US Millionaire Robert Durst Found Guilty Of Murder Of Friend Susan Berman 21 Years Later

He said a friend of Durst had testified that the real estate magnate had told him of Berman: "It was her or me. I had no choice."

Robert Durst at the Inglewood Courthouse in Inglewood, California in May 2021. (AFP Photo)

New Delhi: Robert Durst, US real estate tycoon has been convicted for the murder of his best friend Susan Berman to stop her from talking about his wife, Kathleen’s disappearance.

The 78-year-old will be sentenced on October 18, 2021, and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Robert Durst was found guilty of killing Berman in 2000, she was found shot in the head in her Beverly Hills home. She was 55.

Durst was arrested in connection to Berman’s murder in March 2015 in a hotel room a New Orleans hours before the finale of HBO’s much-acclaimed crime documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" aired.

Durst was still wearing a wireless microphone when he went into a hotel bathroom after the interview according to a BBC report. 

"There it is, you're caught," he whispered to himself. "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

Murder of Susan Berman

The police were investigating the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathleen and were about to question Berman, who was his employee and best friend at the time.

Susan Berman the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster was a crime writer, and had acted as a spokesperson for Durst when he became a suspect in his wife's disappearance.

Kathleen McCormack, a medical student, went missing in 1982 after spending a weekend in their New York country home. Durst was never charged for his wife’s case and she was eventually declared dead.

While he has repeatedly denied any involvement in Berman’s murder, he acknowledged he had written an anonymous letter to police telling them that her body lay in her Beverly Hills home.

Move To Texas

After the murder of Berman, Durst’s life had taken a turn which some called stranger than fiction. He moved to Galveston, Texas where he lived pretending to be a mute woman. In Texas, he met his third victim, an elderly neighbour named Morris Black whose dismembered body was found near the sea.

He admitted to dismembering the body but said that he killed Black in an act of self-defence. Durst was acquitted in this case.

According to AFP, Prosecutor John Lewin told the jury there was a "mountain of evidence" that Durst had killed all three people with whose deaths he had been connected.

He said a friend of Durst had testified that the real estate magnate had told him of Berman: "It was her or me. I had no choice."

"He has never been held accountable for his domestic abuse of (wife) Kathie. He was never held accountable for her death. The last 20 years he's gotten away with murdering Susan," Lewin told the jury according to the report. Prosecutors called Robert Durst a 'narcissistic psychopath'

"For the last 20 years, he's avoided responsibility for Morris Black. Durst is not jinxed. He's a three-time killer who has managed to escape accountability until this very moment."

Durst comes from an influential family from New York, his grandfather had started the Durst Organisation and at point, he was sent to become the successor of his father Seymour. But he was replaced by his brother Douglas, Durst and his family have long kept their distance from one another.

His brother Douglas Durst, who testified at the trial, told the court: "He'd like to murder me”, reported BBC.