Update: Robert Durst, the millionaire murder suspect made famous in the HBO documentary miniseries The Jinx, is set to spend seven years in prison, following a plea agreement on a weapons charge. The plea deal, which NPR reports was approved by a judge on Wednesday, is separate from the charges he is facing in the 2000 murder of friend Susan Berman.
This story was originally published on February 3, 2016.
Robert Durst, the notorious millionaire subject of HBO’s The Jinx, has pleaded guilty to charges of possessing an illegal firearm, according to The New York Times.
Durst, 72, had faced charges pertaining to a handgun that was found when he was arrested for murder in March 2015. He was also found with more than $40,000 and a full latex mask, CNN reports.
Because Durst is a convicted felon, he is prohibited from owning a firearm. His plea deal means that he will be sentenced to over seven years in federal prison, and will be transferred to Los Angeles to face trial for the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman.
Durst and his alleged crimes became infamous thanks to the 2015 HBO documentary series The Jinx. The show profiled him and examined suspicions that he was involved in the deaths of Berman and his wife Kathleen Durst, who disappeared in 1982. He was not charged in either case.
During production of the series, filmmakers uncovered additional evidence connecting Durst to the deaths, including a note that appeared to be in his handwriting — and caught on tape an off-the-cuff comment in which Durst seems to confess to multiple murders. The Jinx departed from similar true crime phenomenons Serial and Making a Murderer thanks to its central figure. In the show, Durst comes off as so mean, so resentful, and so otherworldly that it was impossible to believe in his innocence.
The new evidence helped re-open the Berman case, and Durst was charged in connection to her death last year; it was during this arrest that authorities found his illegal gun. Durst had been previously acquitted of the death of neighbor Morris Black in 2003. The two had been neighbors while Durst was posing as a deaf and blind woman.
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