The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office announced that it has reopened its investigation into murder charges against the bizarre New York real estate magnate Robert Durst as a result of new information revealed in the HBO documentary series about him “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.”
It sounds too peculiar to be true. Sure many television news reports have led to new police investigations or the reopening of old ones in the past. But an HBO documentary?
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Durst was suspected of not only murdering his own wife but of also killing his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles. In an earlier episode of the documentary series it was explained that Los Angeles police discovered Berman’s dead body in her home only after they received a letter written in block letters in the mail telling them to look for it.
Durst’s stepson Sareb Kaufman said in the fifth and most recent episode of the documentary series that he found an envelope with a letter written by his stepfather to Berman in 1999, which used the same type of block letters.
Beverly Hills detectives who were interviewed in previous installments of the documentary explained that only the woman’s killer could have known about the body so whoever he was that had to be the person who sent them the letter. They also speculated that the killer must have at least cared about the victim if he wanted her body to be quickly discovered.
Durst’s side speculated that Berman was murdered in a mob hit. But the police countered that the mob would never have sent the letter to ensure that the body would quickly be discovered.
Regardless, it would be very difficult to prove that the same person wrote the same block letters.
Durst tried to deflect blame from himself when telling interviewers in the documentary, “If somebody liked her, why kill her? And now you’ve taken this big risk. You’re writing a note to the police that only a killer could have written.”
In other words since he knew Berman personally he would have been a fool to send the police such a note since it would clearly have made him a suspect in her murder.
