The multimillionaire New York real estate heir Robert Durst has been convicted of murdering his best friend Susan Berman more than 20 years ago, in a case that took on new life following the documentary The Jinx.

Berman was shot at point-blank range in her Beverly Hills home in December 2000 as she was prepared to tell police how she helped cover up the killing of Durst’s wife.

Durst’s strange story gripped viewers of the hit television documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which chronicled the disappearance of his wife Kathie in 1982, the cold-blooded murder of Berman in Los Angeles 18 years later, and the violent 2001 death of a roommate in Galveston, Texas, where Durst was living under cover as a deaf-mute woman.

They interlaced evidence of Berman’s killing with Kathie Durst’s suspected death and the 2001 killing in Texas.

During 14 days of testimony that was so punishing that Judge Mark Windham called it “devastating”, Durst denied killing his wife and Berman, though he said he would lie if he did.

Durst admitted on the witness stand that he sent the note and had been in Los Angeles at the time of Berman’s death.

He said he sent the note because he wanted Berman to be found but didn’t want anyone to know he had been there because it would look suspicious.

He acknowledged that even he had difficulty imagining he could have written the note without killing Berman.