NEW ORLEANS — The night before he was busted in the JW Marriott hotel, Robert Durst was ambling around the French Quarter packing heat, The Post has learned.
Millionaire real estate heir and murder defendant Durst had a pistol strapped to his side — and he wasn’t shy about showing it off, said a doorman at a nightclub just off Canal Street.
John Phillips, 32, said Durst made a beeline for the Mahogany Jazz Hall Burlesque and Absinthe House when he heard music spilling out into the street shortly before midnight Friday.
“He was walking on the other side of the street and cut right across to me,” Phillips recalled. “I asked him to come into the club, but he said in a female-ish soft voice, ‘I would like to come in, but I can’t right now.’ ”
Without prompting, Durst then pulled open the right side of his brown tweed suit jacket, revealing the butt of a handgun nestled in a belt holster, Phillips said. “I thought to myself, ‘I hope this old guy with a gun doesn’t do anything stupid.’”
Phillips said that “the whole exchange took less than a minute” outside the club, which is flanked by several down-scale restaurants and a sex shop.
After their brief encounter, Durst “just stumbled a little as he walked down the block,” Phillips said. “I just thought he was an old man who was a little bit off. I kept thinking, ‘This old guy is on too much prescription medication.’”
Less than 24 hours later, the FBI nabbed Durst at the Marriott, where cops found a loaded .38-caliber revolver and marijuana stashed in his room.
Additional reporting by Bruce Golding