LOS ANGELES _ A friend of Robert Durst placed a phone call, pretending to be his wife, on the same day in 1982 that police believe Kathleen Durst vanished in New York, according to testimony Wednesday at a hearing in the murder case against the real estate scion.
Durst, 74, is accused in the execution-style killing of Susan Berman, his longtime friend. According to prosecutors, Durst shot Berman in the back of the head inside her Los Angeles home in 2000 because she knew too much about Kathleen's disappearance.
Lynda Obst _ a producer who has worked on major films such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Interstellar" _ was revealed Wednesday as the latest "secret witness" called by the prosecution. Her identity had been withheld from the public until she took the stand.
A longtime friend of Berman's, Obst testified Wednesday that Berman had told her she pretended to be Kathleen Durst in a phone call with a doctor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York on Feb. 1, 1982. The call came the day Kathleen Durst was expected to begin a clerkship in pediatrics at the facility.
Prosecutors have said there is evidence that Kathleen Durst was dead at the time the call was made, and the doctor who received the call testified earlier this year that he was unsure if he was actually speaking to her on the phone that day.
For years, Obst said, she didn't think much about what Berman had told her. It wasn't until she watched an episode of "The Jinx," the HBO documentary that examined Durst's life and the series of killings linked to him, that she realized other people didn't know Berman claimed to have made the call.
"This was a very disturbing episode to me," Obst said. "I was struck. My heart started racing. ... It was terrifying to me, because I assumed everyone knew this."
Her testimony came one day after another friend of Berman's, Miriam Barnes, recalled a chilling conversation she'd had with the victim years before her death.
Barnes said that soon after Kathleen's disappearance, Berman had called asking her to come to her apartment. When she arrived, Berman was pacing and asked her to sit down, Barnes testified.
"I'm going to tell you something, but I need you not to ask me any questions," Berman said, according to Barnes. "I did something today."
Berman did not elaborate, according to Barnes' testimony, other than to say the favor was for Durst.
Then, Barnes recalled, her friend offered an ominous warning that didn't fully hit her until she attended Berman's funeral years later: "If anything ever happens to me, Bobby did it."
Barnes was the second person to testify that Berman knew details about Kathleen's disappearance. Earlier in the year, Nick Chavin _ a mutual friend of Durst and Berman _ testified that the multimillionaire once confessed to killing Berman. He also testified that Berman had told him years earlier that Durst told her that he'd killed Kathleen.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Chip Lewis on Wednesday morning, Barnes also testified that Durst had not threatened her. The pair only met once, Barnes said.
Lewis also focused on a discrepancy in Barnes' recollection about when the alleged conversation with Berman took place. On the stand Tuesday, Barnes testified that it happened in the 1970s, saying she knew it was before her wedding in 1978. Kathleen didn't disappear until 1982.
When asked Wednesday how she was with remembering dates, Barnes replied, "Meh," adding that she never really liked numbers.
Durst traced Barnes with his eyes as she left the witness stand and exited the courtroom. He eventually turned around at the urging of one of his attorneys.
Born into prominence as the son of a real estate tycoon, Durst gained broader notoriety in the spring of 2015 with the premiere of the six-part HBO documentary examining Kathleen's disappearance, Berman's death and the 2001 slaying of Durst's neighbor in Texas. Durst admitted to shooting Morris Black and chopping up his body, but he argued self-defense and was acquitted in 2003.
During the last episode of "The Jinx," Durst mumbles, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," which some viewers considered a broad confession. A day before the episode aired, FBI agents arrested Durst at a hotel in New Orleans, where he was staying under a fake name.
Berman, a writer and daughter of Las Vegas mob royalty, had served as Durst's unofficial spokeswoman when Kathleen's disappearance became tabloid fodder. Before Berman's death, authorities had been hoping to interview her about the events of 1982.
