Judge and Brother Say ‘The Jinx’ Robert Durst Started Out Killing Dogs

It’s a known fact — and great argument for tougher animal cruelty laws — that many serial killers start out by killing dogs and cats.

Among them are Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and “Boston Strangler” Albert DeSalvo. And now Robert Durst can apparently be added to this list.

As you’ve probably heard, the real estate tycoon and subject of the recently aired HBO documentary series, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” was arrested this week and charged in the 2000 death of his friend, Susan Berman. In the last episode of the series, Durst can be heard confessing to the murders of Berman as well as his wife, Kathie Durst, who disappeared in 1982. “I killed them all, of course,” he said.

Back in 2003, Susan Criss was the judge for Durst’s murder trial for shooting and dismembering a neighbor in Texas. The jury believed Durst’s story that he did it in self defense, and he was acquitted. Criss told “Inside Edition” today that after the trial ended, “a perfectly clean and preserved cat head, cut up by someone who knew what they were doing” was left on her porch.

She said she “strongly believes” it was Durst who did it.

Durst had seven Malamutes, all named Igor, upon whom he practiced dismemberment techniques, according to both Criss and Durst’s brother, Douglas Durst.

“They all came to some unnatural deaths. Some very bizarre, unnatural deaths,” Criss told “Inside Edition.” “He practiced on those dogs, and that’s where he got some of those skills at cutting people up.”

Douglas Durst told the New York Times in January about the seven Malamutes.

“They all died, mysteriously, of different things, within six months of his owning them,” he said. “We don’t know how they died, and what happened to their bodies. In retrospect, I now believe he was practicing killing and disposing his wife with those dogs.”

Criss and Douglas Durst said “Igor” was Robert’s code word for “murder.”

“When he was in jail in Pennsylvania, he was recorded saying, ‘I want to Igor Douglas,’” his brother told the New York Times.

Robert Durst is currently in an acute mental health facility in St. Gabriel, La., waiting extradition to Los Angeles.

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