Real estate heir Durst pleads guilty to gun charge

The maximum sentence would be 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The show profiled him and examined suspicions that he was involved in the deaths of Berman and his wife Kathleen Durst, who disappeared in 1982. But by that time Durst, who was the subject of the February 2015 documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst”, had been living what some would describe as a hair-raising life of mystery for decades.

However, he won’t immediately be sent to California until at least the sentencing. Durst had been previously acquitted of the death of neighbor Morris Black in 2003. However, an agreement between Durst, his lawyers, and federal prosecutors, exchanged a guilty plea for seven years and one month behind bars in federal prison.

“Sometimes sociopaths crave the spotlight they get for their crimes and are more than happy to cooperate with journalists, authors, and documentary filmmakers”, Paul Levinson, media critic and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in NY, told The Christian Science Monitor. In 2000, police were preparing to question Berman, a friend of Durst’s, in the investigation of the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack.

Durst had been charged with illegally carrying a.38-caliber revolver. The Bureau of Prisons must then decide where he will serve the sentence, and he will have to be transported to that prison.

“What we’ve done and are trying to do, since day one, is to clear the decks of everything so we can go to California”, said Durst’s attorney, Richard DeGuerin. Durst, as a convicted felon, was not allowed to possess a handgun.

Durst has been long estranged from his real-estate-rich family, which is best known for a series of New York City skyscrapers – including an investment in the World Trade Center. He is expected to return to California by August 18 for his arraignment on the pending murder charge, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Assistant US Attorney Michael McMahon said the plea bargain will be nullified if the judge gives Durst a different sentence.