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Alleged Serial Killer Who Targeted Elderly Claims God Won't Let Him Be Convicted
Ahead of his retrial for the murder of Lu Harris, accused Billy Chemirmir maintains that he is not a killer.
A suspected Texas serial killer accused of targeting elderly women claims he is “not a killer” ahead of his retrial.
Billy Chemirmir, 49, told the Dallas Morning News last week, “I am not a killer.”
In the phone interview from jail, he said, “I’m not at all what they’re saying I am. I am a very innocent person. I was not brought (up) that way."
Chemirmir is currently scheduled to be retried on April 25 for capital murder in the death of Lu Harris, 81. A mistrial was declared in November in the case, after the 12 presiding jurors said they were deadlocked 11 to 1.
Chemirmir doesn’t appear worried at all about his upcoming retrial.
“100% sure I will not go to prison,” he told the Dallas Morning News. He claimed he has been receiving messages from God, who told him that he won't be convicted.
The suspected serial killer even boldly told the reporter interviewing him, “I want you to write this down, because we’re going to talk about it again. I will not go to prison, Charlie.”
Harris' 2018 slaying is one of 18 capital murder charges — all involving elderly women — on which Chemirmir had been indicted. Investigators have also linked him to six additional deaths between 2016 and 2018, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Chemirmir, who moved to the U.S. from Kenya in 2003, was first eyed as a possible attacker in March 2018 when he was suspected of trying to smother 91-year-old Mary Annis Bartel to death, according to Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS. Before police arrested him in connection with that alleged incident, they caught him throwing a jewelry box into a dumpster, according to a 2018 press release from the Dallas Police Department.
The jewelry box led them to the body of Harris; her lipstick was smeared on the pillow used to kill her just two days after the attack on Bartel, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
After the discovery of Harris' body, investigators searched Chemirmir's apartment and allegedly found jewelry, cell phones and other belongings of other victims. Prosecutors say he targeted many North Texas senior living facility residents while either working as health care staff or impersonating maintenance personnel at the facilities. Many of the deaths were initially listed as due to natural causes.
Even though the first trial was focused solely on Harris, it began with a taped deposition Bartel made before her death.
In the recording, Bartel explained that she knew she was in trouble as soon as she opened her door and saw Chemirmir wearing gloves. She explained that he'd smothered her with a pillow and, when she came to, some of her most precious jewelry — including her wedding band and diamond engagement ring — was gone.
“You hope that he feels some kind of remorse, and the fact is he feels nothing,” Cheryl Pangburn, whose mother, Marilyn Bixler, was killed in 2017, told the Dallas Morning News. Police believe Bixler was one of Chemirmir’s victims.
Chemirmir has pleaded not guilty to Harris’ murder. He faces life in prison without parole if convicted of her killing.
