Lawyers for New York real-estate heir Robert Durst acknowledge he penned a note tipping off police to the location of the body of a friend he is accused of killing, court documents showed.
In a court filing last week in the Superior Court of California of the County of Los Angeles, lawyers for Durst conceded he had written the note directing police to the home where his best friend, Susan Berman, was shot point-blank in the back of the head just before Christmas in 2000.
Durst, 76, pleaded not guilty to murder in Berman’s death, but told a documentary film crew that the letter could only have been sent by the killer.
Photo: AP
The revelation he sent the note was made in a joint filing by defense lawyers and prosecutors of stipulations they have agreed to before his trial scheduled for Feb. 10.
Attorneys for Durst said they made the concession as a strategic decision after the judge agreed to admit the evidence based on analysis by handwriting experts.
The defense, which had long denied he wrote the note, said they still plan to challenge that ruling on appeal.
Attorney Dick DeGuerin told reporters that the defense would not comment on the stipulation.
“This does not change the facts that Bob Durst didn’t kill Susan Berman and he doesn’t know who did,” DeGuerin said.
Durst killed Berman because he feared his friend and unofficial spokeswoman was going to tell police what she knew about the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Kathleen Durst, in New York in 1982, prosecutors said.
The note sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department on the same day Berman was killed has been considered a smoking gun in the case since the bombshell finale of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst aired on HBO in 2015.
Robert Durst was shown the note written in block letters that only included the address of Berman’s house and the word “cadaver.”
He denied writing the note, but said that “only the killer could have written” it.
The envelope was addressed with Beverly misspelled “Beverley.”
Filmmakers then confronted him with a letter he sent Berman a year earlier that appeared to have identical handwriting, including the same misspelling.
“I wrote this one, but I did not write the cadaver one,” Robert Durst said.
Yet moments later, he could not tell the two apart.
After an awkward moment in which he blinked, burped and put his head in his hands, he denied being the killer.
The interview then ended and Robert Durst walked into a bathroom unaware he was still wearing a live microphone.
He was heard muttering to himself: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
One law enforcement official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, because the investigation was ongoing, said that analysis linking Robert Durst to the letters was the key new evidence presented to prosecutors before his arrest.
He was nabbed on the eve of the broadcast in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he was staying in a hotel under a pseudonym and appeared to be making plans to leave the country.
After Berman’s death, Robert Durst went into hiding in Galveston, Texas, where he disguised himself as a mute woman in a boarding house.
He killed his neighbor, Morris Black, in 2001 in what he said was self-defense after the men struggled over a gun.
He then chopped up the man’s body and disposed of it at sea.
He was acquitted of murder in that case.
Prosecutors said Black was killed after he learned Robert Durst’s real identity.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin plans to present evidence at trial that the killings of Black and Berman were both part of an effort to cover up the slaying of Kathleen Durst years earlier.
Her body has never been found and she was declared dead two years ago.
Robert Durst, reportedly worth US$100 million, is considered the prime suspect in her presumed killing, but has never been charged.
Witnesses who testified in pretrial hearings said that Berman told them Robert Durst acknowledged killing his wife and that she helped him cover up the crime.
They also testified that Berman said if anything happened to her, Robert Durst would be responsible.
The defense also stipulated that Robert Durst wrote a note found in a trash can in a bedroom at the home the couple shared in Westchester County, New York, where they had been staying just before he said he last saw his wife.
Referred to as the “dig note,” it seems to be a list including the words “town dump,” “dig” and “shovel.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese