Two witnesses for prosecutors, including one yet to be identified, are expected to testify on Tuesday at a hearing in the murder trial of New York real estate heir Robert Durst — in case they die or get killed, prosecutors said.
Superior Court Judge Mark Windham said prosecutors presented evidence revealing a “possible danger” to the unidentified witness during an earlier hearing in the case, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Durst, 73, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting of his friend and longtime spokeswoman, Susan Berman, at her home in Los Angeles in 2000. Prosecutors allege Durst killed Berman because she knew Durst killed his first wife, Kathleen — who has been missing since 1982.
At a hearing in December, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin asked Windham if the witnesses could testify due to concerns about their safety.
“Mr. Durst is accused of the murder of one witness, he has admitted to causing the death of a second individual who we believe was killed because he was a witness as well. And the special circumstance of this case is that he murdered his wife,” Lewin said. “Two of those three individuals, the people are alleging, were murdered because they were witnesses.”
Lewin added: “Mr. Durst has something in the order of $100 million. The witnesses in this case realistically, understandably are concerned about their safety.”
Dr. Albert Kuperman, an 86-year-old retired New York doctor who was an associate dean at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx — where Kathie Durst was a student when she disappeared — is expected to testify. Lewin didn’t specify what Kuperman would testify to during the hearing in December, saying only he needed to testify sooner rather than later.
Defense attorney David Chesnoff said Durst, who appeared in court in a wheelchair, was not a threat to anyone in his current state.
“Suggesting somehow that a man in a wheelchair is somehow a threat to an 85-year-old man in New York . . . is just hyperbole,” Chesnoff told Windham in December.
Durst was arrested on murder charges based on evidence from “The Jinx,” a six-part HBO documentary in which Durst blabbed about himself and seemingly confessed into a microphone that he thought was off, saying: “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
The documentary features footage on Berman’s death in 2000, the disappearance of Durst’s wife in New York and Durst’s 2003 trial in Texas — where he ultimately was acquitted of killing neighbor Morris Black.
Meanwhile, Berman’s biographer thinks Durst will finally be convicted of murder, she told Page Six earlier this month.
“The evidence is clear,” Cathy Scott said. “I don’t see how he can get out of this one.”
Scott, who said she will be in the courtroom Tuesday for the pretrial hearing, said Durst will be convicted, even though he has the best lawyers money can buy.
When Kathie Durst disappeared, Berman became his spokeswoman and shielded him from reporters hounding him for details about the case.
“She had told friends, ‘I know he did it,’” Scott said.
Defense attorneys earlier this month said they have mountains of evidence to review and doubted whether they could be ready for trial before next year. A preliminary hearing has been set for Oct. 17, according to court documents filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court cited by the Associated Press.
Durst, who remains held without bail, was arrested by the FBI at a hotel in New Orleans in 2015. He was charged with Berman’s murder days later and was sentenced to seven years in prison on federal gun charges in April.