Robert Durst says he was under the influence of methamphetamines when he murmured the apparent murder confession that dramatically capped HBO’s six-part 2015 doc The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst and led to his arrest. In fact, Durst told prosecutors last year, he was high during the entire taping.
In a transcript of a March 15, 2015, jailhouse interview, filed in L.A. County Superior Court yesterday, Durst tells prosecutors:
“Yeah, well, the whole long weekend, when I did the interviews for The Jinx I was on meth. The whole time I was on meth. And when I looked at the little pieces of it, I was going like this, and like that. And I was – it should have been obvious. And I’m surprised my lawyer let me go ahead with it, ’cause it just – I looked like there was something going on.”
In his candid onscreen Jinx interviews with director Andrew Jarecki, Durst repeatedly denied his involvement in two murders until the stunning March 15, 2015, finale in which he excuses himself to use the bathroom, seemingly unaware that his mic is still on.
“What the hell did I do?,” he’s heard asking himself. “Killed ’em all, of course.”
The eccentric scion of a New York real estate family was arrested in New Orleans the day before the finale aired, and is now serving a seven-year term in California for illegal possession of a revolver he had at the time of the arrest. He was interviewed by prosecutors the day after his arrest – the same day the Jinx finale aired.
This past November, Durst was extradited to California and entered a not guilty plea in the 2000 murder of his longtime friend Susan Berman. The documentary suggested that Durst killed Berman because she had knew of his involvement in the 1982 murder of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst.
Durst had already admitted to killing a Texas neighbor in 2001, but pleaded self-defense and was acquitted by a jury.
Asked by the prosecutor why he agreed to the Jinx interviews, Durst says, “I’m – I’m still sort of putting that together in my own mind. But, I had been approached by 48 Hours. And way back when, I was approached by Connie Chung.”
Later in the interview, when the prosecutor dismisses he claims of being on meth – “that one won’t work,” the interviewer says – Durst responds, “I’m not saying my answers were wrong. I’m just trying to say that I was ‘gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, gu’ during the thing.”
“And, I think, the reason I did it, had to be because I was swooped, speeding.”
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In another part of the jailhouse interview, Durst seems to admit to being flattered by the casting of Ryan Gosling as Durst in All Good Things, Jarecki’s 2010 feature film about the case. When the prosecutor asks whether he thought it was “pretty cool having a guy, uh, that good-looking” play him, Durst apparently mumbles something before conceding, “Sure.”
