Fame is a bitch. Robert Durst, the real estate scion who has long been suspected of multiple murders, must agree. Durst’s wife’s 1982 disappearance in Los Angeles was never solved, nor was the murder of a Durst neighbor in Texas in 2001. (At trial in 2003, Durst admitted to dismembering the victim, yet he was found not guilty of the murder.) Now the 71-year-old Durst has been arrested due to a reopened investigation in LA for the 1982 murder–probably because of a TV show.
Durst’s story has received wide national attention as a result of a six-part HBO documentary called The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. The media attention generated by the fascinating and exhaustive series, directed by filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, is believed to have spurred the action by the Los Angeles District Attorney. (The series began on February 8. The final episode is scheduled to run Sunday, March 15.) The spotlighted attention spurring renewed legal action resembles another recent case where a furor over Bill Cosby’s alleged misconduct was reignited after a routine by the comedian Hannibal Buress when viral on the Internet.
