Who is Billy Chemirmir? The slain Baringo man accused of killing 22 elderly women in the US

Billy Kipkorir Chemirmir, the Kenyan suspected of being behind a string of murders in the United States died in a prison cell in Texas on Tuesday.

Fifty-year-old Chemirmir was killed on Tuesday morning by his cellmate who is serving a sentence for murder at Coffield prison, the AP news agency reported.

Information from his past court appearances and interviews with American media indicates that Chemirmir is originally from Eldama Ravine, Baringo County.

He grew up with his 27 siblings from his father’s three wives.

In a previous interview with the Texas newspaper Dallas Morning News, Chemirmir said he moved to the United States in 2003, where he sold cars and began working as a senior caregiver in Dallas.

In 2004, he married an American citizen, making him a permanent resident of the US, but the couple divorced in 2006.

He said moved from working for agencies that would place him with clients to making more money and finding his own clients, charging $20 or $30 an hour (about Ksh.2,900 to Ksh.4,400 at current exchange rates) to take care of the elderly across North Texas.

But police say Chemirmir used the work to get into luxury senior living communities in Dallas and Collin counties, posing as a worker to get access to elderly women.

He reportedly would smother them with a pillow and steal valuables from their homes.

The Kenyan denied the accusations, telling Dallas Morning News in 2020, “I am not a killer, I’m not at all what they’re saying I am. I am a very innocent person. I was not brought [up] that way. I was brought [up] in a good family. I didn’t have any problems all my life.”

According to information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Chemirmir was indicted on a charge of capital murder in the death of an 81-year-old woman in March 2018 and attempted capital murder charges in separate attacks on two women in Texas later.

Dallas Morning News reports that he has also been arrested twice on charges of driving while intoxicated; in 2010 in Addison and in 2011 in Dallas.

In 2012, he was reportedly arrested on a family violence charge and sentenced to 70 days in jail.

He would be arrested again four years later, in June 2016, on a criminal trespass charge after showing up at a high-end senior living complex in Dallas where authorities now believe he killed two women the month before.

In total, Chemirmir had been indicted on 22 capital murder charges, thirteen of which were in Dallas, while nine were in Collin.