it was messy. he looked like a street bum. reporter: he was 67 by then and seemed to have done away with his cross-dressing. might have lived out his days in quiet, if eccentric, isolation. but then the durst story went hollywood. a movie called all good things was released based on robert durst s life, played by ryan gosling. it was directed by filmmaker andrew jarecki. bob liked that movie, and that s why he got involved with jarecki, i think. reporter: it was to offer his side of the story that bob sat for two long interviews with jarecki, for what would eventually become the hbo series called the jinx. i begged him not to do it. i begged him not to do it. why he did it, only bob knows. reporter: what did he think he would get out of it? he thought he would be able to show that he s not a monster, he s not a horrible person. reporter: bob watched the
robert durst. by now, you ve heard the bizarre saga. the multi-millionaire scion of a new york real estate empire. the disappeared wife, the dead friend, the dismembered neighbor. he s been the subject of several dateline episodes and the star, though not in the way he intended, of hbo s the jinx. but do you? does anybody know the truth about robert durst? the trail we followed, the revelations we encountered, the personal account he wrote and we were given, which have led us into a very weird place, the lost years of the infamous robert durst. the tale is like quicksand. it sucks you in. bob is endlessly fascinating and and always surprises me. reporter: he has certainly
will the defendant please rise. reporter: the altmans said bob was convinced, 99.9% certain that he d be convicted. we, the jury, find the defendant robert durst not guilty. reporter: the jury took five days to save him from 25 years to life in prison. though he later served a little time in federal prison for skipping bail and dismembering morris black. but by 2005, he was a free man again. now the only person who could catch bob durst was bob durst. coming up, what was he thinking? caught off camera and seemingly offguard on the jinx. did robert durst confess? why did he give that interview? thought he d be able to show he s not a horrible person. when dateline continues. ir the enamel on a daily basis. with pronamel repair toothpaste, more minerals enter deep into the enamel s surface.
and according to jarecki, the filmmakers had given evidence to the authorities two years before the show aired. which, to bob s attorney dick deguerin, meant the show was far from objective reporting. they edited probably 50 or more hours down into a few minutes. and i think the editing job was designed to make him look bad. reporter: but it was a simple comparison of handwriting samples that, on it s own, seemed to condemn robert durst. it was episode five of the jinx series, in which a letter he admitted sending to susan berman was compared to the infamous cadaver note her presumed killer sent the cops. soon after seeing that episode, bob packed up and left houston. but the cops were monitoring his cell phone and eventually tracked him to the jw marriott hotel in new orleans.
answers. reporter: and hear his own account of his strange life. the reclusive millionaire has spent much of his time on the road. so where was he? what was he doing? who was he with? what is a guy of his wealth doing hanging out at a homeless shelter/soup kitchen? reporter: for decades, suspicions, questions, raised anew on the series the jinx. killed them all, of course.