In court papers released Wednesday, Los Angeles County prosecutors urged the judge in the upcoming murder trial of New York real estate scion Robert Durst to allow them to present testimony from handwriting experts about an anonymous “cadaver note” mailed after the December 2000 killing of his friend, who was shot once in the back of the head in her Benedict Canyon home.
Prosecutors — objecting to a defense’s motion to exclude handwriting and handprinting evidence — argue that the “internationally renowned experts” concluded Durst wrote the note with the word “cadaver” and the address of his slain friend, Susan Berman, along with an envelope that was addressed to Beverly Hills police and postmarked a day before the 55-year-old woman’s body was discovered.
The prosecutors noted that the majority of the defense’s filing criticizes the original handwriting analysis done by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Questioned Documents Section, in which a forensic document examiner initially concluded in 2001 that it was “highly probable” that Berman’s personal manager, Nyle Brenner, had written the cadaver note and envelope.
The examiner subsequently evaluated court-ordered handwriting exemplars from Durst and “admitted that he made a mistake when he first analyzed the evidence and identified Brenner,” according to the prosecution’s court filing.
Prosecutors subsequently sought out two of the world’s leading questioned document examiners for an “independent and blind analysis.” One of the experts concluded that Durst had written the note and envelope and made a “considered effort” to “intentionally change and alter his normal hand-printing” while providing his court-ordered writing exemplars and the other concluded that “defendant wrote the cadaver note and envelope, and that Brenner did not,” according to the filing.
A hearing is set next Wednesday on the issue as Durst, 76, awaits trial on a charge that he murdered Berman, whose body was found in her home on Christmas Eve 2000.
Durst has been behind bars since March 14, 2015. He was taken into custody in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the airing of the final episode of HBO’s documentary series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which examined the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathie, along with the killings of Berman and his Texas neighbor Morris Black,
Durst went on trial for Black’s death and dismemberment after a nationwide manhunt in which he was located in Pennsylvania, but a jury acquitted him of murder after agreeing with Durst’s contention that he had killed his neighbor in self-defense.
In January, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham agreed with the prosecution’s contention that jurors should hear evidence about Black’s 2001 killing.
The judge said evidence about Black’s killing could be relevant to the special circumstance of lying in wait involving Berman’s killing, and noted that Durst’s payment of Black’s bills after killing the man was “very similar” to his actions after his wife disappeared.
But the judge noted that the photographs of Black’s body — minus the man’s head, which has never been found — are “grim” and said he may limit the photographs jurors will see, along with potentially giving panelists an instruction advising them that Durst has already been acquitted of murdering Black.
In the finale of HBO’s “The Jinx,” Durst is caught on microphone muttering to himself, “Killed them all, of course,” and “There it is, you’re caught.”
At the end of a hearing last fall in which Durst was ordered to stand trial, the judge called Durst’s comment in the documentary “cryptic.”
The judge said then that the evidence suggested that Durst had killed his wife, supporting the argument that Berman’s death was an effort to eliminate a witness to a crime.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin argued last year that Durst was “responsible” for his wife’s death in 1982 and got Berman to help him cover his tracks — in part by having her pretend to be his wife in a telephone call to the dean of the New York medical school his wife was attending at the time of her disappearance. The prosecutor contends Durst killed his friend because he was “afraid she was going to talk.”
One of Durst’s attorneys, Chip Lewis, argued at the hearing in January that it would be “fundamentally unfair” to require Durst to locate witnesses the defense had called in his trial for Black’s killing, and said prosecutors were trying to force Durst into testifying in his latest trial.
Durst has been long estranged from his real estate-rich family, which is known for ownership of a series of New York City skyscrapers — including an investment in the World Trade Center. He split with the family when his younger brother was placed in charge of the family business, leading to a drawn-out legal battle.
According to various media reports, Durst ultimately reached a settlement under which the family paid him $60 million to $65 million.