America’s obsession with true crime stories continues today, but the genre may have peaked back in 2015 with The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, the HBO limited series that made headlines because of the show’s extraordinary ending. I won’t spoil it (yet), but suffice it to say that the final seconds contain one of the most astounding moments in television history.
Now there’s a new development in the case: the prosecution have asked the judge handling Durst’s case to allow them to use the DVD commentary track for a movie called All Good Things as evidence. Read the latest about the Robert Durst trial below.
All Good Things is a 2010 film directed by Andrew Jarecki, the same guy who directed HBO’s The Jinx. The movie stars Ryan Gosling playing a character heavily inspired by Durst, the wealthy real estate heir suspected of killing at least three people over the past thirty years. The real Durst, who was notoriously tight-lipped with journalists, actually liked Jarecki’s movie and reached out to him about it, which resulted in the pair recording a commentary for the DVD release and sparking a series of in-person interviews that would later be used in The Jinx.
Now, The Los Angeles Times says that prosecutors in Durst’s murder case have asked the judge to consider All Good Things and its DVD commentary as evidence because “Durst’s comments and, at times, his silence while viewing All Good Things constitute a tacit admission of guilt”:
“After reading the script and watching this movie,” prosecutors wrote, “defendant did not sue the production company for slander, nor did he object to how the movie portrayed him.”
Spoilers for real life and The Jinx ahead.
Durst, 75, is suspected of murdering his good friend Susan Berman in 2000, allegedly because Berman knew the truth about Durst’s wife’s disappearance. Kathleen Durst disappeared in 1982 and her body was never found. Durst was arrested the day before the final episode of The Jinx aired, and audiences watched as Durst was confronted with evidence that seemed to directly tie him to Berman’s murder: an envelope with his handwriting that misspelled Beverly Hills as “Beverley Hills”, the same misspelling that was on an anonymous letter mailed to the police alerting them to the fact that Berman had been killed. (The show posited that Durst shot Berman in the head, but felt guilty about her body potentially being undiscovered for a long period of time in her home, so he allegedly sent the letter to the police so they would find her quickly.) After being confronted with this evidence in The Jinx, Durst left his microphone on and can be heard muttering the words “killed them all, of course” while in the bathroom after the interview.
“I felt [All Good Things] was very, very, very close in much of the ways about what, pretty much, happened,” Durst said in an interview that was played in court this week. “There were parts where I said, ‘Well, that’s just not right.'” One of those parts? The depiction of him killing his dog, Igor.
“His failure to dispute any of the other damning allegations from the rest of the movie manifests his belief in the movie’s truth,” prosecutors said. “It strains all credibility to suggest that a person being depicted as a serial killer would not have stood up and proclaimed the falsity of such allegations.”
Durst denies killing Berman and his wife Kathleen. The judge has not yet decided if All Good Things and its commentary – on which Durst admits to assaulting his wife – should be allowed in the case, but he’s announced that there is enough evidence for Durst to stand trial for the murder of Susan Berman. After The Jinx aired, I wrote about the show’s relationship to All Good Things, and you can read that piece here if you’re interested.
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