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- [00:01]
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- [01:02]
Charlie Scudder
1974 the Vietnam War has been raging for nearly 20 years. The North Vietnamese army has been growing stronger ever since American troops left a year earlier. But here, in a little bar and restaurant not far from the French Embassy, that front seems far away. It's called May Kim. The owner is a dark haired Chinese born woman named Lu Ti Vanguard. She's a war widow with three adult sons and one teenage daughter. Everyone calls her Kim. Across the street from Kim's bar is the Vietnamese headquarters of Caltex, an American oil company. One of Kim's regulars is an American expatriate who works for Caltex, a US Military veteran from Texas named William Harris, Kim and Bill hit it off. They get married, but they've barely started their new lives together. In April 1975, when the Viet Cong and People's Armies of Vietnam begin their final assault on the South Vietnamese capital, Caltex pulls Bill out of the country, sending him to a hotel in Singapore in the last days of April. But not before the newlyweds rush to the American Embassy, where Bill signs an affidavit saying he's married to Kim and that he will care for her in the United States. Bill flees, leaving Kim and her teenage daughter Lone, behind. The next day, Saigon falls. Kim and Lone hurry back to the US Embassy, where American helicopters are landing on the embassy's roof to evacuate people to safety. But the line is long. There are thousands of refugees mere hours before North Vietnamese soldiers take control of the city. Kim and Lone wait Their turn. Hoping to get out of Saigon and back to Bill. I'm Charlie Scudder, and this is the Unnatural Causes. Chapter four the Refugee on the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, lines of refugees climb a ladder to a US army helicopter, where they all cram. Inside on the ladder is Kim and her daughter, Lone. They make it into the helicopter and are taken to the deck of an aircraft carrier waiting in the South China Sea. A few days later, they're reunited with Bill near Manila. From there, the couple spend the rest of their lives seeing the world, mostly thanks to Bill's work in the oil industry. They live in Hong Kong, then Tanzania. When it's time for Bill to retire, they move to Dallas. Lone followed soon after and married an American. Bill and Kim live not far from their daughter in a little house on Warm Breeze Lane in north Dallas. Bill collects model airplanes. Kim collects $2 bills and gives them out to family and friends as gifts. In 2008, Bill dies. In 2013, Lone also dies of cancer. Kim stays in their little house on Warmbreze Lane, just a few blocks from her son in law, Richard Reinhart.
- [04:11]
Richard Reinhart
Most people think their mother in law.
- [04:14]
Charlie Scudder
My mother, a lot of this is from Richard's testimony.
- [04:18]
Kim Harris
She was very, very fun to be around. You know, it's your birthday, she'll give you a hundred spot, no problem. Along with that, always had a $2 bill on the gift card.
- [04:29]
Charlie Scudder
By 2018, she's 81, but is active and sharp and takes care of herself. She pays her own bills, drives herself to the store, buys her own groceries at a nearby Walmart. One day in March 2018, she puts on bright fuchsia lipstick, just like always to run errands. She parks in a handicap spot at Walmart, grabs a cart and goes about her normal shopping. She doesn't notice a man talking on his cell phone who follows her from aisle to aisle. We would probably never know about Kim's visit to Walmart if not for something that happened just a day before. A mere five miles down the road at Preston Place Apartments, a retirement community in Plano, Texas. Since you already heard the first episode, you know what happened there. A Preston Place resident named Jackie Midkiff opened the apartment door of her neighbor Mary Bartel, and found Mary lying unconscious on her bed. Across the hall, Jenny Bassett discovered the lifeless body of her mother, Ann Conklin. Mary Bartel was taken to Medical City, Plano Hospital.
- [05:42]
Officer Jamal Kemp
I got a call from my supervisor and he said, hey, I need you to go to the hospital. There's a victim There.
- [05:51]
Charlie Scudder
That's Officer Jamal Kemp with the Plano Police Department. He was tasked with interviewing Mary at the hospital. What was her demeanor like?
- [06:00]
Officer Jamal Kemp
Classy. Very. Very poised. Surprisingly poised. Toward the end of the conversation, we were going to take photographs of her injuries, and she felt that she didn't look presentable. I knew she was referring to her clothing for the photographers, and that just really impressed me. I was like, wow, we're talking about within the last hour, this guy almost killed her, and she's worried about something like that. It's a different mindset from a different generation. So the word I would use to describe her is poised. I do remember walking in and talking to the victim, and you just leave it open. It's an open ending question. Just tell her what happened. And then you just be quiet. And she told me, she said, yeah, a guy pushed his way in and he was wearing dish gloves. So at that moment, I knew that this was serious because we had gotten word that there was somebody operating in the area that was wearing dish gloves, which is just strange in itself. So at that point, I was like, okay, this is. We need to get everybody up and over here.
- [07:08]
Charlie Scudder
In the days prior Plano, investigators had started getting reports of a stranger at Preston Place who wore dish gloves and was possibly stealing from residents. The patrol officers, like Kemp, had been briefed to notify the Crimes Against Persons Unit, where or capers, if they found anything that matched that description. When Kemp heard Mary mention the dish gloves, he called it in. The report went to Detective Paul Martinez. Recently, I asked Martinez what he remembers from that morning.
- [07:40]
Detective Paul Martinez
I went in there to go hear for myself and talk to her and got to see her for the first time. Right. And so that was a good conversation, you know, meaning, you know, you're trying to be open minded. Right. You know, if this really happened and was attacked, you know, how much trauma she's going through. So sometimes she's got to be open minded. How truthful? Honestly, not truthful. How much of it is really happening? And maybe is it just, you know, she's still being traumatized. I might need to talk to her later on and see if there's any details that she left out because of the traumatic event.
- [08:16]
Charlie Scudder
Martinez asked Mary to tell her story again and again. She repeated that a man wearing gloves had come to her door and knocked loudly. When she opened the door, she said he forced his way in, told her to go to the bed, and slammed a pillow on her face. She said she tried reaching for her emergency button but couldn't press it. Before she lost consciousness, Mary also said she was missing her wedding ring, a brilliant diamond in the center with rows of smaller diamonds on each side.
- [08:46]
Detective Paul Martinez
Then she went on to say. She goes, I'm now concerned about my purse, my wallet, electronics. And she started naming off different things. And when she said money, I was like, okay, well, do you remember what kind of denominations you had or how much money? And she was like, oh, yeah. And I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but it was like, $200, and there's, you know, this many tens, this many twenties, this many fives, this many ones. And I was like, oh, wow, she's being very detailed. She knows what she has. So it just led to, in my opinion, her credibility of what was really taking place. You know, I was like, wow, what really got me as it got me, you know, you can tell that it really did happen to her is she got a little choked up because she goes, you know, I'm not afraid to die, but I thought I was going to die, and I didn't want to die that way. And her saying that in her voice, getting choked up and so forth, is like, oh, there's no doubt this happened, you know?
- [09:40]
Charlie Scudder
Detective Martinez left the hospital and went to Preston Place. Officers had sealed both Ann and Mary's apartments and were searching them for clues. Meanwhile, Martinez and another detective began canvassing the property, knocking on doors and trying to find out if any other residents saw anything suspicious.
- [10:00]
Detective Paul Martinez
Some of the contacts that I made, learning that, you know, people were opening the door very easily, you know, which made it later on, it made it understand how easy it was for Billy Schemmer to pick his victims out.
- [10:19]
Charlie Scudder
Several more residents reported an intruder wearing gloves who said he was with maintenance. They shared the same story as Miriam Nelson. He came into the apartment, looked around, and left. But their description of the man was vague at best. They said he was a black man, but that was about it. Martinez also contacted the property management, who said someone had filed a suspicious vehicle report on the property just a few days prior. A man named Richard Plink had come to visit his mother at Preston Place and noticed a man in a Nissan Altima sitting alone in the parking lot. He thought that was odd and noticed when he left that the man was still there, but had just moved parking spots. Plink walked over and asked if the man needed any help. He said he was waiting on a therapy client and didn't need anything. Plink walked away, but noted the license plate id he was typing it into his phone when the man in the Nissan Altima drove away. Plink called police and made a report. Four days later, when Martinez was canvassing Preston Place, Plink repeated the details to another detective, including the license plate number.
- [11:33]
Detective Paul Martinez
We turned that over to our intelligence unit and they run with it.
- [11:39]
Charlie Scudder
Police soon had a litany of information about this Nissan Altima. First they saw that it had been in an accident and now was in an impound lot in Dallas. The driver in that accident was named Billy Shamirmere. They found that the Altima was scanned by a license plate reader at a far north Dallas apartment complex where Billy Shamirmere lived, and they found a trespassing charge From Edgemere in 2016, the one Josh Alleman filed all those years ago where Billy Shamirmir was driving the same vehicle.
- [12:14]
Detective Paul Martinez
Ultimately, it was Richard Plink's license plate that he gave us and description that he gave us that really snowballed and got us looking into these law enforcement databases that led us to Billy Shamer Mare.
- [12:29]
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- [12:53]
Advertiser 1
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- [13:01]
Advertiser 2
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. 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.
- [13:29]
Charlie Scudder
Plano is a suburb of Dallas, but it isn't really fair to call it a small town. It has a population of nearly 290,000, public transportation, nine high schools, and in 2018 had a police budget of more than $80 million. Still, Plano has had just an average of five murders annually in the past decade. If you remove the Shamirmere cases as an outlier, Martinez said that whenever there is a homicide, the whole department chips in and helps support the investigation however possible. A real all hands on deck situation after the attempted murder of Mary Bartel, some investigators started searching online databases for reports of suspicious activity. Others continued going door to door at Preston Place asking for more information. One of the detectives called in to help with the case was John Hoffman. I wanted to talk to Detective Hoffman specifically because he has a side hustle hobby that made him particularly interested in this case. He's a coin collector and keeps track of gold and silver exchange rates to know when to buy and sell.
- [14:39]
Richard Reinhart
I buy gold and silver and coins and I appraise them. So I have kind of a good working knowledge of it. Basically it's my grandfather and my father, we've all been in that. My son's doing it as well. It's just an interesting hobby, being able to look at some jewelry, figure out what it would be worth, weighing it, determining the different gemstones.
- [15:07]
Charlie Scudder
When he got Mary Bartel's report about her missing wedding ring, Hoffman went to online sales platforms, including Offerup, to see if anyone had listed the stolen ring. Sure enough, he found a recently sold listing for the same custom designed diamond encrusted ring. A photo showed the ring on a man's hand. The brilliant diamond barely able to slide past the first knuckle. The user who listed the ring had two accounts. Zeb Zeb 4 and Zebra 44. Remember that, it's important. Later, Zebra 44. Police first contacted the user who bought the ring, a man named Abdel Saleh. Saleh said he had purchased the ring in a meeting at a Starbucks in North Dallas. He made a living buying and selling jewelry and precious metals online. He's originally from Jerusalem and feels more comfortable speaking Arabic than English. He would testify at trial through an interpreter and became known among the victim's families as the hundred percent guy or the guy in the fedora. Here he is being questioned by prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin at trial. You'll also hear Seleh's Arabic interpreter translating immediately after each question.
- [16:21]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
So we, we couldn't make this out. We wouldn't be able to see who this is. But you know who these two individuals are?
- [16:30]
Charlie Scudder
Yes, 100%.
- [16:33]
Kim Harris
That's me and that's my cousin.
- [16:34]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
The top one is you and the bottom one is your.
- [16:38]
Charlie Scudder
That's my hat.
- [16:39]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
You still have your hat with you today? When I came out to see, you were wearing that hat too, right?
- [16:49]
Kim Harris
Can't you use it in the court?
- [16:51]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
Okay, that's fine.
- [16:54]
Charlie Scudder
The prosecutor shows screen grabs from security footage at a Dallas Starbucks showing the guy in the fedora making an exchange with Billy Shamir.
- [17:03]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
And then here is the man that you. Mr. Chir in Starbucks.
- [17:08]
Kim Harris
Yes, he came. He was very nice.
- [17:11]
Richard Reinhart
Do you remember exactly how much you paid for it?
- [17:13]
Kim Harris
380.
- [17:15]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
$380?
- [17:16]
Charlie Scudder
Okay.
- [17:17]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
What did you do with that ring.
- [17:19]
Charlie Scudder
When you got back to your shop?
- [17:20]
Kim Harris
I took the diamonds out and melted it.
- [17:24]
Charlie Scudder
When detectives went to that Starbucks and found the security camera footage of the transaction where Sulla bought Mary Bartel's ring, they noticed that right next door was a diamond and gold exchange. That's the name of the place. Diamond and gold exchange. Enter Detective Hoffman and his knowledge of the precious metal trade. When Hoffman brought in a photograph of Shamir Mir, the owner of the diamond and gold exchange, a man named Gilad Nissanov, recognized him right away. Billy Shamir Mir was a regular there.
- [17:56]
Richard Reinhart
He would take that and go to one of the gold and silver places and present as a very informed seller at that point.
- [18:04]
Charlie Scudder
This is Detective Hoffman again, a.
- [18:06]
Richard Reinhart
A broker for estate sales. Come in well dressed and act like he knew. He goes, this is what I have. And it was a very informed presentation. They considered him somewhat professional. He'd come in there, you know, within a couple of hours after having killed somebody, smiling, joking around, just having a good time, shaking hands, cashing in this jewelry for pennies on the dollar. Pennies on the dollar. I mean, it was awful when you look and see what he was getting, and he would just be as happy as he could be.
- [18:42]
Charlie Scudder
Prosecutors played some of the security camera footage of Shamir Mir at the diamond and gold exchange when the case went to trial. The cameras were focused on the door in the waiting room. So we don't see Nissanov or anyone behind the counter, but we do see Shamir Mir coming in over and over, grinning, laughing, making jokes. He's comfortable relaxing in the waiting room while exchanging his stolen merchandise for cash. Cell phone data later showed that Shamir Mir frequented pawn shops in the area, too. But Hoffman says that none have records that he ever actually sold items. Some did recognize him, Hoffman says, as someone who would come in for an appraisal but never finalized a deal. That's one of the reasons Hoffman says, that Shamir Mir wasn't caught sooner. Pawn shops in Texas and elsewhere are heavily regulated. They must hold items for at least 30 days, and they keep extensive records of who they buy from and document those items thoroughly. And those records are regularly inspected by state officials. Cash for gold shops, however, don't have the same strict oversight.
- [19:50]
Richard Reinhart
The pawn shops, they're heavily regulated. The state really stays on top of them for whatever reason. The cash for gold places aren't. They're not held by the same rules. You know, bad habit for Billy Schmermorrow was that he would sell this stuff quickly he didn't hold on to it long. So we're able to put deceased people to jewelry sales quickly and go, okay, this is what's missing on this date. Let's look and see what's if he did it on this date or the day after. And it was, it was fairly easy to put those things together. Compare and go. This is what's missing. Because it was a absolute loophole where people could just quickly dump stuff. Pawn shops, they have to, you know, if you go in there and you want to see a record, they produce the records for you. Gold and silver places weren't quite like that. So there were some changes that needed to be made because how easy it was to go in there and sell was why he used them.
- [20:53]
Charlie Scudder
The diamond and Gold exchange that Shamir Mir frequented is in a strip mall right on the corner of LBJ Freeway and Coit Road. It sits below Dallas's High Five interchange, which stacks five towering overpasses where LBJ and U.S. 75 cross. Earlier this year, I went to the shop to take a look and to meet its owner, Gila Nissanov. Pulling into the parking lot of the Diamond Gold Exchange. And I'm gonna park.
- [21:24]
Kim Harris
Way down here.
- [21:26]
Charlie Scudder
The windows on the front of the building are darkly tinted so you can't see in from the sidewalk. Stepping inside, there's a small waiting room I recognized immediately from the security camera footage shown in court. A few chairs, a small table and a blank wall with a thick multi pane glass window. The kind with a little slot below to pass through jewelry, documents or cash. Right away, I recognized the owner's dark five o'clock shadow beard and slicked back hair. Behind the window, just like when he had testified at trial. He wore a nicely starched white button up shirt and dark slacks. Gila. Hi, my name is Charlie.
- [22:05]
Kim Harris
I'm a journalist.
- [22:06]
Charlie Scudder
I am working on a podcast about the Billy Shimanor case. I know you testifying. Would you mind sitting down and chatting a little bit?
- [22:13]
Kim Harris
What kind of questions are you?
- [22:15]
Charlie Scudder
I just want to know kind of what you remember about him. I know he came in a lot. I also know there's been critiques of the fact that you guys, you know, he kept coming back and back, I guess, and kind of want to give you a chance to respond, you know.
- [22:31]
Kim Harris
Yeah, I'll tell you, you know, honestly, we, we get a lot of customers that come in all walks of life. Yeah, Billy came in and he purported himself as like an antiques dealer.
- [22:45]
Charlie Scudder
Okay, I didn't know that.
- [22:48]
Kim Harris
Like a dealer in trade.
- [22:50]
Charlie Scudder
Okay.
- [22:51]
Kim Harris
And he would come in with jewelry and, you know, very, very polished water suit. A lot of times with a British accent from Kenya.
- [23:03]
Charlie Scudder
Oh, British accent from Kenya.
- [23:05]
Kim Harris
Yeah.
- [23:05]
Charlie Scudder
Okay. Yeah.
- [23:06]
Kim Harris
A lot of the Kenyan people, they.
- [23:07]
Detective Paul Martinez
Have that British accent.
- [23:08]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [23:09]
Kim Harris
So he wasn't like a hoodlum or a thug or anything like that, you know?
- [23:15]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [23:15]
Kim Harris
What is that?
- [23:16]
Officer Bill Knight
Reporter?
- [23:17]
Detective Paul Martinez
Yeah.
- [23:17]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [23:17]
Kim Harris
Look, I. I don't want to be painted as a bad guy in this.
- [23:21]
Charlie Scudder
You know, I totally get that.
- [23:22]
Kim Harris
Really did not do anything wrong.
- [23:24]
Charlie Scudder
Nissanov repeated that a few times that he didn't want to look like the bad guy in this story. He's seen other media coverage of the case and said his family and friends from out of town message him the few times that the case has made the national news. He said there's plenty of blame to be placed in this case at the senior living communities. The police, just not on his business. How do you respond to the critique that, you know, someone should have noticed?
- [23:53]
Kim Harris
You know, the police, I feel like they said themselves they didn't do their job or they. There was a lot of things that a lot of the people, a lot of the families, they went to the police and said, hey, this happened. This kind of odd thing happened. Obviously, we had no idea. Here, we have nothing to hide.
- [24:15]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [24:16]
Kim Harris
And, you know, when the police came, you know, we came and gave them the records right here. We're here to help. We had no idea this was going on. If we were doing something shady or illegitimate, we wouldn't accept records.
- [24:28]
Charlie Scudder
So it's not just, we're here to.
- [24:30]
Kim Harris
Work with the police.
- [24:31]
Detective Paul Martinez
Yeah.
- [24:32]
Kim Harris
Sometimes kids come in with mom and grandma's jewelry that they shouldn't have sold. We're here to work with everybody, you know, so we can't qualify people.
- [24:42]
Richard Reinhart
It's.
- [24:42]
Kim Harris
It's just what it is. But, I mean, look, just because he was a black guy, I mean, people look at him and they're like, oh, well, he had to have been. You know what I mean?
- [24:50]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [24:51]
Kim Harris
It's.
- [24:52]
Advertiser 1
You know.
- [24:52]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. And. And I get that when you have a repeat customer like that, it's. It's good business, you know? Yeah.
- [24:59]
Kim Harris
Business.
- [25:00]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [25:00]
Kim Harris
But I mean, obviously, if we would have known any of that, then we would have definitely not done the business. If we would have known anything to speak suspicious or anything like that, we would also have alerted authorities as well.
- [25:13]
Charlie Scudder
Nissanov repeated something you heard me say in the first episode of this podcast. If this had happened on a college campus, it would have been a completely different story because it involved older adults. He Said is a big part of why it went under reported for so long.
- [25:29]
Kim Harris
So I'll tell you, a serial killer in North Dallas. Something else.
- [25:35]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah.
- [25:35]
Kim Harris
You know, I get chills thinking about in this country, we don't care about our parents, grandparents. You know, they're put in these communities and to them they're volition as well. But, I mean, in this country, we don't care about our elderly people. I'll tell you, he's coming here with a smile on his face. Seems like from everything, he was a sociopath.
- [26:02]
Charlie Scudder
Nissanov also walked me through the process of how his business buys jewelry and other items from customers. He said his assessors will take a look at the item and make an offer. Then, to complete the sale, he writes a brief description of the item on a receipt and gets a copy of the customer's government issued id. Shamir Mir used his Kenyan passport with his real name, not an alias. I asked how long Nisenov keeps these records. He said he stores them for a significant amount of time. When police came to question him, he provided Shamir Mir sales records dating back to 2015. Remember, Kathy Sinclair, the first publicly identified victim, died a year later. Was Shamirmere selling jewelry from other murder victims as early as 2015, or were those legitimate sales from some other source? Police say we may never know. Here's prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin questioning Nisanov at trial.
- [27:03]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
These list off all of the transactions that Mr. Chamir was making with your establishment starting in 2015 all the way down to March 19th of 2008?
- [27:18]
Kim Harris
Yes.
- [27:19]
Prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin
And the total of the amount that you all sold to him was in that time span at 91,003 or you bought from him. $91,350.
- [27:33]
Charlie Scudder
$91,350 over almost two and a half years, not including whatever else was sold on Craigslist or Offerup. And although Nisenov told me that he offers competitive rates for all his customers, including Shamir Mir, Hoffman says he was likely lowballed when he sold his stolen goods. It's difficult to pin down an exact value for all of the goods Shamir Mir stole, in part because not all of the thefts were reported to police. And as you may remember from Norma French's case, the reports police did take didn't always account for all of the stolen property. But if you just add up the missing items we do know of, that value easily starts to climb over a million dollars. If he'd gone to some other kind of business that's more heavily monitored by law enforcement. Detective Hoffman says Shimirmer may have gotten a better deal.
- [28:29]
Richard Reinhart
There's a lot of money in that industry, and the cash for gold places, the gold and silver exchanges weren't regulated nearly like what a pawn shop is. They don't have to hold them like a pawn shop. The documentation is much different. And quickly that stuff is gone. Which would probably be another thing that he probably preferred is that that stuff is gone quickly.
- [28:56]
Charlie Scudder
So on March 20, 2018, the day after Mary Bartel was attacked, Plano police had already found that her ring had been listed online and quickly sold the user. Zebzeb 4 was registered to Billy Shamirmir. They knew that the suspicious car reported at Preston Place was driven by a man named Billy Shamirmir, who also had been arrested for trespassing at another senior living community. Finally, they found probable cause for arrest, but it wasn't for the murders. Shamirmere had an outstanding warrant because he hadn't shown up to court for a public intoxication charge.
- [29:36]
Detective Paul Martinez
Now we have somebody to actually go talk to.
- [29:38]
Charlie Scudder
This is Plano Detective Paul Martinez.
- [29:40]
Detective Paul Martinez
Again, it's like put a plan together, go get him arrested for this, you know, simple warrant for public intoxication. Bring him to the Plano Police Department so that I can go interview him and see where that takes us. Right. We had no idea what it was it was going to turn into.
- [30:02]
Charlie Scudder
At the time of Billy Shamirmir's arrest in the spring of 2018, Plano was one of the fastest growing cities in Texas and part of the Dallas Fort Worth metro area. That's among the fastest growing in the US because of that, Plano's police force was upping its game. Just a few weeks prior, it had launched a brand new surveillance unit meant for long stakeouts and monitoring persons of interest to help relieve those duties from patrol cops and detectives with heavy cases loads. They sometimes worked undercover, often in plain clothes and unmarked cop cars. The morning of March 20, 2018, they were tasked with arresting Billy Shamirmir on the public intoxication warrant, knowing that he was a person of interest in the attempted capital murder of Mary Bartel.
- [30:51]
Officer Bill Knight
So I arrived at the apartment complex and got set up at about 12:25 and. And we just sat there looking at all the cars that came through and whatnot.
- [31:01]
Charlie Scudder
That's Officer Bill Knight. He was one of several officers who went to the apartment complex that day. He had backed into a spot near the dumpster across from the apartment where Shamirmere lived and his assigned parking spot.
- [31:16]
Officer Bill Knight
When the Intelligence unit worked up information on Shamir Mir, they had a good vehicle for him, but it was involved in an accident, I think maybe the day before. I mean, we were pretty unlucky in that aspect because we didn't know what he was driving. So we had no choice but to show up at the apartment complex where we knew he would eventually. Well, we thought he'd eventually return to and just sit and wait instead of being able to research various databases looking for the car, where it may have hit on a camera system, tollway or whatever. We didn't have any of that information because his vehicle was impounded, undrivable, I assume. So we didn't know what he was in.
- [32:02]
Charlie Scudder
And they waited. One officer near the front of the complex noted every car that entered the parking lot, trying to see if its driver matched the ID photos that they had been given of Shamir Mir. Others confirmed those observations from other hidden cars in the parking lot.
- [32:20]
Officer Bill Knight
Sergeant Hughes was on the northwest corner of the complex and he saw a car driving in. And the driver of that car was possibly a match for Shamir Mirror.
- [32:31]
Charlie Scudder
The silver car drove past another officer who confirmed it looked like their guy. But the car drove past Shamir Mirror's assigned parking spot, where they expected him to stop. Instead, it pulled in front of Knight's car and stopped at the dumpster.
- [32:46]
Officer Bill Knight
The car ended up passing me and he stopped near the dumpster, got out. At first I could only see the top of his. He was wearing a brown cap. So he digs around in the car a little bit, walks to the dumpster. I hear some stuff being moved in the dumpster or tossed in the dumpster, I don't know. He returned to his car and walked around the back. And then at one point he got into the back passenger seat. I don't know what he was doing. I heard him beating on something or heard some kind of noise, loud noise. And then when he stood back up, he looked at me. I was like, yeah, this is, this is, this is going to be. He made another trip to the dumpster. And I heard a really loud noise, like something heavy was thrown into the dumpster. Then he returned to his car, made a, like a three point turn, turned around, and ended up going back westbound towards his parking space, number 67.
- [33:43]
Charlie Scudder
As soon as Shamir Mir pulled into his parking spot, the officers went into action. Several drove up from behind, pinning the silver sedan in its spot, so the driver had nowhere to flee. The officers drew their guns and got out of their cars, not in uniform, but wearing bulletproof vests with police stamped on them. Shamir Mir later said it looked like he'd stepped onto a Hollywood movie set.
- [34:07]
Officer Bill Knight
I mean, we're clearly marked up. There's no question that we're police. We're yelling police very loudly because we want everybody to know we're the police. So there's not any miscommunication on anyone's part or misinterpretation. I should say definitely blocking the car. I mean, his crimes were so atrocious. There was no way he was going to leave there. I mean, absolutely no way he was going to leave because we couldn't take a chance of him killing something else.
- [34:32]
Charlie Scudder
Police continued shouting at Shamir Mir, telling him to get out of the car, but he didn't move. They told him he was under arrest. He didn't respond. Finally, an officer opened the driver's door of the sedan, and Knight went to the other side to shove him out. He had been gripping a bag of jewelry in one hand and an envelope of cash in the other. It all scattered across the concrete when Shamimir hit the ground and officers put him in handcuffs.
- [35:01]
Officer Bill Knight
After we all got him on the ground and whoever handcuffed him, he was put in a patrol car. He never said, you know, like, hey, you have the wrong guy, or, what are you guys doing this for? He didn't say a word because I think, again, I think he was so, so surprised that we were on it.
- [35:18]
Charlie Scudder
With Shamira in custody, the officers went back to collect the items that he had in his hands. They found a gold necklace with the name Kim. In the envelope was a thick stack of two dollar bills. The officers also went back to the dumpster and pulled out a large red jewelry box that had been pried apart. Inside the box was a plastic Caltex name tag for Bill Harris, and an old, crumpled affidavit from the U.S. embassy in Saigon signed April 29, 1975, testifying that Harris was married to a woman named Liu T. Fang. It didn't take long for police to put the puzzle pieces together and find Kim's address on Warm Breeze Lane. Dallas officers arrived, and when no one answered the front door, they forced their way in. The cops went from room to room, finally finding Kim's body in the bedroom. Face Plano Detective Paul Martinez sped to Warren Breeze Lane. It wasn't his crime scene or jurisdiction, but the Dallas cops there told him what they had found inside.
- [36:28]
Detective Paul Martinez
They said, hey, we found a deceased woman on the side of the bed, and everything appears to be natural. But then I explained to that officer, I said, hey, let me tell you how we got to this point and told him a little bit about Mary Bartelle that just happened 24 hours ago and that the weapon that she claims was was used on her was a pillow and asked that he go back in there and see if the pillow was staged.
- [36:50]
Charlie Scudder
Martinez said the officer went back inside the house to check. On the bed were several pillows with polka dot pillowcases. The bed was unmade, but nothing seemed out of place. But then the officer turned the pillows over on one. Right in the center of the polka dot pillowcase was a bright fuchsia lipstick scene, the same shade Kim applied before her shopping trip to Walmart.
- [37:17]
Detective Paul Martinez
He comes back out and says, yeah, we found a pillow that looks like it has lipstick. We're calling Dallas PD Homicide. And we're like, okay, perfect. You know, homicide's coming in. Once they got there, it was no brainer. But otherwise now we're bringing him transferring custody from our little warrant that we had for him to now potential murder. I don't think anybody saw that coming.
- [37:39]
Charlie Scudder
Later that night, Shamir Mir willingly handed his phone over to police, saying they could use it to verify his alibi. Instead, they found something unbelievable. This wasn't just about Ann Conklin, Kim Harris and Mary Bartel. This was way bigger.
- [37:57]
Kim Harris
The issue is where are we going forward?
- [38:00]
Charlie Scudder
Are we going to pursue a death penalty or no? Next time on the Unnatural Causes. 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 Monica 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.