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Post by kitty on Feb 29, 2020 13:34:46 GMT -5
I was beginning to think he would never go to trial. It's being shown on Court TV and I'm going to try to watch it.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Mar 4, 2020 21:12:36 GMT -5
Durst Trial Begins in LA, New York Judge Tosses McCormack Family ‘Right to Sepulcher’ SuitThe trial of 76-year-old Robert Durst for the killing of his longtime friend Susan Berman got underway with Deputy DA John Lewin’s recitation of the murder in which there were no signs of a break-in or struggle and nothing was taken. “Susan knew her killer,” he told the jury. “She freely and voluntarily admitted this person into her house.”
He then played excerpts of a 2015 interview wherein the eccentric millionaire admitted he doesn’t believe “the rules” apply to him. In another interview, Durst discussed how he burps loudly during meetings he doesn’t feel are important, bragging, “I do what I want. There’s nothing anybody can do about it. Tough.” In addition to the video clips, Lewin submitted graphic photos of Berman’s blood-covered corpse lying face-up on the floor of her home. He also played a 911 tape of a neighbor’s call to police. “She lives by herself and I hate to think,” the distraught caller told the dispatcher.
Durst’s arrest for Berman’s murder occurred March 14, 2015, one day before the airing of the finale of The Jinx, an HBO docu-series that chronicled Durst’s life and the three deaths connected thereto.
Prosecutors contend Durst killed Berman because she knew about the murder of his first wife, Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack Durst, who mysteriously disappeared in January 1982. By December 2000, Berman was in desperate need of money, living in a small, dilapidated, sparsely-furnished house and, according to friends, spending most of what little she had on her three dogs. It is generally believed she was planning to write another book that would be detrimental to Durst. According to the state, Durst “devised and carried out a diabolical plan to cover up the killing of his wife, which ultimately cost two other people (Berman and Morris Black) their lives.” During the trial, the state will present evidence not only from the Berman case, but also from the disappearance of Kathie Durst and the 2001 killing and dismemberment of Morris Black in Galveston, Texas.
According to veteran criminal defense lawyer Lara Yeretsian, who has no role in the case, “The prosecution will essentially be retrying his wife’s death in order to establish motive. This will be like two murder trials in one.”
The prosecution’s case also depends heavily on second-hand testimony from a witness who said Durst admitted killing Berman and other witnesses who claim Berman told them Durst killed his first wife and she assisted him after the fact.
Durst and his exploits are well-known to the public: The 2010 film All Good Things starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst is based on the disappearance of Kathie Durst and what transpires in the decades thereafter. And of course, millions watched The Jinx and even those who didn’t have heard of the notorious hot-mic moment in which Durst mutters, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” Defense attorneys contend their client was the victim of deceptive editing, but prosecutors are convinced it was a confession.
Durst has consistently denied any role in the disappearance of his wife and claims he had nothing to do with the death of Susan Berman.
“Our defense is: One, he didn’t do it, and, two, they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it,” David Chesnoff, one of the defense lawyers, said before the trial commenced. “It is a highly circumstantial case and we will have strong responses to explain the circumstances.”
“No direct evidence implicates Durst in the murder except for a note (the “cadaver” note) to the police and Durst’s own rambling and sometimes incoherent statements,” observed Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and co-founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers who, though not involved in the case, has been following the proceedings. “Prosecutors have their hands full. Even though the law gives equal weight to direct and circumstantial evidence,” she continued, “some jurors have difficulty or are outright unable to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without physical evidence.”
In the meantime, back in New York, a judge tossed the $100 million “right to sepulcher” lawsuit filed against the real estate scion by his first wife’s relatives. The three sisters of Kathie Durst brought the unusual suit against both their former brother-in-law and The Durst Organization in 2015. Today (March 4) Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Roy Mahon dismissed the case, deeming it barred because it wasn’t filed within the three-year statute of limitations.Sources: Daniel Goldblatt, WRAP, March 4, 2020; The Associated Press, March 4, 2020; Law & Crime, March 4, 2020; and Priscilla DeGregory, The New York Post, March 4, 2020.
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Post by kitty on Mar 5, 2020 1:11:49 GMT -5
If it was about money, why didn't he just pay her off? Even if he'd given her $1 million, it would have been cheaper than what he's spent on lawyers and he wouldn't have risked spending the rest of his life in prison.
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Post by catherine on Mar 5, 2020 14:44:24 GMT -5
If it was about money, why didn't he just pay her off? Even if he'd given her $1 million, it would have been cheaper than what he's spent on lawyers and he wouldn't have risked spending the rest of his life in prison. First, I have no sympathy for anyone who wastes their money on damned dogs. However, on Court TV, someone said Berman was a high maintenance bitch (not in those words) and that she spent a lot of the money she had left on some play that was so awful no one would produce it. Durst gave her two $25,000 checks, but he himself has admitted that like most Jews, he hates to spend money. She probably was blackmailing him and that was wrong, but that was no reason to kill her. She didn't see him kill his wife, so if she wrote a book accusing him of killing her, it would be her word against his.
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Post by Kate on Mar 7, 2020 14:38:15 GMT -5
First, I have no sympathy for anyone who wastes their money on damned dogs. However, on Court TV, someone said Berman was a high maintenance bitch (not in those words) and that she spent a lot of the money she had left on some play that was so awful no one would produce it. Durst gave her two $25,000 checks, but he himself has admitted that like most Jews, he hates to spend money. She probably was blackmailing him and that was wrong, but that was no reason to kill her. She didn't see him kill his wife, so if she wrote a book accusing him of killing her, it would be her word against his. I watched a little of Court TV last night and saw the part where they were saying that Susan Berman was high maintenance. They also said that she was living in what I suppose amounts to a hovel in Los Angeles, but still wasted money on the dogs, which her life revolved around. There's something seriously wrong with people who do without themselves for the sake of some POS dog. I was disappointed in Court TV because instead of showing the actual trial, it's just a repetition of certain parts of the trial over and over again.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Mar 12, 2020 3:09:50 GMT -5
Susan Berman Lied and it Got Her KilledAccording to Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, when Susan Berman told her longtime friend Bobby Durst that police intended to question her about the disappearance of Kathie Durst, it was equivalent to signing her own death warrant. “It was that statement from Susan Berman to Bob Durst that sealed her fate,” he told the jury.
“Bob Durst showed up at her doorstep,” he continued. “She let him into the house” and the moment she turned away, her old friend raised his weapon. “He shot her point-blank. At the time the gun was fired, it was within an inch from the back of her head.”
In reality, although New York authorities had reopened the investigation into the mysterious 1982 disappearance of Kathleen “Kathie” McCormack Durst, no one had contacted Berman. She was lying and her lie resulted in her death in December 2020, prosecutors insisted. (Berman told others she was planning to speak to police.) Lewin went on to imply that Berman, who was in dire financial straits, told Durst the authorities were about to question her, hoping he would dole out even more cash to ensure her silence. The miserly millionaire had written her two $25,000 checks during the previous 12 months.
The day before Berman’s body was discovered on Christmas Eve, Durst sent an anonymous note to the Beverly Hills Police Department in which he wrote the word “cadaver” and address, “1527 Benedict Canyon,” in block letters. He didn’t admit writing the note until December 2019.
Durst didn’t learn his long-time friend and confidante had lied to him about being contacted by the police until 15 years later when he was arrested in New Orleans.
It is the prosecution’s contention that Berman helped Durst cover up the murder of his first wife, whose body has never been found.
After shooting Berman, Durst passed himself off as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner and rented a cheap apartment in Galveston, Texas, where he and his neighbor, Morris Black, became friends. According to Durst, when he finally admitted his true identity, Black commenced pressuring him to purchase a house that the two could share. In September 2001, he shot Black in the head, dismembered his corpse, stuffed the parts into plastic bags and dumped them in Galveston Bay, where they were discovered floating on the surface. Jurors were shown photographs of Black’s headless torso and at least two were so shaken they looked away and one woman placed her hand over her mouth. Black’s head was never found.
Numerous clips from The Jinx also have been played for the jury, including the one in which Durst describes getting drunk and stoned and using a saw to butcher his friend.
When defense attorney Dick DeGuerin addressed the jury, they heard a different version of events. “When Bob showed up and found her dead, he panicked,” he told the eight women and four men. “He wrote the anonymous letter so her body would be found and he ran.”
DeGuerin argued that Durst, 76, suffers from mild autism, which explains some of the choices he has made. “Bob panicked and he ran as he’s been doing all his life. ... Bob doesn’t make good decisions,” the lawyer continued. “It’s part of his makeup. It’s typical of his emotional condition.” Additionally, he said, his client had once been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome, although psychiatrists “now just call it as being on the spectrum.”
DeGeurin reminded the jury Durst is on trial for Susan Berman’s murder only, not the murder of Morris Black nor the 1982 disappearance of his wife. Although he agreed Black’s dismemberment was so “awful” it would “overwhelm everything else,” he reminded the jurors his client was acquitted after a Texas jury determined he had acted in self-defense.
He then addressed The Jinx, claiming the HBO documentary is “what got us to this courtroom today,” specifically, the hot-mic confession in the finale in which Durst mutters, “Killed them all, of course.”
He also blamed an “ambitious district attorney by the name of Jeanine Pirro,” who decided to reinvestigate the Berman case despite a lack of any new evidence.
Durst, who has been held without bail since his arrest five years ago, sat stone-faced at the defense table. According to DeGeurin, his gaunt, frail-looking client has undergone three surgeries – one to his brain and two to his back – and has been fighting esophageal cancer.Sources: Court TV; Matt Hamilton, The Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2020; Rebecca Rosenberg, The New York Post, March 5 and 10, 2020; and Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman by Cathy Scott.
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Post by kitty on Mar 12, 2020 10:02:15 GMT -5
She had known him for year and knew he had already killed one person and she had to have known that he was cheap when it came to money. For the daughter of a mobster, she wasn't very street smart.
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Post by steve on Mar 14, 2020 10:20:29 GMT -5
OK, he's saying that he was there and that he wrote the cadaver note. I'm no legal expert, but it looks to me like he's basically doing the same thing he did in Texas. How is the state going to prove that he killed the woman just because he was there and wrote a note?
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jun 1, 2020 21:37:31 GMT -5
Durst Trial Scheduled to Resume July 27
The seemingly never-ending prosecution of Robert Durst for the murder of his longtime friend, Susan Brennan, is scheduled to resume in July at a courthouse in Ingleside. The trial, which began in February, was disrupted by the Chinese virus pandemic. Judge Mark Windham ordered the move May 22, after Durst’s attorneys filed a motion for change of venue to a location where participants would be able to comply with current social-distancing rules.
The prosecution has requested proceedings against Durst continue by having witnesses testify via a social medium such as Skype or Zoom, however, the defense opposed the suggestion, claiming it is “violative of the defendant’s Constitutional rights and utterly impractical.”
In a another motion, the state requested jurors be allowed to hear and view the videotaped testimony of the prosecution’s star witness, Nathan “Nick” Chavin, as well as that of three other out-of-state witnesses. All four, the prosecutors argued, are over the age of 65, placing them “at higher risk of severe illness or death due to COVID-19.”
The jurors selected in February are being instructed to return to court Monday, July 27, but this is dependent upon how the judge rules on a defense motion scheduled for hearing June 23. Durst’s defense team is arguing the “prejudicial mid-trial delay” has “made it impossible” for the defendant to get a fair trial and considering the length of the delay, it is “unrealistic” to expect jurors to recall evidence concerning the shooting death of Susan Berman.
On April 12, Durst celebrated his 77th birthday in his hospital room-type cell at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles. The small area in which he lives has a tiny slit of a window and in addition to the hospital bed, overbed tray, bedside cabinet and steel sink, his room is equipped with a breathing machine and walker. There are books and magazines on the tray and atop the cabinet and more books are stacked in the corner. Durst has been held without bail since his March 2015 arrest in New Orleans. Sources: State of California v. Robert Alan Durst; Marlam Yeghikyan, Canyon News, May 27, 2020; The Daily Breeze, May 22, 2020; and RadarOnline, August 1, 2019.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jul 31, 2020 21:13:40 GMT -5
Robert Durst Trial Postponed Again: Set to Resume April 12, 2021
At a July 17 hearing, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin proposed delaying the trial until next year, by which time the flu season should be over. Judge Mark Windham agreed to the postponement, setting a new trial date of April 12, 2021, which, coincidentally, will be Robert Durst’s 78th birthday.
However, the judge indicted he was willing to resume the proceedings earlier if the Defendant waived his right to a trial by jury and allowed the judge to determine the verdict. As expected, the defense declined.
In June, David Chesnoff, one of Durst’s attorneys, filed a motion requesting a “fresh start” with a new jury, arguing the present jurors would be exposed to outside influences and may not accurately recall prior testimony. The jury heard opening statements and two days of testimony before the case was suspended in mid-March. After Windham denied the motion, the defense team requested a mistrial, which also was denied.
Durst, who has been behind bars since March 14, 2015, was not in the courtroom.
Sources: Nancy Dillon, The New York Daily News, July 31, 2020; The Long Beach Press-Telegram, July 31, 2020; Dakin Andone and Paul Vercammen, CNN, July 31, 2020; and KNBC, July 31, 2020.
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Post by kitty on Aug 1, 2020 19:30:58 GMT -5
He'll probably die before this case ever goes to trial. In the most recent pictures of him, he doesn't look healthy.
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Post by Graveyardbride on May 18, 2021 2:22:24 GMT -5
Durst Trial Resumes in California, New York DA Reopens Case of Wife’s DisappearanceRobert Durst’s trial for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman resumed yesterday in Inglewood, California, following a 14-month recess. Judge Mark Windham began by asking jurors if they can take up where they left off in March of last year when the proceedings were recessed because of the pandemic. “So, where did we leave off?” Windham quipped as jurors laughed.
During the proceedings, defense attorney Dick DeGuerin requested the trial be suspended because of Durst’s bladder cancer and other health issues that require hospitalization. “The question isn’t whether he can endure the rigors of the trial,” DeGuerin said, “it’s whether he can survive at all.”
Prosecutor John Lewin scoffed at defense claims that Durst should be released to a hospital, insisting he was receiving high-quality care in jail, where he is being held without bail. “It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Lewin told the judge. “The goal here is simply to have this trial go away.”
According to Windham, Durst wasn’t present during the proceedings because he refused to leave the jail. DeGuerin, however, contended this was inaccurate, claiming jailers had previously failed to transport his client to the courthouse, falsely reporting he was “willfully absent.”
While Durst, who turned 78 April 12, is charged with the killing of Berman only, prosecutors used his wife’s disappearance and the murder of Morris Black in Texas to build their case.
In the meantime, the district attorney in Winchester County, New York, has reopened the case of Kathie Durst’s 1982 disappearance.Sources: Brian Melley, Associated Press, May 17, 2021; Brian Melley, KCRA, May 17, 2021; and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, The New York Post, May 17, 2021.
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Post by Kate on May 18, 2021 3:23:35 GMT -5
So this old bastard is finally going to face the jury. He must be one heartless SOB to walk up behind a woman who had been his close, and probably only, friend and shoot her in the head. Even if it was her own lies that provoked him, he knew she was hard up for cash and he could have easily bought her off rather than kill her.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Jun 11, 2021 0:36:18 GMT -5
Durst Hospitalized, Trial Temporarily Suspended
When court convened Thursday morning (June 10), Judge Mark E. Windham announced to the jury and others present that Robert Durst had been transported to a hospital for Los Angeles County inmates. He said he did not have much information regarding the Defendant’s condition beyond the fact he was discovered “down,” i.e., he was not in his wheelchair, an indication he had fallen from the chair. Chip Lewis, a member of Durst’s defense team was unable to provide any additional information concerning his client’s condition.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, however, was quick to voice his suspicion that Durst was possibly faking a medical crisis in an attempt to force a mistrial, adding there are recordings of telephone calls Durst made from jail indicating he intended to feign dementia or possibly the Covid-19 virus. “I have no idea whether this is legitimate or not,” the prosecutor said, “but obviously, given his history, it’s certainly suspect as to what his actual condition is. It’s very clear the defense and the Defendant want this trial to go away.”
When the trial resumed in May, Dick DeGuerin, another member of the defense team, requested a mistrial, claiming the Defendant needed to be hospitalized for bladder cancer and other health problems. In support of their request, the lawyers filed a report by Keith L. Klein, M.D., a physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who examined the Durst and found him to be “profoundly malnourished” and at risk of “sudden death” from elevated levels of potassium or stroke, noting the accused suffered a “mini stroke” during a court appearance in 2019. “The question is not whether he can endure the rigors of a trial, it’s whether he can survive,” the defense lawyer alleged in the pleading. “I would not be surprised if Mr. Durst died in the next twelve months.”
Judge Windham denied the defense motion, but agreed to hear testimony from Durst’s physician at a later date.
On Wednesday (June 9), jurors heard damaging testimony from Mella Kaufman, daughter of Paul Kaufman, who was romantically involved with Berman. According to Kaufman, Berman once told her an “interesting story” as they were returning from a visit to the UCLA library. “She was telling me about her friend [Durst] and how his wife had disappeared and how she had been an alibi, or made a phone call for him, so that it wasn’t suspicious,” Kaufman, 45, told the jury. “She left it kind of like a cliffhanger. You know, she left me in suspense, like, ‘Did he do it?’ And she kind of smirked and said, ‘I don’t know, what do you think?’”
Kaufman’s testimony is at the center of the state’s theory that Durst murdered Berman inside her Los Angeles home in December 2000 to ensure her silence during the reinvestigation of Kathie Durst’s 1982 disappearance. It is the prosecution’s contention that Durst killed his wife during a bitter argument and convinced Berman to pose as Kathie and place a call to the medical school she was attending claiming she was ill. Shortly before her death, Berman, who was desperate for money, falsely told Durst the police intended to question her concerning his wife’s disappearance, likely believing her friend would offer her a large sum of money to keep quiet.
Sources: Matthew Ormseth, The Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2021; The Associated Press; and Nancy Dillon, The New York Daily News, June 9, 2021.
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Post by Kate on Jun 11, 2021 14:28:46 GMT -5
I knew the old bastard would pull something like this. I don't believe he's sick either, but with all of his health problems, it will be very hard to prove that he's faking it.
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