A judge has ordered the man at the centre of HBO documentary ‘The Jinx’ to stand trial for the murder of his long-time friend 18 years ago.
75-year-old multimillionaire Robert Durst was arrested after the documentary aired and charged with the murder of his confidant Susan Berman, who was shot dead in 2000.
Durst is the grandson of New York real estate tycoon Joseph Durst, who founded the Durst Organisation – which owns more than 8.5 million sq ft of high-quality office space in Midtown Manhattan and more than one million sq ft of luxury residential rentals.
He has pleaded innocent to murdering Ms Berman, and will be able to enter a plea at an arraignment hearing on November 8th.
The Jinx
The HBO documentary, ‘The Jinx: The Life And Deaths Of Robert Durst’ investigates the disappearance of Durst’s wife as well as the deaths of Ms Berman and Morris Black – one of Durst’s neighbours.
A jury acquitted Durst of Mr Black's murder after finding he was killed in self-defence - but he was convicted of dismembering him, and his head has never been found.
Kathleen Durst is presumed dead. Her husband has never been charged with any crime related to her disappearance, and he also denies killing her.
Ms Berman, who was the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, was shot in the back of the head at her home in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors have alleged that Durst killed her so she would not tell police what she knew about his wife's disappearance back in 1982.
Arrest
He was arrested in New Orleans hours before the final episode of the documentary went to air.
The final episode saw him muttering to himself on a live microphone: "You're caught. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
After Mrs Durst vanished, Ms Berman was Durst's unofficial spokeswoman, but prosecutors and witnesses in earlier hearings say she did much more.
Ms Berman told friends Durst acknowledged killing his wife and said she helped cover his tracks.
One of her friends, who testified at an earlier hearing, said Ms Berman told them that if anything happened to her, Durst would have done it.
Durst’s lawyers have staunchly denied the claim – and insisted there is no hard evidence linking him to Ms Berman’s killing.
