US tycoon Robert Durst pleads not guilty in LA murder

New York real estate tycoon Robert Durst, whose bizarre life was the focus of an acclaimed HBO series, has appeared in a Los Angeles court and denied killing a friend 16 years ago.
"I am not guilty. I did not kill Susan Berman," Durst, 73, who was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, told the judge yesterday.
The real estate scion is charged with the execution-style killing of Berman in December 2000, a day before she was due to be questioned by police who had reopened an investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie Durst, in New York.

Berman, a Las Vegas mobster's daughter, had acted as a spokeswoman for Durst after he became a suspect in the disappearance of his wife.
The 55-year-old was shot in the back of the head at her Benedict Canyon home near Los Angeles on December 23.
According to the charge sheet, two handwriting experts believe Durst is behind an anonymous letter sent to authorities to alert them to a "cadaver" at Berman's home.

Durst first came into the spotlight after he was arrested in 2001 for the gruesome killing of his 71-year-old neighbour Morris Black, whose body parts were found stashed in trash bags in an estuary in Texas.

Despite his testimony describing how he cut Black into pieces, Durst was acquitted in 2003 after a sensational trial during which he pleaded self-defence.
He grabbed headlines again after he appeared to make an unwitting confession to a number of killings during filming of the six-part HBO television documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst."
The series, which aired last year, focused on the deaths of Berman and Black, as well as the disappearance of his first wife, who vanished from the couple's New York cottage.
In the final episode Durst was heard muttering to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom.

"There is it, you're caught," he said at another point. "What a disaster."
He was arrested in March 2015, a day before the finale of "The Jinx" aired, when police found a .38 caliber revolver and marijuana in his New Orleans hotel room.
He was sentenced to seven years in prison on a weapons charge and, as part of a plea deal, was transferred last week to Los Angeles from a prison in Louisiana.