Robert Durst has Covid, his lawyer says, and is on a ventilator.

The millionaire and former actual property mogul Robert A. Durst, 78, is on a ventilator in a Los Angeles hospital after testing optimistic for Covid-19, days after being sentenced to life in prison for the 2000 murder of his confidante.

“We had been notified that he examined optimistic for Covid,” his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, mentioned on Saturday.

Mr. Durst was admitted Friday night time to LAC+USC Medical Middle, in accordance with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division’s inmate locator. The district legal professional’s workplace mentioned it couldn’t remark due to medical privateness legal guidelines.

At a sentencing listening to on Thursday, Mr. Durst sat slumped in a wheelchair. He wore a brown jail jumper and a masks. At occasions, his respiratory appeared labored. He pulled down his masks, solely to lift it once more moments later.

“His well being deteriorated over the weeks of the trial,” Mr. DeGuerin mentioned. “On Thursday, he seemed like demise warmed over.”

Mr. Durst was frail and had quite a few well being issues however was alert through the four-month trial that ended on Sept. 17 with a first-degree murder conviction. Mr. Durst, whose life story impressed a Hollywood film and an HBO documentary, won’t be eligible for parole.

The jury that convicted him in Los Angeles discovered that the prosecution had confirmed particular circumstances: Specifically, that Mr. Durst shot Susan Berman, a journalist and screenwriter, as a result of he feared she was about to inform investigators what she had discovered as his liaison with the information media after the 1982 disappearance of his first spouse, Kathie McCormack Durst.

Mr. Durst faces a attainable homicide indictment in New York in reference to the disappearance of Kathie Durst. Miriam E. Rocah, the district legal professional of Westchester County, N.Y., reopened the investigation earlier this 12 months and deliberate to place quite a few witnesses in entrance of a grand jury.

Mr. Durst acknowledged to filmmakers that earlier than Ms. Durst disappeared, his marriage had a collection of “half arguments, combating, slapping, pushing” and “wrestling” however he insisted he didn’t kill her.