The Jinx: New York property heir found guilty of murdering friend years after HBO documentary

New York multi-millionaire and property heir Robert Durst has been convicted of his best friend’s murder in a case that has fascinated America for years following an infamous TV documentary.

A jury in Los Angeles reached the guilty verdict after a total of just seven hours of deliberation over three days.

They concluded that he shot his friend Susan Berman in her Los Angeles home in December 2000.

During the trial, prosecutors told the court that he had killed Ms Berman to prevent her telling police what she knew about the disappearance and suspected killing of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst, in New York in 1982.

Lawyers told the jury the Durst was a “narcissistic psychopath” and argued that while he was only on trial for one murder, he was actually suspected of three.

Aside from Berman and his wife, prosecutors also said he was thought to have killed a neighbour in Texas while on the run. He had been found not guilty of that killing in 2001.

Durst, now aged 78, was the subject of an HBO documentary in 2015 called The Jinx, in which he apparently confessed.

He was caught on a live microphone in the bathroom saying to himself: “What the hell did I do? …Killed them all, of course.”

Durst, who missed court due to contact with a positive coronavirus case, faces life in prison without parole when he is sentenced on 18 October.