Robert Durst, the property heir and subject of the award-winning HBO documentary series The Jinx, has pleaded not guilty to the killing of his former spokesperson Susan Berman.
“I did not kill Susan Berman,” Durst told the court in Los Angeles on Monday, where he wore a neck brace and came into the courtroom in a wheelchair. “I do want to say here and now, I am not guilty,” he added.
Durst, who is 73, was transferred to Los Angeles from New Orleans where he was serving an 85-month sentence for unrelated gun charges and is now standing trial for the murder of his friend and former spokeswoman, Berman, who was killed in 2000.
Durst has been linked to several murder cases – including the death of his first wife, Kathleen, who disappeared in 1982 and is still missing, and Berman. In 2003, a jury in Galveston, Texas, acquitted him of murdering his neighbor, Morris Black, who Durst admitted to dismembering before disposing of his body parts in Galveston Bay.
Berman was shot in her Los Angeles home in Beverly Hills before New York authorities had the opportunity to interview her after reopening their investigation into Durst’s wife’s disappearance.
The black sheep of a powerful New York real estate family, Durst was the subject of 2015’s true-crime documentary The Jinx, where he was caught on a hot mic saying “What did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Durst’s lawyers have said that he relishes the chance to fight the charge against him and may contest the admissibility of evidence produced by the makers of the HBO show The Jinx, including the apparent confession.
