Case file #3
Robert Durst (The Jinx)
Filed under homicide, 2010s.
- Era
- 2010s (2015)
- Date
- March 14
- Status
- Closed
Spoilers ahead
This page tells the whole case, including how it ended. It concerns real deaths and real people, and it is written under our editorial standards. Play the case first, or read on when you are ready.
Read the case file
Robert Durst, heir to a New York real estate empire, was long suspected in the 1982 disappearance of his wife Kathleen, then a fourth-year medical student, the 2000 killing of his friend and confidante Susan Berman, and the 2001 death of his Galveston neighbor Morris Black, 71 (Durst was acquitted of murder, claiming self-defense). He volunteered for Andrew Jarecki's HBO docuseries; producers matched the handwriting and a distinctive misspelling, 'Beverley', between Berman's anonymous 'cadaver note' and Durst's old letters. Confronted on camera, he later muttered into a live lavalier mic: 'What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.' Arrested March 14, 2015, the night before the finale, he was convicted in 2021 and died in custody months later. Because he died with his appeal pending, a Los Angeles judge ruled the conviction permanently abated under California law in 2022. The aired bathroom audio was edited: in the raw recording played at trial, the lines came in a different order.
Read about how we handle cases like this one in our editorial standards.