Who is Billy Chemirmir? Texas serial killer charged with killing 17 elderly women, probed for 1,000 such attacks
DALLAS, TEXAS: A Texas man who was accused of smothering more than a dozen women living in North Texas retirement homes and robbing them of their jewelry has now been indicted for three additional charges of capital murder, bringing the total to 17.
Healthcare worker Billy Chemirmir was accused of stealing jewelry, cash and other precious items from his victims and sell them at Dallas-area pawn shops. Chemirmir was charged for murdering Joyce Abramowitz, 82, Doris Wasserman, 90, and Margaret White 86, who were all killed at The Tradition-Prestonwood senior living community in Dallas between July 2016 and December 2017. Chermirmir, who is a Kenyan resident and is living in the US illegally, has a total of 17 capital murder charges and two counts of attempted capital murder stemming from similar attacks.
If convicted, he could face the death penalty and is in jail in lieu of an $11.6 million bail. His attorney, Phillip Hayes, stated that a lot of the evidence against him is circumstantial. “It seems like every unexplained death they come up with, they’re pinning on him,” Hayes said. “If you look at all of it, it doesn’t stand up," he added. He is still being investigated for around 1,000 unsolved deaths or attacks mostly targeting elderly women in nursing homes.
According to a report by NBC New York, all three deceased women were believed to have been suffocated with a pillow or strangled to death prior to being robbed, though the exact nature of their death is unknown. Investigators said Chemirmir acted as a maintenance worker to gain access to the women's apartments and later sold or pawned their jewelry. The three deaths that sparked the latest round of charges against Chemirmir first came to light in civil complaints that had been filed against the retirement community where the victims lived.
Joyce Abramowitz was murdered in July 2016, three months after she reported a robbery, while she was on vacation. After her death, her son reported that a safe was missing from her room. After a month, Margaret White was found dead at The Tradition Prestonwood complex, where her residence was found to have been stripped of her jewelry. A day before Christmas in 2017, Doris Wasserman was found murdered on her bed, just hours after spending time with her family.
Chemirmir is in jail since March 2018, for killing 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris. In May 2019, he was charged with 11 other murders by smothering.