Eccentric, Billionaire, Murder Suspect Robert Durst Held in Louisiana, Moved to New Prison

While Scarsdale native Robert Durst faces a first-degree murder charge in California, he remains in custody in Louisiana, where authorities moved him from one prison to another last night.

There, the subject of a six-part HBO documentary focusing on accusations that he killed at least three people over a 20-year span faces gun-possession and drug charges.

There’s been quite a lot going on in Louisiana since FBI agents arrested Durst Saturday on the California warrant. The New York City real estate heir had checked into a New Orleans hotel under an assumed name.

California authorities filed an extradition request Monday that was granted the same day, but then put on hold—because Louisiana police filed felony charges against Durst connected to a revolver and five ounces of marijuana allegedly found in his hotel room.

Yesterday he was arraigned and then, after wrangling in court, transferred from the New Orleans jail to a state prison nearly 70 miles away. The stated reason was to put him in a place with medical facilities, the LA Times reported. According to nola.com, officials were concerned about Durst’s safety in the ”notoriously dangerous” jail.

He’ll be back in court March 23 as authorities weigh the extradition request and the state charges.

Louisiana law forbids convicted felons from possessing guns. Durst has two felony convictions, on federal fugitive-from-justice and weapons charges in connection with a death in Texas while he was living as a woman under an assumed name.

The bail-jumping and gun convictions were the only penalty he suffered in connection with that case. He was acquitted of Morris Black’s murder in 2003 though he admitted he had cut his elderly neighbor’s body up and thrown the parts into Galveston Bay. The head has never been found.

The murder charge he now faces in California stems from an earlier, mysterious death—that of Durst’s longtime confidante and sometime media spokeswoman, Susan Berman, in 2000. She was killed execution-style right before investigators from Westchester County were due to question her in connection with a still earlier mystery—the disappearance of Durst’s wife Kathie in 1982 in Bedford.

The March 14 first-degree murder warrant was executed one day before the last episode of the documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” aired on HBO. The California charge carries the potential for the death penalty, as authorities allege Durst lay in wait for Berman and killed her because she was a witness to a crime.

Outside the New Orleans courthouse on Tuesday, Durst lawyer Dick DeGuerin told reporters that the California murder warrant was “based on a television show, not on actual facts,” according to nola.com.

A conviction on the Louisiana gun charge could put Durst in prison there for up to 20 years.

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