“The Jinx — Part Two” director Andrew Jarecki says he worried for his own safety when Robert Durst fled his Houston home after the fifth episode of Part One came out – and the FBI couldn’t find him.
Jarecki received word that Bob was on the run through the FBI, which is not revealed in the follow-up to the series released in 2015. Executive producer Zac Stuart-Pontier delved into this revelation with Jarecki on “The Official Jinx Podcast” in the episode titled “Chapter 7: ‘Why Are You Still Here?’”
“I said to them, ‘I think there’s a risk to me. And I’m OK with that, but I’d like to have a plan in place if anything weird happens,’” Jarecki recalled. “And then I remember calling up my guy and having him say, ‘Yeah, we really have no idea where he is?’ And I said, ‘Well, how’s that possible? You’re the FBI, right? You’re the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You should be the boss of where people are, especially if they’re putting witnesses at risk or whatever.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, we’ll keep you posted if we notice anything.’ So that was not confidence-inspiring.”
The director hired security as a precaution for his family, and he detailed telling his daughter about it. Her response made him even more alarmed.
“She was quite young at the time, maybe she was 11, and I remember saying sort of nonchalantly, ‘Hey, uh, tomorrow morning when I take you to school, we’re going to have a couple of other guys, you know, helping me take you to school,’” he said. “And she immediately started crying. And I thought, ‘All right, well, she gets it. Maybe I should take this seriously.”
The FBI’s wiretap on Durst’s phone revealed he was in the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans the day before the finale of Part One came out. March 15, 2015, he was heard trying to log into his voicemail, which led to his arrest.
Listen to the full podcast here.
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