(Bloomberg) -- Robert Durst, the New York real-estate heir charged with a 2000 murder of a friend, said his arrest warrant was filed to coincide with the final episode of an HBO series about him and wasn’t based on sufficient evidence.
Durst was arrested in New Orleans March 14, the day before HBO showed the last installment of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” in which he appears to admit he killed three people including his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles.
His lawyers said in a court filing Friday there’s no reason to keep him jailed on gun and drug charges brought by New Orleans prosecutors after his arrest in the lobby of the JW Marriott on Canal Street.
Durst, 71, has a bail hearing March 23 in New Orleans on the two local charges, one for being a felon in possession of a firearm and the other for simultaneously carrying a weapon and marijuana. A magistrate judge agreed to set a date Monday for a preliminary hearing over whether there’s enough evidence for the case to proceed.
Representatives of the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond a phone call seeking comment on the filing by Durst’s lawyers.
Los Angeles police issued a warrant for Durst’s arrest for the murder of Berman, who was found shot to death shortly before she was to be interviewed by Westchester County, New York, prosecutors about the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife.
Los Angeles prosecutors said in a criminal complaint that Durst killed Berman because she was a witness to a crime. According to the HBO documentary, Berman was a daughter of Las Vegas gangster Dave Berman and she was Durst’s confidante and spokeswoman at the time of his wife’s disappearance.
Durst has maintained his innocence in both his wife’s disappearance and in Berman’s death.
In the final episode of “The Jinx,” Durst is confronted with a letter he sent to Berman before her death. The handwriting on the envelope and the misspelling of “Beverly Hills” as “Beverley Hills” matches that of a note sent to Beverly Hills police right after her murder, saying that there was a “cadaver” at Berman’s address.
Durst denied he wrote the note to the police when asked about it by the documentary makers. After the interview concludes, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and unaware that he’s still being recorded, says, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
The case is People v. Durst, SA089983, California Superior Court, Los Angeles County.
To contact the reporters on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net Della Hasselle in New Orleans state court at della.louise@gmail.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg, Andrew Dunn
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