Robert Durst: 'I'm Told My Life Expectancy Is About Five Years'

Durst also said he was high on meth during shooting for The Jinx, the HBO docuseries

Photo: Reuters/Landov

In an interview, in which he confessed he was high on meth during the taping of the HBO docuseries The Jinx, real estate mogul and alleged murderer Robert Durst said he only expects to live five more years, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

“I’m told my life expectancy is about five years,” Durst said during a three-hour jailhouse interview on March 15, 2015 with a Los Angeles prosecutor and LAPD detectives at New Orleans Parish.

Durst brought up his life expectancy during a conversation about cooperating with prosecutors.

“There’s not much that I could agree with with anybody that somebody could offer me, unless they could offer me more life,” he said, adding, “I just have no idea how we could reach an agreement on something.”

Durst, who said he was in declining health since a bout with esophageal cancer in 2007, was arrested in New Orleans the day before the finale of the documentary aired. The documentary implied that Durst killed his college friend Susan Berman in 2000 because she knew too much about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen, who has still never been found.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

During the interview, Durst admitted to smoking pot “every day, all my life,” purchasing a .38 caliber revolver from a former fellow inmate and shoplifting since he was a kid.

He also said he was in the process of fleeing when he was arrested, but he did not confess to the killings of Berman and Kathleen Durst.

Lewin told Durst he believed that killing Berman was not something he wanted to do. “I’m gonna stay away from killing Susan,” Durst answered.

‘The Worst Fugitive the World Has Ever Met’

There were times during the interrogation when Durst was very effusive. In one exchange, Durst discussed the difficulties of dismembering his Texas neighbor, Morris Black, who he admitted to killing in 2001 but was later acquitted after pleading self-defense.

“I know that cutting up that body, the way I was doing it, was the hard way,” he said. “The proper way is what a surgeon would do with a scalpel. And he would cut around the ligaments, and then, do it in the joint. Not on the bone.”

Durst also admitted that he wasn’t a fan of following society’s rules.

“There’s the line,” he said. “You get to the end of the line. And I’m not gonna get at the end of the line. I’ve got other things I want to do.”

Durst even answered questions about why he didn’t flee the country after filmmakers confronted him in 2012 about a hand-written anonymous letter to police. Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki noted that the handwriting on the letter matched Durst’s own handwriting.

“You saw the envelopes. How come you didn’t … leave then?” Lewin asked. “It’s mind-boggling to me.”

“I guess inertia,” Durst replied. “I just didn’t really, really, really think that I was gonna end up arrested.”

Lewin pressed Durst about the letter. “First of all, you agree, as you sit here today, you agree that, whoever wrote that letter, they killed Susan. Agreed?”

“See, I don’t know that,” responded Durst. “I mean, maybe there were two people who killed Susan. It doesn’t have to be one person. There could be two people. One person could go into the house and shoot Susan. And the other person could be the driver.”

“Whether the person was the shooter or the driver, whoever wrote the note was a part of killing her?,” asked Lewin.

“Yes,” said Durst. “Whoever wrote that note had to be involved in Susan’s death.”

Durst also explained that life as a fugitive didn’t agree with him, referring to his time on the lam after the killing of Black.

“Being a fugitive was not something I did well,” he said. “I hated being a fugitive. I would walk down the street and turn around and start looking over my shoulder. And, you know, it was just, I was the worst fugitive the world has ever met.”

Durst also said he was high on meth during the three days of filming the Jinx documentary. “The whole time I was on meth…And it should have been obvious. And I’m surprised my lawyer let me go ahead with it, ’cause it just-I looked like there was something going on.”

Lewin said he was surprised that Durst allowed the filmmakers full access to his files, which included documents between him and his attorneys.

“I was trying to be-and I just figured-and-and the way they made [the movie] All Good Things, it made me a sympathetic person, as opposed to a super-aggressive person – which is pretty much correct,” he said.

He added, “That they would see me as an acceptable human being, as opposed to all of this other stuff. And that I couldn’t get them to see me as an acceptable human being if I was covering things up.”

Durst’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, told PEOPLE that his statement to police was improperly obtained.

“This interview was given at a time when they should have contacted his lawyers, especially since they know full well who his lawyers are,” DeGuerin says, adding he has already started drafting a motion to suppress the substance of Durst’s interview.

“I am concerned by the prosecution’s actions,” DeGuerin adds. “Even though they have criticized us for talking to the press, they put this interview out there. I feel this is an effort by the prosecution to influence the jury pool.”

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office responded in a statement to PEOPLE that read, “This motion is being litigated in a public forum and involves information that is relevant, material and necessary to refute the false allegations and mischaracterizations made by the defense in their opposition.”