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HBO documentary star Durst facing legal morass

John Bacon
USA TODAY

The legal morass of HBO documentary subject Robert Durst promised to get more complicated Tuesday as the wealthy eccentric faced gun charges in New Orleans, murder charges in Los Angeles, a revived murder investigation in New York and potential questions about a disappearance in California.

Kathleen Durst and Robert Durst on their wedding day.

Durst, 71, was arrested Saturday in New Orleans on a murder warrant from Los Angeles. The next day HBO aired the climactic final episode of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst featuring his now infamous bathroom mutterings.

On Monday, Durst waived extradition, ready to fight the California charge. Authorities in Los Angeles formally charged him with the murder of his friend and author Susan Berman, who was found dead with a bullet in her head on Christmas Eve 2000.

Police Tuesday searched his Houston home in a 17-story condominium tower.

"This case is a prosecutor's dream," Michael Devorkin, a criminal lawyer with the New York firm of Golenbock Eiseman, told USA TODAY. "About the only way it could be better is with a written confession."

Also on Tuesday, police in Eureka, Calif., said they would like to know what Durst might know about the 1997 disappearance of teen Karen Mitchell, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mitchell, 16 at the time, was last seen walking down a street and may have gotten into a car driven by a male, The Charley Project reports a witness has said. Durst was known to frequent a store owned by Mitchell's legal guardian and aunt, and was a prime suspect in the disappearance, according to the project, a website that profiles people missing in cold cases.

The Eureka Police Department deferred questions to the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office, which could not be reached late Tuesday.

Durst, who lived in Trinidad, Calif., at the time of Mitchell's disappearance, visited the store of Mitchell's aunt at least four times while dressed in drag, The New York Daily News reported.

But first, Durst has to get out of Louisiana. Authorities in New Orleans say Durst, arrested at a hotel, was in possession of a handgun. They charged him Monday as a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and with having a small amount of marijuana.

He was to be transferred to a state prison Tuesday night because of unspecified mental health issues.

"We came here to waive arraignment and go back to California and get it on," Durst's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said on the courthouse steps. "Bob Durst didn't kill Susan Berman." DeGuerin expressed "frustration" that the local charges could delay the California proceedings.

"It's never a good thing to be charged with multiple crimes in multiple jurisdictions," Stuart Slotnick, a defense lawyer at the New York firm of Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney, told USA TODAY. But he stressed that the cases can be dealt with one at a time, with neither one adversely affecting the other.

Ultimately, Durst will be transferred to Los Angeles, where he is charged with one count of first-degree murder. The charge under California law carries the "special circumstances of murder of a witness and lying in wait,'' and makes Durst eligible for the death penalty if convicted, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said.

LAPD said the documentary had nothing to do with the arrest, citing "additional evidence that has come to light in the past year."

Analysis linking a letter Durst wrote to Berman a year before her death with one he said "only the killer could have written" to point police to her body was the key new evidence, the Associated Press reported, citing an unnamed official not authorized to speak publicly because the investigation was ongoing.

Both letters misspelled Beverly Hills as "Beverley Hills."

Durst, confronted with the letters in the documentary, denied killing Berman, then went into the bathroom with a microphone still recording. "There it is. You're caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," Durst is heard mumbling to himself.

Devorkin said defense lawyers probably won't be able to keep the recordings out of the trial.

"He has great lawyers, and they will have to try and find a way to explain all this," he said. "Was Durst confused? Was he kidding?"

Slotnick isn't impressed by the recording.

"This isn't a clear-cut confession," Slotnick told USA TODAY. "Does 'kill them all' mean kill them all with his presentation? It's more a fantasy than a confession."

Durst has had success before in criminal court. Months after Berman's death, Durst was arrested in the death of a Texas neighbor, Morris Black. Durst, who admitted cutting up Black's body and dumping the remains in Galveston Bay, won acquittal based on self-defense. He did, however, plead guilty to jumping bail and witness tampering.

Then there is the matter of his wife, Kathleen, who disappeared in 1982 while the couple was living in Westchester County, north of New York City. Berman, who met Durst in college, had been an unofficial spokeswoman for him during the resulting media frenzy.

Almost two decades later, New York State Police and the Westchester District Attorney's Office were taking a fresh look at the case and determined that Berman might have information. But before they could speak to her, Berman's body was found.

Durst acknowledged in the documentary that Berman had told him she was going to speak with investigators. He suggested he told her it was OK with him if she did and denied any involvement in his wife's death.

New York State Police investigator Joseph Becerra said authorities in New York would monitor the Los Angeles case. "Hopefully it will lead to some resolution of our case," he said.

Contributing: William M. Welch in Los Angeles; Melanie Eversley in New York; Jonathan Bandler, The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News.

Robert Durst is seen in an image from the DBO documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst."
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