When Robert Durst, the subject of HBO’s documentary series The Jinx, is back in court in New Orleans today, he is expected to plead guilty to a gun charge, NPR reports. Attorney Dick DeGuerin also will defend Durst in California this summer, when the heir of a wealthy New York family goes on trial for murder. DeGuerin, a Texan, takes on tough cases. He represented former Texas Congressman Tom DeLay after a campaign finance scandal, disgraced businessman Allen Stanford and outlaw country singer Billy Jo Shaver, who had shot someone in the face. He also defended David Koresh, who, for 51 days in 1993, was in a standoff with federal authorities at his religious compound in Waco, Texas.
DeGuerin re-entered the national spotlight a decade later when he defended Durst, then a recluse who disguised himself as a woman, then killed and dismembered his neighbor, dumping him into Galveston Bay. The trial in 2003, in which Hurst was acquitted, was sensational. It brought DeGuerin celebrity lawyer status, and it cemented Durst’s reputation for the bizarre. The HBO documentary The Jinx put Durst in a bright spotlight. The series re-examined the execution-style killing of Durst’s friend Susan Berman. In the final scene, he mumbles, “What did I do? Killed them all, of course.”