Robert Durst, the focus of the HBO docuseries The Jinx, has passed away while serving a life sentence. The convicted murder and real estate tycoon was 78 years old. Going all the way back to his 40s, Durst has been the main suspect for a series of murders, including his own wife and, later, his best friend, Susan Berman. After alluding prosecution for years, Durst was famously caught and tried for Berman’s murder after making one hell of a slip-up while filming The Jinx.
Via The New York Times:
In a story made for supermarket tabloids, Mr. Durst, a small, rail-thin man, was a cross-dressing fugitive from justice with $100 million in assets. On the run, he became a vagrant urinating in public, sometimes disguising himself as a mute woman. He beat his wife and forced her to have an abortion; beheaded a man he had killed as he sat in a pool of blood, and once wrote a “cadaver note,” telling the Los Angeles police where to find a woman who had been shot in the head. Distraught and alone in a bathroom, he unwittingly confessed to all the killings on a live recording used in a 2015 HBO mini-series about himself.
As for his cause of death, Durst’s lawyers told The Daily Beast that it was “natural causes associated with the litany of medical issues we had repeatedly reported to the court.” So in other words, oldness. Durst was very, very old, and also a convicted murderer, which really can’t be emphasized enough. Easily a top three takeaway.
(Via The New York Times)
