LOS ANGELES _ One of Robert Durst's oldest friends resumed testifying against him Wednesday, saying she knew he and his wife, Kathleen, had marital problems in the years leading up to her 1982 disappearance.
Emily Altman gave the testimony in a Los Angeles courtroom, where the New York real estate magnate appeared for a hearing ahead of his murder trial.
The 74-year-old is accused of the execution-style shooting of Susan Berman, his best friend, inside her Benedict Canyon home in 2000. His motive, prosecutors say, was to silence her for knowing too much about his wife's vanishing.
By the late '70s and early '80s, Altman said she knew the Dursts were having problems, adding that one day while at a garage sale together, Kathleen told her she had started seeing another man _ a blues musician. So, Altman said, when Kathleen disappeared in 1982, she thought maybe she'd gone with him.
When a prosecutor asked her hypothetically how she'd feel if she knew Durst killed Kathleen, Altman responded: "Really hard for me to justify in my own head, OK?"
Altman, who sometimes got emotional on the stand, said she had recently broken into tears on a phone call with a reporter, explaining that she didn't want to testify. But when a prosecutor expressed frustration with Altman, saying he believed she was choosing not to answer his questions, she shook her head. The judge then referred to her as a "hostile witness," but later clarified that he only meant that she'd identified more closely with the defense than the prosecution.
Durst, who has pleaded not guilty, watched silently as his friend testified.
At Wednesday's hearing, the judge ruled that any jail phone calls between Altman and Durst were fair game for prosecutors to use. (Prosecutors and defense attorneys disagreed over whether it was proper for Altman to testify about certain things, considering she has long worked in the law practice of her husband, Stewart, who has represented Durst over the years.)
The judge ruled that the dominant purpose of the phone calls between Emily Altman and Durst was friendship and said that any possible attorney-client privilege had been nullified because the recorded jail conversation included a warning that the call was being recorded.
Durst was arrested at a New Orleans hotel in March 2015 on suspicion of Berman's murder. His capture came a day before the airing of the final episode of "The Jinx," a six-part documentary about Durst's life. In the episode, Durst mumbles into a hot microphone: "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," which some have interpreted as a confession to multiple murders.
The documentary highlights Kathleen's disappearance, Berman's murder and the 2001 death of Morris Black, who was Durst's neighbor during the time he lived in Galveston, Texas, under an assumed name as a mute woman. (Durst, who said the gun went off accidentally while defending himself against Black, admitted to dismembering the man's body. He was ultimately acquitted.)
The eccentric millionaire is unlikely to stand trial in Los Angeles before 2018, and the judge has allowed prosecutors and defense attorneys to question several witnesses early, preserving their testimony in case they die before the case goes to trial.
During their questioning of witnesses, prosecutors seem to be eliciting testimony they hope will help establish their theory that Durst has a long history of violence.
Earlier in the week, a Connecticut man testified that Durst kicked him in the eye at a party in the 1980s with enough force to fracture his orbital bone. At a similar hearing earlier this year, a retired New York City police detective testified that he had once interviewed the Dursts' neighbors, who told him they recalled an incident in which Kathleen came to their house _ terrified _ saying her husband had beaten her. (According to the detective's report at the time, Durst denied hitting his wife.) And Durst's longtime friend, Nicholas Chavin, said earlier this year that Durst once told him he had intentionally hit a police officer with his car while driving 1 mph.
Chavin also delivered bombshell testimony: The defendant once confessed to killing their mutual friend _ Berman.
"I had to. It was her or me," Durst said, according to Chavin. "I had no choice."
