Robert Durst Will Testify at Murder Trial, Lawyer Tells Jury
Robert Durst Found Murdered Friend’s Body, His Lawyer Says
(Bloomberg) -- Robert Durst will take the stand in his own defense, his lawyer told jurors in the New York real-estate heir’s trial for the 2000 murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman.
Dick DeGuerin, Durst’s lead lawyer, also said in his opening statement Tuesday that his client found Berman already dead at her Los Angeles home, then panicked and ran.
“Bob Durst didn’t kill Susan Berman, and he doesn’t know who did,” DeGuerin said.
According to Los Angeles prosecutors, Durst, 76, shot Berman in the head to prevent her from talking to the police about his first wife’s 1982 disappearance. They believe Kathie Durst was actually murdered by Robert Durst and that Berman helped him cover it up.
Tuesday was the first time Durst’s lawyers have acknowledged he was in Berman’s home, or even that he was in the Los Angeles area at the time. Their account of what happened points to a defense similar to the one Durst used in 2013, when he was acquitted of the 2001 murder of his elderly neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas.
Durst testified in the Texas case that he “panicked” after accidentally shooting Black during an altercation. According to Durst, he decided to dismember and dump Black’s body in Galveston Bay because he didn’t think the police would believe him. At the time, he was living in Galveston disguised as a mute woman, hiding out from New York state investigators who had reopened the Kathie Durst case in 2000.
“Bob doesn’t make good decisions,” DeGuerin told jurors Tuesday. “Throughout his life, Bob has run away from trouble rather than face it.”
Durst’s testimony is likely to receive much more attention this time around. He achieved greater notoriety following the 2015 release of the HBO documentary “The Jinx: the Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” The final episode concluded with Durst, off camera in a bathroom but with his microphone still on, muttering to himself that he “killed them all, of course.”
That audio was played for Los Angeles jurors by prosecutors.
Durst is a scion of the family behind the Durst Organization, one of Manhattan’s largest commercial property owners with stakes in buildings including One World Trade Center.
DeGuerin said his client has been diagnosed as “being on the spectrum” for autism, symptoms of which include an inability to read social cues. That blinded Durst to the aggressive side of Black, said the lawyer, who dwelt at length on evidence that he said showed the 2013 killing had been unintentional.
The prosecution, on the other hand, says Durst has a history of killing people when he feels pushed into a corner, including Black, Berman and Kathie Durst.
To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Anthony Lin
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