LOS ANGELES -
It had all the makings of a salacious TV soap: the troubled heir to a New York real estate fortune, on the run across America, a trail of unsolved murders in his wake.
But the HBO documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” was real - and in the last episode, which aired on Sunday night in the US, its star and prime suspect appeared to solve the murder mysteries once and for all.
“What the hell did I do?” Durst, 71, was heard asking himself, when he apparently inadvertently wore a microphone to the bathroom during a break in filming.
“Killed them all, of course,” he answered.
On Monday, Los Angeles County prosecutors filed a murder charge in one of the killings, The Los Angeles Times reported. He was taken into custody in Louisiana over the weekend.
Police have been suspicious about Durst for decades, since his wife Kathleen disappeared from the couple's Westchester County, New York, home in 1982.
His close friend Susan Berman was found murdered in her Los Angeles home in 2000, just as police were planning to interview her about Kathleen Durst's disappearance. Durst was in California at the time of Berman's murder, but police failed to tie him to the crime.
In 2003, Durst was tried for the murder of Morris Black, a neighbour in Galveston, Texas, where he had lived in disguise, posing as a mute woman. But he convinced the jury the death was an accident and that he dismembered Black's body in a drunken fugue state, and they acquitted him.
Durst's taped TV confession - if that is indeed what it was - may not be allowed as evidence in court, law professor Stanley Goldman told the Los Angeles Times.
But just as important may be an envelope discovered by Berman's stepson during filming which appeared to link Durst to her murder.
The handwriting on the envelope, which contained a letter from Durst to Berman, strongly resembled an envelope sent to police notifying them of a “cadaver” in Berman's home.
“These two producers did what law enforcement in three states could not do in 30 years,” former Westchester County prosecutor Jeanine Pirro told the New York Times.
On Saturday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found Durst at a hotel in New Orleans, where he had checked in under an assumed name, and arrested him on suspicion of Berman's murder.
On Monday, a court delayed moving him to Los Angeles to face charges, as New Orleans prosecutors considered charges against him for marijuana found in his hotel room.
Durst's lawyer Chip Lewis suggested Saturday the arrest amounted to a publicity stunt to promote the TV series, according to media reports.