Robert Durst was a rich man living free despite police efforts to link him to murder. Adnan Syed was a young man imprisoned for life for killing an ex-girlfriend.
Media scrutiny changed their fortunes, pushing both back into the courts — Durst is facing trial on a murder charge, and Syed awaits an appeal of his conviction.
Observers say it’s what journalists, or others taking on the role of investigative reporters, can and should do but not simply, or heedlessly, to play faux detective.
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“We are holding law enforcement accountable,” said Kelly McBride, an expert on ethics for the Poynter Institute journalism think tank. “Our job is not to prove people innocent or guilty. But we very much are part of the checks and balances that ensure that democracy is working.”
Durst, heard dramatically muttering “killed them all” to himself in the finale of HBO’s six-part docuseries “The Jinx- The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” was charged Monday with first—degree murder in the 2000 shooting of his confidante, Susan Berman.
Police had planned to question Berman as part of their renewed probe into the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s wife. Syed, who has maintained his innocence in the strangulation of Hae Min Lee in 1999, when both were teenagers, was granted a request for review by Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals after the popular National Public Radio podcast “Serial” dissected the evidence against him last year.
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