American millionaire and real estate heir Robert Durst was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the murder of a friend more than 20 years ago. The sentence for the 78-year-old was announced by a judge on Thursday (local time) in Los Angeles, as US media reported. Thirst, who suffered from bladder cancer, among other things, appeared sitting in a wheelchair in the courthouse.
On September 17, Durst was found guilty by a jury of having shot and killed his friend Susan Berman at her Beverly Hills home over the Christmas period of 2000. At that time she was supposed to testify to the police about the still unexplained disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathleen Durst in 1982. Kathleen was never found and no charges related to her disappearance were ever brought. After the current verdict against Robert Durst, Kathleen’s family now demanded that Durst should also be prosecuted for their disappearance.
The process began in March 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic brought life to a standstill in the United States. He was resumed in May 2021. The 14-month delay was voiced by the defense New York Times referred to as the longest adjournment with the same jury in United States history.
Neighbors killed and dismembered
Durst had also been on trial before. In 2003 he confessed to having killed and dismembered a neighbor in Galveston, Texas, two years earlier. The killing was done in self-defense, he panicked and decided to cut up the body. Durst was acquitted. The prosecution, however, had accused him of wanting to steal the man’s identity in order to avoid the investigation into the disappearance of his wife.
Twelve years later, in 2015, the case got a new spin when Durst appeared to accidentally confess the murders in the HBO documentary “The Jinx”. When he went to the toilet, his microphone was still on and recorded a series of comments that looked like a confession. “You got caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” he said. However, according to media reports, the transcripts of the sound recordings in court showed that the quotes for the documentation had been merged and edited to put them in a different order and context.