An eccentric US tycoon has appeared in court, a day after being charged with the killing of a mobster's daughter in the latest instalment of a bizarre murder mystery laid bare in a TV documentary.
Claiming that "ratings" were driving the prosecution, lawyers for Robert Durst, 71, the descendant of a New York real estate dynasty worth $US4.4 billion ($A5.76 billion), said they want the case to go to trial in California as soon as possible.
But prosecutors in New Orleans, where Durst was arrested on Saturday, are pursuing minor gun and drug charges against him. When police arrived at his room, he was found with a .38 calibre revolver and marijuana, police say.
"We will continue to fight for Bob. We want to get to California as quickly as we can so we can get into a court of law and try this case where it needs to be tried," said Durst's lawyer Dick DeGuerin.
"We will contest the facts there (in California), and we will try to contest them here," he said, outside court in New Orleans, where the case was adjourned until next Monday.
He added: "We want to contest the basis for his arrest, because I think it's not based on facts, it's based on ratings."
Durst was charged in Los Angeles on Monday with murder over the 2000 death of his close friend Susan Berman.
Durst appeared to make an unwitting confession to a catalogue of killings during filming of the final episode of the acclaimed six-part HBO documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.
In the finale, broadcast on Sunday, Durst is heard muttering to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course" - apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom.
It was not clear if Durst was sincerely confessing, but authorities in Los Angeles reportedly said the television documentary had played a role in their decision to seek the his arrest for Berman's murder.
Berman was shot in the back of her head at her home in Beverly Hills, a day before she was due to be questioned by police who had reopened an investigation into the 1982 disappearance of the tycoon's wife, Kathie Durst, in New York.
Share
