While Robert Durst has been sitting in a Louisiana prison awaiting his trial on gun charges and his extradition to Los Angeles for murder charges, he's had some time on his hands. The suspected murderer may have even penned a strange letter to a reporter detailing his life in Los Angeles, his ailments, and how he loves the opera and football.
An L.A. Times reporter sent a letter to the 71-year-old, wealthy New York real estate scion a couple of weeks ago, and received a reply through the mail on Wednesday. Although the outlet hasn't been able to verify if it's really Durst who sent it to them, there are a few things that make it seem believable, like how the envelope is addressed with his name from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, where Durst is imprisoned. The envelope was postmarked from a Baton Rouge, La. post office, which is just a few miles away from the jail.
The letter, which you can see in its entirety here, doesn't mention anything about Durst's state gun and drug possession charges in connection to his arrest in New Orleans, La. on March 14 or about the charges involving the 2000 murder of his close friend, Susan Berman, in Beverly Hills.
Instead, in shaky cursive handwriting, the writer detailed how he lived part-time in L.A. in a West Hollywood apartment, and that he hated L.A. traffic, though he "loved watching the traffic come up La Cienega and mush into Santa Monica." He also wrote about his interests, which include the opera and professional football, and he points out L.A.'s leaders failed in getting a football team out to the city. He says he moved from L.A. to Houston for surgery at a hospital to remove esophageal cancer.
When authorities arrested Durst in New Orleans in connection to Berman's murder, they found him in a hotel room wearing a latex mask as a disguise with over $42,000 in cash, a gun, and weed in his possession. This morning he was scheduled for an arraignment in New Orleans on the state gun and drug charges, but he may also face a federal weapons charge, ABC News reports. Durst agreed to be extradited to Los Angeles to go on trial for the Berman case, but it's been delayed due to these other charges in New Orleans.
HBO's riveting docuseries, The Jinx, brought renewed interest to cases Durst has been linked to, which include another murder in Galveston, TX, and the disappearance of his wife, Kathleen Durst, in 1982—a case that's never been solved. Durst has never been convicted. One of his most highly-publicized and shocking cases was the 2001 death of his neighbor, Morris Black, in Galveston, Texas. Durst was acquitted in the murder trial, claiming that he killed Black out of self defense, and then butchered his body parts, stuffed them in garbage bags and left them in a bay—because he was scared.
