Authorities found nearly 150 grams of marijuana and a revolver in the hotel room where they arrested Robert Durst, the millionaire who has long been suspected in three sensational murders and mumbled about how he “killed them all” in the dramatic finale of an HBO documentary.
Durst appeared before a judge for a second straight day to face the drug and weapons charges. He also is charged with murder in the Los Angeles killing 15 years ago of a friend who acted as his spokeswoman.
He has also been suspected in the disappearance of his first wife and he won an acquittal on a murder charge in Texas.
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| Robert Durst is escorted from Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to the Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment in New Orleans, Tuesday, March 17, 2015. (AP-Yonhap) |
A law enforcement official said Durst’s arrest on the murder charge was based on words he wrote, not the words he spoke at the end of the documentary about his troubled life.
Analysis linking a letter Durst wrote to his friend Susan Berman a year before her killing with one he said “only the killer could have written” to point police to her body was the key new evidence in the long-dormant investigation into the 2000 killing, the official not authorized to speak publicly told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Durst, 71, was charged Monday in Los Angeles with first-degree murder in the shooting of Berman, the daughter of a prominent Las Vegas mobster. He could face the death penalty under special circumstances that allege he ambushed her and murdered a witness to a crime.
Authorities in New Orleans charged him late Monday with being a felon in possession of a gun because he had a revolver when he was arrested there Saturday. Assistant District Mark Burton said they found the pot and gun in his hotel room.
Attorney Dick DeGuerin said he wants a hearing in Louisiana as soon as possible to contest the arrest.
“The warrant we believe is based on a television show and not on actual fact,” he said. “We want a hearing as quickly as possible so Mr. Durst can go to California and face trial as quickly as possible.”
The judge in New Orleans, Magistrate Harry Cantrell, scheduled another hearing for next Monday.
Presented with the two letters in the finale of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” that aired Sunday on HBO, the eccentric heir blinked, burped oddly, pulled his ear and briefly put his head in his hands before denying he was the killer.
Then he stepped away from the tense interview and went to the bathroom, still wearing the live microphone that recorded what he said next.
“There it is. You’re caught!” Durst whispered before the sound of running water is heard. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
That moment didn’t just make for a captivating ending to the documentary on the eccentric life of an heir to a New York real estate fortune, it could also provide additional evidence for prosecutors.
The official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the bathroom recording was not presented to prosecutors before charges were filed because detectives were still trying to determine if the recording was tampered with in any way.
But legal experts said the audio and other parts of the interview could become key evidence.
“Any statement that the defendant makes that they want to use against him, they can use against him,” said Andrea Roth, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kerry Lawrence, a defense attorney in Westchester County, New York, said Durst’s lawyers will have to try to explain away his comments, perhaps dismissing them as a joke.
“Prosecutors would argue it was a candid moment of self-reflection, and I assume will argue that he knew he was still being recorded, and this was either said in jest or he was being facetious or sarcastic or was being provocative,” Lawrence said. “I don’t think it’s quite the smoking gun.”
Durst — still worth millions despite his estrangement from his family, whose New York real estate empire is worth about $4 billion — has maintained his innocence in three killings in as many states. (AP)
