LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s been more than three years since the arrest of eccentric New York real estate heir Robert Durst in the execution-style shooting of his best friend years earlier in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors could move closer to bringing him to trial if they can show probable cause at a hearing that begins Monday that Durst killed Susan Berman in order to silence her from revealing what she knew about the death of the multimillionaire’s first wife.
Durst, 75, has pleaded not guilty, and with all that has emerged about him publicly from an HBO documentary series and from a string of unusual court hearings that have already taken place, it seems likely a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will order the case to proceed to trial.
Prosecutors have started recording testimony over the past year of older witnesses who might not be available if there is a trial. Some of the testimony includes damning evidence for Durst, who already has beaten a murder rap in an unrelated 2003 Texas killing.
One of his closest buddies, Nathan “Nick” Chavin, who was also close with Berman, testified Durst essentially admitted killing her, saying: “It was her or me, I had no choice.” Chavin and other friends of Berman said she told them Durst had killed his first wife, Kathleen, who disappeared in 1982 in suburban New York and has never been found.
Berman, a writer and daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, said she helped Durst cover his tracks and told one friend that if anything ever happened to her, Durst would be the culprit. And then there’s the documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” where he is heard muttering to himself on a live microphone: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
The challenge, however, will be getting any of that evidence before a jury. “All kinds of evidentiary issues are going to be a battle in this case,” said Stanley Goldman, a professor at Loyola Law School.
Durst’s defense team, who didn’t reply to messages seeking comment, has fought or is expected to challenge every bit of evidence that implicates him, including Berman’s numerous hearsay statements to friends.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said Durst forfeited the right to challenge the hearsay statements because he killed Berman to prevent her from telling police what she knew about Kathleen Durst’s death.
“His attempt to prohibit the jury from learning what she said about him killing his wife is the most recent chapter in the defendant’s 36-year quest to evade responsibility for the heinous crimes he has committed,” Lewin said.
Berman’s death and a subsequent killing were motivated to cover-up his wife’s death, Lewin said. He intends to present evidence Durst roughed up his wife to show he tried to control her through fear and had the capacity for violence that escalated.
Goldman said the judge will have to evaluate the relevance of the evidence, whether hearsay is permissible and if the proof offered by testimony outweighs the bias it could create against Durst. “He’s not being tried for killing his wife,” Goldman said. “But it’s part of the story. To flesh out the entire story without it, you don’t know the motive. How far does the judge let the prosecutor go back to prove that he did those things?”
For example, it’s not certain if the judge will allow evidence that Durst fatally shot and dismembered neighbor Morris Black, 71, in Galveston, Texas, nine months after Berman was killed. Durst had moved there and posed as a mute woman to hide from investigators who wanted to talk to him after reopening the investigation into Kathleen Durst’s disappearance. He was acquitted of murder after testifying he killed Black in self-defense.
Durst was arrested in the Berman killing in 2015, just before the climactic final episode of “The Jinx” aired, in which he is heard muttering in a restroom about the killings. He acknowledged in a three-hour interrogation by Lewin that he was in the process of fleeing.
“I was the worst fugitive the world has ever met,” Durst said, according to a transcript of the interview. The defense also wants to bar those statements from trial.
The guy may be guilty as sin, but if they don’t have any real evidence, he has to go free. It may sound like letting him go is another crime, but it’s more important that hearsay and possible past crimes are not admitted into the case because preserving the integrity of the justice system is more important than this one crime.
Not that our present justice system has much in the way of integrity anyway, but you don’t want a precedent set of admitting rumor, gossip, and personal history as “evidence” to convict someone.
I’m glad O.J. Simpson was freed, too. I’m sure he killed his ex-wife, but once the cops start planing phoney evidence (which they did), the case against him should be lost.