True Crime Vault: The Devil You Know

Speaker 1 You're listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Speaker 2 Robert Durst is a devilish character.

Speaker 3 In 1982, his wife disappears.

Speaker 2 Devious, malicious.

Speaker 6 Since then, he's been suspected of killing a neighbor.

Speaker 7 A fisherman discovered a headless, limbless torso here in the waters of Galveston Bay.

Speaker 9 But this is a guy who doesn't believe that any rules apply to himself.

Speaker 10 Neighbors Halt Police, who found the writer dead of a single gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 12 I'm dumbfounded.

Speaker 14 I never thought that in 100 years that she would die that way.

Speaker 16 He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it, to whoever he wants to do it to.

Speaker 18 Because he was wealthy and he had the power to do it.

Speaker 20 A very high-profile murder trial ended with a verdict that was so surprising the defendant appeared to be caught off guard.

Speaker 21 He got a kick out of getting away with things.

Speaker 16 Bob's problem is that he loves the attention.

Speaker 2 Robert Durst's sense of invincibility. He thinks nothing sticks.

Speaker 23 It was a huge blunder for Bob to appear in the jig's.

Speaker 24 His jaws were on the floor.

Speaker 25 No one could believe what they'd just heard.

Speaker 28 Robert Durst, recently the subject of a documentary series, tonight under arrest, I get called by my assistant DA, you better win this case.

Speaker 15 Do not let this narcissistic psychopath get away with what he has done.

Speaker 15 Grab your coat, get your hat,

Speaker 15 leave your worry on the doorstep.

Speaker 15 Just direct your feet

Speaker 15 to the sunny side of the street.

Speaker 15 Can't you hear a bit of pain?

Speaker 15 And that habit tune is your sin.

Speaker 15 Let it be so sweet

Speaker 15 on the sunny side of the street.

Speaker 31 I've never forgotten it. Susan Berman's father's favorite song was on the sunny side of the street.
So I always think of that when I think of her because it became her favorite song too.

Speaker 33 I'm Officer Rashad Sharif from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Speaker 33 That was Christmas Eve 2000 and it was a nice Southern California December, 70 degrees, clear skies.

Speaker 36 The street there is one of the main thoroughfares from like West Hollywood, Hollywood area to the valley.

Speaker 33 We received a radio call and we started heading that way up to the canyon.

Speaker 38 It's a Beverly Hills zip code.

Speaker 34 It is a fairly affluent area because it's up in the hills.

Speaker 33 The call was the open door where the neighbor had not seen their neighbor for a while and the dog is running around loose.

Speaker 35 It was a rear door that was open.

Speaker 34 Then they went, and that's when they found the body of Susan Berman.

Speaker 40 And her body is laying there.

Speaker 3 Gunshot to the back of the head.

Speaker 3 The dog's bloody pawprints all around her body.

Speaker 33 We discovered one shell casing.

Speaker 10 Police found 55-year-old Susan Berman dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. Nothing was stolen, and the neighbors report having never heard a shot fired.

Speaker 3 There was no forced entry in that house, so whoever came had to know her.

Speaker 43 And there was no defensive wounds on her. And when her back was to him, he cowardly executed her by putting that gun to the back of her head and pulling the trigger.

Speaker 2 About two days later, the Beverly Hills Police Department receives a rather intriguing piece of mail and then the mystery deepens.

Speaker 44 What the murderer did in LA

Speaker 44 was take notepaper and a green pen and wrote cadaver and her address and sent it to the Beverly Hills Police Department and

Speaker 13 spelled Beverly wrong.

Speaker 46 It was kind of weird because we thought who uses the word cadaver and who

Speaker 37 would send a letter to the Beverly Hills police?

Speaker 12 It's like somebody doesn't want her laying there for any length of time.

Speaker 2 Little did Detective Coulter know that solving this case and bringing that someone to justice would take 20 years.

Speaker 2 The combined efforts of the LAPD and the FBI, 50 law clerks, nine prosecutors, and a two-year trial.

Speaker 3 Susan was the only child of a major Vegas gangster. Her father, Davey Berman, they called him Davy the Jew.

Speaker 40 And then the day that Buddy Siegel was shot in L.A.,

Speaker 34 him and five others walked into the flamingo and took over the flamingo.

Speaker 3 She would do her homework in the casino counting room using the chips to do her math.

Speaker 44 Her dad loved Susan, spoiled her rotten, and he was a quiet man, but very forceful and very well respected. And Susan just absolutely adored him.

Speaker 46 When Susan was only 12, her father died on the operating table. He was in the hospital for routine surgery.
And this was a huge blow to Susan, and it really marked her for the rest of her life.

Speaker 3 Her mother couldn't handle it either. Within a year when she was 13 her mother died officially by suicide.

Speaker 46 After her father died Susan was living in Idaho with her father's brother Chicky.

Speaker 44 Chicky put her into college at UCLA and that's where Susan met Bobby Durst.

Speaker 44 He was in a master's program for a a year at UCLA and she was getting her bachelor's degree.

Speaker 44 He came from money, she came from money. They both led privileged childhoods.

Speaker 44 So Susan went on to UC Berkeley to get a master's degree in journalism.

Speaker 16 When Susan graduated from Berkeley, she went to work for the San Francisco Examiner and ended up meeting Nick Chabin.

Speaker 21 So I was with Susan Berman, and that's when she said to me, I got a friend I want you to meet.

Speaker 53 He's my best friend.

Speaker 21 We went to school together at UCLA.

Speaker 17 She says, you two are destined to be bad boys in love.

Speaker 5 They got along like gangbusters. And of course Susan was in the middle of all that.
So they were like the three musketeers.

Speaker 21 I was starting in real estate advertising and Bob is like a mogul in real estate and he's the eldest son of the Durst family, and he is without question the heir to all this.

Speaker 21 Until his wife disappeared,

Speaker 21 that changed everything.

Speaker 54 Robert and Kathy Durst appear to have the entire fairy tale.

Speaker 13 Kathy Durst was my best friend, and the last conversation that I had with Kathy

Speaker 13 was a very powerful conversation.

Speaker 37 According to Gilberta, she said that if anything happens to me...

Speaker 46 You'll check it out.

Speaker 2 I'm afraid of what Bobby might do.

Speaker 9 That was the last she ever heard from her again.

Speaker 58 What's developed, St. Police, are questions about the mysterious disappearance of Durst's wife Kathleen in 1982

Speaker 58 and most recently the December 2000 execution-style murder of Susan Berman.

Speaker 57 The relationship between those two cases are so interrelated.

Speaker 59 Kathy's death ultimately led to Susan's death.

Speaker 50 You have to understand who he is.

Speaker 60 Do you know where your wife is?

Speaker 16 Before you can understand what he did.

Speaker 9 The Durst organization is a very large real estate empire. They're kind of behind the scenes and quiet, unlike the Trumps.

Speaker 9 You don't see their names plastered all over buildings.

Speaker 51 It's a billion-dollar company that owns some of the most prestigious properties in New York.

Speaker 46 Seymour Durst, Bob's father, was the company's dynamo. He was the driving force.

Speaker 9 They are responsible for the whole revitalization of Times Square.

Speaker 46 Their skyscrapers helped form the New York skyline.

Speaker 5 Robert Durst grew up in Scarsdale, New York, in a very affluent area.

Speaker 5 Bob was a difficult child. He didn't excel in school.
He was socially separated from both his family and friends.

Speaker 61 His mother either jumped or accidentally fell off the family roof at their house in Scarsdale. and Bob claims to have seen it at age seven.

Speaker 24 Bob Durst grew up the oldest of four children, and he was the one who was set to inherit it all.

Speaker 49 He was the one who was set to take over the family business.

Speaker 3 Bobby Durst meets this beautiful woman, Kathleen McCorick.

Speaker 3 She was a tenant in one of the buildings his family owned in New York City.

Speaker 9 They couldn't be more different. Robert Durst was Jewish.

Speaker 57 Kathy was Catholic.

Speaker 9 Bob came from a privileged life.

Speaker 9 Kathy came from a working-class family.

Speaker 63 She's 19, and Bob's almost 30.

Speaker 16 Bob was this, you know, dashing, I'm going to do whatever I want.

Speaker 51 And Kathy's a kid.

Speaker 64 My sister Kathy, she always wanted to make a contribution. She started going to school at Western Connecticut State College.
She got her four-year degree in nursing.

Speaker 64 And she said, I want to be a doctor. I can give more.
I've got more to give.

Speaker 24 Kathy was a student at the Einstein Medical School in the Bronx.

Speaker 64 She said to me, I'm going to be the first durst to be an MD, a doctor. She goes, because in Jewish families, that's an honor.

Speaker 3 Bobby and Kathy from the beginning seemed to have a wonderful marriage. It wasn't the money that she loved.
She loved him.

Speaker 5 Bob's father had this huge business that was growing, and he wanted his eldest son to work in the business.

Speaker 61 But not only did he not like the real estate business, he wasn't really very good at it.

Speaker 5 He would show up to work in shorts and a t-shirt, which is, you know, the real estate business is not like that. It's a very formal business.

Speaker 3 You know, Bobby was a real weirdo. You know, he did things like burp out loud and think it was funny.

Speaker 5 He told us that he would pee in wastebaskets.

Speaker 9 He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it.

Speaker 25 That's how he's lived his life.

Speaker 48 That's just Bob Durst.

Speaker 2 And it wasn't that long before this outlandish behavior actually morphed into something far more serious and even dangerous.

Speaker 9 There was the one incident at Christmastime when he wanted to leave a family, get together at Kathy's, and Kathy wasn't ready to leave, and he basically grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out.

Speaker 54 And I remember January 31st of 1982.

Speaker 56 Kathy came for dinner and was quite on edge.

Speaker 68 Had been fighting with Bob for most of the weekend.

Speaker 29 Bob would call the house. I want you home now.

Speaker 46 Kathy comes home to the cottage that she shared with Bob in South Salem, New York. She was angry that Bob had demanded that she come home.

Speaker 46 Kathy wanted to drive back into Manhattan so that she could go to school the next day.

Speaker 29 According to Robert Durst,

Speaker 54 he takes her to the Katona train station to board a train bound for Manhattan.

Speaker 49 The next day, the dean of Kathy's medical school gets a call from a woman who claims to be Kathy Durst, complaining of a stomachache, and said that she couldn't show up that day.

Speaker 46 And Bob didn't report her missing until five days after Bob last saw her.

Speaker 46 And he didn't go to the police in South Salem. He went to the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
This sent the investigation off on the wrong trajectory.

Speaker 61 He brought a magazine in with his father and Harry Helmsley and Donald Trump's picture on the cover to say,

Speaker 61 this is who I am.

Speaker 39 He told me that he had not spoken to his wife in four or five days.

Speaker 39 But he went on to explain to me how she was a medical student and that she would take these clinical studies at hospitals and would remain in their dorms for days at a time.

Speaker 70 So it seemed reasonable to me at that point.

Speaker 5 And there were doormen at Bob and Kathy's building in New York who were saying that Kathy came home that night.

Speaker 49 The police believed Bob,

Speaker 61 and they only did their investigation in Manhattan.

Speaker 49 So once the media got wind that Kathy had disappeared, there was a lot of interest in this case.

Speaker 54 And Susan Berman became Robert Gerst's media spokesperson.

Speaker 16 Susan was very smart. She's very manipulative.

Speaker 9 Susan would children from the press and basically paint unflattering stories about Kathy, how she probably just ran off with someone.

Speaker 46 The police did not have a firm grasp of what exactly had happened.

Speaker 46 And by the end of 1982, it was a cold case.

Speaker 37 The Durst case came to my attention in 1999.

Speaker 9 It was just so interesting how she was never found in all these years. And looking at the case, it really piqued my interest, so I just started digging into things.

Speaker 7 Two weeks ago, a fisherman discovered a headless, limbless torso here in the waters of Galveston Bay.

Speaker 9 So I get a call that a guy named Bob Durst has been arrested in Galveston, Texas, of all places, for murdering his neighbor. And first thing I ask, is it our Bob Durst?

Speaker 2 After Kathy goes missing, the police investigation went absolutely nowhere.

Speaker 2 And even though Bob Durst may have been looked at, there was nothing to formally charge him with anything to do with the disappearance of his wife.

Speaker 51 In a newspaper interview with the New York Post, Robert Durst said he thought his wife was still alive, and he offered a reward to help find her.

Speaker 56 The circle of friends immediately questioned why was it a missing persons and not a homicide.

Speaker 29 We were sure that our friend was dead.

Speaker 68 The New York City police insisted they had no evidence to support that theory.

Speaker 2 Nearly two decades later, a very astute New York State police detective named Joseph Becera decides he's going to open up an investigation.

Speaker 9 How can this woman just disappear off the face of the earth?

Speaker 57 She was about to graduate medical school.

Speaker 32 She had everything to live for.

Speaker 49 He decided to reopen it with the graces of the then district attorney of Westchester County, Janine Pirow.

Speaker 68 We now are looking at this case differently. We're not sure that she left Westchester.

Speaker 9 So Susan Susan Berman was Bob's best friend. Susan acted as basically a spokesperson for Bob, basically to shield him from the press.

Speaker 9 She was key to everything we were looking for here in New York regarding Kathy's disappearance. She was one person I really wanted to speak to.

Speaker 2 Stunningly, Susan Berman is murdered before detectives have an opportunity to talk to her.

Speaker 32 When I got the news that Susan Berman was murdered, I felt like a punch in the gut.

Speaker 54 He was extremely afraid of being arrested and extremely afraid of Janine Piroud.

Speaker 51 And it's right at this time that Bob Durst simply disappears until there's a shocking development just months later.

Speaker 6 A 13-year-old boy was fishing with his father on the coast of Galveston when he noticed something in the water.

Speaker 51 The first object the police pull out of the water is a triple-wrapped garbage bag.

Speaker 44 The poor boy found a torso.

Speaker 46 It was a small man. His legs and arms had been severed.
His head was missing.

Speaker 51 There was a mountain of evidence in those garbage bags.

Speaker 6 Pieces of trash from a certain address. Those items told the police the next place they needed to look.

Speaker 49 And that address led police right to a rooming house where the victim Morris Black lived.

Speaker 49 They discovered a trail of blood that starts in Morris Black's house. crisscrosses down the hallway and leads into the kitchen rented by a deaf mute woman.

Speaker 29 But of course, that person was Robert Durst dressed in drag.

Speaker 46 Bob had rented this room in Galveston posing as a mute woman by the name of Dorothy Siner. Dorothy was someone that he had attended high school with.

Speaker 44 Robert Durst was in Galveston hiding from Ginny and Piro. Robert Durst would write notes to people, you know, because of course they didn't want to use his lower voice.

Speaker 49 One of the reasons that he did that was so he wouldn't sound like a man trying to be a woman.

Speaker 46 Well, these two men, Morris and Bob, according to Bob, used to go across the causeway to Pelican Island to shoot Bob's guns, his handguns.

Speaker 41 I had gotten to know Morris, and one day he said, you have no idea the things that I know. I can never talk to anybody about this, and it's just killing me.

Speaker 16 The problem for Bob is, is that Morris Black represented a connection between who he was and where he was.

Speaker 44 Durst was worried that Morris Black knew who he was, and he was afraid that he would tell police.

Speaker 51 Robert Durst became the prime suspect in the murder of Morris Black, so police wanted to find him right away.

Speaker 2 Among the items recovered by police was a prescription for eyeglasses.

Speaker 2 They call the optometrist's office and tell him to be on the lookout. If this person comes to claim these glasses, call us.

Speaker 2 And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 46 The clerk called the police and they were waiting outside for Bob.

Speaker 46 And they found inside his car a bow saw.

Speaker 6 He had marijuana in the car and he had a weapon that was illegal in texas so he was arrested for those he was also arrested for the murder

Speaker 31 so bob's bail was set at three hundred thousand dollars detective cody kazlas made a wise crack well you got it and erst made a wise crack back not on me

Speaker 3 This money gets wired from New York and he gets on bail.

Speaker 3 At that point, they were like, who is this guy?

Speaker 61 For him, $300,000 bail was chump change.

Speaker 24 But instead of facing justice, he goes on the run.

Speaker 46 Well, he got in his car and he started driving.

Speaker 46 Ultimately, he had Morris Black's license and his ID

Speaker 46 and he rented a car in Alabama. Meanwhile, there is a national manhunt underway to find Bob Durst.

Speaker 69 Police wind up busting Robert Durst in a shoplifting incident in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 24 At a Wegmans grocery store, he is busted shoplifting a sandwich, a band-aid, and a newspaper.

Speaker 3 When he stole that sandwich, he had $38,000 in the trunk of his car.

Speaker 24 They realized, though, very quickly, that this was no ordinary shoplifter.

Speaker 69 This was the man who was the subject of a nationwide manhunt, and they sent him back down to Texas to face justice.

Speaker 55 There were reporters from all over the country coming to Galveston to watch this trial.

Speaker 3 He gets on the stand, admits he killed him, admits he dismembered him.

Speaker 3 Bobby Durst is arrested for murder of his neighbor who he chopped up and put his body parts in the Galveston Bay.

Speaker 46 But it wasn't until the fall of 2003 that the trial began.

Speaker 49 Are we ready to bring the jury out?

Speaker 6 I'm Susan Chris, and I'm the judge who presided over the Durst murder trial in Galveston, Texas.

Speaker 55 There were reporters from all over the country coming to Galveston to watch this trial.

Speaker 48 One of the strangest courtroom cases in the country.

Speaker 46 By now, it's getting a lot of coverage.

Speaker 52 The millionaire black sheep Robert Durst, his Fall From Grace, has all of New York talking.

Speaker 3 Really, it was more about the murderer in this case. Like, what the hell happened to Bobby Durst?

Speaker 24 There was a whole lot of people who thought that a guilty conviction for him was going to be a slam dump.

Speaker 46 Unlike with the disappearance of Kathy or the murder of Susan Berman, there was a mountain of evidence tying Bob to the murder scene.

Speaker 2 Robert Durst had the luxury of hiring a Fort Knox of defense attorneys. These are some really high-profile guys.

Speaker 46 He hires the two best legal gunslingers in the state of Texas, Dick DeGuaron and Dave Ramsey. And then to round out the trio of lawyers, they brought in Chip Lewis.

Speaker 77 Everybody in Gallison has been real nice to him.

Speaker 6 Dick DeGuarin is very much a Texas trial lawyer. He's got the cowboy hat.
He is disciplined. He is professional to an extreme.

Speaker 63 As far as a defense, first we had to divorce the bizarre facts from the case, case, from what actually happened when Morris Black died.

Speaker 62 This case is not about what Bob Durst did after Morris Black died.

Speaker 49 From the get-go, Durst and his lawyers admitted that he killed Morris Black, but they claimed that he acted in self-defense.

Speaker 63 The gun went off with Morris Black's finger on the trigger.

Speaker 80 All right, please.

Speaker 69 Where the defense's argument involves self-defense, it's not uncommon for defendants to take the stand, and Robert Durst did just that in dramatic fashion.

Speaker 3 He gets on the stand, admits he killed him, admits he dismembered him.

Speaker 81 Durst spoke candidly in court today, taking Durarst through the pitfalls of his life, from his battle with bulimia as a child to his ongoing battle with his addiction to marijuana and alcohol.

Speaker 49 Dick DeGuerin staged a pretty dramatic reenactment of the dispute that broke out between Black and Durst.

Speaker 82 And you grabbed him like that and wrestled him and you've tumbled to the ground, would you be acting reasonably?

Speaker 57 Once the issue is fairly raised of self-defense, then it's incumbent on the prosecution to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 83 Every little sawmark in each and every one of those leg bones and arm bones has got a whole lot of intent in it.

Speaker 6 The state just thought it was going to be impossible for anyone to convince a jury that a case where you cut the body up and you took the head away could have been self-defense.

Speaker 81 Don't cut somebody up, another human being, into pieces.

Speaker 53 Bag them up,

Speaker 81 dump them in the bag,

Speaker 52 when you act in self-defense.

Speaker 31 The jury deliberated several days over this.

Speaker 6 There's a point where I thought they might end up being hung.

Speaker 34 We're all sitting there figuratively chewing our fingernails.

Speaker 25 Good morning. You may all be seated.

Speaker 49 Well, the jury has sent a note indicating that they have a verdict.

Speaker 23 And they give it to the clerk and the judge looks at it.

Speaker 68 Will the defendant please rise?

Speaker 22 And kind of paused just an instant.

Speaker 52 Will the jury find the defendant, Robert Durst, not guilty?

Speaker 49 When this verdict was read aloud and Robert Durst was acquitted, you could hear the gasps in the courtroom.

Speaker 24 Jaws were on the floor.

Speaker 25 No one could believe what they'd just heard.

Speaker 20 A very high-profile murder trial ended with a verdict that was so surprising the defendant appeared to be caught off guard. Your client sure seemed shocked when he heard the verdict, were you?

Speaker 86 I wasn't shocked, and I don't think his expression was one of shock. It was one of great relief.

Speaker 68 We cannot convict him.

Speaker 87 He is not guilty.

Speaker 84 I wouldn't be asking him to escort my daughter to her senior prom this year, but

Speaker 84 Gerse's not the only crazy person in Galveston.

Speaker 4 Congratulations.

Speaker 87 The defense of self-defense worked in Galveston. You have laws in Texas that allow not only defending yourself and others, but your property.

Speaker 46 Although Bob was acquitted, there were still two other charges lodged against him. Tampering with evidence, meaning cutting up Morris Black's body, and bail jumping.

Speaker 46 Ultimately, Bob pleaded guilty to those charges and served some more time in jail before he was free.

Speaker 51 By the time Bob was released in 2006, Westchester, New York police had not yet announced developments in the Kathy Durst investigation, and it seemingly went cold again.

Speaker 51 Around the same time, the Durst organization cut ties with Bob in return for a $65 million payout.

Speaker 68 Bob loved the attention he got after the verdict.

Speaker 51 They even make fun of him on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 14 What's your name, bud?

Speaker 12 My name is Robert Durst.

Speaker 51 Law and Order featured a Durst storyline.

Speaker 41 You testified that you dismembered Mr. Barry's body because, quote, you knew what the police would think.

Speaker 49 And in 2010, the legal saga involving Robert Durst was encapsulated in a movie.

Speaker 5 I had followed the story of Bob Durst when it happened. You know, I was very interested in it.
So we wrote a screenplay.

Speaker 5 And that's All Good Things.

Speaker 3 It's All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling as Bobby Durst.

Speaker 23 I'm not going to be able to subsidize your lifestyle, which I don't think that you want.

Speaker 53 I don't want that.

Speaker 46 Kirsten Dunce played Kathy.

Speaker 12 I won't be like when you grow up.

Speaker 12 What do you know about it?

Speaker 46 All Good Things was a semi-fictionalized telling of the Bob Durst story,

Speaker 46 it put him at the center of three murders.

Speaker 5 Later, I found out that he'd gotten a copy of the script, even though the script was on lockdown. Nothing's on lockdown in Hollywood.

Speaker 5 He somehow knew somebody, and he was able to get a copy of the script, and he read it, and he was very intrigued by it.

Speaker 5 Bob called us right before All Good Things premiered, and he wanted to see it. He was in Los Angeles, so we drove over to his studio and we arranged for him to have a screening.

Speaker 46 And after seeing the movie, he made what is probably the blunder of his life.

Speaker 46 In 2010, All Good Things is released.

Speaker 26 The movie is well received.

Speaker 49 But the person who had the most praise for this movie was, believe it or not, Robert Durst himself.

Speaker 49 And he enjoyed the movie so much that after watching it, he reached out to the movie's producers, Mark Smerling and Andrew Djirecki, and sparked a relationship with them.

Speaker 32 Well, it became very clear to me that Andrew and Bob connected in a way that I did not connect.

Speaker 5 They both come from extraordinarily wealthy families.

Speaker 54 Robert Durst grew to trust Andrew Djirecki and Mark Smerling and agreed to tell his story in his own words.

Speaker 46 So later that December, Bob sat down for an entire weekend giving an interview at a hotel in Santa Monica.

Speaker 5 The opportunity to sit down with him in an open interview situation seemed irresistible.

Speaker 32 We did three full days with him. And Bob is very open.

Speaker 9 He's almost glib.

Speaker 5 I always felt like Bob had a compulsion to confess.

Speaker 16 I disagree with the idea that Bob was trying to confess. Bob's problem is that he loves the attention.

Speaker 64 Loves it.

Speaker 16 It was like a drug to him.

Speaker 24 Those interviews became the documentary that we all know as the Jinx.

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Speaker 5 Bob Durst seems to be weighed down heavily by his life and his decisions. And I think he always saw himself as a Jinx.

Speaker 34 Everything he touched fell apart or exploded.

Speaker 46 So it's very obvious in the first interview that the Jinx did with Bob Durst what kind of little ticks he displayed when he would sit down.

Speaker 5 When he starts to get nervous, he starts to burp a lot.

Speaker 57 And stretch and yawn.

Speaker 34 And he talks to himself.

Speaker 46 His face would twitch and he would blink. You had to really look at and figure out how much was true and how much wasn't.

Speaker 2 Now Jareki and Smerling have all this footage, 20 hours of interviews with Bob Durst. The next objective is to get friends and family and associates to tell their part of the story.

Speaker 2 That was not going to be an easy task. In fact, it took four years.

Speaker 57 In 2011, we started doing interviews.

Speaker 32 One of the interviews is Sarah Kaufman, who is Susan Berman's. He's not adopted by Susan, but might as well have been adopted son.

Speaker 5 I stayed in LA to keep doing some research, and Sarah called me the next day, and he said he had found something. He said, can you come by? And I said, sure.

Speaker 5 So you can see in the jinx, I go by and Sarab shows me this letter and the writing on the letter is identical almost to the writing on this cadaver note that had been sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department after Susan was murdered.

Speaker 5 We fly back to New York, we put in a safe deposit box, and we sit down and we go, oh my god, what are we going to do next?

Speaker 5 We realized we had something that was evidence in a murder trial.

Speaker 2 Every documentary filmmaker hopes to find that golden nugget, that unique thing that blows the project wide open. They could never have imagined what was about to happen.

Speaker 2 They take these two identical envelopes and plan to show them to Bob Durst with camera rolling. It did not disappoint.

Speaker 3 In the jinx, Bobby denies that he wrote the note, but he says whoever sent that note is the murderer. Well, Andrew Djireki says to him, well, what about this?

Speaker 46 They put up the two envelopes, which were so startlingly alike. The block lettering was the same.
The telltale misspelling of Beverly was also the same.

Speaker 46 And Bob looked a little bit stunned and flustered, and they asked him to identify which was which.

Speaker 42 Can you tell me which one of these you wrote or which one you didn't write?

Speaker 94 No.

Speaker 46 This was the dilemma. They had discovered a new piece of evidence and it was remarkable.
It wasn't the whole case, but it was a remarkable piece of evidence.

Speaker 46 So where does the line between their obligation as a journalist end

Speaker 46 and their obligations as a good citizen begin?

Speaker 5 We decided that we would give it to law enforcement at some point.

Speaker 43 When we left Mark Smerling and Andrew Drecci after first seeing the footage of some of the things that Bob had said, after seeing the cadaver note, John and I absolutely knew Robert Durst is good for this murder.

Speaker 2 For the next two years, LAPD is keeping a watchful eye tracking his cell phone. Now, the prosecutors, meanwhile, are building their case.

Speaker 2 Andrew Jarecki and Mark Smerling are waiting through hours and hours and hours of footage.

Speaker 2 And then they make another remarkable discovery.

Speaker 5 We had done the last interview with Bob.

Speaker 9 The process is that when we're doing the interview, there's multiple mics, multiple cameras.

Speaker 32 There's a mic overhead.

Speaker 5 Bob's got a radio mic, which is a wireless mic, pinned to him.

Speaker 5 Bob goes into the bathroom,

Speaker 5 comes out of the bathroom. I shoot him, he leaves, and that day's over.

Speaker 5 The footage goes back to the editors.

Speaker 57 And one day I hear this scream from the back editing room.

Speaker 5 And one of the editors, she comes out, she goes, You got to come back here. And I go back, she plays me the end of the interview.

Speaker 5 You can hear the click of the bathroom door, and he goes,

Speaker 12 There it is.

Speaker 4 You're Courtney.

Speaker 4 Kill them all,

Speaker 4 of course.

Speaker 5 Like, oh my God. And then the tape stops.

Speaker 5 Done.

Speaker 5 That was recorded when the interview was recorded in 2012. We didn't discover it until 2014.
So it was two years after the interview that we discovered the bathroom recording.

Speaker 46 So the big news was that in 2015, HBO was going to bring out this new six-part documentary called The Jinx, the Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

Speaker 46 Their promos were great, and it was up on a big billboard in Times Square, which is Durst territory.

Speaker 2 There's a big ad campaign and lots of anticipation leading up to the series. It finally premieres, but meanwhile, prosecutors have a big concern.
Bob Durst is out there, free, and with lots of cash.

Speaker 16 Our concern was that what's going to happen is once the Jinx air, Bob is going to end up taking off for Cuba.

Speaker 46 After every episode of the Jinx, I was talking to Bob and he still felt that he was in pretty good shape after episode four.

Speaker 46 But when I called him to talk about episode five, I could tell he was agitated.

Speaker 46 And I knew I wasn't going to be talking to Bob Durst ever again.

Speaker 49 He realized the gravity of what he had said, and he went on the run once again.

Speaker 97 The FBI is peeing his phone to keep tabs on Bob.

Speaker 46 And they notice he's driving east, and suddenly it goes blank.

Speaker 23 Bob's turned off his phone, and they have no idea where he is.

Speaker 31 I feared Bobby Durst.

Speaker 52 He could hire anybody to do anything.

Speaker 45 And I was scared of him.

Speaker 69 This was the most sensational,

Speaker 24 the most twisted,

Speaker 26 the most bizarre story

Speaker 69 I've ever covered in my career.

Speaker 23 It was a huge blunder for Bob to appear in the jigs.

Speaker 73 And you've got this rich guy with all the power in the world.

Speaker 9 Bob is very cunning and manipulative.

Speaker 27 Robert Durst, a real estate heir, under arrest for a murder that happened 15 years ago.

Speaker 95 Charged with killing his friend, Susan Berman.

Speaker 35 And he murdered her.

Speaker 61 Here's my best friend, boom.

Speaker 43 This is Berman murder, the Kathy Durst murder.

Speaker 97 They belong together.

Speaker 87 He feared that some of these witnesses might get whacked.

Speaker 21 He said, hey, Nikki, guess what? Cutting up a body is only a misdemeanor here in Texas.

Speaker 4 He thought thought that was pretty funny.

Speaker 8 But this is a guy who doesn't believe that any rules apply to himself.

Speaker 48 That's just Bob Durst.

Speaker 42 It was clearly a note of what to do to dispose of a body.

Speaker 19 Do not let this narcissistic psychopath get away with what he has done.

Speaker 2 Robert Durst has this sense of invincibility. He crawled under the radar for so many decades.

Speaker 3 In 1982, his wife, Kathy, disappears. Nobody thought she disappeared.

Speaker 32 Something terrible happened to Teati.

Speaker 2 Even though Bob Durst may have been looked at as a suspect or a person of interest, there was nothing to formally charge him.

Speaker 57 The case just went cold, as though Kathy fell off the face of the earth.

Speaker 52 What happened to Kathleen Durst?

Speaker 49 State police are taking a fresh look at the case.

Speaker 26 And there is one person who could crack the case wide open.

Speaker 9 Susan Berman was Bob's best friend. I think she was key to everything we were looking for here in New York regarding Kathy's disappearance.

Speaker 10 55-year-old Susan Berman, found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 32 When I got the news that Susan Berman was murdered, I felt like a punch in the gut.

Speaker 46 10 months after Susan's body is found, there's another incident, this time in Texas.

Speaker 19 Galveston police say Robert Durst killed his next-door neighbor and dumped his body into Galveston Bay.

Speaker 46 There was a mountain of evidence tying Bob to the murder scene. This seemed like an open and shut case.

Speaker 52 Did the jury find the defendant Robert Durst not guilty?

Speaker 49 Robert Durst is acquitted of murder in a verdict that not only shocked Robert Durst, but shocked the entire world.

Speaker 57 Bob thought that he was the smartest one in the room, and he probably thought, why not give my side?

Speaker 9 Let me appear on this program. I can con them just like I conned everyone else in my life.

Speaker 23 It was a huge blunder for Bob to appear in the Jinx.

Speaker 46 That's what spurred LA to reopen the investigation.

Speaker 51 The Jinx producers shared information with the LA prosecutors that they'd uncovered during production.

Speaker 51 Both an apparent bathroom confession from Bob and a note that seemed to link him to Susan Bourbon's murder.

Speaker 49 This cadaver letter, this big reveal on the Jinx, turned out to be the smoking gun that prosecutors were looking for.

Speaker 16 We were shocked that it takes Bob seeing it on TV to go, uh-oh, I'm in trouble.

Speaker 51 But that's what happened.

Speaker 43 The Los Angeles Police Department detectives were monitoring Bob, and they know that he's very likely going to run.

Speaker 2 Knowing full well that Bob Durst has money and means to get out of Dodge, the FBI and the LAPD want to keep their eyes on him as much as possible.

Speaker 2 The only real way to do that is through his cell phone.

Speaker 46 And they notice that

Speaker 46 Bob has gotten into his car and he's driving east and suddenly

Speaker 46 it goes blank.

Speaker 23 Bob's turned off his phone and they have no idea where he is.

Speaker 46 And I thought, holy,

Speaker 16 he's gonna run.

Speaker 95 Bob had turned off his cell phone so investigators couldn't locate him. And so what happened was he called his voicemail from a phone at the New Orleans Marriott Hotel.

Speaker 95 And that gave investigators a lead.

Speaker 46 So two FBI agents went to the J.W. Marriott and they went up to the desk, the front desk, and they asked the clerk, so do you have a Bob Durst registered here?

Speaker 46 No.

Speaker 46 Do you have Dorothy Simon? No.

Speaker 46 And they go through 10 more aliases that Bob had used at one time or another.

Speaker 46 And as they're standing there trying to figure out their next step, who comes waltzing through the door? None other than

Speaker 46 Bob Durst.

Speaker 2 Once investigators get their chance to search the room, they find a gold mine of evidence of a man hoping to be on the run.

Speaker 46 They find a latex mask, a professional one that you can pull over and look like a completely different person.

Speaker 46 They find money in the hotel room. They find maps, including a big map of the southeast.

Speaker 46 They handcuff him to a chair, and Bob happens to mention, oh, by way,

Speaker 46 in my jacket in the closet is a gun.

Speaker 28 Robert Durst, a real estate heir and recently the subject of a documentary series, tonight under arrest for a murder that happened 15 years ago.

Speaker 42 The 71-year-old was apprehended at this New Orleans hotel where he was registered under a fake name, Everett Ward.

Speaker 46 As soon as the FBI agents detain Bob, the call goes to L.A. to say, okay, we got him on your murder warrant.

Speaker 16 On that Saturday afternoon, I get called by my assistant DA who tells me, okay, we just arrested Bob Durst. You got what you want, you better win this case.

Speaker 87 When Robert Durst got arrested, that was the moment for Lewin to take advantage of his detention and he raced down to New Orleans to interview him.

Speaker 46 This is a crazy situation. Here, Bob, who's well acquainted with law enforcement and the legal system, who is not demanding the lawyer up.

Speaker 9 You have the right to the presence of an attorney before and during any questioning.

Speaker 52 Do you understand?

Speaker 4 I understand.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 50 My goal was, how can I get him to talk to me?

Speaker 16 What can I do?

Speaker 50 And I knew that Bob Durst's favorite topic of conversation is Bob Durst.

Speaker 60 There's no question that of

Speaker 60 any

Speaker 60 suspect I've ever had, ever dealt with, you are the most interesting.

Speaker 50 Bob understood that we had substantial evidence against him.

Speaker 60 You'd like some details from me if I knew about where Kathy's body is.

Speaker 33 And about what happened to him.

Speaker 60 And about what happens.

Speaker 60 And you would agree that you're in the position, if you want, to tell me more than you have.

Speaker 60 About that, I'm not about to go back for our okay durst skirts around

Speaker 60 the issue of potentially getting a deal from luwin and so it begs the question why are you trying to cut a deal before you're charged if you're truly innocent well you asked me what i thought you wanted to hear i think what you wanted to hear is what did you do with kathy right

Speaker 60 i tell you those things of being guilty

Speaker 50 originally my thought was that i was only 10 or 20 minutes away from a confession.

Speaker 16 Over time, what I've realized, Bob will let you get down to the five-yard line pretty easily, and you think you're about to score.

Speaker 50 You're not going to score. He really doesn't

Speaker 50 start really playing defense until he gets to the five.

Speaker 60 I'm not about to say to you, John,

Speaker 52 this is it without my lawyer.

Speaker 80 Okay.

Speaker 5 I think there's two sides to Bob Durst.

Speaker 5 There's this underlying side that feels guilty for it, has a compulsion to confess. But on top of that is the self-preservation side.

Speaker 48 Robert Durst, the millionaire heir, is in court this morning in New Orleans for a bond hearing. His lawyers trying to free him so he can fight those murder charges in Los Angeles.

Speaker 38 Bob Durst didn't kill Susan Berman. He's ready to end all the rumor and speculation and have a trial.

Speaker 38 But we're frustrated because the local authorities are considering filing charges on him here and holding him here.

Speaker 2 Bob Durst was convicted of the gun charges and is sentenced to 85 months behind bars.

Speaker 40 He was held up in New Orleans.

Speaker 39 So that is an absolutely massive gift, essentially, by Durst.

Speaker 59 He gave us extra time.

Speaker 2 Now the prosecution has the time that it needs to track down witnesses and find evidence that builds a bulletproof case against Robert Durst.

Speaker 46 There were a number of witnesses who were very reluctant to come forward. If Bob could get off in Galveston, he's capable of anything.

Speaker 19 Robert Durst is being held in a Los Angeles jail tonight. He's expected back in court in LA in two weeks with a trial not until next year.

Speaker 95 Durst is due to be arraigned on Monday, charged with killing his friend Susan Berman.

Speaker 31 I think Susan wanted to be stood up for.

Speaker 31 I think the trial, of course, was a great way to honor her.

Speaker 49 This trial was as high stakes as it could get, not only for Robert Durst, but for the lead prosecutor, John Lewin, who spent years focusing on this case.

Speaker 36 If there was any DA to handle that case, John Lewin was the one to handle it. John is going back and re-interviewing witnesses.

Speaker 36 You know, you got to remember a lot of those people when we interviewed them, you're talking about in 2001.

Speaker 49 Witnesses may be dead, evidence is lost, people don't remember. You have all these obstacles in an old case.

Speaker 46 And there were a number of witnesses who were very reluctant to come forward. If Bob could get off in Galveston, he's capable of anything.

Speaker 2 The law allows something called conditional testimony.

Speaker 46 A conditional witness is someone who is 65 or older and you're fearful that they might not make it to trial.

Speaker 87 Lewin feared that because of Durst resources that some of these witnesses might get whacked.

Speaker 2 You put those witnesses on the stand but there's no jury. They testify, it's videotaped,

Speaker 2 and then later it's played back when the jury is actually present.

Speaker 35 The truth, the whole truth, and that the detestation will be done.

Speaker 45 Yes.

Speaker 45 I was uncomfortable coming forward.

Speaker 13 I feared Bobby Durst. He's very wealthy.

Speaker 45 He has long arms. He could hire anybody to do anything and I was scared of him.

Speaker 35 Did you, in your mind, come to believe who was responsible for Susan's death?

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 60 Who was that?

Speaker 60 Bobby Durst.

Speaker 51 Miriam testified that at the time of Kathy's disappearance, Susan anxiously confided in her that she had just done a favor for Durst.

Speaker 12 She said I did something to Venny and Keith.

Speaker 80 It'll be far into if anything ever happened to me by considering.

Speaker 13 I remember her saying this to me.

Speaker 41 I didn't know how important it was.

Speaker 57 And I didn't think that anybody that I knew in my world would murder somebody.

Speaker 24 Pressure was mounting on the prosecutors and investigators working this case to find witnesses to take the stand.

Speaker 69 And that leads them directly to Nick Chabin.

Speaker 70 Mark,

Speaker 21 I'm known in the show business.

Speaker 2 Nick Chabin was most definitely a creative character. He was a satirist.
And it turns out that Susan Berman was actually writing a story about his musical aspirations.

Speaker 2 And then Susan introduces him to Bob. And the three of them are tight, thickest thieves, the best of friends.

Speaker 24 Yeah, these were my my two best friends they were my two best friends which is a very strange position nick wanted nothing to do with this trial nick would have been very happy to just go on the rest of his life and take these secrets to the grave luin did everything in the world to get me to talk to

Speaker 21 and i wouldn't answer his phone calls and i wouldn't take his phone calls

Speaker 23 Lewin realizes that he's got to draw Nick out.

Speaker 21 I'm working for Miller Advertising. And one fine day, the head of the company came into my office,

Speaker 21 and on his finger was a sticky.

Speaker 95 He said, you've got to call this guy.

Speaker 70 I said, who?

Speaker 21 He said, he's a district attorney in LA. You've got to call him.

Speaker 77 I says, what?

Speaker 21 You have to call him.

Speaker 19 Hey, Nick, you have...

Speaker 16 You have John Lewin, Habib Balian, and George Shamleon on.

Speaker 97 Okay.

Speaker 16 Nick could have told told us, hey, listen, I don't know anything.

Speaker 50 But instead, Nick said, I'm not saying that I don't have information.

Speaker 11 I'm just not ready to share it yet.

Speaker 100 I decided to answer your questions the best I could.

Speaker 85 This is everything you know about Bob's possible involvement in either Kathy or Susan's murder and your knowledge of it.

Speaker 21 I don't know if I have or not.

Speaker 85 I thought I did. Maybe I didn't.
I don't know.

Speaker 97 He

Speaker 63 told me all kinds of things. He says, wasn't Susan your dear friend?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 46 And Bobby's your dear friend.

Speaker 21 So one of them kills the other. You've got to make a choice.

Speaker 51 Honestly ask yourself, is Bob worth it?

Speaker 25 If the roles were reversed, would Bob do that for you?

Speaker 21 Lun is a master at ripping off the bandage as he described it. Just rip off the bandage, Nick.

Speaker 94 You better. He got me to cop to what I knew.

Speaker 2 Nick Chaven's been carrying around this soul-scorching soul-scorching secret for a long time.

Speaker 4 And I told Nick, and all that I'm hoping before you testify under oath, that you're honest.

Speaker 2 Now he's ready to let it go.

Speaker 49 I've been covering big criminal cases for more than two decades,

Speaker 69 And this was the most sensational,

Speaker 49 the most twisted,

Speaker 26 the most bizarre story

Speaker 7 I've ever covered in my career.

Speaker 49 There will never be another legal saga like this.

Speaker 2 To build a solid case against Bob Durst, John Lewin needed to assemble a stellar team of prosecutors.

Speaker 16 There were actually a total of eight prosecutors who worked on this case at different times.

Speaker 79 We also had probably a total of close to 50 law clerks.

Speaker 43 It was very clear from the beginning that these three cases were interrelated and for the jury to properly determine the truth, they were going to have to get the whole picture.

Speaker 8 We were trying to get the jury to understand that this is a guy who doesn't believe that any rules apply to himself.

Speaker 48 That's just Bob Durst.

Speaker 25 He's the most self-involved person I've ever seen.

Speaker 46 So the trial in Los Angeles is high stakes for both sides.

Speaker 3 Bob Durst was already in prison for six years by the time Susan's murder trial started.

Speaker 49 This was a man who was in his late 70s, who was battling cancer that appeared to be in the advanced stages.

Speaker 26 He was frail.

Speaker 87 He was weak. He was being wheeled in and out of court.
He had tubes and medical devices hanging from him.

Speaker 25 People were wondering every day, is this guy even gonna live to be able to see the duration of this trial.

Speaker 32 Mr. Lewin will make his opening statement first and that's because the people have the burden of proof.

Speaker 51 After a year of false starts due to COVID and of course Bob's bad health, opening statements at the trial finally began.

Speaker 42 So there's going to be three

Speaker 42 killings that we are going to prove.

Speaker 51 Prosecutors also shared their theory for the reason Berman was murdered. Remember that 1982 phone call from Kathy to her med school claiming she was too sick to work?

Speaker 51 Well, prosecutors say it was really Susan Berman pretending to be Kathy, giving Bob a phony alibi. And they argue Susan's complicity also made her a target.

Speaker 101 Everything starts with Kathy Durst disappearance and death at the hands of Mr.

Speaker 62 Durst and Mr.

Speaker 101 Durst alone.

Speaker 8 And after that, he had to kill Susan Berman because he feared that she was going to talk.

Speaker 101 And then he had to kill Morris Black because Morris Black knew who he was and was putting pressure on him.

Speaker 51 Almost from day one, prosecutors made it clear that Durst's interview in the Jinx would be a key piece of evidence.

Speaker 42 All of the video that you will see has been unedited.

Speaker 51 And that so-called cadaver note, it would be the lynchpin in their case against him.

Speaker 46 From the very beginning, his stance was always, I'm not going to show you the jinx. I'm going to show you the raw material.

Speaker 8 This is what he said in 2010.

Speaker 101 This is the interview with Andrew Durecki and Mark Smerling.

Speaker 57 Well, to begin with, you didn't

Speaker 41 write the cadaver note, is that word?

Speaker 21 I did write the cadaver note.

Speaker 101 In 2012,

Speaker 101 Mr. Durst made clear.

Speaker 42 The evidence is going to show that this is an absolutely true and correct statement.

Speaker 25 And this is what he said.

Speaker 42 You're writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written.

Speaker 2 On day two, Defense Attorney Dick DeGuerin throws his cowboy hat into the ring, and he's hoping that same Texas charm that worked down in Galveston will work in L.A.

Speaker 46 You got DeGueron coming into the courtroom just like he did in Galveston. He's got his Stetson on, he's got his cowboy boots on.
It charmed them in Texas.

Speaker 42 I'm Dick DeGuerin.

Speaker 42 I'm from Texas. I don't have an accent.

Speaker 42 At least I don't think I do.

Speaker 46 It meant zero in Los Angeles.

Speaker 44 He was a cowboy at heart and a very, very good defense attorney with an incredible reputation.

Speaker 31 Bobby Durst got the best.

Speaker 42 Mr. Lewin has made a

Speaker 42 fine presentation.

Speaker 94 Very skillful, very slick.

Speaker 42 Mine's not going to be that slick.

Speaker 87 DeGuerrett's strategy was no evidence is evidence. If you have no physical evidence, then that means that Robert Durst did not murder Berman.

Speaker 42 The evidence is lacking.

Speaker 42 The evidence isn't there.

Speaker 88 This is a heavyweight bout between two people that were at the top of their game.

Speaker 94 Bob, did you love Kathy?

Speaker 75 Yes, very much.

Speaker 42 Have you ever loved anybody in your life more than Kathy?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 42 Did you kill her? No.

Speaker 8 We can show without question that Bob is responsible for Kathy's death. We can show circumstantially that Bob got rid of her body.

Speaker 16 Was it murder or was it manslaughter? We have no idea.

Speaker 51 Now, the prosecution focuses squarely on the Berman murder. They play the testimony of their star witness, Nick Shavin, best friend to both Bob Durst and Susan Berman.

Speaker 35 How do you feel about being here today?

Speaker 28 I feel like it's something I have to do.

Speaker 38 Sometime in

Speaker 72 late 2014,

Speaker 60 did you have a dinner with Rob Durst?

Speaker 53 Yes.

Speaker 46 So Nick recounts to Lewin

Speaker 46 exactly what happened.

Speaker 52 With the joint find the defendant?

Speaker 21 I hadn't seen him in 10 years and he called, he

Speaker 21 acquitted in Galveston. And he said, hey, Nikki, guess what? Cutting up a body is only a misdemeanor here in Texas.

Speaker 4 We thought that was pretty funny.

Speaker 21 So now he said, let's have dinner to celebrate. I'm coming to New York.

Speaker 46 They go to dinner at a little restaurant called Barrawine, a French bistro.

Speaker 46 And they're having dinner.

Speaker 46 But as they put on their coats and they're leaving, Nick realizes they haven't talked about Susie or Kathy.

Speaker 22 We walked out the door

Speaker 22 and on the sidewalk,

Speaker 10 I said,

Speaker 53 we wanted to talk about Susie.

Speaker 53 And Bob said,

Speaker 53 I had to.

Speaker 22 It was her or me. I had no choice.

Speaker 21 That stunned me.

Speaker 21 Then I said,

Speaker 21 you said also you wanted to talk to me about Kathy.

Speaker 21 He turned on his heel and began walking north away from me. I said, Bob, Bob, and he didn't answer.
He just kept walking.

Speaker 46 So it's a very dramatic moment, and it's basically a confession.

Speaker 24 Lewin was masterful.

Speaker 66 The evidence was unbelievable.

Speaker 51 Now it's time for the defense to take its turn. And just as they had done in Galveston, they called defendant Robert Durst to testify.

Speaker 41 Bob, did you kill Susan Burma?

Speaker 35 No.

Speaker 41 Do you know who did?

Speaker 75 No, I do not.

Speaker 2 And for the most part, it sounded quite reasonable.

Speaker 12 I got the idea.

Speaker 66 of sending a letter to the Beverly Hills Police

Speaker 12 that Susan was dead at her house.

Speaker 8 What was your state of mind?

Speaker 66 I was trying to decide

Speaker 75 if anyone would believe

Speaker 75 that I killed Susan Berman

Speaker 4 and I had no reason to kill Susan

Speaker 4 Berman.

Speaker 2 Then John Lewin takes his turn.

Speaker 81 You may commence your cross-examination of the witness, Mr.

Speaker 97 Lewin.

Speaker 2 And he's just starting to warm up.

Speaker 84 And I want to congratulate you.

Speaker 97 You've set the perjury record.

Speaker 76 Cross-examination begins in the Robert Durst murder trial. Durst attorneys wrapped up his direct examination of his client.

Speaker 62 Mr. Durst, Mr.

Speaker 79 DeGuerin called you Bob. Do you want me to call you Bob? Do you want me to call you Mr.

Speaker 9 Durst? What would you prefer?

Speaker 66 How about sir?

Speaker 16 You can call me sir.

Speaker 79 He becomes very hostile right off the bat, and it was, you know, downhill from from there.

Speaker 8 Would you lie under oath to help your case?

Speaker 66 Yeah

Speaker 51 Throughout nine days of cross-examination Lewin repeatedly catches Durst in lies showing that he has been lying for years and that he would be willing to protect himself by lying

Speaker 23 Did you not say that you would lie about whether you murdered Susan Berman, whether you murdered Kathy Durst, and whether you murdered Morris Black.

Speaker 71 If I had killed them, I would lie about that.

Speaker 44 Lewin must have been doing cartwheels inside his body because that was a gift. You know, in other words, I'm a big fat liar.

Speaker 88 When he admitted to John Lewin that he would perjure himself, I looked at Mr. DeGuerin because, you know, they had lost control of their own, you know, client.

Speaker 66 I think I need to congratulate you.

Speaker 71 You filled up 18 lines on my tablet.

Speaker 25 And I want to congratulate you.

Speaker 15 You've set the perjury record.

Speaker 15 Your honor,

Speaker 35 your honor,

Speaker 51 you got away with that.

Speaker 24 It was very tense between Robert Durst and John Lewin.

Speaker 51 Lewin confronts Durst about a piece of evidence in Durst's own handwriting. It was referred to as the dig note, and it was found in his trash can not long after Kathy's disappearance.

Speaker 51 Written on it were a number of words including town dump, bridge, dig, boat, shovel, among other things.

Speaker 98 The dig note was

Speaker 68 very bad for Robert Durst.

Speaker 98 It was clearly a note of what to do to dispose of a body.

Speaker 62 So Mr. Durst,

Speaker 62 would you agree this looks like a list of how you would get rid of a body.

Speaker 66 That's what it looks like to you.

Speaker 51 Durst tried to write off the note as nothing sinister. It was just a mundane to-do list.

Speaker 51 Bridge

Speaker 66 is an abbreviation of Bridge Hampton.

Speaker 66 D-I-G

Speaker 66 is for digital.

Speaker 66 Boat

Speaker 66 is the sailboat.

Speaker 66 They needed to go to the town dump. Shovel

Speaker 66 was the snow shovels.

Speaker 88 One of the most, I think, entertaining or hilarious parts of the whole trial was how Durst sort of reverse-engineered the meaning of everything on that dig note.

Speaker 3 But that's his mentality. I'm Bob Durst.
I can do and say whatever I want.

Speaker 51 Lewin went on to question Durst about the now famous smoking gun moment from the Jinx.

Speaker 62 All right, Mr.

Speaker 100 Durst, I want to talk about what has been referred to as the bathroom audio.

Speaker 62 You said, there it is, you're caught, correct?

Speaker 4 I accept that.

Speaker 62 And you would agree that while you were in the bathroom, Mr. Durst, you said the words, killed them all, of course, correct?

Speaker 66 I think what I said was

Speaker 47 they'll all think I killed them all.

Speaker 30 Can we cue it up, please?

Speaker 62 I want you to listen, Mr. Durst.

Speaker 62 Killed them all, of

Speaker 35 So you think that you added, they'll all think

Speaker 100 before the words, I killed them all, of course. Is that correct?

Speaker 35 That's correct. Please play it again.

Speaker 8 Please play it right before. And I want you to listen very carefully.

Speaker 85 I want you to tell me when you hear any of the words you just described.

Speaker 85 Kill the wall,

Speaker 62 Do you understand, Mr. Durst, that your attorneys have already stipulated that what we just played is unaltered, unedited footage?

Speaker 12 I don't see the mind picking up everything I said.

Speaker 51 And throughout the trial, Lewin continued to remind jurors that Durst is a self-admitted liar.

Speaker 100 Would you agree that the admissions that you've made about your prior perjury

Speaker 62 are extremely relevant for somebody assessing your credibility.

Speaker 35 Yes.

Speaker 87 Lewin had Durst in the palm of his hands. There were so many instances where Durst was tripped up on the stand and made admissions.

Speaker 51 But would jurors agree and put an end to Robert Durst's decades of evading justice?

Speaker 80 The clerk will please read the verdict. We the jury find the kid Robert Durst

Speaker 49 This was a case that was stranger than fiction.

Speaker 24 But what this case did above all was it resurfaced secrets from the past.

Speaker 46 Bob showed a remarkable facility to make up stories at the drop of a hat and to pack them full of details, which makes you think they must be true.

Speaker 2 Listen to what he says about the discovery of Susan Berman's body.

Speaker 8 Was she cold to the touch? Was she warm to the touch? Could you tell?

Speaker 66 I put my hand over her face.

Speaker 66 I might have left that out

Speaker 66 to see if she was breathing, to see if I could feel breath. And it felt cold.

Speaker 73 And the most compelling part to me of the cross-examination was when he was talking about finding her body.

Speaker 66 Her breath felt, her face felt cold.

Speaker 16 She's dead.

Speaker 27 What do you mean her breath felt cold?

Speaker 81 Was she breathing on you when you got there?

Speaker 66 No, she was not breathing.

Speaker 15 So how can her breath be cold when she's dead?

Speaker 8 She's a stiff.

Speaker 66 It was, I put my hand on her face and it was cold.

Speaker 49 He slipped.

Speaker 6 I mean, he just absolutely slipped.

Speaker 73 I I don't think you could have said anything more incriminating if you had a Hollywood scriptwriter writing it.

Speaker 59 His whole thing is to give as many details as possible to the lie.

Speaker 59 And the problem with that is the more lies you have, the more opportunity for reality to intersect with the lie and prove that you're lying.

Speaker 41 Had you made plans to spend Christmas with Susan Vermont?

Speaker 66 Yes.

Speaker 44 Bobby had told her he was going to come to California and she didn't know when he was going to arrive exactly. And she told told friends, hey, we're going to get together.
We don't know exactly when.

Speaker 75 Mr.

Speaker 53 Lewin, you may resume your cross-examination of Mr. Durst.

Speaker 46 In a coup de grace to me, they pull out Susan's day planner.

Speaker 99 Mr.

Speaker 50 Durst, you recognize this to be Susan's handwriting, correct?

Speaker 66 It might be Susan's handwriting.

Speaker 98 She wrote everything down in there.

Speaker 98 Everything was there, all her appointments and even small to-do tasks were in there as well.

Speaker 51 That's important because Durst insists that he came out west just to take a pre-planned trip with Vermin up the California coast. Well, the prosecution had a totally different explanation.

Speaker 51 They were convinced that Bob Durst came west for one reason, to murder Susan Vermin.

Speaker 99 We're going to go turn to the 22nd. This is the day that you originally were supposed to meet Susie Vermin.

Speaker 79 Is that correct?

Speaker 66 Correct.

Speaker 99 Do you see any notation on the 22nd, Mr.

Speaker 8 Durst, that references you?

Speaker 66 I do not specifically see anything describing the fact that I was going to arrive that evening.

Speaker 43 That calendar told the jury Bob was lying.

Speaker 43 Susan Berman wasn't going up north with him on a trip. She was getting her hair done.

Speaker 99 Mr.

Speaker 82 Durst, this is my last question. Did you kill Susan Berman?

Speaker 80 No.

Speaker 8 But if you had, you would lie about it, correct?

Speaker 4 Correct.

Speaker 11 Nothing further. Thank you.

Speaker 2 After a trial that lasted 24 months, the prosecution finally rested its case.

Speaker 75 This case can be summed up to you in nine simple words. It was her or me.

Speaker 75 I had no choice.

Speaker 57 This man murdered Susan Berman.

Speaker 66 He murdered her.

Speaker 15 Do not let this narcissistic psychopath get away with what he has done, what he did to Susan Berman.

Speaker 24 But one of the most powerful arguments from Robert Durst's legal team came during the closing arguments.

Speaker 24 Dick DeGuerin looks at the jury and says to them, we do not convict folks based on made-for-TV movies. And that was a reference to the media frenzy that surrounded the Jinx documentary.

Speaker 82 Nine days

Speaker 38 of beating up on a sick old man that can't defend himself.

Speaker 82 I've known him for 20 years, and I am proud to stand before you

Speaker 8 and defend Robert Durst

Speaker 88 when almost no one in the world

Speaker 38 would do so.

Speaker 3 The jury was out a few days, a reasonable amount of time.

Speaker 87 The verdict came in, and Durst was exposed to COVID and couldn't be in the courtroom.

Speaker 2 But Judge Wyndham refuses to delay the reading of the jury's verdict for one more moment.

Speaker 80 The court will please read the verdict.

Speaker 80 We, the jury, find the opinion, Robert Durst, guilty of a crime of first-degree murder, that's his inverted.

Speaker 49 Now to a court case that has garnered headlines across the country for decades.

Speaker 48 Overnight, a jury convicted Robert Durst of first-degree murder in the shooting death of his best friend.

Speaker 9 And I remember I was at a gathering when I got the phone call about it.

Speaker 9 And I went into another room and just teared up.

Speaker 16 We are extremely gratified and appreciative of the verdict that the jury reached in this case. We think that it was supported by the evidence.

Speaker 98 Once I saw the evidence for each of the three crimes, I felt like it was pretty clear and overwhelming.

Speaker 88 To me, he confessed three times. On tape, when he said, you know, killed them all.
Confession number two was when he admitted to writing the cadaver note. And number three, it was either her or me.

Speaker 88 I had no choice.

Speaker 17 Nobody saw Bobby Durst's reaction to the guilty verdict.

Speaker 3 But I can tell you what everybody else's reaction was.

Speaker 3 Hallelujah. Finally.

Speaker 6 Now, that's not the end of the story, though, because there's never an end of this story.

Speaker 49 He's getting away with another get out of jail-free card, if you will, once again.

Speaker 53 All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the sentencing proceedings.
It's the judgment and sentence of this court, Mr.

Speaker 53 Durst, that you be imprisoned in the state prison for the term prescribed by law, that is, life in prison.

Speaker 2 Robert Durst was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, never to run away again.

Speaker 77 I think everybody felt justice was being served in the fact that he was tried, convicted, and that put closure on a lot for a lot of people.

Speaker 8 The defendant Robert Durst is committed to the custody of the sheriff for delivery to the Department of Corrections forthwith.

Speaker 14 I went to the mausoleum and was able to go visit Susie and tell her that she can lay her head down and rest easy now.

Speaker 45 I still miss Susan and I feel so bad that she's gone.

Speaker 31 I think she would be

Speaker 31 validated by the people who came to stand up for her and who who have been standing for her.

Speaker 3 Kathy's brother, Jim McCormick, has been hoping for justice for his sister. He felt, you know, a conviction in Susan's case is like a conviction

Speaker 3 for my sister, too.

Speaker 3 They went to the Westchester County Prosecutor. We want an indictment on Kathy's murder, and they got it.

Speaker 72 A second-degree murder indictment tonight against real estate heir Robert Durst.

Speaker 51 One of Durst's LA trial lawyers, Chip Lewis, called this charge fake news.

Speaker 9 Things he said on the stand at the Los Angeles trial,

Speaker 37 we came to the conclusion that we did have enough to charge him with murder and take it to trial.

Speaker 49 But by the time this started to play out in the courts of New York, it was too late.

Speaker 96 Breaking news, real estate heir and convicted murderer Robert Durst has died. The 78-year-old went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived.

Speaker 6 Robert died after he was found guilty by a jury, but before the appellate process could work its way through.

Speaker 87 So in California, when a defendant dies and the case is still on appeal, the conviction is abated. It's vacated.

Speaker 57 It's gone.

Speaker 2 So the question is, was final justice ever really done?

Speaker 76 Probably not for Kathy Durst's family.

Speaker 5 Not knowing what happened to Kathy over all these years, not knowing where her body is, not being able to give her a burial, not having any closure.

Speaker 49 The most tragic part is that the family will never have those answers.

Speaker 29 It's been 40 years.

Speaker 61 I miss Kathy.

Speaker 61 We would have had a good time growing old together.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault, Friday nights at 9 on ABC. You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020.
Thanks for listening.