Robert Durst says he acquired a wig to hide Jeanine Pirro from 'disguising myself as a woman.'
Millionaire suspect of murder Robert Durst said on Thursday that, because he feared Jeanine Pirro, he acquired the wig and disguised himself as a mute woman in Texas.
After reading a number of November 2000 articles from Daily News and other news outlets stating that New Yorks authorities reinvestigated his first wife, Kathie Durst's disappearance in 1982, Durst said on his third day of testimony at the Los Angeles Murder Trial that he decided to live in the Gulf Coast city of Galveston, Texas.
The Westchester County District Attorney at that time was Pirro, today famous for being a Fox News personality often lamped on Saturday Night Live.
When asked by Dick DeGuerin's counsel why he travelled to Dallas and rented a flat under a woman's name in late 2000, "I was hiding from Jeanina Pirro," Durst told jurymen.
"Have you been afraid of her?" Pleading with Pirro, DeGuerin asked.
"Yes," answered Durst.
He stated, he explained he bought the wig at Dallas' shop, "I disguised myself as a lady.
"I've got a large cargo shirt. Really excellent, I shaved," he replied. "My voice is highly acknowledged. So I wrote on a 3/5 card, 'I'm silent.' I knew I couldn't talk to anyone. I'd display the card to everybody who talked to me."
Under the name of Dorothy Ciner, he chartered an apartment which he referred to as a "high school hobby."
He stated that Galveston "seemed like a location I could go and remain and that I couldn't recognize and run into anyone I knew."
He claimed, revealing that he utilized an Internet terminal at local public libraries to avoid discovery, "I went online most days and checkted for the news on Jeanine Pirro from the Westchester County."
Durst added that he believed that he needed to be deeply undercovered as Kathie's disappearance "were questionable" in the articles he received during the mid-November travel into Texas.
Durst, 78, is not accused in the alleged death of Kathie, but his fate is widespread in his assassination trial in Los Angeles.
Durst is now on trial for the supposed assassination of his best friend Susan Berman in her Los Angeles bungalow on December 23, 2000, as part of a Manhattan estate fortune.
Attorneys claims Durst shot Berman in the back of her skull as execution style, as she helped cover him up from Kathie's claimed slaughter in 1982 and wanted to secure her silence.
They say that Durst was a sign of his remorse when he decided to masquerade as Dorothy Ciner in such a tragic way.
Because he anticipated that the intensified Pirro inquiry could force Berman to start to blaspheme, Durst went to California soon after fleeed to Galveston.
Federal prosecutors believe that Durst was afraid, alleging that Berman had drawn Kathie into office in 1982, and called her last living visit in sick to the 29-year-old aspiring medical school.
Berman's de facto stepdaughter gave the jurors in his previous testimony Berman revealed to her earlier that she had actually aided Durst with his "alibi."
Mella Kaufman (45) testified in June: "She told me about her friend [Durst], how her wife disappeared and how she was alibi or made a telephone call for him."
Durst said on thursday morning that, until six days after he had dropped out Kathie at Katonah North Metro Train Station, Westchester County, he did not even alert Mr Bermans of Kathie's supposed absence.
The judges have heard evidence before that in 2001 Durst fatally shot Morris Black, his neighbor in Texas.
After testifying that the act was self-defense, the Texas jury acquitted Durst of Black's murder. Durst alleged he panicled Black before discarding the body parts of Galveston Bay, and dismembered Black.