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- [00:02]
Charlie Scudder
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.
- [00:23]
Wes Ferguson
Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more.
- [00:29]
Charlie Scudder
In the summer of 1994, four teens.
- [00:32]
Anthony Brewer
Entered an abandoned building in Gravesend, Brooklyn. It was the last time they would be seen alive. With few clues and no witnesses, the case went cold. But for Anthony Brewer, the brother of one of the victims, the search never stopped. In 2024, he acquired evidence from the police that contained DNA samples that didn't match the teens. That discovery put his life and the life of his family in grave danger. The Vanishing all episodes now available on Disney and Hulu on disneyplus.disney.com, rated TV.
- [00:58]
Charlie Scudder
14 LV Mary Sue Brooks lived alone in Richardson, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas. She owned two condos a few doors down from each other. Sue lived in one and rented the other to her grandson and his wife. Their one rule, which applied to both grandmother and grandson, don't come over unannounced. You may remember how Sue's friend Ruth described her back in episode one.
- [01:25]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
She was a happy spirit. She was a smile.
- [01:28]
Wes Ferguson
She was a sunflower.
- [01:30]
Charlie Scudder
But on the evening of January 31, 2018, Sue's family couldn't get in touch with her. Her grandson decided to break their one rule and go check on his grandmother. When he got to her door, it was slightly open. When he saw what was inside, he called police. Her body was laying on the floor of the living room. Plastic bags of frozen groceries from Walmart sat on the counter, melting. Officers called the Dallas county medical Examiner's office and Sue's primary care doctor. Because sue had a blood pressure cuff sitting on a table nearby, not to mention her advanced age, they told police they wouldn't be seeking an autopsy. Natural causes, they said. Call a funeral home instead. But Officer Shane Harris, a 26 year veteran on the force, wasn't convinced. Here's a clip from his body worn camera which was recording that night. I was just gonna do one last.
- [02:29]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Hit her just to make sure I can see anything. Can you just shut up for me?
- [02:43]
Charlie Scudder
Harris carefully turned Sue's body over. Her body was rigid, her mouth slightly open, but there were no abrasions or marks that suggested anything violent had happened here. He patted down her body, looking for anything clearly broken or out of place. He didn't notice anything. He placed her back onto the ground. It would have taken a trained eye to see if there were tiny burst blood vessels called petechiae in Sue's eyes or cheeks. The only signs a smothering death might leave. And even then, those same marks could come from a heart attack or stroke. Only someone with experience in smothering investigations might think that this was anything but natural. The thing is, Dallas had such a trained eye. Dr. Jeffrey Barnard, who was Dallas County's chief medical examiner, is one of few forensic pathologists in the United States who have investigated multiple confirmed smothering deaths. If you listened to season one of the Unforgotten, you may recognize him. He's the expert my senior producer, Wes Ferguson interviewed about the autopsy of Shelly Watkins from Corsicana, Texas. Barnard was the right guy in the right place at the right time to notice and potentially stop Shamir's stealthy killing spree. So how did he miss it? I'm Charlie Scudder, and this is the Unnatural Causes Chapter seven, the Missed Clues. When I said that Barnard was the right guy in the right place at the right time, I wasn't exaggerating. Not only does he have 38 years of experience in forensic pathology, he and his office are uniquely respected in the field. He's a presiding officer for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which oversees all of the state's crime labs and has taught forensic pathology the science of determining how someone died at UT Southwestern in Dallas. He also has a particular kind of expertise that makes him specifically qualified to investigate Shamir Mir's crimes. He's one of few forensic pathologists who have conducted autopsies on several known smothering deaths. Meaning he knew what to look for. In 2015, he published a peer reviewed paper in the Journal of Forensic Sciences about the signs medical examiners should look for when determining whether or not a serial killer is at work. Then there's this. Barnard has been credited with pushing the Dallas Police Department to reinvest in and revive its cold case unit in 2016. One reason? A string of cases that bothered him from the late 1980s and early 1990s that he'd always thought could be connected. He thought there may be an undetected serial killer targeting elderly women by strangling them. He wanted funding to retest DNA in those cases and possibly identify a suspect. His push to reopen those cases led DPD to create a much more robust cold case unit to test other unsolved cases. Those tests later showed that those elderly murder victims Were not connected after all. But I asked Barnard, who retired earlier this month, about the irony there that he'd spent decades obsessing over a possible serial killer who targeted elderly women, Even as the first cases of a real serial killer who targeted elderly women were missed in his office. I guess I wonder about. Because it seems like there's a little bit of irony there that you're focused on this possible serial killer targeting elderly women when there is a real serial killer targeting elderly.
- [06:30]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Yeah, it came a lot years later, but the mode of murder, so to speak, was different. There was no question these cases were homicides from the beginning. Like I said, strangulation cases, which the majority of these were. There was no question that they were homicides versus cases that totally appeared to be natural and many of which were called in and nothing was found at the scene, so they were released. I think probably there are many people have experience with smotherings. They just don't know their smotherings. Because that's the thing about smothering is you're lucky if you get any real evidence. There are probably cases that come through that very well could be. And if there is zero evidence, zero suspicion, you look at them as what they appear to be.
- [07:21]
Charlie Scudder
Does that concern you at all, the fact that we just don't know?
- [07:25]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Well, I mean, you could potentially say every case that comes in that you don't have any findings that has chronic disease could be a smothering. And the reality is. Well, that's true, it could be. But you physically cannot examine every one of those. You have to take into account what the investigative information is and whatever else that you have to evaluate.
- [07:47]
Charlie Scudder
It just feels like there were. Y'all had the right tools. Your experience with smothering deaths, your experience with these kinds of cases, and they just came in and out and they were missed.
- [07:59]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Well, the cases that came in were called what they found, which was natural. The two I exhumed had nothing to go on until investigative information came up. But the other cases never came in the office. They were called in, just like thousands of other cases are called in. And if there's nothing suspicious, then you're generally not going to bring someone in who's got a chronic disease. They're elderly, and it's not unexpected that they are found dead. Every office in the country has the exact same thing.
- [08:33]
Charlie Scudder
Barnard said that if the same cases came in today without any additional information, he would still call them natural. At the time, Barnard said his office was doing about 3700 autopsies. Per year. Today it's up to 5000. Sometimes his team has up to 30 autopsies in a single day.
- [08:54]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
4000 people are dead at home that are elderly. You're going to try and autopsy 4,000 people in addition to the nearly 5,000 you've done? There's no staffing that can do that. So you have to make educated guesses. And unfortunately, as in this case, there were just cases that there was not any information that was compelling.
- [09:19]
Charlie Scudder
It wasn't until police provided cell phone data showing Shamir Mir's phone in the apartments of his victims that he decided it couldn't have been a coincidence. Barnard said he was recently invited to give a talk at the Mayo Clinic. He said the clinic expected him to talk about the JFK assassination, which if you're the chief medical examiner in Dallas, you know a thing or two about. Instead, he prepared a presentation on the Shamir Mirror case and told his fellow doctors the importance of including investigative evidence in determining cause and manner of death. But that reliance on external investigations can raise other issues. Brandon Garrett, the Duke University law professor and death penalty researcher you heard from in Episode five, is also an expert in the ways that many so called forensic science methods are based on subjective claims that can be biased. His most recent book, Autopsy of a Crime Lab, breaks down how many kinds of evidence are touted as foolproof but have been debunked in recent years, especially as DNA evidence can identify suspects with much greater accuracy. Bite mark evidence, blood splatter evidence, hair and fiber evidence, even fingerprint evidence has been shown to be faulty.
- [10:35]
Anthony Brewer
Garrett says traditional forensics didn't begin with any investment from the research community and no involvement of research scientists at all. They typically evolved because police found evidence in crime scenes and started to look at it with their bare eyes. And then maybe they used the technology of the microscope once that came along. They are professional eyeballers and it would be good if more statistics were brought into those disciplines. And there's a lot of work being done to try to accomplish that.
- [11:03]
Charlie Scudder
In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences, America's leading group of scientific researchers, produced a bombshell report that described just how flawed the evidence that's commonplace in criminal trials can be. It said that much of the evidence is without any meaningful scientific validation and claimed that judges have been utterly ineffective in maintaining high standards to avoid using junk science in criminal trials. A lot of the conversation around the problems with junk forensic science have focused on what's called false positives, conclusions that use faulty evidence to wrongfully identify A suspect. It's led to many wrongful convictions and was the primary focus of the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report. But false negativesconclusions that ignore key pieces of evidence and potentially leave criminals unidentified are also rampant in forensic investigations. Often investigators are given wide leeway to determine what evidence is relevant and what's not. Garrett cited a 2011 FBI study that suggested that 85% of fingerprint analysts make false negative mistakes.
- [12:15]
Anthony Brewer
It is often the worst thing that can go wrong in the criminal system because an innocent person was wrongly convicted. Often when the false positives can contribute to that. If a forensic expert, if a medical death investigator does a false positive, it could lead to an innocent person being wrongly convicted. But false negatives have enormous consequences too. And in many of these fields, there's evidence that false negatives may happen just as often or even more often. And it was sort of widely ignored because, well, that doesn't matter in real life. But of course it matters enormously in real life. It matters to public safety. False negatives are also of enormous consequence and have become more high profile. Medical death area so often when it's a police involved killing, that medical examiner suggests that there might be other explanations or natural causes.
- [13:03]
Charlie Scudder
Garrett pointed to the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. Initial police reports said that Floyd had experienced a medical incident that led to his death. It wasn't until video captured by a teenage bystander was made public showing an officer kneeling on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds that his cause of death was changed to homicide.
- [13:26]
Anthony Brewer
There's evidence that it's a broader phenomena that we may be undercounting. Police involved killings by as much as 50% in this country, according to a University of Washington study. But, but, but, you know, this case highlights that these, these issues may be far more common than appreciated in cases that, that might, might never have attracted public attention, you know, had there not been this, this, you know, serial killer that was, that was sort of caught in, in the act of one of the killings. But it sounds like this is the kind of thing that would have gone unnoticed for years had it not been for, for happenstance. It suggests that also when you have sort of more vulnerable, less privileged people here, it's elderly people who aren't a priority in society that they may suffer the most from these kinds of false negatives.
- [14:16]
Charlie Scudder
Just like in the George Floyd killing. Barnard said it took extra evidence, extra context to determine there was anything suspicious about the deaths of Shamira's victims. Here he is Testifying in the first trial about the night the body of Sue Brooks was found in her own living room following her shopping trip to Walmart, you'll hear prosecutor Glenn Fitzmartin asking him questions. But there was nothing at that scene.
- [14:41]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Nothing left behind, that three experienced police officers would look at and determine that.
- [14:47]
Charlie Scudder
Someone had done something of foul play.
- [14:49]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
That's correct.
- [14:50]
Charlie Scudder
Had they had that inclining, had they thought that something had been left behind or something looked suspicious, would you have been sending someone out and the medical examiner's office treated it differently?
- [15:01]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Well, in this case, it was after, I believe, a daughter came in and identified that there was something missing in the house, but then she filed a report. Had we had that right off the bat, had someone, the grandson who found her, said that there was a missing safe or whatever was missing, we would probably not. Only since we're out with Park, Casey.
- [15:25]
Charlie Scudder
And don't you think the police would have treated that a little bit differently as well? I think so. So the scene as it was left that night left the police, experienced police officers to believe nothing. There was no foul play, and therefore you all had to treat it the way you would a normal situation where an elderly individual had passed away. That's correct. When I first heard that, it raised a lot of questions for me. The idea that how a trained medical examiner determines cause and manner of death is dependent in large part on a police investigator's notes is potentially problematic in a few different ways. On one hand, it could mean medical examiners are working too closely with police and prosecutors as an arm of law enforcement and could identify the wrong suspect, which can lead to wrongful convictions. On the other, it could mean that like in the Shamirmir case, false negatives could lead to unidentified murders or murderers. Either way, that subjective process can be riddled with bias and is not the kind of objective scientific research that it often sounds like on TV shows like csi and not what it sounds like when presented as scientific evidence in the courtroom. I asked Barnard, the medical examiner, about potential bias in those kinds of investigations. Is there any worry in the field maybe that there could be bias thrown in with that?
- [16:50]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Well, you know, bias is one of those things that you say, is it bias or is it really educated information because these people die from chronic diseases? So, I mean, if that's a bias, then you have to say, then there is a bias to that. The fact that they're elderly and they have chronic disease goes hand in hand that when you're elderly and you have chronic disease, that you can and do.
- [17:14]
Charlie Scudder
Die I also wanted to ask Barnard about 2 of the Shamirmeer cases, in particular. In almost all of the Dallas county cases that have been identified publicly, Barnard and his office did eventually amend the death certificates to homicidal violence. But in two cases, he did not. In the death of Catherine Probst Sinclair, whose nephew Dan we visited in episode two, Barnard changed the cause of death to undetermined, and it was not referred to a grand jury for a criminal indictment against Shamir Mir. In the case of Solomon Saul Spring, the only male victim that's been named, he did not amend the death certificate at all. Saul lived at the Tradition Preston. He was found dead in his apartment on October 1, 2016, a week before Norma French was killed there. He was 89. His death was unlike any of the other cases, not only because of his gender. Saul was found lying in a straight line, just like many of the other victims. But unlike the others, he had broken ribs and a large gash in the back of his head and was lying in a pool of blood. The photos of the apartment are gruesome. There's blood all over the carpet, spread on some of the walls, and in the bathroom, sitting upright on the floor. There's a bloody tabletop lamp near one wall. There was also construction equipment, a 2x4 board, and a large clamp in the bathroom. Although the Tradition had no record of Saul requesting a maintenance worker, Saul wasn't initially on police's radar as a possible victim of Shamir Mir. But according to Trey Crawford's lawsuits against the Tradition, an unnamed whistleblower who worked there said the community had identified Saul as a possible victim alongside the other indicted cases. Shimmerymere's cell phone data also shows he was on the property at the time Saul died. Saul's death certificate, however, still reads that he died of natural causes. Police at the time assumed that because he was taking blood thinners, Saul must have slipped in the bathroom, hit his head, and bled out. Because Barnard's office did not alter his cause of death like the others. That's his official cause of death. Even today, I have two specific cases I want to ask you about. One is Catherine Sinclair. So she died in 2016 at Edgemere. She's the first named victim that we know of. Active, healthy. She did receive an autopsy. Her nephew was her executor. Filed a report of missing a stolen safe, and her cause of death was changed to undetermined.
- [19:55]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Right. That was certified by the doctor who did the examination.
- [19:59]
Charlie Scudder
Okay, so. But you would have changed it to.
- [20:01]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Well, I Mean, the. The cell phone data was unclear in that.
- [20:08]
Charlie Scudder
Okay.
- [20:09]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
There was. In fact, later on we heard that there was a safe missing or it was reported. I can't remember whether since I didn't get involved in that case, but I think that that one also there was the residence where she lived where there was some comment about possible family members carrying something big out. So it was never really proven whether there was a theft by him and whether he killed her.
- [20:38]
Charlie Scudder
Barnard is referring to a theory that police floated at Edgemere in 2016 after Dan Probst first filed his theft report. They allege that he or another relative may have stolen the safe for an insurance payout. Dan, who has tried pushing the medical examiner's office to change his Aunt Kathy's cause of death to homicide for nearly a decade, denies this.
- [21:03]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
That's totally impossible.
- [21:05]
Charlie Scudder
This is Dan.
- [21:08]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Whatever. I don't know. After this much time, I don't even know if I'm going to share that with my brother and sister. I. I pretty much expected something that stupid. Didn't know what the stupid would be, but that is ridiculous.
- [21:29]
Charlie Scudder
After making this claim about Dan and his family, Barnard brought up Saul Springs case and some.
- [21:36]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
There's a couple of cases where, you know, families weren't happy. We didn't call it, but you have to watch where his phone goes. And in some of these, he went to a place and he wasn't there very long. And then he went to another place in the building and was there for some period of time. But he also worked at some of these places. And so the one individual that I said, I can't make the call, and family wasn't happy he was examined was a man.
- [22:05]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. So I was gonna ask about that one, too.
- [22:07]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
And you could only follow his phone for about 15 minutes near that room, and then he goes back to another apartment where he was working. And so because that was. There was an injury to the head and there's blood in there. They also was on medication for blood thinners. I believe he had atrial fibrillation. So he's on that. Being covered in blood would not make sense. Going back and working for a while and I could never get enough data and I couldn't get a time frame that I can make the call. I tried to make the call, but I'm not going to make a call. That I think is not right. And so the timing didn't add up. The rest of it didn't add up. It wasn't his normal scenario for how he operated. He picked women and So I believe that that one was not.
- [22:56]
Charlie Scudder
I told Saul's daughter what Barnard had said about her father's death and why it was still ruled natural. She declined to respond. Barnard said that some of his colleagues had debated with him about the other cases. He said he was certain after looking at police's evidence, that they should be amended to homicides. The medical examiner in Collin County, William Rohr, chose instead to list all the Plano and Frisco cases as undetermined.
- [23:24]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
When you get the investigative information, you've got findings that you've seen before and then you look at that findings, phone, video, and you realize they're thefts. It's like it could not be anything else but that. And so I was confident with that. You know, if I had known that we had more thefts going on, we'd have brought them all in. I still don't know that we would have made the call. If you have no injuries, I just don't think there, there was enough there on that.
- [23:51]
Charlie Scudder
I know a lot of the victims families at least have talked a lot about like the ageism in this and the idea that just because they were old and just because they lived in.
- [24:02]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
A place like this, well, I would disagree with that. I think there may be some element of truth to that, but they are also not. It's not surprising that they die. They have chronic disease, they commonly die of that. But if I had a 45 year old who had a history of heart disease, coronary artery disease, and he's found dead at his home, he wouldn't come in either, you know, so you take the information and you know, nobody wants to have missed anything like that. I mean, I wasn't afraid to make the right call in going back. Other people didn't make the same call I did, but there was nothing that tipped us off early on. And Certainly we have 13,000 cases called in a year. I'm not going to be evaluating every 13,000 cases. Somebody's got to ring the bell that there's something that we need to evaluate. Because you cannot bring 13,000 cases in, it is impossible. There's not enough medical examiners in the United States to cover all of those cases in Dallas County. Not possible.
- [25:14]
Wes Ferguson
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- [25:39]
Charlie Scudder
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- [28:30]
Wes Ferguson
If there's one thing I've learned in four decades of caring for very complex, frail older adults and dealing with their families, those families are in pain. Those families are struggling with great challenges. Are there times that their complaints are overstated? Sure. But I've always taken the approach that the customer is always right. To blow them off is, to me, unconscionable, does a disservice. And even though, like in the case of, let's say you have someone with Alzheimer's and they say someone, you know, someone stole this from me, and they say it because they don't remember that they lost it or they put it somewhere or whatever, or it hasn't even been there for 10 years or whatever, to just assume that they're wrong, that they're mistaken, it's a really crappy excuse for not delivering good care. You know, it's gaslighting 101.
- [29:42]
Charlie Scudder
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, violent attacks on seniors are on the rise, especially as people live longer and the share of people who are over the age of 65 grows. According to estimates from the U.S. department of justice, less than half of all violent crimes against those seniors were reported to police. Plus only 1 in 24 cases of elder abuse are reported to adult protective services, which exists in all 50 states. Many of the children of Shamira's victims, like Scott McPhee, say they wish police had taken more time to investigate their concerns immediately after their parents died, rather than brushing them aside as natural or normal for an older adult.
- [30:26]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
I've continued to use the phrase a complete lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of the investigating detective and his team. It wasn't just our mother, right? Dallas police, Plano police, even Frisco police did not follow evidence and could have. Could have probably caught this guy and saved a lot of lives had they spent a little more time applying some intellectual curiosity to really understand what was going on. But your job as a detective, as a professional, is to work through those things, to not be biased. And where there are biases to.
- [31:03]
Charlie Scudder
To.
- [31:04]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
To work through those and make sure that you don't let those influence your decisions. At the end of the day, you know, that's how Shamir Mir got away with what he did. He found a crack that no one looked in because of ageism and bias and a cultural lack of caring for older populations. He saw it. He milked it.
- [31:27]
Charlie Scudder
Did you buy into that at all that, oh stuff goes missing?
- [31:31]
Wes Ferguson
Absolutely not.
- [31:33]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Why not?
- [31:34]
Charlie Scudder
This is Shannon Dion. Who you've heard from throughout the season.
- [31:37]
Wes Ferguson
Stuff going missing, that's very casual. My perception take of what was missing from my mother was that it had been taken off of her cold, dead body. That that's very, very different than, oh, things just go missing. Or as one family was told, well, you know, old women put their jewelry in their underwear drawer. No, this was a crime. The theft of jewelry from my mother was a crime.
- [32:12]
Charlie Scudder
And here's Cheryl Pangburn who found out about her mom's cause of death on Facebook.
- [32:17]
Wes Ferguson
My mom, she was 90. But you never would have known from her lifestyle or her appearance that she was that age. We laugh at the fact that she never wanted anybody to know her age because they automatically made assumptions about you if you said you were 90. So she never revealed her age to anybody where she lived and everybody thought she was much younger than she was.
- [32:43]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah, I can imagine it's hard. You mentioned that, not wanting people to know how old you are.
- [32:51]
Wes Ferguson
Right.
- [32:52]
Charlie Scudder
That's gotta be tough. When you are active, you are an independent personality and kind of the world tells you no, you live in an old folks home.
- [33:02]
Wes Ferguson
You know, it's so funny. I think one, you know, if there are certain takeaways that I've gotten from this experience, it is the misinformation that people have about seniors. There is a segment of our population that is senior adults. And most people, when you hear the term senior adult, your mind goes to a nursing home and a frail, feeble person in a wheelchair waiting to die. Some of these women were in their 90s. My mom was 90. That are thriving, active, as sharp as attack and everybody overlooks them. That's one of the reasons my mom never wanted to say her age is because there is an association attached to a 90 year old that couldn't have been farther from the truth.
- [33:55]
Charlie Scudder
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- [34:16]
Wes Ferguson
These statements have not been evaluated by.
- [34:18]
Charlie Scudder
The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. What was that from the director of the Invisible Man. What's wrong with daddy? He got infected.
- [34:32]
Anthony Brewer
And Blumhouse, producers of the Black Phone.
- [34:35]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Something's happening too. Can you Hear me, me I can't.
- [34:39]
Wes Ferguson
Understand you Mommy be changing.
- [34:43]
Charlie Scudder
Wait, Daddy.
- [34:46]
Wes Ferguson
Is that you?
- [34:49]
Anthony Brewer
Wolf Man Directed by Lel.
- [34:50]
Charlie Scudder
Rated R. Under 17. Admitted without parent.
- [34:53]
Anthony Brewer
Only in theaters Friday.
- [34:58]
Charlie Scudder
There's another kind of bias at play in this case, and it's one I've been hesitant to bring up. I want to start by playing a bit of tape from Mary Bartel's recorded testimony in the first trial when she's being cross examined by defense attorney Philip Hayes about the morning that Billy Shamirmere attacked her in her apartment at Preston Place.
- [35:18]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
The fellow who did this to you.
- [35:21]
Wes Ferguson
On that day, you've never seen him there before.
- [35:23]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
That you know of, is that right? That's correct. Okay. In quite honestly, he wouldn't know if.
- [35:30]
Wes Ferguson
You had or not because you.
- [35:31]
Charlie Scudder
You didn't identify.
- [35:32]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
You couldn't identify because you didn't really look at his face. That's correct.
- [35:38]
Wes Ferguson
I think you said, tell the police.
- [35:39]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
And you repeated today that once you saw those green gloves, that's kind of.
- [35:43]
Wes Ferguson
What you fixated on.
- [35:44]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Yes. Did you. And I think you told them, the police, when they talked to you in the hospital, that you don't even know what race the fellow was?
- [35:51]
Wes Ferguson
No.
- [35:53]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
That didn't bother me either because I.
- [35:56]
Wes Ferguson
I know that, you know, when people pick someone out of a lineup, they're.
- [36:02]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
Wrong more often than they're correct.
- [36:04]
Charlie Scudder
I don't know if Mary really didn't remember her attacker's race at that moment, but according to paramedics testimony and in their initial reports, she did remember the day she was attacked. Even as her story changed from a strange nightmare to a description of a real and terrifying attack, one thing stayed constant. She said her attacker was a black man. Plano officer Jamal Kemp, who interviewed Mary at the hospital, is black and said he noticed Mary avoiding identifying her attacker's race. Did she provide a description at all? She did, but she didn't. She described a male. Okay. She would not describe his race to me, which was really interesting because I had already heard black male. She could describe that to somebody. I interpreted that as. She didn't want to offend me in some type of way. Looking back, I wish I had pressed it even more. I didn't think it was that important in that moment. But these are things you learn along your way in your career and in a society that is obsessed with race. It came up in the trial. Yeah. The way the defense attorney described it was she didn't even know what Racy was. That's what he hung his hat on. Yeah. I was gonna say that. Cause I. You know, especially as a black officer, do you run into that? Yes, you do. But it comes out in different ways. Like in this scenario, I wouldn't even imagine that this would matter in this moment. Green, purple, I don't care what he is. This guy tried to kill you. What's he look like? So we can go catch him, you know, but that was. I thought that's what she was thinking in that moment. There is no evidence that there was racial bias in the investigation of the crime, and there's no evidence that Shamir Mir targeted his victims because they were white. But all of his victims that we know of, other than Kim Harris, were white. Despite racist stereotypes, interracial murder is rare. According to FBI data, just 18% of white murder victims were killed by Black offenders in 2023, the most recent year of data available. Chamir's family in Kenya have said very little about the case publicly, but a relative did tell a reporter after his arrest that they didn't believe Billy was guilty. They said that black men were wrongfully arrested in the United States all the time. And this is true, too, like so much about the American justice system. Of course race had a role in this case. Whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. That's bothered me, and it's something I've talked a lot about with Shannon Dionne. So your sister was attacked by a black man who came to the door that you didn't know?
- [38:54]
Wes Ferguson
Yes.
- [38:55]
Charlie Scudder
Your mother was attacked, killed by a black man who came to the door that she didn't know, but they knew white women. All the victim. Most of the victims, I should say, were white women. It's kind of an elephant in the room that's. There is this issue of race. How have you. Have you thought about that?
- [39:20]
Wes Ferguson
Absolutely. And once I was aware that mom had been murdered by this person a few months after, I suddenly realized, subconsciously, without intending to, I was having a mental and physical reaction when I was around black men. And I have very, very dear, dear friends who are black men. And it really bothered me. It's long gone now, but that's one of the many things I resent about the criminals that have had an effect on my family, that they put a distance between me and people that love me.
- [40:19]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. I asked that question as a white man who doesn't have that experience. And I know that even talking about it has the ability of playing into a racist narrative of white women need to fear black men. Which is centuries old.
- [40:44]
Wes Ferguson
Right. And very current.
- [40:46]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah, exactly.
- [40:47]
Wes Ferguson
And very current. I Know women that feel that way. That's why it bothered me so much, because, as I said, I have these wonderful families that I'm very, very close to. Some little brothers or big brothers, I call them. To have this suddenly change in my life, it was something that had to be fixed. And because I want to role model for my friends, that's not the issue. And in fact, I did talk about with them some of the other victims of. This has nothing to do with his race. A white man could have very easily have walked in the same number of times and done the exact same thing. It just happened to be this man.
- [41:32]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. And, in fact, I remember Mary Bartel's testimony. She said something similar. She was asked about race, and she brushed it aside.
- [41:45]
Wes Ferguson
Mm.
- [41:46]
Charlie Scudder
Well, that doesn't really matter.
- [41:47]
Wes Ferguson
Right, Right. It doesn't.
- [41:49]
Charlie Scudder
But even though identifying him, that was.
- [41:53]
Wes Ferguson
Part of the identification.
- [41:55]
Charlie Scudder
Right.
- [41:55]
Wes Ferguson
You know, did he have black hair? Did he have brown skin? Did he have white? Yes. No, that was. And he obviously was. I mean, when you look at him, you see that right away. It's not a detail. It's not like, what's his height, what's its weight? There's no guessing. So in terms of the crime itself, race is not a factor. The only factor in the crime is that he was a terrible, horrible human being. Just sheer evil. I refer to him as the beast. This beast was walking on this earth and was given access to vulnerable victims. That's the only thing that matters.
- [42:39]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. And kind of parallel to that is the fact that he was an immigrant. The relevance of Shamir Mir's immigration status has been something I've struggled with over the years, too. After he was arrested, U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement filed a hold for Shamir Mir with the Dallas County Jail. It basically means that whenever he completed his sentence with Dallas county in the state of Texas, in other words, if he was released on bond, acquitted, or completed a prison sentence, that he would be placed in the custody of ICE and would likely be deported. Often, an ICE hold means that the defendant is in the country illegally. So many journalists, including me, reported early on that Shamir Mir was an undocumented immigrant. My initial reports for the case for the Dallas Morning News included this error, which we publicly corrected once I realized my mistake. ICE has confirmed to me and other reporters that Shimir had legal permanent resident status in the US but the false story was already out there, and some conservative pundits jumped on the story as evidence for the need for stricter immigration laws.
- [43:44]
Wes Ferguson
Again, that doesn't matter. An American citizen, white, female, could have done all of this. It's the evil beast that was permitted to walk in. The immigration status is irrelevant.
- [44:01]
Charlie Scudder
That's true, of course, but a lot of America's senior care system is built on the back of immigrant labor. So to ignore that part of Shamir Mir's identity is to ignore a big part of what made him typical for the in home caregiving workforce. Home healthcare is among the fastest growing occupations in the US but it's not growing fast enough. More than 3 million people work in home healthcare, which isn't even enough to meet the current demand of older people who are living at home. One analysis from the Economic Policy Institute suggests that we'll need more than a million new in home care workers by 2029 just to keep up. Just like how there's a difficult tension of isolation and autonomy among many seniors, in home care workers experience the same feelings. They're often working long hours alone in a client's home, away from their own family. A Jen Poo, a MacArthur genius fellow and labor activist, writes in her book the Age of Dignity, that because the classification of domestic workers in the early 1900s primarily meant black Americans and formerly enslaved people, they have been excluded from many worker protection laws as companions. Today, they are often overworked, undertrained, and earn an average of less than $10 an hour. According to some estimates, a vast majority of those workers are women and two thirds are immigrants like Shamir Mir. About half of those immigrants, according to a study from the National Domestic Workers alliance, are undocumented. As Poo writes, the truth is, the diverse and growing aging population and the growing immigrant population in this country need each other. There is no way to meet our need for care in this country without immigrants carrying a lot of the weight. David Schless, the Senior Housing association president, said that's one of the biggest challenges facing the industry in the coming years.
- [46:01]
Anthony Brewer
We will need as a nation more caregivers who are, you know, able to work here legally. And that's very, you know, that's not, it's not going to go away. So that's a, that's a really pressing issue for us. And, and again, that becomes more, you know, more problematic with each passing year. And home health care, I mean, it affects every element of, you know, of senior care, from home health to hospitals. It's a really big issue for us.
- [46:36]
Charlie Scudder
Yeah. So. And you specifically say able to work here legally is. It is an immigration issue?
- [46:42]
Anthony Brewer
It is, yeah. No, I think it, I, I think it is. Again, there's different things you can do. I mean, some of this can be done with, you know, changes to existing programs, but, you know, we don't really, you know, this. The senior. Senior housing business or the senior care business doesn't really have its own visa category, whereas other, you know, there are other, you know, temporary visa categories or permanent visa categories that exist, and they don't exist for senior care.
- [47:16]
Charlie Scudder
When Shamir Mir called me after the mistrial, I asked about the issues of race and his immigration status and whether he thought they played a role in how the case against him was prosecuted. He said it didn't. He said he was certain he'd be found not guilty regardless of race. He repeated what you heard him say in the last episode. He was confident he would never go to prison. He was excited, he said, for his next chance to prove his innocence. Next time. The second trial of Billy Shamir Mir. We brought you every bit of evidence the law would allow us to bring this case to prove to you that that man right there is capable of taking the most innocent of objects, the things we put our children's heads down on at night. And he turned them into instruments of nightmares. The more that I listened to the evidence that was presented as well as what wasn't, I thought to myself, all.
- [48:13]
Dr. Jeffrey Barnard
But bark and nobody.
- [48:15]
Wes Ferguson
It's a lot of barking.
- [48:17]
Charlie Scudder
They're just barking.
- [48:18]
Wes Ferguson
All right. Has the dreams the river we have now and what is the word club's dream?
- [48:26]
Charlie Scudder
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.