LOS ANGELES — New York real estate heir Robert Durst knew he was suspected in the Los Angeles killing of his best friend, but he never fled when he had the chance because years had passed and he didn’t think police would come after him, according to recently released court documents.

Durst was asked why he didn’t split after documentary filmmakers confronted him in 2012 with a letter anonymously sent to police in 2000 tipping them to the location of Susan Berman’s body that matched handwriting on a letter he had sent her years before.

"I was the worst fugitive the world has ever met," says Robert Durst, a suspect in three killings. Associated Press/Gerald Herbert

“You saw the envelopes. How come you didn’t … leave then?” Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John 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.”

The comment was one of several that hinted at his involvement in three suspected killings chronicled in the documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” but Durst stopped short of confessing to any of them. The documents detail his interrogation by Los Angeles prosecutors while he was in custody in New Orleans after his arrest March 15 last year on a charge of murder in Berman’s death.

Durst acknowledged he was in the process of fleeing when he was arrested. He was found in a hotel with a false Texas ID, stacks of $100 bills, bags of marijuana, a .38-caliber revolver, a map folded to show Louisiana and Cuba, and a flesh-toned latex mask with salt-and-pepper hair.

“I was the worst fugitive the world has ever met,” he said.

His arrest came the day the final installment of the six-part series aired on HBO.

– From news service reports

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