Documenting a serial killer

MURDER, money, mystery - and other facets of tabloid-worthy drama - collide with compelling force in The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a six-part documentary series on HBO that dissects the curious tale of a real-estate scion, serial-murder suspect and all-round bizzaro character.

Just before the final episode of the documentary aired in the US last month, its main subject, 71-year-old Robert A Durst, was arrested on murder charges in a New Orleans hotel that he had checked into under an alias. It was merely the latest twist in a long-running saga that, well, you just can't make up.

Durst, the estranged oldest son of a prominent real estate family in New York, had been investigated and incarcerated for past misdeeds and was also a prime suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife Kathleen. Police also suspected him of involvement in the death of a close friend in Los Angeles in 2000, while the 2001 killing and dismemberment of a neighbour in Texas, where he posed for months as a deaf-mute woman, was explained away as self-defence.