An attorney for Robert Durst on Wednesday slammed prosecutors’ case against the disgraced real estate heir as weak — insisting that there is no hard evidence linking him to the slaying of his longtime pal.
“Evidence was lacking,” lawyer Dick DeGuerin told the panel in his opening arguments at Durst’s murder trial in Los Angeles.
“Not a fingerprint. No DNA. No blood. No fibers from his clothes no gun. No shoeprints. Nothing in his car when it was searched later. Didnāt do a sexual exam. No forensic evidence that Bob Durst killed Susan Berman.”
DeGuerin stressed that the burden was on California prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the kooky 78-year-old killed Susan Berman iš¼n 2000.
“Was she murdered? Yes. Who did it? Thatās not our burden; thatās not your burden. The stateās burden is to prove who did it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “If it’s not Bob, it’s not guilty.”
Durst is on trial for Berman’s alleged “execution-style” murder at her home in the Benedict Canyon section of Los Anļ·½geles in late December 2000.
The trial had started lļ·ŗast year but was postponed for some 14 months becaušse of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In their opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors said the evidence will show Durst shot and killed Berman to keep her from divulging information she had about the disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathie Durst.
Prosecutors allege Durst killed Kathie and dismembered her body in 1982,ź¦ when she vanished from their New York home. Durst had confided about the slayinšg to Berman, his longtime friend, according to the prosecution.
DeGuerin said Durst found Berman’s body when he went to visit her around Christmas Day in 2000 ā but said there was no evidence to show that he shot her.
“The evidence isnāt there,” he told jurors. “Bob Durst did not kill Susan Berman, and he does not know who did.”
Durst panicked after making the grisly discovery and drove to San Francisco ā but not before sending a cryptic note to the Beverly Hills Police Department saying there was a “cadaver” in Berman’s home, according to DeGuerin, who says his client is on the autistic spectrum.
Durst penned the creepy letter to police, fearful that Berman’s body would lie there for days, the lawyer said.
The infamous “cadaver letter” was detailed in length in the 2015 HBO docu-series “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.”
But DeGuerin blasted the Emmy-winning series as a “hatchet job” that was “not a documentary.”
The attorney also slammed filmmakers for the final scene of the series — which included Durst saying he “killed them all” on a hot mic while in a bathroom — calling it “heavily edited.”
Scenes of the “The Jinx” were played by prosecutors during their opening statements Tuesday.
