The Jinx: How HBO Caught a Killer on Camera

When HBO's *The Jinx* premiered on February 8, 2015, few expected the documentary series about New York real estate heir Robert Durst would culminate in his arrest just hours before the finale aired. The six-part investigation, directed by Andrew Jarecki and produced by Marc Smerling, would ultimately help solve a two-decade-old murder and reshape how true crime documentaries intersect with active criminal investigations.

Robert Durst, son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, was the subject of decades of speculation regarding three deaths: his wife Kathie McCormack Durst, a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who vanished in Westchester County in 1982; his best friend Susan Berman, shot execution-style in her California home in 2000; and his neighbor Morris Black, killed and dismembered in Galveston, Texas in 2001.

For years, these cases remained largely separate in the public consciousness. Kathie's disappearance had barely been investigated—the NYPD never searched the Durst home or surrounding areas. Her husband claimed she left him, though evidence suggested domestic violence and that she had already rented an apartment and hired a divorce lawyer. Susan Berman's murder went unsolved. Durst was acquitted of Morris Black's death after claiming self-defense; at the time, he was living in Galveston disguised as a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner.

The Jinx changed everything by connecting these threads. The documentary's breakthrough came through meticulous investigation of the Susan Berman case. Police had received an anonymous "cadaver note" directing them to Berman's address, with the word "cadaver" misspelled. Filmmakers obtained a 1999 letter Durst had sent to Berman and discovered the handwriting matched the anonymous note—a critical piece of evidence that had never been properly analyzed.