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. 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. 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. “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. 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. 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. Durst could move to California within four to six weeks, his attorney Dick DeGuerin said before Wednesday’s hearing. 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. His attorneys have said repeatedly that Durst is innocent, doesn't know who killed Berman, and wants to prove it. 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. He's charged in California with killing his friend Susan Berman in 2000.
– 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.)