Latest on Robert Durst

[Paladin]

FYI, This guy is out there. Glad to hear that at least the Galveston police and Ron Paul want to do something about it.

http://news.galvestondailynews.com/stor ... 2837c18cfb

"The war on drugs couldn't put Durst in jail

By Michael A. Smith
The Daily News

Published July 9, 2006

Only one thing stands between Robert Durst and prosecution that could send him to federal prison, possibly for decades. That one thing is the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston.

That office, which exists to enforce federal laws in this part of the world, has for more than a year had compelling evidence that Durst committed three felonies when he bought the pistol with which he killed his elderly island neighbor, Morris Black.

For more than a year, a Galveston police officer has been prodding federal prosecutors to seek charges against Durst in what that officer called a “slam dunk� case. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s office recently joined the effort.

But Donald J. DeGabrielle Jr., U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said Wednesday his office wouldn’t act because of a conversation in 2004 between a prosecutor and Durst’s defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin.

The situation provides an interesting window into how the federal justice system works for people who can afford top-shelf defense counsel. It raises questions about the utility of a federal firearms law with which all Americans must comply when exercising their Second Amendment rights to own and bear arms. And it calls into question the commitment of two of the state’s most powerful politicians to enforcing laws meant to keep guns away from addicts and habitual drug users.

Ruger No. 223-51668

It is illegal in this country for a drug addict or habitual drug user to possess a handgun. Durst, the millionaire heir to a New York real estate fortune, is known to have possessed several.

One of those, a Ruger P4, fired the .22-caliber bullet that killed Morris Black. Charged with murder in Black’s death, Durst testified the killing was accidental; a jury agreed and voted to acquit.

Durst was convicted of evidence tampering after admitting he used a bow saw and paring knife to cut Black into six pieces, five of which were found wrapped in plastic garbage bags floating in Galveston Bay.

Black’s head, into which that .22-caliber bullet was fired, has never been found.

During his trial, Durst testified numerous times and partly in his own defense that he was a habitual marijuana user. He said he’d used the illegal drug “essentially daily� since the mid-1960s. He called it a “lifelong addiction or friend or whatever.�

ATF Form 4473

If that’s true, as Durst swore it was, he has committed at least three federal firearms felonies, says Sgt. Cody Cazalas of the Galveston Police Department.

Cazalas argues that Durst committed one federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison when he answered “no� to question 9e on ATF form 4473, which asks:

“Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana, or any depressant, stimulant, or narcotic drug, or other controlled substance?�

People who answer “yes� to that question cannot legally purchase or possess a firearm. People who lie commit a felony.

Durst answered “no� to that question and signed his name to a statement certifying he understood that lying about it was a felony.

Cazalas said he believes Durst committed a second felony by lying about his address on the same form. A conviction for that crime carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Durst committed a third federal felony, Cazalas argues, by actually possessing the Ruger P4 he lied to obtain, the one that killed Black. That charge carries another possible 10-year sentence.

Cazalas says that for more than a year he urged federal prosecutors to act but got nowhere.

He asked U.S. Sen. John Cornyn for help. He got a letter in reply saying that the senator couldn’t interfere in the judicial process, as if prodding a presidential appointee to enforce federal laws were the same as urging prosecutors to back off a chum.

He got no reply from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Galveston County native who claims to hold people here close to her heart. Only Paul’s office made inquiries.

By His Own Words

But why would the U.S. attorney’s office even need prodding, much less ignore it, when armed with Durst’s own sworn testimony that he was a habitual drug user and an addict, and his signature certifying the contrary?

DeGabrielle, who inherited the Houston office and the Durst issue in March, said that in 2004 a prosecutor told DeGuerin his client would not be prosecuted for firearms crimes he might have committed in the Southern District of Texas in 2001.

Durst bought the P4 that killed Black on Aug. 30, 2001, at Carter’s Country in Pasadena.

In 2004, Durst was considering a plea deal offered by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He had been arrested there after skipping bail on the murder charge and assuming Black’s identity.

The P4 had turned up in a Galveston trashcan, shortly after the five larger pieces of Black had turned up in Galveston Bay, but Durst was armed with a 9mm pistol.

He pleaded guilty to interstate transportation of a firearm and possession of a firearm by a fugitive from justice and interstate transportation of firearm by a person under felony indictment.

He received nine months in prison and two years supervised release.

Unethical Or Trivial?

DeGabrielle said the prosecutor made the agreement with DeGuerin as a matter of judicial economy since Durst already was being prosecuted on federal firearms charges in Pennsylvania.

He said he didn’t know, but doubted that agreement was part of the formal plea deal Durst struck with federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania.

Despite that, he said it would be unethical for his office to seek charges now.

DeGuerin has a different recollection. He said there was never any agreement, formal or otherwise. He said he got the impression during that 2004 conversation that prosecutors in the Houston office thought the case over the P4 was “chickenshit.�

“I got the impression they thought it was chickenshit of Cody Cazalas to push for more prosecution after losing at trial fair and square,� DeGuerin said Wednesday.

Relevant Conduct

Whatever the U.S. attorney’s office had in mind in 2004, the conversation was unfortunate. Unlike the Pennsylvania charges, trying the case of the P4 could have introduced issues of what’s called “relevant conduct� in the federal criminal justice system.

In Pennsylvania, Durst was merely a fugitive from justice illegally armed with a 9mm pistol. Here, he could have been tried for illegally obtaining and possessing a firearm that was used to end a human life.

A judge then might have felt at liberty to impose years, perhaps decades, of prison time, rather than nine months.

Take A Rest

DeGuerin on Wednesday had a message for Cody Cazalas. “Tell Cody to take a rest,� he said. “Surely there’s something else that would better serve his attention, something more current.�

DeGuerin might have a point, but for several things. One is Durst’s behavior after his trial. He has twice violated terms of his state parole. He did so once by going to The Galleria shopping center in Houston.

State Judge Susan Criss, who presided over the murder trial, saw him there.

He violated it again in December 2005 by lurking outside the house of a woman who had testified against him in the murder trial. She lives near where Black was killed and dismembered.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles gave Durst 60 days in a private facility for that violation.

In June, another prosecution witness saw him in the neighborhood around 81st Street where Black’s remains were found floating — after Durst dumped them, wrapped like garbage — in the bay.

That trip was not a violation of his parole, because the terms of it had changed. His attorneys argued that those terms should never have included restrictions on where he went because he was not convicted of a violent crime.

Tampering with evidence is not a violent crime, even when it entails butchering a human body. The state attorney general agreed. So Durst is free to travel where he likes so long as it’s in Texas and he keeps in touch with his parole officer.

Fear Factor

But Robert Durst scares some people. Perhaps they have overly vivid imaginations. Perhaps they think about things they shouldn’t, like what sort of person can loop a bow saw around a human leg, for example, and work it back and fourth through the cooling flesh until the limb comes free.

Perhaps they dwell too much in the past on such things as the odd disappearance of Durst’s wife, Kathleen.

Perhaps they think too much about his former friend and alibi witness in that case who wound up dead from a bullet in her brain. Durst never has been directly implicated in that execution-style killing.

Whatever is wrong with those people, they seem to be afraid. Cazalas says he worries. He says the witness who lives near 81st Street is afraid to let his children out of the house. Relatives of Durst’s missing wife worry.

Perhaps the fearful will take comfort in the fact that the U.S. attorney’s ethics are intact, even if their peace of mind is not.

Michael A. Smith is associate editor of The Daily News. "