Robert Durst pleads guilty to gun charge, setting up possible murder trial

He has also pointed to the well-known unreliability of handwriting analysis in criminal cases – which many judges do not admit at trial.

Durst, 72, wore an orange jumpsuit, tennis shoes, and black aviators at his Wednesday appearance.

‘I plead guilty, ‘ Durst told the court. Durst, a convicted felon, was found with the handgun during his arrest last March at the J.W. Marriott Hotel on Canal Street, where he was registered under an alias.

The statement doesn’t list anything else, including $117,000 in $100 bills that was sent to the hotel for Everette Ward – the name under which Durst had registered – and arrived after his arrest.

Durst has waived extradition and says he wants to go to California to prove his innocence in the death of Susan Berman.

McMahon called the plea agreement a “good result”.

The maximum penalty that Durst could have faced was 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As part of the plea, once Durst is sentenced in New Orleans on a weapons charge federal prosecutors will present Durst for an August 18 arraignment in Los Angeles Superior Court.

A fugitive NY real estate heir held in Louisiana on a weapons charge is scheduled for a plea agreement that will let him return to California to face a murder charge. The murder investigation was reopened in 2000 by Westchester prosecutors, after which Berman was found murdered execution-style in her Los Angeles home.

“What we’re doing and have been trying to do from the start is get Bob Durst to Los Angeles”, Mr. DeGuerin said after the hearing, according to the Associated Press. Berman helped give Durst an alibi at the time.

He’s expected to serve his sentence in California. Durst’s lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to suppress the evidence of the revolver, claiming the search was warrantless, but U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan ruled that a gun was fair game in a search involving a murder suspect likely on the run.

Though Durst is only facing trial for a crime committed in 2000, the root of his troubles date back to 1982 when his first wife, Kathleen Durst, abruptly disappeared, reported NBC News.