Loyalty and lies central in Durst star witness testimony
LOS ANGELES — Robert Durst’s close friend reluctantly admitted Friday that he had misled and lied to prosecutors for months before coming clean and saying that the real estate heir had confessed to killing their close friend.
A dogged defence lawyer finally got Nathan Chavin to say he was “lying” after he had deftly wielded an arsenal of weaker synonyms to explain what he said were efforts to avoid turning on his friend by telling the truth.
“I was covering up. I was withholding the truth,” Chavin said. “Is that a euphemism? I was lying.”
Evidence of Chavin’s “waffling,” a word he employed at one point, was used by Durst’s camp to undermine the prosecution’s star witness after he dropped two damning bombshells the day before.