As The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst heads into its final episode tonight on HBO, Robert Durst, the wealthy and eccentric subject of the docuseries, was arrested on Saturday in New Orleans based on a warrant issued by Los Angeles County, according to The New York Times and other news sources. He is currently being held without bond, unsurprising given his history of previously fleeing a court appearance in Texas.
Details of the warrant have not been issued as of this writing, but given the location of the warrant, the arrest is presumed to be associated with the ongoing homicide investigation of the death of Susan Berman, a close confidant of Durst who was believed to have held information related to the disappearance of Durst’s first wife. The docuseries, directed by Andrew Jarecki, strongly suggested in a recent episode that Berman could have attempted to blackmail Durst as the investigation of the Kathie Durst disappearance kicked off again. Jarecki places Durst in California during the window of the Berman murder and indicates Durst turned off his cell phone for the 24-hour period in which Berman was believed to have been murdered.
The most recent episode ended on a dramatic cliffhanger where ***SPOILER*** a letter was uncovered written by Durst to Berman that matches an anonymous note mailed to the L.A.P.D. notifying them of Berman’s death. Both notes are written with block letters and contain identical misspellings of Beverly Hills.
Durst was previously acquitted for the 2001 murder of a neighbor in Galveston, Texas. As The Jinx covered that case, Durst famously provided this quote, “I did not kill my best friend; I did dismember him.” No charges were brought against him for Kathie Durst’s disappearance.
There is no word how, if at all, this recent development will be reflected on tonight’s episode. It is likely too late for Jarecki to reflect this recent development much beyond a simple postscript.
