Robert Durst defense lawyer urgers jurors to set aside ‘gruesome’ dismemberment and spousal abuse to acquit ‘sick old man’

Robert Durst might be guilty of “atrocious” spousal abuse and the “gruesome” dismemberment of a Texas neighbor, but he didn’t kill his best friend Susan Berman, his lawyer argued Thursday.

Defense lawyer Dick Deguerin spoke to jurors on the second day of closing arguments in Durst’s Los Angeles County murder trial and urged them to set aside emotion and even their personal opinions about his controversial client.

“You could see from Bob Durst’s 14 days on the witness stand that his compass doesn’t point north. He’s unusual. And I don’t think you need a psychiatrist to tell you that,” DeGuerin said.

He admitted Durst was abusive toward his first wife Kathie Durst and even conceded Kathie must be dead after she disappeared in 1982. But he said Durst didn’t kill his 29-year-old medical student wife and doesn’t know what happened to her.

“Bob’s treatment of Kathie was atrocious,” DeGuerin said. But the prosecution’s efforts to shame and “demonize” the millionaire Manhattan real estate heir doesn’t prove he’s a killer, he argued.

The lawyer who helped Durst win acquittal on Texas charges he murdered Galveston neighbor Morris Black in 2001 said the prosecution theory that Durst killed Kathie, tapped Berman to help with his alibi and then murdered Berman in December 2000 to guarantee her silence simply lacks hard evidence.

“This is a circumstantial-evidence case,” he said.

“If you come to two or more reasonable conclusions about where the circumstantial evidence leads you, you have to say ‘not guilty,’” he argued.

“If you are, as you must be, still asking yourself, ‘What happened to Kathie? Where? When? How?’ Then that’s reasonable doubt. You can’t guess. You have to be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.

DeGuerin spent considerable time stressing to jurors that photographic evidence showing Black’s dismembered body parts shouldn’t prejudice them against Durst.

Durst, 78, admits he chopped up Black’s body and dumped it in Galveston Bay during what he described as a drunken-fugue state. Still, he was acquitted of murder because jurors determined he accidentally shot Black in the head during a self-defense struggle.

“It’s terrible what Bob did to Morris Black’s body. And those pictures are awful. I know some of you turned away from them. Some of you couldn’t look at them. They’re that bad. But what we had in Galveston was a jury that was intelligent enough, intellectual enough to realize and to separate what happened to Morris Black’s body after he was dead from the manner in which he died,” DeGuerin said.

“It’s gruesome. It’s awful. I have to ask you, please, don’t let your emotions rule your logic,” he said.

During his sometimes folksy presentation, the octogenarian lawyer also called Durst a “sick old man” who was “badgered” for nine days under intense cross-examination in the Inglewood, Calif., courtroom.

“I’m not trying to get sympathy for Bob, but it is a fact that he has serious medical conditions. You can see it. I’ve been concerned that he wouldn’t last through this trial,” DeGuerin said.

Closing arguments are set to continue Monday with the jury due to start deliberating the high-profile case on Tuesday.