Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has spent much of the last 20 years thinking about Robert Durst, the notorious real estate heir suspected of multiple murders but who managed to evade justice until the end of his life.
Jarecki's 2015 Emmy-winning docuseries, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” put Durst in the spotlight by revisiting the mysterious deaths to which he was linked: the 1982 disappearance of the former Durst's wife, Kathie McCormack Durst; the murder of his best friend, Los Angeles writer Susan Berman, in 2000; and the gruesome murder and dismemberment of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, in 2001. And, as is known, it led to Durst's arrest in New Orleans the day before the broadcast of the explosive but controversial finale in which he muttered: “I killed them to everyone, of course.” ”To himself while he was in the bathroom.
In “The Jinx – Part Two,” a six-episode continuation that concluded Sunday on HBO and is available to stream on Max, Jarecki looks at the dramatic events that have unfolded since Durst's quasi-confession aired on national television and sparked a craze for high-profile true crime documentaries. This time, the focus is less on Durst and his damaged psychology and more on the circle of friends and confidants who helped him along the way.
“When we were making the first 'Jinx,' we were like, 'How do you kill three people in 30 years and get away with it?' It takes a village,'” Jarecki said, in a windowless editing room in Chelsea, where he was joined by executive producer Zac Stuart-Pontier, who after 15 years in the world of “The Jinx” has an almost instantaneous memory of everything related to Durst. related. The conversation, which was scheduled for half an hour, was extended to 90 minutes, an indication that the documentarians are not done talking about Durst, who died in 2022, or the friends and family who helped him over the years.
“This idea of complicity was fascinating to us because it expands the story,” Jarecki said. “Who are these people who consider themselves good, honest, decent people and do not consider themselves complicit in anything?”
Sunday's finale, appropriately titled “It Takes a Village,” takes a critical look at the people who understood Durst (and what he was capable of) better than anyone: his siblings, Wendy, Douglas and Thomas; and his second wife and heir, Debrah Lee Charatan, who did not attend an interview but is present in the series through video statements and often fascinating prison phone calls with her husband. The series portrays her as a cunning opportunist, more consigliere than wife, who helped Durst safeguard his fortune through numerous legal battles, used her wealth to amass her own real estate empire, and is now fighting a wrongful death lawsuit from Kathie's family. , the McCormacks.
Robert Durst and his friend Susan Berman, murdered in 2000.
(HBO)
“This is a person who has really played the long game,” said Jarecki, whose 2010 feature “All Good Things” was inspired by Durst and led to his involvement in “The Jinx.”
The finale tells the story of Charatan's relationship with Durst, which began in the late 1980s, when she was newly divorced and bankrupt, and he was a wealthy eccentric who was rumored to have killed his first wife. The couple married in a secret ceremony in 2000, shortly after authorities in Westchester County, New York, reopened the investigation into Kathie's disappearance, and days before Berman was shot in the head.
The series concludes with a dramatization of a woman who looks like Charatan driving a luxury convertible down a scenic road and arriving at a palatial oceanfront estate. It is interspersed with footage of the statement from the real Charatan, who she questions about supporting Durst while he was accused of horrible things. “It was worth it?” asks a lawyer for the McCormack family. “I think so,” he says.
“I think she thought, 'Well, I'll do the math: There's a lot of value in staying connected to this person.'” [Durst], because he is going to die with more than 100 million dollars,'” Jarecki said. “By the way, it was difficult what he did: managing Bob for all those years. That wasn't easy. He is an infuriating and extremely time-consuming partner.” (Exhibit A: In a tense video call shown in the series, Durst clashes with Charatan over payment of her legal fees, threatening to cut her out of her will. She deftly escorts him back.)
Charatan's relationship with Durst came under increased scrutiny after his death in January 2022. Due to a legal technicality in California, his conviction for Berman's murder was overturned, essentially overturned. This led the McCormack family to file a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Durst estate, which is controlled by Charatan.
Director Andrew Jarecki, left, and Robert Durst.
(HBO)
Charatan appeared to take a statement in the case. In parts that appear in “The Jinx,” she admits to having lived with another man during her marriage to Durst and says that she “respects” the jury's guilty verdict in the Berman case. However, she says that she does not believe Durst killed Kathie.
“She's had a lot of opportunities to redeem herself, including being able to be on the show,” Jarecki said. “She could have explained why she was with him. She could have explained what she really believed.” The filmmaker said he tried to get Charatan to participate in the documentary, even having dinner with her several times to plead her case, but he was unsuccessful.
“It Takes a Village” also considers the role played by Durst's younger siblings, who in their testimony say they feared their older brother and even suspected he might have had something to do with Kathie's disappearance, but did little to help. on the research. time. They also reportedly did not reach out to the McCormack family to offer support or condolences.
In an audio testimony, Thomas Durst says his siblings Wendy and Douglas never mentioned Kathie again after she disappeared: “It was like she had become a non-person and I decided, 'You know what? Kathie isn't just missing. Kathie is dead and Bob is responsible, but I don't know what I can do.'”
Kathie's body was never found and in 2017 she was declared legally dead. Durst was formally charged with her death in 2021, but died before his trial began.
“How much would it have cost them to approach Kathie's family and say, 'Listen, we didn't kill Kathie. But boy, we feel really bad about what happened. And we want to make some kind of contribution to you,'” Jarecki said. “They didn't have to admit their complicity, but at least it would have been an acknowledgment.”
“The Jinx” also captures the moment when Jarecki receives a phone call informing him that Durst is dead. Although his passing wasn't exactly surprising (Durst was 78 and had had health problems for years), it still left him baffled, Jarecki said. “It had been in my life for so long that it didn't seem real that it was going to go away,” he said. “I didn't miss it. I didn't think, 'Oh, we had these beautiful moments together.' …I just thought, I actually don't know how I feel about this..”
In the months before her death, Jarecki and Stuart-Pontier said they worked together on numerous drafts of a letter to Durst, pleading with him to clarify what happened to Kathie. But Durst never revealed what he knew about his fate.
The gist of the letter was that Durst should “just tell people what happened with Kathie,” Jarecki said. “Maybe it was a terrible accident. Whatever it is, even if it's bad, even if she makes you look terrible… everyone's going to say, 'Even though she did some terrible things, before she died she somehow found a way to have a little bit of redemption.' ”. Jarecki believed that Durst considered himself fundamentally misunderstood and tried to appeal to that.
Jim McCormack, brother of Kathie Durst, and his wife, Sharon McCormack, in “The Jinx – Part Two.”
(HBO)
“One of the reasons he agreed to talk to me to begin with is because he had applied to get into a co-op building and was turned down,” he said. “And his attitude was like, 'Oh, I've never been convicted of murder. So why are you treating me like an outcast?'”
They decided not to send the letter because “it was inserting us into history in a way that could alter [it]” said Jarecki, who believes Durst killed Kathie because she had accomplished so much and highlighted how little she had done despite her extraordinary privilege. “Bob is a phony, and Bob knows he's a phony,” he said. “Kathie arrives and falls in love with him, and at some point she realizes that she's a fake. And that humiliates him a lot.”
The filmmakers began thinking about another season of “The Jinx” while reviewing testimony from conditional witnesses in the Berman case: people like Nick Chavin, the old friend turned “secret witness” against Durst. “There's nothing like friends turning on each other,” Stuart-Pontier said. “That was the first indication that the people around Bob were really going to play a very important role in telling the story going forward.”
“The Jinx – Part Two” argues that before Berman became one of Durst's victims, she was one of his enablers. Perhaps the biggest bombshell of the season is the audio tape of an interview Berman gave to journalist Albert Goldman a few days after Kathie's disappearance, in which he slandered his friend's character and raised the idea that she had been a victim. of a robbery. which she suggested she was helping Durst cover up a crime.
The theme of complicity is, if anything, more relevant in today's political climate than when “The Jinx” Season 1 aired in 2015, just months before Donald Trump announced he was running for president. It's hard to watch the second season without thinking about the biographical similarities between Trump and Durst, controversial descendants of powerful New York real estate dynasties known for acting with impunity.
“This is all very topical,” Jarecki said, noting how Republicans who once denounced Trump have fallen back into line. “We've talked about why 'The Jinx' is important now. But it seems that this idea of complicity is very important for what is happening.”
