Entertainment

Audio of Durst in Bathroom Could Play 2 Ways in Murder Case

Published

9 years ago

March 19, 2015

In this Tuesday, March 17, 2015, file photo, Robert Durst is escorted into Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

BRIAN MELLEY, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The whispered words of Robert Durst recorded in an unguarded moment in a bathroom could come back to haunt him — or help him — as he faces a murder charge.

A possible move by prosecutors to introduce the incriminating material from a six-part documentary on his strange life and connection to three killings could backfire as interview footage did in the Michael Jackson molestation trial and the Robert Blake murder case.

In both cases, the defense was allowed under the “doctrine of completeness” to provide segments of interviews that presented their clients favorably without subjecting them to tough cross-examination.

“I submit that Blake didn’t have to testify and Michael Jackson didn’t have to testify because the prosecution foolishly wanted to introduce portions of their interviews,” said attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., who represented both men. “They just got greedy. They were mesmerized by portions they thought could help them.”

In the Jackson case, the defense used unaired footage to counter damage done by “Living With Michael Jackson,” a damning documentary in which Jackson held hands with his accuser and spoke of letting children into his bed.

“I’d slit my wrists before I’d hurt a child,” Jackson said in one outtake shown by the defense, according to Mesereau, who won the performer’s acquittal 10 years ago.

In the Durst case, prosecutors could seek to play portions from “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” that concluded with the eccentric millionaire off camera talking to himself in a bathroom with his wireless microphone still live.

“There it is. You’re caught!” Durst whispered before the sound of water running can be heard. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

Durst was arrested in New Orleans on Saturday, the day before the final episode aired.

He has been charged in Los Angeles with first-degree murder in the 2000 killing Susan Berman, the daughter a mobster and a close friend who acted as his spokeswoman after his wife disappeared in New York in 1982.

Durst, 71, who is estranged from a family that has a real estate empire worth an estimated $4 billion, has long denied killing Berman and Kathleen Durst, who was declared dead even though her body was never found. Investigators had reopened that case and planned to speak with Berman when she was shot once in the back of her head at her home near Beverly Hills.

After the killing, Durst disguised himself as a mute woman and moved into a cheap Galveston, Texas, boarding house where he killed an elderly neighbor in 2001. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted of murder but convicted of unlawfully disposing of the man’s body, which was found chopped up and floating in Galveston Bay.

While legal experts said Durst’s remarks off-camera and to filmmakers during the production will most likely be admissible, prosecutors will have to decide if they outweigh the possibility that the defense would play other portions of interviews showing him denying any killing.

“I would see this moment of unguarded truth as worth a lot of those denials,” said George Fisher, a former prosecutor and professor at Stanford Law School. “The flat out meaning of the statement is very clear on its face.”

In the case of Blake, prosecutors sought to introduce a portion of a jailhouse interview of the actor discussing his family with Barbara Walters because it contradicted other evidence. The defense then successfully pushed to bring in the rest of the interview.

“It did a great deal both to humanize him and so he wasn’t just seen as a celebrity,” said M. Gerald Schwartzbach, who won Blake’s acquittal on a murder charge involving the killing of his wife. “There was an image projected that a lot of people had about Robert as a difficult person. In this video, he came across as a very sympathetic person.”

Prosecutors are not commenting on the Berman case while Durst is still held in Louisiana, where he also faces firearms charges. A lawyer for Durst did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

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O.J. Simpson, 76, Dies of Prostate Cancer

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson, who rose to fame as a college football player who went on to the NFL and parlayed his talents in acting and sportscasting, succumbed to prostate cancer on April 10, his family announced.

Published

1 day ago

April 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson. Wikipedia photo

By Post Staff

Born and raised in San Francisco, the Galileo High School graduate was recruited by the University of Southern California after he was on a winning Junior College All-American team.

At USC, he gained wide acclaim as a running back leading to him becoming the No. 1 pick in the AFL-NFL draft in 1969 and joining the Buffalo Bills, where he had demanded – and received — the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. In 1978, the Bills traded Simpson to his hometown team, the San Francisco 49ers, retiring from the game in 1979.

Simpson’s acting career had begun before his pro football career with small parts in 1960s TV (“Dragnet”) before “Roots” and film (“The Klansman,” “The Towering Inferno,” Capricorn One”).

He was also a commentator for “Monday Night Football,” and “The NFL on NBC,” and in the mid-1970s Simpson’s good looks and amiability made him, according to People magazine, “the first b\Black athlete to become a bona fide lovable media superstar.”

The Hertz rent-a-car commercials raised his recognition factor while raising Hertz’s profit by than 50%, making him critical to the company’s bottom line.

It could be said that even more than his success as a football star, the commercials of his running through airports endeared him to the Black community at a time when it was still unusual for a Black person to represent a national, mainstream company.

He remained on Hertz team into the 1990s while also getting income endorsing Pioneer Chicken, Honey Baked Ham and Calistoga water company products and running O.J. Simpson Enterprises, which owned hotels and restaurants.

He married childhood sweetheart Marguerite Whitley when he was 19 and became the father of three children. Before he divorced in 1979, he met waitress and beauty queen Nicole Brown, who he would marry in 1985. A stormy relationship before, during and after their marriage ended, it would lead to a highway car chase as police sought to arrest Simpson for the murder by stabbing of Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

The pursuit, arrest, and trial of Simpson were among the most widely publicized events in American history, Wikipedia reported.

Characterized as the “Trial of the Century,” he was acquitted by a jury in 1995 but found liable in the amount of $33 million in a civil action filed by the victims’ families three years later.

Simpson would be ensnared in the criminal justice system 12 years later when he was arrested after forcing his way into a Las Vegas hotel room to recover sports memorabilia he believed belonged to him.

In 2008, he received a sentence of 33 years and was paroled nine years later in 2017.

When his death was announced, Simpson’s accomplishments and downfalls were acknowledged.

Sports analyst Christine Brennan said: “… Even if you didn’t love football, you knew O.J. because of his ability to transcend sports and of course become the businessman and the pitchman that he was.

“And then the trial, and the civil trial, the civil case he lost, and the fall from grace that was extraordinary and well-deserved, absolutely self-induced, and a man that would never be seen the same again,” she added.

“OJ Simpson played an important role in exposing the racial divisions in America,” attorney Alan Dershowitz, an adviser on Simpson’s legal “dream team” told the Associated Press by telephone. “His trial also exposed police corruption among some officials in the Los Angeles Police Department. He will leave a mixed legacy. Great athlete. Many people think he was guilty. Some think he was innocent.”

“Cookie and I are praying for O.J. Simpson’s children … and his grandchildren following his passing. I know this is a difficult time,” Magic Johnson said on X.

“I feel that the system failed Nicole Brown Simpson and failed battered women everywhere,” attorney Gloria Allred, who once represented Nicole’s family, told ABC News. “I don’t mourn for O.J. Simpson. I do mourn for Nicole Brown Simpson and her family, and they should be remembered.”

Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer about a year ago and was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, according to Pro Football Hall of Fame President Jim Porter. He died in his Las Vegas, Nevada, home with his family at his side.

He is survived by four children: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage and Sydney and Justin from his second marriage. He was predeceased son, Aaren, who drowned in a family swimming pool in 1979.

Sources for this report include Wikipedia, ABC News, Associated Press, and X.