Robert Durst: Jury shown The Jinx finale at murder trial

Robert Durst appears during the opening statements of his Trial at the Airport courthouse in Los Angeles, CaliforniaImage copyright
EPA

Image caption

“What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” Robert Durst is heard saying in The Jinx

The murder trial of US millionaire Robert Durst, the subject of the documentary The Jinx, has started with the jury viewing clips from the series.

Prosecutors allege that in 2000 the 76-year-old killed Susan Berman to stop police questioning her about the disappearance of his wife, Kathleen.

Mr Durst has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge.

The real estate heir was the focus of the 2015 series The Jinx, in which he allegedly confessed to the crime.

Jurors were played the show’s finale, where Mr Durst is captured on a microphone saying to himself: “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

Hours before this last episode aired, authorities arrested him in New Orleans for Berman’s murder.

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Mr Durst’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, objected to jurors also being shown clips from All the Good Things, a 2010 film of his marriage starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst.

The film was directed by The Jinx’s filmmaker Andrew Jarecki and depicts the life of the tycoon and shows him as a murderer.

“This is improper,” Mr DeGuerin said. “What’s on the screen is made up.”

Mr Durst’s first wife Kathleen McCormack went missing in 1982 and is presumed dead.

Image copyright
HBO

Image caption

Mr Durst was the subject of a documentary series shown on US television

Berman, 55, was found shot in the head in her Beverly Hills home.

In his opening statement, John Lewin, deputy district attorney said: “She let the killer into her house, she turned her back to them… She wasn’t afraid of them, and then she was executed, shot in the head at very close range.”

Mr Durst was acquitted of murdering his elderly neighbour Morris Black in 2001, successfully arguing he had killed him on the grounds of self-defence before cutting up the body.

source: bbc.com