Infamous real-estate heir Robert Durst has been arrested in New Orleans for an out of state warrant in connection with a murder investigation, officials said. The warrant was issued by Los Angeles County.
Durst, 71, famously went on trial for the fall 2001 murder of neighbor Morris Black, who was found dismembered in a Galveston, Texas, bay.
Even after jumping bail and later being found in Pennsylvania when he shoplifted a sandwich, he was acquitted via a self-defense claim.
Many have also suspected Durst, whose family is considered one of the top five real-estate holders in New York City, in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst, and the 2000 execution-style murder of confidant Susan Berman in Los Angeles.
In the finale of an HBO documentary on the case, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which aired Sunday night, Durst appears to confess not only to Berman’s killing but also to at least two others. A microphone he was wearing while being interviewed was live while he went to the bathroom. It recorded him whispering to himself: “What a disaster. … I’m having difficulty with the question. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
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Multiple law-enforcement sources said that the new warrant was connected to the investigation into Berman’s death. It comes after a three-year joint probe by the FBI, LAPD, New York State Police, NYPD and Westchester County (NY) District Attorney.
Durst’s lawyer, Chip Lewis, told NBC News that his client was arrested at the JW Marriott hotel in New Orleans on Saturday night. Durst was held without bail at an initial hearing in magistrate court on Sunday, and is expected to appear again for an extradition hearing on Monday morning.
Federal officials said that Durst was in the lobby, mumbling, when he was arrested, and had been registered under a false name with a fake ID, having paid for the room in cash.
Sources say the prosecutor in the case will be John Lewin, a skilled courtroom tactician who specializes in difficult and often circumstantial cold cases.
His brother, Douglas Durst, who now runs the family real-estate empire, released a statement Sunday afternoon saying: “We are relieved and also grateful to everyone who assisted in the arrest of Robert Durst. We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done.”
News of the arrest came on the day the last episode of the HBO series, which includes a letter Durst wrote with misspellings and hand writing that together with other information, could help implicate him in the murder of Susan Berman. Sources say filming and preparation for the series bolstered the prosecution’s case although they the underlying facts that had been already collected supported the LAPD’s case against Durst.
This story originally appeared on NBC News
Andrew Blankstein