Robert Durst, the NY real estate heir and murder suspect at the center of HBO’s The Jinx, pleaded guilty Wednesday in New Orleans federal court to illegally possessing a.38-caliber revolver.
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NY real estate heir Robert Durst pleaded guilty to a gun charge in New Orleans Wednesday, putting him one step closer to being extradited to Los Angeles to face murder charges, CNN reports.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt said Wednesday that he would “provisionally” accept the plea and would make a final decision after he receives a pre-sentencing report.
Durst, who appeared in shackles and an orange prison jumpsuit, admitted he illegally carried a.38-caliber revolver after being convicted of a felony.
Durst will be sentenced to 85 months in prison for the gun charge.
At this time, HBO was airing a six-part documentary about Durst called “The Jinx”.
Also not listed were other items found in his hotel room, including items prosecutors have said showed he was planning to flee to Cuba, such as a head-and-chest flesh-toned latex mask with salt-and-pepper hair, an apparently fake Texas ID, and a map folded to show Louisiana and Cuba.
“Bob Durst didn’t kill Susan Berman and doesn’t know who did, and he’s eager to go to trial and prove it”, attorney Richard DeGuerin wrote in an email Tuesday.
The murder charge relates to the 2000 slaying of his writer friend Susan Berman.
“This agreement has a lot of moving parts and a lot of jurisdictions”. Defense attorney Richard DeGuerin occasionally repeated questions into Durst’s right ear; he told the judge that Durst’s left ear is completely deaf.
The defense team and prosecution will grapple over similarities between Durst’s two handwritten letters that incriminated his involvement with Berman’s murder, as well as his murder confession on tape, when they get to Los Angeles. Durst has waived extradition but won’t immediately be sent to California until at least the sentencing. If the judge accepts the sentence, then the Bureau of Prisons decides where Durst will serve it, though Englehardt can recommend a prison.
The plea bargain will be nullified if the judge gives Durst a different sentence, McMahon said. The maximum would have been 10 years and a $250,000 fine.
The show chronicled several police investigations of the multimillionaire, including the 2003 dismemberment killing of a male neighbor in Texas for which he was acquitted of murder, and the 1982 disappearance in NY of his wife, Kathleen. Durst was formally arrested early on the day of the broadcast, before viewers saw him in a washroom, still wearing a live microphone and muttering, “There it is”.
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