Robert Durst Seeks Judge Approval Of 7-Year Prison Sentence
NEW ORLEANS (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Real estate heir Robert Durst will soon learn whether a federal judge will accept a 7-year-and-one-month sentence on a weapons charge that's kept him in Louisiana pending a murder trial in California.
Judge Kurt Engelhardt will say Wednesday whether he approves that sentence, which Durst, 72, accepted as part of his guilty plea in February. If he rejects the sentence, the plea agreement would be nullified.
Durst is charged in Los Angeles with killing his friend Susan Berman in 2000 to keep her from talking to New York prosecutors about the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen, in 1982.
The charge stems from his arrest in a New Orleans hotel last year by FBI agents who feared he was about to flee to Cuba. The gun was found in the hotel room he had taken under the name Everette Ward. After his arrest, a package with $117,000 in cash arrived, addressed to Everette Ward. Durst will forfeit that money, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon said after the hearing.
McMahon called the plea agreement a "good result." The maximum would have been 10 years and a $250,000 fine.
His attorneys have said repeatedly that he's innocent, doesn't know who killed Berman, and wants to prove it.
The most recent such statement was in a motion filed Monday asking U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt to recommend that Durst serve his time at Terminal Island, California, about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles, because it's near where Durst faces trial and it has medical facilities Durst needs because of his "advanced age and serious health considerations, including mobility challenges.''
An estranged member of the wealthy New York real estate family that runs 1 World Trade Center, Durst was tracked to New Orleans in March 2015 by FBI agents worried that he was about to flee to Cuba..
FBI agents followed Durst to a New Orleans hotel on the eve of the finale of "The Jinx," HBO's six-part documentary about Durst, his wife's disappearance, Berman's death and the death and dismemberment of Durst's neighbor Morris Black in 2001. Durst was formally arrested early on the day of the broadcast, before viewers saw him in a washroom, still wearing a live microphone and muttering, "There it is. You're caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
A previous felony that is also part of Durst's plea was a 2004 plea in Pennsylvania to possessing a weapon both while under indictment for Black's death and doing so while a fugitive on the murder charge.
He ultimately testified that he killed Black in self-defense, and was acquitted of murder.
At the end of the show, Durst is heard muttering, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.''
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