(Reuters) – Accused murderer Robert Durst, the multimillionaire real estate heir, returns to the witness stand on Wednesday at Los Angeles County Superior Court, testifying in his own defense on charges of killing longtime confidante Susan Berman.
Testifying from a wheelchair and wearing an L.A. County jail uniform, Durst on Monday denied killing Berman and said he did not know who did while under questioning from his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin.
DeGuerin will resume his direct examination of Durst when court resumes before exposing his client to cross-examination from prosecutors, most likely Deputy District Attorney John Lewin.
Durst, 78, appeared frail on the witness stand and spoke in a voice weakened from surgery for esophageal cancer, sounding much different from the man with a confident New York accent whom viewers came to know in the 2015 documentary series “The Jinx” on HBO.
Durst, the grandson of a Manhattan real estate magnate, is charged with the December 2000 murder of Berman, a writer he is accused of shooting because of what she might have known about the unsolved disappearance and presumed killing of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, two decades earlier.
Berman, 55, was found slain in her Beverly Hills home after police in New York were reported to have reopened an investigation into the fate of Durst’s wife, who was a medical student when she vanished in 1982.
“The Jinx” examined the cases of Berman and McCormack and Durst’s 2003 acquittal in the killing and dismemberment of a neighbor in Texas.
While shooting the documentary, Durst was caught on microphone apparently confessing, saying to himself: “There it is, you’re caught,” and, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Defendants rarely testify as it exposes them to cross-examination. Durst’s lawyers are apparently trying to demonstrate his frailty to the jury.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Peter Cooney)
