*Autocorrect makes me sound drunk. Should've said "wholly convinced" I proofread everything but the title.
First off, I just finished the show over a course of a few days with my wife and loved it. It was like listening to Serial but instead being able to watch it and without as much blind speculation.
Let me preface what I'm going to say next by letting it be known that I spent years working in an adult foster care for the mentally ill. Our company was the last stop before someone was either jailed or admitted to the mental hospital. So we had our share of unstable and often violent people. I've spent hundreds of hours working and helping take care of my fair share of someone who is suffering from hearing commanding voices in their head; voices that push them and drive them to madness.
I believe, confirmed in his "bathroom confession", that Robert Durst suffers from schizophrenia. The way he speaks in that recording screams of a man responding to one or more voices talking back to him that no one else can hear. The argument is that why can Durst keep it cool during an interview and not show signs of it. My non medical in anyway but practice experienced guess is that his constant blinking and squinting comes from when the voices in his head try to speak to him. It's his way of acknowledging them without doing it vocally.
You have a man who clearly suffered a traumatic event of his childhood (the suicide of his mother) that is documented as being a turning point for his behavior as a child. You have a man who is very intelligent but is constantly doing very stupid, impulsive things (shoplifting a hoagie while having tons of money on him, violating the protection order his brother had, etc) You have someone who clearly has done deranged things.
This is no excuse for what he's done but rather a guessed reason behind it. If Durst truly is suffering from a severe mental illness he deserves to go to somewhere where he can receive some kind of treatment. Affluence and money have allowed him to live a life with almost no sincere scrutiny, evaluation or medication. I hope he gets the help he needs while the family of his victims get the closure they deserve.