The murder trial of multimillionaire Robert Durst, accused of killing Susan Berman, has restarted last week. Previously, the trial that inspired the HBO documentary miniseries “The Jinx”, was postponed for more than a year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Robert Durst’s Murder Trial Restarts
After being postponed since March 2020, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the murder trial of Robert Durst restarted last week in Los Angeles. The multimillionaire is accused of murdering Susan Berman, the daughter of David Berman, a famous casino mogul from Las Vegas.
On December 23, 2000, 55-year-old Susan Berman was killed at her home in Benedict Canyon, LA. Prosecutors claim that Durst shot Berman over fears for her disclosing cover-up details relating to the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathie in 1982. Deputy district attorney John Lewin spoke at the trial and claimed that everything started with the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathie. Furthermore, he alleged that once Berman turned her back on Durst, she was shot fatally by him at the back of her head. According to Lewin, Durst was allowed to enter Berman’s house because “she trusted him“.
Charged with one count of murder, Durst rejected the accusations. The 78-year-old sat in a wheelchair in the courtroom and was given a tablet PC to help him track the words of the prosecutor due to impaired hearing.
In a 1981 memoir titled Easy Street: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter, Susan Berman recalled details regarding her childhood. She described how her father was involved with mobsters and crime syndicates. Besides those operations, David Berman has also invested in multiple downtown casinos in Las Vegas back in the 1940s. UNLV University Libraries reveal that one such casino is the El Cortez, which operates even now.
The murder trial of the New York real estate heir Durst and his biography inspired 2015 HBO documentary miniseries, dubbed “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst“. The 6 episode miniseries was directed by Andrew Jarecki and written by himself, Marc Smerling, and Zac Stuart-Pontier.