Durst, 76, has never been charged in connection with the death of his wife Kathie Durst, who disappeared in 1982. She was later declared dead despite no body ever being found—but the real estate scion is now on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of his friend Susan Berman in 2000.
Prosecutors allege Durst shot and killed Berman in her Beverly Hills home to prevent police from asking her about the disappearance of his wife. Durst denies killing Berman.
The judge in the case ruled prosecutors can provide evidence and say Durst killed his wife in order to establish motive for Berman’s killing, the Associated Press reported.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin repeatedly told the jury in his opening statement on Wednesday that Durst had killed his wife—and played several clips from the six-part HBO documentary series, titled The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, that prompted Durst’s arrest in 2015.
The BBC reported that jurors were played the finale of the The Jinx, in which he was captured on a hot mic saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Durst has maintained that the last day Kathie Durst was seen in 1982, he had spent the day with her at their home in South Salem, New York, before he put her on a train to Manhattan.
Lewin told jurors that the prosecution will present evidence showing Kathie Durst never got on that train. “We’ll demonstrate that Kathie Durst never left that house. He came home, and he killed her,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
He played several clips from interviews Durst did for the The Jinx in 2010, in which he admits to pushing and shoving his wife and pulling her hair. “I remember dragging her by her hair, and grabbing her arm,” Durst says in one of the clips played to the jury, according to the Associated Press.
Jurors were also played a clip from a DVD commentary Durst did with the filmmakers of All The Good Things, a 2010 film starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst as Robert and Kathie Durst.
“This is more or less accurate,” Durst said in the about one scene in which Gosling terrorizes Dunst and she climbs out of the window onto the terrace of their penthouse in a bid to escape.
The film, directed by Andrew Jarecki, portrays a volatile relationship between the couple and paints Durst as a murderer. Jarecki later made The Jinx after Durst sat for numerous interviews over several years.
But Dick DeGuerin, Durst’s attorney, objected to jurors being shown clips from the film on Wednesday. “This is improper. What’s on the screen is made up,” he said, according to the BBC.
DeGuerin previously got Durst acquitted of murder in the death of his neighbor Morris Black, arguing the killing had been in self-defense. Durst testified that he had killed, dismembered and disposed of Black in 2001, but claimed it had been an accident during a struggle over a gun.
