Robert Durst arrest mug shot taken from the Orleans Parish Sheriff's website:
Welcome to Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office | Sheriff Marlin N. Gusman
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CREDIT: Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office(Photo: Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office)
Robert Durst, subject of the HBO documentary
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, has been arrested in New Orleans for a Los Angeles murder.
Durst, 71, is a member of a prominent New York City family that owns a multibillion-dollar real-estate company. He was taken into custody in a hotel lobby Saturday night and was being
held Sunday on a first-degree murder warrant, Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office documents indicated.
The
Los Angeles Times reports that authorities in Los Angeles have been interviewing new witnesses in the 2000 slaying of writer and Durst confidant Susan Berman. Durst discussed the case in the HBO documentary series, which wraps up Sunday night.
Durst will not fight extradition back to Los Angeles, Durst lawyer Chip Lewis told
KTRK-TV in Houston. Lewis also said he plans to fight the murder charge.
In 1982, Durst was the only named suspect in the disappearance of his first wife, medical student Kathleen McCormack, a medical student who vanished after Durst maintained he dropped her off at a train station near their home north of New York City in Westchester County.
On Chistmas Eve 2000, after investigators probing the McCormack disappearance contacted Berman, she was found murdered with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. Durst was never charged.
Last week's HBO episode hinted that Los Angeles detectives were closing in on Durst, showing an apparent match between the Dec. 23, 2000, anonymous letter alerting police to a body at Berman's address and the handwriting on a letter Durst sent Berman the previous year. Both letters even misspelled Beverly Hills as "Beverley."
New York state police Investigator Joseph Becerra was the first to take a fresh look at McCormack's disappearance in 2000 and has worked closely with Los Angeles detectives and FBI agents in recent months.
"We're going to monitor the Los Angeles case closely and hopefully it will lead to some resolution of our case," Becerra said Sunday.
Months after Berman's death, Durst was arrested in the murder of Texas neighbor, Morris Black. Durst admitted cutting up Black's body and dumping the remains in Galveston Bay. Aided by a trio of famed Houston defense lawyers, Durst won an acquittal based on self-defense.
Durst's family's business, the Durst Organization, owns more than 15 skyscrapers, including the Bank of America Tower in the heart of Manhattan, and has a large investment in One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the U.S. and the replacement for the Twin Towers. Durst is not involved in the family business.
In July, Durst had a more querky run-in with the law. He was accused of urinating on a Texas CVS cash register and candy rack. Lewis at that time said Durst suffers from a form Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.
"He wasn't arguing with anybody and he didn't seem agitated," Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva told
The New York Post. "He just peed on the candy. Skittles, I think."
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