Robert Durst murder: The Jinx filmmakers Andrew Jarecki, Jason Blum celebrate conviction - The Washington Post

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki was in the middle of an interview Friday when he got a text message years in the making: A verdict was coming in the murder trial of Robert Durst, the New York real estate heir he’d captured confessing in the HBO documentary series “The Jinx.”.

For 16 years, Jarecki has immersed himself in the world of the eccentric millionaire, first directing a 2010 film starring Ryan Gosling as Durst and later digging into the three slayings Durst was long suspected of in “The Jinx.”.

The guilty verdict caps a long journey for authorities who sought to prosecute Durst for killings in three states without success.

In doing so, Durst, who had not previously cooperated with the media, also gave Jarecki and his crew access to all of his records.

At some point during the hours of interviews, Jarecki realized Durst had grown comfortable in talking about the disappearance of McCormack and the deaths of Berman and Black — a little too comfortable.

When Jarecki realized his documentary subject was saying “a lot of incriminating things,” he and his staff doubled down on their efforts to confront Durst about his past.

Confident he could not be connected to the note, Durst told Jarecki that “only the killer could have written” the letter.

That changed when Jarecki and his crew confronted Durst on the note, on which the handwriting bore stark similarities to a letter Durst had sent Berman a year before her death.

On March 14, 2015, the day before the episode aired, he was arrested by the FBI in New Orleans after Los Angeles police obtained an arrest warrant in Berman’s killing, due in part to the hours’ worth of interviews Durst gave to Jarecki for “The Jinx” that were handed over to police.

Durst later said he regretted being involved in “The Jinx,” describing it as a “very, very, very big mistake.”.

The use of “The Jinx” to help convict Durst shows the power of the true-crime genre to produce results in cases that have long been abandoned, said Joe Giacalone, a retired New York police sergeant and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Blum celebrated the conviction on Saturday, saying stories like the one told by Jarecki “certainly have the power to change the world.” He said the legacy of “The Jinx” will forever be linked to Durst being found guilty

For Jarecki, he said his work will now shift from wondering whether Durst was behind the crimes he was implicated in to how Durst managed to evade authorities for so long