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Serial killer susan monica2/11/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() Durst had given her $50,000, and prosecutors suggested she was trying to leverage more money from him by telling him she was going to speak with the cops. Berman, a writer who had been friends with Durst since they were students at the University of California, Los Angeles, had serious financial problems at the time. Durst, who had long denied ever being in LA at the time of Berman's death, testified at trial that he found her dead on a bedroom floor when he arrived. Just before Christmas, he testified that he traveled to LA to visit Berman for a "staycation" with plans to see some of the tourist sites. He eventually dropped the disguise after mishaps that included walking into a men's restroom and igniting his wig at a bar while lighting a cigarette. His lawyer told him to be prepared to be charged in the case, and he fled a life of luxury to Galveston, Texas, where he rented a cheap apartment as "Dorothy Ciner," a woman he pretended couldn't speak. But his troubles resurfaced in late 2000 when New York authorities reopened the case. He later quipped that he was "the worst fugitive the world has ever met." Durst escaped close scrutiny from investigators when his wife disappeared. He jumped bail in Texas and was arrested after shoplifting a chicken sandwich in Pennsylvania, despite having $37,000 in cash - along with two handguns - in his rental car. Durst ran from the law multiple times, disguised as a mute woman in Texas and staying under an alias at a New Orleans hotel with a shoulders-to-head latex mask for a presumed getaway. He provided plot twists so numerous that Hollywood couldn't resist making a feature film about his life that eventually led to the documentary and discovery of new evidence in Berman's slaying. The story of Durst, the estranged scion of a New York real estate developer, has been fodder for New York tabloids since his wife vanished. ![]() Durst was never charged in the disappearance of his wife, who has never been found, and was acquitted of murder in Galveston, Texas, where he admitted dismembering the victim's body and tossing it out to sea. The conviction marks a victory for authorities who have sought to put Durst behind bars for murder in three states. You're caught." Durst's decision to testify in his own defense - hoping for a repeat of his acquittal in the Texas killing - backfired as he was forced to admit lying under oath, made damning admissions and had his credibility destroyed when questioned by the prosecutor. Durst could be heard muttering to himself on a live microphone in a bathroom: "There it is. Durst was arrested in 2015 while hiding out in a New Orleans hotel on the eve of the airing of the final episode of "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," in which he was confronted with incriminating evidence and made what prosecutors said was a confession. They interlaced evidence of Berman's killing with Kathie Durst's suspected death and the 2001 killing of a tenant in a Texas flophouse where Robert Durst holed up while on the run from New York authorities. Prosecutors painted a portrait of a rich narcissist who didn't think the laws applied to him and ruthlessly disposed of people who stood in his way. Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, was Durst's longtime confidante who told friends she provided a phony alibi for him after his wife vanished. Durst, 78, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Susan Berman, who was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home in December 2000 as she was prepared to tell police how she helped cover up his wife's killing. A Los Angeles jury convicted Robert Durst on Friday of murdering his best friend 20 years ago in a case that took on new life after the New York real estate heir participated in a documentary that connected him to the slaying linked to his wife's 1982 disappearance. Robert Durst spins his wheelchair in place in a courtroom in Inglewood, Calif., last week. ![]()
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