January 23, 2025

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Equality opinion

No proof linking Robert Durst to 2000 murder: attorney

An lawyer for Robert Durst on Wednesday slammed prosecutors’ circumstance towards the disgraced genuine estate heir as weak — insisting that there is no difficult proof linking him to the slaying of his longtime pal.

“Evidence was missing,” law firm Dick DeGuerin informed the panel in his opening arguments at Durst’s murder trial in Los Angeles.

“Not a fingerprint. No DNA. No blood. No fibers from his clothing no gun. No shoeprints. Practically nothing in his auto when it was searched afterwards. Didn’t do a sexual test. No forensic proof that Bob Durst killed Susan Berman.”

DeGuerin stressed that the stress was on California prosecutors to verify outside of a reasonable doubt that the kooky 78-calendar year-previous killed Susan Berman in 2000.

Susan Berman, Robert Durst
Robert Durst’s law firm insists there is no proof linking him to the murder of Susan Berman.
HBO

“Was she murdered? Yes. Who did it? Which is not our stress which is not your stress. The state’s stress is to show who did it past a affordable question,” he explained. “If it is not Bob, it’s not responsible.”

Durst is on demo for Berman’s alleged “execution-style” murder at her residence in the Benedict Canyon portion of Los Angeles in late December 2000.

The demo experienced started final 12 months but was postponed for some 14 months due to the fact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Robert Durst is assisted by his attorney Dick DeGuerin (R) as he appears in the courtroom for his murder trial at the Inglewood Courthouse
Robert Durst is assisted by his lawyer Dick DeGuerin as he seems in the courtroom for his murder trial at the Inglewood Courthouse on May perhaps 18, 2021.
AL SEIB/POOL/AFP by means of Getty Pictures

In their opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors stated the evidence will exhibit Durst shot and killed Berman to retain her from divulging info she experienced about the disappearance of Durst’s to start with wife, Kathie Durst.

Prosecutors allege Durst killed Kathie and dismembered her system in 1982, when she vanished from their New York home. Durst had confided about the slaying to Berman, his longtime mate, in accordance to the prosecution.

DeGuerin explained Durst discovered Berman’s body when he went to go to her around Xmas Day in 2000 — but stated there was no evidence to show that he shot her.

“The evidence is not there,” he told jurors. “Bob Durst did not destroy Susan Berman, and he does not know who did.”

Durst panicked right after making the grisly discovery and drove to San Francisco — but not before sending a cryptic take note to the Beverly Hills Law enforcement Section expressing there was a “cadaver” in Berman’s household, in accordance to DeGuerin, who states his customer is on the autistic spectrum.

Durst penned the creepy letter to law enforcement, fearful that Berman’s physique would lie there for days, the lawyer mentioned.

The infamous “cadaver letter” was in-depth in duration in the 2015 HBO docu-collection “The Jinx: The Existence and Fatalities of Robert Durst.”

Defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, right, gives Robert Durst a device to read the real time spoken script as he appears in a courtroom as Judge Mark E. Windham gives last instructions to jurors before attorneys begin opening statements at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in Inglewood, Calif
Robert Durst, 78, is charged with just one depend of murder in the killing of his ideal buddy, Susan Berman, in 2000 in her Los Angeles house.
Al Seib/Los Angeles Occasions by means of AP, Pool

But DeGuerin blasted the Emmy-profitable sequence as a “hatchet job” that was “not a documentary.”

The attorney also slammed filmmakers for the remaining scene of the sequence — which provided Durst indicating he “killed them all” on a very hot mic while in a toilet — contacting it “heavily edited.”

Scenes of the “The Jinx” ended up played by prosecutors for the duration of their opening statements Tuesday.