Durst Jury Told His Friend’s Lie ‘Sealed Her Fate’ in Murder

(Bloomberg) -- Susan Berman lied when she told her friend Robert Durst that she had been contacted by police about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife -- and that might have cost Berman her life.

Prosecutors say the New York real-estate heir killed Berman in 2000 so she wouldn't talk to investigators. But she was never contacted by police, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told a jury on the second day of his opening statement in Durst's murder trial.

Just before she was killed, Berman told Durst in a phone call that Los Angeles police investigators wanted to talk to her about what she knew about Kathie Durst's disappearance. That phone call “sealed her fate,” Lewin told the jury.

Durst, 76, is accused of murdering his longtime friend and confidante at her Beverly Hills home with a single gunshot to the back of her head. The reclusive millionaire is the estranged scion of one of New York's most prominent real-estate developers whose holdings include a stake in One World Trade Center. He quit the family business in 1994 after his younger brother, Douglas Durst, was made head of the Durst Organization by their father.

In footage from the 2015 HBO documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” -- shown to the jury in Los Angeles state court -- Durst says he had the conversation with Berman about her being contacted by police and told her to do whatever she thought was best.

Durst only found out in 2015, after he had been arrested in New Orleans, that investigators had only planned to contact Berman but never actually did before she was killed, Lewin said.

Los Angeles County prosecutors allege that Durst killed his first wife and that Berman, who he told Kathie Durst's death had been accident, helped him cover up his involvement by providing an alibi. Berman confided to a number of her friends afterward that she was involved in the cover-up.

Lewin also told the jurors that Durst planned to kill his brother Douglas, who is expected to be called by the prosecution to testify at the trial.

Notebook Entry

In a notebook found in Durst's car when he was he arrested for shoplifting in Pennsylvania in 2001, police found an entry that read “What DD is doing to me puts me in the same position as what Kathie did to me.”

Durst was on the run at the time after jumping bail in Galveston, Texas, where he had been arrested on suspicion he had killed his elderly neighbor Morris Black. Durst was acquitted of the murder charges though he admitted to the Texas jury that he had dismembered his neighbor after accidentally shooting him and that he dumped the body parts in the Galveston Bay.

While in jail in Pennsylvania, Durst called his second wife in New York. In a recording of the call played to the jury, they can be heard discussing his plans to kill his brother, according to Lewin.

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, Steve Stroth

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.