Former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro got slammed again Thursday during testimony at a Los Angeles hearing for millionaire murder suspect Robert Durst.
New York writer Lisa DePaulo took the witness stand for a second day and said the former district attorney of Westchester County asked her to fabricate an interaction with Durst’s wife Deborah Charatan for Pirro’s 2015 book, “He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice.”
DePaulo, who collaborated on the book until a falling out with Pirro, testified that the Fox News host wanted her to include a passage claiming Pirro scored an interview with Charatan after Durst’s 2001 arrest for the murder and dismemberment of his neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas.
DePaulo said she pushed back because during a 2001 interview for a Talk Magazine article, Pirro told her she got “shut down” by Charatan.
“So she basically wanted to use a concocted story to sell her book?” Durst defense lawyer David Chesnoff asked DePaulo on Thursday.
“No argument there,” DePaulo shot back.
The courtroom exchange echoed the breach of contract lawsuit that DePaulo filed against Pirro in Manhattan Supreme Court in October 2015, after Pirro fired her from the project.
Pirro denied DePaulo’s accusations in a November 2015 affidavit that claimed DePaulo “drank alcohol and popped pills” during their time working on the book, allegations DePaulo denied.
The legal action was sent to arbitration.
“DePaulo is a pathetic loser who contracted with me to write a book but because of her situation couldn’t deliver, and shock… used a Durst attorney to sue me and lost,” Pirro said in a statement to the Daily News on Thursday.
When she first took the stand Wednesday, DePaulo confirmed whispers Pirro had a romantic relationship with Cody Cazalas, the Texas homicide detective who investigated Durst after Black’s torso and limbs were found in Galveston Bay.
She said Pirro kept a photo of Cazalas in a drawer that she only took out when he came to visit.
DePaulo said she wasn’t sure when the two first became lovers.
Durst, 75, was acquitted in 2003 of Black’s murder but is now facing charges he executed his friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles in 2000.
Prosecutors contend Durst killed Berman to keep her from speaking with Pirro or other investigators about the fate of his missing first wife Kathie Durst, who vanished without a trace in 1982 and is presumed dead.
They called another witness after DePaulo to further build their theory Berman provided an “alibi” for Durst in 1982 and had become a liability in the eyes of the real estate scion.
Julie Smith — like DePaulo — was called to testify at a videotaped “conditional exam” used to preserve the testimony of witnesses who might not be available for trial.
Smith, 73, testified that Durst pal Nick Chavin “sought her out” at Berman’s memorial service to say “Susan told him that she knew Bobby killed Kathie.”
She said Berman never said anything like that to her, but Smith said she felt Berman knew she’d go to the police with such information if Berman ever shared it.
During a separate conditional exam last year, Chavin claimed that Durst stood outside a Harlem restaurant in late 2014 and admitted he killed Berman 14 years earlier.
“I had to,” Durst allegedly told Chavin. “It was her or me. I had no choice.”
Durst has pleaded not guilty in the case and claims he has no idea what happened to either Kathie or Berman.
He was arrested in New Orleans on the Berman murder warrant while allegedly attempting to flee to Cuba the day before the finale of the HBO docuseries “The Jinx,” which chronicled his life.
In the final episode, Durst went into a bathroom still wearing his microphone and muttered an alleged confession to himself, unaware he was still being recorded.
“What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” he said into the hot mic.
