Millionaire's unwitting TV confession: 'I killed them all'

New York City real estate heir Robert Durst leaves a Houston courtroom. Photo / AP

For more than three decades, Robert Durst drifted across the United States, frustrating murder investigators in three states and funded by the $65 million pay-off he received when he was disowned by his property dynasty family.

But the morning after American television viewers heard the millionaire from one of America's wealthiest families muttering that he "killed them all" in a pivotal unscripted aside at the finale of a documentary about his life, he appeared in a Louisiana court following his arrest on a Los Angeles murder warrant.

Durst, 71, was taken into custody at a New Orleans hotel where he was staying using a false identity and paying in cash as, investigators believed, he was preparing to flee to Cuba.

His first wife vanished from their home in 1982, a close friend and confidante was found shot dead in 2000 shortly before she due to speak to police about that disappearance and his neighbour was killed and dismembered in 2001.

In an astonishing true-crime meets television twist, the key breakthrough seems to have been made by the producers of The Jinx:The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst a gripping television series in which Mr Durst spoke freely.

He was confronted by the striking similarity on the envelopes of a letter he wrote to his friend Susan Berman, a crime author, and a note that police said could only have been sent by the killer who shot her dead in 2000 in Los Angeles.

On camera, he tried to swat away the comparisons and repeated his insistence that he was not a killer.

But then he went to then bathroom and delivered a mumbled and apparently highly incriminating soliloquy, unaware that his microphone was still live "There it is," he said. "You're caught. You're right, of course... I'm having difficulty with the question. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

Mr Durst's lawyers, who are expected to challenge whether those words can be used against him, have long said that he did not commit murder. But Los Angeles prosecutors are expected to focus on further evidence, including the handwriting on the letter that was shown on The Jinx for the first time.

Ms Berman was found shot in the back of the head at her Beverly Hills home. She was preparing to talk to investigators about what she knew about the 1982 disappearance of Mr Durst's first wife Kathleen.

Police long viewed him as the prime suspect in both cases, but they never had the evidence to bring charges.

He did face a trial on murder charges for killing a neighbour in 2001, but he was acquitted after his lawyers persuaded jurors that he acted in self-defence in a struggle and then hacked up the dead man's body and dumped him in the sea.

The timing of his arrest on the eve of the final episode of The Jinx raised questions about the liaison between the documentary-makers and police.

But there was only relief from relatives of his suspected victims and his own estranged family.

"Closure is near at hand," said James McCormack, the brother of Mr Durst's long-missing first wife. "I feel it in my heart."

Douglas Durst, his brother who now runs the family's portfolio of skyscrapers, including the major investment in the new World Trade Centre, expressed similar sentiments.

"We are relieved and also grateful to everyone who assisted in the arrest of Robert Durst," he said. "We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done."