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Fugitive real estate heir OK’s extradition
By AMANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A New York real estate heir has agreed to return to Los Angeles to face charges that he killed a woman to stop her from cooperating with an investigation into the disappearance of his wife, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Robert Durst, 72, and his attorneys jointly filed an agreement with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. It stipulates that Durst will be extradited from Louisiana to Los Angeles no later than Aug. 18.

Court filings have shown that Durst has struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on a weapons charge in New Orleans. The weapons charge has kept Durst jailed in Louisiana since March, even though he waived extradition on the murder charge in Los Angeles.

Durst, an estranged member of the family that runs 1 World Trade Center in New York, faces a first-degree murder trial in Los Angeles in the 2000 death of his friend and onetime spokeswoman Susan Berman, 55.

The millionaire is accused of killing Berman to keep her from talking to investigators looking into the disappearance of his first wife in 1982.

Richard DeGuerin, one of Durst’s attorneys, said in a statement Tuesday that the extradition agreement is ‘‘part of our effort to have Robert Durst face and defeat the California murder charge as soon as possible.’’

Associated Press