GALVESTON, Texas — Prosecutors rested their case Monday against Robert Durst, a millionaire heir to a New York real estate empire who admits to dismembering an elderly man after fatally shooting him.

Lawyers for Durst, 60, will begin presenting their case Wednesday by taking jurors on a field trip to the shores of Galveston Bay. There, a young fisherman found garbage bags containing the dismembered pieces of 71-year-old Morris Black floating near a rock jetty on Sept. 29, 2001.

A clear trail of evidence, including newspaper address labels and receipts, led police to quickly amass evidence that Durst had meticulously cut up Black's remains, cleaned up the bloody mess and threw away anything that would have identified either man.

What police never established, Durst's lead lawyer stressed Monday, was evidence they legally need to sustain the charge of murder. The defense insists Texas law requires the prosecution to disprove Durst's self-defense claim.

"You found no evidence that would disprove self-defense, did you?" defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin asked the prosecution's 40th and final case-in-chief witness.

Galveston police Sgt. Cody Cazalas points out Durst in a security camera video that captured his image after the killing.

"No sir," replied the witness, Galveston police Sgt. Cody Cazalas.

"You found nothing that bears on the issue of whose finger was on the trigger of the gun that caused Morris Black death, did you?" DeGuerin followed up.

"Correct," Cazalas said.

Durst's trial, now in its fourth week, is national news not because of anything having to do with Morris Black, who, by all accounts, was a miserable old man whose own family wanted nothing to do with him. What's been bringing reporters from as far away as New York to Judge Susan Criss's fifth-floor courtroom is any reference — however remote — to the unsolved 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen.

The defense did not let the New York City tabloid reporters down Monday. DeGeurin peppered Cazalas with questions about why Westchester County, N.Y., District Attorney Jeannine Pirro kept popping up publicly in Galveston and elsewhere during the investigation of Black's death. A New York State Police investigator reporting to Pirro's office had recently jumpstarted the stalled investigation of Kathleen Durst's disappearance when Robert Durst put on a wig and dress and posed as a mute woman to rent a $300-a-month apartment in Galveston next to Black's.

The defense claims Durst was hiding out from the tabloids in the Big Apple, where the Durst Organization owns billions of dollars worth of real estate.

"He was on the run from Jeannine Pirro and her horde of newspaper reporters who followed her around like puppy dogs," DeGuerin said in the preamble to a question. "That's why he came to Galveston to rent an apartment [posing] as Dorothy Ciner. You figured that out, didn't you?"

"If you say so,"  Cazalas answered.

Durst will tell jurors about how he came to be living in a low-rent Galveston neighborhood posing as a woman when he testifies, probably next week. Although having a defendant take the stand is always risky, the defense team needs Durst to establish evidence of what happened inside the apartment house where he and Black lived.

The defense wants jurors to see the place where the body parts surfaced so that the panel can look out on the vast expanse of water. Black's head was never found when police searched the bay bottom, and prosecutors believe Durst wanted the head never to be found because it could be a) used to identify the body and b) examined to show how Morris Black died.

"Where did you find the head, detective?" District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk asked.

"Still looking," Cazalas said.

The defense claims that Durst wasn't concealing the head in particular. The police merely failed to find it.

Cazalas also touched upon the importance of the victim's missing head in response to a question by DeGuerin that seemed designed to remind jurors that prosecutors cannot say with certainty what transpired between Durst and Black.

DEGUERIN: "The cutting up, the dismembering, the disposal of Morris Black's body. It's not evidence of how Morris Black died. Would you agree with that?"

CAZALAS: "No, not really. If the head would have been located and there was a bullet hole in the back of Morris Black's head, that would have been evidence of how he died."

The defense claims Durst came home to his apartment unannounced, found Black inside holding Durst's gun, and the gun discharged while they wrestled for control of it on the floor. During his opening statement, DeGuerin told jurors that a bullet struck Black in the face.

Despite the gruesome nature of Black's death and dismemberment, Criss's courtroom hasn't had an overly serious tone. Jurors have found many things about Durst's behavior to laugh about. Even his lawyers referred to several things he did or told people as "strange."

When Durst was arrested Oct. 9, 2001, for example, he was brought before a judge who wanted to know why he would not cooperate with a court order to surrender blood, hair and fingerprint samples.

"Because Jessica told me not to," Durst replied, according to DeGuerin.

"Who is Jessica?" the judge wanted to know.

"She's my muse," Durst answered.