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June 25, 2015
In The Mix

The Jinx Is Up

A very timely HBO docu-series garners praise and wide attention — while raising ethical questions for documentarians.

Ann Farmer

It was, in the end, a matter of luck.

In the final episode of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, writer-producer-director Andrew Jarecki and his team are seen sitting down at a conference table. It’s 2012, and they’ve been working on this six-part HBO documentary for years. After multiple entreaties to their subject, alleged killer Robert Durst, he’s finally agreed to a second interview date. And they intend to back him into a corner. 

“What are our goals? Number one, get justice,” says Jarecki, stepping up to a chalkboard to restate their intentions in writing. “So we don’t want to interfere with what the police can do,” he continues, emphasizing the fine line they are treading. “And we don’t want to interfere with anything that could get us more evidence.”

Durst, an eccentric New York real-estate scion, is suspected of getting away with murder. Not just one murder — but three murders in three states, starting with his first wife, Kathie, who disappeared in New York in 1982. Almost two decades later, his confidante, Susan Berman, was found dead — shot in the back of her head in her L.A. home.

Decamping to Galveston, Texas, where he assumed the weird disguise of a mute woman, Durst was arrested in 2001 for killing and dismembering his neighbor, Morris Black. He claimed self-defense. Each investigation or trial floundered for lack of material evidence. 

Since their first interview with Durst in 2010, though, these filmmakers have gotten hold of something tangible — handwriting evidence — that they believe could directly implicate him in at least one of the murders. They hope that by carefully mapping out a cat-and-mouse interview strategy, they can ambush Durst into saying something incriminating.  

As viewers of the series — and followers of the news accounts — know, something quite remarkable did happen: Durst heads into the bathroom, forgetting to take off his wireless mike. There, sight unseen, he seems to unwittingly confess to the crimes. 

“There it is. You’re caught....” Durst mumbles in the bathroom. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

Many months passed before the filmmakers discovered the outtake. More months went by before they informed the police of his alleged confession.

The day before the airing of the final installment, Durst was arrested for the murder of Berman. The LAPD insisted that the timing of his arrest had nothing to do with any revelations stemming from the HBO series.

But viewership spiked that night and inspired 35,000 tweets.

“It was serendipitous for them,” says Ed Hersh, a veteran producer and executive who consults on storytelling and development for cable networks and public television.

Shows like Fox’s America’s Most Wanted have long provided the satisfaction of criminals subsequently apprehended, he notes. The Jinx took it further.

The unpredictability of Durst’s confession, coupled with his well-publicized arrest, created an aura of immediacy uncommon in documentaries. “It was more thrilling,” Hersh says.

It also reaffirmed a trend among audiences eager for different types of storytelling, even a six-installment series about one individual that previously might have been shoehorned into a single episode of 48 Hours.

“What’s new is how audiences embraced it,” says Hersh, comparing it to the way listeners latched onto Serial, a 12-episode public radio podcast of a murder investigation, which aired last year.

The critics applauded as well. But the series also provoked criticisms.

News organizations questioned the filmmakers about the chronology of an event that appeared to have been edited out of order. They pressed them for specific timeframes for when they were given the handwriting evidence, when they discovered the confession and when they subsequently alerted the authorities to those critical clues.

And they expressed unease with the highly stylized reenactments of the murders. Crime re-creations may be a common practice in television production, but they blur the distinction between truth and fiction.

“It’s not like all of a sudden The Jinx was doing things that nobody has done before. It just did it masterfully,” says documentary director Joe Berlinger, who is pleased that a very public debate about these issues was triggered. (Within days, though, the filmmakers clammed up since they could be called as witnesses.)

“Is it fair if evidence was withheld for too long?” Berlinger asks, echoing some concerns that the filmmakers might have held on to evidence for the sake of their project. “It’s troubling,” he adds.

Because if Durst truly is a murderer, “you want that guy off the streets as soon as possible because he has the potential to kill again.” 

Berlinger is best known for his Emmy-winning documentary series, Paradise Lost, which aired on HBO and is likewise credited with influencing a criminal case: three Memphis men convicted of satanic murders were released from prison partly because of the attention brought by his retelling of the events.

During filming, Berlinger was handed a piece of evidence, a bloody knife, which placed him in an ethical conundrum. Should he give it to the police and risk losing access to individuals who could help him flesh out the story? He turned it over.

“That was in ’93,” Berlinger says. “I would hope, in 2015, if we were faced with that situation, that we would make that same decision.”

Meanwhile, documentarians and ethicists are wondering to what extent the popularity and success of The Jinx will influence future filmmakers who are faced with equivalent moral dilemmas.

“From an entertainment, an aesthetic and a creative standpoint,” Berlinger says, “it was a watershed moment because it was an amazing piece of television that got lots of eyeballs, that was compelling, that was edge-of-your-seat. And from a journalistic standpoint, it was a watershed moment because the sanctity of journalism has been chipped away at over the years.

"And this show brings all of that into focus.”

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