Multimillionaire murder suspect Robert Durst had a fascination with guns and an unsettling need to visit a friend in California — Susan Berman, who authorities say he shot to death months later — a Texas woman who dated the creepy New York real estate heir said Wednesday.
Linda Walker Zevallos, in interviews with the Los Angeles Times and NBC’s “Today” show, said that in 2000 she went out on a string of dates with Durst, who then lived in Dallas, after they met on a flight from New York.
Zevallos said she knew nothing about Durst’s past, including the suspicion that surrounded him after his wife, Katherine, had gone missing in Westchester County in 1982.
“At the time there was no Google, so I didn’t know the whole back story,” Zavallos, 63, said. On one date, Zavallos and Durst decided to stay in and watch a movie — and even that got weird.
“He wanted to get this movie that had just come out at Blockbuster,” Zavallos recalled. “I said, ‘What is it?’ ‘American Psycho.’ He was all excited about ‘American Psycho.’ I went to Blockbuster and rented [it]. I watched about five minutes, and I couldn’t watch any more. It was about a guy in New York killing people. It was just too violent.”
The 2000 movie starring Christian Bale, based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel, depicts a wealthy New York investment banker who hides his alter-ego, a serial killing sociopath.
On another date, Durst took Zavallos and her 13-year-old son Michael out to dinner. “We started down the street and he said, ‘Oh I forgot I’ve got two guns in the back seat, so Michael, don’t touch the guns.’ I was absolutely shocked,” she told “Today.”
Zevallos said she broke off the relationship shortly after Durst told her he needed to go to Southern California to visit Berman. She said she didn’t know if Durst ever made the trip, but it did unnerve her when she learned that Berman was murdered execution style and that Durst was a suspect.
The next year, Durst was facing murder charges in the death of a Galveston neighbor after he was arrested in the same car he used to squire Zavallos around in Dallas. “It was the same car, the silver Honda,” Zavallos said. “When they arrested Bob there were only two things in the back: the saw and his tennis racket.”
Durst, 71, was arrested in New Orleans on March 14. He is facing gun charges in the Big Easy and murder charges in California over the Berman slay.