LOS ANGELES _ Los Angeles prosecutors began presenting their case Wednesday against eccentric New York real estate heir Robert Durst, alleging he killed his best friend, Susan Berman, in her Benedict Canyon home to prevent her from incriminating him in his wife's disappearance.
But in a murder trial expected to play out over several months, jurors will hear more than just evidence in the execution-style shooting of Berman, who was found dead on Christmas Eve in 2000.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin and his team of prosecutors have painstakingly assembled a web of evidence that spans decades, with more than 100 witnesses, dozens of hours of video and reams of documents that shed light on three crimes they say Durst committed, starting with the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst.
During opening statements, prosecutors previewed witnesses they planned to call, including brothers Douglas and Thomas Durst and Berman's friends Lynda Obst, a producer, and Laraine Newman, a former "Saturday Night Live" star.
"Much of the most damaging evidence is going to come directly from Mr. Durst himself," Lewin told jurors, referencing hours of interviews Durst gave to creators of the HBO series "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" and the audio commentary he provided for "All Good Things," a 2010 fictional movie loosely based on his life starring Ryan Gosling.
Jurors saw video of Durst admitting to using food stamps and shoplifting water bottles at the airport, despite his family's enormous wealth. He discussed his genitals in front of his mother-in-law. He spoke of his lackadaisical approach to working at his family's real estate company and warned his pregnant wife that if she kept the baby, he'd divorce her.
"Bob Durst is very honest about the fact that the rules don't apply to him," Lewin argued.
Durst waited five days to report his wife missing in 1982 and misled authorities about the nature of their relationship, according to prosecutors. Central to this ruse was Berman, who prosecutors allege gave Durst a "false alibi" by impersonating Kathleen Durst in a call to her medical school and giving authorities the impression that she was still alive.
The case grew cold until 1999, when Durst learned New York authorities had reopened it, prosecutor say. That prompted Durst to silence Berman forever, they contend. Prosecutors showed photos of Berman's dead body and played the 911 call that brought Los Angeles police to her home.
In the call, a neighbor is concerned that Berman's dogs are on the loose in the yard.
In the prosecution's telling, the 2001 shooting and dismemberment of elderly neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas, marked "the violent climax of his nearly year-long effort to conceal himself from New York authorities."
Durst was acquitted in Black's death in 2003 after claiming self-defense. The same attorneys who represented him in Galveston will defend him in Berman's killing.
Lead defense attorney Dick DeGuerin and his team will attempt to chip away at the prosecution's theory, which links the disappearance of Durst's wife with the deaths of Black and Berman.
As Durst attorney Chip Lewis told the Los Angeles Times, despite a thorough investigation in New York that has lasted years, no one has ever been charged in Kathleen Durst's disappearance. Further, defense attorneys argue that paltry physical evidence exists linking Durst to Berman's killing.
"Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman and doesn't know who did," DeGuerin told the Times last year.
In the defense view, the killing of Black in Galveston is an irrelevant "emotional hijacking" aimed at covering up for paltry evidence, Lewis said.
"Black died several months after Susan Berman was shot," Lewis said in a statement. "The beyond gruesome nature of the dismemberment and the disposal of Black's body are solely designed to predispose the jury to find Bob guilty of Susan Berman's murder, despite the lack of evidence that he actually committed the crime."
Prosecutors have said that Durst has confessed and done so with frequency.
He admitted writing the so-called "cadaver note" that was sent to Beverly Hills police the day before Berman's body was found. The note contained the word "cadaver" and had Berman's address on it. It included the same misspelling of "Beverley" as that in a letter he had written to Berman.
A close friend, Nick Chavin, has testified that over dinner in 2014, Durst said, "I had to. It was her or me" _ words Chavin said he took to be a confession.
It's unclear whether Durst, who turns 77 next month, will take the witness stand as he did in Galveston.
Now ill and with limited mobility, he has attended each day of jury selection, rising at 4 a.m. in the county jail. In court, he has signaled defiance, fist-bumping attorneys and once flexing both arms above his head and looking to the audience as he slowly walked to his chair.
