Has anyone been watching The Jinx? It’s a six-part true crime documentary about Robert Durst. The last episode airs this weekend and despite it being a documentary about an infamous (multiple?) murder story in which the accused killer has thus far gone free, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the ending.
The way the series has unfolded the layers to this mystery is great, and it seems some of the stuff in it may have repercussions for Durst.
Yep. But I can’t imagine it will go anywhere. This guy has already gotten away scott-free with three murders. If they couldn’t get him then, I don’t see how they’re going to get him based on this note.
I haven’t watched the series, but I did see the crappy Ryan Gosling movie.
-Tom
Durst recently had a “medical mishap” in a CVS store:
He was arrested this morning in New Orleans after Los Angeles issued a warrant for his ass. The show basically aired a bunch of new evidence that led to the NY and LA prosecutors and the Feds re-opening the case.
Yeah, they suspect he was thinking of leaving the country. Had a fake ID and was paying in cash for his hotel.
Of course this could all be for ratings…
Yow, that was quite the ending. The whole series was very well done.
Dunno how it will all stand up in court, though. Handwriting evidence is always iffy, and no doubt Durst has some elaborate explanation for what he said when the mic was live. The cat may have more lives left in him yet.
BTW, you know you’re a true crime junkie when they’re showing (I think in Part 3) the map to Susan Berman’s house on Benedict Canyon Rd and you see “Cielo Dr” on the map and you’re all “That’s where the Manson murders were!”
I thought it was a great show, extremely well done.
What a fucking lunatic.
Wow, that’s kind of awesome that they grabbed him again. Durst is a murderous sociopath who deserves every bit of legal hassle he gets. But I’m with HumanTon. I can’t imagine the note or the “I killed them all” audio is going to stand up in court. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that the case is being re-opened based on that evidence. It smacks a little of grandstanding. Do they really think those things are going to stick?
A friend of mine has been watching this series. I told him I haven’t watched it, but I read in the news about the note. He was a bit surprised that I would allow the show to be spoiled for me that way. :)
-Tom
They might have more than that.
Early on in the final episode, we see the evidence envelope from the “Cadaver” letter. On it is clearly marked instructions to examine DNA evidence from the seal of the envelope. Perhaps Bob used one of those water sponge thingies to seal the envelope…but I’m guessing that if he licked it, they’ve got his DNA on that envelope and may be able to make a match there.
I just have a weird feeling that this time also, Durst is going to sing like a canary.
One other thing working against Durst here. It seems like Mr. Durst’s current attorney has very little control over what his client does. If Chip Lewis had any ability to have a normal attorney-client relationship with Bob Durst, there’s no way that Durst would have consented to any participation in this project in any way whatsoever. And Lewis is clearly present at the first Durst interview showing through the first five episodes of the show. (He’s seen at one point telling Durst that he’s wearing a live mic.)
I would imagine that Durst’s reluctance to do the second interview was based on Lewis telling him to knock it off…but eventually Durst relents and does that second, fateful interview. Lewis is nowhere to be seen. Guessing he didn’t know his client did that.
And so, if this was anyone else, the incredibly rich family would step in at this point and accuse Lewis of malpractice, cite Durst clearly not being in his right mind, and bringing in bigtime lawyers who’d have whole chunks of Durst’s on-camera escapades stricken from the record.
In this case, though, Durst’s family wants him locked up. So…that’s not an avenue open to them.
I’d also be curious to see what they’ do with Debrah Charatan, Durst’s wife. Clearly this isn’t much of a marriage in any typical way that word is used. By her comments on tape, it seems very likely that she knows things. Now, I know that in the US, spouses do not have to testify against one another, but I’d be curious to see if a prosecutor didn’t charge her with some sort of obstruction of justice charge and then offer her full immunity for her testimony against Durst.
You can’t go around peeing on the candy in the CVS. The Man will not stand for that!
This is a country of laws.
Just finished watching this before it disappeared off on-demand. Obviously it’s hard to tell what the editing is hiding/exaggerating, but it really seemed like he had/has something of a wish to get caught, or at the very least test the limits. That whole thing with showing up at his brother’s place and demanding to be filmed doing it doesn’t really have any other explanation (well, any rational one - he could just have wanted to be threatening and not thought about the very obvious consequences). Some of the stuff from the tape at the very end points in that direction too. And then there’s the shoplifting and simply doing the documentary at all, which doesn’t seem to have any upside if he’s innocent or guilty.
I also really don’t understand the jurors.
We just finished it last night. Excellent profile of a true sociopath.
The question for me is whether or not the “second interview” actually took place before or after his lawyer told him about the live mic. It could always have been shown out of sequential order.
And, the big “evidence” they found was a letter Durst purportedly wrote to Susan months before she was murdered. It had almost the same block letters, including the same misspelling of BEVERLEY. They were able to find an application he had filled out with the same block letters and had it analyzed. The most interesting part to me is that Durst tried to pass it off as nothing and that anyone could have that type of block letters, but was unable to tell Jarecki which one he had written.
There’s some oddity there, like they found it early on in the investigation and put it in a safety deposit box so that they would have it and continue what they were doing. However, Jarecki says they’ve been in contact with the police (or whatever investigative branch was interested in Durst) for the past two years. It just makes me wonder about the timeline and the order of the episodes. They definitely saved that part for the last episode, regardless of when they found it.
The troubles with a narrative over an accurate timetable.
I’d be really interested in seeing what you think of it Tom once you’ve watched it (if you do). Especially since you mentioned that in relation to Noah Baumbach’s Q&A, but never expanded on your views.
I just watched this over the last few evenings.
Justin, to your questions, I think everything makes sense as far as the timeline of the production of the show. Of course how everything is edited and presented is the huge asterisk by the whole thing from a viewer’s perspective, but to the extent you’re willing to trust that they are not outright lying to the audience, I think their timeline on the letter and the mic line up.
Hopefully I’m not just adding an additional layer of vagueness to this as I recall it as best I understood it (I definitely wasn’t taking notes or anything while I watched it) but I think they had access to Durst twice. The first time was for a few days a year or two ago, which was all the interview portions with Durst in the beige sweater, and the parts walking around NY with him. Pretty much all footage of Durst up through episode 5 was from that initial session with him over a few days. Somewhere in there is also when we first see him talk to himself with the mic still on, and his lawyer steps in to tell him it’s still live.
The second time they talk to Durst (in person) is that final interview. This is obviously after they’ve found the letter, it’s apparently after (in light of the letter) they’ve tried and failed for several months to get Durst back, and then finally it’s after Durst was arrested and released for breaking the restraining order against his brother. That final interview is the one the show ends with, and so there’s no ambiguity in their presentation of that timeline.
If they were switching interview locations and dressing Durst up in different clothes to match or not-match separate footage to misrepresent the order of any of their conversations with Durst, then obviously nothing at all is trustworthy, and Durst would actually be weirdly complicit in—let’s say—an “unfavorable” presentation of his story. So I have no reason to doubt that overall timeline of their meetings. Access to Durst on two occasions with quite a while in between, and the final interview on the show (ending with him talking to himself on a live mic for the second time) was the final interview chronologically.
There’s a little more room for them to fudge the timeline of the letter they got from whats-his-name, Susan Berman’s step-son. As presented in the show, sometime after their first interview with Durst, they find the letter, quickly put it in a safety deposit box and then move forward with trying to get the second interview with Durst (and having it checked out by the handwriting expert). There’s room there for some editing in the name of the show’s narrative without wholly undermining the case they’re presenting.
As a totally off the wall example, maybe they were careless and it was very late in the process before it occurred to them to put the letter in a safety deposit box, so they just went back and filmed that to make it look like they did it immediately after finding the letter. It wouldn’t meaningfully change how the second interview with Durst went down, but it would make them look smarter on the show.
I have no reason to specifically suspect that happened, but that’s the kind of thing where I also would not be surprised if editing presented a timeline between the first and second interview a little more neatly than how it went down.
Beyond that, I pretty much buy the presentation of the show.
And as a show, it was riveting from start to finish. It makes me at least a little bit uncomfortable because it was so engrossing, and also hey, it’s about a guy who really killed at least one person and almost definitely more. There’s a tension between the voyeuristic creepiness of it all and the entertainment value that probably should make me uncomfortable, but I’m not trying to say this kind of show/documentary/entertainment shouldn’t exist. Just, wow. It’s Serial all over again, except with an almost incomparably stronger suspicion that I am being entertained by an absolute monster.
Thanks for the indepth response Schmidt. I need to watch it again, but, following your logic, it sounds like you’ve got it locked down pretty hard. I need to pay closer attention to the clothing. You’re right about the similarities to Serial.
Have you looked into Her Story? http://www.herstorygame.com/ It’s about reconstructing a crime based off an old search engine and video clips. Very much scratches the same itch.
And he’s dead. He wasn’t in prison long, but at least he died in prison
I had watched the Max’s new “coming soon” trailer at to my surprise they had a quick one-second blurb for a “new season” of The Jinx. Looking around, wasn’t able to find word of this anywhere else.
— Alan