Nine months after the thrilling finale of The Jinx, in which Robert Durst allegedly admitted he "killed them all," the show's creator is reflecting on how insane making the documentary was.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Andrew Jarecki, director of The Jinx who is also featured prominently in the show, said that in many ways he sympathized with Durst.
"I understand why he felt mistreated by his family," Jarecki explained. "I understand why he felt the loss of his mother. I can feel sympathy for a 7-year-old boy who was present when his mother committed suicide. That doesn’t mean that I justify his actions."
Jarecki also noted that during the majority of their interactions, Durst came across as a genuinely nice and gentle man. However, every once in a while, his darker side would shine through.
In the final episode of The Jinx, Jarecki reveals that he captured Durst apparently confessing to three murders while unaware his microphone was still on. This audio was supposedly not discovered for two years. Some have called this fact into question, but Jarecki says everyone was simply so wrapped up in the interview that they just didn't pay attention to the recording at first, and the sound guy took his headphones off.
"In general, the rule is you don’t stop recording sound, for perfectly ordinary reasons, like you want to have room tone," Jarecki said. "It was so normal that we never even listened to what was happening in the bathroom other than hearing the toilet flush from outside."
And if you experienced a sudden realization during the series that Durst might actually be a monster, Jarecki went through the same thing.
"I didn’t think that Bob was innocent, but I didn’t know that he was guilty," he said. "[Once] I knew he was guilty, I had to recognize that this person who, in some ways, was my friend, at some level still is…The big personality shift was suddenly I realized that I was dealing with a murderer."
All six episodes of The Jinx are now available on HBO Go. Durst is expected to face trial in California and is accused of the murder of Susan Berman.