Robert Durst has been a part of director Andrew Jarecki’s life for nearly two years.
In 2005, the director began working on the 2010 film “All Good Things,” starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, and was inspired by the life of Durst and the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack.
He then followed that up with the 2015 HBO six-part docuseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which explored Durst’s connection to several murders and dramatically concluded with his hot mic admission, “Killed them all, of course.”
The series garnered a host of awards and the storyline appeared to be over. However, in 2017, Durst stood trial for the 2010 murder of his good friend, Susan Berman.
Critics who had refused to talk to Jarecki for the first “Jinx” series were now testifying in the Berman trial — and Jarecki realized that there was another series in the making.
“The Jinx: Part Two” debuted on Sunday.
Durst was the eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst and first gained headlines for the unsolved 1982 disappearance of McCormack.
Berman, one of his oldest friends, who provided an alibi for Durst when McCormack went missing, was shot outside her home in 2000.
Later that year, after being tipped off by his sister that the McCormack investigation had been reopened, Durst went into hiding and moved to Galveston, Texas, where he disguised himself as a mute woman.
The following year, Durst was arrested after body parts belonging to his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, 71, were found floating in Galveston Bay.
Durst skipped bail but was extradited, and was found not guilty of the murder but pleaded guilty to bail jumping and evidence tampering (for his dismemberment of Black’s body) and served time in prison in between threatening his brother, Douglas Durst.
He did not face any further legal action until his shocking confession in “The Jinx,” which led to him being charged for Berman’s murder.
Robert was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He was later charged with McCormack’s disappearance, but died in 2022 at the age of 78, before a trial could begin.
Jarecki, who also helmed the critically acclaimed documentary, “Capturing the Friedmans,” knows he’ll never have another subject as fascinating as Robert.
“I think he was a unicorn,” he told the New York Post in a recent interview. “He’s not just rich and murderous, he’s an insanely odd and charming engaging person who draws people in and he’s also a firestarter, who is constantly making problems for everyone around him.”
Jarecki noted Robert’s strange relationship with his relatives.
“Look at his family – if you come from a rich family and you do some bad stuff, you don’t want to besmirch the family, he wants to besmirch the family, he wants to bring the family down because he’s angry that he wasn’t the one chosen to run the business so he’s such a contradiction,” he explained.
Interestingly the director declines to categorize Robert as ‘immoral’ or ‘amoral.’
“He had a very loose interpretation of morality,” Jarecki opined. “He was much more comfortable with gang members in prison, then he was with people in his social set. He bought a house in Harlem and loved being in Harlem and loved diversity and being around different people.
“He was a Democrat, he hated Trump which is kind of amazing because he’s kind of Trumpian. Every time you think you’ve got him figured out, he surprises you like he does an act of kindness or says he wants to leave money in his will for someone and then he doesn’t. That’s one of the things that makes us want to keep watching because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Jarecki added that seeing how many people were involved in Robert’s nefarious activities was fascinating.
“…Which is why part two is so engaging to me,” he explained, “because there is this smörgåsbord of bad behavior by people who are decent people otherwise in a lot of ways.”
“The Jinx: Part Two” is currently streaming on Max. New episodes will air Sundays at at 10:00 p.m. ET, with the finale on May 26.
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