The criminal allegations against Robert Durst, the infamous real estate heir linked to two killings and his wife's disappearance, include an incident in Pennsylvania where authorities said he stole a $6 sandwich.
Durst, the son of a New York City real estate mogul, is accused in the 2000 killing of Susan Berman — his confidant, and the daughter of an associate to Las Vegas mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky — in West Los Angeles, according to the LAPD.
"As a result of investigative leads and additional evidence that has come to light in the past year, investigators have identified Robert Durst as the person responsible for Ms. Berman's death," the statement said.
Durst, now 71, has always maintained his innocence in Berman's death. Berman, 55, a writer who became Durst's spokeswoman, was killed at her home near Beverly Hills with a bullet to the back of her head as New York investigators prepared to question her in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of Durst's wife, Kathleen.
After Berman's death, Durst moved to Texas, where he lived as a mute woman in a boarding house until his arrest in 2001 after dismembered parts of the body of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay.
Durst then became a fugitive, until he turned up shoplifting a chicken sandwich, Band-Aids, and a newspaper from a Wegman's in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, even though he had $500 cash in his pocket and $37,000 in his rental car — along with two guns and marijuana.
Durst has connections to the Lehigh Valley. He graduated from Lehigh University in 1965 and at the time of his shoplifting arrest claimed that his daughter attended the university though he has no children, reported the Express-Times.
His lawyer, Chip Lewis, later told the jury that Durst shot Black in self-defense and suffered from Asperger's syndrome. Despite admitting that he used a paring knife, two saws and an ax to dismember Black's body before dumping the remains, Durst was acquitted of murder.
Durst still faced some consequences in Texas — in 2004 he pleaded guilty to bond jumping and evidence tampering, but with time served, he was paroled in 2005. Then, violating the terms of his parole, he returned to the boarding house where Black was killed, and had to serve another four months in jail.
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Durst was arrested in New Orleans on a murder warrant just before Sunday evening's showing of an HBO serial documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst about his links to three killings. In the the finale, Durst said he "killed them all."
Durst is being held without bail following an initial hearing in New Orleans magistrate court Sunday and is expected to agree to be taken to Los Angeles to face first-degree murder charges, Lewis told NBC News.
