NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A New Orleans judge on Wednesday sentenced real estate scion Robert Durst to seven years in prison for a federal gun crime and agreed to recommend that he serve his time in California, where he faces a murder charge in a friend’s 2000 death. 
 
 The 73-year-old, who entered and left the courtroom in a wheelchair, had pleaded guilty to the gun charge in February. 
 
 Speaking in a weak voice, he asked U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt to speed his transfer to California, so he can defend himself in the death of writer Susan Berman. 
 
 “I truly, truly want to express my statement that I am not guilty of killing Susan Berman,” said Durst, appearing thin in his loose-fitting orange prison jumpsuit. 
 
 Durst has been held in Louisiana since his March 2015 arrest on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm after a search of his New Orleans hotel room turned up a handgun. 
 
 His arrest came one day before the series finale of an HBO documentary entitled, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which chronicled several police investigations of the multimillionaire whose family is known for its significant New York real estate holdings. 
 
 Engelhardt approved a plea agreement calling for an 85-month prison stint, followed by three years of supervised release. The judge said the deal also resolved several pending charges against Durst in New York, Texas, and Louisiana state court. 
 
 The HBO series documented investigations of Durst in connection with the dismemberment killing of a male neighbor in Texas in 2003, for which he was tried and acquitted of murder, and the 1982 disappearance in New York of his wife, Kathleen. 
 
 In the series’ final episode, Durst’s voice was captured on a microphone after an interview as he muttered that he had “killed them all.” 
 
 Real estate heir Robert Durst appears in a criminal courtroom for his trial on charges of trespassing on property owned by his estranged family, in New York December 10, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo 
 
 Durst has previous convictions in Texas related to jumping bail and carrying a weapon across state lines in 2004 as he tried to flee the murder prosecution there. Durst served about three years in connection with those charges. 
 
 Prosecutors say Durst, who has long been estranged from his family, is worth some $100 million. 
 
 Durst could move to California within four to six weeks, his attorney Dick DeGuerin said before Wednesday’s hearing. He was expected to be arraigned on the murder charge in Los Angeles on August 18. ||||| Frail Robert Durst sentenced on gun charge in New Orleans but headed to low-security federal prison in L.A. 
 
 Frail Robert Durst sentenced on gun charge in New Orleans but headed to low-security federal prison in L.A. 
 
 Robert Durst, the New York real-estate heir and celebrity murder suspect who twice chose New Orleans as a hideout, moved closer Wednesday to escaping another hot Louisiana summer behind bars. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt sentenced the ailing Durst, 73, to an agreed-upon 85-month prison term on a federal gun count resulting from a search of his room last year at the JW Marriott hotel in downtown New Orleans. 
 
 A call from the hotel to retrieve his voicemail drew authorities, who were pursuing Durst, the subject of the then-running HBO miniseries “The Jinx,” in the 2000 execution-style slaying of his longtime confidante and spokeswoman, Susan Berman, in Los Angeles. 
 
 Engelhardt endorsed a recommendation sought by Durst’s attorneys for him to serve his sentence at a low-security federal prison facility on the Pacific coast while he awaits state prosecution for Berman’s murder. 
 
 Durst, appearing frail in orange St. Charles Parish jail scrubs, reurged that request before Engelhardt on Wednesday. 
 
 “I’ve been waiting to get to California for a year so I can state my not guilty” plea in Berman’s killing, Durst said. “If there’s anything you can do to speed up that process, I would truly, truly appreciate it. I am not guilty of murdering Susan Berman.” 
 
 In a legal filing this week, his attorneys cited Durst’s “advanced age and poor health” in their request for him to be housed at FCI Terminal Island, a federal prison with medical facilities near Los Angeles. 
 
 An elaborate deal with federal prosecutors, confected as part of Durst’s guilty plea in February to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, would have him back in California by Aug. 18 for his arraignment in the murder case. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon said Wednesday that it’s likely Durst will leave within a few weeks for California, assuming the federal Bureau of Prisons accepts the judge’s recommendation. 
 
 The gun charge stemmed from a search of Durst’s hotel room on March 14, 2015, which turned up a flesh-colored latex mask with salt-and-pepper hair, five ounces of marijuana, more than $100,000 in cash and a loaded Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver, authorities said. His attorney said Durst has forfeited those items, including the cash, as part of his plea deal. 
 
 Following his guilty plea in February, McMahon said he suspected Durst had been headed to Cuba to try to evade arrest in Berman’s killing. 
 
 Engelhardt had held Durst’s guilty plea in abeyance pending a probation report that recommended a sentencing range of just 12 to 18 months on the gun charge. But Engelhardt, in formally accepting the deal Wednesday, noted that it also includes stipulations that authorities in New York won’t prosecute him over financial maneuvering while on the lam, and that prosecutors in Texas and New Orleans won’t pursue further gun counts against him related to his stay in New Orleans. 
 
 Dick DeGuerin, Durst’s longtime attorney, said the deal “cleared the decks, at a cost. It’s a serious cost, but he’s not facing any other prosecution except what’s in California. That’s what this is all about. We want to get to California and go to trial.” 
 
 DeGuerin, describing Berman as Durst’s “best friend,” again insisted that Durst didn’t kill her and doesn’t know who did. He said Los Angeles prosecutors have not revealed any new evidence in the case but that he’s confident Durst will beat the murder rap. 
 
 “He didn’t do it. That’s as confident as you can get,” DeGuerin said outside the federal courthouse Wednesday. 
 
 Renewed interest in Durst for Berman’s killing stemmed from the conclusion of the HBO show. In the final episode, Durst made what some observers described as a confession while muttering to himself off-camera, still wired with a microphone on a trip to the bathroom. 
 
 “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” Durst said. 
 
 The show cataloged three presumed killings of which Durst has been suspected: Berman’s slaying 16 years ago; the killing of a Texas neighbor, Morris Black, for which Durst was acquitted, despite dismembering Black and dumping his remains in Galveston Bay; and the disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen Durst, in New York in 1982. 
 
 Durst was a felon because of guilty pleas in 2004 to interstate transportation and possession of a firearm by a fugitive of justice. He had jumped bail in 2001 after being charged in Black’s killing. 
 
 While on the lam, he moved for a time to New Orleans, where he rented an apartment under a woman’s name, court records show. Authorities later found a wig used to support his alias and a money clip that had belonged to Berman. 
 
 Follow John Simerman on Twitter, @johnsimerman. ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Durst, the scion of a prominent New York real estate family who gained new notoriety this year in an HBO documentary on his alleged crimes, has agreed to come from Louisiana to Los Angeles to face charges that he killed a friend to stop her from cooperating with an investigation into the disappearance of his wife. 
 
 FILE - This Tuesday, March 17, 2015 file photo shows Robert Durst is transported from Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to the Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment on murder charges in New... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Tuesday, March 17, 2015, file photo, Robert Durst is escorted into Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in New Orleans. Prosecutors said... (Associated Press) 
 
 Durst and his attorneys jointly filed an agreement with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, prosecutors announced Tuesday. It stipulates that Durst will be extradited from Louisiana to Los Angeles no later than Aug. 18. 
 
 Court filings have shown that Durst has struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on a weapons charge in New Orleans. The weapons charge has kept Durst jailed in Louisiana since March, even though he waived extradition on the murder charge in Los Angeles. 
 
 Durst, an estranged member of the family that runs 1 World Trade Center in New York, faces a first-degree murder trial in Los Angeles in the 2000 death of his friend and onetime spokeswoman Susan Berman, 55. 
 
 The 72-year-old millionaire is accused of killing Berman to keep her from talking to investigators looking into the disappearance of his first wife in 1982. 
 
 Durst was arrested in New Orleans on the eve of the finale of "The Jinx," a six-part HBO documentary about Durst, the disappearance of his wife, Berman's death, and the death and dismemberment of a neighbor in Texas in 2001. 
 
 Durst's lawyers say his arrest in New Orleans was timed to coincide with the conclusion of "The Jinx." Durst had registered at the hotel under the name Everette Ward and was lying low while HBO aired the final chapter of his life story. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan in Louisiana postponed Durst's trial on the weapons charge earlier this month to give attorneys time to work out a date to sign a plea agreement. On Thursday, she scheduled a change of plea hearing for Feb. 3. 
 
 Richard DeGuerin, one of Durst's attorneys, said in a statement Tuesday that the extradition agreement is "part of our effort to have Robert Durst face and defeat the California murder charge as soon as possible." 
 
 "Bob Durst didn't kill Susan Berman and doesn't know who did," DeGuerin said. "He is eager to go to trial and prove his innocence." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans contributed to this report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Follow Amanda Lee Myers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amanda-lee-myers.
– A New Orleans judge officially approved Robert Durst's February plea deal on a gun charge and sentenced him to seven years in prison on Wednesday, Reuters reports. For more than a year, the real estate heir has languished in a New Orleans prison after being nabbed with a handgun in his hotel room. He was busted for that felony just one day before the series finale of HBO's The Jinx, in which he famously appeared to confess to three murders by saying, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course." US District Judge Kurt Engelhardt also agreed that Durst can be transferred to a low-security prison with medical facilities in San Pedro, Calif., where the 73-year-old's attorneys say his "advanced age and poor health" can be better addressed, per the Advocate. In California, Durst will face a murder charge in the 2000 death of friend Susan Berman, the AP reports. (A Texas judge believes Durst once dumped a cat's head on her doorstep.)