As Durst Murder Case Goes Forward, HBO’s Film Will Also Be on Trial

“The editing is problematic,” Mr. Harris said. “They put those lines together in a way that’s very damning. But it is definitely more ambiguous in the transcript.”

True crime documentaries like “Thin Blue Line” (1988), have a long history of working to free the unjustly accused. Much rarer have been those that, like “The Jinx,” were at least partially responsible for putting people in jail. In the Durst case, the investigators in Los Angeles did not so much work off leads suggested by the documentary as build their case atop the evidence unearthed by the series itself. (Lifetime’s recent documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” also presented a compelling argument for that singer’s prosecution, and was followed by his arrest.)

Susan D. Murray, an associate professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, credits “The Jinx” with triggering a recent burst of true crime documentaries. “The Jinx,” she said, “has all the elements of documentaries, but it also has the sensational aspect of reality TV unfolding before you.”

And seldom has there been a more compelling subject than Mr. Durst who, at 76 and with a net worth of $100 million, has spent the last few years in a Los Angeles jail cell. Long alienated from his family, which built a real estate empire in New York City, Mr. Durst has also long been suspected of having murdered his wife, Kathie, who vanished in 1982, though he was never charged. Ms. Berman, one of Mr. Durst’s best friends, was at his side through most of it, often acting as his spokeswoman.

In 2000, when Ms. Berman turned up dead, shot in the back of the head, Mr. Durst was also suspected, but he was not initially charged. He was living in Texas at the time. He had moved there from New York, taking up residence in Galveston and posing as a mute woman after the authorities in Westchester reopened the investigation into his wife’s disappearance. Investigators now contend that during this period, Mr. Durst stole away to California and killed Ms. Berman because he was concerned his old friend would incriminate him in his wife’s death.

Ten months later, he was back in the spotlight when parts of his Texas neighbor’s body turned up in Galveston Bay. Mr. Durst was charged with murdering Morris Black and gave a gruesome account at trial of carving up the body. But he said his gun had gone off accidentally as he grappled with Mr. Black in self-defense. The jury acquitted him in 2003.