Scandal-scarred real-estate heir Robert Durst will take the stand at his California murder trial, defense lawyers said Tuesday in court.
“Bob Durst is going to testify,” Dick DeGeurin told jurors during his opening statement in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Durst, 76, is on trial for the slaying of his best friend, Susan Berman, in her Beverly Hills home in December 2000.
Prosecutors have argued that he shot her in the back of the head to stop her from cooperating with Westchester investigators on a new probe into the disappearance of his first wife, Kathie Durst, in 1982.
Deputy DA John Lewin told jurors in his three-day opening statements that Durst killed Kathie after their marriage soured then shot Berman to keep her quiet. He also killed and dismembered his friend, Morris Black, in 2001 in Galveston, Texas, where he was hiding out disguised as a mute woman. Lewin said Durst feared that Black, who knew his true identity, would reveal his whereabouts.
But DeGeurin argued that Durst had acted in self-defense. A Texas jury agreed in 2003 and acquitted Durst of murder after he testified. DeGeurin and his co-counsel, Chip Lewis, represented Durst at that trial too.
“Chip and I have been representing Bob since I first met him in the jail in Pennsylvania in November of 2001,” DeGuerin said playfully in openings.“Right after he was arrested for shoplifting a chicken salad sandwich, a Wall Street Journal and a band-aid.”
Durst had just been charged for Black’s murder and jumped his $250,000 bond only to be caught stealing a sandwich from a grocery store a few weeks later. He had $37,000 in cash in his car in the parking lot.