Original subtitles

Michael Belcher: In March of 2016,

I get a call from a 000 number.

He says, "Hi, this is Deputy District Attorney John Lewin

from the Major Crimes Division."

He gets talking. He says, you know,

"I'm working on the, you know, Durst case. Have you heard of it?"

I said, "Fred Durst? Oh, my God!" He said, "No, no, no.

"Fred Durst is the lead singer of Limp Bizkit.

Robert Durst."

I'm like, "Killed them all, of course."

And he's like, "I was very impressed with your resume.

I'd like you to, you know, come work for us."

And I said, "Well, if you like me,

I have an identical twin brother."

He says, "Really?! Does he wanna work on the Durst case?"

I said, "Yeah! Of course, he does!" Like

John Lewin: I ended up calling them the Wonder Twins.

If you showed up at 5:00 in the morning,

they'd be here at 4:30. If you left at 7:00,

they would leave at 7:30.

David Belcher: Our responsibilities, at the beginning,

were to just sift through the evidence.

There were 150,000 pages of discovery

that we needed to go through.

And the way that John works is

he wants to know everything.

There were dozens of law students

all going through the evidence, making sure that John

and the whole prosecutorial team

had everything they needed to put the case together.

Michael Belcher: To break the monotony

of sorting through 150,000 pages of discovery,

we listened to a bunch of Bob's phone calls,

and the jail calls were always fun to listen to.

It goes, you know, "Boop, boop, boop, boop."

- operator: Hello. This is a prepaid call from... - Robert Durst : Bob!

Both : Bob!

Michael Belcher: It was a little treat,

especially when he was talking to his wife Debrah.

Debrah Lee Charatan I know.

♪ Well, you just think that I'm ♪

♪ Some great survivor ♪

♪ And you just build upon ♪

♪ The light to carry you ♪

♪ Well, I don't even talk that way ♪

♪ See, I wanted you to stay ♪

♪ And show you the world's a better place ♪

♪ And as we crawl to find our way ♪

♪ We even take the shape of something else ♪

♪ You think that I'm just ♪

♪ Some great survivor ♪

♪ You think that I'm just ♪

♪ Some great survivor ♪

♪ I'm afraid that the weight of the world ♪

♪ Is catching up with you ♪

Habib Balian: When we first started the case,

we didn't exactly know how all the cases interacted

with each other and fit together.

When someone's wife disappears,

their best friend gets murdered,

and their neighbor gets chopped up and thrown in a bay,

assuming that the person did all of these crimes,

generally you have an idea that they're gonna be interconnected

in some way, but you don't know exactly how.

John Lewin called and said, "Hi, you know, I'm...

I'm the prosecutor in Susan Berman's..."

And I was like, "Good. Good luck."

DePaulo: Right.

When Bob has a friend,

he expects blind loyalty.

Like, unconditional loyalty.

He expected his friends to, you know, toe the line.

And a lot of them did for a long time.

I think they were afraid of Bobby

because a lot of people thought he could come and kill them

and it wasn't an unreasonable fear.

So I knew that a lot of this was gonna rest on

whether Bobby's loyalists

would, essentially, "turn" on him.

Lewin: I thought that people close to Bob

would have damaging information.

And if a witness has information,

I'm gonna find a way to get it.

Doug Oliver was a confident,

man-about-town kinda guy.

Doug Oliver was kind of,

I think of him as a playboy back in the '80s

and somebody who wanted to be a big shot.

And he told me

that not long after he met Bob,

they got involved in a little real estate deal.

They bought a tenement

that Doug had found.

Bob put up all the money,

and then when they sold the building,

Bob split the profit evenly with Doug,

and that really endeared

Bob to Doug.

He was extremely close to Bob.

He was talking to Bob back in 1982,

the week Kathie disappeared.

He clearly knew information that he was hiding.

And so, we wanted to, um, to speak to him.

On January 31, 1982.

I've got phone records

that show Bob calls you February 3rd.

So the question that I have was...

Oliver: I really don't wanna talk about the case.

It upsets me. I don't wanna hear about it.

He was the rudest witness I've ever encountered in my career.

Durst : Doug?

Oliver: Hey, Bob. I only have

the fondest, greatest memories of you, okay? I mean, really.

You were a good friend for-for-for the years we were together.

No, no. You were a better friend.

You were a better friend to me.

Do you still go to...

What was the name of the Riviera on?

- Oliver: Oh, Saint-Tropez? - Yes.

Every other year, maybe every three years,

I go to Saint-Tropez.

It's not as much fun without you, put it that way.

And at my age, most people, you know, are starting to retire.

I'm busier now than I've ever been, and I'm having more fun.

I really am. And I'm making more money, too, thank God.

I thought you'd enjoy what fun I'm having. You know?

Anyway, Debbie says you look really good,

- and she's right. - Oliver: Oh, well, thank you.

I'm getting old though. Trust me.

Oh, I trust you.

Bob clearly has these friends that are loyal to him

who just don't wanna give him up.

We wanted to get close to everybody and see what came up

but we wanted to speak to Nick Chavin in particular.

We didn't know exactly what he knew,

but we knew he was very close to-to Robert Durst.

Nick Chavin (singing): ♪ Old Man River ♪

♪ Old Man River ♪

♪ He just keeps walkin' ♪

♪ He keeps on walkin' ♪

♪ He just keeps walkin' along ♪

♪ Tote that barge, lift that bale ♪

♪ You gets a little drunk ♪

♪ And you land in jail ♪

What was the last thing I said?

Ever since I can remember,

all I've ever wanted was to be famous.

I formed a band and I became Chinga Chavin.

And "chinga" is a Spanish phrase.

- Are you aware of that? - Andrew Jarecki: No.

Okay. The literal translation is "fuck you."

I came up with a hook.

Sexy and ribald country and western songs.

It's more what you don't show

that creates the allure.

Jarecki: When did you first hear Nick perform music?

Ugh. Could we skip that? Really.

I... I'm not in the Chinga Chavin fan club. Let's get it down.

♪ You got a date, she's hot and pretty ♪

♪ Even if you're only gonna get bare titty... ♪

Jarecki: Do you let him play music in the house?

If I'm not in the house, yeah.

"Country Porn" was a much more powerful hook

than I ever thought possible

and the thing caught on immediately.

♪ Where your sweet head used to be ♪

The music's great.

(singing along) ♪ Now, it's been said that for everyone ♪

♪ There is somebody else ♪

And then at some point, Susan Berman came to a performance

and she wrote some reviews of my act.

She liked it, and she was a powerful journalist then.

So Susan and I became friends through promoting my career.

She taught me how to live wealthily

in-in Manhattan.

I didn't have the faintest fucking idea.

♪ 'Cause I'm savin' myself ♪

♪ For a title role ♪

♪ In a wet dream tragedy ♪

Once, we went to a restaurant, Elaine's.

I was in my, uh, stage clothes.

I had cowboy boots, and I had a Western shirt

and rhinestone pants that matched it.

People were stopping by and talking to us

and Susan said to me, "Chinga, they think you're really famous.

They have no idea you're not really famous."

And she said, "Just play it up."

She really was a hoot.

♪ On the pillow where your sweet head used to be ♪

"Chinga!" She always talked like that.

"I wanna introduce you to a really good friend of mine.

He's my best friend, Bob Durst."

♪ Where your sweet head used to ♪

♪ Be... ♪

We were an immediate attraction like two magnets.

And she said something to the effect like,

"Well, now you two naughty boys can have fun."

God, was that ever true.

You look very defiant in this picture. You look kinda bad ass.

Yeah, I think I was. That was just a natural phase,

the two of us. I mean, we were really a two-man brotherhood.

Bob's closest friend in the world was Susan Berman.

And Nick Chavin was second.

And the three of them were very close.

So, I started trying to contact Nick.

John Lewin was calling me every day.

But Nick was clearly ducking us.

He's a little bit like Bob.

Nick doesn't wanna talk to you, you're not gonna get him.

I figured I could control him.

I'd never had anyone really control me.

I control.

I didn't want any part of talking to him.

My instincts are to avoid the cops.

Bob and I had a contempt for the law

and for society and for rules.

That was part of what bonded us together.

Well, it wasn't treated like a crime.

It was just treated like a, a mystery.

And I felt on the side

of protecting Bob all the way through.

My relationship with Kathie did not run that deep.

I knew Kathie, but I didn't love Kathie that way,

didn't have the time to have a mature love for her.

It was a lot like what Susan said to me when she was alive.

She said, "Kathie's dead."

"Nothing we can do can change that.

"But, Bob's alive, and he's still our dear friend,

and we owe it to him to protect him."

He's a very difficult person to get to know

but once you get to know him as a best friend,

he can't let go of that.

He was the smartest, and I've said this over and over,

he's the smartest man I ever met.

He was the best man at my wedding.

There's never been anyone in my life

that I ever felt as deeply about as Bob.

And like him enormously.

I'm indebted to him.

Nick felt a lot of loyalty to Bob.

Bob had helped him get started in a career in New York.

He was still trying to make it with his band

but he soon realized he needed to get a day job.

So, Nick got a job advertising

for real estate projects.

Jarecki: It's kind of amazing, right? You had, like,

- a life as a guy with a coat and tie. - Yeah.

Jarecki: And then you have this, like, rocker life.

And never the twain shall meet.

We tried to keep them apart.

Bob calls him up one day and says, "Hey."

"You wanna represent us

on our new office tower on Sixth Avenue?"

And it was a career maker for Nick.

Nick Chavin: He gave me my business career,

the whole thing, on a platter.

I was just another shlub in New York City.

But having the Durst organization as your client,

they're fucking one of the biggest clients

in real estate advertising.

They spent a few million dollars a year.

Lewin: Nick Chavin wouldn't return my calls.

So finally, I reached out to, if I remember,

like, the head of his firm.

Nick Chavin: One day, my boss came into my office

with a yellow stickie on his finger.

I'll never forget this.

I don't know what Lewin told him on the phone,

but it was clear that all hell was gonna break loose

if I didn't take his call.

Well, I'm in advertising, professional liars.

It's hard to admit you're lying to the DA.

I think he said he's a cold case specialist

working on the Durst case.

Nick easily could a said, "No,"

"I don't know,"

or, "I don't think that Bob killed Susan."

And what Nick said is...

Hello. This is a prepaid call from...

Durst : Bob!

Lewin: I did not know what Nick knew

but I thought that he had very damaging information

and that he was conflicted about it and wasn't ready to talk.

And so, in the meantime,

I tried to talk to other people.

Susie Giordano was a woman

who worked for Nick Chavin

in the advertising agency.

Hi!

Hey. How are you?

My goodness, you're really there.

I am.

- I am. How are you? - Durst: So...

Lewin: She functioned as.

Bob's pen pal slash girlfriend

slash Girl Friday.

I don't know what that thing is back there.

Oh. That's where I do my ladies' push-ups.

Lewin : So, kinda if we go to the beginning,

tell me how did you meet Bob Durst?

Susie Giordano : I met Bob through my boss, Nick Chavin.

Bob looked perfect all the time.

He was confident. He's very charming.

He has a very, very, very charming side.

You know, when you're in your early 20s,

he was in his early 40s, and I was single.

And we came from two entirely different worlds.

At the time, I was the youngest in the agency.

Of course, the partner used to say,

"You don't mix business and pleasure," but...

I was the type that if someone says you can't have it,

you want it.

Nick Chavin: Susan Giordano. Susie G. Was friendly.

She was personable.

We sort of hired her 'cause we needed a flunky

and her ability to flirt was endless.

She comes to me one day, and she says,

"Nick, can you introduce me to some of your rich friends?"

I certainly didn't wanna introduce her to my friends,

but she kept bugging me to do it.

She had a hoarse voice, and she was fond of saying,

"If you get me a date with him, I'll make him a happy man."

I figured Bob would like her.

Durst: You are the woman

who I think could have,

and definitely should have,

married a long time ago.

Giordano : I love you. I miss you a lot. I really love you...

Durst : And I love you, love you, love you.

Giordano : I know it's gonna be a happy ending.

I told you, it's gotta be.

I think we both deserve it.

Now, here I am.

I have so much love to give, you know?

Whether it's your kids, your family, your animals,

there's just so much.

And I used to think that he was missing all of it.

Durst: Hi.

Giordano: I don't think Debbie's a trusting person.

I don't think she's really gonna trust anybody.

So, she doesn't give anyone the chance.

A chance to know who you are.

It was easy to be his friend.

He was somebody that you knew would be there

and I was there for him.

But, I'm a loyal person, normally,

to people that I feel deserve that.

Jarecki: Even though you knew

he had dismembered Morris Black,

that was not a boundary for you?

I don't

maybe I watch too much "Criminal Minds,"

but I-I don't know

what anybody would do in a situation,

so I... sometimes, it's... Do I understand it? No.

Jarecki: So, Nick, did it bother you

when you found out what he had done in Galveston?

Well, what isn't in my mind is, "Jesus Christ!

He cut up Morris Black and got away with it!"

That just wasn't... It just didn't have any impact on me.

I don't have that same moral

hatred of murder and murderers.

Giordano: You're speculating.

Anything is possible. Anything could've happened.

Maybe it is the way he said it was.

Who's to say? No one else was there.

Lewin: Susie Giordano is very interesting.

She plays like she doesn't know what's going on,

yet she tried to help Bob while he was on the run.

When Bob got arrested in New Orleans,

the last thing that they find

is a UPS tracking number.

They go down to UPS, they intercept the package,

and it's a package from Susie Giordano.

Lewin: And when they open it,

stuffed in there is over $100,000.

Jarecki: But, you knew there was some money in the bag.

But how much could've been in there? Figured,

I don't know, $1,000, if anything.

You didn't think that he was gonna go on the run

- and might not come back? - No! Not at all. Not at all.

- Jarecki: There was no talk about Cuba, or he's gonna... - Never.

Lewin: It turns out that when you have

a whole lotta money,

people are willing to do things for you

because they think some of that money might go their way.

David Chesnoff: We're all doing the same thing, as the prosecution.

We divvied up the witnesses.

There were hundreds of, you know, hundreds of 'em.

This was a very long proceeding

with lots of witnesses and lots of moving parts.

Charles Bagli: I think that both the prosecution

and the defense

wanted to be close

to Bob's small group of friends.

And when they were called in to account

for themselves and for Bob,

they did everything they could to shield him.

Oliver : Hi, Bob. Can you hear me?

Durst : I can hear you. Sit up straight.

C-Can you see me? Where... There.

Durst: There. You look like Doug Oliver now.

Okay. Yeah, I can't see all your face.

Can you move so I can see your face?

Ah, much better. Oh, you got a beard!

Nice.

Yeah, your attorney called and said that

you would like me to come visit,

which I was really happy that you

sent a message to me. Man, that was very nice.

Durst : Oh, I very, very, very, very, very much appreciate

that you're gonna go and testify for me.

All that we need you to talk about

is how you remember Kathie Durst.

Oliver: Now, we can't talk about the case, okay?

Your-Your lawyer told me I shouldn't talk about the case.

- Don't wanna get you in trouble. - Durst: Okay, let's just talk

about Nick Chavin a little bit.

Bagli: Bob was really nervous about Nick Chavin

because Nick had not been super outspoken

in all of this, one way or the other,

and he had become somewhat elusive.

Dick DeGuerin: I knew that Nick was a potential witness

because he and Bob had been good friends.

Went to his office and tried to talk to him.

Nick Chavin: I didn't wanna meet with him and talk,

so I hid in the stairwell in back

like a fugitive.

I would have been afraid of what I might say.

I'm not gonna hurt him. I'm not gonna do anything

except ask him what he's gonna say.

Waited there an hour or so.

Got tired.

So I left.

Nick Chavin: I didn't wanna get involved in this trial.

But I've never abandoned my feelings for Bob,

which just drives my wife up the walls.

Terry Chavin: Nick believed Bob

and was, you know, his loyal friend.

Nick seemed to be so under his spell,

you know, even in spite of the whole, you know,

the... all these murders.

Terry's, like, smart.

And from the very beginning,

Terry felt Bobby killed Kathie

and Bobby killed Susan.

And she was very frustrated

that Nick wasn't coming on board.

Lewin: At a certain point in time,

Nick Chavin's wife Terry contacted us,

and basically told us

that Nick had more information than what he was saying.

Terry Chavin: I was so frustrated with Nick.

He believed Bob for so many years. He was so loyal.

I met Debrah in, like, '87 or '88.

There was some kind of double date or something.

She was a force. She was very

a strong woman, I guess you'd say.

Jarecki: And did you think, like, strong, "Hm, interesting?"

Or did you think strong like, "Ah!"?

Mm, second reaction, yeah.

I had a desk at Debrah's firm.

It was a really bad time in my life. Let me put it that way.

I didn't really wanna work there.

Bagli: In the 1980s,

Debbie opened a real estate firm.

She hired smart,

attractive women

to work for her.

Real estate was very male-orientated at that time.

It was a very smart marketing ploy

to be the first all-female firm,

and Debbie got a lot of notoriety for it.

There was a part of her that didn't understand,

in business you have to... you know,

you don't treat people a certain way, so...

It was just bizarre, the whole thing.

Nick Chavin: Debrah was fixated on having the Bach women

represent purity

and hygiene and to be attractive

to the, predominantly, males

who run the commercial real estate business.

She had to make sure that her women,

or "girls" as she called them, didn't smell.

I don't know if it was once a week or twice a week,

she would have them come to her office

and raise their arms, baring their armpits.

And she would walk along the row,

like a Marine Corps drill sergeant.

She would sniff each one of them individually.

And, by God, they had to be odorless...

or she'd send them home to bathe.

Jarecki: Where did you hear that story?

From Terry, who worked there and experienced it.

It was not a comfortable place to be in.

And then, Debrah had asked me

to help Bob find a townhouse.

This was after Galveston.

He's got three murders under his belt,

and he's walking around like everything's fine,

which was really very uncomfortable.

I just felt very unsafe around him, and

he was very unpredictable.

When you have kids, it makes it even more scary.

That's when I got the life insurance policy.

So at least I would have my kids taken care of

if anything happened to me.

You know, whenever you have a certain amount of risk in your life,

it makes sense to get that,

you know, if you look at it like that way.

And it just seemed like we c... I couldn't get rid of him.

Terry Chavin: I was friendly towards them.

I didn't want them to suspect me

or think I was disloyal or anything like, you know,

Susan was gonna be disloyal,

and, you know, that was the end of that.

Oof, this stuff is really... I get sick thinking about it.

Terry Chavin: It was really obvious that

something happened at that dinner.

Nick came home and was really angry.

He had to really

wake up, let's say.

Lewin: And then, we called Nick,

and Nick was basically ambushed with the fact

that we knew what he had told his wife.

What do you do when your best friend

kills your other best friend?

I mean, loyalty is due to Susan, but it's also due to Bob.

And Susan befriended my daughter

and took care of my daughter and took care of us.

Times I was with my first wife, not Terry.

And Susan babysat for her

when I was out late at night playing a gig.

She was a mother to us.

To both of us.

This made me forever grateful to Susan Berman.

Lewin: Nick did not want to be involved in the case,

and Nick hid from me for as long as he could.

But I think he really wanted to do the right thing in his life.

Nick Chavin: Ultimately, I felt like I was being disloyal

to Susan's memory and what I owed her by not

by not coming forth and telling him the truth.

Nick Chavin: It's hard for me to do this.

No one's ever gotten as close

to my heart and brain as Bob has.

It's hard to imagine the closeness.

It just made me glow.

I gotta stop being protective of Bob Durst.

Friendships die hard.

♪ Times are hard ♪

♪ You're afraid to pay the fee ♪

♪ So you find yourself somebody ♪

♪ Who can do the job for free... ♪

♪ When you need a bit of lovin' ♪

♪ 'Cause your man is out of town ♪

♪ That's the time you get me runnin' ♪

♪ And you know I'll be around... ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I don't wanna do your dirty work ♪

♪ No more ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ Light the candle ♪

♪ Put the lock upon the door ♪

♪ You have sent the maid home early ♪

♪ Like a thousand times before ♪

♪ Like the castle in its corner ♪

♪ In a medieval game ♪

♪ I foresee terrible trouble ♪

♪ And I stay here just the same... ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I don't wanna do your dirty work ♪

♪ No more ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I don't wanna do your dirty work ♪

♪ No more ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I don't wanna do your dirty work ♪

♪ No more ♪

♪ I'm a fool to do your dirty work ♪

♪ Oh yeah ♪

♪ I don't wanna do your dirty work ♪

♪ No more... ♪