New York millionaire Robert Durst declared guilty of best friend’s murder

Real estate heir Robert Durst is shown in this Jan. 6, 2017, file photo. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via AP/Pool)
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Updated 18 September 2021
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New York millionaire Robert Durst declared guilty of best friend’s murder

  • Durst faces a mandatory term of life in prison without parole after he was convicted of first-degree murder
  • Prosecutors painted a portrait of a rich narcissist who ruthlessly disposed of people who stood in his way

INGLEWOOD, California: A Los Angeles jury convicted Robert Durst on Friday of murdering his best friend 20 years ago, a case that took on new life after the New York real estate heir participated in a documentary that connected him to the slaying that was linked to his wife’s 1982 disappearance.
Durst, 78, was not in court for the verdict from the jury that deliberated about seven hours over three days. He was in isolation at a jail because he was exposed to someone with coronavirus.
Durst, who faces a mandatory term of life in prison without parole when sentenced Oct. 18, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Susan Berman. She was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head in her Los Angeles home in December 2000 as she was prepared to tell police how she helped cover up his wife’s killing.
Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, was Durst’s longtime confidante who told friends she provided a phony alibi for him after his wife vanished.
Prosecutors painted a portrait of a rich narcissist who didn’t think the laws applied to him and ruthlessly disposed of people who stood in his way. They interlaced evidence of Berman’s killing with Kathie Durst’s suspected death and the 2001 killing of a tenant in a Texas flophouse where Robert Durst holed up while on the run from New York authorities.
“Bob Durst has been around a lot of years, and he’s been able to commit a lot of horrific crimes. We just feel really gratified that he’s been held accountable,” Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said.
Lewin met with jurors after the verdict and said they thought prosecutors had proven Durst had killed his wife and had murdered both Berman and his Texas neighbor in an effort to escape justice.
He said jurors did not find Durst credible as a witness.
Durst was arrested in 2015 while hiding out in a New Orleans hotel on the eve of the airing of the final episode of “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” in which he was confronted with incriminating evidence and made what prosecutors said was a confession.
Durst could be heard muttering to himself on a live microphone in a bathroom: “There it is. You’re caught.”
Durst’s decision to testify in his own defense — hoping for a repeat of his acquittal in the Texas killing — backfired as he was forced to admit lying under oath, made damning admissions and had his credibility destroyed when questioned by the prosecutor.
Defense lawyer David Chesnoff said Friday they believed there was “substantial reasonable doubt” and were disappointed in the verdict. He said Durst would pursue all avenues of appeal.
The conviction marks a victory for authorities who have sought to put Durst behind bars for murder in three states. Durst was never charged in the disappearance of his wife, who has never been found, and he was acquitted of murder in Galveston, Texas, where he admitted dismembering the victim’s body and tossing it out to sea.
The story of Durst, the estranged scion of a New York real estate developer, has been fodder for New York tabloids since his wife vanished. He provided plot twists so numerous that Hollywood couldn’t resist making a feature film about his life that eventually led to the documentary and discovery of new evidence in Berman’s slaying.
Durst ran from the law multiple times, disguised as a mute woman in Texas and staying under an alias at a New Orleans hotel with a shoulders-to-head latex mask for a presumed getaway. He jumped bail in Texas and was arrested after shoplifting a chicken sandwich in Pennsylvania, despite having $37,000 in cash — along with two handguns — in his rental car.
He later quipped that he was “the worst fugitive the world has ever met.”
Durst escaped close scrutiny from investigators when his wife disappeared. But his troubles resurfaced in late 2000 when New York authorities reopened the case.
His lawyer told him to be prepared to be charged in the case, and he fled a life of luxury to Galveston, Texas, where he rented a cheap apartment as “Dorothy Ciner,” a woman he pretended couldn’t speak. He eventually dropped the disguise after mishaps that included walking into a men’s restroom and igniting his wig at a bar while lighting a cigarette.
Just before Christmas, he testified that he traveled to LA to visit Berman for a “staycation” with plans to see some of the tourist sites.
Durst, who had long denied ever being in LA at the time of Berman’s death, testified at trial that he found her dead on a bedroom floor when he arrived.
Berman, a writer who had been friends with Durst since they were students at the University of California, Los Angeles, had serious financial problems at the time. Durst had given her $50,000, and prosecutors suggested she was trying to leverage more money from him by telling him she was going to speak with the cops.
Nine months after her death, Durst killed his Galveston neighbor Morris Black, in what he said was either an accident or self-defense. Durst said he found Black, who he had become friends with, in his apartment holding Durst’s .22-caliber pistol.
Durst was acquitted after testifying the 71-year-old was killed in a struggle for the gun. Durst then chopped up Black’s body and tossed it out to sea. He was convicted of destroying evidence for discarding the body parts.
After the trial and the ghastly evidence of the dismemberment, Durst found he was a pariah, he said. Despite an estimated $100 million fortune, he was turned away by multiple condominium associations and said the Los Angeles County Museum of Art wouldn’t take his money unless he donated anonymously.
Durst thought a 2010 feature film based on his life, “All Good Things,” starring Ryan Gosling as him and Kirsten Dunst as Kathie, had been largely accurate and painted a sympathetic portrait, despite implicating him in three killings. He only objected that he was depicted killing his dog — something he would never do.
He reached out to the filmmaker and agreed to sit for lengthy interviews for a documentary. He encouraged his friends to do the same and gave the filmmakers access to boxes of his records.
He came to deeply regret his decision after “The Jinx” aired on HBO in 2015, calling it a “very, very, very big mistake.”
The documentary filmmakers discovered a crucial piece of evidence that connected him to an anonymous note sent to police directing them to Berman’s lifeless body.
Durst, who was so confident he couldn’t be connected to the note, told filmmakers “only the killer could have written” the note.
Filmmakers confronted him with a letter he sent Berman a year earlier. The handwriting was identical and Beverly Hills was misspelled as “Beverley” on both. He couldn’t tell the two apart.
The gotcha moment provided the climax of the movie as Durst stepped off camera and muttered to himself on a live microphone in the bathroom: “Killed them all, of course.”
During 14 days of testimony that was so punishing Judge Mark Windham called it “devastating,” Durst denied killing his wife and Berman, though he said he would lie if he did.
He tried to explain away the note and what prosecutors said was a confession during an unguarded moment.
For the first time, Durst admitted on the witness stand that he sent the note and had been in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death.
Durst said he sent the note because he wanted Berman to be found but didn’t want anyone to know he had been there because it would look suspicious.
He acknowledged that even he had difficulty imagining he could have written the note without killing Berman.
“It’s very difficult to believe, to accept, that I wrote the letter and did not kill Susan Berman,” Durst testified.
A prosecutor said it was one of the truest things Durst said amid a ton of lies.


Boris Johnson gets a surprise peck from an ostrich in Texas

Updated 1 min 18 sec ago
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Boris Johnson gets a surprise peck from an ostrich in Texas

  • Video shared on Instagram by his wife Carrie Johnson
  • The couple visited Dinosaur Valley Park, southwest of Dallas

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson received a memorable welcome from an ostrich at a state park in Texas when the towering two-legged bird gave him a peck, according to a video Sunday.
In the video, posted by his wife Carrie Johnson, an ostrich slowly walks toward a car before poking its head through the driver's seat window where Johnson is sitting with his son on his lap. Once in front of Johnson, the bird quickly pecks its beak toward his hand.
“Oh, Christ,” Johnson yells before driving off in the video.
“Too funny not to share,” Carrie Johnson said in the caption on Instagram.
It is not clear which wildlife park they were visiting, but other posts on the same account show the family visiting Dinosaur Valley Park, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) southwest of Dallas.
Boris Johnson, who served as prime minister from 2019 to 2022, was also spotted with his wife at a local restaurant in Lake Granbury, Texas, on Sunday, according to the restaurant's Facebook page.
“We are so honored to have him as our guest!!” said Stumpy's Lakeside Grill in a Facebook post with a photo of the former prime minister.


Nose job boom in Iran where procedure can boost social status

Updated 08 April 2025
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Nose job boom in Iran where procedure can boost social status

  • Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian women have been required to dress modestly and cover their hair, and the beauty industry has become almost entirely centered on the face

TEHRAN: All of the women in Iranian model Azadeh’s family have had nose surgeries, each feeling the pressure to conform with Western beauty standards in a country where female bodies are heavily policed.

To Azadeh, smoothing out the bump in what Iranians would call the “Persian nose” she was born with proved a lucrative investment.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian women have been required to dress modestly and cover their hair, and the beauty industry has become almost entirely centered on the face.

Having rhinoplasty — a nose job — can make a major difference, Azadeh told AFP.

“After the operation, not only have I earned myself a modelling job with better social standing but I’m also earning three times more and I’m more respected by clients,” she said. Azadeh, 29, asked that her surname be withheld because women models can face social pressure in Iran.

According to the US-based International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more than 264,000 cosmetic operations were performed in Iran in 2023, with rhinoplasty being the most common.

Across Tehran and other Iranian cities, brightly colored billboards advertise beauty clinics and cosmetic procedures, offering promises of sculpted noses, flawless skin and perfect teeth. Many people with bandaged noses can be seen on the streets, a testament to the popularity of rhinoplasty.

“It has become more of a cultural trend,” said rhinoplasty surgeon Hamidreza Hosnani who performs up to 20 operations a week at his well-equipped clinic in the capital.

And that trend has evolved, becoming more and more tied to social identity and status, especially as more women have defied the strict dress code.

Such defiance became more marked following the mass protests sparked by the 2022 death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini.

In Iran, where the minimum wage is around $100, basic rhinoplasty costs up to $1,000 — significantly cheaper than in other countries, Hosnani said.

Millions of Iranians have long struggled with soaring prices and a plunging currency, driven in part by years of international sanctions.

“I even had to borrow the money required for the operation from my friends and family, but the money was well spent, and it was completely worth it,” Azadeh said.

Reyhaneh Khoshhali, a 28-year-old surgical assistant, had the operation four years ago, and regrets not having it sooner.

“My nose really did not look good aesthetically and I wanted to be more beautiful,” she said.

“If I could go back, I would have had the operation earlier.”

 

 

For years, Iran has hosted highly advanced medical centers, even becoming a destination for foreigners seeking high-quality and affordable cosmetic surgery.

However, the procedures can also come with risks.

The Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned about the growing number of unauthorized clinics performing cosmetic procedures.

In February, a dozen unlicensed practitioners were arrested and several operating theaters in Tehran’s Apadana Hospital were closed because of unauthorized cosmetic procedures, the health ministry said.

In 2023, three women died in a single day — November 7 — during cosmetic surgery in three separate incidents in Tehran, media reported at the time.

Ava Goli has yet to undergo her rhinoplasty operation, and said that finding a reliable doctor involved some research.

“I saw some people whose nose job did not look good... and yeah, it really made me scared at times,” the 23-year-old told AFP.

Yet the demand for cosmetic surgery in Iran remains high — and the pressure to keep up is not limited to women.

Bahador Sayyadi, a 33-year-old accountant, said he had to borrow money so he could have a hair transplant.

“My financial situation isn’t great, but thanks to a loan I got recently, I will be doing the procedure just in time before my wedding,” he said.

“Men should also take care of themselves these days, just like women.”


Scientists genetically engineer wolves like the extinct dire wolf

Updated 08 April 2025
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Scientists genetically engineer wolves like the extinct dire wolf

NEW YORK: Three genetically engineered wolves that may resemble extinct dire wolves are trotting, sleeping and howling in an undisclosed secure location in the US, according to the company that aims to bring back lost species.

The wolf pups, which range in age from three to six months old, have long white hair, muscular jaws and already weigh in at around 80 pounds — on track to reach 140 pounds at maturity, researchers at Colossal Biosciences reported Monday.

Dire wolves, which went extinct more than 10,000 years old, are much larger than gray wolves, their closest living relatives today.

Independent scientists said this latest effort doesn’t mean dire wolves are coming back to North American grasslands any time soon.

“All you can do now is make something look superficially like something else“— not fully revive extinct species, said Vincent Lynch, a biologist at the University at Buffalo who was not involved in the research.

Colossal scientists learned about specific traits that dire wolves possessed by examining ancient DNA from fossils. The researchers studied a 13,000 year-old dire wolf tooth unearthed in Ohio and a 72,000 year-old skull fragment found in Idaho, both part of natural history museum collections.

Then the scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used CRISPR to genetically modify them in 20 different sites, said Colossal’s chief scientist Beth Shapiro. They transferred that genetic material to an egg cell from a domestic dog. When ready, embryos were transferred to surrogates, also domestic dogs, and 62 days later the genetically engineered pups were born.

Colossal has previously announced similar projects to genetically alter cells from living species to create animals resembling extinct woolly mammoths, dodos and others.


Artist of ‘distorted’ portrait says Trump complaint harming business

Updated 06 April 2025
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Artist of ‘distorted’ portrait says Trump complaint harming business

WASHINGTON: The artist who painted US President Donald Trump in what he criticized as a “purposefully distorted” portrait has said his remarks have harmed her business.
Colorado removed the official portrait of Trump from display in the state’s capitol building last month after the president complained that it was deliberately unflattering.
“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol... along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on March 24.
“The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst,” Trump said.
The 78-year-old Republican called for the oil painting to be taken down, and said the artist, Sarah Boardman, “must have lost her talent as she got older.”
The Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature said the same day as Trump’s complaint that the painting would be removed from the gallery in the capitol’s rotunda — where it had been hung since 2019 — and placed in storage.
Boardman has responded to Trump’s critique in a statement on her website, saying she completed the work “accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion,’ political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied.”
“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years,” the British-born artist said.
Boardman added in the undated statement that for the six years that the portrait of Trump hung in the Colorado capitol, she “received overwhelmingly positive reviews” on the commissioned work.
However, since Trump’s comments “that has changed for the worst,” she said.
In addition to Trump and former president Barack Obama, Boardman was also commissioned to paint a portrait of ex-president George W. Bush.


Nostalgia fuels UK boom in vintage video game repairs

Updated 06 April 2025
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Nostalgia fuels UK boom in vintage video game repairs

  • The shelves lining Luke Malpass’s home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and await

STOKE ON TRENT: The shelves lining Luke Malpass’s home workshop are a gamer’s treasure trove stretching back decades, with components of vintage Game Boys, Sega Mega Drives and Nintendos jostling for space and awaiting repair.
Parcels from gamers seeking help arrive from around the world at RetroSix, Malpass’s Aladdin’s cave.
He has turned a lifelong passion for gaming into a full-time job, answering the common question of what to do with old and worn machines and their parts.
“I think it can be partly nostalgic,” said Malpass, 38, as he surveyed the electronics stacked at his home in the central English city of Stoke-on-Trent.
He said the huge revival in retro games and consoles is not just a passing phase.
“Personally, I think it is the tactile experience. Getting a box off the shelf, physically inserting a game into the console... it makes you play it more and enjoy it more.”
Electronic devices and accessories, some dating back to the 1980s and the dawn of the gaming revolution, await to be lovingly restored to life.
Malpass has between 50 to 150 consoles needing attention at any one time, at a cost of between £60 ($78) and several hundred pounds.
It’s not just nostalgia for a long-lost childhood.
He believes it’s also a way to disconnect, unlike most online games which are now multi-player and require skills honed over long hours of practice to reach a good level.
“Retro gaming — just pick it up, turn it on, have an hour, have 10 minutes. It doesn’t matter. It’s instant, it’s there, and it’s pleasurable,” he told AFP.
With vintage one-player games “there’s no one you’re competing against and there’s nothing that’s making you miserable or angry.”
Malpass, who is a fan of such games as “Resident Evil” and “Jurassic Park,” even goes so far as to buy old televisions with cathode-ray tubes to replicate more faithfully his experience of playing video games as a kid.
Video clips he films of his game play, which he publishes to his YouTube channel, have won him tens of thousands of followers.


“I think people are always going to have a natural passion for things that they grew up with as a child.
“So I think we’ll always have work. It’ll evolve. And it won’t be, probably, Game Boys,” Malpass said.
“There’s always going to be something that’s retro.”
This week a survey organized by BAFTA, the British association that honors films, television, and video games, voted the 1999 action game “Shenmue” as the most influential video game of all time.
“Doom,” launched in 1993, and “Super Mario Bros.,” in which Mario first started trying to rescue Princess Peach way back in 1985, came in second and third place.
And on Wednesday, Nintendo unveiled details of its long-awaited Switch 2 console.
It includes new versions of beloved favorites from the Japanese giant — “Mario Kart World” and “Donkey Kong Bonanza.”
Held every four months, the London Gaming Market, dedicated to vintage video games, has been attracting growing numbers of fans.
“I’m a huge ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ fan... You never know what you’re going to find when you’re out here so I’m just always on the lookout,” said Adrian, a visitor wearing a T-shirt with a Sonic image.
Collectors and gamers sifted carefully through stacks of CD discs and old consoles hoping to find hidden treasures.
For Andy Brown, managing director of Replay Events and organizer of the London event which is now in its 10th year, the Covid-19 pandemic marked an upturn in the return to vintage games.
“I think people were stuck at home, wanting things to do that made them remember better times because it was a lot of doom and gloom around Covid,” he told AFP.
A study earlier this year by the US association Consumer Reports found 14 percent of Americans play on consoles made before 2000.
And in September, Italian customs busted a gang smuggling counterfeit vintage video games, seizing 12,000 machines containing some of the most popular games of the 1980s and 1990s.