Robert Durst Denied Bail at New Orleans Court
The real estate heir's hearing went on for nearly three hours.
— -- Robert Durst was denied bail at court in New Orleans today after prosecutors told the judge that the only way to determine how likely a flight risk Durst is would be to pore through his criminal history.
Before his court appearance, Durst's attorney Dick DeGuerin had told ABC News his client's chances of being granted bail were "slim to none, and none just left town."
The nearly three-hour session today was a bail hearing on two weapons charges, while a second hearing that had been set to follow, to contest his arrest on a murder warrant issued by Los Angeles police, is now scheduled for April 2.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit, the handcuffed Durst appeared impassive and disoriented in court today, shifting in his chair.
To help make their argument that Durst is a flight risk, prosecutors told the court today that they had been tracking his phone and lost track of it somewhere between Houston and Beaumont, Texas, near the Louisiana border.
Also, in recent years, prosecutors said, Durst used up to 10 aliases.
The New York real estate heir was arrested March 14 by FBI agents at a New Orleans hotel in connection with the death of Susan Berman in Los Angeles 15 years ago.
Agents had traced his calls to the hotel and were questioning hotel officials when they spotted Durst in the lobby, prosecutors said, adding that they allegedly found a gun in his room.
Durst's attorneys have said Durst is innocent and they say the L.A. arrest warrant is invalid and there wasn't enough evidence to arrest him.
"Bob Durst didn't kill Susan Berman and he doesn't know who did," DeGuerin, his attorney, said outside court last Tuesday. "That being said my concern that the warrant that was issued in California was issued because of a television show and not because of facts.
"We want to contest the basis for his arrest because I think it's not based on facts, it's based on ratings. So we will continue to fight for Bob. We want to get to California as quickly as we can so that we can get to a court of law and try the case where it needs to be tried," DeGuerin said.
Durst has spent the past week at a jail equipped to deal with the mentally ill.
FBI agents believed Durst, 71, may have wanted to flee the country, possibly to Cuba, as he registered under an alias at the hotel, paid with cash, and was found with fake documents, a law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told ABC News.
The day of Durst's arrest was the day of the first nonstop flight from New Orleans to Cuba since 1958, according to nola.com.
Police say, at the time of Durst's arrest, they also found him in possession of a full-face latex mask, more than $42,000 in cash, enough pot for about 300 joints, a fake ID, a real passport and a .38 special revolver with four live rounds. A UPS package had also been sent to the hotel with $117,000 and clothing, police said.
Durst has denied killing his friend Berman, but some believed he had a motive, allegedly wanting to silence her about the 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst.
Kathleen was officially declared dead in 2001, and Durst has said he has no idea what happened to her.
Durst was also charged in the 2001 killing of a neighbor in Galveston, Texas, but he claimed self-defense and was later found not guilty.
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