The man arrested (no photo so far) is Ricardo Saldivar.
Fox Newshas a story too and commenters speculate that Saldivar is an illegal alien. Here is what one commenter said:
As an alternate to the death penalty in this case, why not send the suspect, if found guilty, to a CA Police K-9 Academy as a live “training aid”. He would be given a rubber knife to defend himself. That would get better TV ratings than an injection.
When we learn more about Saldivar, I’ll post it.
I spent my writing time today at RRWwriting this week’s refugee news round-up.
“How many of you knew that an alleged serial killer recently operated for years in Dallas and Collin counties, targeting elderly residents?”
(State Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco introducing his bill, one of three bills to assure the horrific murders of vulnerable seniors bring some protection for others.)
The question Patterson asks is one I pose to friends when they ask me about topics I write about on this blog.
Invariably the answer is no, they hadn’t heard, and that is because a story that should be known across America is no where to be found in the mainstream media.
Oh yes, it was covered briefly when Billy Chemirmir was initially arrested, but very little news since then has escaped beyond the state of Texas.
If this is the first you are hearing about it, know that a Kenyan immigrant spent several years getting into the apartments and homes of elderly women in the Dallas area, allegedly smothering them with pillows and stealing their valuables.
Investigators and medical examiners missed the murderous pattern and two dozen died before Chemirmir was arrested.
(There could be more victims. The extent of his murder spree is still not fully known.)
Front page news in Texas yesterday! So where is other major media?
Although some were suspicious, the victims’ families were led to believe their loved one died of natural causes.
Tragically, when the case began to unravel, some family members learned through social media that their mother was the victim of a serial killer.
But, not letting their personal tragedies cause them to mourn in silence, some of the daughters came together to form an organization whose mission is to make sure their horror isn’t visited upon others in Texas.
That is where we pick up this story that has been covered extensively by reporter Charles Scudder at the Dallas Morning News.
‘It is overwhelming’: Daughters testify in support of Texas bill filed in response to Chemirmir case
Police say the women’s mothers were probably victims of the serial-murder suspect. Now, families are urging Texas legislators to pass measures to improve safety in senior-living homes.
AUSTIN — Arm in arm, heels clicking down the marble floors of the Texas Capitol as they walked toward a hearing of the House Committee on Public Health, Shannon Dion and Cheryl Pangburn worried that the legislators wouldn’t hear their message.
For years, they’ve tried to raise an alarm. For years, they said, no one has listened.
Dion was always suspicious about how her mother, Doris Gleason, died in October 2016, but she was brushed off by police, property managers and news reporters alike. Pangburn also had lingering questions after her mother, Marilyn Bixler, died in September 2017, but for months after she learned the truth through Facebook, she couldn’t get police to give her a straight answer.
Investigators now say both women’s mothers were killed by Billy Chemirmir, who is charged with 18 counts of capital murder and two counts of attempted capital murder in Dallas and Collin counties.
Police say he targeted women in independent-living communities and their own homes, smothering them with pillows and stealing jewelry, cash and other valuables to sell.
“You don’t wake up in the mornings without thinking of it,” Dion said.
“It’s with us every day, and you get used to that flow,” Pangburn said. “Then you’re in Austin testifying and it hits you.”
Within days of learning what had happened, Dion and Pangburn say, both wanted to find a silver lining — something good to come from their horror, something to make sure no one else would go through it, too. They and other relatives of the dead founded the nonprofit Secure Our Seniors’ Safety to raise awareness about the slayings and pressure lawmakers to pass laws aimed at improving security at senior-living communities.
Now, after countless late-night calls with each other and Zoom meetings with lawmakers, Pangburn and Dion were finally in Austin, talking to legislators, asking them to listen.
More here. It might be behind a paywall (I am a subscriber), but you should be able to read the story here.
Please visit the website Secure our Senior’s Safety (sign up for their newsletter) and see how these women have come together to assure that their personal tragedy results in changes in the law so that maybe your family, at least in Texas, doesn’t suffer the same fate.
Driven by a special passion they are Fighting Back in a campaign I’ve been describing in my Community Organizing 101 series.
Billy Chemirmir may very well be the most prolific killer in Texas history, so don’t let the mainstream media succeed in hiding the story because it doesn’t fit their narrative about immigrants and about Africans.
See the most recent news at ‘Inside Edition’and be prepared to shed tears for the family members who were interviewed about the loss of their beloved mothers allegedly at the hands of a ‘new American,’ a man ‘welcomed’ to America.
Suspected Serial Killer Accused of Smothering 18 Seniors and Stealing Jewelry
The three daughters of murdered seniors explain that all three of their mothers lived on the same floor at the upscale Tradition senior living center.
“…if only that detective unit had a little more intellectual curiosity, how many other people’s mothers could have been spared?”
(Scott MacPhee whose mother was murdered by the Kenyan Killer)
Reporter Lise Olsen at the Texas Observer has done an extensive examination of the failure of police departments across the country to solve murder cases that if solved early could have saved many other lives.
The report is long and begins with a recitation of the failings in the Texas case to identify early-on an alleged serial killer I call the Kenyan Killer, Billy Chemirmir, who alternately is believed to have posed as a health care worker or a maintenance man to gain access to elderly women’s homes and apartments some in upscale senior living facilities where families had every expectation that their beloved mother was safe.
Olsen, at theTexas Observer, features the Dallas area police departments failures, but broadens her report to explain a reduction in the number of murder cases solved nationwide is a growing and shameful problem.
I will add one more shameful matter involving the Chemirmir case and that is that the national media has apparently decided to relegate the case to Texas media only.
UNDETECTED
As more homicide cases go unsolved, the backlog of unsolved murders grows and serial killers are free to kill again. Too few police departments are effectively deploying their resources to stop them.
Olsen wraps with this story which I hadn’t previously heard about. At least a half a dozen vulnerable women were killed after Carolyn MacPhee who died on December 31, 2017 at the hands of Billy Chemirmir.
She fought hard because his DNA was (too late) found on her glasses.
Carolyn MacPhee met Chemirmir in October 2016 when her husband of nearly 60 years, Jack, was dying of a progressive nervous system disorder. The MacPhees had met in the 1950s at Washington State University in the mountains of Spokane. Even in her early 80s, Carolyn still had the flair of the girl she’d been when they became college sweethearts. She didn’t want to send Jack to an institution, but needed help to care for him in their Plano home. She found Chemirmir, who was working under the alias Benjamin Koitaba, through a service that claimed to vet home health workers, although Chemirmir, using a fake ID and already with a criminal record, should not have passed a background check. [Should not have still been in the country in my view!—ed]
“Koitaba” worked as a replacement caregiver in the MacPhees’ home off and on for four months—long enough to learn the family’s routine and the layout of their home.
As part of the care team, he received notice when Jack died. He came back to murder his former patient’s widow six months later, according to a Collin County indictment.When found on Sunday, December 31, 2017, Carolyn was dressed up and ready to go out to church.
Her son, Scott MacPhee, came to his mother’s house to meet Plano police officers that day. He was mystified by what he observed: “It was cold that day, but her coat had disappeared. And two valuable rings she always wore were missing.” He challenged a Plano detective about the missing items, but the response was, according to him, “Old people hide their stuff.”There was blood in the bathroom, in the garage, near her body, and even on her glasses. And yet his mother had no obvious wounds. Officers collected no samples of the blood. Nor did they take photos or videos, he said. No autopsy was ordered by Collin County officials.
The death investigation seemed like a whirlwind, Scott said: “We found her, the cops show up, the paramedics show up, the CSI department shows up, and they rope things off, they do all their investigation, and the detective says she died of natural causes.”
Months later, when he saw the news stories about Chemirmir’s arrest and all the other killings and robberies of older women, he called police again.Eventually, they called back. Through cell phone records, investigators told him they knew that Chemirmir had visited his mother’s home on the day she died. They requested her bloodstained glasses, which he had saved. On them was Chemirmir’s DNA.
So far, Carolyn MacPhee is the only victim whom police have identified among Chemirmir’s former home health clients, although he worked in other homes between 2013 and 2019, her son said. In that same period, police say he was carrying outserial murders.
What Scott can’t stop wondering is this: How many elderly people were marked as natural deaths whose deaths were not natural at all?
Publicly, the Plano, Dallas, and Richardson police departments have said that they are reviewing more than 750 other unassisted elderly deaths over the past 10 years, but Scott is skeptical of their commitment to the cold murder cases. “I have no evidence they’ve done that. I’ve seen no more indictments.”
He now suspects his mom, fit and feisty, died only after trying to fight off her killer. He believes other lives could have been saved if the blood the killer left behind in his mother’s home had been tested sooner. “Nothing is going to bring her back, he said. “But if only that detective unit had a little more intellectual curiosity, how many other people’s mothers could have been spared?”
Carolyn lived by Jesus’ commandment in John 13:34-35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Don’t miss my post below.
Visit Save our Seniors Safetyand subscribe to their newsletter to keep up with what these women are doing to make sure their mothers’ deaths are not forgotten and that some good comes from their personal tragedies.
They are working on a legislative initiative and could use your help.
Kenyan Billy Chemirmir was indicted in yet another murder of a vulnerable senior woman the day before last week’s March on the Capitol. Other than the Dallas Morning News, crickets from the rest of the media.
And, you know why that is! Chemirmir represents the exact opposite profile of what the media wants us to believe about the good immigrants coming here from African villages for a better life in America.
In my opinion, besides the fact that Chemirmir should not even have been in the country, the case represents a colossal failure on the part of the senior living facilities to keep their residents safe, and an even more frightening and extremely sad failure on the part of authorities who didn’t put the pieces together sooner.
Families had expressed concerns about missing jewelry and the conditions in their loved ones homes that should have been red flags to investigators.
Chemirmir indicted with 18th capital murder charge
A Dallas County grand jury has added an 18th count of capital murder against Billy Chemirmir, who is accused of smothering and robbing elderly people for years in Dallas and Collin counties.
The latest charge is in the death of Glenna Day, who was killed Oct. 15, 2016, at The Tradition-Prestonwood, a luxury senior living community in Far North Dallas.
Day, an artist, had worried about unexplained deaths on her hall.
Billy Chemirmir is accused in indictments and lawsuits with the deaths of 24 elderly people in North Texas.
Billy Chemirmir is accused in indictments and lawsuits with the deaths of 24 elderly people in North Texas. (Dallas County Jail / Dallas County Jail)
Chemirmir has been indicted in connection with eight other deaths at that complex, and he has been linked in lawsuits to one other. Including several other deaths that have not been included in his 18 indictments, he has been accused of killing 24 people from April 2016 through March 2018.
If convicted, Chemirmir could face the death penalty. He has said he is innocent and is in jail, with bail set at $17.6 million.
[….]
Before she died, a string of strange deaths down the hall had worried Day, her family says.
She told her daughter over and over in late 2016 about a number of her neighbors on the fourth floor who had died unexpectedly, but she didn’t have any more details about the strange deaths.
“Maybe I should move,” her mother told a friend.
Just a few weeks later, Day was found dead.
Unfortunately, the Dallas Morning News story is behind a paywall (or at least I think it is, I am a subscriber). Reporter Charles Scudder deserves a Pulitzer when this is all done and I sure hope he is writing a book!
Chemirmir’s trial is scheduled for April, but could be delayed.
In what is surely a rare thing to see, the victims’ daughters have joined forces to attempt to strengthen Texas laws to make it more difficult for a monster like Chemirmir to have such easy access to anyone’s beloved mother in the future.
See my tag (Billy Chemirmir) for all of my posts on this nightmare story going back to March of 2018 when he was arrested at the end of a two year killing spree.
