text: 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. ||||| FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2014 file photo, New York City real estate heir Robert Durst leaves a Houston courtroom. New Orleans Federal Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, approved a plea... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2014 file photo, New York City real estate heir Robert Durst leaves a Houston courtroom. New Orleans Federal Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, approved a plea agreement for Durst to serve 7 years, 1 month in prison on a weapons charge. Durst still faces a separate... (Associated Press) 
   
   FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2014 file photo, New York City real estate heir Robert Durst leaves a Houston courtroom. New Orleans Federal Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, approved a plea agreement for Durst to serve 7 years, 1 month in prison on a weapons charge. Durst still faces a separate... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2014 file photo, New York City real estate heir Robert Durst leaves a Houston courtroom. New Orleans Federal Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, approved a plea... (Associated Press) 
   
   NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Latest on the prosecution in Louisiana of property heir Robert Durst (all times local): 
   
   10 a.m. 
   
   Robert Durst will be heading from Louisiana to California soon to face a murder charge in connection with the death of a friend in 2000. 
   
   Attorneys said Durst would be in Los Angeles by mid-August. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon said it is likely Durst would arrive in California well before that. 
   
   A federal judge on Wednesday approved a plea agreement for Durst to serve about 7 years on a weapons charge. 
   
   The New York property heir has steadfastly insisted that he is innocent in the death of Susan Berman. Prosecutors say Durst killed Berman to keep her from talking to prosecutors about the disappearance of Durst's first wife in 1982. 
   
   Durst's wealthy family runs 1 World Trade Center. He was tracked to New Orleans in March 2015 by FBI agents worried that he was about to flee to Cuba. 
   
   ___ 
   
   9:15 a.m. 
   
   A federal judge in New Orleans has approved a plea agreement for real estate heir Robert Durst to serve 7 years, 1 month in prison on a weapons charge. 
   
   Judge Kurt Engelhardt approved the sentence Wednesday. The 72-year-old Durst agreed to the sentence as part of a guilty plea in February. 
   
   Durst still faces a separate murder charge in California. He is accused of killing a female friend in 2000 to keep her from talking to prosecutors about the disappearance of Durst's first wife in 1982. Durst has steadfastly maintained his innocence. 
   
   ___ 
   
   Real estate heir Robert Durst will soon learn whether a federal judge accepts a 7-year-and-one-month sentence on a weapons charge that's kept him in Louisiana pending a murder trial in California. 
   
   Judge Kurt Engelhardt will say Wednesday whether he approves that sentence, which the 72-year-old Durst accepted as part of his guilty plea in February. 
   
   He's charged in California with killing his friend Susan Berman in 2000. His attorneys have said repeatedly that Durst is innocent, doesn't know who killed Berman, and wants to prove it. 
   
   The most recent such statement was in a motion Monday asking U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt to recommend that Durst serve his time at Terminal Island, California, about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles, where Durst faces trial in Berman's death. ||||| 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.
target: – 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.)