The rich and sulphurous American heir Robert Durst, recently sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his best friend after years of twists and turns, died on Monday in custody at the age of 78, announced one of the his lawyers.
The multimillionaire died “natural causes linked to the long list of medical issues that we have repeatedly raised in court over the past two years“said lawyer Chip Lewis.
Robert Durst was convicted in September by a Los Angeles court of killing his friend Susan Berman with a bullet to the head at the latter’s home in 2000, in Beverly Hills.
The prosecution argued that he thus sought to cover up his role in the murder of his wife Kathleen, killing Ms Berman to prevent him from responding to New York police officers who were investigating his wife’s disappearance in 1982.
Mr. Durst, who has always denied outright, was formally charged in New York last October shortly after his life sentence in California.
A black sheep from one of New York’s biggest real estate families, Robert Durst was arrested in March 2015 on the eve of the airing of the last episode of a six-part HBO biographical documentary, “The Jinx“.
The series revisited another bloody episode in Robert Durst’s life: the murder of a neighbor, which he then dismembered and thrown into the sea.
He had been acquitted of this crime by an army of prestigious lawyers who had pleaded guilty to a mixture of self-defense, accidental shooting and acts of alcohol.
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