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LOS ANGELES (CN) — Robert Durst, one-time heir to a wealthy family of New York real estate developers who is on trial for murde, finished answering the prosecutor’s questions Tuesday after nine days on the stand under cross-examination.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin questioned Durst about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst. Lewin also grilled Durst about the 2000 death of Morris Black — Durst’s neighbor in Galveston, Texas – for which Durst was tried for murder and acquitted. Finally, Durst was asked at length about the 2000 death of his best friend, Susan Berman, who he is now accused of murdering.
According to the prosecution’s version of events, 2000 was quite the year for Durst: he allegedly killed his neighbor, married his current wife Debbie Charatan, then hopped on a flight and killed his best friend a little over a week later.
Lewin has spent much of his time trying to chip away at Durst’s credibility with the jury by pointing out numerous instances where Durst allegedly perjured himself. Durst at one point even admitted to having no issues lying on the witness stand about certain things — namely his first wife’s disappearance and Berman’s murder — not insignificant details given the circumstances.
“If you’ve said you’ve taken an oath to tell the truth but you’ve also just told us that you would lie if you needed to can you tell me how that would not destroy your credibility?” Lewin asked.
“Because what I’m saying is mostly the truth. There are certain things I would lie about, certain very important things,” Durst responded.
Durst, who is 78 and suffers from bladder cancer, is also notorious for faking illnesses to get out of trouble, according to Lewin. For most of his testimony Durst has been seated in a wheelchair and visibly hooked up to a catheter, while wearing a brightly visible “fall risk” hospital bracelet, which Lewin claims is all part of a coordinated effort to paint himself as some sort of frail elder undeserving of a lengthy prison sentence.
Durst has said he has Asperger’s syndrome, which if true places him on the autism spectrum, but which Lewin described more than once as being an absurd defense. Asked if he’s really using autism as an excuse for his behavior, Durst calmly responded, “sure, why not?”
During cross-examination Lewin played an audio recording of phone calls made by Durst from jail where he asked a friend if he could possibly fake poor eyesight to get out of work. On the tapes Durst can also be heard asking “if there’s a test for dementia” and whether he could believably fake the disease.
Lewin also asked Durst about comments he supposedly made during the filming of a documentary about his run-ins with the law, titled “The Jinx.” At the end of the final episode Durst could be heard muttering to himself in a bathroom. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” he said, apparently unaware he was still being recorded. Durst responded that only part of what he said was audible in the recording and claimed the entire statement was: “They’ll all think I killed them all, of course.”
According to Lewin, Durst killed Berman because nearly two decades earlier she provided him with an alibi in the disappearance of his wife. Lewin claims Berman called Durst’s wife Kathleen’s medical school pretending to be her, saying she would be out sick that day, to cover up the fact that Kathleen had actually been killed days earlier by Durst. Lewin further claims that Berman eventually fell on hard times financially and had either been blackmailing Durst, or was attempting to, prompting him to murder her in her Benedict Canyon home.
Durst was previously acquitted in the murder of his Texas neighbor, Morris Black, who Durst admitted to dismembering and dumping in Galveston Bay while hiding out from investigators who were reexamining his wife’s earlier disappearance. A jury in that case believed Durst’s story that Black was killed in self-defense after pulling a gun on Durst in his own home.
Police arrested Durst in 2015 for Berman’s murder and his trial began earlier this year before being postponed due to the pandemic.
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