Billy Chemirmir: Deaths First Ruled Natural

Case No. 03

Older women in North Texas died in their homes, and some of those deaths were first recorded as natural. How the State turned them into a pattern, and used the pattern at trial, is the signature question.

The Victims

Lu Thi Harris was 81. She was born on a Chinese island, moved as a girl to what is now Vietnam, and ran a restaurant and bar in Saigon. Her son-in-law testified that she got out of the city by helicopter from the roof of the American embassy to a carrier in the South China Sea. She went by Kim. Her son-in-law told the jury that she was “fun to be around” and “generous, very humorous and a real smart lady” (appellate brief), and that she liked to hand out $2 bills she ordered from the bank.

Mary Brooks was 87, and her family called her Mary Sue. She lived in a condominium in the Richardson area. After the verdict, her daughter said her love and her memories would live on in her family.

Mary Annis Bartel was 91, a widowed mother of six who went to Mass every morning. She survived the attack that led to Chemirmir’s arrest. In November 2019 Plano police gave her a Citizen Hero award, and her family says she forgave him. She died on Feb. 27, 2020, at an assisted living facility in Carrollton, a few days short of her 93rd birthday and before any trial (Dallas Morning News).

Families of other women whose cases were dismissed after the two convictions have asked that their mothers be recognized as victims too. Those cases were never tried, so this post does not describe them as proven. Why that distinction matters is the subject of The Case That Will Never Be Tried.

The Case

Warning Signs

Chemirmir was living in an apartment in Far North Dallas when he was arrested in 2018 (Dallas Morning News). He told police he bought and sold jewelry and had worked as a caregiver and security guard (NBC DFW). A home health company later said it had employed a “Benjamin Koitaba” until January 2016, using a stolen identity; police said Chemirmir had used that name (WFAA).

In April 2016, police found him roaming the halls at The Edgemere, a Dallas senior living community, and formally warned him to leave and stay away. He gave the Koitaba name. On June 18, 2016 he was arrested there for criminal trespass, sentenced to 70 days in jail and released after 12. The Dallas Morning News found that it was the first time police knew of him at a senior community (Dallas Morning News). Two Edgemere residents who died within a month of each other that year were later among the women whose deaths were linked to him.

Other warnings went unconnected. In October 2017 a 93-year-old woman at an assisted living community in Frisco survived an attack by a man posing as a maintenance worker who forced his way in, knocked her off her walker and tried to smother her with a pillow (Fox 4); Collin County later charged Chemirmir with attempted capital murder in that case (NBC DFW).

Preston Place

On March 15, 2018, a man visiting his mother at Preston Place, a retirement community in Plano, noticed someone loitering outside for hours. When he asked if the man needed help, the man said he was there to see his father. The visitor wrote down the license plate of the silver Nissan Altima. Police traced the car to Chemirmir through a Dallas accident report from two days later. These details are drawn from the testimony as summarized in the defense’s appellate brief.

Four days after the loitering, on March 19, Mary Bartel was found unconscious in her Preston Place apartment. She later said she had known instantly when she saw “those two green rubber gloves.” A man in green gloves told her to lie on the bed and pressed a pillow over her face. At the hospital she realized three rings were missing. Prosecutors later showed that about an hour after the attack, a phone tied to Chemirmir photographed one of the rings near his home and listed it on a resale app, and a buyer met him at a Starbucks that day to buy it (appellate brief).

The Arrest

On March 20, Plano detectives watched Chemirmir’s apartment complex. That evening he pulled up in a rented car, threw something into a dumpster, and was arrested in the parking lot with jewelry and a stack of cash in his hand. In the dumpster officers found a red jewelry box holding papers bearing the name of Lu Thi Harris. Dallas police went to her home for a welfare check, forced their way in, and found her dead. Keys from his car opened her security gate and front door (appellate brief).

Video from a Walmart near her home showed Harris and Chemirmir checking out at the same time that afternoon and leaving about a minute apart. Her son-in-law later identified jewelry found with Chemirmir as pieces she wore every day (appellate brief). Chemirmir also had an envelope of $2 bills, which he said he had bought from someone in Fort Worth (CBS News Texas). In his police interview he said, “I’ve never murdered anybody” (NBC DFW), and that he had bought the jewelry box about 20 minutes before his arrest (CBS News Texas).

The Search Widens

Three days after the arrest, a Dallas assistant police chief said the department’s initial estimate of deaths to review was “over 750 elderly females.” Police in four cities, Plano, Frisco, Dallas and Richardson, went back through the deaths of older women who had died alone, while the Dallas and Collin County medical examiner offices worked through the death certificates. That order of operations is the mechanism behind everything that followed: a certificate had to be amended, to homicide or else to undetermined, before a case could be indicted at all. Families learned in uneven ways. One daughter heard from a Plano detective who had read her Yelp review of her mother’s senior community (Dallas Morning News). Marilyn Bixler’s daughter learned through a Facebook message, from the daughter of another suspected victim, that her mother was on a list of possible victims. The Collin County medical examiner had changed the cause of death from a heart attack to undetermined seven months earlier. Nobody had told the family (CBS News Texas).

The delay cost evidence outright. Many of the women had been cremated long before anyone suspected a homicide, their apartments had been cleared and their belongings given away. In May 2018 investigators exhumed one woman’s body from a mausoleum at Restland Cemetery, performed an autopsy and returned her, having learned that her jewelry had been pawned days after her death. For most of the others there was nothing left to autopsy, which is why so much of what follows rests on circumstance rather than on findings.

The indictments came in waves. By June 2022, Chemirmir had been charged with capital murder in the deaths of 22 women. These are charges that were never tried, except in the Harris and Brooks cases:

• Dallas County (13): Lu Thi Harris, Phyllis Payne, Phoebe Perry, Norma French, Doris Gleason, Rosemary Curtis, Mary Brooks, Leah Corken, Juanita Purdy, Joyce Abramowitz, Margaret White, Doris Wasserman and Glenna Day (NBC News; NBC DFW; NBC; Oxygen).
• Collin County (9): Minnie Campbell, Carolyn MacPhee, Martha Williams, Miriam Nelson, Ann Conklin, Helen Lee, Marilyn Bixler, Diane Delahunty and Mamie Miya, plus two counts of attempted capital murder, including the attack on Mary Bartel (NBC DFW; NBC DFW).

The Harris Trials

The first trial, in November 2021, ran into a holdout. “He picks out women he knows are too weak to resist,” one of the prosecutors, Jerry Varney, told the jury (Fox 4). A jewelry broker testified that he had bought about $91,000 in jewelry from Chemirmir between 2015 and 2018 (NBC DFW). After about 10 hours of deliberation the jury reported it was deadlocked 11 to 1, and the judge declared a mistrial.

At the April 2022 retrial, prosecutors again relied on the Walmart video, Harris’s jewelry and keys, an FBI agent’s cell-site analysis (appellate brief), and Mary Bartel’s videotaped deposition. Defense lawyer Kobby Warren called the State’s case “all bark, no bite.” The defense called no witnesses, and Chemirmir did not testify. The jury convicted him after about 45 minutes (AP).

The Brooks Trial

Mary Brooks had been found in her Richardson condominium on Jan. 31, 2018, with grocery bags from the same Walmart still on her counter. Store video from the day before showed a silver Nissan Altima park beside her car and pull out right after her. A ring her family identified as missing was listed on one of Chemirmir’s resale accounts the next morning (appellate brief). Her family reported a safe, her wedding rings and a coral necklace missing (NBC DFW). The reporting described the coral necklace as one she always wore (CBS News Texas).

The defense again called no witnesses. “They are begging that you plug in the holes that they cannot,” defense lawyer Phillip Hayes told the jury (AP). The jury convicted him in under 30 minutes (NBC DFW). A week later, families of other women gave victim-impact statements. “You stole my mom, my best friend,” said Loren Adair Smith (ABC News 4).

One feature of that trial belongs in any discussion of other-crimes evidence: the jury trying Mary Brooks’s death also heard DNA evidence from the Lu Thi Harris and Martha Williams cases. Forensic proof tied to two other women, in a prosecution for a third, is the cumulative-prejudice problem Rule 403 exists to weigh.

Two more of those statements show what the sentencing hearing in a single death became. Ellen French House held up a photograph of her mother, Norma French, and then another: “This is my mother after you pried her wedding ring off of her finger that she couldn’t even get off.” Lindsey Watkins, Helen Lee’s granddaughter, said: “Her life was worth just a few thousand dollars to you. But it was worth everything to me.” Neither death was ever tried.

Dismissals and Death

After the second life sentence, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said of the man he had just convicted twice, “Mr. Chemirmir will die in the penitentiary and that was my goal.” He then dismissed the remaining Dallas cases. Some families objected: “I don’t think that is strong enough for Texas law and for the gravity of these crimes,” said a nephew of one woman whose death was never charged (NBC DFW). In August 2023, Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis said he would not seek death, “in consultation with the families,” and that Chemirmir “will never be a free man again” (NBC DFW).

Weeks later, on Sept. 19, 2023, Chemirmir was found dead in his cell at the Coffield Unit. An Office of Inspector General report identified his cellmate, who was serving time on a murder charge, as the assailant (AARP), and a custodial death report listed blunt force trauma and an edged instrument (WFAA). “This was jailhouse justice,” said the same nephew (NBC DFW).

How the Case Was Built

The State assembled the Harris case from six kinds of evidence.

• The survivor’s account. Bartel gave a videotaped deposition in the summer of 2018, about two hours long, in which both prosecutors and the defense questioned her while Chemirmir watched by video from jail. After her death, the jury saw the video.
• Store video. Video from a Walmart at Arapaho and Coit Road showed Chemirmir and Harris in the store at the same time on the day she died, according to the defense’s appellate brief (docket).
• The property. The jewelry box, cash and jewelry, and the keys that opened Harris’s doors.
• Cell-site records. An FBI agent testified about records from his phone, according to the defense’s appellate brief (docket).
• The medical findings. Smothering with a pillow can leave little trace, and it leaves less the less the victim is able to struggle. Dallas County’s chief medical examiner told the Brooks jury that in a smothering case “it’s not uncommon you don’t have physical findings,” and that if a death “looks to be a natural death, nothing at the moment seems suspicious.” A University of North Texas criminal justice lecturer, Bob Wall, told the Dallas Morning News that small hemorrhages called petechiae do not always appear and are not an automatic sign of foul play. The research cuts the same way in both directions. In one 30-year national series of asphyxia homicides, petechiae were recorded in about 61 percent of cases and 7 percent of victims had no observable external injuries at all, so their absence proves little and their presence proves less than people assume.
• The other cases. The Bartel attack and the Brooks death, admitted over objection under Rule 404(b).

The Signature Question

The State did not offer the other cases as a signature. According to the defense’s appellate brief, prosecutors told the judge the Bartel attack explained why police were waiting for Chemirmir and let the jury “get the complete picture.” They offered the Brooks death, in the brief’s words, to show the same scheme and plan, motive, and no mistake. The judge admitted both under Rule 404(b).

The common thread the State drew was the same Walmart. Prosecutors alleged that Chemirmir followed Brooks home from it, and they had video of him in the same store as Harris on the day she died. The defense answered that the store was the only real similarity, and that the State had no video of him there in the Brooks case, only a silver Nissan Altima parking near her car.

“No mistake” is the purpose that matters most in a case like this. It rests on the doctrine of chances, which tells us that highly unusual events are unlikely to repeat themselves inadvertently or by happenstance. Dabney v. State, 492 S.W.3d 309 (Tex. Crim. App. 2016), citing De La Paz v. State, 279 S.W.3d 336, 347 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009). The more similar deaths there are, the less likely they were all natural. Segundo used the same doctrine to prove identity rather than to answer a claim of mistake. Segundo v. State, 270 S.W.3d 79, 88 n.24, 89 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008). Texas also requires that, before the jury hears about another offense at the guilt phase, the trial court make an initial determination under Rule 104(b), when the evidence is offered, that a jury could reasonably find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed it. Harrell v. State, 884 S.W.2d 154, 160-61 (Tex. Crim. App. 1994). As to the Brooks evidence at the Harris trial, that raised a prior question: was her death a crime at all?

That is the loop in a case built on reclassified deaths. According to the brief’s account of the testimony, the medical examiner changed the Brooks ruling to homicide based on information that included Harris’s death, the Bartel attack, and “the circumstances surrounding each offense.” Her death was then offered as one more example of the pattern. The defense argued there was “no physical evidence found explaining her death” and that the ruling “was based on theories and what the detectives told him.” No appellate court decided whether that argument was right, because the appeals ended with his death.

Could the evidence have come in as a true signature, to prove identity? Under Segundo, similarities typical of a type of crime do not count. Older women shopping alone, followed home and robbed of their jewelry is a pattern with force, but whether a single store makes it distinctive is exactly the kind of question an appeal would have tested.

Mary Bartel’s account was different. She survived, she identified what happened to her, and she was questioned under oath by both sides. Her evidence is the strongest link in the chain and the clearest example of how Texas law can preserve a vulnerable witness’s testimony.

What the Defense Could Have Tested

• Each change in manner of death. Ask what new medical finding, if any, supported each change from natural to homicide, and what came from police information instead. See Challenging Forensic Evidence in Texas Homicide Cases.
• The petechiae. Press how much weight a nonspecific finding can bear, and what else causes it in a person of advanced age.
• The cell-site records. The defense did challenge the FBI agent’s analysis, with a running objection. The test is to hold such testimony to what the records support: an approximate area, refined by timing data, rather than a precise location. See Can Cell Phone Location Data Be Used Against You? and Can Call Detail Records Really Prove Where You Were?
• The similarities. Separate what was distinctive from what is common to burglaries of older people, and argue Rule 403 on the rest.
• The deposition. Ask what discovery the defense had when it questioned Bartel in 2018, since a deposition is only as good as the file behind the questions.

How It Works in Texas

Other offenses. Rule 404(b)(2) lists permitted purposes “such as” motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident, so the list is illustrative rather than closed. Segundo sets the bar when the purpose is identity, and Harrell requires the judge, at the guilt phase, to make an initial determination under Rule 104(b) that a jury could reasonably find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed it. At punishment the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirement comes from Art. 37.07, sec. 3(a) instead, and it runs to the factfinder rather than to the judge as a threshold. And Rule 403 runs the other way from how it is usually described: the judge may exclude relevant evidence only if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence. The tilt is toward admission.

Preserving an older witness’s testimony. Under Art. 39.025 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, when the State applies to depose an alleged victim or witness who is 65 or older, or who has a disability, the court must order the State to take the deposition no later than the 60th day after the application is filed. Note where that deadline falls: it runs to the taking of the deposition, not to the entry of the order. It can be extended by written agreement, and the court must grant a State request to extend it if a reason is the unavailability, health or well-being of the witness. If the defendant is confined in a correctional facility, the court must issue any orders or warrants needed to secure his presence, and the sheriff must provide a secure location and enough law enforcement personnel. A defendant who neither attends nor asks for a continuance waives the right to be present. Under Art. 39.12, a deposition may not be read at trial unless oath is made to one of six grounds the article lists, one of which is that the witness has died since the deposition was taken. When the State offers it any credible person may make the oath; when the defense offers it the defendant must make the oath in person. For criminal proceedings commenced on or after Sept. 1, 2025, House Bill 2348 also lets the court, on either party’s motion, order the deposition taken by video recording, and it conditions admissibility on the person who operated the camera being available to testify to the recording’s authenticity and to the taking of the deposition. Reporting on this case does not say which provision Bartel’s recording was made under, and the accounts do not agree on what it was: the wire services called it a deposition and one station called it a taped interview. The Confrontation Clause bars a deceased witness’s testimonial statements unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine. Two limits matter. Nontestimonial hearsay falls outside the Clause altogether, and a defendant who procures a witness’s unavailability forfeits the objection, which is not an academic point in a homicide case. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68 (2004).

Expert opinion on cause and manner of death. A medical examiner’s ruling is expert testimony and can be tested like any other, including on what the opinion rests on and whether it depends on facts supplied by investigators. See How to Challenge a Forensic Expert Witness in Texas.

Death certificates. After lobbying by families in this case, Texas passed “Marilyn’s Law,” House Bill 723 (2021). Now Health and Safety Code sec. 193.012 requires a person who submits a request to modify the medical certification on a death certificate that is not a pending death certificate to give the decedent’s next of kin written notice of the modification, in the manner the department prescribes, for requests made on or after Sept. 1, 2021. The duty falls on whoever asks for the change, not on the State, and the statute sets no deadline. The name comes from the bill’s short title and does not appear in the code section.

Discovery. For offenses committed on or after Jan. 1, 2014, Art. 39.14 requires the State, as soon as practicable after a timely defense request, to produce and permit inspection and copying of offense reports, designated documents and papers, witness statements and designated tangible things that “constitute or contain evidence material to any matter involved in the action,” and it reaches items held by the State or by any person under contract with the State. It is a duty rather than a courtesy. Whether a medical examiner’s file and the records behind a changed death ruling sit inside that possession, custody or control is an argument built on those words rather than a phrase in the statute, and it is the argument to make. See The Michael Morton Act, the Richard Miles Act and the Heath Opinion Now Under Fire.

Death during an appeal. Under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 7.1(a)(2), a criminal appeal is permanently abated if the appellant dies after the appeal is perfected but before the appellate court issues its mandate. Both of Chemirmir’s appeals ended that way in September 2023, before the Court of Appeals decided the issues raised in the Harris appeal. No brief was ever filed in the Brooks appeal.

Where Things Stand Now

Chemirmir’s appeals were permanently abated in September 2023 (Harris docket; Brooks docket). The remaining Dallas County cases had already been dismissed, and the Collin County cases were never tried.

Daughters of the women formed an advocacy group, Secure Our Seniors’ Safety, in July 2019. Shannon Gleason Dion, whose mother was Doris Gleason, founded it with three other daughters, and they pushed for changes in Texas law (Texas Observer). Besides Marilyn’s Law, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1132 (2021). Texas had regulated crafted precious metal dealers under Occupations Code chapter 1956 since well before this case, and that bill amended the existing scheme, redefining crafted precious metal, defining jewelry store, and requiring the commissioner to examine at least 10 dealers a year. In 2025 it passed Senate Bill 1283, which added Chapter 786 to the Health and Safety Code. A senior retirement community must now run a criminal history check on each of its own employees, must disclose in the residence contract whether it requires the businesses it hires to check theirs, and must send residents and post written notice of criminal activity posing a risk to them, within two business days of a report to law enforcement or of known criminal trespassing. The chapter also bars a community from penalizing residents for talking to police or family about safety. Its exemptions are broad enough to matter, and they include health care institutions and any other facility the Health and Human Services Commission regulates. “If my mother and so many others knew there had been a criminal trespasser, they would have never opened the door,” Loren Smith told lawmakers.

Several families also sued senior living operators, alleging they failed to protect residents (Dallas Morning News). One operator called allegations that one of its executives withheld information “absolutely false” (CBS News Texas). The case has since been the subject of a 2024 Paramount+ docuseries, Pillowcase Murders, and a podcast season, The Unforgotten: Unnatural Causes.

One of those suits turns on a death that the families say was preventable in the most literal way. Miriam Nelson, 81, called management when a man posing as a maintenance worker tried to get into her Plano home. Management did not promptly call police. She was murdered three days later. That sequence is the reason Loren Smith’s line to the Legislature about opening the door is not a figure of speech.

Henry Lee Lucas, the first entry in this series, shows the opposite risk: cases closed on a confession rather than proof.

Sources

This post describes Billy Chemirmir’s two capital murder convictions using court records and published reporting. His appeals were abated after his death and never decided. Deaths in cases that were dismissed or never tried are not described as proven. The cellmate identified by prison officials is not named. This post is offered for general information about Texas law, is not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.