Real estate heir Robert Durst, a three-time suspect, is convicted of murder in L.A.
CTV
A California jury on Friday found multimillionaire real estate heir Robert Durst guilty of murdering his best friend Susan Berman in 2000, the first homicide conviction for a man suspected of killing three people in three states over the past 39 years.
Durst, 78 and frail, will likely die in prison as the jury also found him guilty of the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing a witness, which carry a mandatory life sentence. Superior Court Judge Mark Windham, who oversaw the trial, set a sentencing hearing for Oct. 18.
The trial came six years after Durst's apparent confession was aired in the HBO television documentary series "The Jinx," in which Durst was caught on a hot microphone in the bathroom saying to himself, "What the hell did I do? ... Killed them all, of course."
The nine-woman, three-man jury had deliberated for seven and a half hours over three days. Durst, who has been in jail for the duration of the trial, was not present for the reading of the verdict because he was in isolation after having been exposed to somebody with COVID-19.
Windham decided to have the verdict read in Durst's absence. Speaking to attorneys for both sides later, he called the case "the most extraordinary trial that I've ever seen or even heard about."
