Robert Durst, the onetime New York actual property scion convicted of 1 homicide and suspected of others, died Mondayat age 78.
Durst died in Stockton, California, the place he was serving a life sentence. His lawyer, Chip Lewis, informed The New York Occasions that Durst went into cardiac arrest at a hospital close to the jail and couldn’t be revived.
He’d contracted COVID-19 and was briefly positioned on a ventilator final 12 months, contributing to his preexisting well being issues.
“Mr. Durst handed away early this morning whereas within the custody of California’s Division of Corrections,” Lewis stated in a press release. “We perceive that his dying was resulting from pure causes related to a litany of medical points we had repeatedly reported to the courtroom over the past couple of years.”
Durst, who has been incarcerated since his 2015 arrest, is estranged from his household, which operates a number of the most prestigious actual property in New York Metropolis.
His trial was delayed as a result of pandemic, however Durst was finally convicted in September of capturing his buddy Susan Berman at the back of the pinnacle in 2000 ― out of worry, prosecutors alleged, that she would surrender details about his connection to the dying of his first spouse, Kathleen McCormack. He was sentenced to life in jail in October.
McCormack vanished in February 1982 after allegedly telling a buddy she was afraid of Durst. She is presumed lifeless, though her stays have by no means been discovered. A grand jury indicted Durst in her dying in November, however he died earlier than he may very well be tried.
Within the wake of McCormack’s disappearance, Berman had served as a spokesperson for Durst, a university buddy of hers. Nonetheless, she later fell on exhausting instances.
In 2015, Durst was dramatically arrested in New Orleans ― with a latex face-and-shoulders masks and over $40,000 in money ― for Berman’s capturing, simply hours earlier than the ultimate episode of a documentary about him, “The Jinx,” aired on HBO.
Throughout filming of “The Jinx,” Durst appeared to inadvertently admit to the killings. Whereas off-camera, however within the presence of a microphone he didn’t know was recording, he muttered “Killed all of them, in fact.” Jurors heard a part of the 2015 recording at his trial.
He was held with out bail, having tried to flee a homicide cost in Texas greater than a decade prior.
In 2003, Durst was tried for the homicide of a neighbor, Morris Black. He claimed that Black’s gun had gone off whereas Durst was making an attempt to defend himself, and admitted to dismembering Black’s physique out of concern, he stated, that authorities wouldn’t consider him. He was finally acquitted.
Durst had been below rising scrutiny for McCormack’s disappearance, with a New York prosecutor reportedly in search of his indictment. Of their sufferer impression statements, a number of of Berman’s family and friends members implored Durst to inform McCormack’s household what he allegedly did along with her physique.
This text initially appeared on HuffPost and has been up to date.
