She was a restaurant owner, refugee of the Vietnam War, loving mother and generous gift-giver. But until now, she’s primarily been known as the last woman allegedly killed by serial murder suspect Billy Chemirmir.
Jurors heard more about Lu Thi Harris’ life Tuesday during the trial of Chemirmir, 48, who faces life in prison if convicted of fatally smothering her inside her Far North Dallas home before stealing jewelry and cash in March 2018.
Chemirmir has been indicted on 18 counts of capital murder in Dallas and Collin counties. In all, he has been linked by police records, civil lawsuits and medical examiner reports to at least two dozen deaths. Chemirmir and his defense team say he is innocent.
The trial will continue Wednesday and is expected to finish this week.
Prosecutors say Chemirmir was arrested soon after killing Harris, who was known by her family as Kim.
After police suspected him of an attempted murder in Plano, they waited at his Far North Dallas apartment to arrest him. Before they approached him, a detective saw him throw a jewelry box into a dumpster.
In Chemirmir’s car was a gold necklace spelling the name “KIM,” and an envelope full of $2 bills.
Inside the discarded jewelry box was an affidavit from 1975, which said that a woman named Lu Thi Vang living in what was then Saigon had married an American named William Harris and would be following him to the U.S.
Jurors saw that document, the cash and the necklace Monday. They didn’t know their significance until Richard Rinehart was called as a witness Tuesday morning.
Rinehart was Lu Thi Harris’ son-in-law. She was born in Hainan, an island off the Chinese coast, and immigrated to Vietnam — then French Indochina — as a child, Rinehart testified.
She married a man who fought for the South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War. The couple had a daughter and three sons. She opened a restaurant and bar near the French Embassy in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.
Harris’ first husband was killed in the Vietnam War in 1970, leaving her a young widow.
Across the street from her bar, Mai Kim — named after her nickname — was the Vietnamese headquarters of CalTex, a subsidiary of the petroleum company Chevron. She met William Harris, who worked at the company, and they married in the later years of the war.
As Saigon fell, she escaped on a helicopter from the roof of the U.S. Embassy to an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, Rinehart testified. From there, she and William lived in Hong Kong and Tanzania before retiring to Dallas.
Two of her sons still live in Ho Chi Minh City, including one who operates the restaurant their mother opened. The third is in Alberta, Canada. Her daughter, Loan, moved to Dallas to be with her mother and step-father, and married Rinehart.
William Harris died in 2008 and Loan died of cancer in 2013, but Lu Thi “Kim” Harris and Rinehart remained close. He lived within walking distance of her home and would regularly meet her for dinner, he testified Tuesday.
“Most people hate their mother-in-law,” he said. “My mother-in-law was a hoot. She was very fun to be around.”
He said she loved giving gifts — particularly fresh $2 bills. She’d order stacks of them at the bank to give out in greeting cards for birthdays and other holidays. Rinehart said he still has three of them on his fridge, all gifts from his mother-in-law.
“That was her thing,” Rinehart said. “She just thought they were neat.”
During Rinehart’s testimony, lead prosecutor Glen Fitzmartin showed him an envelope that Chemirmir was holding when he was arrested. Jurors already knew it was full of $2 bills. Rinehart was able to see it was Harris’ handwriting scrawled on the outside.
Determining cause of death
Jurors heard testimony Monday about a lipstick-stained pillow that investigators believe was the murder weapon.
Dallas police Detective Cayce Shelton said he noticed Harris’ fuchsia lipstick was smeared across her face. On the bed he found a white polka-dot pillow stained with a fuchsia streak that appeared to match Harris’ lipstick.
The jury also heard Monday how police were led to Harris’ house and found her body. Police became suspicious of Chemirmir after then 91-year-old Mary Bartel survived an attack in her Plano senior-living community the day before. Though Bartel was unable to identify the intruder, Plano police detectives said they tracked a suspicious vehicle report at the facility to Chemirmir and used cellphone records to show he was in the area at the time.
Police went to Chemirmir’s home the evening of March 20, 2018, and found him tossing things into a garbage bin. Inside his car, detectives found multiple sets of keys, the envelope of $2 bills, bags of jewelry and a Kenyan passport. Chemirmir is a Kenyan immigrant with permanent resident status in the U.S. He could face deportation if ever released.
Harris’ name was on some of the recovered items. Officers went to her home, where they broke the patio door to get inside. They found her dead on the floor between the bed and a dresser.
Shelton, the Dallas detective, testified that one of the keys Chemirmir had with him unlocked Harris’ front door.
Travis Danielsen is a medical examiner in Knoxville, Tenn., who worked at the Dallas County medical examiner’s office at the time of Harris’ death. He testified Tuesday that he conducted her autopsy.
Danielsen testified that Harris had petechial hemorrhaging, or small burst blood vessels, on her eyes, neck and shoulder. He also said he found petechiae while evaluating Harris’ neck muscles and heart. But petechiae alone are not an automatic sign of homicide, Danielsen testified.
“It’s certainly something we see often in asphyxial deaths. However, like I said, they are a nonspecific finding,” he testified. “There’s literature that a strong sneeze can cause petechial hemorrhaging.”
Unlike strangulation, which can sometimes leave bruising on the neck, smothering leaves only petechiae. But petechiae could also be found in natural deaths, too.
That led many of the deaths attributed to Chemirmir to be initially listed as due to natural causes. Only after his arrest did medical examiners re-investigate dozens of death certificates.
“They wouldn’t even bring [a body] to the medical examiner’s office unless there was external trauma,” Danielsen said.
Danielsen also said he found bruising on Harris’ wrists, and that she had hypertension and cardiac disease — common in older adults, but not what caused her to die, he said. He said he considered investigative evidence from police to make a determination in the case.
“Without that information, it would be undetermined,” Danielsen said. “In asphyxial deaths, we rely on investigative information.”
In the end, he testified, the cause of death was smothering.
“The manner of death is homicide,” he testified. “We have to consider any and all information.”
After walking through Danielsen’s report, Fitzmartin picked up the pillow with Harris’ lipstick and showed it to him. The prosecutor offered a hypothetical that the pillow could have been pushed down over Harris’ nose and mouth.
“Could this cause the smothering you’re talking about?” he asked.
“Yes,” Danielsen said.
“Could this pillow used in that manner be a deadly weapon you’re talking about?” Fitzmartin asked.
“Yes,” Danielsen said.
Awaiting justice
A few floors above the courtroom where Chemirmir is facing trial, other families whose loved ones he allegedly killed gathered to watch the proceedings on a live video feed.
Due to COVID-19 precautions, public visitors are not allowed in the courtroom — including family members. The Dallas County district attorney’s office set up the room for about a dozen families who wanted to attend in person.
For many of them, the second day of testimony was easier to bear than the first.
Lindsey Roan’s mother, Martha Williams, was killed at Preston Place Retirement Community in Plano two weeks before Harris. Chemirmir has been indicted in Williams’ death, and Roan said it has been difficult to see his face in news reports.
But seeing Chemirmir in court Tuesday — dressed in a black suit with dark-rimmed glasses and a zebra-print tie — was not nearly as difficult.
“I wasn’t hit by lightning like I had been in the past,” Roan said. “The surrealness is still there, but I think we’re going to be OK.”
Her mother’s case is in Collin County, where the district attorney’s office has declined to comment on how it will prosecute Chemirmir, only saying that it would make decisions after Dallas County has completed its case.
Roan said this week’s trial is just a first step.
“For right now, I’m just glad he will be put away,” Roan said. “Finally we’re here, and finally we’re going to get some justice.”
