Mr. Durst, the one-time heir to a Manhattan real estate empire who is suspected of several deaths, is on trial for the execution-style killing of a close friend.
Robert Durst during his murder trial in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Credit …
(subsequent arrest on murder charges) in the execution-style killing of his close friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles in December . The lawyers have established a war room at the hotel to plan their defense of Mr. Durst against the prosecution’s contention that their client executed Ms. Berman because he was afraid that she was about to reveal to the authorities her role in helping him cover-up the disappearance and murder of his first wife, Kathie, in .
In a vigorous opening statement from the defense on Tuesday, David Z. Chesnoff told the jury that there were no fingerprints, blood, DNA or fibers linking Mr. Durst to Ms. Berman’s death, the only slaying with which he has been charged.
“We believe the absence of evidence is evidence that Bob is not guilty, ”Mr. Chesnoff said. Black’s slaying, a jury acquitted Mr. Durst in 2018, said Dick DeGuerin, Mr. Chesnoff’s co-counsel, despite Mr. Durst’s testimony about carving up the body and dumping it in Galveston Bay. untouched on Tuesday is what lies at the heart of the prosecution’s case: Mr. Durst’s own statements from hours of interviews with the producers of “The Jinx,” coupled with his many jail house phone calls and his nearly three-hour interview with John Lewin, deputy district attorney of Los Angeles. On Tuesday, Mr. DeGuerin attacked “The Jinx,” which he said was a “deviously misleading and heavily edited television production, not a documentary.” While it will not be played in court, the prosecution plans to show jurors the raw unedited interviews with Mr. Durst.
In their opening statement on Tuesday, the defense lawyers told the jury that Mr. Durst had used his key to enter Ms. Berman’s home. “Bob showed up and found her dead and he panicked,” Mr. DeGuerin said. “He wrote the anonymous letter so her body would be found and he ran. He’s run away all his life. ”
The prosecution says that Ms. Berman made a critical phone call after Mrs. Durst disappeared, after a weekend away with her husband at their cottage north of Manhattan, that threw the investigation off course. Posing as his wife, Ms. Berman called a medical school dean saying that she would not attend a clinic rotation that day. Four days later, Mr. Durst walked into a Manhattan police station to report that his wife was missing. story, which focused on Manhattan rather than the couple’s suburban cottage, was big headlines in the city’s tabloids. Because there was no body and no sign of her, the case eventually faded away. (In late) , Mr. Durst learned that investigators had reopened the case and he fled to Texas, where he rented an apartment for $ a month and posed as a mute woman. A short time later, Ms. Berman was found dead in Los Angeles. Initially, suspicion fell on her landlady and her agent. But they were soon cleared and detectives turned to Mr. Durst, who at the time was in jail on charges of killing Mr. Black. As the defense depicted Mr. Durst as an odd and pathetic figure who failed to pick up on social cues, Mr. Lewin painted Mr. Durst as a man who never played by the rules, who would kill when backed into a corner. Read More
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