Robert Durst looks at jurors as he appears in an Inglewood courtroom with his attorneys for the first closing arguments presented by the prosecution in the murder trial of the New York real estate scion who is charged with the longtime friend Susan Bermans killing in Benedict Canyon just before Christmas Eve 2000. Inglewood Courthouse on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021 in Inglewood, CA.
Al Seib | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Disgraced New York real estate heir Robert Durst has contracted Covid-19 and is currently on a ventilator, his attorney told NBC News.
“All we know he’s tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital and on a ventilator,” Dick DeGuerin told the outlet. “He looked awful Thursday, worst I’ve ever seen him. He was having difficulty breathing, he was having difficulty speaking.”
The diagnosis comes just two days after Durst, 78, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a close friend more than two decades ago. Jurors convicted Durst last month in the death of Susan Berman, who was shot in the back of her head in her home on Dec. 23, 2000.
Prosecutors said that Berman was supposed to speak with police about a fake alibi she allegedly gave the real estate heir following his wife’s 1982 disappearance. (Kathie Durst has never been found and was presumed dead.)
Durst then went into hiding in Galveston, Texas, where he disguised himself as a woman named Dorothy Ciner, NBC News reported.
Durst also later killed and dismembered his neighbor, Morris Black, in September 2001 in Texas, but he was acquitted in court on self-defense claims.
However, the spotlight on Durst was brought back following a 2015 HBO Series, “The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst,” where he appeared to confess to the murders.
A microphone that Durst was wearing recording him in the bathroom whispering to himself: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”
Durst was arrested in New Orleans in 2015.