I hope the professional investigators watching The Jinx with the hope of getting enough on Robert Durst to bring him to trial succeed. I, too, am looking at the HBO series for clues, but just as an unaccredited wannabe Durstbuster. One of the three people he's believed to have murdered, Susan Berman, was a friend, so I have a personal investment, but I also consider myself good at picking up things that may not be noticed by others. This traces back to the O.J. Trial. After being found not guilty, the football star announced, "I'm going to spend the rest of my life looking for Nicole's killer."
"That's very revealing," I pointed out to friends. "He phrased it that way because he knows it will never happen. He didn't say, 'I'm going to do everything I can to find the killer.'"
In the episode addressing the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie, a small square door was shown and he was asked what cops searching the house might have been looking for. Speaking slowly and showing no emotion, which is his style, he theorized, "Maybe they were looking for body parts." Aha! Unless he knew that she'd been chopped up, why would that come to mind? I was expecting more moments like this one, but we're not done.
The last of the three crimes covered in the show is the Texas murder of his neighbor. Durst admitted to having dismembered him and shoving the parts into body bags, explaining matter-of-factly that he didn't have the strength to dispose of the body any other way. The millionaire heir was able to lawyer up, which was money well spent as he hired two teams of attorneys and they succeeded in getting him an expected acquittal. He looked as shocked by the verdict as anyone else, asking his lawyer to repeat it to him.
I was surprised by the lawyers' willingness to reveal their strategy. One described Durst as "a lump we would have to shape." Another, Chip Lewis, admitted on camera that they'd taken liberties, saying that that they'd put the focus on Jeanine Pirro, the DA assigned to the Kathie Black case, and demonized her. He was shown in the courtroom, saying, "If Ms. Pirro had kept her mouth shut, none of this would have happened." "The jury ate that up," he said on The Jinx. I wonder how Durst feels about their revealing the strategy they used and publicly taking credit for the decision. It seemed so much like a promo; I looked for the disclaimer, "Results not typical."