Andrew Jarecki, the director of HBO’s documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” told “CBS This Morning” he and his crew were wrapping up years of work on their film when they realized they had captured audio of what may be Durst’s confession. “We discovered that we had this shocking piece of audio,” he said.
Durst, who was arrested Saturday night in New Orleans, has for years maintained his innocence. The key piece of audio was recorded on a mic he wore for one of two interviews with “The Jinx” filmmakers:
“We thought we were done at the end the interview and he reacted in a strong way to the material that we showed him and then he got up and said good-bye and we thought that was the end. But his microphone kept recording. We always leave the microphone on him. He knows that and he went to the bathroom while it was recording. It wasn’t until months later that we had an editor listening to material that we had left behind, thinking, now we have to listen to everything we got.”
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In a separate interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Jarecki insisted there was no “deal” with law enforcement over the timing of Durst’s arrest, which coincided with the airing of the last part of the documentary on HBO:
“We’ve been in contact with law enforcement for the past two years, so when we finally found that subsequent submission, what happens in the bathroom, we contacted them and we said, ‘We have something more.’”
Jarecki said the filmmakers did not make a deal with law enforcement over the timing of the arrest.
“We don’t have that kind of power, we’re not in charge of the arrest timing, and we had no idea of the arrest timing,” he said.