A US HEIR to a $4 billion fortune, Robert Durst, was arrested over the weekend, as the final episode of a documentary about his life showed him saying he had “killed them all”.
Robert Durst, linked to two killings and his wife’s disappearance, was the subject of the HBO documentary The Jinx, which told the story of the murders and his life.
In the finale, Durst was asked about similarities in handwriting in a letter he wrote and another linked to one of the killings. Later, film-makers said Durst wore his microphone into the bathroom.
What followed was a bizarre rambling in which Durst said, apparently to himself, “There it is. You’re caught” and “What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course.”
The show ended, and it wasn’t clear whether producers confronted Durst about the secretly recorded words, or what Durst meant by them.
Durst was arrested by FBI agents on Saturday at a New Orleans hotel he had checked into under a false name, on a warrant from Los Angeles for the murder of a mobster’s daughter 15 years ago.
Durst was ordered held without bond pending another hearing today. His lawyer, Chip Lewis, said Durst will agree to be taken to Los Angeles to face the first-degree murder charge.
Durst’s relatives thanked authorities for tracking him down.
“We are relieved and also grateful to everyone who assisted in the arrest of Robert Durst. We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done,” said his brother, Douglas Durst, in a statement.
Durst, 71, has always maintained his innocence in the 2000 murder of Susan Berman, whose father was an associate of Las Vegas mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky.
Berman, 55, a writer who became Durst’s spokeswoman, was killed at her home near Beverly Hills with a bullet to the back of her head as New York investigators prepared to question her in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of Durst’s wife, Kathleen.
The LAPD claim that the documentary did not form part of their investigation, though the documentary makers had unearthed a letter written by Durst that bore a similarity to one that tipped authorities off to the location of Berman’s body.
After Berman’s death, Durst moved to Texas, where he lived as a mute woman in a boarding house until his arrest in 2001 after dismembered parts of the body of his elderly neighbour, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay.
Durst then became a fugitive until he turned up shoplifting a chicken sandwich, Band-Aids, and a newspaper in Pennsylvania.
Durst had $500 cash in his pocket and $37,000 in his rental car — along with two guns and marijuana at the time.
Lewis told the jury that Durst shot Black in self-defence and suffered from Asperger’s syndrome. Despite admitting that he used a paring knife, two saws and an axe to dismember Black’s body before dumping the remains, Durst was acquitted of murder.
He was found guilty of bail jumping and would later be arrested for urinating on a candy display in a supermarket.
Jarecki had made a film based on Durst’s story in 2010, All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling. Durst wanted to see the film, calling Jarecki and eventually agreeing to talk on camera.
With AP reporting.
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