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 beginning Monday that Durst killed Susan Berman to silence her from revealing what she knew about the death of the multimillionaire’s first wife.
Durst, 75, has pleaded not guilty. With all that has emerged about him publicly from an HBO documentary series and a string of unusual court hearings, it seems likely a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will order the case 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 strong evidence against Durst, who already has been cleared in an unrelated 2003 Texas killing.
One of his closest friends, Nathan “Nick” Chavin, who also was close with Berman, testified that Durst essentially acknowledged 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.
In the HBO documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” 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.
The motive for Berman’s death and a subsequent killing were covering up Kathleen Durst’s death, Lewin said. He intends to present evidence that Robert 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 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 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.
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