Opening statements and testimony is to begin in the first capital murder trial of Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir, 48, of Dallas.
The Kenyan national is charged in the March 2018 smothering death of Lu Thi Harris, 81. It is the first trial in the 18 cases filed against Chemirmir in two counties.
Chemirmir was arrested after police began piecing together a series of deaths of elderly women. The day before Harris was found dead, Plano firefighters had revived a 91-year-old woman who was found unconscious in her retirement home room. They revived Mary Bartel who told them a man had come into her room, attempted to smother her with a pillow, stolen jewelry and fled. Police soon realized there had been other deaths in the same retirement community that had initially been considered natural causes.
Investigators began asking questions and found that one woman who had seen a car she didn’t recognize and had written down the license plate number. That car belonged to Chemirmir.
Surveillance was set up outside of Chemirmir’s apartment and police were there when they say they saw Chemirmir throwing trash into the dumpster. One of the items was a jewelry box belonging to Harris. The officers went to Harris’s home and found her dead in her bed. Lipstick on her pillow suggested it had been used as a murder weapon. The Medical Examiner would later determine Harris had been dead about an hour before her body was discovered.
Police began contacting other agencies and a web of information began pointing to death after death that had either been unexplained or presumed to be due to natural causes. In many of the cases, police say jewelry had been taken. Chemirmir was suddenly a chief suspect, with police saying he had posed as a maintenance worker or medical technician, taking advantage of lackluster oversight at several senior citizen communities.
In all, authorities suspect Chemirmir in at least 24 murders. He has been formally charged in 18 cases. The murder of Harris is the first of two cases Dallas County prosecutors say they will use to lock Chemirmir up for life without parole.
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“They are going with their case with the strongest evidence,” said University of North Texas, Dallas College of Law professor Brian Owsley. “You really want to come out of the box strong, get the conviction, have a clean one. Don’t leave some procedural errors that are good appellate claims.”
While this case is ostensibly about Harris’s death, prosecutors intend to present two evidence that Chemirmir was behind two other deaths, to show a scheme or motive. And while there has been plenty of news coverage about the case, a jury was seated last week promised to State District Court Judge Raquel 'Rocky' Jones that all could decide the facts from the evidence presented in this single trial.
That would limit the jury to the three cases, and not the spectacle of the other cases that are pending. It may also be the defense’s best hope for avoiding the only remaining penalty for capital murder; life without parole.
Legal observers say it is entirely possible the jury instructions, known as the charge, could contain at last one other lesser included charge, felony murder. While it also carries the possibility of life in prison, felony murder allows a convicted defendant to seek parole after 30 years.
Some relatives of victims have complained that the death penalty is not an option in Dallas County. But there may be a practical point to that decision.
“If they get life without the possibility of parole they’re going to have to pay to incarcerate him for the rest of his natural life,” Owsley said. “But they’re not going to have to pay for multiple attorneys, they’re not going to have to pay for all the appellate reviews. They’re not going to have to deal with the stuff going up to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to stay executions because of new evidence.”
There is also the burden of a death penalty hearing. Prosecutors would be able to raise other cases during punishment, but the defense is given wide latitude. Under Supreme Court rulings, the defendant in any death penalty case is entitled to every available piece of evidence. That includes a deep background investigation and any potential evidence that may be presented in mitigation.
Chemirmir is from Kenya.
“That means they are going to have to go over to Kenya where he is from originally and try to find family and friends who knew him back then. That’s an additional delay, an additional cost. “
But while Dallas County has no intention of bearing that expense, Collin County, where Chemirmir faces five capital murder cases, has not ruled it out. Court files neither rule the death penalty in or out, and prosecutors have been mum on their intentions.
Testimony in the trial is expected to last all week.
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