In ‘The Jinx — Part Two’ finale, Andrew Jarecki says Robert Durst was enabled by wife and siblings
LA TimesFilmmaker Andrew Jarecki has spent much of the last 20 years thinking about Robert Durst, the notorious real estate heir who was suspected in multiple murders but managed to evade justice until the very end of his life. Jarecki’s Emmy-winning 2015 docuseries, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” thrust Durst into the spotlight by revisiting the mysterious deaths to which he was linked: the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst; the murder of his best friend, Los Angeles writer Susan Berman, in 2000; and the grisly killing and dismemberment of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, in 2001. “Who are these people who see themselves as good, honest, decent people and don’t see themselves as accomplices in anything?” Sunday’s finale, fittingly titled “It Takes a Village,” takes a critical look at the people who understood Durst — and what he was capable of — better than anyone: his siblings, Wendy, Douglas and Thomas; and his second wife and heir, Debrah Lee Charatan, who did not sit for an interview but is present in the series through video depositions and often riveting prison phone calls with her husband. “This is a person who’s really played the long game,” said Jarecki, whose 2010 feature film “All Good Things” was inspired by Durst — and led to his participation in “The Jinx.” The finale recounts the history of Charatan’s relationship with Durst, which began in the late 1980s, when she was newly divorced and freshly bankrupt, and he was a wealthy eccentric rumored to have killed his first wife. “They didn’t have to admit their complicity, but at least it would have been an acknowledgment.” “The Jinx” also captures the moment when Jarecki receives a phone call informing him that Durst is dead.