The reboot of Robert Durst’s murder trial continued Thursday with a leading medical examiner stating that Susan Berman — that the girl Durst is accused of murdering in December 2000 — may not have seen her killer coming since she was shot at the back of the mind.
Riverside County’s chief forensic pathologist, Mark Fajardo, that examined Berman’s autopsy at 2015, confirmed that was his concept while being questioned by Durst’s attorney Dick DeGuerin.
Fajardo qualified that it was highly likely that Berman didn’t even see her killer coming since Berman was shot with a 9 mm pistol”within an inch” of the rear of her head. He highlighted that that in no way presupposed which Berman knew her killer.
Inspired by DeGuerin if the chance that Berman was on her knees and cleanup after her dogs at the time she had been shot was consistent with the evidence Fajardo reviewed, he said:”That is a possibility, surely.”
Fajardo then confirmed his theory that due to the way in which the bullet entered the back of Berman’s head, it is a”chance” she did not know she was going to be murdered.
In the time Durst was detained in New Orleans in 2015, Fajardo conducted the Los Angeles coroner’s office. He testified earlier that in the timehe also reviewed the report on Berman’s December 2000 autopsy; the pathologist who initially ran Berman’s autopsy has retired.
Durst, 78, is suspected of killing Berman in her Los Angeles home in December 2000 to keep her from talking to police about what she supposedly knew about the disappearance of Durst’s wife, Kathie Durst, almost two years earlier in New York City.
Robert Durst has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said he doesn’t know who murdered Berman, who was his longtime confidante and once an unofficial spokeswoman when Kathie Durst disappeared.
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin has stated Berman’s murdering and Robert Durst’s admission that he fatally shot and dismembered a drifter at Texas, Morris Black, in 2001 are equally connected to the mystery of Kathie Durst’s disappearance.
The court heard from two additional witnesses Thursday: Drs. Alicia Landman-Reiner and Helen Bloch, both of whom were Kathie Durst’s classmates at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Bloch, who has years of experience treating domestic violence victims, testified that she remembered Kathie Durst after coming into campus having a black eye — an accident she attempted to cover sunglasses — a while prior to her disappearance.
Robert Durst has long been suspected of murdering Kathie Durst but has never been charged and has denied any role in her disappearance. She’s never been found.
The trial started in March 2020 but was adjourned after six days due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It declared this week in Inglewood with attorneys making abbreviated opening statements to remind jurors concerning the evidence.
