Los Angeles: Los Angeles Court Jury convicted with a life sentence to US real estate scion Robert Durst on Thursday for the killing of his best friend. But last month a jury in Los Angeles took just eight hours to find the 78 year old guilty of the execution-style slaying of Berman.

This crime was a witness killing, Judge Mark Windham said before reading out the life sentence. That circumstance tremendously aggravated this awful, disturbing crime. Windham rejected the defense’s request for a new trial, saying, there is sufficient, in fact, overwhelming evidence of guilt.

The court also heard from Sareb Kaufman, a son of Berman who said he has wondered what his life would have been like had Durst not killed his mother. Every plan was completely swept away, a crying Kaufman said. You also murdered me, the person I was. Durst sat motionless in a wheelchair during Thursday’s court session. Prosecutors say he murdered crime writer Berman to prevent her from being questioned by New York police over the disappearance of his wife Kathleen. Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, had acted as a spokeswoman for Durst after he became a suspect in the wife’s disappearance.

Durst, a multi millionaire who was the subject of an explosive HBO documentary entitled The Jinx, has always denied charges that he shot that friend, Susan Berman, in the back of the head in 2000 at her Beverly Hills home to keep her from talking to police about the disappearance of his wife two decades earlier.