Robert Durst Due in Court April 2 on Louisiana Gun Charges

Millionaire Robert Durst, linked to murders described in the recent HBO documentary “The Jinx,” is due in Orleans Parish Magistrate Court tomorrow for a preliminary hearing into gun charges stemming from his arrest in New Orleans.

RELATED:

• HBO Subject Robert Durst Arrested in Cold Case Murder of California Friend
• ‘Killed Them All,’ Admits Real Estate Heir Arrested for Beverly Hills Murder
• Fox’s ‘Judge Jeanine’ Predicted Robert Durst’s Arrest Before the End of ‘Jinx’ on HBO
• Eccentric, Millionaire, Murder Suspect Robert Durst Held in Louisiana, Moved to New Prison

The Scarsdale native was arrested March 14, the day before the last episode ran, on a warrant from Los Angeles authorities. He had checked into a New Orleans hotel under an assumed name and LA police sources said they feared he planned to flee to Cuba.

The 71-year-old faces gun and drug charges in Louisiana—and extradition to California in connection with the execution-style death of a friend in 2000.

One angle that Durst’s attorneys could take to combat the charges surfaced at a March 23 hearing in New Orleans where he was denied bond, according to the Times-Picayune.

At that hearing, seeing former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro in the room, defense attorney Dick DeGuerin announced he wanted her sequestered as a possible witness for the “dogging of Mr. Durst.”

That argument had worked at Durst’s 2003 Texas murder trial, where despite admitting that he had shot and cut up a neighbor while living under another name disguised as a mute woman, Durst was acquitted. His lawyers argued at that time that he was hiding because Pirro in particular was hounding him over the disappearance of his wife in Bedford in 1982.

Louisiana Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell did not allow the move, because DeGuerin had not prepared essential papers.

Times-Picayune reporter Ken Daley described another angle: at the hearing DeGuerin argued that the search of Durst’s hotel room, which turned up a gun, marijuana, a map of Florida and Cuba, and a high-quality latex mask of a person with salt-and-pepper hair, was illegal.

In cross-questioning, he extracted an admission that the search was done—by FBI agents working with LA authorities—seven hours before a search warrant was obtained.

Read the entire Times-Picayune article here.

(Photo of Robert Durst, screenshot from Click2Houston.com video on Youtube)