The Jinx: How HBO Solved a Decades-Old Murder
Andrew Jarecki's documentary series captured a real estate heir's confession on a hot microphone, unraveling three suspicious deaths
Robert Durst's life reads like a crime novel—except it's real. The wealthy New York real estate heir became the central figure in HBO's landmark documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which premiered in 2015 and produced extraordinary results: a conviction for murder and answers to questions that had haunted investigators for decades.
Directed and produced by Andrew Jarecki alongside Marc Smerling, the series emerged from nearly a decade of meticulous research. Drawing on police files, witness interviews, never-before-seen footage, private prison recordings, and thousands of pages of previously hidden documents, the filmmakers constructed a narrative that would ultimately help solve a cold case.
Three deaths formed the investigation's core. The first was Kathleen "Kathie" Durst, Robert's wife and a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who vanished in 1982. Her disappearance remained officially unsolved, though Durst was long suspected. Three decades later, investigators would revisit this case with fresh evidence.
