Possible serial killer Robert Durst, 78, has been found guilty by a Los Angeles jury of murdering a girlfriend. The jury finds proven that he shot Susan Berman in 2000.
Durst allegedly killed her because she wanted to tell the police that she helped cover up the murder of Durst’s wife in 1982. After Kathleen Durst’s disappearance, she is said to have provided him with an alibi.
Durst, a scion of a wealthy American real estate family, was arrested in a New Orleans hotel in 2015, following the HBO documentary The Jinx, the Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. During an interview for the series, Durst had gone to the bathroom without realizing that his pinned microphone was still on. In front of the mirror he muttered to himself, “What the hell have I done? Killed them all, of course.” According to the prosecutors, that amounted to a confession. A 1999 letter from Durst to Berman also provided evidence.
Chopped into pieces
A year after Berman’s murder, Durst was again involved in a possible crime. He was suspected of murdering and dismembering his neighbor. He was already being prosecuted for that at the time, but during the trial his lawyers said that Durst had killed the neighbor in self-defense, panicked and therefore dismembered the body. The jury then acquitted Durst. He was convicted in 2016 for illegal possession of weapons.
Over the years, Durst regularly went into hiding when the ground got too hot under his feet, disguised a few times with a latex mask or as a deaf-mute woman. But he also made mistakes, for example by accidentally going to the men’s restroom or setting his wig on fire with a lighter. He was also arrested once for stealing a chicken sandwich from a store, even though he had $37,000 in his car.
rich narcissist
The prosecutors portrayed the suspect as a wealthy narcissist who believes the law does not apply to him and who ruthlessly removes those who stand in his way. “Bob Durst has been at it for many years and he has been able to commit horrific murders. We are grateful that he is now being held accountable for that,” prosecutor John Lewin said.
The judge will determine the sentence on October 18. The serious crime of which the jury finds Durst guilty is punishable by life in prison.
–
