Since HBO‘s The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst aired in 2015, Durst, who was arrested shortly before the docuseries’ shocking finale, was convicted of murder in 2021 before dying months later.

In that time, true-crime projects have proliferated in the wake of hits like The Jinx and contemporary docuseries Making a Murderer, the podcast Serial and based-on-a-true-story fictional series like The People v. O.J. Simpson and subsequent American Crime Story installments.

Yet despite being part of this early true-crime wave, The Jinx filmmaker Andrew Jarecki says that there were things about Durst that made him even more riveting than an unsolved murder.

“I think Bob is kind of a unicorn because he’s so unusual, because he’s such a powerful personality and also reckless and also willing to be honest about things that most people aren’t honest about, so you feel like you’re seeing inside him,” Jarecki said at Thursday’s New York premiere of The Jinx–Part Two.

“And beyond that he’s also rich and he’s also from this family, not only a rich family, but also a family that he’s constantly embarrassing. There’s so much to him, and he’s a troublemaker and kind of a firestorm. That draws people in. It’s very seductive. I’m not sure we’re going to find another Bob Durst. A lot of people are going to find fascinating stories in that vein, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to find a story like that.”

Los Angeles deputy district attorney John Lewin, who helped prosecute Durst for the murder of Susan Berman and appears in The Jinx — Part Two, agrees with this assessment, coming from the standpoint of a career chasing criminals.

“I’ve been trying cases and been a prosecutor for 30 years. When they made the Bob Durst mold, they broke it,” Lewin said. “As talented as Andrew is, as great as the show is, in the end Bob Durst is singularly unique in terms of who he is and what he’s done. If you had a fictionalized version of what occurred, people would walk out because they would say it’s not believable. So the great thing about reality is it doesn’t have to be believable, it just has to have happened. Bob, who he is, how he responded and what he did, we’ll just never see it again and he is compelling.”