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- [00:02]
Charlie Scudder
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you.
- [00:07]
Josh Alleman
Get more out of your passions.
- [00:09]
Charlie Scudder
So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more. Build a routine with Ollie that supports your wellness needs. Like getting your daily vitamins and minerals with Ollie's multigummies or keeping your mood upbeat with all the vitamin D and hello Happy. Give your gut health some support with probiotics and wake up feeling refreshed after taking Ollie sleep.
- [00:46]
Josh Alleman
Do wellness on your terms.
- [00:48]
Charlie Scudder
Find Ollie at a Walmart or Target near you or@olli.com these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
- [00:54]
Josh Alleman
This product is not intended to diagnose.
- [00:56]
Charlie Scudder
Treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [01:00]
Josh Alleman
All right, it's Wednesday, May 18, a little after 9am and I'm driving to Quinlan, Texas, where Dan Probst lives. His aunt was Kathryn Probst Sinclair, and she is the first victim that we know of who lived at Edgemere. She lived at Edgemere. She died in early 2016. I'm on the road about an hour's drive east of Dallas looking for the farm where a man named Dan Probst lives. I'd met Dan before, but I'd never been out to see him. I wanted to hear more about his aunt Kathy and how he first realized that she was murdered. And I really just like the guy. He's what some folks call salt of the earth. Honest, not afraid to tell you the truth, even if you're not going to like it. He's an absolute Texas cowboy. He's got a great mustache, big old west mustache, wears a cowboy hat, jeans, boots, long plaid shirts. He's a good dude. I think he raises poultry, like chickens and turkeys and that kind of thing. So I'm excited to see the farm for the first time.
- [02:22]
Charlie Scudder
Your destination is on the right.
- [02:24]
Josh Alleman
Okay. Approach. Right there. There's a metal mailbox. Got a big Texas flag out front. Good morning. How are you? Good.
- [02:33]
Charlie Scudder
How about you?
- [02:34]
Josh Alleman
Good to see you. I'm doing well. Doing well. Thanks for having me out.
- [02:37]
Charlie Scudder
It's nice, huh?
- [02:38]
Josh Alleman
Yeah. Dan's home sits in a picturesque little meadow just a mile from Lake Tawakani. The house sits partway down a small slope and is surrounded by trees. You can see a little pond through the tree line when you're sitting on his Back porch, Dan chews away a mix of chickens and ducks as we.
- [02:56]
Charlie Scudder
Get settled back about 15, 16, 17 years ago, there was a backyard chicken craze. So I provided the chickens and, you know, back that time we were on TV and I did it for about 12, 13, 14 years.
- [03:14]
Josh Alleman
Dan's aunt Kathy was raised near St. Louis and became Dr. Katharine Probst in 1962. She got a job at a hospital in Louisiana, where she met her husband, a man from just outside Pittsburgh. The newlyweds moved there in 1969, where she worked at several different hospitals until her retirement in 2002. Shortly after her husband's death, Kathy didn't have any children of her own, so Dan and his siblings were the ones tasked with her care. With her help, they moved her to Edgemere, a sprawling independent living community surrounded by Dallas ultra wealthy enclaves of Preston Hollow and the Park Cities. It's just a few blocks down from the massive estate owned by Mark Cuban. Yeah, that Mark Cuban. Dan said Kathy was paying around $3,000 a month for her one bedroom, two bathroom apartment at Edgemere.
- [04:08]
Charlie Scudder
She collected all kinds of shit. Oh, my God. Coins, jewelry, just anything, collectible, stamps. Her house was like a museum.
- [04:20]
Josh Alleman
In fact, when Aunt Kathy decided to move to be closer to Dan's side of the family in Texas, she packed up all of her most valuable possessions in a locked safe and instructed Dan to drive through the night. There would be no leaving the safe in an unattended hotel parking lot. They would need to go straight from her doorstep to a secure place in Texas. Which is why Dan found it so odd that almost two years later, Kathy was found dead in her apartment and the safe was nowhere to be found.
- [04:50]
Charlie Scudder
I kind of went a little nuts when they said, the safe's gone. And it was like, duh, safe gone, Kathy dead, you know. Did you call the police?
- [05:00]
Josh Alleman
When Dan got the call on the morning of April 8, 2016, that Kathy had died, it wasn't entirely surprising. She was 87 years old, and although she was in good health, Dan knew it was a possibility that she could have a heart attack or a stroke and they'd lose her. But when he heard about the safe, he had simple instructions for the security guards there.
- [05:22]
Charlie Scudder
I'm calling and making a robbery report and I'm going to ask Edgemere to somehow seal that room. I don't want anybody else in or out of that apartment.
- [05:32]
Josh Alleman
Dan understood what no one else did. This wasn't just the apartment of an older woman who died naturally. It was a crime scene. I'M Charlie Scudder, and this is the Unnatural Causes Chapter two the Caregivers. After I left Dan's farm, I drove about 30 miles south to another small town, Scurry, Texas. I wanted to interview one of the security guards who was told to seal Kathy's room when she was found dead, her safe missing. His name is Josh Alleman, and today he works at a rehabilitation facility for people with substance use disorders. We've been talking on and off for a while at that point, but always off the record, meaning I agreed not to use anything he said in my reporting. Recently though, he's changed his mind. I wanted to start by asking you. So we've been talking for a while. I mean years at this point, right? You wanted to be off the record. You were slow to dive into the public light with all of this, right?
- [06:38]
Charlie Scudder
I. I was, yeah, for sure.
- [06:40]
Josh Alleman
So what's, what's changed your mind?
- [06:45]
Charlie Scudder
When, when the victims families started reach reaching out to me and they wanted to hear more and more about what, what happened. I dealt with a lot of emotions from the very beginning. I felt a lot of guilt and shame in that because I always felt like I had a chance of stopping him back then. So I was trying to work through that pain, through that guilt, through that shame. And when they heard my story and they didn't blame me, they didn't hate me, I always worried they would hate me.
- [07:22]
Josh Alleman
Josh is a big guy. He's got a thousand watt smile, is overwhelmingly polite and acts like a big teddy bear. He's also kind of my doppelganger. We're both bigger guys with short dark hair and beards. And when he visited the Dallas County Courthouse for one of the trials, the lead prosecutor, who you'll meet in a future episode, asked if he was my brother. I don't have a brother, but I definitely see the resemblance. He grew up not far from here in Mesquite, Texas. His dad is actually the mayor there. He played football at John Horn High School, which is a big deal here in Texas, and got a partial scholarship to play at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie. He wanted to be a pastor, but dropped out after a few semesters and two torn ACL injuries. Josh worked for a bit at a Christian bookstore and started dating a woman who was the manager there. He knew he wanted to propose, but wanted to get a better paying job first. A friend suggested he apply to be a security guard. He was hired by a Dallas security company that had a contract with Edgemere, where there was an opening.
- [08:31]
Charlie Scudder
Well, it was beautiful. It was beautiful place. I mean, it was huge. There were like 10 buildings all connected by long hallways. In between those buildings, they had several courtyards. There was one courtyard that had like a putting green. There was a billiards room. There was an art room. There was a little. There was a couple of movie theaters in there. I mean, it was fantastic. Beautiful, beautiful property.
- [08:55]
Josh Alleman
So when you started, what did you think about working at a retirement home?
- [09:00]
Charlie Scudder
I loved it. I loved getting to know the residents there, and they treated you so kindly. They would ask me for simple things like to fix their TVs. I remember specifically that was like one of the main calls that I got to fix their TVs. And it was simple fixes like changing a channel, changing HDMI channel or something like that. And they were so grateful. And I just got to know all of them very, very sweet people there.
- [09:27]
Josh Alleman
On one of his first days working, a resident who was receiving hospice care died in the community. Josh was troubled. He didn't want to be the one to find a dead body and worried that it might be a risk of working with this particular demographic.
- [09:42]
Charlie Scudder
I did talk to my. One of the. One of the supervisors up there and was like, how often does that happen where you find someone deceased, you know, and. And they said that if they're not on hospice and just, you know, randomly one day we find them passed away. That the last time it happened was like seven years before. So it's very rare. It's very rare that you just find someone like that. So that kind of reassured me.
- [10:11]
Josh Alleman
Josh said he especially liked working Thanksgiving because the grandmas and grandpas would all be perfecting their dishes to bring to their family holidays. Someone had to be taste tester. And Josh happily obliged. There was one resident in particular, he said, that called with the most problems. A retired school teacher who seemed to rotate through in home caregivers faster than anyone else at Edgemere.
- [10:36]
Charlie Scudder
She was someone that was very independent and very tough. She went through a lot of caregivers and she would call me, she would. They would quit usually by the end of a week or she would fire them. And when she fired them, she usually would have me involved with that because she would call me up and be like, all right, Josh, come kick them out. This is a cycle for a while until he started. Started working for her. Benjamin Coitiba. So that's how I met him.
- [11:09]
Josh Alleman
Unlike other caregivers, this guy Benjamin Coiteba was great with the old school teacher. Josh kept expecting to get a call to kick him out. But the call never came.
- [11:19]
Charlie Scudder
I would talk to him, like, here and there. Each of the caregivers I got to know because I knew at some point she was going to have me, you know, go over there. So I talked to him, and no red flags. It's weird. Whenever I talk to him, he seemed like the nicest person. Very professional and just very positive. Most of them that I talked to would vent to me, you know, and. But not him. He. He was always saying, yeah, everything's going great. Everything's fine, and no issues. And so he worked for her for two months. About two months while he was there.
- [11:58]
Josh Alleman
Josh had been working at edgemere for about 10 months when Kathy, Dan's aunt, was found dead by a housekeeper. Josh was off the next day, but was called in when Dan demanded the door be sealed and Kathy's body be sent to the medical examiner for an autopsy. While he was there, he got a report from another resident that seemed strange.
- [12:19]
Charlie Scudder
One of the residents reported that a man had come to her apartment claiming to be with maintenance. She called the. The security guard that was on duty. She said that this mysterious man came to her door, and he had this alert button in his hand. Now, she knew the maintenance guys. She knew all of them, and that's why she didn't let him in. She immediately called the security guard, told him about it, and he went to go look around to try to find him, and he couldn't find him.
- [12:47]
Josh Alleman
About a week later, a second resident called with the same story about someone pretending to be a maintenance worker.
- [12:54]
Charlie Scudder
We run all over the building for about 30 minutes trying to find him. After 30 minutes, I go back to my office and I look at the camera footage, and I. And I see him. I see Benjamin Coidoba walking down that hallway. Around that time, she had called the.
- [13:12]
Josh Alleman
Caregiver, who had been getting along so well with the tough school teacher. Josh played a clip of the security camera footage for me. In the frame, he sways through the entrance with a casual swagger, confident, like he's supposed to be there.
- [13:28]
Charlie Scudder
I called the maintenance guys. I said, hey, meet me at this apartment. I know who it is. And we all start walking that way. They actually run into him in the hallway. We take him to the security office. We have him sit down, and, you know, we're talking to him. I'm talking to him myself, you know, and questioning why he's on that side of the building. And he's. He's telling me that he's looking for food for his resident which he's been there two months. He's nowhere near the cafeteria. He's nowhere. Or the restaurant. Let me say restaurant.
- [14:05]
Josh Alleman
Not a cafeteria.
- [14:06]
Charlie Scudder
Not a cafeteria. It was nice, but he's nowhere near it. Like, he's wandering around these hallways where these residents live. The police get there, and they talk to him, and we explain what's going on, and we tell them we want him banned. And so they issue him a criminal trespassing warning and tell him we all walk him to his car, and we tell him not to come back.
- [14:30]
Josh Alleman
Police issued a criminal trespass warning to Benjamin Koitiba, but that doesn't mean that he was arrested or charged with any crime. If he returned to the property, police told Coidiba he would be arrested for trespassing and sent to the county jail. Josh went back to his regular duties, making rounds, helping residents fix their TVs, taste testing recipes. A few weeks later, another woman was found dead. Phyllis Payne was 91 and was found lying on her bed like she died in her sleep, just like Kathy Sinclair. About a month after that, Phoebe Perry was found dead. She was 94. The families of both Phyllis and Phoebe reported missing jewelry, silverware, and other valuables to police in the days and weeks after their deaths. So what are you thinking at this point? Because you've gone from worried about people dying, being told it doesn't happen that much, to all of a sudden, three in a row. What are you thinking?
- [15:32]
Charlie Scudder
I'm thinking this is crazy. Like, this is, you know, it's. It's unbelievable. But, yeah, I'm. Red flags for sure. Like, what the heck is going on? You know, why. Why are they passing away at the same time? The. The police come out to each one. They say natural causes for each one. And so that's. Nobody's thinking murder? No, that's. That's far from it. Nope. Nobody's thinking that.
- [15:59]
Josh Alleman
One week after Phoebe died and a few months after Coidabo was escorted off the property by police, Josh was working a Sunday shift when a resident called saying a man had come to her door claiming to be with maintenance. She had let him in, and he asked her to stand in another room while he worked in the bathroom. He left the apartment soon after, and she realized some of her valuables were missing.
- [16:23]
Charlie Scudder
And I ran to that apartment. You know, I couldn't. I couldn't believe it, because, you know, that guy's back. Clearly.
- [16:29]
Josh Alleman
He called the police, who came and took a report, but without a suspect to arrest, they couldn't do much.
- [16:35]
Charlie Scudder
That same day, you Know, I'm trying to look at camera footage, trying to find, you know, it's got to be the same guy, right? And there's one stairwell close to her apartment that I look at, and sure enough, I see Benjamin Cordoba. It was a fuzzy camera. It was very fuzzy. It was hard to tell, but Benjamin Cordoba had a very distinct walk, like almost a. I don't know, almost a strut, the way he would walk. And so the same guy, that's kind of what I could tell, is that it was. It was that walk that gave him, Gave him away for me.
- [17:12]
Josh Alleman
For the next three days, Josh tried calling the Dallas police detective assigned to the trespass case. He never got a call back. While he waited to hear from the cops, Josh went back to the security camera footage to see if there was any other times when Coidoba had been on the property.
- [17:28]
Charlie Scudder
And so I figured if he's leaving out that way, he's gotta be coming in through that way, right? And so I just focus on that camera and I look for a few hours. And I found he came in at 7am which was shift change. He followed employees in. I thought, what if he came in the day before? And sure enough, I look at 7am he had followed employees in that day too. I looked at that Friday, he didn't come in that Thursday, he didn't come in all the way to the previous weekend. And that previous weekend, he came in 7am, followed employees in like clockwork.
- [18:01]
Josh Alleman
Josh saw that Coidoba had snuck onto the property for five weekends in a row.
- [18:06]
Charlie Scudder
Well, shortest amount of time that he stayed was 10 minutes. And the longest time was three hours. Based off that, I thought, okay, he's got a pattern. We know what day, we know what door, we know what time we can be there. Next time we can stop him. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business. With easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale ups online, in person and on the go, Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month.
- [18:52]
Josh Alleman
Trial at shopify.com setup.
- [18:57]
Charlie Scudder
This episode is.
- [18:58]
Josh Alleman
Brought to you by Amazon.
- [18:59]
Charlie Scudder
Sometimes the most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting.
- [19:05]
Josh Alleman
In crowded waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy, that's painful.
- [19:09]
Charlie Scudder
Amazon One medical and Amazon Pharmacy Remove those painful parts of getting better. With things like 247 virtual visits and.
- [19:16]
Josh Alleman
Prescriptions delivered to your door thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon one, Medical healthcare.
- [19:21]
Charlie Scudder
Just got less painful.
- [19:27]
Josh Alleman
By the time Josh the security guard had noticed a pattern of criminal activity at Edgemere, several women that we know of had already been murdered. Why hadn't anyone noticed? To answer that question, it's helpful to know a little bit more about the industry that Edgemere operates in. The kind of places where your loved ones might live or where you may choose to grow old one day. Edgemere is one of many senior communities in Dallas that are what's called independent living. I've used that term a few times already. But if you're not familiar with the senior living industry, you may not really know what it means. On a basic level, it's exactly what it sounds like. A community that allows senior residents to remain independent while still taking advantage of some of the benefits of living in a larger community of older adults. But even that simplifies the wide range of independent living communities in the US.
- [20:21]
Charlie Scudder
What we're really honing in on are.
- [20:24]
Josh Alleman
Vulnerable older people who have the need for long term services and supports. This is Dr. Michael Wasserman, who you heard from in our first episode. He's a geriatrician, which basically means a doctor who specializes in the care of older adults. And so that actually starts with individuals living in their own home who need home health, who need assistance, and then you move from that into assisted living where you have greater needs, maybe someone to give your medications, maybe someone to help with bathing. And then you have group homes which are sort of people living in a house, a residential house with five or.
- [21:09]
Charlie Scudder
Six people and then you have nursing.
- [21:11]
Josh Alleman
Homes at the other end of that spectrum. All of those living situations comprise long term care. Wasserman would know. He's got a lot of experience in basically every aspect of, of senior care. He ran his own private practice, has worked in the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, and was the CEO of the largest chain of nursing homes in the state of California since the COVID 19 pandemic. He's worked on the regulatory side of the industry with governments and public health authorities to coordinate care of older adults. Wasserman said that all older adults require a different level of care than other populations and that people living in independent living communities can have just as many, if not more specialized needs.
- [21:58]
Charlie Scudder
And to ignore that is folly.
- [22:01]
Josh Alleman
To ignore that is ignoring the fact that the health and well being of people in assisted livings and group homes and heck, even in a retirement community.
- [22:13]
Charlie Scudder
That you know Sort of bridges the.
- [22:16]
Josh Alleman
Assisted living by offering some supportive wellness and health services. Wasserman said that independent living communities operate as glorified apartment complexes. You pay rent, the property management may offer trash or maintenance services, but otherwise you're on your own. Others are what's called age in place or continuum of care communities where you're able to stay in a single apartment and the services can scale up or down to include memory care or other nursing as you age. That's what my family settled on. For Maw Maw, my grandmother, it was more like independent living when she first moved in, but has allowed her to bring in more substantial care while staying in the same place.
- [22:57]
Charlie Scudder
Over the course of the past, you know, 30 years, the options that are.
- [23:02]
Josh Alleman
Out there in most parts of the.
- [23:04]
Charlie Scudder
US have, you know, really expanded significantly.
- [23:09]
Josh Alleman
That's David Schless, the president of the American Senior Housing Association. It's an industry group that represents executives who own and operate senior living communities across the spectrum of care.
- [23:21]
Charlie Scudder
It is more like, you know, multifamily housing in that, you know, there's some of it is more targeted at, you know, affluent seniors and some of it's more, you know, moderately priced and some of it's in urban locations and, you.
- [23:39]
Josh Alleman
Know, there's just a lot more to choose from. He said that independent living as a business model started to develop after the Fair Housing Amendments act of 1988. It expanded prohibitions on housing discrimination and made it illegal for landlords to discriminate based on physical or mental status. Exemptions were carved out for communities that registered as housing for older persons, which allowed landlords to build communities specifically for adults aged 55 and older.
- [24:08]
Charlie Scudder
Since that legislation was passed, there's a.
- [24:10]
Josh Alleman
Lot of services that you can bring.
- [24:13]
Charlie Scudder
Into someone's home and, you know, someone can stay anywhere they could stay in a multi family housing. They can stay in, you know, independent living. Again, for, you know, for many people, the independent living is, you know, a very nice option to have with other older adults.
- [24:31]
Josh Alleman
According to the National Investment center for Seniors Housing and Care, another industry group that serves senior living real estate investors and operators, at least 21% of all senior housing in the US is independent living. And Dallas has the largest market for similar active adult communities nationwide. That estimate is likely low since independent living communities aren't regulated like assisted living or nursing homes. Here in Texas, for example, you don't even have to register for a license with the state to open an independent living community in the same way you'd be required to for assisted living. It also means that a ton of communities don't have the same obligation to provide the same level of security for residents in the way that other kinds of communities might. There's likely more people coming and going from an independent living community, just like you'd expect at any other apartment complex. And that freedom to hire your own caretaker or cleaning service or have visitors stop by anytime unencumbered is what makes independent living so desirable for a lot of older adults. Residents pay top dollar to live in those kinds of communities. Remember, Dan said his aunt Kathy was paying around $3,000 a month for her apartment at Edgemere. Residents put down as much as a $1.4 million deposit to reserve a spot at Edgemere, most of which was refunded when a resident moved out or died. The seniors who live at Edgemere pay their monthly service fee until their death, since many will keep the apartment and as they age. But those high rents haven't protected communities like Edgemere from serious financial pressures, especially in the years since the COVID 19 pandemic. In 2022, Edgemere declared bankruptcy and sued its landlord, a Dallas based real estate investment group. In that suit, the community detailed a series of financial woes that left Edgemere in debt and unable to pay its bills. After a year in bankruptcy court, Edgemere was bought by an out of state company. As part of the bankruptcy process, Edgemere agreed to pay $145 million that it owed to about 300 families of its residents in unpaid deposit refunds. In its many federal bankruptcy court filings, discussing its assets and debts and financial troubles, Edgemere didn't mention that at least three murders had been committed on on the property in the years leading up to the pandemic. This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest with your guardrails in place with Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started Risk for free@greenlight.com Spotify after Josh Alleman found that Benjamin Coitiba had been returning to Edgemere every weekend during the 7am shift change, he called police again and again. They told him they couldn't do anything until a crime was committed. In other words, call us when he gets there. It was Friday at this point and Josh knew that Coidoba would be back in the morning.
- [27:53]
Charlie Scudder
We decided in the maintenance guys, we decided we're gonna go up there 6:30, and we're gonna wait for him and we're gonna. We're just gonna get him ourselves. And so we do. We meet up there at 6:30 that, that next morning, that Saturday morning. And we knew what car to look for. We, we taken a picture of his car before. So about 6:50, he drives up and he parks on the, on the street. At that point, we were like, okay, we're you. We're going to be over here. You come from back here. You come from over here. We had one. One guy outside NKC ran. And so we, we had eight guys that were out there. Everybody was passionate about it for sure. Everybody was ready to stop him because we just were ready to catch a thief. You know, we took it personal that he was doing that to our, to our, to our residents.
- [28:42]
Josh Alleman
What happened next was captured on Edgemere security cameras. Koitoba enters the first set of doors and approaches another with a small security booth. He's wearing a green polo with a logo of an in home care company and black slacks. He's carrying a manila envelope in one hand and in the other is holding a cell phone to his ear like he's on an important call. Just as he gets to the door, a man walks through one of Josh's teammates. Josh follows after. Coytobus starts to turn, and several more men step into frame. One grabs his arm and puts Koitoba in a headlock. As he tries to duck out of the way. The seven men force him into a side room out of frame from the cameras. Did y'all say anything to him? Did he say anything back?
- [29:26]
Charlie Scudder
Oh, yeah, we talked to him for a little while because it took a while for the police to get there.
- [29:31]
Josh Alleman
One of the guards there that morning pulled out his cell phone and began recording as they waited for the cops. Yeah. You've been telling the resident that your name is Peter and then you work for Manon.
- [29:41]
Charlie Scudder
My pleasure to get you over to the police. How long have you been here in the United States?
- [29:47]
Josh Alleman
Six months.
- [29:49]
Charlie Scudder
That's a lie. No way. And just the fact that you're the same person that we caught the first time, that's enough. Look at him smiling like he did something. Thief.
- [29:59]
Josh Alleman
Your mama didn't teach you better.
- [30:01]
Charlie Scudder
We opened them in a law envelope. That's the first thing we did. And so there was a. There was a gun, and we didn't touch it. We didn't look at it, but the police later on told us it was unloaded. There was a magnet.
- [30:16]
Josh Alleman
Texas had recently passed an open carry law, which made it legal to carry a firearm openly in public places. But at the time, you still needed to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, like coitibus gun. It was and still is illegal to carry a firearm into places deemed medical facilities, like Edgemere was. The magnet, police said later was to check for real or fake jewelry. Fakes would stick to the magnet. Precious metals would not.
- [30:44]
Charlie Scudder
Police get there, they talk with him, and they found out at that point that his real name was Billy. Billy Chimeramere.
- [30:54]
Josh Alleman
Billy Shamir Mirror. Not Benjamin Coidiba, the name he'd been using.
- [30:59]
Charlie Scudder
And so they ended up charging him with failure to identify along with the criminal trespassing.
- [31:04]
Josh Alleman
Was it like seeing him in handcuffs after all of your detective work?
- [31:10]
Charlie Scudder
Well, we were happy. I mean, we were. We protected our facility. You know, that. That's. That's how we looked at it. We. We. We stopped him. We. We stopped a thief. So we were. We were still at adrenaline, you know, still had adrenaline. We were excited. And right after that, we. We all went to IHOP together to celebrate. And so, yeah, we were excited about it. You know, we felt pretty. Pretty good about ourselves at that point.
- [31:40]
Josh Alleman
Even though he was carrying a gun illegally, police did not charge Shamir Mir with violating the state's concealed carry law. Edgemere's attorneys wanted to push them to do so. They asked Josh to collect statements from all the theft victims who'd reported the maintenance imposter. He also collected the initial reports and scanned through the security cameras to capture the moments when he had been on the property since the trespass warning.
- [32:04]
Charlie Scudder
I remember I have everything on my desk, different files. And I just thought about the residents that had passed away who had missing items before, just because we just caught this thief. And it just got me thinking, what if this guy did this? What if he's the one that stole their items? I looked at the days that they died, and I realized, you know, they died on the weekends. Phoebe Perry and Ms. Payne died on the weekends. Phyllis Payne, Dr. Sinclair, she passed away when he was working there. He. From there, I look at the door logs. Those doors are electronic, and you can tell what time their doors open and closed for. For Phoebe Perry and Phyllis Payne, the mornings of their deaths. It said on the door log, door open from the inside, door closed. And then 10 minutes later, door open from the inside, door closed. And so it just got me thinking, okay, did they get Their newspaper. Like I'm trying to rationalize it, but then I thought, well, maybe they got a knock on their door and he told them that he was with maintenance and maybe they let him in and then he kills them and takes their jewelry. And then 10 minutes after 10 minutes, he opens the door and closes it behind him as he leaves. That made sense too.
- [33:22]
Josh Alleman
And you thought that at that time?
- [33:23]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah, I sure did.
- [33:26]
Josh Alleman
This was late June 2016. Shamir Mehr wasn't arrested for capital murder until March 2018. Josh was without a doubt the first person to realize what was actually happening. But he was ignored.
- [33:44]
Charlie Scudder
I met with one supervisor first. They told me to go to this other supervisor. I met with them and I explained to them the entire theory and whatnot. I showed the footage, I showed the door logs and they told me to write it down, put it in your file and if anything else comes up, we'll bring it forward to the police. And I said, so you don't want me to go to the police yet? They said, no, not yet.
- [34:06]
Josh Alleman
I called Edgemere to ask if they had a response to this, that their employees intentionally hid potential evidence of a series of murders from police. Teresa Bates, the executive director of the property under its new ownership, said that because that was before her company took over, she couldn't comment on any part of the case. A few months after he shared his suspicions about the deaths, Josh was promoted to security lead at Edgemere. But he was still technically working through the contracted security company. Because of the string of thefts, management decided to make some changes, he said, and hire an in house security team. They eliminated his position in early 2017 and encouraged him to reapply for his job with the new team. Josh declined. Even after he left Edgemere, Shamir Mir remained on his mind. I think you mentioned you would search his name every now and then.
- [35:01]
Charlie Scudder
Absolutely. For those, for the time after that, for, for the two years after that, I would search. I was obsessed, I was obsessed. Search his name all the time because I just, I, I just knew something was wrong with that guy, you know.
- [35:17]
Josh Alleman
Did you suspect him of murder at that point?
- [35:20]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah, this is after the, yeah, the theory. This is after the theory. And yeah, I for sure did. I was just discouraged by those that, you know, couldn't, couldn't see it.
- [35:35]
Josh Alleman
You know, you say you're obsessed. Did that, how did that weigh on you? Did that weigh on you?
- [35:46]
Charlie Scudder
It did. I mean, I, probably every single day I would look up his name and, you know, just, yeah, I, I, I just felt like I was right about it, but I still, like, wrestled with that. I hate it, you know, I hate. Because it, because, because I was right, you know, I. I just hate it. Yeah. What was the question again? I'm sorry.
- [36:23]
Josh Alleman
I was asking how this, how that time, knowing that he was out there and that you suspected him of this, how that weighed on you.
- [36:41]
Charlie Scudder
That's. I don't know. That's hard. That's hard to answer. I just, I just had the obsession. I just, I just had the obsession that I was right. I just was convinced that I was wrong at that point. Like, I'm. I could convinced by outside factors. You know, like internally I felt like it was. I was right. But at the same time, all the deaths, like I said, were natural causes. That's what the police said for each one, like, and kind of, I kind of felt like, who am I to question what they're saying, that there was natural causes, you know, they didn't see anything. So why, who am I?
- [37:24]
Josh Alleman
After Shamirmere was charged with criminal trespass at Edgemere, he was sentenced to 70 days in the county jail. Yet after just 12, he was released on good behavior. Two weeks later, he was pacing the halls of another independent living community. Just a few miles north, more bodies started to appear. Who, if anyone, could put the puzzle pieces together now. Next time on the Unforgotten. Unnatural Causes.
- [37:54]
Charlie Scudder
We're paying premium price to have our mothers protected there. And he was in there all the time and they did nothing. And then to have nine murders. It's just unbelievable when it comes out that Shamir Mir is arrested and they all knew he was all over the building. What did they do? Nothing. Nothing.
- [38:23]
Josh Alleman
The Unforgotten is a Free range production. Season 2 Unnatural Causes is created, written and hosted by me, Charlie Scudder. Our producer is Wes Ferguson. Associate producer is Monika Watkins. Audio, editing, engineering, mixing and mastering by Austin Sisler at Eastside Studios in Austin, Texas. Theme song and Sound design by AJ LeGrand. Wes Ferguson is the executive producer at Free Range. Special thanks to the Dallas Morning News and the division of journalism at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts.
- [38:58]
Charlie Scudder
SA.