The Jinx director Andrew Jarecki on 'oddly charming' Robert Durst and being fearful of his life

Andrew Jarecki has dedicated nearly two decades to telling the true-crime saga of New York real estate heir Robert Durst.

His 2015 docuseries, The Jinx, had real-world consequences, ending with Durst's off-camera confession: “You’re caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course...”

The twist – one that was greater than any fiction - led to Durst's criminal trial for the murder of his best friend Susan Berman, resulting in a guilty verdict and life sentence.

Durst was first suspected of killing his wife, Kathleen Durst, after her disappearance in 1982 - her body has never been found. Then in 2001, he was arrested for the murder of his neighbour Morris Black – only to be acquitted of all charges after claiming he acted in self-defence.

However, nine years after Durst's shocking confession and two years after his death at 78, Jarecki and producer Zac Stuart-Pontier have returned with a six-episode follow-up, concluding this Sunday on Sky Documentaries.

With the story coming to an end, does Jarecki feel like he has reached closure, afterspending 20 years getting to know Durst?

“You know, I think it'll still be lingering in my mind,” he tells The Standard.

“But all the subjects of everything I've ever worked on, are still in my mind, and I still have relationships with all the key people [in the docuseries].

“I definitely think that the themes are going to stay in my mind, and I think I'm going to stay very interested in human nature, complicity - these are things that are part of my permanent thinking process now.”

Viewers witness throughout the second series just how many of Durst’s “friends” were complicit in his crimes.

Whether their actions were fuelled by a kind of twisted loyalty or for financial gain - after all Durst was a wealthy and well-connected man – viewers will have to make that decision themselves.

Watching the second season it’s clear to see how Durst weaponised his charm for his own personal gain – and didn’t care for the consequences that would await his friends.

Such is Durst’s power over people that Jarecki likens his influence to former US President Donald Trump and the January 6 Capitol riots, branding him “a strong dominant figure”.

“I think the dominance is big,” he recalled about Durst.

“We see the power of his personality, we hear him say, ‘I'd like you to do this’. There are moments when Bob is asking his friend, Stewart Altman, who's a lawyer and also his ex-buddy, and he's asking Stewart, 'Well, I would like you to find out about sending money to Belize.'

“So why does he want to do that? Because he's trying to hide money from the McCormack family all the time, because he knows there's the possibility of a wrongful death suit [Durst was suspected of his first wife Kathleen Durst McCormack’s death].

“And Stewart says to him, 'I don't know Bob, I don't know that's I don't know if that would be good for my career.’ And it's one of the few times when somebody stands up to Bob, and he immediately just goes, 'alright, well, if you don't want to do it, forget it.’

“Immediately, it's like, 'okay, you want to be out of the club, you want to be out of the Bob club? No problem, if you're afraid to do this’ so he turns to Debbie Lee Charatan [Durst’s widow and executer of his estate].

“Debbie says, 'Well, I don't know.' So what does that tell you? In other words, Debbie doesn't want to do it either. And she said, 'Well, what does that tell you? Doesn't that tell you maybe there's something maybe you shouldn't do it?' And he goes, 'it tells me I haven't found the right people yet.’

“So, he's sifting around through the available helpers to try to figure out who's willing to do something extra naughty that could end up losing somebody their law license or whatever. You know, that's complicity, that's the enforcement and what interests me.”

Having spent two decades chasing Durst and trying to understand his inner workings, does Jarecki believe he will ever meet someone like the late criminal again?

“In some ways I see him is a unicorn just because he had all of these unique elements, right?” he recalled.

“He was oddly charming. One of the most interesting things about him is that we don't hate him off the bat, even if we hate the things that he's done.”

While he may be “oddly charming”, Jarecki did recall one incident where he was left fearful for his life.

After walking home one night in 2015, the filmmaker said his stomach dropped when he saw what he believed to be Durst’s unmistakeable yellow Smart car parked outside his New York apartment building leaving him “freaked out”.

At the time, episode five of his bombshell documentary had just aired on HBO so he was on high alert, only to find out that the car belonged to one of his building’s doormen.

“That whole period was kind of uncomfortable,” he shared. “It just seemed like it was sort of par for the course, there was no getting around it. I learned a lot.”

Soon after he enlisted the help of security detail but he remarked that the FBI didn’t give him the sense of safety he had hoped for.

“I mean, I had an FBI minder, who was sort of supposed to be looking out for me and telling me if Bob was getting close to me or something like that, and I called him around that time.

“And he said, 'Oh, yeah, we lost him.' And I said, 'What do you mean, you lost them? It's just one little guy.' And they said, 'Well, you know, it's actually it's a lot harder than you think, you know, we got a tail a guy, you know, you need multiple people to do it. And you know, if he goes into a mall, he could come out of any of the doorways. So, you got to have a different guy for every doorway.'

“And I was like, 'that sounds like a lot of unnecessary information. I just wanted you to say, we know where he is. And he was like, sorry’.”

The Jinx - Part 2 airs on Sky Documentaries and Now