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The trial of a Texas man accused of posing as a handyman in order to rob and kill senior citizens is set to being Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Billy Chemirmir, 48, is charged with robbing and killing 18 senior citizens. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted. Prosecutors have decided not to seek the death penalty.
Chemirmir allegedly posed as a handyman or forced his way into apartments to gain access. Most of the victims lived in independent living communities for older people.
One of the victims, Leah Corken, 83, was found on the living room floor of her apartment in 2016. There were makeup smudges on her bedroom pillow and her wedding ring was missing.
"I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know," M.J. Jennings, Corken's daughter, said. "I didn't know it was murder."
Families across Dallas had similar stories with missing jewelry and puzzling deaths of their older, but otherwise healthy loved ones.
In March 2018, 91-year-old Mary Annis Bartel survived after a man forced his way into her apartment, telling her "don't fight me" as he tried to smother her with a pillow and left with jewelry. The next day, Chemirmir was arrested.
At a news conference following Chemirmir's arrest, then-Plano Police Chief Greg Rushin acknowledged a tendency to assume the death of an older person is natural.
"There is not a deep investigation. ... It would be very easy to disguise a crime," Rushin said.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Chemirmir's attorney didn't respond to the AP's request to comment for this story, but has previously called the evidence against Chemirmir circumstantial. Chemirmir, who immigrated to the U.S. from Kenya, became a legal permanent resident in 2007.
Eight of the people he's charged with killing lived at The Tradition-Prestonwood, and he's been linked to a ninth resident's death in a lawsuit.
Just days before Glenna Day, 87, was found dead there in October 2016, she told friends something seemed off.
"They asked how things were going. She said, 'Well, I'm thinking I should move because my friends are dying,'" said her daughter, Sherril Kerr, who added that the deaths prompted her mother to go to her doctor for a checkup.
When Day was killed, the accomplished artist had been working to restore a friend's painting, and had just been out dancing at a senior center.
Chemirmir has been indicted in two deaths earlier that year at another Dallas retirement community — The Edgemere — and linked via an autopsy report to a third.
The deaths at The Tradition began after his release from jail that July. According to lawsuits against The Tradition, Chemirmir was escorted off the premises in late 2016 and asked not to return. A November 2016 police report says the suspect -- who isn't named but whose description matches Chemirmir -- was seen there numerous times, saying he was checking for pipe leaks.
In the two weeks before the attack on Bartel, Chemirmir is accused of killing three of her fellow residents at Preston Place in Plano.
As the victims' children began finding each other, they formed Secure Our Seniors' Safety. The group championed new Texas laws requiring medical examiners to notify families when a relative's death certificate is amended and requiring spot checks by officials at cash-for-gold shops.
They say more work needs to be done, including more transparency at independent living communities. In lawsuits, the families accused the facilities of failing to have the security they advertised.
"We didn't know evil was roaming the hallways," said Shannon Dion, whose mother was killed at The Tradition and who is the group's president.
The Tradition said in a statement that it relied on investigations by police and medical examiners. Preston Place said it resolved the litigation but would not comment on specifics. Edgemere didn't respond to requests for comment.
As Scott MacPhee read an article about Chemirmir's arrest, his 82-year-old mother's death at her Plano home began to make sense. Carolyn MacPhee was found in her bedroom on New Year's Eve in 2017, just over eight months after her husband's death. There was blood on her glasses, a door and tissues in the bathroom. Two diamond rings she always wore were missing.
"I'm reading the story going, 'Well, holy crap, that connects all of the dots,'" he said.
Robert MacPhee said police surmised that their mother had a nosebleed and died of an aneurysm, so the family did not pursue an autopsy. It turned out that Chemirmir, using the Koitaba alias, had been an at-home caregiver for their father, who had Parkinson's.
About nine months after Chemirmir's arrest, Jennings found out that authorities believed her mother had been murdered.
"Suddenly, all of the things that I saw in that room on that day ... everything made sense," she said.
Jennings said Corken had lived all over the world and moved from Florida to The Tradition to be close to her.
"She was my best friend, she really was," Jennings said.
