Sheriff: Durst is suicide risk

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

Troubled real-estate heir Robert Durst is a suicide risk and has been moved from a New Orleans jail to a state prison with a mental-health unit, officials said Wednesday.

The 71-year-old millionaire is in custody in Louisiana on gun charges while awaiting a transfer to Los Angeles to face murder charges in the death of his friend, Susan Berman, 15 years ago.

A city magistrate had ordered that Durst remain in the New Orleans jail so he could help his defense team, which does not believe he suffers from acute mental illness. However, the appeals court sided with the sheriff’s office, which said it had sole authority to decide where to house inmates needing mental-health treatment.

The sheriff’s office said in a court brief that Durst’s lawyers could have access to Durst with 24 hours’ notice to the prison in St. Gabriel, about 70 miles from New Orleans.