The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst 1x6

1. Ed Murphy: I've never seen anybody send a letter like that

2. in previous cases stating there's a cadaver,

3. as he described it, at a certain location,

4. because he's more or less giving himself up,

5. whoever sends that, that letter.

6. It's just a very, very strange thing.

7. Robert Durst: That's her address.

8. Uh, block letters of somebody who's hiding their signature.

9. And they spell "Beverly" wrong.

10. Somebody had to plan to do this.

11. They had to go to her house, do what they did,

12. and, and now you're taking this big risk.

13. Andrew Jarecki: Which big risk?

14. You're writing a note to the police,

15. that only the killer could have written.

16. And the police went on and on about

17. how "cadaver" is the wrong...

18. you know, most people wouldn't say "cadaver,"

19. they'd say "body."

20. They would conclude that that meant

21. that the person had something to do with

22. medical or ambulance services,

23. somebody who is involved in that

24. and would know and use the word "cadaver" for a body.

25. Eleanor Schwank: I think that word is so telling.

26. Kathie had a cadaver in medical school.

27. She didn't give it a name.

28. You know, she had respect for the fact that

29. it was a human being, a living human being at one time.

30. And so... she talked about her cadaver,

31. and she talked to Bob about the cadaver.

32. Bob heard that word over and over again

33. in relation to a dead body.

34. If you ask anybody how they would describe

35. a dead body, nobody says "cadaver."

36. Yeah, but Wall Street.

37. Oh, Jesus.

38. Beverly.

39. I couldn't help but recognize

40. a similarity between the two.

41. I want to know what you thought of it.

42. I don't know enough about handwriting

43. to be anything other than dangerous,

44. but I see similarities and I see differences.

45. Oh, God. The "B" is exactly the same.

46. Son of a bitch.

47. Um, so are you going to record our conversation now?

48. Marc Smerling: Yeah.

49. Are you figuring now, or are you done?

50. No, it's recording.

51. Zac Stuart-Pontier: That's when it goes into digital.

52. See that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

53. How do we make sure that we accomplish our goals?

54. Number one—get justice such as

55. we can get in this case.

56. So we don't want to interfere with

57. anything that police could do.

58. We don't want to interfere with anything

59. that'll continue to get us more evidence

60. or any of that.

61. Bob—second interview.

62. It's very possible that he goes into

63. the interview feeling one way,

64. and he comes out of the interview

65. feeling a totally different way.

66. Whether we use it or not, I would love

67. to do the handwriting exempt thing

68. that we were talking about.

69. My name is John Osborn, and I'm a forensic document examiner.

70. What I'm immediately looking at is

71. letter forms which appear more than once.

72. So, for instance, you have 1, 2, 3 capital letters "N."

73. There's some distinctive characteristics of interest.

74. But in order to determine whether or not

75. these two writings were prepared by the same person,

76. you would have to have a significantly larger

77. quantity of known specimen hand printing

78. and numerical figures that are comparable—

79. not necessarily the same words or names,

80. and not necessarily in the same order,

81. but the same individual letters.

82. All right. So what do we have documents-wise?

83. How many documents do we have?

84. About 40.

85. That's a lot.

86. Oh, my God, look at that.

87. A lease application where Bob says his job

88. is a chief botanist.

89. This is good.

90. There's a ton of them.

91. They're very similar, all of them.

92. Mm-hmm.

93. So what I'm going to do is first take

94. the cadaver letter

95. and the envelope that the letter was received in

96. and separate out each of the letter forms.

97. What I want to do is perform a comparative analysis

98. between the individual letters and numerical figures

99. that appear in the cadaver letter and the envelope

100. with appropriately comparable known specimens,

101. submitted as that of Robert Durst.

102. The "N's—the more distinctive characteristic.

103. Let's take a look at this one right here

104. among our questioned items, and this one right here.

105. I mean, I would say they're pretty bang on.

106. These particular characteristics are unique to one person,

107. and only one person.

108. Andrew Jarecki, voice-You know, this is a guy who in some ways

109. I've been giving tremendous benefit of the doubt.

110. You know, not just in terms of

111. the kinds of questions I ask him,

112. but in terms of my emotional connection to him.

113. You know, I like the guy.

114. This shift, for me, post-L.A.,

115. and, you know, with everything

116. that we've learned in the meantime, is big.

117. And yet it's not, it can't be evidenced

118. in my relationship with him.

119. I can't be, I can't be any different.

120. And yet my feelings about it are very different.

121. My feelings are, you know, are different not

122. because I thought, "Well, I was

123. "sure that Bob was innocent, but

124. I wasn't sure that Bob was guilty."

125. And that's a big, big change.

126. Recorded voice: Your call has been forwarded

127. to an automatic voice message system.

128. Robert Durst's voice on machine: Hi. This is Bob.

129. Recorded voice: Is not available.

130. Andrew Jarecki on recording: Hey, Bob. It's Andrew Jarecki.

131. I want to sit down and finish our

132. trailing questions on our interview.

133. I'm going to need, you know, a, I don't know, a solid day.

134. So that's my theory. I'm at your disposal. Bye.

135. Do we know where he is in Spain?

136. Yeah, he's in Madrid.

137. Stuart-Pontier: Well, we don't know that he's in Madrid.

138. I mean, I find him to be...

139. Yeah, I doubt he's lying about that... truthful.

140. Stuart-Pontier: Are you guys fucking kidding me?

141. Wow.

142. He actually told me he was in Madrid.

143. Recorded voice: Is not available.

144. So how many days till Bob?

145. Well, today is Tuesday.

146. It's a week. Next Tuesday, one week till Bob.

147. If he doesn't cancel.

148. I mean, I'm very disappointed to not be doing this on Tuesday.

149. Oh, me, too.

150. You know? It's kind of killing...

151. I feel like we're just...

152. I—I—I hate to say it,

153. I don't want to be the naysayer,

154. but it just doesn't sound like he's gonna do it.

155. Sounds like he's just going to keep putting it off

156. and keep seesawing and torturing us.

157. I think it just literally comes down to,

158. in the sleepwalking of Bob,

159. is today a day when he feels like talking,

160. is a day when he doesn't feel like talking,

161. is a day when he feels like talking, he'll give me a date.

162. Later on, if it happens by coincidence

163. that that date is another day

164. when he feels like talking, he'll show up.

165. If it's not another day when he

166. feels like talking, he won't show up.

167. So Bob basically is off the map.

168. Yeah, which is why I don't think

169. he's like necessarily freaked out about us,

170. unless he's actually found something out.

171. Hi. I'm trying to get the arrest number

172. for somebody who was arrested either today or yesterday.

173. He's not at Manhattan Central Booking,

174. and he's not at Bronx Central Booking.

175. But if he was arrested today, they don't get a list.

176. She says, "My list, if he was arrested today,

177. my list doesn't get updated until 4:30-5:00."

178. M13672299?

179. You can't tell me what he was arrested for, can you?

180. OK. All right. Thank you.

181. Smerling, voice-In court, they said Doug had put

182. an order of protection on Bob after, you know,

183. that day we shot in Times Square.

184. They had video surveillance footage of Bob approaching

185. Doug's house a couple of weeks later.

186. And so apparently he had broken the order of protection.

187. So they went and they arrested Bob.

188. And they had a bail hearing that he got $5,000 bail.

189. Yesterday, suddenly, Bob called me.

190. So then he sends me this message this morning.

191. "Left you a lengthy voicemail and I ain't heard anything.

192. "Hope you not dead. Otherwise please contact. Bob."

193. Let's hear it.

194. Recorded voice: Next message.

195. They're saying, "Bob, if you don't want to go to jail,

196. "and you want to have a good defense here,

197. you need Jarecki and Smerling to give you the defense."

198. Obviously it gives us a lot of leverage.

199. I can get the footage that we, that we shot that day,

200. and the stuff in front of the, in front of Douglas' house,

201. and share it with you.

202. My only, you know, uh, um, request is that

203. we agree that if you're going to,

204. if you're going to submit it or file it or something,

205. that we just agree to limit, limit it,

206. you know, to the relevant thing.

207. I don't know what that is. But I'll be happy to agree to,

208. you know, if you want to use it

209. or you want to make it part of your filing, I will.

210. If it happens this weekend,

211. uh, how are we approaching it? You know?

212. We're going to start with softball questions.

213. A trip down Memory Lane.

214. We want to bring him to that place, that time.

215. So, we have a little pile of stuff.

216. "Here's a photograph of you and Susan.

217. Do you remember when that was taken?"

218. Now we give him just the letter

219. that's in the envelope.

220. You take it out of the envelope.

221. Don't let him see the envelope.

222. Take it out of the envelope. Hand it to him.

223. "Susie.

224. "Now and again I think about old times.

225. Good luck. Bobby."

226. This was in Susan's personal effects.

227. So, this is a letter to Susan.

228. Why was this letter so short?

229. When did you have an office at 67 Wall Street?

230. Then you put the envelope.

231. "Here's the envelope it came in."

232. And now he looks at the envelope.

233. And he's like how is he going to back out of that?

234. I don't think— he's not gonna admit to writing that.

235. He's not gonna admit to it.

236. Dude, this is—this is extremely hard for him to say...

237. This was found inside this.

238. They're both on ancient,

239. 12-, 14-year-old Robert Durst letterhead.

240. I understand. This was falsified...

241. So, you're going to have to dig in on him.

242. He says, "I didn't write that envelope.

243. I don't know where that envelope came from."

244. You're going to have to dig in.

245. You're saying I got to do that, what I just did?

246. Yeah, you gotta do that.

247. Well, I mean, the question then is,

248. you know, is it enough?

249. And do we move on to something else?

250. That one you're going to have to modulate.

251. Well, if he admits...

252. if he says, "Yes, I wrote the cadaver note,"

253. then you get to "Did you kill your best friend?"

254. We don't know what he's going to say.

255. "Did you carry this with you?"

256. I guess is the question.

257. Stuart-Pontier: Yeah, no. I think that's—

258. if he'll talk about that...

259. That's not bad.

260. Why were—"Why were you caring about carrying?" is better.

261. I think that, if I was sitting in the hot seat,

262. that's a hard one to explain.

263. I don't have to go into the letterhead question on this, right?

264. I can use the letterhead question here.

265. The problem is that...

266. That's what you've got to do...

267. He may say...

268. He'll be focusing on the letterhead.

269. Well, I don't know, because...

270. There's a good chance.

271. And it will take his mind off...

272. Yeah, but it gives him a lot of time

273. if he's scanning—and he's a smart fucker—

274. gives him a lot of time to look down there

275. and be like, "Oh, they're going— they're going there."

276. How about being more firm to him about it, saying,

277. "Obviously to anybody who's looking,

278. "looks at these two, these two addresses written this way,

279. "they're going to think they're written by the same person,

280. "that the person that wrote this envelope

281. wrote the cadaver note."

282. Stuart-Pontier: Is that better than "I,"me."

283. Look, "When I look at this, it seems to me that..."

284. I think that's always best.

285. "When I look at these two things, Bob, it looks to me like..."

286. Can I just say, "When Marc and I look at these two things"?

287. "When Zac looks at these two things"?

288. The more I sit here, the more I realize like,

289. "A," how hard this is gonna be...

290. and "B," how cold it's going to feel to him.

291. There's not a doubt in my mind

292. that Bob Durst has killed at least 3 people.

293. I believe that he killed his first wife.

294. I think Susan Berman had fallen on hard times.

295. I think when she made the statement

296. that the New York detectives were gonna go talk to her,

297. that sealed her fate.

298. I think whoever killed her assassinated her,

299. and I think it was Bob Durst.

300. There's no doubt in my mind that he—

301. that he killed Morris Black, because he admitted to it.

302. He also dismembered him.

303. I—I think he is being unfairly accused of these.

304. Honest—I know that he is innocent

305. of the—of the charges

306. in, uh, in Galveston.

307. But, I—I feel like he is being

308. unfairly accused on these other events—

309. the disappearance of Kathie in New York,

310. and the—the death of Susan Berman.

311. You know, I've said before that I think

312. that Bob Durst may be the unluckiest man in the world.

313. A lot of people write him off

314. as an eccentric kind of guy, and, uh, you know,

315. "It's just Bob being Bob."

316. It would be cute if "Bob being Bob"

317. didn't result in 3 people being dead.

318. Bill Mayer: Bobby's best friend.

319. Bobby's wife. Bobby's neighbor.

320. You know, there's not a...

321. very often they say, you know,

322. a lot of smoke doesn't necessarily mean fire,

323. but I think there's a lot of smoke here.

324. He seems to be at the wrong place

325. at the wrong time very often.

326. I think that his whole life, he's felt slighted

327. and underappreciated and smarter than other people.

328. And he wants to get this across.

329. He doesn't feel like justice has been done,

330. even as people peel away and want little to do with him.

331. He's stuck in a rut that began when he was a—a child.

332. Right or wrong, Bob has dodged some bullets.

333. And when you care about someone,

334. and you're in the line of work I am,

335. that leads me to want to counsel Bob

336. to enjoy the vineyard, have a good time

337. in New York and Los Angeles, travel.

338. Even this documentary, I told him,

339. "Look, I know you want to tell your story.

340. "It's important to you, and that's fine by me.

341. "But I want you to remember one thing.

342. "You run the risk of pissing people off.

343. "And people that have intentions contrary to your liberty.

344. Don't forget that."

345. I mean, I'm very— I'm very nervous about it.

346. Why?

347. Uh, I don't know.

348. I woke up early this morning.

349. You know, I've spent a lot of time on the phone with him,

350. a lot of time talking to him.

351. For years, I've been saying to people, "I'm not afraid of him.

352. I don't feel fear."

353. But at the same time, you know,

354. you can't help but consider that

355. if you're about to let him know that,

356. you know, you're potentially becoming the enemy.

357. There he is.

358. Hey, Mr. Durst.

359. Hey, Bob.

360. Marc. How are you doing?

361. Nice to see you again.

362. Let's go upstairs.

363. reach into the bag...

364. Right, so what we're going to do is get some coffee...

365. Very interesting information for you,

366. if you want to do it. And...

367. Excuse me.

368. So, I want to—now I want to ask you

369. about a bunch of photographs and stuff.

370. Some of it's all stuff—

371. some of it's stuff you've seen before,

372. because some of it I got from you.

373. Um, but for us to...

374. That's me and my yellow horse.

375. We're in Central Park.

376. This one is you and Kathie.

377. Could this be at her mother's house?

378. Might be in Vermont.

379. I still have the long bangs type—

380. what was it, Viking something or other hair.

381. This is an interesting picture of you and Susan.

382. Yes, I'd like to get a copy of this.

383. Yeah.

384. You can have this one.

385. Um... all right. I want to ask you about this address.

386. "Susie.

387. "Now and again I think about old times."

388. "G.D. Good luck. Bobby."

389. "Susie"... what, what about the address?

390. This office was— was your own office

391. that you had for a period of time?

392. Yeah, yeah. I—I—

393. when I left the family business,

394. I moved my office downtown.

395. Do you remember writing this to Susan?

396. No, not at all.

397. I left the family business in '94, '95.

398. "Susie, now and again I think about old times.

399. Good luck. Bobby."

400. I don't know what Susie was doing.

401. She must have come out with a new something or other?

402. Whatever she had had published or whatever in '94, '95.

403. I have no idea what that's about.

404. My theory is that this probably was

405. you sending her some support.

406. Oh, that's possible.

407. That certainly is possible.

408. I can easily see writing that letter

409. and putting a check in there.

410. I want to show you the envelope that that letter came in.

411. Would you read me the address on this envelope?

412. "Robert Durst, Floor 24,

413. 67 Wall Street, New York, New York 10005."

414. And who you sent it to?

415. "Susan Berman. 1527 Benedict Canyon,

416. Beverly Hills, California."

417. "Beverly, spelled wrong, California. 90210."

418. Which is, which is, you know,

419. the zip code that you want in Beverly Hills,

420. but you just didn't want Susie's neighborhood.

421. So, obviously I want to ask you about the cadaver note,

422. the famous cadaver note.

423. Can you read me the spelling of Beverly Hills?

424. "Beverly Hills Police, 1527 Benedict Canyon, Cadaver."

425. The same misspelling.

426. So "Beverly" is spelled the same way on this

427. and the same way on this.

428. Same misspelling.

429. What does that say to you?

430. Well, I mean, the writing looks similar

431. and the spelling is— is the same,

432. so I can see the conclusion the cops would draw,

433. or the writing exemplar person would

434. conclude they were both written by the same person.

435. And I think this, I mean,

436. this is a comparison of the two, right?

437. Which is a...

438. Very similar.

439. So, I guess the question is

440. did you write the cadaver note?

441. No, I didn't write the cadaver note.

442. So you wrote this, but you didn't write this?

443. Definitely wrote this, but I definitely did not write that.

444. I—I guess I'm searching for a way,

445. among other things, to understand how, um...

446. Two people could misspell "Beverly"?

447. I'm searching for a way to figure out

448. how you didn't write the cadaver note,

449. 'cause it's so similar.

450. Well, what I see as the similarity

451. is really the— a misspelling in the Beverly.

452. Other than that, the block letters are block letters.

453. How else would you write a block letter than—than that?

454. I mean—I mean, it's almost like a—a typed thing.

455. It's gonna look— with 2 typewriters,

456. it's gonna look the same.

457. So, you wrote one of these,

458. but you didn't write the other one?

459. I wrote this one, but I did not write the cadaver one.

460. And can you tell me which one you didn't write?

461. No.

462. Good.

463. That's it.

464. Thank you very much.

465. Well, thank you very much.

466. And it's 5 after 4:00.

467. Perfect timing. Can I have this?

468. Or are you gonna send me...?

469. Yeah, I want you to have it.

470. Thank you. Oh.

471. Do we have Bob's bag nearby?

472. Do you want to take one of the sandwiches, Bob?

473. Yeah, but we can wrap one up and...

474. Stuart-Pontier: We've got so many sandwiches.

475. What are we going to do with them?

476. I am going to go use the restroom, which is right here.

477. Or maybe this is the bathroom?

478. Stuart-Pontier: Yeah, that's the... You're right.

479. This is the bathroom.