Final updated on March 5, 2020, at 6:54 p.m. ET

Published on March 4, 2020, at 8:00 p.m. ET

Susan Berman and Robert Durst

Robert Durst happens to be the topic of an HBO documentary, a Ryan Gosling film, decades of tabloid protection, and multiple SNL spoofs, but on prosecutors turned the attention back onto the two women they say he tormented and killed wednesday.

Starting statements started Wednesday into the l. A. Murder test of Durst, a 76-year-old real-estate heir by having a undoubtedly strange history. Prosecutors think he killed their wife that is first, in 1982, though her body hasn’t been discovered. He’s now been faced with the murder of their friend that is longtime Susan, who he’s got been accused of killing in 2000 to avoid her from implicating him in Kathie’s death.

A visual image of Berman lying on her straight back in a pool of bloodstream from the gunshot injury to your mind ended up being one of the primary pieces of proof that Deputy District Attorney John Lewin presented towards the jury. Jurors also heard sound regarding the 911 call put by her concerned neighbor, whom saw Berman’s dogs loose in her own yard. It had been unusual when it comes to neighbor hood, and specially away from character for Berman, who lived alone and was dedicated to her pets. Whenever very very first responders arrived at the home, they had no concept they’d find an execution-style murder inside.

Durst attends their murder trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Her run-down leasing ended up being a cry that is far her times as being a “mafia princess” in Las vegas, nevada, where her father, David Berman, had been certainly one of mobster Bugsy Siegel’s lovers. Her memoir, effortless Street, reported their conflicted relationship and her deep commitment to her dad regardless of the terrible things he did.

“Loyalty had been extremely important to Susan, ” her friend Miriam Barnes testified at a hearing that is pretrial. “She discovered commitment from her dad, in which he suggested every thing to her. ”

This “loyal to the” that is extreme is at one’s heart of Berman’s relationship with Durst — and also the explanation, prosecutors state, she endured by him after their spouse went lacking under dubious circumstances. But once Berman told Durst authorities had contacted her about reopening Kathie’s instance, prosecutors state, it had been their concern with betrayal that inspired him to destroy their companion.

Kathie and Robert Durst

Durst demanded commitment — not only from “Susie, ” but additionally their spouse Kathie.

Lewin emphasized the “unequal power dynamic” between Kathie along with her spouse, who had been nine years older and heir to a real-estate fortune.

“In regards to education she had zilch, ” Durst told filmmaker Andrew Jarecki in a job interview through the 2015 HBO documentary The Jinx which was played in court. “I guess you will say I happened to be marrying beneath me personally. Or she had been marrying up. ”

Durst stated money didn’t matter to him, but he hated time that is spending their wife’s “average United states family” and “despised” and “ridiculed” the items they did.

Durst had been unfaithful very nearly from the beginning of the wedding, Lewin revealed. But down the road, when their relationship became rocky and Kathie cheated on him, Durst ended up being furious.

“I became constantly extremely, extremely, very controlling, ” he told Jarecki within the meeting.

He provided her a tiny allowance and withheld cash when she crossed him — like when she told him she had been expecting and desired to keep carefully the child.

“I informed her right from the start, i did son’t wish to have kiddies, ” Durst stated. “Keep the infant and you’re likely to get divorced from me personally. Period. ”

Lewin stated it was “the start of the upsurge in the violence that is domestic the wedding” additionally the start of divorce procedures proceedings.

Because their relationship deteriorated, Durst declined to pay for Kathie’s mexican cupid medical college tuition — she was at her this past year at Albert Einstein university of Medicine and near to graduating.

On Jan. 6, 1982, she decided to go to Jacobi infirmary, a medical center connected to the medical college, with accidents to her face. She told physicians that she was indeed a target of domestic violence, but she didn’t state that her spouse had been the main one who assaulted her. Like a lot of women, Lewin stated, she had been afraid and embarrassed.

Despite her fear — which another colleague during the medical school testified to witnessing — Kathie stayed with Durst. She desired just just what she thought had been a fair divorce or separation settlement, Lewin said, and she wouldn’t normally keep her wedding until she started using it.

Lower than a thirty days later on, kathie disappeared. The early early early morning she ended up being likely to go to classes, a lady called the dean associated with school that is medical state she had been ill and wouldn’t be to arrive. Prosecutors say that call had been created by Susan Berman, impersonating Kathie following the murder to safeguard Durst, who she called “Bobby. ” Berman’s buddy, film producer Lynda Obst, testified in pretrial hearings that Berman at one point confessed to her about making the phone call.

Kathie disappeared after asking for her husband’s support that is financial prosecutors noted. Years later on, Berman had been “living in squalor, ” Lewin stated, and she additionally required cash. She started using it from Durst: two checks of $25,000 each within the 12 months she passed away. Had been it to get her silence?

“Susan ended up being my closest friend, ” Durst would later on inform authorities from a brand new Orleans prison cellular.

More on your

• The Robert Durst Murder Test Is Finally Underway. Here’s All You Need To Find Out About The Bizarre Topic Of “The Jinx. ” Drusilla Moorhouse · March 4, 2020
• Robert Durst’s Wife Ended Up Being Afra Claudia Rosenbaum · Feb. 16, 2017
• The Holes In “The Jinx” Might Get Deeper Versus We Thought Kate Aurthur · March 23, 2015

Dru Moorhouse could be the content chief for BuzzFeed Information and it is situated in l. A.

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