Robert Durst was ordered to stand trial in the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman after nearly two weeks of preliminary court hearings, the Associated Press reports.
Los Angeles Judge Mark Windham ruled on Thursday, October 25, that prosecutors presented enough evidence for the case to move forward. The judge ordered the 75-year-old, who was the subject of HBO’s acclaimed 2015 docuseries The Jinx, to remain in jail without bail.
Durst was arrested in March 2015 and charged in the point-blank shooting of Berman, who was 55 when she was killed at her L.A. home nearly 15 years earlier. He has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors have accused the New York real estate heir of murdering Berman to keep her from sharing details with police about his wife Kathleen Durst’s 1982 disappearance. Kathleen has long been presumed dead. Robert has never been charged with a crime related to his wife.
The AP reports that Robert’s attorney, David Chesnoff, argued during the preliminary hearings that there is no hard evidence, such as DNA or witnesses, to link his client to Berman’s death.
The Jinx, which won two Primetime Emmys, investigated Kathleen’s disappearance as well as the murders of Berman and Robert’s neighbor Morris Black. The multimillionaire was acquitted in the 2001 slaying of Black, 71, after a jury found that he acted in self-defense.
The HBO series ended with Robert being caught talking to himself on a live microphone. “What the hell did I do?” he asked. “Killed them all, of course.”
Robert is scheduled to return to court on November 8 for a second arraignment.
