Robert Durst’s Confession: The Hot Mic, Trial, and Overturned Conviction

Robert Durst’s confession wasn’t a signed statement or a courtroom admission. It was a muttered, fragmented monologue captured on a live microphone in a bathroom during the filming of HBO’s documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, in which the New York real estate heir was recorded saying, among other things, “Killed them all, of course.” That recording, along with a separate verbal admission he made to a close friend, helped convict Durst in 2021 of murdering his longtime friend Susan Berman.

What Durst Actually Said on the Hot Mic

The recording was made in 2012, after a confrontational final interview with director Andrew Jarecki. Jarecki had just confronted Durst with a handwriting sample linking him to a key piece of evidence in the Berman case. Durst excused himself to the bathroom. His wireless microphone stayed on.¹

What it captured was a rambling, disjointed stream that included the phrases “There it is, you’re caught,” “Killed them all, of course,” and “What the hell did I do?”¹ The remarks were obscured by background noise and weren’t discovered until two years later, when editor Shelby Siegel isolated the individual audio tracks.² The filmmakers said they then “soon looped” Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin in on the find and turned over the full seven-minute recording.³

How HBO Edited the Recording

When the bathroom scene aired in the series finale on March 15, 2015, the audio was not presented in the order Durst spoke it. The broadcast placed “What the hell did I do?” immediately before “Killed them all, of course,” creating the impression of a single confession delivered in one breath. The unedited transcript, later filed in court, showed the two phrases were spoken at separate points, with other unrelated remarks between them.⁴

Jinx editor Zac Stuart-Pontier acknowledged the phrases were rearranged to “end the series on a dramatic note.”⁴ Prosecutors later filed the full court transcript specifically to respond to defense claims that the filmmakers had manipulated the audio.⁵ The jury that eventually convicted Durst heard the raw, unedited audio rather than the broadcast cut.⁶

The Second Confession Jurors Heard

The bathroom audio drew the headlines, but a different admission may have mattered more inside the courtroom. Nick Chavin, a longtime friend of both Durst and Berman, testified that after a 2014 dinner in New York City, Durst told him he had killed Berman. According to Chavin, Durst said: “I had to. It was her or me. I had no choice.”⁷

Prosecutor Habib Balian told jurors in closing arguments that those nine words summarized the entire case against Durst.⁸ Unlike the bathroom audio, Chavin’s account was a direct, person-to-person admission, delivered without the ambiguity of a muttered monologue.

What Durst Admitted on the Stand

Durst took the stand in his own defense and made admissions that further damaged his case. The most significant concerned a note mailed anonymously to the Beverly Hills Police Department the day before Berman’s body was found. The note contained only her address and the word “CADAVER,” and misspelled Beverly Hills as “Beverley.”⁹

For nearly two decades, Durst denied writing the “cadaver note.” In December 2019, after a judge ruled handwriting analysis admissible, his defense team conceded in a court filing that he had authored it, calling the stipulation a “strategic decision.”¹⁰ At trial, Durst explained he had found Berman already dead after letting himself into her home with a key she had mailed him, and said he sent the anonymous note rather than call police because he feared his “recognizable” voice would identify him.¹¹

He also conceded he struggled to believe his own story. “I mean, I have difficulty believing it myself, that I would write the letter if I had not killed Susan Berman,” Durst told the jury.¹²

Across roughly 38 hours of cross-examination by Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, Durst admitted to lying under oath and conceded he would lie about “very important things.”⁶ Asked whether he would lie about killing Berman, he answered: “I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.”¹³

How the Confession Led to Conviction

Durst was arrested on March 14, 2015, at the JW Marriott hotel in New Orleans, one day before the Jinx finale aired. His defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said of the timing: “Do I think this is a coincidence? Hell, no.”¹⁴ Law enforcement later said they moved when they did because they had learned Durst was actively planning to flee and the show was about to broadcast his recorded remarks.³

The murder trial began in Los Angeles in March 2020, was adjourned fourteen months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and resumed in May 2021.¹⁵ Jurors heard the raw bathroom audio from The Jinx, Chavin’s testimony, clips from Jarecki’s 2010 fictionalized film All Good Things, and jailhouse recordings in which Durst discussed faking medical conditions.⁶

DeGuerin portrayed Durst as a socially awkward, ailing man and a victim of “ambitious prosecutors and deceptive filmmakers,” arguing that being a liar did not make his client a killer and calling The Jinx a “hatchet job.”¹⁵¹⁶

On September 17, 2021, after approximately seven and a half hours of deliberation, the jury found Durst guilty of first-degree murder. It also found two special circumstances: that he had been lying in wait and that he killed a witness to prevent her from revealing information about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst.¹⁵¹⁷¹⁸

Why the Conviction No Longer Legally Stands

Robert Durst died on January 10, 2022, at age 78, of natural causes at an outside hospital while in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.¹⁹ He had filed a notice of appeal but died before the appellate process concluded. Under California law, because his conviction was not yet final at the time of his death, it was vacated.²⁰

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson summed up the result: “The whole world knows the jury found Durst guilty, but that’s not what the legal record will show.”²¹

Durst himself offered a verdict on the chain of events that began with the hot mic. In recorded prison phone calls featured in The Jinx — Part Two, which aired in 2024, he described his decision to participate in the original documentary as the “dumbest thing” he ever did.³

1
BuzzFeed News. What Robert Durst Actually Said in That Unguarded Moment
2
The Hollywood Reporter. The Jinx Robert Durst Confession
3
The Hollywood Reporter. The Jinx Part Two Premiere: Robert Durst Arrest Explained
4
The Week. HBO’s Jinx Misleadingly Edited Robert Durst’s Infamous Statement
5
Fast Company. What the Transcript of Robert Durst’s The Jinx Confession Means for His Defense
6
Courthouse News Service. Cross-Examination of Real Estate Heir Robert Durst Finishes in His Murder Trial
7
Vanity Fair. The Jinx Part 2: Nick Chavin
8
CNN. Robert Durst Trial Jury
9
Los Angeles Times. Robert Durst, Susan Berman Murder Trial Relationship Timeline
10
Courthouse News Service. Lawyers Agree Robert Durst Wrote Incriminating Cadaver Note
11
Courthouse News Service. Robert Durst Admits He Wrote Infamous Cadaver Note
12
Los Angeles Times. At Robert Durst Trial, Real Estate Heir Admits He Found Susan Berman’s Body, Wrote Cadaver Note
13
NPR. Robert Durst, Real Estate Heir, Dies in Prison at 78
14
CNN. Robert Durst Arrest
15
The New York Times. Robert Durst Murder Trial
16
Courthouse News Service. Defense Paints Robert Durst as Man Who Made Poor Choices, Not a Murderer
17
The Guardian. Robert Durst Sentencing: Life in Prison for Susan Berman Murder
18
Courthouse News Service. Robert Durst Sentenced to Life Without Parole in 2000 Murder of Friend
19
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Robert Durst Dies of Natural Causes
20
Rolling Stone. Robert Durst Death: California Murder Conviction Vacated
21
The New York Times. Robert Durst Dies