AP TELEVISION

New York - March 17, 2015

** SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY WHITE FLASHES **

1. Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst, walking down street

2. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"I'm over the moon, absolutely over the moon. That's why I agree to do all these interviews - I'm exhausted. I wish my friend Eleanor Schwank, who worked with me on this, who just passed away could see it."

3. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"I will take his going to jail anyway I can, I'm not fussy - he can only go to jail once. What I would like is for him to tell us, on his death bed if he has to, where he put Kathy's body or pieces of it."

4. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"They're very happy. They've finally seen an end to it. You know she has a mother that's 101 years old living at home, 101 and not knowing for the last 33 years where her daughter is."

5. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"I don't expect he is going to get off scot-free, I really don't. I think this time we've got him. He stabbed himself. He hoisted himself on his own petard whatever you want to call it. I am not thinking that way at all. I really think this time we've got him."

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"I think the trial is another chapter. I mean I'm waiting for that to be the nail in his coffin. He's got to squeak out of this one, that would be really amazing."

7. SOUNDBITE (English) Ellen Strauss, friend of Kathleen Durst:

"How hard everybody worked, how hard all of us worked and it now seems that maybe it paid off - that it did pay off. I know that that the last chapter isn't written yet, but that is what life is all about surprises."

FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus027863

Ellen Strauss, a friend of millionaire Robert Durst's first wife Kathleen Durst, said she is "over the moon" about his arrest.

Strauss has been investigating the death of her friend for over 30 years and feels vindicated by Durst's arrest.

"I will take his going to jail anyway I can, I'm not fussy, he can only go to jail once. What I would like is for him to tell us, on his death bed if he has to, where he put Kathy's body or pieces of it," said Strauss.

Strauss said she has spoken to Kathleen Durst's family and said they are "very happy" with the arrest.

"They've finally seen an end to it. You know she has a mother that's 101-years old living at home, 101 and not knowing for the last 33 years where her daughter is," said Strauss.

Durst was charged Monday in Los Angeles with first-degree murder in the shooting of Susan Berman, the daughter of a prominent Las Vegas mobster. Durst has also been suspected _ but never charged _ in the disappearance of his first wife in New York.

He could face the death penalty under special circumstances that allege he ambushed Berman and murdered a witness to a crime.

Authorities found more than a quarter-pound of marijuana and a revolver in Durst's hotel room when he was arrested over the weekend, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Durst appeared before a judge for a second straight day on Tuesday to face the drug and weapons charges.

In 2003, he was acquitted of murder in a dismemberment death in Texas.

In a documentary that just wrapped up about Durst's troubled life, he mumbled about how he "killed them all," providing a dramatic kick to the end of the series. But a law enforcement official said his arrest on the murder charge was based on words he wrote.

Analysis linked a letter Durst wrote to his friend Susan Berman a year before her killing with one that pointed police to her body, and that was the key new evidence in the long-dormant investigation into the 2000 killing, the official not authorized to speak publicly told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.