HBO had teased that The Jinx was going to end in explosive fashion, and it was not kidding. Just hours before the finale of the documentary based on Robert Durst was set to air, police moved in and arrested him on a murder warrant for the death of Susan Berman. She had served as Durst's spokeswoman and was shot in the back of the head in 2000. It was right before she was expected to be questioned about the disappearance of Durst's first wife Kathleen nearly 20 years earlier. Ironically, a typo on a handwritten piece of paper is what ultimately lead to Durst's unraveling. Andrew Jarecki was the director of The Jinx and spent a good deal of time with Durst. He and the rest of the production team was absolutely stunned to hear Durst mutter into an open mic, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." While it can and no doubt will be argued that Durst assumed he had privacy while in the bathroom, the fact is he still had a hot mic clipped to him and understood how it worked. Jarecki turned all the audio tapes over to police months ago, and on Monday, March 16, he sat to discuss his experience with Durst on CBS This Morning.
"The truth is we hoped that Robert Durst would be arrested as soon as possible, and we were sort of amazed ourselves that he hadn't be been arrested for so long, but the authorities were never communicating with us other than in their normal cordial way," he said.
"After sitting down with him, we thought we've got this sort of revelation, which is he was unable to determine which of the two handwritings that we were showing him was his own. It wasn't until months later that we had an editor listening to material that we had left behind, thinking, now we have to listen to everything we got. We're about to finish the series and we discovered that we had this shocking piece of audio," he said.
"What's amazing to me is he came to us knowing what he knew about his life. We didn't know that. All we could do is assume that some bad things had happened. We weren't exactly sure what," explained Jarecki.
While so many obviously assumed that Durst was guilty, to actually hear the words fall from his mouth in a moment when no one else was around was absolutely shocking, don't you think? We already know his defense team will try and get the audio tape thrown out because of the way it was obtained. Do you think it will ultimately be admissible as evidence in court? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
