NEW YORK
An American real estate tycoon, Robert Durst, has been charged with murdering his close friend, Susan Berman, in 2000, media reports said Monday.
Los Angeles prosecutors filed first-degree murder charges against him with the "special circumstances of murder of a witness and lying in wait,” the Los Angeles Times said. The charge makes him eligible for the death penalty.
The 71-year-old is suspected of killing Berman to stop police from asking her about the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie.
Kathie Durst has never been found and no one has been charged for her disappearance. She was eventually pronounced dead, according to the New York Times.
The NBC reported that the eccentric real estate heir agreed Monday to be extradited to Los Angeles to face murder charges. He was arrested in New Orleans late Saturday, a day before the HBO cable television company aired the final episode of a documentary about him.
In the final moments of "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," he is seen as remarking off camera that he had "killed them all," soon after being asked about the mysterious deaths of three people, including Berman and Kathie, during the course of three decades.
In 2001, Durst was arrested in Texas after body parts of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, were found. He admitted to the murder, but was acquitted after his lawyer successfully argued that he acted on self-defense.
