An advertising executive claims Robert Durst confessed to murdering his friend Susan Berman during a 2014 after-dinner conversation.
“I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice,” the executive, Nick Chavin, recalled Durst saying.
Chavin, who was a long-time friend of both Durst and Berman, gave a deposition in the murder case, which has yet to go to trial. Prosecutors had kept Chavin’s identity secret until the deposition, citing fears that Durst might have him murdered to prevent him from testifying.
Chavin also claimed Berman had told him Durst had admitted to murdering his first wife, Kathleen.
Durst, once the heir apparent to the namesake family real estate company, was arrested in New Orleans in 2015 after an HBO documentary recorded him muttering what could be construed as a murder confession. (Durst claimed he was nonsensical at the time because he was high on meth.) He is facing trial in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors allege Durst murdered Berman in 2000 to prevent her from spilling information about the disappearance of his first wife in 1982.
Chavin claimed that Durst was the best man at his wedding, and that he helped Chavin get advertising work for the Durst Organization. [LATimes] — Konrad Putzier