"Born into a real estate dynasty that ranked with the Trumps, Zeckendorfs and Helmsleys in New York, Mr. Durst had been a deeply troubled outlier of the family since his youth."

"He fought constantly with his younger brother Douglas, who went on to head the family empire. When Robert Durst tried joining the button-down real estate world, he failed miserably. He was socially awkward, muttered to himself, belched noisily in public and urinated in office wastebaskets. In other settings, he could be smooth, urbane and enormously generous. He gave thousands of dollars to friends, attended the ballet and partied at Studio 54 and other Manhattan hot spots. A master of disguises and aliases, he maintained a stash of wigs and masks and assumed false identities.... In the final episode of the six-part HBO series, he is heard muttering to himself during a bathroom break, apparently unaware that a microphone attached to his clothing is still live: 'What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.'"

From "Robert Durst, heir to New York real estate fortune and convicted murderer, dies at 78" (WaPo).

"Robert Durst Found Guilty of Murdering Friend."

Questionable use of the word "friend" in a NY Magazine headline.

Real-estate scion Robert Durst was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury in California on Friday for killing a close friend...

There's that word again. 

... over 20 years ago. The crime is one of three murders Durst is suspected of over nearly four decades — all of which he apparently confessed to in the HBO documentary series The Jinx, six years ago.

Harvard lawprof Noah Feldman says Robert Durst's confession is not admissible.

What we have is video of Durst, alone and looking into a mirror and saying "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." Feldman says he's "going deeply into the law" and "the circumstances of the statement" and encountering a "profound question about fantasy versus reality, the nature of a soliloquy, and the fascinating human strangeness unleashed by the era of reality television." All of that creates opportunities for presenting other evidence and making arguments about the meaning and weight of the words spoken by Durst, but it's not hearsay, because statements of a party offered by an opposing party are defined by the rules of evidence as not hearsay. [ADDED: Under some states' evidence rules, the statement of a party is hearsay but would fall within an exception to the rule against hearsay.] So what is Feldman's argument?

"'What the hell did I do?' Mr. Durst whispers to himself in an unguarded moment caught on a microphone he wore during filming."

I'll put the rest after the fold in case you haven't watched the final episode of HBO's 6-part documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst."