Original subtitles

Kelly siegler: On September the 22nd, 2003,

Multimillionaire robert durst was on trial

In galveston, texas, for the murder of morris black.

That trial was the beginning of one

Of the biggest legal stories in america.

All eyes were on this case.

This was an international story,

Because the defendant owned

More than anybody probably owned

In all of new york city.

This case was not going to be a whodunnit.

It was going to be a why done it.

This is what mr. Durst did to morris black.

How in the hell do we get this jury

To look at what happened

Versus all the [bleep] he did afterwards

That makes him look like a very dangerous,

Calculated killer?

Kelly: This was not a case that I was involved in.

The lawyers that were involved are all friends of mine.

But even as much as I thought I knew,

I had no idea what was really going on in galveston county.

None of it makes sense. Absolutely none of it.

It would be nice to believe that when you have the evidence,

When it's credible and compelling,

You're going to get the right verdict.

But when you have a defendant

With unlimited resources and money,

Unfortunately, that's not the way it always happens.

It's important to find out truly what happened

Behind the scenes in galveston county.

Truly what happened with that jury,

With that verdict, with those lawyers.

That's a story nobody has ever heard before.

[theme song playing]

[tense music plays]

They broadcast it as a torso floating in the bay,

And the body would have been down in here.

And I actually pointed out to the bay, and I said,

"look at those dark spots...

Just under the surface of the water."

Out beyond the pier,

You can see the dark shadows of the bags out there.

Then we fished out three bags

That were floating under the water.

That was two arms and a leg.

And then the missing leg was found farther west

From the crime scene, washed up on the beach.

There was no head.

Kind of seared into your memory, if you will.

It's hard to forget.

Finished all the chores for the day, I sit down,

Turn on the tv to watch "Sunday night football,"

And within two or three seconds, the phone rings.

I answered the phone, and dispatch says,

"this is galveston dispatch.

We have a torso floating in the bay."

And I said, "I'm sorry,

I didn't hear you right. What did you say?"

I got in the car, and I responded to the scene.

I think one of the things people don't know

Is sometimes prosecutors are on call,

Kind of like a doctor's on call.

In special crimes at harris county,

We were on call 24 hours a day

With a beeper or with the cell phone.

Joel: You don't want to make any assumptions at that point.

You let the evidence tell you where to go next.

We have the torso, two legs, two arms, and three empty bags.

I see trash in the bags.

There was a cover for a bow saw.

One thing that really stood out that I remember,

There was a newspaper flyer that said, "resident"

And had an address on avenue k.

The immediate thought was that that address

May very well have something to do with this crime.

Using fingerprints, the medical examiner is able

To confirm the identity of that headless body

As being 71-year-old morris black.

Why would anybody want morris black dead,

And why would anybody need to mutilate his body

In such a horrible way?

While morris black's family is notified about his death,

The galveston police department arrives

At that address on avenue k.

The trash was out at the curb,

And inside the trash can,

There was a .22 pistol

And an empty shell casing.

We're very much thinking we had a murder weapon at that point.

The police department also recovered

An eyeglass prescription in the trash,

And the name of the prescription belonged to robert durst.

At this time, nobody knew who robert durst was.

We also found an eviction notice for morris black

For apartment number one.

Inside morris black's apartment, there was blood in the drain...

The sink, the shower.

Certainly evidence that would indicate

That blood was being washed down the drain.

And they found evidence of blood in the hallway,

Going from morris black's apartment

To the apartment across the hall.

The landlord told us that

Dorothy ciner was the person who rented

The apartment across the hall from morris black.

Dorothy ciner is not at the apartment,

So the police department gets a search warrant

For that second apartment, and when they go inside,

They find blood spatter on the walls.

There are drop cloths and cuts in the linoleum,

Consistent with dismemberment of the body.

Morris black was kind of a loner.

He had a good heart, but he could be difficult.

Morris black would wear, like, a little knit cap all the time,

And he walked around like a sailor man,

You know, and he was a merchant marine.

The way he lived was off the grid.

He kept to himself.

Usually, you can get a better feel for your victim,

But morris black just kind of stayed this shadowy character

That not a lot was ever known about.

The autopsy showed that there was an injury

To the head while he was alive,

'cause there was blood in the lungs.

Only way you can get that is flowing blood

Coming down the esophagus, down into the lungs,

And the person is breathing at the time.

We know he wasn't shot

In the torso, the arms, or the legs.

We know there was a gunshot,

Because of the high-velocity spatter.

Likely conclusion,

Morris black was shot in the head.

So, this person who rented the apartment

Under the name dorothy ciner

Was somebody we wanted to talk to.

Through the internet, we were able to locate dorothy ciner

And actually called her up and talked to her.

She had no connection to galveston.

She had no connection to morris black.

We ask her about a robert durst.

She went to high school with robert durst.

We do not believe in coincidences

In the criminal justice system.

And the fact that robert durst

Went to high school with dorothy ciner,

I call it circumstantial evidence.

During the investigation, we came across information

That robert durst may have dressed as a woman

From time to time.

Librarians said that they did see

Robert durst and morris black together at the library,

And that robert durst would come in dressed in drag.

And so we figured that robert durst is dorothy ciner.

♪♪♪

[police sirens blaring]

Officers pulled over the vehicle,

Which was driven by robert durst.

And inside the car, they found a bow saw

And traces of blood in the back portion of the suv.

Officer cody and I were upstairs of galveston police department

Where robert durst was,

And he asked what his bond was

And cody told him it was $250,000.

And then ask him,

"do you have that kind of money?"

And his response was, "not on me."

He's booked and then he made bond,

I believe, the next day.

At that time, I got a call from a new york times reporter,

Asking me to look at an old photo

And see if it's the same robert durst.

From there, all hell broke close.

We find out robert durst was actually

A real estate heir from new york city.

His family owns times square.

So, what in the world is robert durst doing

Dressed as a woman in galveston, texas,

In some crappy apartment?

Galveston is a port city,

So we have people from all over the world

Coming through our port.

And it seems to be the perfect place to get away,

Disappear and hide if you're looking to do that.

One of the reporters told me that he was a suspect

In the disappearance of his wife from a long time ago,

And that that case had never been solved.

He's also a suspect in la

In his best friend, susan berman's, murder

Only a year earlier.

Maybe he was hiding in galveston,

Because these charges were heating up.

When the time comes for durst to show up

For the initial hearings in the morris black case,

He is nowhere to be found.

He was on the lam, and turns out he's got resources

To be on the lam forever if he wants.

You know, he's that wealthy,

Just paid the cash to bond out like that,

There's no telling where he is now.

I mean, he's gone.

Someone killed someone and cut their body up?

That seems crazy.

Robert durst hired

The dream team of texas.

Justice isn't black or white.

It's green, and he had the green.

Has arrested robert durst dt

For the murder of morris black.

But with seemingly unlimited financial resources,

Robert durst skips town, and now he's on the run.

Robert, please come home.

The trust has the wherewithal to pay for your legal defense.

Forty-five days goes on,

They're searching for robert durst.

He's finally found 1,500 miles away from galveston, texas,

In pennsylvania, where he's arrested

Shoplifting a sandwich.

Bobbi: He rented a car,

And he's using morris black's id

And he's using morris black's name.

♪♪♪

While all this is going on, you also have a prosecutor

In westchester county, new york,

Looking into a murder allegation against robert durst there,

And another one in la county, california,

Where they're looking at the possibility

Of robert durst also committing a murder there.

Jenna: Because there was a lot of evidence,

The morris black case looks open and shut.

It doesn't look good for robert durst.

And then this guy who just got arrested shoplifting a sandwich,

Has hired literally the dream team of texas.

Dick deguerin,

Mike ramsey and chip lewis.

You don't get better.

We all knew at that point it's going to be a fight.

When robert durst hired dick deguerin,

Everybody knew who he was.

He was the biggest guy to hire in texas.

He was the best.

And I knew that personally, because I tried

The gerard goldberg case against him,

And I got to see firsthand, upfront and personal,

How great he was at his job.

I also got to see things

That I thought he made mistakes doing

Where I felt like maybe I could share those thoughts

With joel and kurt as they prepared for their trial.

And I did that.

And I knew chip better than both of those guys,

Because he's a friend of mine.

And chip worked at the da's office

When I was at the da's office.

He was an up-and-coming star prosecutor

Who was great in trial, who is very, very charming.

He left the office to go out and make his own name

In the criminal defense world.

So I knew that joel and kurt were going to have

Their work cut out for them.

I had enjoyed a lot of success

And created a very favorable reputation.

That very fortunate set of circumstances

Put me in a position to be hired on the durst case.

Here I am, just over 30, going to be trying

The most high profile case

In the country, if not the world.

Joel: I remember walking over to the main courthouse,

And as soon we turned the corner,

There was 50, 100 cameras.

It was bizarre.

All eyes were on this case.

This was an international story, because the defendant

Was the son of a billionaire with a b.

Somebody who owned more

Than anybody probably owned in all of new york city.

This case was not going to be a whodunnit.

It was going to be a why done it.

Because with the amount of forensics that you have

Cutting a body up,

They're gonna be able to tie back

Something with the dna to durst.

That's unavoidable.

We filed a pleading with the court that said

"you do not need to do dna."

There will be no contest

As to the identity of the shooter.

Mr. Durst swears to affirm that he killed morris black.

It was self-defense,

Resulting in an accidental discharge of a gun.

It was not a murder.

Susan: Everybody was shocked

That that was going to be the defense.

Well, of course, there was always a question

In everyone's mind whether he was insane.

You have someone who is trying

To hide his identity dressing as a woman,

Killed someone and cut their body up?

That seems crazy.

How does self-defense end up

With body parts in a trash bag thrown in the bay?

Doesn't quite make sense.

When you read the legal paragraph

Of what justifies self-defense, there's a lot of words.

And it's hard to make a jury understand all those words

And all those little elements and pieces matter

Before self-defense applies.

Before you're allowed to use deadly force self-defense,

You have to believe the threat is imminent,

Like about to happen,

And you have to use reasonable force

Necessary to defend yourself.

Self-defense cases are harder to prosecute than you think.

Chip: We knew the atrocious, horrific facts

And what they were.

The question was,

How in the hell do we get this jury

To look at what happened

Versus all the [bleep] he did afterwards

That makes him look not only guilty,

But like a very dangerous, calculated killer.

But we had all the money in the world

To do all the work we wanted to do to get there.

I think if we can keep this on track,

We're gonna win this case.

Kelly: Robert durst is charged

With the murder of his neighbor, morris black.

As the prosecution prepares to go to trial,

They come to court with what you would assume

To be a plethora of evidence.

And for his part, robert durst has hired

The best defense lawyers that money can buy.

We had everything at our disposal.

We had an unlimited budget.

We had the ability to do things

That 99% of the time,

A criminal defense lawyer doesn't have to do.

Deep, involved, expensive polling

Of thousands of people

To put together a most compelling motion

To change the venue was the first in that step.

We could show the folks

That met the criteria for jury selection in galveston county

Were overwhelmingly predisposed to believe bob durst was guilty

Based on what had been reported to date.

Joel: We didn't have that kind of money.

We did not have any polls,

But we're getting affidavits from citizens,

And we're showing that, yes, he could get a fair trial.

Change of venue, if a judge grants that,

It's going to cost the county a lot of money,

Because you have to pay to put up not just twelve jurors

Plus two alternates in another county,

But all the security, the bailiff,

However many deputies need to come

To be in charge of the jury and the defendant,

The court staff, the judge,

The prosecution team, the defense team.

The county's got to pay for all that

Times every single night you're in trial,

And they don't come home on the weekends.

I think that when you add up all those expenses,

You're easily talking about with a trial that lasted

As long as this one did, close to a million dollars.

So that's a huge bill,

And they don't have the money for that.

The judge has a lot of discretion on a change of venue.

However, the polling was so thorough,

The support for the motion was overwhelming,

That a court of appeals, if she denied change of venue,

Would likely make them try the whole case again.

The goal in mind was to posture the case

To a point that the state would agree to trade

Our change of venue motion for individual voir dire.

The defense's position was,

"if you give us individual jury selection,

If you permit us to examine jurors one by one,

Then we don't have to take this show on the road."

Mike ramsey and dick deguerin could literally drill down

On individual jurors

About whether they could find

That someone could kill his neighbor,

Decapitate him, dismember him, throw him in galveston bay,

And still walk out of that courtroom.

So, in a typical case, they all would have had

30 minutes to pick their entire jury and be done.

In this case, they traded it for unlimited voir dire,

Which means that chip lewis,

Because he was the one that handled voir dire,

Got up and talked to every individual juror

For as long as he wanted to.

And then they decided what they wanted to do

With each juror.

Whole different ballgame.

So, strategically,

What he did, playing that card, was brilliant,

And I've never seen it done before that way, ever.

The defense team definitely took advantage

Of the individual jury questioning

And spent a lot of time with jurors.

Chip lewis in particular did a lot of the jury questioning,

And he was getting to be friends with those jurors

Before they ever walked into that jury box.

I'm watching jury selection.

They bring the panel of 300 jurors in,

And he proceeds to, by the next day,

Have memorized every single one of their names

And connected it to their face.

I was very surprised that he had taken the time

To memorize everybody's name.

We ask a lot of questions about loved ones,

Friends, somebody close to you

That has dealt with mental issues and struggles.

Plant the seed in the jury's mind.

They're starting to think already

Before they're even chosen,

There's something about mental issues in this case.

The defense was very focused with the jury questioning.

"have you ever been in a situation

Where something happens,

You didn't mean for it to happen,

And you kind of lose your mind?

We're looking for jurors

Who have been inoculated to the fact

That you're going to see some awful, awful [bleep].

What I'm going to ask you to do

Is compartmentalize that awful [bleep].

And the way you do that is you follow the universal law.

It is the law of nature.

Nothing that happens after the fact

Can change how morris black died.

[eerie music plays]

In a moment, ladies and gentlemen,

I'm going to read the court's charge to you,

Which is the court's instructions on the law

And the legal definitions

That you need to decide this case.

Jury instructions did not support

The defense narrative

About they couldn't consider anything after the killing.

-We're ready to proceed? -Yes, your honor.

It took nearly two months

For both sides to pick this jury.

The trial of robert durst was then set to begin

On September the 22nd, 2003,

Which was almost two years after the murder occurred.

Trial is supposed to start, and all of a sudden,

There are these jailhouse tapes.

Taped jail conversations have the potential

To completely change the course of a trial.

Days before we were to begin the trial, ♪♪♪

36 hours' worth of recorded phone jail conversations

With robert durst arrived.

Durst had previously been in custody

In pennsylvania, and the pennsylvania jail

Had hours of recordings of durst

Speaking to mrs. Durst.

Kelly: We learned that robert durst married

Real estate power player debrah lee charatan

In December of 2000.

Their marriage began less than nine months

Before durst killed morris black.

As you hear robert durst talking to his wife,

You hear how cunning he is, how smart he is.

So, you get the real essence and character of the man

In these tapes in a way that poor,

Little pitiful [indistinct] robert durst

Sitting in the courtroom, looks nothing like.

Susan: There's a conversation between him and his wife

Where she did not want him to use one of his attorneys

Because she was afraid

That he wanted to use the insanity defense.

And what good lawyer wouldn't consider it in this case?

The problem was the family trust had a provision

That if he was ever found insane

Or incompetent in a court of law,

He would be eliminated from the trust.

The 750,000,000 that he standed to inherit

Would not go to him.

Kelly: These calls were mostly about conversations

Having to do with the money.

So you would think that a lot of that

Is not even gonna be relevant.

And that was the ruling that judge chris made,

That however cold-blooded he seems,

Discussing money has nothing to do

With what happened in the murder of morris black.

So she didn't let hardly any

Of the jail call information into evidence.

The defendant, robert durst, stands charged by indictment

With the offense of murder.

The defendant has pleaded not guilty.

The texas trial of the century is ready to begin.

He murdered morris black in cold blood

And tried to get away with it.

As the prosecutors are presenting their case,

It looks pretty bad for durst.

The prosecutors had a mound of evidence

That seemed insurmountable.

Kelly: Motive is not a required element in any murder case.

We're all taught that. We all get that.

But we also know that if you can't put

A motive out there that makes sense to a jury,

You're probably not gonna win your case.

The prosecution laid out

This was a premeditated murder to kill morris black

To assume his identity.

The prosecutors laid out evidence

That robert durst was no dummy.

He didn't just panic.

He executed morris black,

And then he proceeded to chop up his body

And try to get rid of it.

I mean, people within our office,

Lawyers on the case, thought

There's no way, no way you can win this case.

When the defense got up there,

They talked about his life as a young boy

And some of the hardships.

He had a tough father, by all accounts.

We establish he witnessed his mother commit suicide

When he was eleven years old

And was raised essentially by a caretaker.

The defense wanted to portray him

As having some mental illness or a little bit of insanity

Without using it as an actual defense.

We let elements of asperger's

On the spectrum, all of the quirks

That are bob durst start early and often.

We didn't need the jury to like him.

We needed them to understand he's a strange bird.

Because of his asperger's, because of his upbringing,

He was very prone to being bullied.

Robert durst appeared to me

To be very small.

He looked like maybe he was about 5'5"

To 5'7" at the most.

He's a very unintimidating person.

The defense dressed him in overly big clothes

To make him look smaller.

Deguerin raised his chair all the way up

To make dick look that much larger than bob.

My bailiff would go during the breaks and lower his seat,

So the seat went up and down all day.

We were painting a picture of bob

That we wanted the jury to see.

We presented a stark contrast between the quirky,

Eccentric, little frail bob durst

And the aggressive, threatening morris black.

Morris black would sometimes get loud,

Or he could be mean or belligerent.

The defense said they were friends.

For whatever reason, their friendship unraveled,

And morris black targeted durst

And got killed in the process.

Once a jury starts to think, "this son of a bitch.

I mean, nobody's gonna miss him.

The world's better off without him,"

It makes bob durst a whole lot more likable.

No one deserves to be murdered, obviously,

But there are different degrees of victims too.

Let's keep it real.

And it's a lot easier to prosecute a case

When your victim is nice and sweet and innocent

Than when they're not.

We had a body, and we had a lot of

Other circumstantial evidence.

It was good evidence, but what we didn't have,

The smoking gun is not there, so to speak.

In this case, it'd be the smoking head.

How do you prove it without the head?

How do you prove that it was accidental, intentional?

How do you prove that? I don't know.

Periodically, when we were all together,

Ramsey would inevitably, with perfect comedic timing,

Say, they didn't find the head yet, did they?

It was always out there in orbit.

You better hope they don't find the head,

Because if that bullet hole's back here

And not right here, we got a problem.

Kelly: All defendants are innocent until proven guilty.

The burden of proof

Rests on the prosecution to prove the case.

The state calls one of their main witnesses,

Their lead detective, cody cazalas,

To walk through every piece of evidence

That connects to robert durst.

Once the prosecution finishes

With their direct of cody cazalas,

The defense begins their cross-examination.

I knew when he was asked what can you point to

That shows this is not self-defense?

You could hear a pin drop.

And he said, "nothing."

♪♪♪

Once the prosecution rests, ♪♪♪

The defense's first witness was robert durst.

Putting a defendant on the stand in a murder case,

When you're as odd as robert durst is,

That's a pretty risky move.

There was never a doubt that bob had to testify.

There's no rule that says

You have to put the defendant on the stand,

And it has to come out of his mouth to say

I acted in self-defense,

But a lot of old-school defense lawyers do believe

That if you're gonna walk a defendant

And get them found not guilty, if it's self-efense,

They have to get up there and claim self-defense.

Durst is answering questions from his defense team

About what it was like to be disguised as a woman

While he was living in galveston.

And he proceeded to tell these stories

About his wig falling off,

His wig catching fire one time.

It was incredibly bizarre and funny,

And jurors were laughing.

If I were the prosecutor and I saw the jury

Laughing along with my defendant,

I would be pretty alarmed 'cause they're liking this guy.

I think the only way you can counter that

Is to just keep hammering home

We're talking about a man who got a bow saw

And tried to cut up a human body

To conceal the fact that he committed murder.

Don't let them take the monster and make you think he's likable.

Come on.

The defense did talk about how robert durst

And morris black were friends

And they lived across the hall from each other.

One time, he'd even given him a key to the apartment.

But then robert durst and morris black

Had gotten into an argument,

And durst had taken his key

Back from morris black,

And he did not want morris black

To come back into his apartment anymore.

Robert durst testifies at the time of the murders

That when he came back into the apartment,

Morris black was there in the apartment.

Robert durst wanted morris to leave,

But morris black didn't want to leave and knew

Where robert durst kept the gun.

And so morris black went to go get the gun

And that the gun accidentally went off

In this fight over the gun.

The judge did allow robert durst

To step down off the witness stand

And demonstrate with his attorney to the jurors

How exactly the struggle happened

And how the gun went off.

Their whole presentation

Was choreographed down to every step.

What you can see happen in a courtroom

With your own eyes because it's acted out in front of you

Is always gonna be more impactful

Than just sitting on a witness stand talking about it.

That is his version of events that he has

All the right in the world to describe and show the jury.

If they chose to believe it, that's up to the jury.

Watching this reenactment, it was plausible to me

This could have happened.

They were riveted, standing up,

Leaning over when durst did the demonstration,

The struggle over the gun.

The way the struggle happened,

The way he fell, and where morris black was shot,

Right above the nose, through the eyes,

Could not be contradicted by the head.

The head was never found.

When the prosecution cross-examined the witness,

They were looking to tear robert durst's testimony apart.

Kurt and I split up the cross-examination,

And I focused on the dismemberment.

You don't cut people up after an accident or self-defense.

And if you look at the cuts, this is not something

That was done haphazardly or in a crisis.

This is something that was done with the skill of a surgeon.

This case is not about

What happened to morris black's body after he was dead.

This case is not about what bob durst did

After morris black died.

The sole issue for you ladies and gentlemen to decide

Is how.

And the crux of this case

Is whether the state has proved to you

Beyond a reasonable doubt that bob durst...

Knowingly, intentionally,

Voluntarily killed morris black.

There's no motive and nothing to gain.

What makes sense about anything

That this man did on September 28,

September 29, September 30,

And October 1 when he fled.

None of it makes sense.

The defendant has demonstrated a willingness

To commit horrid, indescribable acts of butchery.

That man, robert durst, is guilty of murder.

Thank you.

I think that if you would have asked

Anybody in the courthouse, we would have all told you,

Well, he's going to be found guilty.

But my brother at the time was a court reporter

In a different courtroom, and he went and watched

A lot of the trial, and he told me

How it was going pretty much every day,

And I had even kind of been warned

It wasn't going great for the prosecution.

Your job as a juror is to look and consider all the evidence.

The prosecution's message in their closing arguments

Were methodical and based on evidence.

They weren't as compelling.

The jury must be convinced that mr. Durst

Voluntarily and intentionally killed morris black.

The fact of running away alone

Cannot supply that evidence.

A huge part of courtroom winning or losing is theater,

And it's drama, and it's connecting with a jury.

And I think that the defense attorneys

Just had a better connection.

We went into the jury room for deliberations.

A vote was taken, some for guilty,

Some for not guilty, and some undecided.

A lot of us are thinking this may be a hung jury.

As the jury enters the courtroom,

Viewers from all over america are tuning in

To learn the fate of robert durst.

...We, the jury, find the defendant,

Robert durst,

Not guilty.

[camera shutters clicking]

The courtroom went berserk.

Reporters were running out of the courtroom

To do live shots.

People were crying.

Everybody in the country,

Especially everybody in law enforcement

Or a prosecutorial background,

Thought this was the greatest layup of all time.

There's no way he's not gonna be convicted.

But criminal justice for the dursts of the world

Is far different than the average citizen.

[laughter]

Justice isn't black or white. It's green.

And he had the green.

I don't want to believe that just because

A defendant has a lot of money,

He can subvert the system and walk away

With a not guilty verdict and not get justice.

A disaster happened, and it makes me sick.

I mean, joel and kurt took their loss quietly,

A lot better than I would have.

When we heard the verdict, you need to respect the jury

And not react when you hear the verdict.

It's a tough job.

We presented the case to the best of our ability.

It was a pretty awful moment because I have to act

Like I don't have an opinion about it,

But in my head, I'm thinking, "oh, my god,

This guy's really dangerous,

And he's about to be loosened on the public."

I don't think the jurors had any idea

The lens they were going to be under,

The second they said not guilty.

I did not want to convict this man on what I thought.

I wanted to make a decision on what I knew,

On the evidence that was presented to me.

Based on the evidence that was presented to us,

There was reasonable doubt.

I feel that the prosecution

Did not prove how morris black died.

We all, as jurors, agreed

That the "not guilty" is saying "not proven."

After robert durst was found not guilty,

The other charges were kind of just left over.

Nobody had the zeal to worry about those.

And they all pretty quickly just came to an agreement

That he would serve a little bit of time

And plead to those cases,

And it would all be over with in texas.

After the jury verdict, there were accusations of,

Were any of the jurors paid off?

Did durst get to them?

I believe in this case, justice was bought.

♪♪♪

With durst's money,in th,

Justice was bought.

...Not guilty.

What was real surprising to me was

Soon after the case was over,

The head juror on the trial

Started visiting robert durst in jail with his family,

Becoming friends with him after trial.

What can I tell you?

One of the jurors subsequent to that case

Worked for bob durst himself.

And then bob donated one million dollars

To galveston county to build a law library.

I think that the jurors in this case,

If you ask them today, would change their verdict.

I'm getting kind of emotional here 'cause, I mean,

Now, you know, you find out all this stuff afterwards,

And I just felt like we were all played.

Robert durst was found not guilty

For what happened with morris black.

But his real day of reckoning

Came in a courtroom in la county

For the susan berman case

With a prosecutor named john lewin.

John lewin was able to build

A strong circumstantial evidence case

Because he took the incriminating evidence

From robert durst's friends

And connected that to the incriminating evidence

From robert durst himself

To link robert durst to the murder of susan berman.

John lewin was granted access to all of kurt and joel's files

And spent a whole lot of time talking to them,

As well as the people involved with the kathy durst case.

John lewin was able to take a bird's-eye view

Of what was going on all across the country,

From new york to texas to la,

And make it all understandable and put it all together

And make it all admissible in that one trial in la county,

And nobody else ever did that.

I got the first call when bob durst

Was arrested in new orleans on the california warrant.

He said, "I need you to get here.

They've arrested me for murder."

Based on robert durst's history,

There was no telling what would happen

With the susan berman trial in la.

I mean, lightning struck once, maybe it would strike again.

Kelly: Dick deguerin was durst's defense lawyer.

Chip lewis was his defense lawyer.

John lewin gave his opening statement,

And then they shut down the courtroom for covid.

And it was over a year later that they continued the trial.

The beautiful thing that happened,

And john lewin figured out a way

To make the motive of why he killed susan berman

Have to necessarily include

What happened in galveston

And what happened in westchester county.

All three of these cases, ladies and gentlemen,

Are interrelated.

Everything starts with kathy durst's

Disappearance and death at the hands of mr. Durst.

And he had to kill susan berman

Because he feared that she was going to talk.

And then he had to kill morris black

Because morris black knew who he was

And was putting pressure on him.

Chip: Judge windham was a fine, fine man.

I like him a lot. We're friends.

But when he overruled my motion

To keep out morris black,

I told him on the bench,

"we don't need to have the trial. It's over."

There was no ability

To make robert durst a sympathetic figure.

A jury, to hear that in the face of everything else,

They were never gonna acquit him.

When they put robert durst on the stand,

He was sickly, he was older.

The pizzazz had gone away,

And john lewin was super prepared and went at him.

It's ridiculous. It's patently absurd.

It's a fiction.

Robert durst is found guilty

Of the first-degree murder of susan berman.

More than 20 years after her death,

He is sentenced to life without parole.

There was a lot of satisfaction

In watching the outcome of the los angeles trial

Because it did feel like he was being accountable,

Not just for susan berman's murder,

But for morris black and for kathy durst's murder.

Kelly: Because of what happened in galveston county,

John lewin was able to use all that

To help put his case together.

So at the end of the day, there was a point to all of it.

It didn't happen as soon or as nicely or as easily

As maybe we would have wanted,

But in the end, they got justice.