“What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” Those 11 words triggered a collective gasp across America when the finale of the HBO series The Jinx first aired in March 2015. They were uttered by New York real estate scion Robert Durst, who had spent more than 20 hours being voluntarily interviewed by the documentary’s director Andrew Jarecki, insisting that he had not been involved in the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst; nor in the deaths of his best friend, Susan Berman, and a neighbor, Morris Black. Durst proclaimed his innocence—until he walked into the bathroom after an interview. Forgetting that his lapel mic was still on, he mumbled those words to himself while he peed. It was one of the most memorable moments in recent TV history.
The Jinx helped usher in a true-crime docuseries boom, though few have done it as well as Jarecki did. His team investigated the crimes as they filmed, helping pull together enough evidence to hand over to authorities. The day before the finale dropped, law enforcement used some of that evidence to arrest and prosecute Durst for the murder of Susan Berman in 2000. That’s where The Jinx Part Two picks up.
When the first installment premiered, Durst was unknown to most viewers. By the time he died in 2022, he was a monstrous specter stalking our collective imagination. Amazingly, knowing whodunnit doesn’t make this new season less gripping than the first: There’s still plenty of jolting details to be absorbed about the how and why.
The first four episodes (I haven’t seen the final two) partly follow Los Angeles deputy district attorney John Lewin as he reopens the Berman murder case. He attempts to get Durst’s inner circle to step forward, and their reluctance is chilling. It brings to mind another New York City real estate scion who is on trial right now, and the many figures who have facilitated his rogue behavior over the years. The series’ motto might as well be: When you’re a star, they let you do it.
A motley cast of characters allegedly enabled Durst in different ways over the decades, long after it was clear that their charming multimillionaire pal might be a sociopathic killer. Close friend Doug Oliver visits Durst regularly in prison and tells Lewin he won’t testify unless the prosecution pays for a private jet: “You guys are never gonna get me on a commercial flight.” Susan Giordano has known Durst since she was a young woman, and when she later comes to see him in prison, he flirts creepily and authorizes $150,000 for her to feather their “love nest” for his eventual release. “It was easy to be his friend,” she says. Then there’s Nick “Chinga” Chavin, a performer of X-rated country songs (sample title: “Cum Stains on My Pillow”) who became best friends with Berman and Durst in the 1970s. He eventually ditched his cowboy boots when Durst helped make him a financial success in the real estate advertising business.
When Chavin finally sits down for the camera, Jarecki (who started his filmmaking career with the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans) asks why he’s remained loyal, even after Durst admitted to dismembering his neighbor’s body with a saw. “It just didn’t have any impact on me,” says Chavin. “I don’t have that same moral hatred of murder and murderers”—a handy quality if you’re palling around with one. The deeper the series probes, though, the more it becomes clear that Chavin is haunted by a question: “What do you do when your best friend kills your other best friend?”
Yet Susan Berman was herself Durst’s conspirator, and the tragic dimensions of this complicity become clearer as the series unfolds. A mob boss’s daughter turned LA journalist, she was working with producer Lynda Obst to adapt her memoir into a movie when she was murdered. Some of the details Jarecki uncovers transform his—and our—ideas about Berman’s role in Durstworld.
Complaints about The Jinx’s inconsistent timeline surfaced when it originally aired, and there’s little doubt that revelations were arrayed for greater dramatic effect. Jarecki crafted the narrative so it felt as much like a prestige fictional drama as an investigative doc, which left me slightly queasy back in 2015 but has subsequently become standard operating procedure. Jarecki also became a central character in his own project, and that starring role is only magnified this time around. The Jinx Part Two can’t help but be self-referential, even self-aggrandizing, since the documentary became so entangled with the prosecution of this case.
In the sequel all gestures at objectivity are gone—something that Durst’s defense lawyers occasionally point out in court as the shadow of The Jinx looms heavily over the proceedings. Jarecki recently told my colleague Julie Miller, “You definitely raise the standard of care when you realize that you have evidence that you think will be determinative in a murder case. You just have to start thinking about it differently—not just, ‘What’s going to make the best film?’ but thinking, ‘What’s going to make the best film?’ and ‘What’s going to make a legitimate prosecution?’”
It’s easy to see how a documentarian might get obsessed with Durst. Watching the new season, I found myself asking the same question that must’ve haunted Jarecki from the start: How did Durst think he could get away with it? Maybe because he felt rich and invulnerable—and because he always had gotten away with it. In an interrogation video, Durst is asked why in the world he volunteered to open up his life to a documentary crew. “I’m still sort of putting that together in my own mind,” he warbles. So are we.
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