Real estate heir Robert Durst found guilty of murdering friend Susan Berman – National

A Los Angeles jury convicted Robert Durst Friday of murdering his finest good friend 20 years in the past in a case that took on new life after the New York actual property inheritor participated in a documentary that linked him to the slaying linked to his spouse’s 1982 disappearance.

Durst, 78, was convicted of the first-degree homicide of Susan Berman, who was shot at point-blank vary behind the pinnacle in her Los Angeles residence in December 2000 as she was ready to inform police how she helped cowl up his spouse’s killing.

Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, was Durst’s longtime confidante who informed associates she offered a phony alibi for him after his spouse vanished.

Prosecutors painted a portrait of a wealthy narcissist who didn’t assume the legal guidelines utilized to him and ruthlessly disposed of people that stood in his means. They interlaced proof of Berman’s killing with Kathie Durst’s suspected loss of life and the 2001 killing of a tenant in a Texas flophouse the place Robert Durst holed up whereas on the run from New York authorities.

Durst was arrested in 2015 whereas hiding out in a New Orleans lodge on the eve of the airing of the ultimate episode of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” wherein he was confronted with incriminating proof and made what prosecutors mentioned was a confession.

Durst might be heard muttering to himself on a reside microphone in a rest room: “There it’s. You’re caught.”

Durst’s resolution to testify in his personal protection — hoping for a repeat of his acquittal within the Texas killing — backfired as he was pressured to confess mendacity underneath oath, made damning admissions and had his credibility destroyed when questioned by the prosecutor.

The conviction marks a victory for authorities who’ve sought to place Durst behind bars for homicide in three states. Durst was by no means charged within the disappearance of his spouse, who has by no means been discovered, and was acquitted of homicide in Galveston, Texas, the place he admitted dismembering the sufferer’s physique and tossing it out to sea.