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00:02in 2016 something really unusual happened in these living communities people are dying
00:09unexpectedly there were odd things like the victims lining up in a very straight line
00:19what he looks for was a vulnerable woman somebody who he could easily overpower and control
00:30it took a really good investigator to see that you know you should look for lipstick on the pillows
00:38he was a professional killer
01:03miriam nelson is a lively 81 year old who has recently lost her husband of 59 years
01:13and she moves into a residence actually an open community residence with her daughter and grandson
01:21just down the street her daughter was really happy that her mom is going to be relatively nearby and
01:30feel secure in that in that facility
01:39i'm dr joni johnson a clinical and forensic psychologist and private investigator
01:43and i spend most of my time evaluating violent offenders
01:48north dallas really was a wonderful place to live if you were a senior citizen and you were looking
01:55for companionship and you were looking for comfort they had a number of upscale living facilities
02:02but they really did understand i think their clientele and who they were attracting and they
02:08really did cater to that particular group and in particular i think they really understood the social
02:14needs of this group and how and how important it was and how advantageous it was to be around people
02:22who were your age who had similar life experiences who were interested in a lot of the same things
02:27and this attracted many people to go live at some of these facilities
02:32these independent living centers are great for people especially that don't have a lot of family
02:38and you're with your peers for the most part they organize all kinds of recreation whether it be
02:46doing tai chi or going out for lunch or going to the theater they're very good at keeping an active
02:52schedule you know to justify the amount of money that they charge for these places and obviously the
02:59more expensive the place you know probably the more bells and whistles these were not cheap
03:06facilities we're talking about some of them rented apartments for four thousand dollars a month
03:10some of them require buy-in of as much as a million dollars
03:23she had just had some groceries delivered and she got a knock on her door so she goes to the
03:29door opens
03:29the door and there's a man saying i'm checking for leaks he's a smartly dressed man but he's wearing a
03:38a rather incongruous pair of gloves that that seem at odds with with the rest of his outfit
03:48i'm professor donna youngs i am what's known as an investigative psychologist
03:57although she asks for id he has no id to present but she's suspicious something doesn't feel right
04:11i'm lisa olson and i'm an investigative reporter she calls the front desk while he's in the apartment
04:18and tries to reach someone and leaves a long voicemail saying did you send anyone to look for leaks no
04:25one
04:25answers her phone call right away but he leaves probably because she was on the cell phone right
04:31so she gets very spooked by that because eventually she is told that there was no one sent to check
04:38for leaks
04:41after he left she noticed that a necklace was missing and she talked to her daughter her daughter
04:48was also concerned concerned to the point that her grandson came just to make her feel at ease and
04:54also to make sure that she was safe miriam's grandsons stays ignite and waits till she feels a little a
05:03little
05:03more reassured
05:10after he moves out miriam is found dead at her apartment
05:18and what's more the family discovered that there's more than 11 000 worth of jewelry missing
05:42in 2016 something really unusual happened in these living communities starting at a place called
05:49edgemere in a three-month period of time there were three unexpected deaths in this community
05:57and there was jewelry missing after each of these deaths and it was very unusual that you would have
06:07three people in this community die within that period of time as a matter of fact the security guard
06:12asked his manager at one point how common is it to have somebody die unexpectedly and the manager
06:19said well the last time it happened was seven years ago we're talking sudden deaths of relatively
06:25healthy women none of whom had time to even call 911 or call a family member and say i'm not
06:34feeling well
06:35you know they just all suddenly keeled over you know so there was some really mysterious things going on there
06:49he tells police that he was at these facilities because he worked as a caregiver and that he was constantly
06:57looking for new clients so he was he claimed to just be you know door knocking or approaching
07:04people looking for clients they warned him and essentially said we're not going to take you in now
07:09but don't come back here's your warning and yet it wasn't that long later that he spotted again
07:18and they called the police and at that point he is arrested
07:29billy shamir mir was born and grew up in kenya his father was a well-respected member of his village
07:38he had three wives and billy's mom was his second wife he had 28 siblings billy shamimi cared for his
07:48elderly father back in kenya taking care of him until he was 100 years old and this will have given
07:54him
07:54experience of understanding and dealing with much older people but it will also have made him very
08:03aware of just how vulnerable elderly people can be
08:14he was sponsored by one of his sisters who already lived in texas and he got a green card so
08:21he had
08:21been living here illegally as a legal permanent resident and he was working he was doing different
08:27kinds of jobs one of his siblings owned a elder care facility and he became a person who cared for
08:34the elderly he did home health care he would look for uh either jobs working for another company a
08:44health care company and if he didn't feel like he was getting uh paid properly or appreciated he would
08:50go off and look for his own clients my name is mitchell p roth i'm a professor of criminal justice
09:01and
09:02criminology at sam houston state university it seemed like he was more in the service side of things he
09:09didn't have any type of medical training he spends i think 12 days in jail he's finally released on good
09:33behavior
09:35people are dying unexpectedly they have no medical problems many of them have clean bills of help
09:42they're active they're spry and yet they are all of a sudden found dead
10:02doris gleason was a 92 year old widow she had been married to the same man for over 60 years
10:11she lost him in 2015 which was just devastating for her and it really took her a while to start
10:17wearing colors again and probably to feel like she had color back in her life again but slowly over time
10:23she really rallied and blossomed she really enjoyed living there she began doing tai chi again she was a
10:32sit-and-sew club she developed lots of friends and she was really enjoying her experience there
10:47her daughter shannon was coming to pick her up as she always did
10:52so when doris is not outside waiting to go to church her daughter goes in right away
11:05finds her mother dead and she's very very shocked
11:10there is a laptop computer that's open and there is a chair that's kind of been pulled out
11:15and it looks like her mom had been doing something perhaps on the computer and just collapsed on the
11:20floor and died
11:32shannon had lost her sister in a really
11:35very sad way her sister had died of cancer and her mom and and she had really really been very
11:41very close and they were in fact they were matching necklaces that had guardian angels and the guardian
11:46angels had been given to them by shannon's sister before she died and they were very distinctive
11:55those were very very important things to them both sentimentally and almost a spiritual way
12:04she is so certain that her mom would never take that necklace off that she calls dallas police and she
12:10reports a robbery so the crime scene unit comes out and they do an investigation and as part of their
12:17investigation doris's daughter realizes that ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry is missing from her
12:23mother's apartment what started to happen was the facility managers and and employees said well you
12:35know maybe it's maybe we're half of these people dying and missing jewelry because the emts are taking
12:41it maybe that's what's happening the dallas police send a detective but not a regular burglary detective or
12:48homicide detective they send a detective specifically to look at whether firefighters and emts are taking
12:56jewelry from elderly women at this facility so they question people who tried to save these women's lives
13:02or tried to revive them they're all cleared and then pretty much the the investigation is closed the
13:10police did not want to believe that there could be a serial killer stalking elderly women
13:23they're not going to be a serial killer stalking elderly women at least four of them live on the same
13:26floor they actually call themselves the fourth floor girls many of them are very close friends with
13:32each other and so some of them start becoming alarmed one of the ladies tells her daughter they're
13:39dropping like flies you have individuals particularly the ones who are living in these retirement communities
13:46who feel like they're safe they're not on guard they're not necessarily concerned about somebody
13:52breaking into their apartment so they're feeling safe and they're trusting the facility to keep them
13:57safe and so i think they're vulnerable in that way
14:06there were odd things like the victims lining up in a very straight line
14:12there were quite a few people who were laid out in very straight lines either on their bed or on
14:18the
14:18floor and that suggested that in a way that they had been posed it could have caused a death
14:25investigator if they'd been really attentive to maybe ask a few more questions
14:32every single one of the eight sudden deaths that occur within a three-month span
14:39were accompanied by valuable pieces of jewelry that were missing and in most cases were reported stolen
14:45almost right away by the family members and these were things like always worn reading rings they were
14:52you know lockets that were given to people by their children that they never took off
15:00but none of this was taken particularly seriously none of this was none of this threw up red flags for
15:07the
15:07investigators it was all just dismissed the way that we understand elderly behavior is sometimes not as
15:17as systematic and organized as as might be
15:30if you look back and you look at the fact of who went to each of these crime scenes it
15:36was different patrolmen
15:38so the investigators going to the crime scene are dealing with the offenses as
15:43one-offs they're not looking for a serial killer if say the same detective had gone to these different
15:51scenes an astute detective probably would have figured out but we're talking about a period at least
15:57in dallas when there was a tremendous manpower shortage there weren't a lot of homicide detectives
16:03homicide detectives did not go to most of these scenes we've got separate jurisdictions the police
16:11investigators not working together at all and we've got a way of murdering people a modus operandi
16:20adopted that is not immediately obvious and as such i think that an investigator going to the crime scene
16:30going to the the scene of the death would automatically adopt a narrative of a natural death
16:38we know that investigators have a tendency to classify very quickly the type of case that they're dealing
16:56with
16:58it is almost impossible really to logically and rationally explain and this not be investigated more seriously
17:09yeah you can say okay well it's because these women were old that's exactly why i think
17:14these cases were not investigated more thoroughly because even if you accept that and kind of go okay
17:20this person might have been 87 or 91 it's important to look at that individual what is their health history
17:30what are their routines there weren't death investigations there was just a presumption that
17:36an older person just died we know that there was a just kind of a unspoken rule in the emmy's
17:42office
17:42that they weren't going to really do too much if the person was over 65 and i think it was
17:47even more of
17:48it the case when a patrolman was called to a place like this they just assumed it would have to
17:55be an
17:56accident or a natural death because so many of them are and it probably was an unpleasant task they didn't
18:02look
18:03forward to and they didn't apply the same rigor that they would have if it had been a younger person
18:10i think you have this bias along everybody about what it means to be old and what it means when
18:18you die
18:19when you're old
18:28serial killers always have a pattern the types of victims the method of killing them their method of
18:35getting away their method of getting to the victim or stalking the victim you have all of these
18:40things and it might be recognized in one police department but this was not relayed to another
18:46police department that's investigating a murder at another complex so these things tend to you know
18:52link up but it takes you know really good police work and police communication to do that
19:03i've looked a lot into civil rights cases corruption this is kind of a story sort of a nexus between
19:11some of my interests because i saw it as a civil rights story as well as a criminal justice story
19:18involving the human rights of the victims were these victims treated fairly because of their age or were
19:25they discriminated against you can see how maybe a patrolman might have missed it but how many cases
19:33could they miss how many times did then the me look at those cases from the same addresses we're not
19:40talking about a small emmy's office we're talking about emmy's office that would have a database
19:44where they would notice that there were lots of unexplained natural deaths at the same facility
19:55so
20:09mary was a mother of six she was a grandmother she's a great grandmother but probably the most significant
20:16thing about mary is the fact that she lived her faith every single day she would get up she'd read
20:22her bible she would pray she was truly a woman of faith she does not know that there's a guy
20:29knocking
20:29on doors saying i'm checking for leaks management hasn't provided this information and when she opens
20:35the door she sees the gloves she realizes she's made a mistake her friends are walking to her door to
20:47pick
20:48her up to go to the exercise class with them when they notice her her door open
20:56they go into the apartment and find mary lying on the floor and she's unconscious and and her friends are
21:04trying to to revive her but they they can't revive her one of the friends is a nurse and she
21:09tries to
21:10to conduct cpr but still they can't they can't bring mary back to consciousness so they they contact
21:17the emergency services
21:21mary has a pacemaker so there's a miracle mary bartel this woman of faith survives
21:32she wakes up in the hospital and the first thing she notices is that both her wedding ring and a
21:39beautiful second ring that she wears on her right hand are gone both gifts from her husband things she
21:47never took off and crucifixes that she also wore are gone and so one of her sons gets a police
21:56officer to
21:57come over and the police officer is very skeptical and here we have a living victim the police officer
22:04initially says to her sons you know it sounds like your mom is delusional you know does she have trouble
22:11keeping track of reality
22:18she was someone who helped finally convince plano police that there really was a serial killer
22:25that this guy was real this was someone they could catch
22:37she's almost immediately told to lie down on her bed and the man puts a pillow over her face and
22:46she
22:46thinks she's going to die plano police have figured out that this is an attempted murder
22:53they have an mo then they start to slowly connect it to others it's after two dozen murders that they
23:01finally
23:02figure out how he's killing people and not leaving obvious signs of a murder
23:12it's harder you know to determine that someone has been smothered to death by a pillow
23:18it did mimic a natural death he was good at trying to mimic natural death in in the way he
23:25he did this
23:42they find that there is a guy who was hanging out in the parking lot for hours in a gray
23:47car
23:49seeming to look at the people going in and out of their apartments
23:52the son of the resident approaches this man and the man explains that he's simply looking for work
23:58but the son is not convinced he makes a point of noticing this man's car the model and the make
24:07and he actually jots down the license plate of this car and he reports it
24:23there's a plano detective who is also looking at the jewelry angle and so he is looking at all these
24:29resale jewelry sites and he comes across this one called offer up and he sees a picture
24:35of a ring for sale that looks very very similar to the ring that mary bartell was wearing he contacts
24:43the seller and the seller tells him that he got this ring from a man he made at a coffee
24:48shop and
24:49this this detective is like a dog on a bone and he is determined to find out what the scoop
24:53is
24:54so he goes to this coffee shop and he notices that there is a diamond and gold exchange right next
25:01door
25:02so he walks next door he talks to the owner of this diamond and gold exchange and he flashes billy
25:09to remember his picture
25:12and this man says i absolutely know this person this person has been in here multiple multiple times
25:19so now the pieces are now starting to fit together and this is the beginning of the end for billy
25:25jameer
25:33in 2010 he had a dui and then again in 2011 he received another dui and then in 2012 he
25:42was arrested
25:43in a domestic violence situation where he attacked his living girlfriend at the time and and really
25:51assaulted her he hit her with a pot and kicked her and took a knife and began stabbing the seat
25:57next to
25:57them what's kind of curious is as a legal permanent resident you can be deported if you're arrested
26:05even for a misdemeanor involving violence or a crime of moral turpitude and he had been arrested for
26:11both shemir mir probably knew that with his criminal history he couldn't pass a background check and so
26:18what he did was he used his cousin's credentials
26:30he apparently was able to pass the background checks that were done to for him to be employed
26:36he also presented that id to police when he was arrested for trespassing
26:53so now not only was he a trespasser but he was also someone who was walking around with a fake
26:57id
26:58i think if the police had been paying more attention and maybe had a little bit more manpower
27:04perhaps they could have made the connection right there at edgemer
27:21he was a rather innocuous presence he was an allowed person he didn't draw attention to himself
27:27he knew how to conduct himself in the settings that he was uh you know looking for victims uh he
27:33knew
27:34what to wear uh he knew the uh i guess the nomenclature that's probably used in the health industry
27:41and he realized too that after a series of deaths um it's best to find another hunting ground
27:58some families went to civil attorneys by lawsuits saying you know i we were not told about these other
28:05crimes we could have taken precautions to help protect our parents or protect our our parents
28:13property and the civil attorneys start to determine that there's evidence of murder even before the
28:19dallas police or the plano police do and in fact in some cases some of these places appeared to have
28:27concealed things that they had found out from residents they concealed that there had been strings of
28:35crimes they concealed that chamere had been stopped as an intruder and inside some of their facilities
28:40in one case management took down flyers that one woman's daughter had put up to warn people about a man
28:49who had been knocking on doors and saying i'm looking for leaks
28:53what was there is
29:10plano police send a whole group whole unit to the apartment associated with this car that they've linked
29:18to Shamir Mir and they're waiting there for him when he drives in and he stops at the dumpster
29:25which is not what most people do and dumps something into the dumpster not a bag of trash
29:30but what looks like a box and then he comes in to his parking spot and then they surround him
29:35and they arrest him. They find a treasure trove of evidence both in his car in the dump site
29:43one of the things they find in this in this dumpster is they find this red kind of ornate
29:50almost Asian looking really beautiful jewelry box that has kind of been thrown away and when
29:56they open this jewelry box they find the name of Lutai Harris in there and they are very concerned
30:05about what has happened to this woman. Lutai Harris was a Vietnamese woman
30:12who met an American soldier during the war they married and moved to the to the United States
30:21now to all accounts Lutai was a hoot she was great fun and one of her particular quirks was
30:30that she kept in her purse at all times two dollar bills that she would give out as gifts
30:37to people. Plano police are incredibly concerned and they race to to her house a private residence
30:47but the house is not within their jurisdiction so Plano police have to wait for Dallas police
30:54to arrive. Once Dallas police arrive they knock down the door break down the door and Lutai
31:01is found dead on on the floor inside. Now Dallas police are ready to write this off as as a
31:13natural
31:13death. Plano police insist that Dallas police look at the pillowcase. They tell them if you think that
31:22that this is not a murder go into the bedroom look at the pillowcase and you're going to see lipstick
31:29on it.
31:42They believe that this is a killer who attacks people with a pillow because they know that from
31:47Mary Bartell. When Dallas police look at the pillow they see makeup all over the pillow clear evidence
31:55that she's been suffocated with that pillow. When they saw that they either looked at the Plano police
32:02and thought boy these guys are like Sherlock Holmes or kind of woke them up from their stupor of how
32:09they've been investigating these or not investigating these crimes. So that's the big break in the case
32:16where they discover a murder that no one knew even occurred. I do think that if Plano police had not
32:24brought the information there about Mary Bartell, there's almost no doubt that Lutai Harris's death
32:29would have been ruled to be a natural death just like all the others.
32:40Billy Shamir-Mir was a predator really who was hunting a specific victim and he what he looked for
32:50was a vulnerable woman. So a woman who was walking alone, she might have a dog with her,
32:56she might have a walker, she might be somebody who needed a little bit of extra time meeting up the
33:01stairs.
33:04The way that Shamir-Mir worked was very predatory, was very instinctive his style of offending. He knew
33:11how to target the most vulnerable and yet lucrative of victims. There's an almost, as I say, a predatorial,
33:20animalistic way in which he he selects his victims.
33:32I think the investigators in this case from all the different counties must have felt
33:38so many different emotions as the evidence began to pile up. I mean, I think it must have been a
33:45very,
33:45very difficult awakening in terms of seeing that this is somebody who had been killing for two years
33:52and had killed over 20 women and one man and who had done it with impunity.
33:59And there had been a number of signs in terms of the crimes, family members and their thoughts,
34:05missing jewelry, and there were even some pretty good physical signs of foul play at some of these
34:11apartments and yet they were overlooked. And it was almost like I think there must have been this
34:16recognition that this confirmation bias had just taken place over and over again where once it was
34:21kind of decided that this is an elderly person, this is a natural death.
34:33Billy Chimir Mir never confessed to anything. As a matter of fact, some of the detectives were astonished
34:40in that they said, we literally laid out evidence after evidence after evidence, video footage, pieces of
34:48jewelry that we do belong to certain people. And he would sit there and just in the face of all
34:54this
34:55evidence just say, I didn't do it. I wasn't there. He just sat there and said, I wasn't raised this
35:02way.
35:03This isn't me. I'm not a murderer.
35:06He claimed that he had come by the jewelry of murdered women in various mysterious ways and that
35:14he had not ever robbed anyone, nor killed anyone, nor would he because as an African and a man who
35:22had a
35:22father who was a chief that he revered elders and he couldn't imagine that.
35:32The police charged him formally with the murder and they decided to charge him with Lou Harris's murder
35:37because they felt like it was the strongest case. I mean, he essentially was almost caught in the act,
35:44not of murdering her, but literally throwing her jewelry box away. And he had her jewelry in his
35:49possession. They know that he stalked her from Walmart. They were able to go and pull the Walmart
35:54footage. I mean, it was, there was very little doubt that this person had murdered Lou Taihera.
36:08The prosecutors were extremely optimistic. They felt like they had a slam dunk case.
36:14As a matter of fact, the prosecutor told the jury that this should take you less time than it might
36:22to pick the jury foreman. But in reality, human beings are very complicated people. And, you know,
36:31getting 12 people in a jury to agree, sometimes it can be very difficult. And one of the individuals on
36:38the jury didn't agree. So it was 11 to one. And so the judge was forced to call a mistrial.
36:45And you can
36:46only imagine the reaction of the family members. That was just horror and shock. And the thought that
36:53he might even be released was terrifying to them. And of course, you know, immediately the prosecutors
37:01say, we're going to try this again. But it was just completely mind boggling to everybody involved
37:08because of the level of evidence against him.
37:24I tend to think he saw being in the home healthcare industry as a relatively easy way to find and
37:34take
37:34advantage of vulnerable people who needed him and who he could then take advantage of.
37:43Each serial killer has a certain motivation. It's not murder without motive as it used to be seen.
37:50And so in this particular case, it's clear that it's, you know, murder for profit because he's taking
37:57things from them. He's not doing anything else with the bodies besides, you know, just trying to
38:03leave them in an unobtrusive manner so that, you know, people, you know, just say, oh, they died. And that's
38:10that.
38:10I think underlying the greed, there was a festering resentment towards older people,
38:19a resentment that has its roots way back in his childhood, when Billy was just one of a huge
38:27families with 28 siblings and a very significant, powerful, respected tribal leader father,
38:35a father that he could never live up to. And I think that these murders gave him the opportunity
38:41finally to be the powerful one.
38:44I do think his primary motivation was money. And I think he killed the victims
38:50to prevent them from identifying him. They were almost like collateral damage to him.
38:56He wanted to get the money. And this was an easy way to do it in his mind. And if
39:02he had to,
39:03you know, kill an old person, well, that was kind of the cost of doing business for him.
39:12Billy Samirmer saw this as a job. He saw this as the way he made money. He was clearly sociopathic.
39:21He had apparently no conscience at all. He had certainly forsaken his upbringing, which was to
39:27revere elders. He saw these people as commodities. And their things as things that he deserved to have
39:35so that he could sell them. To me, that's, that's, that's a real tragedy, that someone would devalue
39:41the lives of other humans beings to that point, that he would see them as only a way for him
39:48to make money.
39:55He was an organized serial killer, as the FBI would say. He had a disguise. He had a kit he
40:01brought. He
40:02had his gloves. He had his fake toolbox. He had his costume. He had his method. He would knock on
40:08the
40:08door. He would pre-case and find the women. This is just somebody who had been at this for a
40:14very long time.
40:24Billy was sentenced to life in prison and they put him in with another murderer.
40:29It turns out that they weren't the best of company. And Billy must have said something that really
40:36bothered the other inmate. Or at least that's what the inmate would later say. And he basically
40:41stabbed him and bludgeoned him to death. He essentially got the death penalty.
40:48This was one of those cases where he should have had some type of protection,
40:53because it was well known that who he was targeting was elderly people. And there is kind of a code
41:00of the
41:00convict that you don't hurt the powerless. You don't take advantage of the powerless. So he was pretty low
41:09on the murder behind bars ladder of life, basically.
41:22Most people have never heard of Billy Shamir Mir. And most people will never hear of him unless they
41:29study health care killers. The media wasn't as interested in him. They're more interested when
41:35there's more of a sexual component involved as well. A burglary is not that sexy a type of crime.
41:42Killing an elderly person is terrible. But again, you know, you're looking at somebody
41:48that because of ageism is becoming visible in our society. And, you know, that's just the nature of
41:56the beast. Three of these facilities that have had major civil lawsuits against them now, where the
42:03former residents' children have alleged, you know, you failed in your duty to just provide basic
42:11information to your residents about dangers that were identified or should have been identified by your staff.
42:21Seniors deserve better places to live where the standards are higher. Seniors deserve better
42:29death investigations. We can't just ignore something like this. We have to learn from what
42:34Billy Shamir Mir did. We have to do better at protecting seniors.
42:53Thank you so much.
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