Please hold while we attempt to connect your call.
Have a seat right there.
- Here? - Right there.
We'll give you the... We'll give you the comfier seat.
I'm... John Lewin.
I'm a... I'm a deputy DA.
Do you mind if... Mr. Durst or Bob? You tell me.
- Bob is fine. - Okay.
So, Bob, basically, I'm from Los Angeles County
and I'm here to... to speak to you.
What I do, I do cold murder cases.
I'm surprised there are that many of those
that you have a full-time job working on them.
There's a certain image
even as... as a seasoned prosecutor
you have of... of a killer.
You can't help yourself.
And it's not Bob.
Before we... we start...
I wanna let you know that I feel like I know you.
Now, I've never met you. I feel like I know you very well.
You know, I know it's... it's probably a very
you know, uncomfortable day for you right now.
And if there's anything that I ask you
that you... that you don't wanna answer...
I won't answer it.
Okay.
Many times in Bob's life, in custody, outta custody
Bob has an option.
One door is keep your mouth shut and don't say anything
and one door is talk.
Bob always goes into the talk door.
Always.
Detective Whelan... Mike's gonna advise you of your Miranda rights.
And are... Can we... Are you cold?
- Can we get you somethin'? - It is a little cold in here, yeah.
Do you want us to get you a blanket?
Yeah.
Here you go.
Do you want anything to drink?
Some coffee?
Coffee would be great.
Okay, only two rules on the coffee.
One, you can't throw it at either one of us, at any of us.
And you can't throw it on the computer.
- Fair enough? - Very fair.
Okay, here you go. All right.
The reason I like cold cases is because people think they beat it.
I love being able to swoop in
and to basically be able to say
"Yeah, no, you didn't beat it.
You walked around for a long time.
You got a life to live you didn't deserve.
But eventually, you gotta pay the piper."
LA County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin
has spent decades prosecuting
complicated circumstantial murder cases.
The idea that it's not necessarily typical for a filmmaker
to call me up going
"Yeah, we've got evidence."
It's more than not necessarily typical.
It's... I mean, unheard of.
Again, I've done this a lotta years
with a lotta interesting cases, and that just doesn't happen.
I love circumstantial cold cases
and my expertise are circumstantial no-body cases.
So I knew all about Bob Durst.
Bob's wife Kathie had disappeared in Westchester back in 1982.
His best friend Susan Berman had been murdered in 2000.
And finally, his neighbor Morris Black
was killed and dismembered in Texas in 2001.
Well, nothing can be done about Morris Black.
He's already been acquitted.
Westchester has never done anything on Kathie Durst.
There are issues.
I don't think there's anything to go there.
The one to look at is the Susan Berman case.
It kinda offended me
as a detective
that this person
was able to get away
with three murders
because of all the privilege, money, power he had.
Homicide detectives have a saying...
"We work for God."
We try to get justice for the victim and his or her family.
So John Lewin and I started working on the case together.
We had a board.
On the board, we had the plan of action...
and people to be interviewed.
We ended up interviewing close to maybe 300 people.
I'm trying to put this case together, myself and detectives.
And here's the problem.
If we contact these witnesses and it gets back to Bob
Bob is gonna take off and we're not gonna see him again.
So I knew it was going to be a race
to get as far as we could before The Jinx came out.
Just before The Jinx is unveiled
Bob is living in Houston.
He's still flitting around the country
but his permanent address
is more or less in Houston.
So he was completely free, right
- at that point... - Absolutely.
And I think he would be free today
if he had just kept his trap shut.
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst
is a new six-part HBO documentary series.
It details the case of the heir
to a wealthy New York real estate family.
When The Jinx came out, it was a six-part miniseries.
And my prediction was
"This is going to be the biggest thing
to hit my office since OJ."
The multimillionaire real estate heir Robert Durst
in a new HBO documentary
he's answering all the charges for the first time.
What do you think at the end?
Do you reach a conclusion?
Well, I think that
what the audience will find when they get to the end of this
is that they're not scratching their heads.
When they get to the end of six episodes
they will know what happened.
who has been pressing, as you know
to see the finished episodes.
And he was sorta saying
"We're curious about whether you come to the conclusion
that he's guilty or he's not guilty.
But obviously, there's a concern
that there could be a prosecution, as a result of this
and we are, you know, very keen to see it as soon as possible."
I mean, I said to him, "Well, I know for sure
they'll let me show you one
you know, episode one, tomorrow or whatever."
And he said, "Well, then I might as well just wait for Sunday."
A teenage boy fishing in the shallow waters off Galveston, Texas
stumbled on the gruesome remains of a murder.
The Jinx started airing in February.
As each episode aired
Bob was watching from his home in Houston.
And he and I spoke after every episode.
Bob got away with murdering Kathie.
I need to know what happened to Kathie.
These are my notes from this time period.
I'd get his reaction.
"Hey, Charles Bagli. It's Robert Durst.
The second episode...
I don't have anything to say about it.
We've heard Kathie's family saying
'Why won't he tell us what he did with her?'
On and on. As if they actually expect me to say
'I put her over there near the lamppost.'"
Beverly Hills Police Department received a letter in the mail.
The envelope was addressed, "Beverley Hills Police"
and the note read, "Cadaver."
Can you think of a reason
why somebody might write a note like that?
I can't imagine.
By the third episode, he was thinking
"I'm in pretty good shape."
"What else can he put in those final episodes?"
So let me see the letter.
And, I mean, of course, I told you this, but...
He showed me a letter from Bob to Susan.
The address written on the front is exactly like the Cadaver Note
down to the misspelling of "Beverley."
So when Bob saw his letter on the TV, he got very nervous.
This seems to be proof positive that he killed Susan.
That is evidence.
When I called him after the fifth episode
there was a change in Bob.
He was clearly now worried.
"No, I'm sorta busy right now.
Let me get back to you, say, Wednesday. Bye-bye."
And I thought to myself, "Holy shit. He's gonna run."
In this past Sunday's show
the discovery of a potentially blockbuster piece of evidence
- Susan Berman... - March 2015...
we got evidence from FBI
that Robert Durst was on the run.
We also got evidence
that he was doing what's called money structuring.
He was withdrawing $9,000 almost daily.
When you withdraw cash money over $10,000
banks are required to report to the federal government
as a suspicious activity, and he was trying to avoid that.
He was making withdrawals of $9,000.
Why would he want that cash unless he was gonna run?
And if he left the country
went to some country we didn't have an extradition treaty
we would have a very difficult time of bringing him back.
And my captain told me
"Whatever you do, don't let Bob Durst get away."
When it came time to track him
I was brought in to help
with the technical side of that
where we were able to get up on his cell phone.
We got his cell phone records.
LAPD was able to obtain a wiretap
which allows us to see the numbers
calling into and out of Bob's cell phone.
The last cell tower that I was able to map
put him heading eastbound on Interstate 10
leaving the area of Houston.
So we realized his phone had been turned off
and then it wasn't active for several hours.
LAPD, the FBI in LA, us in New York
we were all really pushing.
We were like, "We need to get him in custody right away."
Our greatest concern came true, and that was scary.
Bob has always seemed to have been
one step ahead of everybody for the most part.
And this was just a kinda déjà vu moment.
So we had to scramble to get a search warrant
for his apartment in Houston.
We went to search the apartment, and we got the surveillance.
We sent a team of four detectives to his apartment...
and we did a search there.
His phone was gone.
He left his checkbooks and credit cards in there.
Clearly, he was not gonna use them 'cause we would have tracked it.
There was some evidence of him taking stuff out, or somebody else.
But apartment was cleaned. It was cleaned out.
Okay.
My name is Chris Lovell.
C... C-H-R-I-S, L-O-V-E-double I.
In one of the more
surprising verdicts
in recent court history
a jury in Galveston, Texas today
found a wealthy man innocent of murdering another man
even after he admitted he cut up the victim's body
and disposed of it.
Chris Lovell was one of the jurors in the Galveston case
that immediately befriended Bob.
As soon as the trial was over
they formed a relationship.
I think he was enamored with Bob
because Bob is incredibly wealthy.
He was hoping that would provide some financial rewards.
With what was presented to me
absolutely, positively, a hundred percent.
With what was presented to me. Yes, sir.
I've never seen or heard of a juror
forming a relationship with a defendant after trial.
But then, most defendants aren't extremely wealthy
with sort of a celebrity status.
I think that Bob trusted Chris
and I think that Chris Lovell will do whatever Bob says.
I didn't set out to be his...
Robert Durst's friend.
It just kind of evolved into that.
I just set out to get some... some questions answered in my mind.
But it has evolved into a friendship
and... and I don't have a problem with him at all.
It is astounding that 12 years after a murder trial
one of the jurors is helping Bob
make his getaway.
That apartment was sanitized.
We did not find any critical evidence.
There was a box on top of the bed in the bedroom.
In that box, there was mementos...
Susan Berman's photos, Kathie Durst's photos.
To this day, I think it was staged for him to say that
"I cared about these people."
But he was sort of playing games.
I'm sittin' there, listening to the wiretap Saturday
before the last episode of The Jinx aired.
And I hear a phone call come into Bob's cell phone.
Hello, you've reached the Jitterbug voicemail for...
Bob.
And I could hear Bob trying to log into his voicemail
using his PIN number.
So it's like beep... beep.
And he was unsuccessful. He was actually getting frustrated.
Shit.
No.
So I knew it was Bob.
So I quickly ran the number that was calling into his voicemail
and it came back to the JW Marriott in New Orleans.
FBI office in New Orleans responded there
to attempt to locate Bob.
Special agent checked with the hotel register.
There was no Bob Durst registered at the hotel.
So he decided to set up surveillance.
Sure enough, about three hours later...
Bob walked in.
It just seemed like everything was colliding.
It was all coming to a head at once.
One of the FBI agents said, "Robert Durst?"
And Bob kinda stopped.
So they started talking to him.
And then a woman is walking by, a guest in the hotel...
and she said, "Oh, is that Bob Durst?"
She had just been watching The Jinx
so she recognized him.
You can't make this stuff up.
But Bob is now famous.
As good as Bob can be or as lucky as Bob is
about evading capture
you know, he screwed up and... and we caught him.
I was contacted and I was told, "Okay, he's been arrested."
The FBI agents asked Bob if he had any ID...
so he took them up to his room.
When they end up going into the room, they find drugs...
a bunch of money...
a loaded firearm...
and a map of Cuba.
There was also a very expensive latex mask.
Did you ever have an opinion
about what the mask was gonna be for?
Did he ever express that?
Do I have an opinion?
The mask was gonna be used to disguise himself
to flee the country, is what I believe.
It... it was not Halloween.
The plan was Bob was gonna take off for Cuba...
never to return.
And of course, that didn't happen.
We all knew you were gonna flee at some point.
I mean, I assume that you're not denying
that you were in the process of fleeing.
I'm not denying I was in the process of...
Yeah, right. And I think the reason you're not doing it is
you know it's obvious there's... let me go another way.
Why are you still here? How come you're not in Cuba?
I don't get it.
I had made arrangements.
I had considered the possibility.
I had looked here and looked there.
But I had never really said, "You know what?
They're gonna come after me.
I've gotta get far away where they can't get me."
I guess, inertia.
I just didn't really... really think
that I was gonna end up arrested.
Being a fugitive was... was not something I did well.
Authorities arrested Robert Durst
in New Orleans, Saturday
on a Los Angeles County warrant.
Tonight, Robert Durst is behind bars
arrested overnight in the lobby of a New Orleans hotel
accused of killing a female friend in Los Angeles 15 years ago.
The investigation got a boost
thanks to new evidence revealed in a documentary series
that Durst willingly participated in.
Last night's arrest comes just hours before tonight's finale.
The director promises tonight's final installment
will answer questions people have been asking for decades.
That night after Bob's arrest
we all went to a screening for the families of the victims
at your house for the last episode of The Jinx.
It was kind of like a meeting of an old club.
You had investigators, prosecutors.
You had witnesses.
And then you had Kathie's family
Jim McCormack, his wife Sharon
and their daughter
who was the spitting image of Kathie.
You gave us a call to screen the final episode of The Jinx.
The sixth episode.
I knew that you had something special to show us.
Also there was Jeanine Pirro
the former DA
in Westchester County
and Cody Cazalas
the detective who had carried
the case in Galveston.
So there's dozens of people
riveted by what's unfolding on the screen
and what the final episode will reveal.
Oh, God, the "B" is exactly the same.
Son of a bitch.
He actually told me he was in Madrid.
And as the episode progresses...
the room got quieter and quieter.
So...
so obviously, I wanna ask you about the Cadaver Note.
The famous Cadaver Note.
Can you read me the spelling of...
- "Beverley Hills..." - "Beverley Hills Police
1527 Benedict Canyon, Cadaver."
So you wrote one of these, but you didn't write the other one.
I wrote this one, but I did not write the Cadaver one.
And can you tell me which one you didn't write?
No.
I am going to go use the restroom, which is right here.
Or maybe this is the bathroom.
- Yeah, that's... - You're right. This is the bathroom.
Oh, my God.
- Honey. - Holy shit.
Oh, my God.
"Killed them all."
I heard it, and then it kinda settles in.
You'd hate to use the word "closure"
'cause we still had a long road to travel.
But at least for that point in time, we finally had closure
that he was finally admitting the truth.
Yeah.
Oh, it's definitely a confession.
I mean, right, Cody?
Yeah.
- They can use that? - Yeah. He wasn't in custody.
Still had the mic on.
It doesn't matter.
He wasn't in custody.
It was not an interrogation.
And then, all of a sudden, it seems to be everywhere.
Real estate heir Robert Durst
admitting to, quote...
"killing them all."
Robert Durst said he killed them all.
They are the five words everyone is talking about this week.
"Killed them all, of course."
Killed them all.
"Of course, I killed them all."
For the first time, it came out of his mouth
what I have felt for a long time
in my heart.
The revelation was like something we've been waiting for for 33 years.
Well, they got him.
Durst was arrested on Saturday
the day before the shocking finale of that documentary series.
You know, I... I've seen...
I've seen all the interviews that you did with Andrew.
So the whole long weekend
when I did the interviews for The Jinx...
- Yeah. - I was on meth.
The whole time, I was on meth.
And when I looked at the little pieces of it...
I was like, I... I just... it was... should have been obvious.
Surprised my lawyer let me go ahead with it
'cause it just... I looked like there was something going on.
Well, so, Bob, 'cause before you go any further on that...
certain things I know.
And you seem like a straight shooter.
I assume you would prefer that I be a straight shooter
- and not a bullshitter, right? - Sure.
Okay, I'm a straight shooter.
What you just told me is bullshit.
I'm not trying to say that my answers were wrong.
I'm just trying to say I was gah... gah during the thing.
I... think that what I said were the correct answers
to... to questions.
And, you know, there begins this conversation
that sounds almost like a plea bargain.
You know, it's... it's... like I said before
this is all voluntary.
- It's com... - No, I hear you
and I have no problem with what you're saying.
Okay.
But what's going through my mind is...
- if I tell you what I know... - Okay.
that answers your questions
what can you possibly do for me?
Okay, let me... I'll... I'll... I can tell you, Bob...
I'm very willing to talk to you.
And as I said, I'm 72.
You know what I want, correct?
Yes. You'd like some details from me if I knew...
- Yes. - about where Kathie's body is.
And about what happened to Susan. Those...
And about what happened with Susan.
And... and you would agree that you're in the position if you want
to tell me more than you have so far...
About that, I'm not about to go that far.
- Okay. - But...
Well, but wait a minute. You're telling me though...
Then I wanna understand when you're saying
"Tell me what..."
Well, you asked me what I thought you wanted to hear.
I think what you wanted to hear
to make Ann McCormack happy is, "What did you do with Kathie?"
Right.
And I think you want me to go through details of... of Susan.
- I do. - Okay, so now...
what would I ask for?
- Tell me. - If I tell you those things
- I'm pleading guilty. - Okay.
And I'm pleading guilty
I'm gonna be going back to Los Angeles, to California
and doing my time.
Well, I... now, I've got a question.
Is there, so, for instance, something that...
And I... and I... that I would have to see is
would it be better doing your time in a different place?
- Are you better doing it... - Yes...
That's just what we're getting to.
- Okay, tell me. - What could you do?
Well, I don't know what the question is yet.
And... and I will tell you that after New Orleans
I was very annoyed
because I felt at the end of that interview
that I was ten minutes away from a confession.
When we... sit down to do an agreement...
And I would expect by Monday
I will have chosen a lawyer in Los Angeles...
And over time, what I've realized is, and as a big football fan...
I was down at the five-yard line.
But I was never going to get that confession.
See, I'm not about to... say to you...
What is your name again?
- John. - John.
I'm not about to say to you
"John, this is it," without my lawyer being here.
Okay, okay. Well, listen, and that's... and that's your right.
And you realize, "Oh, okay.
It wasn't that I was so great getting down to the five-yard line.
It's that he really wasn't playing any defense
and he's not gonna let me get into the end zone."
So are you willin' to talk to me after court today?
- Sure. - Okay, all right.
We'll head to court.
And he said he would talk to me.
And of course...
that didn't happen.
So now, Bob was in custody in New Orleans.
And who was the first person to fly down to New Orleans
and visit Bob in jail?
Hi.
How ya doin'?
Doin' all right. How are you doing?
I'm doing fine.
I'm sorry. This is the way
they do visitation here.
Debbie served
as Bob's wife
confidante, and advisor.
You see me in my jumper?
No, I can barely.
Hold on a second. Let me stood up.
Okay, I see it.
I see it.
Ai-yi-yi.
You actually look pretty good.
Thank you.
Your hair looks very bushy, by the way.
Nah, it's just hair, you know? You know I have a lotta hair.
Bob got from Debbie a safe harbor
a place that he could always go
where there were no questions asked.
He had absolute trust in her.
What I would like to do going forward
to pay my bills
and spending the money on the legal defense
sell the apartment complex, sell the two condos.
Yeah. And I think you should keep your apartment in Houston.
And if you... I think the thing you should sell here
is the apartment building.
The... the real estate in the Hamptons
has that gone up much? Is that way up?
Crazy.
So if we have that today to sell, what would we ask for it?
I don't know. It's probably worth twenty.
Interesting.
So the second person to visit Bob in New Orleans
might have been Dick DeGuerin.
One of the same lawyers that got him off in Texas.
Once Bob was arrested...
I got to New Orleans
as quickly as I could
which was about the next day.
And that's when I first saw Bob.
Bob saw my dedication to his defense in Galveston.
Bob Durst is not guilty of murder.
It's hard to argue with success.
Will the defendant please rise?
We, the jury, find the defendant, Robert Durst, not guilty.
Bob Durst didn't buy his way to freedom.
It wasn't his money that influenced this... this jury.
It was the facts, or the lack of facts.
I understand that you want Dick DeGuerin on your team.
I don't blame you.
He... did wonderful things for you in the past.
Bob did have this infinite trust in DeGuerin.
So he authorized Dick to assemble a defense team.
Dick DeGuerin reaches out to a friend, David Chesnoff.
A very prominent figure in Las Vegas.
He is the go-to guy for any celebrity
any professional athlete
any bad guy that gets into trouble.
He is very adept at making problems go away.
Chesnoff's a brilliant lawyer.
He's a strategically-thinking lawyer.
I've always been interested in fighting for the underdog.
In the old days, if you were
a celebrated person
you got breaks.
Now, if you're a celebrated person, it's worse.
The more famous you are, the tougher it is.
It's like a populist thing.
Their chance to get even with the rich person.
I think we had a hell of a team.
We had one goal, and that was to defend Bob Durst.
I met this David Chesner, and he... seems very bright.
I think the team that you have is great.
So there are now prominent lawyers
assembled for Bob's defense team.
Were you also listening to his calls from prison at point, from jail?
When Bob got arrested in New Orleans
he made repeated calls.
I listened to every call there.
When he was in Louisiana, he was a nonstop talkfest.
From the moment Bob was arrested in New Orleans
he was reaching out to old friends
looking to see who can he rely on.
He was seeking both emotional support
and to see who would be on his side.
The people around Bob helped him
whether it was consciously or unconsciously
go on for so many years without consequence.
I like to think that if a good friend of mine
is suddenly implicated
in one, two, three murders
that I would recoil from that.
But who knows until you're tested?