HBO miniseries The Jinx edited by UNC alumna

When Caitlyn Greene was a UNC freshman, she found herself at the desk in her Ehringhaus dorm room, flipping through a thick directory of courses.

The ones that stood out were in the journalism school — classes in graphic design and multimedia, just to fill in empty slots around business courses in her schedule.

But those courses ended up becoming her passion.

Greene, who graduated from UNC in 2011 with a photojournalism degree, is now a co-editor on “The Jinx” — an HBO documentary-style series on the life of Robert Durst.

Greene said Durst’s complex character is part of what drew her to the project.

“I’ve always been drawn to stories that deal with darkness,” she said in an email.

“They highlight the things that make us human and force us to acknowledge the parts of ourselves we keep most hidden.”

A day before the series finale aired on March 15, Durst was arrested.

He was later charged with the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman due to new evidence the Los Angeles Police Department had received in the past year.

Durst, heir to a wealthy New York City real estate family, has been suspected for murder in three different cases across almost 20 years.

The six episodes tell the stories of his wife’s disappearance in 1982, the shooting of his friend in 2000 and the murder and dismemberment of his neighbor in 2001.

During her time at UNC, Greene said her teachers heavily influenced how she viewed the world.

“I learned to see — how to really, actively see,” she said.

Journalism professor Chad Stevens, who taught Greene and worked closely with her on multiple projects, said in an email that as a student, Greene was humble and hardworking.

He said he is not surprised to see Greene working on a successful project like “The Jinx.”

“She is a fluid, lyrical, brilliant editor,” he said. “What she does on the timeline just feels right, and you could see that in her early work as a student here at UNC.”

The summer after Greene graduated, she was a lead editor on the Powering a Nation project called “Coal: A Love Story,” which later won a SXSW Interactive Award.

Stevens said he specifically remembers Greene’s work on that project in the days right before the deadline.

“Caitlyn worked fanatically, relentlessly to make sure the project was at its highest level.”

Chris Roush, business journalism professor and senior associate dean for undergraduate studies, had Greene for a core class in the journalism school: news writing.

“She was one of the students who immediately stood out in a class because she was very creative and an exceptionally good writer,” he said.

Roush said Greene’s writing impressed him so much that he tried to convince her to pursue more traditional journalism, but she was set on multimedia and photojournalism.

“Obviously she made the right decision by not listening to me.”

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