Billy Chemirmir Indicted on an 18th Capital Murder Charge in the Death of Glenna Day, 87
Day died at The Tradition-Prestonwood in Dallas in October 2016, weeks after telling family about neighbors who had died unexpectedly.
Published
Glenna Day had been uneasy for weeks. In late 2016, her family says, she kept telling her daughter about neighbors on her floor at The Tradition-Prestonwood who had died unexpectedly. "Maybe I should move," she told a friend. A few weeks later she was found dead in her apartment at the luxury senior living community in Far North Dallas. She was 87, and her death on October 15, 2016, was taken to be natural. Her death is now the subject of the 18th capital murder charge against Billy Chemirmir, news that broke on Tuesday, January 5, 2021.
A Dallas County grand jury had added the new count against Chemirmir, who is accused of smothering and robbing elderly people for years in Dallas and Collin counties. Police said he posed as a health care worker or a maintenance man to reach the people he targeted. Day's case gave him nine indictments for deaths at The Tradition-Prestonwood alone, and lawsuits linked him to one more death there. Counting deaths that were not among the 18 indictments, he had been accused of killing 24 people between April 2016 and March 2018.
Day was an artist who sometimes painted on her patio, and the scene her family found never sat right with them. She was still in her artist's smock, with paint on her hands and her brushes out on the patio, which was unlike the tidy grandmother they knew. "That didn't fit with me," said her daughter, Sherril Kerr. "Yes, she would've died. I get that. But not horrifically and not before her time."
Kerr was among the many relatives who had sued the senior living communities where their mothers died. The lawsuits against The Tradition-Prestonwood claim that Chemirmir could enter through a parking garage and had "uninhibited access" to the entire facility, and that as residents died and reports of missing jewelry spread, employees failed to tell police, "who were viewing each death through a skewed, incomplete lens." The families say that is part of why the deaths were not treated as suspicious at first. "She wasn't a treasured asset, she was a bottom line," Kerr said. "Had they shared that information, well, how many of them would have been saved?" In a written statement, the community said it regards its residents as family and had relied on investigators who first ruled the deaths natural. "Those rulings stood for more than 27 months," the statement said.
Chemirmir has said he is innocent. His attorney, Phillip Hayes, said he had not seen much about the new case but was "sure it's more of the same: accusations based on having the medical examiner change his/her mind," and added that much of the evidence against his client was circumstantial. In December he had put it more bluntly: "It seems like every unexplained death they come up with, they're pinning on him. If you look at all of it, it doesn't stand up."
Chemirmir remained in jail, with bail set at $17.6 million, and faced a possible death sentence if convicted. His first trial was scheduled for April 5, 2021, though the coronavirus pandemic was expected to push it back.
What was established on January 5, 2021. Chemirmir had been indicted, not convicted, in Glenna Day's death, and the cause of her death as originally recorded was natural. The figure of 24 deaths includes cases that had not been charged. The claims about the facility come from lawsuits filed by families, which The Tradition-Prestonwood disputed.
Sources
- Chemirmir indicted with 18th capital murder charge, The Dallas Morning News
- Dallas serial killer suspect indicted on 18th murder charge, FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth