HBO will revisit Robert Durst with The Jinx—Part Two
Two years after his death, convicted killer Robert Durst will be the subject of The Jinx—Part Two
Aux News The Jinx
True crime content continues to be extremely popular, but the genre may have peaked back in 2015 when Robert Durst went to the bathroom unknowingly wearing a microphone and muttered to himself that he’d “killed them all, of course.” The finale of HBO’s The Jinx capped off a sensational series that had unprecedented access to Durst and ended up being instrumental in his arrest and ultimate conviction for the murder of his best friend, Susan Berman. And now there’s going to be more, as today the network announced The Jinx—Part Two.
According to a press release from HBO, after Durst was arrested, “The filmmakers continued their investigation for the next eight years, uncovering hidden material, Durst’s prison calls, and interviews with people who had never before come forward.” The six-episode season is currently in production and doesn’t yet have a release date, though it is slated to premiere in 2024.
The original Jinx came about after Durst reached out to Andrew Jarecki, who directed the film All Good Things, a fictionalized version of Durst’s life starring Ryan Gosling and Kristen Dunst. Professing himself to be a fan of the film, Durst agreed to be interviewed by Jarecki for a documentary. The docuseries explored Durst’s life growing up as the son of wealthy real estate magnate Seymour Durst and the disappearance of his wife Kathleen McCormack. Durst maintained his innocence in McCormack’s death (and wasn’t charged in connection with her disappearance until 2021). He did confess to the gruesome dismemberment of a neighbor in Texas, though he claimed it was done in self-defense.
It was Berman’s death that eventually saw Durst sentenced to life in prison, in large part due to evidence uncovered by The Jinx. It wasn’t the muttered confession of “killed them all,” but an anonymous note sent to police to help them find Berman’s body after her murder in 2000 that renewed the investigation in 2015. The Jinx filmmakers found another sample of Durst’s writing that not only matched the “cadaver note,” but also showed the same misspelling of Beverly Hills (written “Beverely”).
Durst was subsequently arrested—the same day The Jinx finale aired—and eventually convicted of Berman’s murder before his death in 2022. Who knows what else Jarecki and his team may have uncovered in the years since that blockbuster finale aired?
20 Comments
We’re still talking about this dude?
Clearly.
Man, who’d he kill this time?
Right? Like else is there to say?
Okay its probably worth noting that the I killed them part is selective editing. This was shown in the trial. The show didn’t really play that big a role in the conviction. He was guilty as shit glad he’s dead but that ending moment is played like its a shocking unbelievable smoking gun we got him moment and its really not and just another example of True Crime kinda being shit.
The thing that gets me about how they edited that scene was that they didn’t have to do it. Durst said all of the following things in this order (as I understand it):“There it is, you’re caught.”“Oh, I want this.”“What a disaster.”“Killed them all, of course.” “What the hell did I do?” The editing of the final scene flips those last two statements and puts “Killed them all, of course” as the answer to the question “What the hell did I do?” That is misleading. It doesn’t necessarily negate all of the things Durst said on the hot mic, but it is sloppy from an editing standpoint. I think you can make the case that the finished product would have been just as strong (and maybe even stronger given the consistent “why is he doing this?” theme of the docuseries) if they had left it the way it was with the “What the hell did I do?” question hanging over the ending.
Yep that is correct. Its a lot more jumbled and incoherent like the man himself. Its certainly not a great statement but I wouldn’t call that a confession.
I watched part of the trial, and you’d have sworn he was being retried for killing that guy in Texas, where he was acquitted. I couldn’t believe they let so much come in about a crime he’d been found innocent of.And at some point the DA asked Durst something like “If you had committed this crime, would you lie about it?”, and when Durst said yes, the DA almost came in his pants, like he’d confessed or something.Since you’re supposed to be assumed innocent, should you even be required to answer a hypothetical that assumes you’re guilty?
Even if he said it exactly how it’s edited, it still never seemed damning to me. I assumed he was whispering to himself sorta sarcastically, like talking how other people would think about him. (The signatures matching, though, now that seemed damning.)
I remember being upset about things in the finale, even before we knew how Jarecki had edited that voice recording. If only I could find what I wrote back then, oh here it is, in a comment on the review linked in this very article (slightly edited for a little more concision, eight years later):I’m disappointed that this piece doesn’t get into the ways Jarecki manipulated the timeline of events in the last episode […] the second interview with Durst happened […] a year prior to his 2013 arrest for violating the protection order against his brother. In the show it was presented as happening afterwards, and as though the arrest gave Jarecki the leverage to get his second interview. Now, there’s a plausible narrative that every choice Jarecki has made was ultimately in good faith to try and be as helpful to the police as possible, including his vagueness about exactly when they contacted the cops […] Possibly this distortion was made in service of that goal, for some reason. Possibly this distortion was made to cover up that goal because otherwise it made them look bad (next paragraph). Possibly it was made for pure storytelling punch […]Because the ungenerous interpretation is that Jarecki confronted Durst with pretty damning evidence in 2012 […] and then in 2013 Durst – whom Jarecki was now convinced was a murderer, whose brother was sufficiently fearful of to have hired security in the past and obtained an order of protection – went and visited his brother’s house. The idea that Jarecki hadn’t shared what he had with the cops during that period, and then Durst went to his brother’s house and hypothetically (given what we know of their history) could have attempted to harm his brother or his family, looks terrible. And that’s one plausible explanation for the switch. There are others! But I think it’s worth keeping in mind, given this piece’s bent, that we have pretty good reason to believe that while the spine of The Jinx is real, many of the details of its storytelling could be more manipulated than we would have expected … which is the big problem I have with “true crime” stuff in general.Of course all that is before we knew that the producers stitched together Durst’s only partially-voiced sarcastic self dialogue to produce a misleading blockbuster moment for themselves. (To be clear: Durst was super guilty!) I’m definitely thrilled that Jarecki gets to continue to be the conduit for helping us understand this story.
Every time I see an article about Robert Durst, for a split second, I think, “They finally are going to bring that guy to justice for all those horrible Limp Bizkit songs.”
He must be punished for The Fanatic!
Here’s Moosey!
“When asked why he did these terrible things, Durst replied, ‘For the nookie’.”
Should have went with my pitch: “Pinch, Poke, You Owe Me Justice”
I can’t believe they didn’t go with my suggestion for ‘The Jinx 2 – Owe Me a Coke’
“He did confess to the gruesome dismemberment of a neighbor in Texas, though he claimed it was done in self-defense.”That’s some very thorough defence.
Who amongst us. . .
It takes a very special person to dismember another person.
Durst is going to go on a farting spree and then confess to killing Nicole Brown Simpson.