The trial of a Texas man accused of posing as a handyman to rob and kill seniors is due to take place on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

Billy Chemirmir, 48, is charged with robbing and killing 18 seniors. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment without parole. The prosecution has decided not to apply for the death penalty.

Chemirmir allegedly pretended to be a craftsman or broke into apartments to gain entry. Most of the victims lived in separate shared apartments for the elderly.

One of the victims, Leah Corken, 83, was found on the living room floor of her apartment in 2016. There were makeup stains on her bedroom pillow and her wedding ring was missing.

“I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know,” said MJ Jennings, Corken’s daughter. “I didn’t know it was murder.”

Families across Dallas have had similar stories of missing jewelry and puzzling deaths of their elderly but otherwise healthy loved ones.

In March 2018, 91-year-old Mary Annis Bartel survived after a man broke into her apartment and told her “don’t fight me” when he tried to suffocate her with a pillow and left with jewelry. Chemirmir was arrested the next day.

At a press conference after Chemirmir’s arrest, then Plano Police Chief Greg Rushin admitted a tendency to assume that the death of an elderly person is natural.

“There is no in-depth investigation … It would be very easy to cover up a crime,” said Rushin.

More coverage from the Associated Press can be found below.

MJ Jennings views a photo of her mother Leah Corken as she sits at her home in Dallas on Wednesday November 3, 2021. Corken was one of 18 women in the Dallas area charged with capital murder and suspected of multiple other deaths. Most of the deaths occurred in upscale independent shared apartments for the elderly, where Chemirmir was accused of breaking into apartments or posing as a handyman and, in some cases, was even caught trespassing.
LM Otero / AP Photo

Chemirmir’s attorney did not respond to the AP’s request to comment on the story, but has previously labeled the evidence against Chemirmir as circumstantial. Chemirmir, who immigrated to the United States from Kenya, became a legal permanent resident in 2007.

Eight of the people he is charged with lived lived at The Tradition-Prestonwood, and he has been linked to the death of a ninth resident in a lawsuit.

Just days before Glenna Day, 87, was found dead there in October 2016, she told friends something was wrong.

“They asked how things were going. She said, ‘Well, I think I should move because my friends are dying,'” said her daughter Sherril Kerr, who added that the death caused her mother to see her doctor to go for a check up.

When Day was killed, the accomplished artist had been working to restore a friend’s painting and had just been dancing in a senior citizen center.

Chemirmir was charged with two deaths earlier this year in another Dallas retiree community – The Edgemere – and linked to a third via an autopsy report.

The Tradition deaths began after his release from prison in July. According to lawsuits against The Tradition, Chemirmir was escorted from the site in late 2016 and asked not to return. A November 2016 police report said the suspect – who is not named but whose description matches Chemirmir’s – was seen there several times and said he was looking for pipe leaks.

Chemirmir is accused of killing three of her roommates on Preston Place in Plano in the two weeks leading up to the attack on Bartel.

When the victims ‘children began to find each other, they founded Secure Our Seniors’ Safety. The group advocated new Texas law requiring medical assessors to notify families when a relative’s death certificate is changed and to require spot checks by officials in gold shops.

They say more work needs to be done, including more transparency in independent shared flats. In legal proceedings, the families accused the institutions of not having the advertised security.

“We didn’t know evil was roaming the hallways,” said Shannon Dion, whose mother was killed at The Tradition and who is the group’s president.

The tradition said in a statement that it relied on investigations by police and medical experts. Preston Place said it had settled the lawsuit but did not want to comment on the details. Edgemere did not respond to requests for comment.

When Scott MacPhee read an article about Chemirmir’s arrest, the death of his 82-year-old mother at their Plano home made sense. Carolyn MacPhee was found in her bedroom on New Year’s Eve 2017, a little over eight months after her husband died. Her glasses were bloody, a door and handkerchiefs in the bathroom. Two diamond rings she always wore were missing.

“I read the story that goes, ‘Well, holy crap, that connects all the dots,'” he said.

Robert MacPhee said police suspected her mother had a nosebleed and died of an aneurysm, so the family did not perform an autopsy. It turned out that Chemirmir, under the pseudonym Koitaba, had looked after her father, who had Parkinson’s disease, at home.

About nine months after Chemirmir’s arrest, Jennings learned that authorities believed her mother had been murdered.

“All of a sudden, all of the things I saw in this room that day … all made sense,” she said.

Jennings said Corken lived around the world and moved to The Tradition from Florida to be close to her.

“She was my best friend, she really was,” Jennings said.

FILE – This undated photo courtesy of the Dallas County, Texas Sheriff’s Office shows Billy Chemirmir. Chemirmir is due to be tried on Monday, November 15, 2021 for the death of one of 18 women accused of killing in Texas over a period of two years.
Dallas County Sheriff’s Office / AP Photo

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SACRAMENTO – From a bird’s eye view, San Francisco appears to be a relatively easy place to draw new political maps, as its residents are densely populated on a narrow peninsula and numbered to occupy a congressional district and multiple legislative seats.

In practice, however, creating new district lines proves to be a pain as the city has many strong ethnic and cultural communities. Sometimes moving a line a few blocks can have a significant impact on a block’s voting rights.

This difficult balancing act is playing out as the California Citizens Redistricting Commission draws new political boundaries for the next decade to accommodate the population changes reflected in the recent U.S. census.

“It’s such a melting pot that it’s hard to draw boundaries that communities don’t divide,” said Samuel Garrett-Pate, a spokesman for Equality California, an LGBTQ advocacy group, of the San Francisco relocation. “It’s possible, it just takes hard, thoughtful work. Communities don’t live in pretty little boxes in which you can draw pretty lines around them. “

The commission has proposed few significant changes to the city’s congressional seat held by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the Senate seat held by Scott Wiener, both Democrats.

But the commission’s work card would change the city’s two assembly districts dramatically. The proposal has angered some local leaders who say it would dilute the influence of Asian Americans, Latinos, African Americans, and LGBTQ residents.

Your proposal to have a working ‘visualization’ at this point could be published as a draft map next week and the Commission will seek public comments. The Commission has until the end of December to adopt its final cards.

The commission has tried to draw more Asian American majority counties across California, including the west side of San Francisco. But by moving more colored voters to an assembly district on the west side of the city, it could also create a white majority district on the east side. Both districts currently have a sizeable Asian population.

David Lee, executive director of the Sino-American Voter Education Committee, said community leaders fear the card could inadvertently reduce minority representation by cramming colored voters into a district.

“Why is the east side of San Francisco getting whiter under this plan?” asked Lee. “Some have suggested that this could be viewed as packing, trying to put all Asians into one district and thereby dilute their power.”

For decades, San Francisco’s assembly districts have essentially divided the city in half from north to south, with District 19 on the west and District 17 on the east. Both areas have elected Asian-American MPs for many years, most recently with members of the Democratic Assembly, Phil Ting in District 19 and David Chiu in District 17 (Chiu recently resigned after being appointed city attorney).

The advocates of the map commissioners would instead divide the city into two ornate L-shaped districts:

• In the south, several multi-colored working-class neighborhoods – including Bayview-Hunters Point, the Outer Mission and Visitacion Valley – would be incorporated into District 19.

• In the north, several predominantly white and affluent neighborhoods – including the Marina District, Pacific Heights, and Sea Cliff – would join District 17.

Reallocation officers have spent little time discussing these changes in their public line drawing meetings. A commission spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on concerns about the proposed San Francisco boroughs.

If the cards are ultimately adopted, the demographics of the boroughs would change dramatically.

According to an analysis by the Sino-American Voter Education Committee, white people would make up about 56% of voters in District 17, instead of 40% in the current district. District 17 would also have a much smaller percentage of Asian voters: 25% versus 34% today.

In the meantime, District 19 would become more diverse, with fewer white voters and slightly more Asians. Asian Americans would make up 49% of the district on the new map, compared to 47% today.

David Ho, a political advisor and long-time organizer in Chinatown, said someone unfamiliar with San Francisco might look at the map and believe it gives the city a more Asian-American influenced district.

He said this attitude ignored the city’s long history of electing different representatives in both assembly districts. He said it also ignores the nuanced nature of neighborhoods because it would separate Chinatown from other allied working-class neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley.

The map would also break up other color communities in the city, including separating the historic Black Fillmore neighborhood from Bayview-Hunters Point, which is now home to many black residents. The map would also separate the Mission District from the Outer Mission and divide Latino voters.

“I think this card is a bit annoying for everyone,” said Ho. “This iteration is just offensive. I don’t see any group that would support this iteration locally. “

LGBTQ leaders have also raised concerns about the map as it moves two neighborhoods, Bernal Heights and parts of Twin Peaks, to District 19. These neighborhoods have a lot of LGBTQ residents and were previously grouped into District 17 with Castro and SOMA.

“We didn’t see the priority of keeping the LGBTQ community together the way we need to,” said Garrett-Godfather, chairman of Equality California.

David Campos, a former board member running for Chius’ old seat in District 17, lives in Bernal Heights and could be pulled out of District 17. The new card will not be used for this special election, but it will apply for the regular election next year for the district.

Campos said that beyond the potential impact on his campaign, he finds the proposed district lines confusing due to the impact it will have on blacks, Latinos and LGBTQ residents.

“If the goal was to disenfranchise color and LGBTQ communities, they did an excellent job,” he said. “It seems like the visualizations are as bad as you can imagine from a stock perspective.”

Dustin Gardiner is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner

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