Prosecutors in Robert Durst’s murder trial on Thursday showed to the jury a latex mask authorities found with they arrested the real estate heir in New Orleans.
Durst, 78, is an heir to a New York commercial real estate empire who was arrested in March 2015 and charged with first-degree murder in the killing of his friend, Susan Berman. His trial in the Los Angeles Superior Court resumed in May after a 14-month recess. Durst has pleaded not guilty.
The head-to-shoulder mask was revealed by Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian during the prosecutor’s closing arguments. Balian said Durst wore the mask as a disguise to evade capture from authorities in 2015.
Durst, who is presently frail and wheelchair-bound, is accused of killing Berman at her home in Beverly Hills, where she was shot in the back of the head in 2000. Prosecutors say Durst killed Berman before she could tell authorities that she provided a false alibi for him related to the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst.
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Durst has repeatedly denied the claims against him. On Sept. 1, Durst said he did not know who killed Berman.
But in a 2015 HBO documentary series, The Jinx, he appeared at one point to admit to several murders. In the film’s production, Durst was caught on film saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
One day before the show’s final episode, Durst was arrested in Louisiana, where authorities found him with a map of Cuba, money, and a gun. Durst has also been accused of killing his wife, although he has never been charged with a crime in her disappearance and denies killing her, and he admitted to killing and dismembering his Texas neighbor Morris Black in 2001 but was acquitted of murder after making a self-defense argument.
Balian told jurors on Wednesday that Durst would be a gold medalist in running from the truth, according to the Associated Press.
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“This was an Olympic year,” Balian said. “If there was an event for running from the truth, he’d be on the top of the podium.”
