Madman or changed man? America debates Durst's acquittal
Bob is a madman," Thomas Durst, 53, told the New York Post, which settled on the page one headline "Run for your lives!"
Now the fun begins. The circus may be leaving town, but Galveston has turned into a national laughing stock. While I can understand the reason for the jury's decision, it certainly does fly in the face of all reason. Kill someone, dismember them, and then throw the body parts into Galveston Bay. Hmm...it's not exactly a stretch to think that SOMEONE is guilty of SOMETHING, eh?? Still, there is nothing quite like a jury of one's peers when it comes to livening things up....
Judge Susan Criss sealed the names of 12 Galveston jurors who waded through weeks of grisly testimony before reaching their verdict Tuesday, but some have come forward to explain their thinking.
On the Today show, four of the Galveston County jurors were asked how they could exonerate a man who's confessed to cutting up the body of his best friend, running from police and disguising himself as a mute woman.
"He wasn't charged with all that," explained juror Christopher Lovell, a 47-year-old League City electrician.
Joanne Gongora, 49, an assistant professor of nursing from Texas City, stressed that Durst was charged only with murder in the death of his 71-year-old neighbor, Morris Black. The only consideration, she said, was whether he tried to kill Black or whether the gun accidentally went off in a struggle. At no point during deliberations did more than three jurors believe Durst was guilty of murder.
"It's very difficult for the public to understand why we came to the decision that we did," Gongora acknowledged. "He did admit to the dismemberment. And it sounds terrible. It was a gruesome, bloody mess ... but we looked at all the evidence at got past that. "
"The question that we had to answer was ... Was it an intentional murder? Was it self defense, an accident?"
Robert Durst may well be crazier than a March hare, but he did have enough of his wits about him to hire good attorneys and let his family fortune pay the freight. There are a number of unanswered questions here: the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, his living in a Galveston apartment as a woman, his skill with a hacksaw. I'll tell you one thing, though...if I'm ever going to murder someone, I'm going to do it in Galveston- and I'll make sure I have a quality hacksaw and plenty of plastic bags.
