LOS ANGELES — Susan Berman may have ensured her own demise by telling real estate heir Robert Durst she planned to cooperate with a renewed probe into the disappearance of his first wife, Los Angeles prosecutors said Friday in court.
Berman told Durst shortly before she was shot in the head that New York authorities had contacted her about Kathie Durst, 29, who mysteriously vanished in 1982.
In reality, Berman had made up the story that allegedly cinched her death in December 2000, prosecutors said.
“It was that statement from Susan Berman to Bob Durst that sealed her fate,” Deputy DA John Lewin told jurors on the second day of the prosecutions’ opening statements in LA Superior Court. Durst, 76, faces one count of murder for the execution-style slaying of Berman, 55, in her Beverly Hills home.
“Bob Durst showed up at her doorstep. She let him into the house,” Lewin said.
The moment she pivoted to tend to her dog, Durst raised his weapon.
“He shot her point-blank,” the prosecutor told jurors. “At the time the gun was fired, it was within an inch from the back of her head.”
New York authorities had launched a fresh investigation into Kathie’s suspicious disappearance, but they had not contacted Berman, Lewin said.
The prosecutor implied that Berman, who was in dire financial straights, made the false statement to Durst so he’d give her more cash to ensure her silence.
The notoriously stingy millionaire had given her about $50,000 in the weeks before her murder.
A day before Berman’s body was found Dec. 24, 2000, Durst sent an anonymous letter to the Beverly Hills Police Department. He wrote her address and the word “cadaver” in block letters on the note. Durst’s lawyers have since acknowledged that he penned the letter.
The real estate scion would only learn that Berman had lied to him 15 years later when Lewin interviewed him after his belated arrest in New Orleans for her murder.
Lewin has argued that Berman helped Durst cover up his killing of Kathie and had even confessed her role to numerous friends. Kathie’s body has never been found.
Weeks after allegedly shooting Berman, Durst went into hiding in Galveston, Texas, where he posed as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner and befriended a neighbor, Morris Black.
As the two became close, Durst dropped his disguise and revealed his true identity. Their relationship soured after Black began to pressure him to buy a house for them to share.