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Billy Chemirmir Indicted on 11 More Capital Murder Charges in Dallas and Collin Counties

Grand juries accused the home health worker of smothering 11 more elderly women, bringing the deaths he was charged with to 12. He denied the killings.

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Illustration of an empty grand jury room with a conference table, chairs and a closed folder. Not the actual room.

For more than a year, Billy Chemirmir had faced a single murder charge. Police had arrested him in March 2018 and accused him of smothering Lu Thi Harris, 81, in her Dallas home, and investigators said early on that they believed he was tied to more deaths. Then, in the middle of May 2019, the indictments came all at once. Six new capital murder charges were made public in Dallas County on Wednesday, May 15, and five more in Collin County the next day. Chemirmir, a 46-year-old home health worker, now stood accused of killing 12 elderly women.

The women named in the new indictments had died between May 2016 and March 2018, and several of those deaths had first been recorded as natural. They were Phyllis Payne, 91; Phoebe Perry, 94; Norma French, 85; Doris Gleason, 92; Minnie Campbell; Carolyn MacPhee, 81; Rosemary Curtis; Mary Brooks; Martha Williams, 80; Miriam Nelson, 81; and Ann Conklin, 82. Court records said each had been smothered with a pillow. Authorities said he had stolen their jewelry and other valuables.

The charges grew out of a slow, deliberate review. After the arrest, the medical examiners in Dallas and Collin counties began going back through hundreds of cases, and police said investigators were examining about 750 unattended deaths of elderly women for possible links. By the time the indictments landed, the Dallas County medical examiner had reversed its findings in six deaths and ruled them homicides, and the Collin County office had five cases it believed were homicides. Days earlier, on May 11, authorities had exhumed one of the women from a mausoleum at Restland cemetery.

It had all started with a woman who lived. In March 2018, according to an arrest affidavit filed in Collin County, a man forced his way into the Plano apartment of a 91-year-old woman, told her to go to bed and not to fight him, then smothered her with a pillow until she lost consciousness and robbed her. Paramedics revived her. Police traced Chemirmir through a license plate number and followed him days later, watching as he threw a jewelry box into a trash bin. The box led them to Harris. At the time, Plano Police Chief Gregory Rushin said Chemirmir had used his health care experience "to his advantage in targeting and exploiting seniors, some of the most vulnerable people in our community."

Chemirmir also faced two counts of attempted capital murder in Collin County over attacks on elderly women. His bail now stood at more than $9 million, and jail records showed an immigration hold. Court records listed him as a citizen of Kenya.

His attorney, Phillip Hayes, said the new charges had caught him off guard. "These cases came out of the blue and I don't have any information on them yet," he said. He added that Chemirmir "has denied it since Day 1" that he had any role in Harris' death. "They have circumstantial evidence that puts him in the area but that's as far as the evidence goes," Hayes said.

What was established in May 2019. Chemirmir had been indicted, not convicted, in all 12 deaths, and he denied killing Harris. Published accounts give different ages for Minnie Campbell and different ages and dates of death for Rosemary Curtis, so those details are left out here; no age for Mary Brooks was given in the reports of the indictments. Early Associated Press reports described Chemirmir as living in the country illegally; the agency later corrected this, saying he was a permanent U.S. resident.

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