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Robert Durst, a real estate heir from New York, has tested positive for Covid-19 and is currently on a ventilator, according to his counsel.
On a phone contact with NBC News, Dick DeGuerin said, “All we know is he tested positive for Covid-19, he’s in hospital, and he’s on a ventilator.” “He was in the worst shape I’ve ever seen him on Thursday.” He couldn’t seem to breathe, and he couldn’t seem to talk.”
His diagnosis comes the same week that he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a buddy more than 20 years ago, in a crime that may have been linked to the killer’s missing wife.
Judge Mark Windham of the Los Angeles County Superior Court handed down the sentence one month after jurors found Durst, 78, guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of Susan Berman on Dec. 23, 2000. Berman was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range inside her Benedict Canyon home. Durst’s attorneys want to challenge the judge’s ruling.
Durst was vaccinated, according to DeGuerin, but he didn’t know if he had a Covid-19 vaccine booster.
In an email to NBC News, Grace Medrano, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said she couldn’t answer medical questions about Durst’s health because of HIPAA privacy rules, which set national standards for protecting an individual’s medical records and other personal health information. Durst’s immunisation status was likewise kept under wraps by Medrano.
Durst’s health has been a concern for him since the beginning of the trial.
In June, he was briefly hospitalised after “some incident this morning affecting his health,” according to Windham. According to DeGuerin, the judge also dismissed DeGuerin’s request to postpone the trial because Durst was battling bladder cancer and other health issues.
According to the Los Angeles Times, who first reported Durst’s current Covid-related hospitalisation, Durst was also not in court the day jurors convicted him of Berman’s murder last month because he had been exposed to someone who tested positive for Covid-19.
Durst’s counsel frequently requested a mistrial, claiming he was too unwell to testify in his own defence, according to court documents obtained by the newspaper. Durst was also confined to a wheelchair for the whole of his trial.
According to prosecutors, before to Berman’s death in 2000, she was due to testify to police about a phoney alibi she allegedly supplied Durst after his wife went missing in New York in 1982.
Kathie Durst has never been discovered, and there have never been any charges filed in connection with her disappearance.
Durst vanished after Berman’s murder and settled in Galveston, Texas, where he assumed the name Dorothy Ciner and wore a woman’s wig, skirts, and high heels on a regular basis.
Despite admitting to dismembering his neighbour Morris Black’s body, Durst was acquitted of murdering him in September 2001, claiming self-defense.
Then, in 2015, in HBO’s “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” Durst appeared to admit to the murders.
He walked to the bathroom while wearing a hot microphone on his head, which captured him whispering to himself: “You’ve been discovered! What was I thinking? Of course, I killed them all.”
Berman’s family talked passionately about the impact she and her murder had on them in remarks made before to Durst’s sentence.
“Let us know where Kathie’s body is,” David Berman, one of Susan Berman’s cousins, stated.
