(CN) — Even though they had a decades-long platonic friendship and talked about moving into a “love nest” together, self-published writer Susan Giordano said she never had a sexual relationship with New York millionaire Robert Durst.
Giordano also told a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court Thursday — where Durst is on trial, accused of murdering another longtime friend, Susan Berman — she wasn’t maintaining the friendship with Durst just for the money.
Over the course of their friendship, Durst had gifted Giordano more than $350,000, according to her testimony Wednesday and Thursday.
“Would you agree your relationship with Bob has been very financially profitable to you?” Deputy District Attorney John Lewin asked Giordano during her second day testifying.
“After 20 years … that’s not what it was based on,” Giordano responded.
In a follow-up question Lewin asked: “Your relationship consists of you and Bob talking and him sending you lots of money?”
Giordano disputed that was the basis of their friendship.
“We also went to dinner,” she said.
But jailhouse phone calls between Giordano and Durst played in court this week painted the picture of a peculiar relationship based on monetary transactions.
As recently as last year, Giordano sent bills she needed paid to her attorney, who covered the expenses with money sent by Durst.
Despite knowing Durst for decades and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from him, Giordano maintained throughout her testimony she “didn’t ask questions” about committing potentially illegal acts on behalf of Durst, including sending him a box of clothes through UPS in March 2015, which turned out to include multiple envelopes containing $115,000 in cash.
Giordano testified she packed a suitcase of Durst’s clothes to send to him in New Orleans, where authorities say he was on the run before his arrest in Berman’s murder.
“I didn’t look in the bottom of the suitcase, there were papers in there but I didn’t touch them. It was dark when I threw things in there — I didn’t go through them,” Giordano said.
She added: “They could be receipts for all I know.”
Giordano also stored 64 boxes containing financial documents and communications between Durst and his lawyers he had asked her to store in her basement. The boxes were later seized during the investigation into Berman’s 2000 execution-style murder.
Berman had acted as an alibi for Durst — who has been a suspect in three murders — when his wife Kathie McCormack Durst disappeared in 1982.
Giordano told Lewin when she first met Durst in the 1980s she had hoped to date him, but she never did.
After she lost touch with the real estate heir, she began writing letters to him when he was jailed in Galveston, Texas — accused in the murder and dismemberment of his neighbor Morris Black — for which he was acquitted by a Texas jury in 2003.
Giordano said she had reached out to Durst, hoping to write a book and tell “his side of the story.”
Giordano visited Durst in Galveston at least four times. The two discussed moving into a home together.
“Did you discuss getting a ‘love nest’ together?” Lewin asked Giordano.
“Yes, but your term is different than my term,” Giordano responded, saying under her breath, “I wanted to take care of him.”
Lewin also questioned Giordano about a phone call she had with Durst in 2017 where he warned her prosecutors had been contacting his friends and she should expect a phone call.
Durst said in the call with Giordano his attorney likely “told you 27 times that you don’t tell them shit.”
In the call played in court, Giordano said “I know” and told Durst: “We don’t answer phones, unless it’s you.”
The months-long trial is expected to continue into August.
Follow Bianca Bruno on Twitter.
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