• e-mail

Ex-real estate tycoon Robert Durst has admitted he lied to police about speaking to his wife on the phone the night she disappeared.

The 78-year-old, who is currently on trial in Los Angeles for the 2000 killing of his best friend Susan Berman, also admitted to the court that he used cocaine, methamphetamine and 'lots of marijuana' in 1970s New York City.

He also claimed that he and his wife had a happy marriage, despite him insisting that she have an abortion against her will.

Testifying on Wednesday, Durst said that he has changed his mind many times about whether he actually saw his wife - Kathie Durst - step onto a commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in 1982.

Ex-real estate scion Robert Durst, 78, answers questions from defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, left, while testifying in his murder trial at the Inglewood Courthouse on Monday, August 9, 2021, in Inglewood. Durst is charged with the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. He testified Monday that he did not kill his best friend Berman, but on Wednesday said he lied to police about seeing his wife step onto a train the night she disappeared

Testifying on Wednesday, Durst said that he has changed his mind many times about whether he actually saw his wife - Kathie Durst (pictured with Durst left on their wedding day and right) - step onto a commuter train for Manhattan on the night she disappeared in 1982 

He added that he lied to police when he told them he later spoke to Kathie Durst on the phone. Prosecutors say Durst shot Ms Berman in the back of the head in December 2000 in her Beverly Hills home,  to stop her from incriminating him in the disappearance of his wife.

'Everyone has asked me that question and I have changed my mind maybe a dozen times,' Durst said under questioning from his attorney Dick DeGuerin at his Los Angeles murder trial. 

'Did I actually see Kathie walk through the doors and onto the train? The answer is no. But there is no place else to go.'

Durst has never been charged in the disappearance of Kathie Durst, who was later declared legally dead.

But prosecutors have been allowed to present evidence that Durst killed his wife and then killed Berman when she was about to tell authorities what she knew.

He testified that he never saw or heard from his wife again after watching her step onto the train platform in the New York hamlet of Katonah near their home on January 31, 1982.

Durst is on trial for the 2000 murder of his best friend, Susan Berman. Prosecutors allege Durst killed Berman to prevent her from speaking to the police about Kathie's disappearance 

Pictured: Judge Mark Windham speaks while New York real estate scion Robert Durst takes the stand and testifies in his murder trial at the Inglewood Courthouse on Monday, August 9, 2021

Pictured: Defense attorney David Chesnoff listens while defendant Robert Durst testifies in his murder trial at the Inglewood Courthouse on Monday, August 9, 2021, in Inglewood, California

But days later he told a detective investigating her disappearance that he had called her and spoken to her at their apartment in Manhattan, where she had gone because she had medical school in the Bronx the following morning.

'That was a lie,' said Durst. 'I wanted to convince him that Kathie had gotten back.'

Durst, 78, spoke slowly in a strained, raspy voice, sitting in a wheelchair instead of the witness chair, and reading his lawyer´s questions on a tablet giving live transcriptions because he struggles with hearing.

He said he was not worried after not hearing from her for several days. He said she often worked very long shifts in her internship and slept in the dorm rooms of friends.

Durst testified that even when he heard answering machine messages from her school saying she hadn't been showing up, he assumed it was because of her out-of-control cocaine use, which had been taxing their relationship.

'I was imagining that she was out someplace having fun,' Durst said. 'It hadn't occurred to me that anything had happened to her. It was more like, what had Kathie done to Kathie?'

During his testimony on Wednesday, Durst also said that he used cocaine, meth and 'lots of marijuana' before his wife disappeared, back when the couple lived with Ms Berman in New York City.

'I tried it several times,' Durst said about cocaine. 'Fortunately, I cannot snort anything because I have bad hay fever. So whenever I would try cocaine, my nose would be clogged up for three or four days.' 

Telling defense attorneys his wife was a heavy user of the drug, he said that he took methamphetamine and smoked 'lots of marijuana.'

'There was lots of drugs around,' he said of the time period. 'Theoretically, cocaine and methamphetamine and marijuana were illegal, but the only people who seemed to get arrested were black people in Harlem.'

Durst said Kathie fabricated and exaggerated stories about his abusing her, including a pair of incidents that were dramatized in the film 'All Good Things' starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst and shown to jurors earlier in the trial.

In one of them, Kathie climbed out the window of their apartment, onto a terrace, and into the apartment of a neighbor, who she told Durst was beating her. 

Durst said he hadn't even been interacting with his wife, and had thought she was in the study the whole time.

He testified that someone 'had convinced Kathie that if she could show I was physically abusing her, she would get a bigger part of the settlement if we got divorced.'

He also disputed an account from the film that was given in the testimony of Kathie's brother Jim McCormack, who recalled Durst pulling her out of a gathering with her family by the hair.

'I did grab Kathie´s hat, put it on Kathie´s head, grab Kathie´s coat and push her towards the door,' Durst said.

The image above shows the promotional movie poster for the HBO documentary The Jinx. Durst was arrested on a warrant in Berman´s killing in New Orleans in 2015 on the eve of the airing of the final episode of the HBO documentary

During the documentary, Durst was caught on a hot mic appearing to confess to the killings

He claimed that the couple were happily married, despite him insisting that she have an abortion against her will, according to the New York Post.

'I was very, very much against having children,' he told the court. 'I felt it was so much of a responsibility. I did not want to be a daddy. My childhood had been a disaster. I did not want the same thing to happen to my child.'

DeGuerin, Durst's attorney, made the rare and risky move of calling a defendant in a murder trial to the stand on Monday.

His first questions to Durst were: 'Did you kill Susan Berman?' and 'Do you know who did?' with Durst answering 'no' to both. DeGuerin then guided Durst on a step-by-step telling of his biography that is likely to continue for several more days.

Durst was arrested on a warrant in Berman´s killing in New Orleans in 2015 on the eve of the airing of the final episode of the HBO documentary series 'The Jinx' on his life and the deaths he's been connected to. 

He told many of the same stories in the series that he repeated from the stand.

Prosecutors also have been allowed to present evidence from a 2003 Texas case, where DeGuerin first put Durst on the stand. 

Durst had testified that his Galveston neighbor Morris Black was killed in a struggle after entering his home with a gun.

In that trial, Durst described chopping up and disposing of Black's body, and the jury acquitted him of murder.

In the Berman killing, prosecutors allege that she was about to talk to police about Durst's involvement in his wife's disappearance.  

Robert Durst stands up at his trial for murder of his best friend Susan Berman and tells judge he is not faking his illness or looking for sympathy while holding up his catheter bag

The health of Robert Durst has been a concern throughout his lengthy trial for the execution-style murder of his friend Susan Berman, 55, in 2000. 

On Monday, Durst, 78, stood before the court to outright deny claims by the prosecution that he was faking his ailments in order to generate sympathy from jurors. 

In the past, the trial has been delayed while Durst received treatment for bladder cancer. 

Robert Durst told the judge in his trial he was not faking his illness or looking for sympathy while holding up his urine bag

#RobertDurst - WATCH: "I'm not seeking sympathy from the jury!" He said his head is shaved because that's the only haircut he can get in the jail. He said his chair was not purposely lowered in Galveston. He says he wants the catheter out. @LawCrimeNetwork pic.twitter.com/qs9i45Z3uP

— Cathy Russon (@cathyrusson) June 28, 2021

Appearing in prison scrubs and with a shaved head, Durst denied manipulating jurors.

'I am not seeking sympathy from the jury,' he said in open court on Monday. 'My head is shaved because it is the only kind of hair cut that I am able to get in the jail.'

He also denied deliberately lowering his chair and said he was trying to get doctors to remove his catheter.

'I don't think it is meaningful,' he said.

Deputy District Attorney John Lewin told the court that he changed Durst's urine bag during a break in court proceedings suggesting that he was doing Durst a favor and showing goodwill to him.

Advertisement