The American businessman, sentenced in October to life imprisonment for the murder of his best friend, died at 78 years of “natural causes”
The rich and sulphurous American heir Robert Durst, recently sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-best friend after years of twisting proceedings, died on Monday in custody at the age of 78, the report said. one of his lawyers.
The multi-millionaire died “of natural causes linked to the long list of medical problems that we have repeatedly raised in court over the past two years,” said lawyer Chip Lewis.
A relaunched investigation
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.
Daughter of a Las Vegas mobster and author of detective novels, Ms. Berman had improvised spokesperson for Robert Durst when he appeared as the number one suspect in the disappearance of his wife Kathleen in 1982. The accusation believes that he ended up killing Susan Berman for fear that she would incriminate him by answering questions from the New York police officers investigating this disappearance.
The couple were in turmoil when Kathleen Durst had passed out in the wild. The wealthy heir had told police that she had taken a train to the couple’s accommodation in Manhattan but had given no sign of life. The next morning, a woman claiming to be called Kathleen Durst called the medical school where she was attending classes to say she was ill but the prosecution believes it was actually Ms Berman.
The investigation into this disappearance was relaunched in 2000 with “The Jinx”, an HBO documentary series devoted to Robert Durst. The police had contacted Susan Berman and she was later found lying in blood at her California home.
Robert Durst claimed during his trial to have found the body of his friend while visiting her but maintains that he did not kill her. He was formally charged with the murder of his wife in New York last October shortly after his life sentence in California.
Ax and saw
Black sheep of one of the greatest families of New York real estate, Robert Durst was arrested in March 2015 on the eve of the broadcast of “The Jinx”.
The series returned to another bloody episode in the life of Robert Durst: the murder of a neighbor, which he then dismembered with an ax and a saw, then thrown into the sea. millionaire had at the time taken refuge in Texas, where he lived disguised as a woman and claimed to be silent, in a small sordid apartment.
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. At his Texas trial, Robert Durst admitted to dismembering his neighbor in an attempt to make him disappear, fearing that no one would believe in self-defense.
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