Durst is charged with the first-degree murder of his close friend and confidante, Susan Berman, in 2000, at her Beverly Hills home, hours before she was set to talk to investigators about the mysterious disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, who was last seen in 1982.
Durst has long denied killing Berman, and his lawyer has said that he panicked and ran after finding her body. He has pleaded not guilty.
The trial began early last year but was suspended in March 2020 after just a few days due to the coronavirus pandemic. It finally resumed this May, and prosecutors rested their case on Tuesday after several months of testimony.
Durst’s expected testimony is just the latest saga in an unusual life that reached mass audiences through “The Jinx” miniseries in 2015.
“There it is. You’re caught,” he said in a series of seemingly unrelated sentences. “He was right. I was wrong.”
“What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Durst’s health has deteriorated since then, and he looks and sounds frail in court. At 78, he is thin, bent-over and in a wheelchair and speaks in a whispery voice.
“I’m worried about his health,” his longtime attorney Dick DeGuerin said. “I’m worried about his ability to survive and his ability to understand complex questions, both direct and cross-examination.”
What to expect from his testimony
Testifying in one’s own defense is uncommon for murder defendants, but the tactic worked for Durst in a previous murder trial.
In 2003, an animated Durst testified he had fatally shot a neighbor, Morris Black, in self-defense and admitted he cut up his body with surgical precision and dumped it in Galveston Bay. He said he did so in a panic, while prosecutors said he wanted to steal the man’s identity and escape the investigation of his wife’s disappearance.
The Texas murder trial revealed more about Durst’s often eccentric behavior, including how he posed as a mute woman as he hid out in Galveston.
Durst’s testimony is expected to last several days, and legal analysts caution that he needs to be careful with his words.
His “testimony could open the door to all types of prior bad conduct that he could be questioned about,” said CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson. “If the jury thinks he’s lying, being evasive or if he’s unsympathetic, a conviction is assured.”
The medical issues could also come into play.
“There is a still a slight chance of raising the sympathy of someone on the jury,” said Loyola Law School Professor Stan Goldman.
But Jackson believes Durst needs to be careful about how jurors perceive his medical issues. “If he testifies and feigns sickness or incapacity, the jury will see right through it,” Jackson quipped.
Also, Judge Windham could still delay the trial due to Durst’s poor health, Goldman said.
“That’s if the judge changes his mind and determines Durst’s condition makes him unfit to testify at this time or in the foreseeable future,” Goldman said.
How we got here
Durst will likely be cross-examined by Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, who has relentlessly pursued Durst for Berman’s murder.
“My life expectancy is about five years,” the eccentric millionaire said in the 2015 interview.
There is little physical evidence in Berman’s nearly 20-year-old unsolved death. There are no eyewitnesses and no murder weapon.
One key piece of evidence is the so-called “cadaver” note, a cryptic letter sent to police with Berman’s address and the word “cadaver” in caps that led detectives to her body.
In the HBO documentary “The Jinx,” Durst said the letter could have been sent only by Berman’s killer. Defense lawyers previously denied Durst wrote the note, and they tried to exclude from trial handwriting evidence about it.
Also in the documentary, filmmakers confronted Durst with another letter he once mailed Berman, with nearly identical handwriting to the “cadaver” note. In both, Beverly Hills was misspelled as “BEVERLEY.”
Lewin, in the interview with Durst, asked him, “Why would you think the killer would have left a note?”
“I’m gonna stay away from that,” Durst replied.
CNN’s Augie Martin and Ray Sanchez contributed to this report.
Real estate tycoon Robert Durst, accused of killing his close friend, expected to take the stand today