud, I was shocked."
Cazalas also noted that in an another episode of The Jinx, "[Durst] says, you know, they think I killed my first wife Kathleen, they think I killed my best friend, they think I killed my neighbor. And a whole slew of others. … As far as I know, there hasn't been any speculation about a whole slew of others. … But when he said, 'I killed them all,' is he talking about the three that we are talking about tonight, or are there even more?"
Mark Fuhrman, who was an L.A.P.D. investigator during the O.J. Simpson trial (Fuhrman retired after the trial, when perjury charges loomed over him) told Pirro that he believed that the Durst audio we heard at the end of The Jinx would be admissible into court. "It was an unsolicited, spontaneous statement," Fuhrman said. "He is wearing a hot wire. He has been notified it’s a hot wire before. It is being recorded, and he knows it. That is specifically why he is there. I don't think it made a difference if he went into a bathroom or any other room. He knows he’s being wired. And I think the statement will come in, and I think it’s highly incriminating."
Durst is due in court for his weapon and marijuana charges, next week. There is no timetable currently set for his extradition to California.
