LOS ANGELES – Robert Durst would have gotten absent with the murder of his finest friend if filmmakers experienced not unearthed the most damning piece of proof against him, a prosecutor stated Thursday in the New York genuine estate heir’s trial.
Durst considered they would hardly ever be ready to confirm he wrote the so-referred to as cadaver be aware directing police to the lifeless human body of Susan Berman. Throughout prolonged interviews, he denied penning the anonymous note that he mentioned “only the killer could have created.”
But the makers of “The Jinx: The Lifetime and Fatalities of Robert Durst” learned an envelope he sent Berman a 12 months before with identical handwriting and Beverly Hills getting misspelled as “Beverley” on each.
It’s the using tobacco gun, Deputy District Lawyer Habib Balian said in his closing argument in Los Angeles Superior Courtroom.
“You can ignore everything else in this case,” Balian reported. “If we invested a single day seeking this … here’s what you’d have: You’d have a be aware sent by the killer that only the killer could have prepared that the defendant has admitted that the killer wrote. And the defendant has stipulated, ‘I wrote the cadaver be aware and envelope that only the killer could have published.’”
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Durst stated he didn’t destroy Berman and would not know who did. He experienced extensive denied writing the cadaver be aware, but he conceded at demo that he sent it just after discovering her lifeless system in her Los Angeles home in December 2000. He testified that he preferred police to discover her but did not feel any person would imagine he hadn’t killer her.
Balian scoffed at that explanation, describing it as chapter 5 in what he termed Durst’s playbook to get absent with murder: altering his story when necessary.
Durst experienced acknowledged on the witness stand that even he experienced problems imagining he could have created the note without killing Berman.
“It’s very complicated to believe that, to accept, that I wrote the letter and did not kill Susan Berman,” Durst testified.
Balian reported it was 1 of the truest issues Durst mentioned amid a ton of lies.
Durst, 78, has pleaded not responsible to murder in the level-blank capturing of Berman. Prosecutors explained he killed her as she planned to discuss to authorities about how she offered a phony alibi for him when his wife went missing in New York in 1982.
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Kathie Durst vanished devoid of a trace approximately 40 years in the past in New York. She has been declared dead, but her body’s never ever been observed and no just one has been charged with a criminal offense similar to her disappearance.
Balian employed the imaginary playbook to exhibit how Durst included up Kathie Durst’s dying and how this later developed into knocking off witnesses, this kind of as Berman and a neighbor in Texas.
The initially action was to get rid of the body. In spite of a deficiency of forensic proof, Balian argued Durst killed his wife in their lakeside dwelling in Westchester County on the evening she was very last noticed and chopped it up and buried it in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
Durst has usually managed he dropped his spouse at a coach station so she could head to the town to attend health care college the subsequent day. He has admitted he lied when he stated he spoke with her that night by telephone immediately after she attained their Manhattan apartment.
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He then made it appear she was even now alive.
He used Berman, the daughter of a mobster and fiercely faithful to him, to impersonate his spouse the following working day and cell phone the health-related faculty dean to say she was sick and couldn’t report to her pediatric rotation.
“They embarked on a campaign to obscure the truth of the matter, to direct the investigation in a totally completely wrong path,” Balian stated.
The third go was to make it surface Kathie Durst, who was shut to graduation and searching for a divorce, just walked absent from her existence. Durst instructed a New York Post reporter he believed his wife experienced a breakdown and ran off, even though he implied she may have experienced a operate-in with criminals due to the fact of her cocaine use.
Even though he made available a reward for details top to her and said he was hopeful she would return, his steps stated or else, Balian claimed. Times following her disappearance, he tossed out her textbooks and clothes.
“How extensive are you heading to keep out hope?” Balian said. “You’re going to maintain out zero hope since you know she’s hardly ever coming house. Since you killed her.”
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Durst, who is ailing and seated in a wheelchair through the demo, testified that he failed to kill his spouse and didn’t destroy Berman. Even so, he also admitted he had lied on the witness stand and claimed if he experienced killed his wife and Berman, he would lie about it.
His legal professionals are scheduled to existing their ultimate argument Thursday. Protection lawyer Chip Lewis said the prosecution’s scripted narrative won’t keep up under scrutiny.
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