The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015) s01e04 Episode Script

We kept Durst down here.
He had the TV up there.
He had one shower.
There's two cells for two people, but he was always in here by himself.
He slept in that cell.
In prison, you're not going to get a whole bunch of rich people in there.
I mean, most people in prison are from lower, lower income families, not educated.
I got along with those people well.
They all treated me with enormous respect.
I was Mr.
Bob in prison.
What they accomplished in their lives, whatever it might have been, they accomplished on their own.
I'll never do anything on my own.
It'll always be this thing or all this money or whatever it is.
No matter what I do in my life, I will have started out rich.
60-year-old Robert Durst sits in a Texas jail now charged with the gruesome death of his neighbor two years ago.
Texas authorities aren't the only ones interested in Durst.
In New York, police continue to investigate the 1982 disappearance of his first wife Kathleen, and police in Los Angeles also want to talk to him about the unsolved murder of friend Susan Berman in December of 2000.
I got a case, but I can't prove it quite yet, and for New York, they got a case.
They They ain't got a body, and, uh, but to us, it was Galveston had the best of all cases.
Robert Durst is charged in Texas with the murder of Morris Black, not only murdering him, but dismembering him and throwing his body in the Galveston Bay.
They had the evidence.
The conviction would be gotten in Texas.
Durst dismembered the body, put it in garbage bags, and threw it in the river.
I mean, how do you defend this? It would seem to be a home run for the prosecution.
Robert Durst shot and killed Morris Black, dismembered him, and threw him away like trash.
That was our focus.
Nobody deserves to be killed and their head cut off, their arms cut off, their legs cut off, and packaged up like garbage.
The evidence, the totality of the circumstances of this case pointed us to one charge and one charge only, and that was murder.
Legendary Texas lawyer Dick DeGuerin heads the billionaire's high-powered defense team.
I think it's a beautiful day in Galveston.
That's all I can say.
I always get nervous before a trial.
I always worry about maybe there's something I should have done I didn't do, and often I'm right about that.
There were moments where you kind of gagged on what you had gotten yourself into.
We've got a guy cut up in 20 different pieces thrown in a bay, and they're expecting us to win this case.
Good? 3, 2, 1.
3, 2, 1.
An eccentric New York real estate heir is on trial in Texas.
In a Galveston court, Robert Durst is looking back at a murky past catching up to him.
This has been the last 20 years of my life, and it's beginning to have closure.
We were getting requests from so many media from around the country People magazine and the New York papers and television stations, and, of course, you have your local media, You have your TV stations from Houston.
The Post had a stringer there.
AP was in there.
The Daily News sent over an editor.
I mean, everybody saw it as a big story.
The tabloid press can't seem to get enough of the multi-millionaire accused of murder.
So I go to the courtroom, and at some level, I felt sorry for Bob.
I mean, he looked at me.
He gave me this little smile.
It wasn't a malicious, "Ha ha! I'm gonna get you next" smile.
it was just kind of like this little smile of recognition.
I never forgave him for murdering Kathie.
It was just some element of feeling sorry for him.
His life just unraveled to such a pitiful degree.
All rise, please.
Good morning.
You may all be seated.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defendant Robert Durst stands charged by indictment with the offense of murder.
The defendant has pleaded not guilty.
We're ready to proceed.
Morning.
The burden of proof is on the state to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Robert Durst intentionally shot and killed Morris Black.
Look at these pictures.
This is what Mr.
Durst did to Morris Black Cut the skin all the way to the bone, pulled the Pulled the tissue and the muscle back, get to the bone, and saw it off.
Flipped the body over a couple of times because, "I got to get around the other side, too, "and I got to do the legs.
Then I got to do the head" motivated to get away with murder.
I'd never seen anything like that, you know? So you think, you know, it's no big deal, but it's Uh, it's It's shocking.
At the start, what I felt in my gut was, it was a murder because he had to get rid of the evidence by cutting him up and throwing him in the Gulf or whatever.
Two local officers were called to the stand today, one a diver for the Galveston County Sheriff's Department who talked about where Morris Black's body parts were found in Galveston Bay.
Sitting back in New York watching this with my colleagues, I would say, "Well, what's his defense going to be?" and they would almost unanimously say, "It doesn't matter what his defense is because he's guilty "and they're going to find him guilty because he cut up the body and, therefore, he's going to be found guilty," and all I would say is, "Look.
"The guy's got unlimited resources.
"He's got a very smart lawyer.
It's a publicity case.
He's gonna have some defense.
" Bob has feelings.
This is his first girlfriend.
He'd been carrying that picture with him.
He had it when he was arrested.
That's the pictures of his wedding, he and Kathie.
He had them when he was arrested.
And there's a picture of Bob as a young boy.
He had them when he was arrested.
When I first met Bob, he was not loud.
He was not even terribly responsive, but he had an intelligence.
He had some wit to him.
He's disheveled.
He's been through the mill.
He's been held in circumstances in which he's never been, but you have to look past that and see this lump of clay here that I'm going to have to mold.
Has it got the capacity to be molded into the shape that I want it to be in by the time we get to a jury? I thought he was going to make a pretty good defendant.
When the defense opened their case and called Durst as a first witness, I was shocked.
They had to explain why he was on the run before he even killed Morris Black.
He was living on the run, so to speak, when he came here.
He's hiding out.
He's wearing disguises.
He's living this bizarre lifestyle.
The people who actually live in Galveston, this tiny town at the end of I-45 where the sign says, literally, "Mile 0," those people go there to get lost.
Jeanine Pirro ran him out of New York, and I say that without fear of contradiction.
That's what happened.
Bob was driven from New York by a politically ambitious woman who wanted to further her own ambition at Bob Durst's expense with no evidence.
DeGuerin down there is making me the focus so that no one focuses on what Robert Durst did.
It was very easy for us to make her the enemy.
We kind of created this mythical character in Jeanine Pirro, and we took liberty with how directly she was involved with that pursuit of Bob.
And until you've seen your picture on the front page of the newspaper being accused of having something to do with the disappearance of a loved one, you don't know what it feels like.
If Miss Pirro kept her mouth shut, none of this would have happened.
Are you kidding? Well, I've heard, "The devil made me do it.
" I never heard, "The DA made me do it.
" They lied.
And that message played well.
The jury, they ate that one up.
Well, it kind of made sense a little bit when we were told that, you know, he was trying to get out of New York because Jeanine Pirro was after him.
I think that she was really out to To get him, and with having the pressure on, you know, he wanted to get away, and, you know, I can't fault him for that.
In terms of the disguise that you chose, you know, you talked about that in Galveston.
Well, it was the only disguise I could think of.
I'm a guy.
And what is a guy going to do? I mean, I could grow a beard and a mustache, and I'd periodically worn a beard and a mustache in New York City, but I can't grow a beard and a mustache now, can't do it by tomorrow morning.
I would have to get some kind of a thing to put on my face, and I just couldn't imagine that any of that would act vaguely real.
I just came up with the idea of a wig, and then, since I'm going to be a woman, I've got to be mute because I cannot sound the way I sound.
Um, I mean, in retrospect now That was a great disguise.
I heard the jury laugh, and I remembered talking to Joel.
I leaned over to Joel, and I ask him, "Did they just laugh at this man?" and it was a defining moment for me.
I felt like, "Oh, my goodness, if they, the defense team, "had set out to humanize him in some way "after he'd dismembered Morris Black, murdered him, "and ran with his I.
D.
and did everything he had done, they were looking like they were being successful at it.
" No one knew a great deal about Morris because he was, uh, a loner.
Every time I say the word "cantankerous" and "grumpy," I see Morris' face.
There was a guy that lived in the house next door that used to sit on the porch and smoke his cigarette, and Morris Black would walk down the street and yell at him for smoking on his porch.
If you stop and think about it, if it weren't such a tragic situation, it would be kind of an amusing one Morris out in front like a terrier dog bitin' and snippin' at various people, and And Bob walking behind Generally a little bit toked up, uh, uh, kind of cooling things down.
Uh, it's an odd couple.
It's an odd situation.
Was there ever a moment when he said, "Hey, for the last couple of weeks, "you've been writing me notes and wearing a wig.
Now you're not writing notes.
" Well, well, we became friendlier as time went on in the following months.
He asked about, "How come you, you know, "were here wearing a Why'd you rent the apartment as Dorothy Signer?" and like that, and I told him I wanted to disappear and hide, and I think, "I'm I'm hiding.
I don't find anybody recognizing me.
" And did he judge in any way? Did he say, "Oh, it's a weird thing to do, or" No.
It was just the opposite.
He said, "Yeah, yeah.
I did that a long time ago.
" Didn't say he changed his name or he dressed like a woman or But, yeah, when I said I just didn't want to be Robert Durst anymore, he said, "Yeah.
I went through that.
" Part of the defense was the famous "he had it coming" defense, where Morris Black was such a bad guy in so many different ways and so crazy, so touched in so many different ways that we could prove.
What were dealing with is an unpredictable and violent man, one given to fits of rage, one given to bizarre conduct.
That's the reason he comes in.
We're not here to blacken the name of a dead man.
There's an old joke in Texas They hang horse thieves and let murderers go.
That's because they don't have any horses that need stealing.
Uh, we do have some people that need killing.
Morris had swiveled the chair.
Judging from his standpoint, if you were in his shoes and you came to your house, to your apartment, your home and you found Morris Black in there without your permission and you knew what we all know now about Morris Black and Morris Black went for a gun, would you be reasonable in being in fear? Would you be reasonable in coming to your own defense? In the State of Texas, you find somebody in your house who's not supposed to be there, there's not much you cannot do to them.
Most other states, what you're obligated to do is to call the police, do something else.
You're obligated to leave.
Texas, you're not obligated to leave.
You can handle it more or less as you see fit.
Obviously, you're not supposed to kill them.
We always had to keep Bob on message.
Uh, "You were afraid of him.
"You were afraid of what he would do, "and you knew you had to get your hands on that gun or something could happen to you.
" That was the case.
And so they go into the fight and the struggle, and they turned, and he fell over the chair, and this happened and put it in the And they went through this whole thing.
I mean, you know, it felt like I was watching something in theater, and then he shot him.
Accidentally, the gun went off.
I said, "Yeah.
All right.
" I'm looking at the jury And then I hear the district attorney.
So I'm thinking, "Okay.
Yeah.
They've got a really great case.
" At some point, this gun, it has to turn and face you, does it not? Yes, sir.
And it's your testimony that, what? But let's remember, you were facing that way.
That's right.
I'm facing this way.
Right.
The way you had it was Was what happened.
The gun turns, and it's just like this? Is this your testimony, that it goes Oh, I can't say that's my testimony.
The two of you look like spaghetti, is the truth of the matter.
Mr.
Black kind of looked like bloody spaghetti, didn't he? No.
He didn't look like bloody spaghetti.
You just don't remember how you were standing? I remember a whole lot better than this demonstration is doing it.
The man sitting before you cannot tell the truth.
You were told that he and Morris would go to places.
Not one person told you they saw those two together ever.
It was convenient for him to say, yeah, they were best friends and they were best buds, but I never found one person that ever saw them go anywhere together.
If it came out of Bob Durst's mouth and Bob Durst's mouth alone, I don't believe it.
Morris would go to the library every day and he would use the Internet for free.
I think he discovered who Durst was and his family's background and their money.
At some point, he told Durst that, "If you don't help me, I'm going to tell New York where you're at," and I think that is what got him killed.
There are areas of bruising across the shoulders, multiple red-brown bruises occasionally blending together.
This is not one blow.
These are multiple blows across the top of the shoulder.
You don't get multiple blows from falling one time.
Those injuries are not consistent with self-defense.
Didn't happen the way he told you it happened.
There's a bullet hole in the wall that was leading from the living room to the kitchen.
You were told that Morris Black shot the eviction letter.
There's no bullet holes in it.
There's a bullet hole in the wall because Robert Durst shot and missed Morris Black.
He shot, he missed, he beat him to the ground, and he executed him.
You don't cut somebody up, another human being, into pieces and bag him up, dump him in the bay, when you act in self-defense.
It just doesn't happen.
You don't butcher somebody, put him in pieces, bag him up, dump him in the bay because there's an accident.
It was explained to me that I was gonna have to do the dismemberment There was no way around it but I think maybe even my lawyers had a vague suspicion.
"Well, he's not going to be able to get through this.
"We're going to get to the dismemberment, and he's just gonna, "Ach.
"" I was scared to death.
I couldn't leave this corpse in my apartment.
I couldn't I had to get this corpse out of my apartment, period.
So what did you decide to do to get rid of the body? Well, I decided I'd wait till night and then I'd pick it up and carry it out of there, and then I realized I wasn't picking up that body and carrying it anywhere because it was much I mean, I wasn't strong enough to do that.
I could drag it out, but I just couldn't see I mean, I thought about putting it in a sleeping bag or something and then dragging the whole thing out, but, good God, that's ridiculous.
Now, Morris had tools.
He had saws and And, um, axes, a giant ax.
Uh, I don't think he had a I don't think he had a bow saw.
Anyway, I went and bought a bow saw and then a bunch of garbage bags and stuff like that and went back to To the house, and I'm sure I got more stoned and more drunk, and I dismembered the corpse primarily with the ax but some with the bow saw and, I think, another saw that Morris Black had.
We worked for days, many days, getting him ready for the kind of questions I knew were going to be coming on cross-examination.
"Tell us about what it was like, sir.
"Where did you start to cut on Morris Black? "Did you cut his arm off first, "or did you cut his leg off first? "What did you use to cut the leg with? Show us.
"What part of his leg did you saw on first, Mr.
Durst, your friend that you were cutting up?" There was a concern on our part that, um the way he sometimes describes things, um, without a lot of emotion, hearing him describe the technical dissection of that body would lead someone to believe he's a cold-blooded killer.
It was very important to say, "Bob, look.
"Your memory is very fuzzy.
"Your memory on this is naturally repressed.
"We've had psychiatrists, psychologists see you.
"They'll all agree.
"For such a horrific event, it's very common "that you don't remember all the details.
Don't try to.
" I did not kill my best friend.
I did dismember him.
Took the body parts, put them in the garbage bags, and drove to find some place to dump the garbage bags, and it immediately became obvious to me I can dump them in the water.
It'll sink.
Nobody will have seen them.
The garbage bags are heavy.
That's what I did.
Had you done any work to try to figure out whether the tide was coming in, the tide was coming out? I wouldn't know how to begin.
So you basically just decided you were gonna I figured it was deep.
I'm gonna drop it, it's gonna sink.
Who cares where the tide is going? It's underwater.
Nobody's gonna see it.
Right, but the bags didn't sink.
- No.
- What happened? They floated.
At the dump site that evening, there was a bag with a right leg and a bag with a left leg, right arm, left arm, and a torso.
But there was one bag that had obviously been sliced open not just with a rock or something, but some kind of sharp instrument.
And the only thing that was missing from everything that was there was Morris Black's head.
It was clear to us that when Durst realized the bags were floating, he cut the bag, picked up the head, and he took off.
He knew the head was the most important piece of evidence about what happened in that apartment.
There was no wrestling over the gun.
I think he shoved Morris down and he shot him in the back of the head, and can I prove that? No, not without the head.
- All right.
- You all may be seated.
Mr.
Lewis, you may proceed.
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 Morris Black died.
We started getting over to the jurors this thought about, "It doesn't change what happened "to Morris Black, anything that Bob Durst did with the body afterwards.
" They They put in front of the jury about a thousand times, "Was there anything that Robert Durst could do "after finding Morris Black dead to To prevent his death or to change the manner in which he died?" And they They brought up about a zillion examples.
"Can you unstrike a match? No.
"Can you unring a bell? No.
"If somebody's dead, is there anything you can do "to prevent him from dying? No.
" There is no charge of dismemberment of the corpse.
There is no charge of destruction of evidence, nothing that the state keeps trying to focus you on.
They have to focus you on that because how Morris Black died Self-defense, an accident They have woefully failed to meet their burden.
Their plea that they came up with, accidental and self-defense, is brilliant because if it's just two people in a room, how do you disprove self-defense? There was a moment during my cross-examination of Cody Cazalas that I thought was extremely important, and, to his credit, he answered honestly.
Sergeant Cazalas told you the truth.
That man told you what the State of Texas doesn't want to talk about.
Their burden to disprove beyond all reasonable doubt, according to their lead detective, they can't meet it.
Every little saw mark in each and every one of those leg bones and arm bones has got a whole lot of intent in it, a whole lot of intent of a man who's getting away with murder.
The state's burden is to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Bob Durst had his finger on the trigger when the gun went off and killed Morris Black.
Look at every piece of evidence you heard and consider it.
You can't segment it and only look at certain portions of it and ignore everything else.
That's not proper.
Possibly guilty.
Probably guilty.
We all talked about that.
What that means is not guilty.
What kind of criminal justice system are we gonna have when we can't consider everything that happened after, during, and before? It all goes to the man's state of mind.
It all goes to his intent.
Bob Durst is not guilty of murder.
Bob Durst is not guilty of murder.
Whatever else he may have done is for another time and place.
Thank you all.
Now to a courthouse in Galveston, Texas, where jurors still have not reached a verdict in the bizarre murder trial of real estate heir Robert Durst.
The trial itself lasted 6 weeks.
Some people here are beginning to worry that the jury might take that long to decide whether Robert Durst is guilty of murder.
You may be seated.
Mr.
Foreman, I understand you have a verdict.
Yes, your honor.
Will you hand it to the bailiff? Will the defendant please rise? Well, the verdict of the jury is such.
"We, the jury, find the defendant Robert Durst not guilty.
" Is there anything the attorneys would like to say at this point? Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
We also thank the jury for the sacrifice of their time.
Thank you for all your time and attention and your sacrifice.
All right, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
This is what the procedure is that we are going to follow.
First of all, we're going to take you back into the jury room - What we did - And it was a big struggle for all of us Is, we kept going back to the charge that was put forth to the jury as to the actual event, that one moment in time.
It was a very unpopular occurrence when the When Bob Durst was found not guilty.
The townspeople, friends, relatives, they weren't happy with the verdict that was brought forward, but when Mr.
Durst was on the, uh, stand I felt he was talking from the heart.
Through the course of the 5 days of deliberation, Bob never He never had more than 3 guilty votes the whole time.
The last one that changed their mind, she had a problem finding him not guilty because he had chopped up the body, and I could understand that.
She was a She was a good Christian woman, very nice lady, but I just said, "You know, that's "That's not what we're here to do.
"We're here to determine "if the event that killed Morris Black "was murder or not, not what happened to his body after he was already dead.
" I said, "We've got to That's our job.
" As a homicide investigator, you work for God because the victim's not there to tell his story.
You're there to represent the victim.
You're there to tell his story.
You're doing that for God.
Um there's a lot of truth in that.
To this day, I feel like I let the Can we stop? Thanks.
You told me on the telephone that DeGuerin might not want me to talk to you because he wouldn't want to see you in an interview saying that you had lied to the jury in Galveston.
Well, they didn't know what I was gonna say.
So, I mean, they've always felt that, you know, they got this home run now.
Now, I get out there and I say something that implies that I made it all up or that I told the lawyers and that we all got together and made it all up or whatever, that's a disaster.
So they just wanted to stay away, and they said about a zillion times, "You can't help yourself.
"Right now, you're a free man 100%.
"You say something inadvertently, "and you'll find yourself charged in New York "or charged in, uh, Los Angeles, "and, uh, an interview is a big risk for you.
Why do you want to do an interview?" Certainly, you've said to me that you did lie to the jury in Galveston in some way, that your lawyer encouraged you to, and I think that's Well, he didn't encourage me to.
We went over the oath, and from day one, the oath says, "You, uh, promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
" "Just make sure the ones at the end "'Tell the truth, nothing but the truth' "That you do exactly that.
"In terms of 'the whole truth,' "if you want to leave out something that does not "Uh, which makes you look bad if you tell it "but does not turn into an untruth, well, try it.
"Try it.
"If there's something so terrible that you "don't want to say it or you think could be construed the wrong way, then just leave it out.
" I'm saying, was there something that was relevant in Galveston that, you know, would have had an influence, where you knew that you were saying something that was limited? Let me see what else I can think of where they didn't specifically ask it and I specifically didn't go there.
I'd have to think about it.
Next time you interview me, I'll have that, and I'll I'll think of a few things.
Shall we take a break for a few minutes? - Want to take a break? - Sure.
Take a break.
There's coffee now.
Sign this.
Okay.
Thank you, and there's orange juice and I did not knowingly purposefully lie.
I don't know, but the room The room is the same room we had, the absolute same.
I did not knowingly purposefully lie.
Yeah, and then they're pissed off with this shit.
Right.
I did not knowingly purposefully intentionally lie.
I did make mistakes.
So I told What? Oh, oh, oh.
I was reviewing I hear what you're saying.
You could hear everything I said.
I never intently I mean, how do I I mean, you know, it's a question of not what do I say, but how do I say it.
I never intentionally purposefully lied.
I made mistakes, did not tell the whole truth.
Nobody tells the whole truth.