Robert Durst sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Susan Berman | Robert Durst

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Robert Durst, a real estate heir suspected in a string of murders over nearly four decades, has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of his girlfriend and friend Susan Berman.

A Los Angeles jury convicted Durst, 78, of first-degree murder last month in the 2000 murder. Prosecutors argued that Durst shot Berman at close range in her home to prevent her from telling police what she knew about Durst’s first wife’s disappearance, Cathy McCormack Durst in 1982. The verdict was Durst’s first murder conviction, which was linked to three deaths in three states.

Durst’s lawyers filed for a new trial, claiming there was not enough evidence to convict Durst, which the judge rejected Thursday at the start of his sentencing.

“The defendant’s testimony was grossly unbelievable and incriminating,” Judge Mark Windham said, adding that there was “compelling evidence of guilt.”

Thursday’s verdict was expected because prosecutors did not demand the death penalty and the jury also convicted Durst of the special circumstances of lying in waiting and killing a witness, which carry a mandatory life sentence.

Berman’s family and friends told the court how Durst had robbed them of a loyal and unforgettable friend who cared deeply for others.

“It was a daily experience that consumed and shattered her soul,” Sarp Kaufman, Berman’s stepson, said of her murder.

Another relative said he visited Berman’s grave to tell her that justice had been served and that she could finally “rest”.

Before sentencing Durst, the judge said Berman was an “extraordinary human being” and that her death was a loss to society.

The verdict came six years after the documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Dea of ​​Robert Durst catapulted the millionaire into the spotlight. The series chronicled Berman’s murder, as well as the disappearance of Durst’s wife and the 2001 death of a neighbor in Galveston, Texas, where Durst was hiding disguised as a deaf and mute woman. He was arrested on the eve of the broadcast of the last episode of the series, which featured Durst confessing to the murders, telling himself, “What the hell did you do?…Killing them all, of course.”

In court, the 78-year-old looked much more ill and weak than he did in the 2015 documentary. He was hard of hearing and used a wheelchair throughout the trial. At one point, after 38 hours of questioning, the judge urged the prosecutor to stop his questions. At some point, the judge said, “there is a limit.”

Authorities have sought to put Dorset behind bars for years for his role in crimes officials believe are due to McCormack’s disappearance and possible murder.

“It all begins with Kathy Durst’s disappearance and death at the hands of Durst,” Deputy Attorney General John Lewin said in his opening statement at Berman’s trial.

McCormack’s body has never been found, although she was declared dead in 2017. Durst was never an official suspect in the case, but prosecutors argued that he was responsible for her death. Durst admitted that the couple had been arguing before her disappearance, and in previous weeks McCormack had gone to the hospital with injuries she said Durst had caused.

Prosecutors said Durst killed Berman, his best friend, because she was willing to tell the police how she helped cover up McCormack’s murder. Reportedly, Berman told her friends that she had given him a false argument.

Prosecutors said Thursday they did not believe Berman knew she was covering up a murder, and that she was instead trying to help her friend. They said Durst most likely told her what happened to McCormack was an accident.

Durst previously faced a murder trial in Texas over the death of his neighbor, Maurice Black. Prosecutors said that while in Galveston, the heir attempted to portray himself as a silent woman named Dorothy Sinner, but that Black did not buy the disguise and was shot and dismembered. Durst and his legal team argued that he killed Black in self-defense, and he was acquitted.

New York prosecutors are expected to press charges against Durst over the death of his ex-wife. The Westchester District Attorney’s Office has reopened the investigation into McCormack’s death, but has not confirmed reports of his plan to pursue an indictment against Durst.

The McCormack family had hoped to speak in Thursday’s ruling, a request that was denied because California law states that only the Berman family is eligible to file victim impact statements in court, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“It wasn’t really an idea that they wouldn’t be allowed to make a victim impact statement,” Robert Abrams, a lawyer for the McCormack family, told the newspaper. “When someone is the central focus of a criminal trial, you expect that.”

Berman’s relatives appealed to Dorset to tell the McCormack family where he had buried his first wife’s body.

“Any hope of any kind of redemption you find is to let them know where to find Cathy,” Kaufman said.

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