Billy Chemirmir is convinced he will never see the inside of a Texas prison.
For the first time, the former senior living caregiver accused of killing at least two dozen elderly women in North Texas is speaking out from his Dallas County jail cell. He says that he is innocent, and that will be acquitted on 18 counts of capital murder.
After a mistrial in November, Chemirmir, 49, will again face trial starting April 18 in the death of Lu Thi Harris, 81.
“I’m 100% sure I will not go to prison,” Chemirmir said in a lengthy interview with The Dallas Morning News last week. “I want you to write this down, because we’re going to talk about it again. I will not go to prison, Charlie.”
In two phone calls from jail Wednesday, Chemirmir talked about his youth in Kenya, his immigration to the United States, and his work here as a caregiver. Police say he used that work to stalk luxury senior living communities in Dallas and Collin counties, posing as a worker to get into the apartments of elderly women before smothering them with a pillow and stealing valuables from their homes.
Chemirmir denies it all.
“I am not a killer,” Chemirmir told The News. “I’m not at all what they’re saying I am. I am a very innocent person. I was not brought [up] that way. I was brought [up] in a good family. I didn’t have any problems all my life.”
Chemirmir’s first capital murder trial ended in a mistrial Nov. 19 after one juror refused to budge in an 11-1 vote. That day, prosecutors vowed to retry him. He faces life in prison if convicted, and Dallas prosecutors say they will continue to try him on other cases until they secure two convictions.
For the families of his alleged victims, the surprise end to November’s trial was yet another hurdle in a yearslong struggle to cope with the violent loss of their loved ones.
“That was a tough week. It’s so frustrating that we have to do this again for the same trial,” said Cheryl Pangburn, whose mother, Marilyn Bixler, was killed at Parkview Frisco in 2017. “This just prolongs everything. We still have to go through this a third time in Dallas County.”
She has been immersed in the details of the case for years and said that to hear his defense was “super insightful, super disturbing.” When she heard Chemirmir had agreed to an interview with The News, she said, she was disappointed that he was reaching out to journalists to try and sway public opinion toward him.
“You hope that he feels some kind of remorse, and the fact is he feels nothing,” Pangburn said. “I cannot comprehend that the human mind can work that way.”
In the November trial, prosecutors presented evidence of him selling stolen pieces of jewelry online even before the women who owned them were found dead. They showed security camera footage of him following women around and out of Walmart, just before they were killed. They showed cellphone data showing his device at the site of nearly every death.
“We have proven this beyond all doubt, because it is just not possible,” lead prosecutor Glen Fitzmartin said in closing arguments of Chemirmir’s first trial. “What are the possibilities of this taking place and this being the most unlucky man? It’s not possible.”
Caregiver experience
Chemirmir was born and raised in Kenya’s Rift Valley, between the cities of Eldoret and Nakuru. He told The News that he’s the son of a wealthy farmer and his second of three wives. Chemirmir was one of 28 children.
He said he was generally well-liked and a good student, especially in math class. While in Kenya, he said, he began his work as a caregiver — taking care of his father, who he said was 100 years old at the time.
Chemirmir said he moved in 2003 to the United States, where he sold cars and began working as a senior caregiver in Dallas. First, he said, he worked for agencies that would place him with clients. But he said he made more money finding his own clients, and would charge $20 or $30 an hour to take care of elderly people all over North Texas.
That’s how he met the family of Carolyn MacPhee, he said. MacPhee’s death in December 2017 is now one of the five indictments against him in Collin County.
MacPhee’s family says they hired Chemirmir to take care of their father, Jack MacPhee, who died in April 2017. After Carolyn MacPhee’s death, they found her broken and bloody glasses on a counter near her body. They also found that jewelry was missing from her home.
Chemirmir admitted he knew the home well, but tried to use that in his defense. He said he was aware of other high-value items stored in a safe in the garage and argued that if he were the killer, he would’ve taken those instead of the jewelry.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Chemirmir said. “That would’ve been the first place to go.”
In many of the cases, just a few pieces of silver or a few pieces of jewelry were missing, leading some family members to not notice until much later that something was awry.
Chemirmir maintains that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He mentioned that other members of his family, who have declined to talk to The News, operate other senior living homes in McKinney and Allen where no suspicious deaths have been reported.
“If I was a killer, I could’ve killed all those ladies,” he said. “Nobody has been killed there.”
Focus on case details
But police say he used his experience as a caregiver to avoid suspicion and target dozens of women — sometimes going door-to-door at Dallas’ luxury senior living communities to find victims.
Medical examiner records, police reports and civil lawsuits show that the alleged killing spree began at Dallas’ high-end Edgemere community in April 2016. At least three victims have been identified there.
Chemirmir was arrested for trespassing at Edgemere in June 2016. He was sentenced to 70 days in the Dallas County jail but was released after 12 days on good behavior. He acknowledges this, and said he went back to the community after his release from jail to take care of senior clients. No other suspicious deaths have been reported there.
Police say that after his release, he also began visiting The Tradition-Prestonwood, where nine victims have been identified. One victim was killed at Parkview Frisco in September 2017, and a woman survived an attack there the next month. Seven women were killed at Preston Place in Plano between October 2017 and March 2018, police say. They’ve also identified four women who were killed at private homes in Plano, Dallas and Richardson.
Many of the deaths were initially attributed to natural causes, despite unanswered questions from family members and missing valuables. It was only after Chemirmir’s arrest that police began reinvestigating older deaths and medical examiners began amending death certificates from “heart attack” to “homicide.”
Chemirmir said that’s another reason he believes he should be found not guilty.
“I don’t even believe the medical examiner,” he said. “I think he was under pressure from politicians, people’s families and that changed his mind.”
Chemirmir knows the details that have been reported about each case thoroughly. In the interview, he regularly quoted The News’ extensive coverage.
Chemirmir doesn’t deny some key pieces in the prosecution’s case. He said he did have the jewelry box that led police to Harris, the final alleged victim, but said he bought it legally on the internet. He said that the OfferUp and Craigslist accounts used to sell other stolen jewelry are his, but that he didn’t do anything illegal.
He instead fixated on small details in each case that he believes will exonerate him.
For example, in March 2018, Mary Bartel, 91, survived an attack at Preston Place. Jurors in Chemirmir’s first trial saw recorded testimony from Bartel, where she described a man coming to her door, forcing his way inside and putting a pillow over her face until she lost consciousness. She died of unrelated causes in February 2020.
In her testimony, Bartel said she was unable to provide a physical description of her attacker — not even his race — because she was fixated on a pair of green gloves coming toward her face.
Chemirmir said prosecutors did not mention that police only found blue gloves when they searched his car and apartment.
Frustrations with defense
Chemirmir also said he’s frustrated with his lawyers’ defense of him, especially during the first trial. He said prosecutors misled the jury by not introducing evidence like his blue gloves.
The defense did not call any witnesses in Chemirmir’s trial, instead leaning on a strategy that relied on convincing jurors that the prosecution had not met its burden of proof.
Chemirmir said he wishes they would’ve said more.
“My attorneys were ineffective,” Chemirmir said. “They sat there while I’m shaking my head. They see the prosecutor continue to mislead and lie and hide evidence to the jurors. They know it’s not true and they don’t say anything to this day.”
Philip Hayes, Chemirmir’s lead attorney, did not comment when told about the interview. Kobby Warren, who led the defense in the first trial, did not respond to calls from The News.
Chemirmir said he’s written to attorneys, asking them questions about how they’ll defend him in April. He said he’s waiting to hear back but said he may ask for new representation.
“That’s about to change,” he said. “I’m about to file some motions soon.”
As of this month, Chemirmir has spent four years in jail. He said his faith has kept him certain. He said that he’s received messages from God, and that he prays every day for his speedy release.
“I’m doing better than I was in 2018 because I know things will start to work out,” he said.
‘Time is prison’
Even if he is acquitted in April, Chemirmir still faces 17 other counts of capital murder — and there are other cases that police say are linked to Chemirmir but haven’t yet been introduced to a grand jury. Collin County will also have an opportunity to try him for the cases in Plano and Frisco.
Prosecutors have more than a dozen cases to choose from, each linked to a family waiting for their own justice.
They’re sons and daughters like Jennie Bassett, who found her mother, Ann Conklin, dead in her Plano apartment in March 2018. Unlike other families, who waited years before getting a call telling them police believed Chemirmir had killed their loved one, police immediately told her that her mother was likely murdered.
She views April’s trial with anxiety, just like last year’s trial. She said that with every headline, every story about Chemirmir, she’s forced to relive it all.
“They say time heals. For us, time is agony,” Bassett said. “For us, time is prison.”
