The Robert Durst murder trial began on March 4, 2020 in Los Angeles. – Etienne Laurent / AP / SIPA
“I killed them all, of course. ” The murder trial rich and sulphurous septuagenarian who appeared to confess in an HBO documentary, Robert Durst, debuted in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The 76-year-old multi-millionaire is accused of having killed his friend Susan Berman shot in the head at his home in 2000 to prevent him from responding to New York police who were investigating the disappearance of his wife Kathleen in 1982.
The prosecution believes that the victim at the time helped Robert Durst conceal his role in the murder of his wife and that the latter was afraid that she would report him to the police. “The evidence will no doubt prove that Susan knew of her killer, that she voluntarily brought him home,” Deputy Attorney John Lewin told the jury at the start of the trial.
He says 55-year-old Susan Berman would never have opened up to a stranger and turned her back on her murderer when she was shot, proof that he was a familiar person she feared not, not a prowler.
Arrested on the eve of the documentary’s broadcast
Robert Durst was arrested in March 2015 on the eve of the broadcast of the latest episode of a six-part biographical documentary broadcast by the HBO channel. Entitled The Jinx, the series rekindled public interest in the affair and Robert Durst himself appeared.
The Jinx returned to another bloody episode in Robert Durst’s life: the murder of a neighbor, whom he then dismembered and threw into the sea in an attempt to remove the body. The whimsical millionaire was then a refugee in Texas, where he lived disguised as a woman and pretended to be dumb, in a squalid little apartment.
He was acquitted for this crime thanks to an army of prestigious lawyers who had pleaded a mixture of self-defense, accidental gunshot and alcohol-related acts.
He pleaded not guilty
The wealthy heir to a real estate empire has always denied killing his wife or Susan Berman, and pleads not guilty to the charges against him in Los Angeles. In The Jinx, Mr. Durst seemed to make an involuntary admission, whispering to himself while he was in the bathroom and his wireless microphone was not turned off: “What did I do?” I killed them all, of course. ”
In an interview with prosecutors after his arrest, Robert Durst defended himself by saying that he was under the influence of drugs during the filming of the documentary and that these words meant nothing in particular. Robert Durst’s trial is scheduled to last several months.
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