On March 19, 2018, Mary Annis Bartel opened the door of her apartment at Preston Place, a retirement community in Plano, Texas. She was 91. The man outside was wearing green rubber gloves, and the moment she saw them, she later said, she knew she was in "grave danger." He forced his way in. "Don't fight me, lie on the bed," he told her. He pressed a pillow over her face and, in her words, used "all his weight to keep me from breathing." Before she lost consciousness she managed to reach her medical alert device. When she came to, her wedding band, her diamond engagement ring and other pieces of jewelry were gone.
Her son, Rick Bartel, said later that at first some people doubted her, and wondered whether she had fallen and imagined the intruder. But a suspicious-person report at the community had produced a license plate, and surveillance video helped Plano detectives put a name to it. The next day, March 20, they followed the man to the parking lot of his apartment complex and watched him throw things into a dumpster. When they stopped him he was holding jewelry and cash. In the dumpster was a large red jewelry box. Papers inside carried the name and address of a woman named Lu Thi Harris, 81, who lived in a house in Far North Dallas.
"Time was of the essence," Plano detective Bill Knight would tell a jury, "because we believed we had another victim." That night officers went to Harris's home. They found her dead in her bedroom, with lipstick smeared on her pillow. The keys in the man's pocket opened her front doors.
The man was Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir. Over the next four years, as police in four cities went back over hundreds of deaths that had been signed off as natural, he would be charged with smothering 22 older women and trying to kill two more. He was convicted of two of the murders. He never admitted any of them.
Chemirmir was born in Kenya on December 8, 1972, the date implied by reports that he turned 48 on December 8, 2020. He remained a Kenyan citizen. According to Crime+Investigation UK he came to the United States in the late 1990s, following his sister to Texas. The Associated Press reported that he became a legal permanent resident in 2007. He sold cars for a time and later worked as a caregiver for older people in North Texas. In a police interview played at his first trial, he said he made his living buying and selling jewelry and had worked as an at-home caregiver and as a security guard. Prosecutors would later show that he sold jewelry through the online marketplace OfferUp and to a precious metals buyer.
He had a record before any of the deaths. His arrest history went back to 2011, including charges of drunk driving and family violence. He also used another name. To at least one family he was "Benjamin Koitaba," the caregiver who had looked after their father, a man with Parkinson's disease.
In the spring of 2016 the name Koitaba appeared in a Dallas police file. In April officers gave a man using that name a criminal trespass warning at The Edgemere, a senior living community in Dallas. Catherine Probst died there on April 8. She was 88, a retired army doctor who had traveled to 75 countries and looked after her health with care, and two days earlier she had been out to dinner with her family. Relatives found jewelry missing and blood on her bed, and asked for an autopsy. The medical examiner ruled the death natural, though the report noted the family's concerns about her missing belongings. Her niece, Jane Fold, said the family knew she kept loose jewels and gold coins but had no full inventory. Her family came to believe she had been killed; her death was never charged. The Associated Press later reported that Chemirmir was indicted in two deaths at The Edgemere and linked to a third through an autopsy report.
The first death that did lead to a charge was that of Phyllis Payne, 91, on May 14, 2016. Her daughter, Loren Adair Smith, would describe her as a "vibrant, active, loving, amazing woman" who was "still living a fabulous life." Phoebe Perry, 94, died on June 5. Both became indicted cases.
That June the man calling himself Koitaba was spotted at The Edgemere again. This time police found two identification cards on him, one in the name of Chemirmir and one in the name of Koitaba, and charged him with criminal trespass and giving a false name to officers. He was released from jail in July. The deaths at The Tradition-Prestonwood, an upscale independent living community in Far North Dallas, began almost at once.
Joyce Abramowitz, 82, whose family said her unit had been burglarized that April, died on July 20, 2016. Juanita Purdy, 82, died on July 31; her daughter said about $28,000 in jewelry was missing. Leah Corken, 83, had moved from Florida to be near her daughter, M.J. Jennings, who called her "my best friend." She was found on August 19 on her living room floor, her hair disheveled, makeup smudged on her pillow and her wedding ring gone, which her daughter called highly unusual. Jennings sensed something was wrong but, she said, "didn't know it was murder." Margaret White, 86, died on August 28.
October brought more deaths. Solomon Spring, 89, was found on October 2 in a pool of blood; his death was named in a lawsuit but was never part of the criminal case. Norma French, 85, died on October 8. Her daughter would later tell a courtroom that her mother's wedding ring had been pried from a finger she herself could no longer get it off. Glenna Day, 87, who had recently been restoring a friend's painting and dancing at a senior center, was found on October 15. Days earlier she had told friends she was thinking of moving because "her friends were dying," and the deaths had prompted her to get a checkup, her daughter Sherril Kerr said. Doris Gleason, 92, died at the end of the month. She wore a gold guardian angel medallion; police later said it was sold, with other victims' jewelry, to a storefront precious metals buyer.
According to lawsuits, Chemirmir was escorted off The Tradition's property in late 2016 and asked not to return. A Dallas police report from November 2016 described a man, not named but matching his description, who had been seen there many times claiming to be checking for pipe leaks. No one connected him to the deaths.
In October 2017 the pattern appeared farther north. At Parkview, a retirement community in Frisco, a man posing as a maintenance worker offered his services to a 93-year-old resident. When she declined, he forced his way in, knocked her off her walker, held a pillow over her face and took her jewelry. She told police she believed she was about to die. She survived, and Chemirmir was later charged with attempted capital murder. Two women at Parkview who died around that time, Helen Lee, 82, and Marilyn Bixler, became indicted cases in 2022. Lee's granddaughter, Lindsey Watkins, was 18 when she went to check on her after Lee missed church, and found her dead. Back at The Tradition, Doris Wasserman, 90, died in December 2017; her family said about $8,500 in jewelry was gone.
Preston Place in Plano marketed itself as an upscale gated community with round-the-clock security surveillance; some apartments rented for up to $3,000 a month. According to lawsuits later filed by families, seven women died there between October 2017 and March 2018. Minnie Campbell, 84, died on October 31. Diane Delahunty died on December 5 and Mamie Dell Miya on December 8. A woman identified in the suits only as Jane Doe died on December 10.
Carolyn MacPhee, 81, lived in her own home in Plano. She was found in her bedroom on New Year's Eve 2017, about eight months after her husband died. There was blood on her glasses, on a door and on tissues, and two diamond rings were missing. Police believed she had suffered a nosebleed and an aneurysm, and there was no autopsy. Her husband had had Parkinson's disease, and his at-home caregiver had been a man the family knew as Benjamin Koitaba. When her son Scott MacPhee read about Chemirmir's arrest, he said, it "connects all of the dots." Rosemary Curtis, 75, died on January 17, 2018.
Mary Brooks, 87, lived in a condominium in Richardson. On January 30, 2018, she went shopping at the Walmart at Coit Road and Arapaho Road. Surveillance video later showed a vehicle of the model Chemirmir drove, a Nissan Altima, parked beside her car and then following it out of the lot. Her grandson found her dead the next day, January 31, with grocery bags from the store still on the counter. Her daughter, Ann Brooks, found that a safe and most of her mother's jewelry were missing, including her wedding rings and a coral necklace she wore "every single day." The death was recorded as natural.
Martha Williams, 80, had moved into Preston Place on May 11, 2017, choosing it as a safe place for an older woman living alone. On March 4, 2018, her daughter, Hollyn Williams, could not reach her by phone, drove over and found her on the floor. Her wedding ring was missing, and later Hollyn noticed an unusual stain on a pillow. Five days later, on March 9, Miriam Nelson, 81, died at Preston Place. Shortly before her death, her family said, a well-dressed man in rubber gloves had come to her door and said he was there to check for a leak. She did not recognize him as a maintenance worker, reported him to management and told her daughter, Karen Harris. The family said the report was never passed on to other residents or to police, and that they learned afterward that residents had reported a trespasser in the months before. Karen Harris's husband, the former Dallas Cowboys player Cliff Harris, would later press lawmakers to make reporting and safety rules mandatory for senior communities.
Ann Conklin, 82, had heard that Martha Williams's jewelry was missing, and told her daughter Jennie Bassett that Williams "did not seem ready to die at all." She trusted that Preston Place would warn residents of any real danger. The day before she died, she texted Bassett about baby birds on a neighbor's patio. "I love baby birds," Bassett wrote back, just before noon. Her mother never answered. The next morning Bassett drove over to pick her up for shopping and lunch and found her on the floor, fully dressed, with her dog, Helen, still on its leash. Her wristwatch was missing. According to the family's lawsuit, which dates her death to March 18, police were already at the community when she was found. Mary Bartel had just survived.
Her family called her Kim. She was born on a Chinese island, and before World War II her family moved to what is now Vietnam. She grew up in Saigon, had three children, and lost her first husband in the Vietnam War. She ran a restaurant and bar across the street from the office of the oil company Caltex, where an American engineer named William Harris worked. They married in 1974. As the fall of Saigon approached in 1975, his company sent him to Hong Kong, but he arranged her papers, and she was flown out by helicopter from the American embassy to an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. The couple lived in Tanzania before William retired and they settled in Dallas. He died in 2008, and her daughter Loan died of cancer in 2013. One of her sons still runs her restaurant in Vietnam.
"My mother-in-law was a hoot," her son-in-law, Richard Rinehart, told jurors. "She was very fun to be around." She loved giving people $2 bills as gifts. A neighbor, Noel Crotty, called her "such a kind person."
On the afternoon of March 20, 2018, the day after the Bartel attack, surveillance cameras at the same Walmart at Coit and Arapaho recorded Harris and Chemirmir checking out at the same time. They left within a minute of each other and drove off in the same direction. A few hours later he was in his parking lot with her jewelry, her keys and dozens of $2 bills, and she was dead.
That night Dallas detective Brian Tabor, the lead investigator on the Harris case, questioned Chemirmir for hours. He was told he was going to jail for murder. "Murder?" he replied. He laughed and smiled at moments. He said he had bought the jewelry from a man who came to his apartment about 20 minutes before his arrest, and that he had taken what he wanted and thrown the box away because he did not want it. Asked the man's name, he said the man "didn't tell" him. He said he had bought the $2 bills from someone in Fort Worth a few days earlier. "I've never murdered anybody," he said, and "I did not go to a house in Dallas." Tabor told him: "It just doesn't make any sense, what you're telling me." Chemirmir, the detective later testified, "struggled for the details" of whom he had met and what he had paid.
His phone told a different story. A Plano investigator found a photograph of Mary Bartel's stolen ring on it, and messages showing that he had listed her jewelry for sale on OfferUp within two hours of the attack. Jewelry belonging to Mary Brooks was also listed. A buyer from a business called Diamond & Gold Exchange would testify that he had bought jewelry from Chemirmir. A search of his silver Altima turned up gloves and, in the trunk, serving platters that belonged to Martha Williams. He was charged with capital murder in the death of Lu Thi Harris and attempted capital murder in the attack on Mary Bartel, and held on a $1 million bond with an immigration hold.
Then came the harder question: how many others? Within days, at least four North Texas police departments, working with the Dallas and Collin County medical examiners, began reviewing unattended or natural deaths of older women going back to at least 2010. "In Dallas alone, our initial estimate is over 750 elderly females," said David Pughes, an assistant chief of the Dallas Police Department. Plano's police chief, Gregory Rushin, said Chemirmir used his health care experience to target older people, and admitted that "we don't really know how many cases he may be suspect in." Police set up a tip line for families.
Almost nothing in the original files pointed to murder. Most of the women were in their eighties and nineties, and many lived alone. Dr. Jeffrey Barnard, the Dallas County chief medical examiner, later testified that investigators often do not visit the scenes of apparently natural deaths of older people, and that homicides can go unnoticed when police have no reason to suspect them. "In a case of smothering it's not uncommon you don't have physical findings," he said. Travis Danielsen, who examined Lu Thi Harris, found small broken blood vessels and some bruising and ruled her death a homicide by smothering, but told jurors that without the investigative information he would probably have called it undetermined or natural. "In asphyxial deaths, as a medical examiner, we rely most heavily, I believe, on the investigative information," he said. Rushin conceded that officials tend to assume older people's deaths are natural, and that it "would be very easy to disguise a crime."
Causes of death were amended one by one. Mary Brooks's was changed to homicide. Families who had reported missing rings and stolen safes and heard nothing now began getting calls, often a year or more after the deaths. Some never got one. Cheryl Pangburn had believed her mother, Marilyn Bixler, died naturally. In March 2019 a high school classmate sent her a Facebook message saying her mother was on a police list connected to Chemirmir. She then learned that the Collin County medical examiner had changed Bixler's cause of death to undetermined on August 31, 2018, and was treating it as a possible murder, but no one had told her. By then she had given away or thrown out belongings that might have been tested for DNA.
The indictments came in waves. In May 2019 a Dallas County grand jury returned six capital murder indictments, for Phyllis Payne, Norma French, Phoebe Perry, Doris Gleason, Rosemary Curtis and Mary Brooks, and Collin County prosecutors were examining unsolved deaths there. That year the office of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot filed notice that it would seek the death penalty in the Harris case. By February 2020 Chemirmir faced 12 capital murder charges and was held on bonds totaling $11.6 million. On February 25, 2020, the grand jury added Leah Corken and Juanita Purdy, bringing the count to 14. On December 8, 2020, his 48th birthday, three more followed, for Joyce Abramowitz, Margaret White and Doris Wasserman. In January 2021 Glenna Day became the 18th.
By then The Dallas Morning News, drawing on medical examiner reports and civil filings, counted 24 deaths in North Texas linked to him. In June 2022 a Collin County grand jury added four more capital murder indictments, for Helen Lee, Marilyn Bixler, Diane Delahunty and Mamie Dell Miya. "Oh my god, we can say 22 now," Pangburn said. The final total stood at 22 counts of capital murder, 13 in Dallas County and nine in Collin County, and two of attempted capital murder.
Chemirmir pleaded not guilty to all of it. One of his lawyers, Phillip Hayes, said in late 2020 that the evidence was circumstantial and that the charges rested on the medical examiner changing his mind. "It seems like every unexplained death they come up with, they're pinning on him," he said.
The relatives found each other. Daughters who had been told their mothers died in their sleep compared notes about missing wedding rings, smudged pillows and a polite stranger in rubber gloves. In July 2019 Shannon Dion, Doris Gleason's daughter, and three other daughters formed a group called Secure Our Seniors' Safety, with Dion as president. Dion had filed a public information request after her mother's death and found reports of other robberies at The Tradition that residents had never been told about. "We didn't know evil was roaming the hallways," she said.
Families sued the communities. Gleason's daughter sued The Tradition, accusing its managers of letting the intruder into the building; her lawyer, Richard Arnold, said Chemirmir "should have been noticed on the day Doris Gleason was murdered." In July 2019 the families of Purdy, Corken and Day sued over security there as well. The Tradition replied that it regarded its residents as family and had relied on the Dallas police and the medical examiner, whose natural-death rulings "stood for more than 27 months." The Wasserman family filed suit in December 2019. In February 2020 the families of Ann Conklin and Miriam Nelson sued Preston Place, alleging that management knew of suspicious activity going back to September 2015, did not require workers to wear identification badges and never warned residents. Their attorney, Trey Crawford, said seven older women had been "murdered and robbed in less than five months." Preston Place said it had assisted police and prosecutors, and later said the litigation had been resolved.
The group also went to the Texas Legislature. State Representative Jared Patterson of Frisco filed House Bill 723, known as Marilyn's Law, requiring officials to notify next of kin when a cause of death on a death certificate is amended. It passed both chambers easily, and Governor Greg Abbott signed it on May 15, 2021; it took effect that September. A second bill, SB 1132, aimed at enforcing the existing rules for cash-for-gold buyers, who must photograph purchases and record sellers' identification but were rarely inspected; a Plano robbery detective, Jon Hoffman, testified that more inspections would help. The Associated Press later reported that the group's efforts had produced a requirement for spot checks of those shops. Two other bills, a voluntary safety certification program for senior communities and a measure making them liable for negligent deaths, failed. "The frustration is nothing has changed in the senior living industry," Dion said in 2021.
By 2021 prosecutors had decided not to seek the death penalty, so a capital murder conviction would carry an automatic sentence of life without parole. The trial for the death of Lu Thi Harris opened on November 15, 2021, at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas, before state District Judge Raquel "Rocky" Jones. Because of COVID-19 precautions, the victims' families were kept out of the courtroom.
Prosecutor Glen Fitzmartin laid out the Walmart video, the jewelry box, the keys and the $2 bills. Under Texas rules the state could show jurors evidence of other offenses, and it did. Jurors watched Mary Bartel's videotaped deposition; she had died in 2020. Ann Brooks described her mother's missing safe and coral necklace. Rinehart identified his mother-in-law's jewelry, and Danielsen explained his findings. For hours the jurors watched Chemirmir's own interview with Tabor.
Chemirmir's attorney, Kobby Warren, made no opening statement, called no witnesses and did not put his client on the stand. He told jurors the state had offered "quantity over quality." Deliberations began on the afternoon of Thursday, November 18. The next day the jurors sent notes saying they were "hopelessly deadlocked 11 to one." Judge Jones sent them back several times before declaring a mistrial on November 19. Which way the majority leaned was never made public, but outside the courthouse relatives spoke of a holdout. "We are devastated at the outcome of this trial," said Loren Adair Smith. Warren rejected the idea of a rogue juror. "It was all circumstantial," he said. Creuzot said his office would try the case again. "Our commitment was to get two convictions and that does not change."
The retrial began on April 25, 2022, after a delay of several hours when a juror arrived late. This time Creuzot himself helped pick the jury. Jurors saw the pillow with the smeared lipstick and the video from the Walmart. Officers described finding Harris. A Plano investigator walked them through the photograph of Mary Bartel's ring on Chemirmir's phone and the OfferUp listings. A Richardson detective explained how police had connected Mary Brooks's death to him. The jewelry buyer testified. Again the defense called no one. In closing Warren argued that the state had never proved Chemirmir was inside Harris's home and called the case "all bark, no bite." Fitzmartin told the jury: "This is an easy decision."
On April 28, 2022, after about 45 minutes, the jury found Chemirmir guilty of capital murder. Judge Jones immediately imposed life without parole. "It is a just verdict," Creuzot said. Dion said the conviction "represents justice for all of the families." M.J. Jennings hoped it would be "the first step of healing."
On October 3, 2022, Chemirmir went on trial a third time, now for the murder of Mary Brooks. Mary Bartel's recorded interview was played again. Bill Knight described the arrest. Barnard testified about smothering. Hollyn Williams described finding her mother. For the first time prosecutors offered DNA. Dr. Stephanie Burton, a Collin County assistant medical examiner, testified that DNA on gloves found in Chemirmir's car could not exclude Martha Williams as a contributor, and that DNA on Williams's pillow and under her fingernails could not exclude him. Plano detective Paul Martinez described finding Williams's serving platters in the trunk of the Altima. Prosecutors also used cellphone records placing him near the women and evidence that he had offered their belongings for sale.
The defense again rested without witnesses. Hayes told jurors that prosecutors were "begging that you plug in the holes that they cannot." Creuzot, arguing the case himself, called Chemirmir's conduct "a conscious, dedicated effort to stalk, surveil, kill, steal, strip and sell." On October 7, 2022, the jury deliberated for under 30 minutes and found him guilty. It was his second sentence of life without parole. Ann Brooks said the family was "thrilled that this defendant will never be able to hurt any other family again." Creuzot said the two sentences meant Chemirmir was "going to die in a penitentiary," and that his office would dismiss its remaining 11 capital murder cases. Hayes said he planned to appeal.
A week later, on October 14, relatives were allowed to speak to him in court. Ellen French House held up two photographs of her mother, Norma French. "This is my beautiful mother," she said, and then, of the second, "This is my mother after you pried her wedding ring off of her finger that she couldn't even get off." Loren Adair Smith spoke for Phyllis Payne. "You stole my mom, my best friend," she said. "And for what? A bit of jewelry? A bit of silver?" And: "We just wanted time, and you stole that time from us." Lindsey Watkins spoke for Helen Lee. "What you'll never understand is that her jewelry was the least valuable thing that you stole," she said. "Her life was worth just a few thousand dollars to you. But it was worth everything to me." Chemirmir listened in a striped jail uniform and said nothing. Some relatives had hoped he would confess. He did not. In the summer of 2023 Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis said he did not plan to try the nine indictments in his county.
Chemirmir was sent to the H.H. Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony, near Palestine, about 100 miles southeast of Dallas. About two weeks before his death, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice put all 100 of its prisons on a rare statewide lockdown because of a rise in killings inside them. Early on the morning of Tuesday, September 19, 2023, Chemirmir was found dead in his cell. He was 50.
The department said his cellmate, who was serving a murder sentence from Dallas County, was the assailant. On October 2 the Office of the Inspector General identified him as Wyatt Busby, 39, serving 50 years for the 2016 fatal stabbing of a man in the Houston area, and described Chemirmir as "stabbed/beaten to death." A custodial death report filed with the state attorney general listed the weapon as a "knife/edged instrument" and blunt force trauma as the means of death. By early October most prisons had returned to normal operations, but Coffield was still locked down. Creuzot reportedly said that Chemirmir had been killed after making sexual comments about Busby's children. No court ruling on Hayes's planned appeal was found; with Chemirmir's death, the remaining untried indictments in Collin County could never come to trial.
The families learned of the death that morning. "My mother died in fear," said Shannon Dion. "This man did not have a peaceful passing." She said there was "some relief" in feeling he "didn't get off easily."
The case has been retold several times. NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth produced a streaming series, "Stranger at the Door," in 2021, built around the question of how a Plano grandmother may have stopped a serial killer. Paramount+ released a three-part docuseries, "Pillowcase Murders." In October 2024 Charlie Scudder, who covered the case for The Dallas Morning News and later taught journalism at Southern Methodist University, released "Unnatural Causes," a nine-part podcast season made with graduate student Monika Watkins that drew on his jail phone calls with Chemirmir.
Two murders were proved in court: Lu Thi Harris and Mary Brooks. Twenty more capital murder charges were brought and never tried, because prosecutors dismissed them after the two life sentences or because Chemirmir died first. Those women are victims he was charged with killing, not victims he was convicted of killing. The two attempted capital murder charges, for Mary Bartel and the woman at Parkview, were never tried either. Further deaths, among them Solomon Spring, Catherine Probst and the woman listed as Jane Doe, were linked to him only by lawsuits, autopsy filings or press counts, and the total of 24 often cited comes from The Dallas Morning News, not a court. Prosecutors' account of how he worked, posing as a maintenance or health care worker and smothering women with pillows to take their jewelry, was accepted by two juries in two cases. He never admitted any of the killings.
Some early reports were wrong. A March 2018 television report called him a Nigerian native; he was Kenyan. Reports also differed on his immigration status. The AP said he had been a legal permanent resident since 2007, while local stations described his immigration hold as being for someone in the country illegally.
The largest question is how he went undetected for nearly two years. He was trespassed from The Edgemere and arrested there in 2016, escorted off The Tradition's grounds, reported by a resident at Preston Place days before she died, and seen in rubber gloves at residents' doors. Families reported jewelry missing after death after death. No one connected the reports until a 91-year-old woman pressed her medical alert button and lived to describe the man at her door.
December 8, 1972: Chemirmir's birth date, as implied by reports of his age.
Late 1990s: Moves from Kenya to Texas, according to Crime+Investigation UK.
2007: Becomes a legal permanent resident, according to the AP.
2011: Arrest record begins, including drunk driving and family violence charges.
April 2016: Given a criminal trespass warning at The Edgemere under the name Benjamin Koitaba; Catherine Probst dies there on April 8.
May 14 and June 5, 2016: Phyllis Payne and Phoebe Perry die.
June 2016: Arrested at The Edgemere for trespassing and giving a false name; released in July.
July 20 to late October 2016: Deaths at The Tradition-Prestonwood, among them Joyce Abramowitz, Juanita Purdy, Leah Corken, Margaret White, Norma French, Glenna Day and Doris Gleason.
October 2017: A 93-year-old woman survives a pillow attack at Parkview in Frisco.
October 31, 2017 to March 18, 2018: Seven women die at Preston Place in Plano, according to lawsuits.
December 31, 2017: Carolyn MacPhee found dead in her Plano home.
January 31, 2018: Mary Brooks found dead in her Richardson condo.
March 18, 2018: Ann Conklin's date of death, according to her family's lawsuit.
March 19, 2018: Mary Annis Bartel survives the attack at Preston Place.
March 20, 2018: Chemirmir arrested; Lu Thi Harris found dead.
May 2019: Six more Dallas County capital murder indictments.
July 2019: Secure Our Seniors' Safety formed; first lawsuit against The Tradition by the Purdy, Corken and Day families.
February 2020: Preston Place sued; indicted counts reach 14 on February 25.
December 8, 2020: Counts reach 17.
January 2021: Eighteenth indictment, for Glenna Day.
May 15, 2021: Governor Abbott signs Marilyn's Law.
November 19, 2021: First trial ends in a mistrial, 11 to 1.
April 28, 2022: Convicted of the capital murder of Lu Thi Harris.
June 2022: Four Collin County indictments bring the total to 22.
October 7, 2022: Convicted of the capital murder of Mary Brooks; family statements in court on October 14.
September 19, 2023: Killed in his cell at the Coffield Unit.
October 2, 2023: Inspector General names cellmate Wyatt Busby.
October 14, 2024: The podcast "Unnatural Causes" begins.