Testimony wrapped up Wednesday in New York real estate scion Robert Durst’s murder trial, with the defendant reiterating that he had not killed a longtime friend in her Benedict Canyon home but acknowledging that he wouldn’t admit it if he had.
Under questioning by lead defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, the 78-year-old defendant said he loved Susan Berman, whom he said he found shot to death inside her home just before Christmas Eve 2000.
“Susan was a friend. I had other friends but none of my other friendships were like my friendship with Susan,” Durst said during his testimony in the final day of nearly three weeks on the stand.
“Did you kill Susan?” the defense lawyer asked.
“No,” Durst responded.
“Do you know who did?” DeGuerin asked.
“No,” Durst again responded.
Durst also denied killing his first wife, Kathie, who vanished in New York in 1982, and said he has never loved anyone more than her.
He told jurors that he was closer to Berman, a 55-year-old writer, than anybody other than Kathie Durst.
In a second round of cross-examination by Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, Durst said he doesn’t even know if his first wife is dead.
“Mr. Durst, you have repeatedly admitted that if you had killed either Kathie or Susan or both of them you would never tell us, correct?” the prosecutor asked.
“Correct,” the defendant responded.
In an updated opening statement when the trial resumed in May after being stalled for more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lewin told jurors that the evidence would show that Durst shot and killed Berman “out of survival” because he feared she would tell authorities about his involvement in his wife’s disappearance.
The prosecutor called the cases of Kathie Durst and Berman “inter-related,” saying that the evidence would show that Durst killed his spouse and used Berman to help cover up his part in the crime and that he subsequently had to kill his neighbor, Morris Black, in Galveston, Texas, because Black figured out who Durst was and was putting pressure on him.
Durst was acquitted in Texas of Black’s murder after testifying that the gun went off during a struggle over the weapon.
Durst and his lead attorney have disputed the prosecutor’s assertion that Berman made a phone call posing as Kathie Durst after the medical student vanished, and insisted that he had nothing to do with his first wife’s disappearance.
Durst has acknowledged that he wrote a “cadaver” note that anonymously alerted police to Berman’s body, but said she was already dead when he discovered her corpse.
Jurors are due back in court next Wednesday when the prosecution is expected to begin its closing argument.
The panel is expected to hear what is expected to be 3 1/2 days of arguments from attorneys before being handed the case by the afternoon of Sept. 14, Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham told jurors.
Citing the “way the cross-examination went with the defendant,” Lewin told the judge outside the jury’s presence that the prosecution decided not to call filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, who did a series of interviews with Durst that later became the six-part HBO series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which examined Kathie Durst’s disappearance and the deaths of Berman and Black.
Durst has been behind bars since March 14, 2015, when he was taken into custody in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the airing of the final episode of the HBO series.
Durst testified earlier that a bathroom recording of him in which he said, “There it is, you’re caught,” referred to the cadaver note. He had been confronted by Jarecki about the cadaver note and two envelopes addressed to Berman and acknowledged that it was pretty obvious that the handwriting was the same, even though he had denied for years that he had written the note to police.
When asked what he meant by his recorded comment “killed them all, of course” that was shown during the series, Durst said, “What I did not say out loud or perhaps I said very softly, `They’ll all think I killed them all, of course.”’
He testified that he has talked to himself since he was a little boy.
“It seems I talk to myself about my thoughts, so some of what I’m thinking I do not say out loud,” Durst testified.
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.
Durst split with the family when his younger brother was placed in charge of the family business, leading to a drawn-out legal battle, and ultimately reached a settlement under which the family reportedly paid him $60 million to $65 million.