Original subtitles

I think that anyone who becomes a prosecutor

realizes the cases that you care about the most

are the ones when the most innocent of us

are hurt or murdered.

If you can't protect them, then what are you doing?

My grandma was 99 when she passed away,

and I remember thinking, "oh, she's super safe,"

when she went to her retirement home,

"nothing can happen to her."

You have to feel that way, you need to feel that way.

[tense music playing]

But in 2018,

law enforcement officers around Dallas, Texas,

happened upon a serial killer

that was preying on a world of very vulnerable victims.

Everyone assumed since the victims were older,

they were dying of natural causes.

But these were not natural deaths, it was murder.

And the killer was able to take the lives of over 20 people.

REPORTER: Police say they plan to review

every single death of an elderly woman in the area

where there was no witness.

[tense music intensifying]

[theme music playing]

That morning, I was out running errands,

and Scott called me and said

he got a call from somebody,

he said that mom didn't make it

to the Dallas Cowboys watching party,

and she wasn't at church.

It's terrifying when you get that call

that somebody who's very reliable,

who never missed a cowboy game in the history of the Cowboys,

was missing church, missing her friends,

missing that cowboy party,

and not answering her phone, you panic.

After calling our mother multiple times

and her not answering, then it was very obvious

there was something wrong.

I contacted Rob,

and we headed straight to the house.

ROB: I was the first one there.

Unlocked the door, you know, called for her,

ran through the living room,

and I saw her feet sticking out around the side of the bed.

She was really pale, her arm was across her face.

I took her arm across,

and her glasses were all messed up.

She was unresponsive, dead on her bedroom floor.

I'm just in shock.

Two weeks before, the doctor said,

"perfect health, you're gonna live another 20 years."

What happened?

Your brain's trying to process that this woman,

that he'd spent Christmas with a week before,

is laying crumpled on the floor, dead.

Rob stepped out to call 911.

This flood of people that start rolling in,

first responders, the EMTs, then the police show up.

The detective told me they've looked her over,

they don't see any signs of a struggle, no bruising.

They turned her back, everything was fine.

We asked the police, say,

"hey, we noticed that she was missing

her rings on her fingers,

her wedding ring, and then the ring that my dad got her..."

...that she never took off, these were fixtures,

and they were gone.

And they say "old people hide stuff."

The police didn't think there was any foul play.

It was natural causes.

SCOTT: Our mother was very engaged in church,

very supportive of the community.

She was a very positive person.

She was very optimistic.

Things were always going to work out,

keep a positive attitude,

look to the future,

be nice to people, things tend to work out.

That was kind of how she lived her life.

Sweet, sweet lady.

Couldn't have asked for a better woman to raise us,

to be there for us through our entire lives.

[melancholic melody playing]

SIEGLER: When you think of the safest, nicest,

most well-off part of Dallas County,

you think of Plano, Texas.

It's where you go when you have everything.

So, if your mother is retired there,

living in a home there,

you're gonna think she's pretty safe.

But in 2018, all that was put into question.

[suspenseful music playing]

DISPATCHER: Plano 911, what's the emergency?

WOMAN: We have a neighbor that we cannot awake.

-Okay, is she breathing? -Yes, she is breathing.

Okay, and how old are they?

She must be almost 90.

-Okay. -We can't wake her up.

[sirens wailing]

After the paramedic spoke with Mary Bartel,

he felt there was something more to this story,

and he wanted an officer to investigate this.

I responded to the hospital,

spoke with Mary Bartel, introduced myself to her,

and asked her if she would tell me in her own words

what had happened.

At around 8:30 in the morning,

she walks to her front door after hearing constant knocking.

As she was going to the door,

this suspect pushes his way in.

First thing she sees and focuses on

is his green gloves.

He told her to go to the bed,

and she just complied.

Once she got to the bed, he pushed her down,

grabbed one of her pillows from her bed,

and put it on top of her face and chest,

and just pushed down real hard.

Mary Bartel thought she was gonna die.

That's the last she remembers.

Mary Bartel states that she was missing jewelry,

rings that she had on both of her hands,

one of those rings being a wedding ring

that she's had for 50 years and never really took it off.

My first priority was to get an investigator

to Mary Bartel's house,

so I contact another detective,

and as she was going to process Mary Bartel's crime scene,

she learns there is a suspicious death investigation

right across the hall,

which is Ann Conklin's residence.

So at that point, we're investigating one death,

Ann Conklin,

and attempted murder on Mary Bartel

to see if they were related or not.

We started to do a canvas,

looking for any other witnesses, any other video,

anything that would give us a lead.

We learned that just a few days before on March 15th,

a gentleman by the name of Richard Plink

picked up his mother to take her to a doctor's appointment

and observed this Black male, well-dressed,

sitting in his Nissan Altima at Preston Place.

And later he noticed the same person

was still in the same parking lot,

but a different parking spot.

He just thought it was weird,

so he asked him if he could help him with anything,

and this man stated that he was fine,

that he was just waiting

for his next therapy appointment.

That's not really unusual,

because there's older people in that community,

but it was enough that it was not settling to him.

So he wrote down the license plate,

and when we ran it,

we learned the driver of that car

was listed as Billy Chemirmir.

So, we started looking at Billy Chemirmir

a little bit more and learned that

he had some prior arrest for criminal trespass

at another senior living center in Dallas.

Now we know that we need to locate Billy Chemirmir.

[suspenseful music playing]

There was this red jewelry box

with a name of Lu Thi Harris.

SIEGLER: With the possibility of more victims on their hands,

officers do a welfare check on Lu Thi Harris.

Four or five cases quickly jump to almost ten cases.

SIEGLER: An attack on a 90-year-old woman

named Mary Bartel

leads police to the connection of another case

that might be related in another part of Dallas,

where a suspect named Billy Chemirmir

had a prior arrest for a criminal trespass

at another senior living facility two years earlier.

Edgemere is a senior living facility

in Dallas,

and in April of 2016,

security personnel had noticed

that this man had been around,

and they weren't sure why,

and he was given a warning not to return.

Then he did return in June.

MARTINEZ: This man was stating

that he was a healthcare worker

involved with the location,

which ultimately was not true,

and Dallas PD identified him as Billy Chemirmir.

He had no affiliation with that location,

and was given a criminal trespass.

So, we had started looking at Billy Chemirmir

a little bit more.

Billy Chemirmir is a individual who came to the United States

in the early 2000s from Kenya,

who had a visa for a short period of time

to be here to work,

and got into the healthcare business

as a caregiver.

So, we started getting very suspicious

that maybe our person of interest

in the attack on Mary Bartel

and the death of Ann Conklin is Billy Chemirmir.

We learned from Dallas PD

that Billy Chemirmir had a warrant out for his arrest

for public intoxication out of Dallas.

Detective Turrubiarte and I discussed it

and said he's a person of interest.

Let's get him in custody,

bring him to the Plano Police Department Jail,

sit down and talk to him and see what we learn.

The arrest team set several officers

throughout his apartment complex.

[suspenseful music playing]

A person who we believed to be Billy Chemirmir

drove in around 6:00 p.m.

We had a detective near a dumpster.

Billy Chemirmir drives to that dumpster

and then discarded some items.

He was able to see Billy Chemirmir get back into his car

and drive to his assigned parking space.

They went up to him and made the arrest.

And when they extracted him out of the vehicle,

on his person, Billy Chemirmir had some jewelry,

bracelets, some $2 bills.

As they detained him,

they went and looked at the dumpster

to find out what did he discard.

Then there was this red jewelry box.

It had miscellaneous items with a name of Lu Thi Harris.

With the possibility of more victims on their hands,

while Billy Chemirmir is being detained,

officers do a welfare check on Lu Thi Harris,

who lives in the Dallas city limits,

which borders Plano, Texas.

Upon our arrival, we were told by Dallas PD

that Ms. Harris was located inside the residence.

The residence was secure

and she was found deceased next to her bed.

Everything appeared to be natural.

We discussed with Dallas PD deployment

that we were investigating specifically Mary Bartel...

and that the likelihood of the weapon being a pillow,

because that's what Mary Bartel described her weapon to be.

They went back inside

and found a smeared lipstick on Lu Thi Harris's pillow.

We also informed them that we found a set of keys

in the center console of the car

that Billy Chemirmir was arrested out of,

and they confirmed that the keys go to her front door.

[fast suspenseful music playing]

At that point, they agreed based on what they found

and our investigation with Mary Bartel,

it was decided that Dallas PD homicide needed to get involved.

I'm feeling a lot of fear and panic

because we've never had police presence on our street.

One of the neighbors told me

Lu Thi had been murdered.

To think that something like this

would have happened to Lu Thi was beyond sad.

Lu was friendly, she was funny.

Lu Thi Harris is a fascinating woman.

She had grown up in Vietnam,

and she was actually airlifted

out of Saigon when it fell.

She married an American man,

and she made a life for herself here in Texas.

In 2018, Lu was living by herself,

her husband had already passed away.

So, you never really thought about

"We need to make sure she needs something,"

because she always gave you

the complete sense of independence.

[suspenseful music playing]

The day after the arrest of Billy Chemirmir,

my partner and I go to Dallas PD

and go speak with Billy Chemirmir

in their interview room.

Billy Chemirmir was just...

like a happy person, not a worry.

When Billy Chemirmir was initially arrested,

it was only for a class C public intoxication,

but that allows them to take him into custody

and ask him questions about anything they want to.

At some point after that,

if they believe there is enough evidence

to charge him with something else,

they can.

Our thought process going into this is

we're not gonna probably get a confession from him.

We just wanted him to talk

and see what nuggets of evidence that we could use against him.

When Billy Chemirmir is being detained,

shockingly,

he agrees to voluntarily give them his cell phone.

Maybe because at that time he didn't realize

that would also give the investigators access

to his text messages,

any photos he had on his phone and also his GPS locations.

March 19th, when Mary Bartel was attacked

and possibly Ann Conklin,

he told us, oh, he did go sell a ring,

he went to Starbucks,

but stated up and down

that he was never at Preston Place in the morning.

He was at home at the time.

When we did legal process and got his cell phone records

and got his location data, that was absolutely a lie.

And he was professing that he was innocent,

not worried that he did anything wrong,

that evidence will show that he did nothing wrong

and it was, like, okay,

"do you mind giving us your DNA?"

After talking to Billy Chemirmir,

he was charged with the capital murder

of Lu Thi Harris,

and the attempted murder of Mary Bartel.

[enigmatic music playing]

TURRUBIARTE: Plano Police.

Billy Chemirmir is under arrest for the attacks and murders

of elderly women in Dallas and Plano, Texas,

but they want to build their cases

and find more evidence to make the cases even stronger.

MARTINEZ: Early in the morning,

the time we were interviewing Billy Chemirmir,

Dallas PD was wrapping up

their crime scene investigation in Lu Thi Harris's home.

They found that there was a receipt

that showed a nearby Walmart

and her making a purchase prior to her death,

which led them to Walmart to investigate that further...

[fast suspenseful music playing]

and learned that Billy Chemirmir was also at that same Walmart

just prior to Lu Thi Harris being killed in her home.

It is suspected that Billy Chemirmir

is at that Walmart hunting for victims.

He's scoping out Lu Thi Harris,

doing some surveillance on her,

looking for opportunity and to determine

if this is going to be someone that he can victimize.

[tense music playing]

SIEGLER: As you have detectives working on the cases

in Plano and in Dallas,

the investigators become aware of yet another case

in Richardson, Texas.

Mary Brooks died

two months prior to the first cases.

Mary Brooks was an 87-year-old woman

who was living in the Dallas area.

On January 31st, 2018,

Mary Brooks's grandson

gets a call from his mother,

who's worried about her mother,

and she asked him to check on her.

And the grandson,

he found that his grandmother was dead.

There were groceries all out on her counters.

They hadn't been put away,

and her family discovered missing jewelry,

and there was a receipt that showed

that she had been on a shopping trip to Walmart.

Richardson PD's investigation led them

to the same Walmart that Lu Thi Harris was at.

She was grocery shopping on the day she was killed,

but they didn't have a suspect at that time,

until we learned of Billy Chemirmir,

Walmart and Lu Thi Harris,

so then Richardson PD started to look,

"Okay, can we put Billy Chemirmir at the Walmart

when Mary Brooks was there?"

Richardson PD was able to show in the video

Billy Chemirmir was parked

in relation to where Mary Brooks was parked.

And when Mary Brooks returned to her car...

you see the silver Nissan Altima,

which is believed to be Billy Chemirmir's vehicle...

exit with her and follow behind her.

And shortly after is when she was found deceased.

[suspenseful music playing]

We met with Dallas PD,

Richardson PD, Frisco PD.

They also had some stuff

that they were very interested in Billy Chemirmir

being their person of interest,

and when we looked at it, it's like, okay,

"let's look at the location data,

can we put Billy Chemirmir there?

Oh, we can."

We're jumping from cases to cases,

and four or five cases quickly jumped to almost ten cases.

And it spider-webbed from that point.

[tense music playing]

On July 16th, 2018,

there was a phone message

from a task force that was investigating a killer

who went around to independent living properties.

My mother Doris Gleason's death

was being investigated as a homicide.

It took my breath away.

On Sunday, October 30th, 2016,

I drove over to pick my mother up for church.

I get to the door,

the door is unlocked.

I walk in and see her on the floor

over by the dining room table,

and she was gone.

She was 92.

I felt shock...

sadness, a bit of devastation.

I had never experienced a death like that,

and then when I hear that

Mama had been murdered,

I am floored.

The detective who was working the Chemirmir case

called me to go and look at pictures of jewelry

that they'd gotten off of Billy Chemirmir's phone.

We asked the detective, "Are you implying

that you think that Billy Chemirmir

killed our mother?"

And he said, "I'm convinced of it."

He said,

"I've already pulled records from his cell phone,

and his cell phone was in the vicinity

of her house on Saturday

and on Sunday morning, before you found her dead."

Suddenly, you find out she's died violently,

and you start the grieving process all over again,

and now you're grieving a violent death.

SIEGLER: While Billy Chemirmir is in custody,

four different police departments

are already working on all these investigations,

and the number is now up to 22 different victims.

This makes Billy Chemirmir one of the most horrendous,

prolific serial murders in Texas history.

But will there be enough evidence

on any one of these cases to actually convict him?

[enigmatic music playing]

When the case first came into our office,

it was talks about that we might have a serial killer

that is preying on elderly individuals.

Honestly, I didn't think it would turn

into the volume of cases that it actually turned into.

I just didn't think that was possible.

In the end,

he had 22 indictments for capital murder,

and two indictments for attempted capital murder,

out of not only our county, Dallas County,

but also including Collin County.

It is a lot,

it's a total disregard for human life.

And then judicial economy, in the end,

you can't try all of these cases.

We had what we believed, the strongest case

with Lu Thi Harris.

Mr. Chemirmir, he was found with her property

hours after being with her.

We went back and found him at Walmart at the same time,

so that became a very strong case for us circumstantially.

DION: Having Mama's case

not being tried

was incredibly frustrating,

but I also recognize

the need for the strongest case.

The goal was to get those convictions,

and if that wasn't my mom's case, then okay.

KOBBY WARREN: I was brought on to Billy's case

and became one of his three attorneys.

I was intrigued in regards to the facts and allegations

in and of itself,

and then just the sheer number of indictments

that were coming out against Mr. Chemirmir.

No matter the number of indictments

or charges against him, he's simply accused,

and that's what we have to make the jury aware of

until they decide something different,

meaning that the state has proven its case

to each and every one of them beyond a reasonable doubt.

He's just simply accused of these offenses.

SIEGLER: The challenges in this case are,

let's be honest,

the amount of evidence was overwhelming.

Was it circumstantial?

Yeah, but what a lot of circumstantial evidence.

That being said,

you still have to present that evidence

very understandably, very concisely.

And the other big challenge you always have is,

you still have to pick your jury,

and you better not pick one bad juror.

FITZMARTIN: Our goal in this case was to see

that Billy Chemirmir died in prison.

In these types of cases, for the death penalty,

we would have to go to Kenya.

We would have to do those types of things

to do a good full background on him.

That was unavailable to us, was unavailable to the defense,

and we would have to have delayed it even further,

and we needed to get resolution to this case.

[enigmatic music playing]

REPORTER: In the morning, jury selection

will begin in Dallas

for the trial of an alleged serial killer,

that is Billy Chemirmir.

The pandemic is going to prevent victims' families

from witnessing his trial in person.

FITZMARTIN: The whole scenario was just different.

We were not allowed to have anybody in the courtroom

that was not a part of the trial.

The victims' families, they couldn't face the person

who had done this to their loved one.

They had to watch it like everybody else did,

through closed circuit television.

If I'm on a jury in COVID time,

and the family members have to come in

one by one with masks on to testify,

that's not going to have the same impact

as seeing a courtroom full of cops

and victims' family members and people watching the trial.

They didn't get the real feel of anybody's pain

or anguish or frustration.

In opening statement,

I really just want to tell the jury

kind of a glimpse of what they're going to see,

what they're going to hear, and how I believe that the case

is going to be set out.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is a case about stalking,

smothering and stealing.

When it came time to presenting evidence to the jury,

we really wanted to show that there's a close connection

to Billy Chemirmir and Miss Harris.

When the Plano Police Department arrested Billy Chemirmir,

he had in his hands the jewelry of Lu Thi Harris,

and I used family members to identify those items

and say, "Yes, I recognize those

as being things that she was wearing."

Do you know any reason why she would get rid of these things?

No, those were her personal items

that she wore every day.

We then present cell phone data

showing Mr. Chemirmir's actions,

placing him at locations

that link directly to Lu Harris.

We relied heavily on the-- on the FBI

in putting together our mapping of the pattern

of Billy Chemirmir on these days.

Typically, he would go to a location

where there is a victim.

He would stay there for a certain amount of time,

pick his victim, murder them, take their jewelry,

then he would travel down to a known location

where you could sell these items and then head back home.

On these cell phone records,

we see here March 15th,

-March 19th, and March 20th. -Yes, sir.

WARREN: So, the response to the state, you know,

asserting that Billy was at these locations

by way of the cell phone data,

what their expert is able to say is that

the device that they believe belonged to Billy Chemirmir

was pinged or located in certain areas,

but they cannot say that it was actually Billy himself,

it's simply the device.

SIEGLER: The defensive strategy, in this case,

with the overwhelming amount of evidence

that there was,

was to try to create reasonable doubt.

You try to poke holes in each witness,

little by little, and argue reasonable doubt.

In this case, you would think that's a stretch

because there was so much evidence,

but sometimes that tactic works.

In criminal trials,

using evidence of other crimes or bad acts

is generally not admissible.

However, it can be for limited purposes.

In this case, it was more for motive and identity,

since no one actually saw him kill anyone,

but we wanted them to know

that this same person with the same profile

and the same similar acts

had been with other women who were killed.

This is the correct person, we have the right person.

BAILIFF: Could you raise your right hand for me?

FITZMARTIN: We decided to go with Mary Bartel,

because she brings to this case

a voice for all the victims.

She is the victim who survived,

and she was able to tell her story through deposition.

I heard this very insistent rapping

at the door.

The door

was opening inward and when I...

my eyes were just fixated

on these green rubber gloves.

I knew instantly,

number one, I should not have opened the door.

Number two, my life was in grave danger.

He just smashed a pillow down hard

over my face and my chest,

and I just couldn't breathe.

The defense lawyer was able to cross-examine her

in her deposition the same way he would have

in the courtroom before COVID happened.

WARREN: She said the individual that walked in

was very articulate and very well spoken,

and we asked about an accent.

She said she didn't recall hearing an accent.

You didn't notice any kind of accent or anything

about his voice that stood out to you?

No, I was just mainly concerned about

whether I...

could get some help before I died.

And anyone that's ever heard Billy speak,

he has a very thick accent, and that's important.

The jury needs to understand that that's important.

Did you ever look at his face?

I was fixated by the green rubber gloves.

Okay. So you never did get a look at his face?

No, I did not.

There was nothing that placed him there

except for Mary Bartel,

and so, if you think she's mistaken

or that credibility is not as high

as what you would like it to be as a juror,

then you set that case aside and ask yourself,

"Is the evidence sufficient to prove that

it was Billy beyond all reasonable doubt?"

[enigmatic music playing]

FITZMARTIN: We wanted to show

Mr. Chemirmir's interrogation video,

because Billy Chemirmir did not have a good story

as to why he's in possession of Lu Thi Harris's items.

He stated that he acquired them

from a man on the side of the road,

he couldn't give us the man's name.

It just seems so illogical that

he is at Walmart with Lu Thi Harris,

and then happens to buy, from some random man,

her items hours later, and was caught with them.

I believe them playing his statement

backfired a little bit, and the reason I say that is

because he gave himself a defense.

Way too many times in my career,

when I was getting ready for trial,

I would tell my main detective

"I'm not going to offer your interview of the defendant,"

and they would get very upset

and I would say "No, it's self-serving."

He doesn't tell the whole truth, he minimizes his involvement.

He acts like it's self-defense.

Why would I offer his version of what happened?

By presenting the videotaped interview of Billy Chemirmir,

the state allowed that to be his way

of putting his defense on,

and they weren't able to cross-examine him

at the same time, because he never had to testify.

And the state doesn't get to say,

"We call Billy Chemirmir to the stand."

It's not up to them.

If he chooses not to testify,

that's the end of his story.

There was so much evidence that they had introduced.

And that was my argument,

is they're presenting all these things,

but what is the quality of this evidence

in regards to them meeting their burden?

SIEGLER: In this day and age,

with what juries expect today with modern forensics,

which I'm so sick of hearing,

there's no such thing as too much evidence.

I wish we could all have that problem.

Once we concluded closing statements,

the case is in the jury's hands.

We just have to wait now for their answer.

I happened to be there in the courthouse,

and the evidence was so well laid out,

so we were expecting, 30 minutes later,

the jury to come back,

and as that jury waited and waited and waited,

and then went home to come back the next day,

we were very concerned.

And it went a little longer, and kept a little longer,

and I said "Well, somebody's back there thinking."

SIEGLER: This case should have been a slam dunk,

and you would expect a quick verdict,

but it took over two days.

The jury was still deliberating

and they still hadn't come up with a verdict.

After several notes, they were sent out by the jury,

they were deadlocked, unable to reach a verdict.

Judge Jones, we remain deadlocked at 11 to 1.

After additional deliberation, we perceive no change.

Then I moved and requested a mistrial, and it was granted.

We are just disappointed that they could not come

to the correct

-and right-- -Obvious.

I don't have a word to describe

the unfairness, the injustice.

Given that Lu Thi Harris's case was,

by the prosecutor's judgment,

their strongest case, and they got a hung jury,

they had to have been devastated when they got that back.

Unfortunately, what all those family members learned is

with the jury, you never know what's going to happen.

When I heard of the mistrial,

I was disappointed for the families,

and immediately started thinking

about participating in the second trial.

The elected DAs in big counties

have a huge office to run,

300 lawyers work for them.

So, when the DA John Creuzot comes aboard

to try the case with Glen Fitzmartin,

that's a big deal.

DION: We went into that second trial

terrified of another mistrial.

SCOTT MacPHEE: I think there was also resolve

on the part of the families

to come back and make sure

that we did whatever we could to help the DA

to close that case on the next time through.

In the second trial,

the COVID restrictions have lessened a little bit,

so we're now able to put the courtroom

back to the way we're used to it,

where spectators are allowed in,

family members are allowed in.

The court was filled with so many families

from other victims,

feeling like that may be their day in court

and certainly hoping for justice for Lu Thi,

but also justice for their family members also.

I've been licensed for 42 years,

and I was a judge for 22 years,

so I saw a lot of cases tried.

To me, voir dire is probably

the most important part of the case.

SIEGLER: Voir dire, it's not the glamorous part,

but it's the part where you better not get it wrong,

because if you do, one juror can ruin everything.

In this case,

we had to voir dire question

a whole big group of people at the same time,

and then to decide how many strikes

they were going to use against how many people.

CREUZOT: So, looking back after we had a hung jury,

I thought that we could do better

in the jury selection process.

I think the art of jury selection

is understanding what your issues and problems are,

and being able to fashion a voir dire

that helped them understand

exactly what the law was.

For example, circumstantial evidence,

and helping them understand that circumstantial evidence

does not mean weak evidence,

and committing to if we prove the case

beyond a reasonable doubt

with circumstantial evidence,

they could return a verdict of guilty.

It makes me crazy that too many people think

that circumstantial evidence cases are weak,

because they're not and they never have been,

and they never will be,

because every little piece points to the same thing,

and every little piece is the truth,

and when you put them all together,

how beautiful can that be.

STENGLE: The main difference in this trial

is that you do not see

the taped police interview with Billy Chemirmir.

DION: When they didn't play the interview at the arrest,

that was a game-changer, because that way,

he wasn't able to spew his lies

without any cross-examination.

FITZMARTIN: During the closing argument,

District Attorney Creuzot linked the evidence back

to what he had talked to the jurors about

in his voir dire in the selection of the jury.

CREUZOT: I told them we're counting on them to end

what they promised under oath that they would do,

and reminding them of the issues that we went over with them,

especially circumstantial evidence.

"If you had said no,

you wouldn't be on this jury.

We brought you the evidence,

and the only thing left is your job to deliberate,

follow the law, and in our opinion,

return a verdict of guilty."

The argument still is-- it's still beyond a reasonable doubt,

that it's extremely circumstantial.

Argument is still that there's no direct evidence

placing him in the home of Lu Thi Harris.

There's no direct evidence placing him

on the street of Miss Harris.

There's no direct evidence even in the extraneous case

that places him in Miss Bartel's home or neighborhood.

CREUZOT: At the end of all the closing arguments,

I think there's a healthy amount of anxiety

in everybody in the courtroom, especially the families,

because they've watched this not turn out well

a few months before,

and for me,

I know because of 42 years of practicing law

that I have no idea what they're going to do.

REPORTER: This was a stunningly fast verdict

for a capital murder trial.

The jury deliberated less than an hour.

DION: It's like pins and needles.

It's high, high anxiety,

but we had the rug pulled out from us before,

so our trust is really low

that this is going to be okay.

The jury has reached a verdict,

and that verdict is...

that we, the jury, unanimously find the defendant

guilty of capital murder as charged in the indictment.

Billy Chemirmir was sentenced to life

without the possibility of parole,

and I knew at that moment in time

that Billy Chemirmir would die in prison.

I have goosebumps when the jury renders

the conviction that he is guilty.

There is such a flood of relief.

On behalf of the many victims,

we are incredibly relieved

that justice is finally here,

especially after the mistrial five months ago.

There was a lot of relief and joy

that the justice had finally been done.

About time.

Why did it take two?

But everybody's just as happy as can be

that he's never going to get out of prison.

HAMBLIN: I look at Lu Thi's death,

and I-- could sound strange,

but I think that she would be proud to know

that she ended all of that--

all of those killings, that that was the end after her.

That was it, and they got him.

Well, what was satisfying about this verdict

was that Mr. Chemirmir had announced to a news station

that he would never go to the penitentiary.

And when that verdict came back, of course,

I looked at him, he didn't have much expression,

but I thought "You're on your way, buddy."

SCOTT: I think the whole experience

has got us both thinking

about how to protect elderly people.

When I worked through

that Mama was

the eighth victim in three and a half months,

and that this had happened at three other

well-respected properties in the metroplex,

that's when I knew that something had to change.

Secure Our Senior's Safety

is a non-profit foundation

committed to showing the vulnerabilities

in independent senior living,

and hopefully correcting those vulnerabilities.

SOSS is proud that

we got two bills through on legislation

to change the security in independent living.

My mother was incredibly private, and that

was a real big struggle for me in the beginning.

She believed a lady's name was in the paper

when she got married and when she died.

And so, for my mother's face

to be splattered everywhere in her name,

my mother would not like that.

But over time, I think Mama understands

my commitment to make her friends safer than she had been,

and in that way, I think she's proud of it.

[melancholic music playing]

SIEGLER: Can you imagine the impact and the horror

that came on over 20 different families

because of all the people that Billy Chemirmir murdered?

I think the good that came of this is that

those facilities have made stronger safeguards,

some laws have changed

to try and ensure that that keeps happening,

and let's hope that

when we have our grandparents and parents

and even us go into places like that from now on,

they're way more protected

as a result of what happened in this case.

[pensive music playing]