Original subtitles

[insects chirping]

- It only takes...

two to three minutes...

two to three minutes of sheer horror.

- You look up,

and the last thing you're seeing

is a pillowcase coming to your face.

- You can't breathe.

- Realizing you are going to die.

[suspenseful music]

- That's the last person that you'll ever see before you die.

[stopwatch clicks]

There she is.

That was the last time that I saw my grandmother.

- For months, police had no suspects.

That changed Tuesday evening.

Plano officers were led to the home

of 83-year-old Lu Thi Harris.

- Police are reviewing the deaths now

of hundreds of people here in north Texas.

- Plano Police plan to review every single death

of an elderly woman in the area.

- Police were investigating these deaths as one-offs.

They weren't looking for a serial killer.

- The room was covered in blood.

- We never got one warning.

♪ ♪

- They covered it up.

- His job is stalking...

surveilling, smothering,

stealing, and selling.

- Those 55 sales for, like, $91,000.

- $5,000, that's what her life was worth.

- We may be talking about the most prolific serial killer

in the history of the country.

- He took so many lives

by simply just taking their breath away.

- You can still see the smudges of her makeup.

This is the pillow that smothered Mom.

♪ ♪

- In this room, it's just an accumulation

of all the facts and documents that I've collected

over the years about my mom.

Her name was Leah Corken...

always perfectly coiffed, hair done and hands manicured.

Always the lady.

She had a very strong wit.

She would belly up to the bar.

There she is with a big Johnnie Walker Red scotch.

Pretty Mom, just drinking.

That was her drink.

But then on the other side,

these are all the incident reports.

I wanted to figure out how many policemen

were the same for every one of the deaths,

but it wasn't the same guy.

Oh, This was the bill Tradition charged me to have her party

in honor of her death.

Kind of kicked myself this weekend

that I never got the report from the funeral home

of what they might have noticed on her body,

because I think I have this memory

that I saw a big bruise on her arm.

And just this morning, I called them,

and they just faxed it over.

So, to read,

there were hematomas on her right leg and both arms,

as well as under her right eye,

that just really hit home.

August 19th...

It was a really hot and a humid day.

I kind of remember hyperventilating

because I couldn't get to Mom...

so I was just racing over as fast as I could.

And I, about right here, get the phone call

that just said, MJ, you need to get here as soon as possible.

The tone of his voice...

just scared the hell out of me.

♪ ♪

My mom's apartment is that balcony right up there.

And I pulled

into Tradition-Prestonwood entrance here.

♪ ♪

And I see all the emergency cars.

♪ ♪

[siren wailing]

♪ ♪

I remember screaming, Mom.

They had a sheet over her,

and just the paramedics were there.

So then they took the sheet off of her,

and I'm looking at her, and I'm like,

that looks really weird.

Why is she in a perfectly straight line

with the back of her feet up?

♪ ♪

And her walker

is on the other side of the kitchen.

I literally laid on the floor

and put myself

in the exact same position as my mom to mimic.

Wait, is this right?

Why is the back of my mom's hair messed up,

when she just had her hair done that day?

And then Ed Sanchez, the community person there,

hugs me, and he says, that's how people die.

And I remember clearly saying, in a straight line like that?

Like, that just didn't make any sense to me.

I remember looking at her pillow,

and I'm like, Mom, you wash your face every night.

Why is there makeup smudged on your pillow?

♪ ♪

- Unless there are suspicious circumstances,

major signs of foul play,

the medical examiner does not come out to the scene.

- When MJ found her mom, Leah Corken,

she said, you know, the body just doesn't look right,

and still nothing happens.

[siren wailing]

There was no autopsy done.

- Instead, I get a phone call.

The medical examiner determined that it was just her heart.

She just died.

But the snapshots never went away,

yeah, the things that I saw,

and I was just so sad that, you know, she was dead.

- The Tradition...

Dallas's crown jewel in retirement living.

This active-adult facility is the brainchild

of Jonathan Perlman.

- Jonathan Perlman is a former baseball player.

He saw just how much money you could make

in the independent-living industry.

He started with The Tradition-Prestonwood,

which was his first facility.

- A lot of thought and planning was involved

in building Tradition.

We've got a movie theater, arts and crafts.

We have a fantastic exercise room,

even an indoor swimming pool.

- Tradition-Prestonwood was really trying

to attract people away from their own homes.

- We're taking all the costs

our residents had when they owned their home.

We provide all maintenance. We pay the taxes.

If something breaks, we fix it.

- You buy all the glitz and glamor

and all this fabulous stuff.

- For now, I'm off to see a movie.

Oh, thank you, Jonathan. Come along.

- But don't be fooled

by independent-living bells and whistles.

♪ ♪

- My mom...

she met a lot of good friends there.

They were known as the "fourth-floor ladies."

Glenna Day was one of them.

- Mama was the party.

She was a widow since she was 50.

People would say, why aren't you getting married?

Because she was cute and fun.

And she said, well, two things...

I've not had an applicant

that I thought could handle the job,

and if I want something with hairy legs, I'll get a dog.

- Fourth floor was the party floor.

- There were, like, seven or eight ladies,

and they just loved to be together.

They would have these silly theme parties.

- But all of a sudden, neighbors on the fourth floor

start to unexpectedly die.

- We got a phone call from Ed Sanchez.

He had said that my mother

had passed away peacefully in her sleep,

and I was like, what?

I know my mother's routine.

She gets up in the morning.

She always makes a hot tea, sits at the table,

and reads the newspaper.

And so, when I got there, I called Ed, and I said,

if she died peacefully in her sleep...

why would today's newspaper be sitting here on this table...

and her teacup and fingernail polish?

The lid was off.

So she was there...

awake.

Ed said, oh, well, she must have gotten up

and then started feeling bad and then went back to bed

and then passed away.

My mom's death certificate said "natural causes,"

and that's what we thought happened,

was natural causes.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

My mom went there because she thought

there was outstanding security,

and she was wrong.

It's all about money, not about care...

[voice breaking] Or my mom would still be here.

- I just want to tell Diana and Philip

that I love you both so very, very much,

and I hope that you will always be as happy

as you both made me today.

And I love you both very, very much.

♪ ♪

- My mother knew something strange is happening.

Leah and Juanita, all of a sudden, they were gone.

They were on her floor. They were her friends.

No heart issues, no underlying problems.

That prompted her to go to the doctor,

and he said, everything's fine.

Sunday morning...

when I walked into the room,

she was on the bed.

Her face was dark,

and I know everyone that dies is not peaceful,

but it had a darkness to it.

And then she was laying on her $400 comforter,

paint on her fingers and on her smock,

which she would never have done.

She'd been restoring a painting,

and her paints were still out and had dried by then.

None of that was cleaned up.

It didn't make sense to me.

♪ ♪

- You have Glenna Day deceased in bed

with paint on her hands... completely unnatural situation.

And, of course, she, like Juanita Purdy,

must have felt sick and laid back down, right?

That was the story.

That was really strange,

and that was certainly noticed by the families

and then obviously dismissed by Tradition-Prestonwood.

And all these women were living on the fourth floor.

- The similarities were incredible.

All these people that worked there...

you just got to wonder,

well, how many times do you have to see a dead person

in a straight line till you start asking questions?

[dramatic music]

- My mother is Doris Gleason.

And this is Mama's calendar.

She wrote everything down.

Monday, exercise at 9:30.

Tuesday, lunch with Doris.

Pacemaker check, Thursday.

And then on Saturday morning, she has the sit and sew

checked off,

but the birthday party for a resident, Rufus,

was not checked off.

She hadn't shown up at the party.

Sunday, October 30, 2016...

drove over to Tradition-Prestonwood

to pick Mom up for church.

She normally would be sitting on a bench waiting for me,

and she wasn't there.

Something was wrong.

Mama's door...

[elevator bell dings]

Apartment 367, was unlocked.

I found her body on the floor

over by the dining-room table.

- Shannon called me... get over here as fast as you can.

- The chair was pulled away, the laptop was open,

and Mama's body was positioned as if she got up

and she collapsed.

[siren wailing]

- One of the officers called the medical examiner

and said, we have an elderly lady.

No sign of forced entry or violence.

Medical examiner cleared the body

to go to the funeral home.

♪ ♪

- Two days she worked on that.

Mama was a steel magnolia...

gracious and beautiful but very strong.

Her faith and her family were her most important things.

So it was disbelief.

My sister Nancy...

found these guardian angel pendants

for me and my mom and herself.

We lost Nancy to cancer in May of 2003,

but that guardian angel necklace...

my mother wore it all the time.

I'd asked for the jewelry

before the funeral home took her body.

- Shannon said to the attendant,

I need my mother's necklace that she had.

- The guardian angel necklace... where's the necklace?

And that's when they unzipped the body bag.

- The attendant said, well, there is no necklace.

- I-I was just destroyed.

♪ ♪

- Ed Sanchez came up, and he said,

well, these old ladies hide stuff

in their underwear drawer sometimes.

He was very dismissive.

- My husband called the Dallas Police,

and we reported there had been a robbery.

So I had one hour of grieving my mother

before the Crime Scene unit came.

- We put together a list of everything missing.

The total was about $10,000 of jewelry.

- I asked the police, do you think someone hurt my mother?

But then I was told no.

She had died naturally,

and someone just happened to come by

and rob the jewelry off of her cold, dead body.

- Doris Gleason was not the first theft.

There were prior instances at Tradition-Prestonwood

in which you had sudden, unattended deaths

with immediately reported missing jewelry.

- It's very difficult to imagine

anybody stealing something off of your mother's body.

But I remember the officer saying,

and I'm here for what?

Somebody stole my mom's wedding ring

off of her finger after she died.

My brother and sister arrived,

and as they were walking in,

the paramedics were walking out.

I said to my sister, y'all have to take a picture of her.

I said, take the blanket off.

I always thought she was in a funny position...

straight line, one arm under.

The community relations director said,

it was sudden, heart attack.

She just dropped dead.

But something was not right.

There was the bloodstain right in the middle of the carpet,

and then her salad...

hadn't been touched.

There were footprints.

And I remember just going, her ring finger looks damaged.

Somebody took that off of her.

- The night Mom died, I realize her ring's gone.

And I said, who stole Mom's ring?

She never took her ring off.

- Right after my mother's death,

my husband and I found a jewelry appraisal,

and almost all the stuff...

was not there.

So it wasn't just the ring.

- Juanita Purdy had $30,000 of jewelry missing

and was reported at the time of her death.

The Tradition reassured them

it was not anybody working there

because they had checked the key logs.

- All of these women immediately reported

jewelry missing to the police.

- Normally, you have maybe three deaths a year

at Tradition-Prestonwood.

Now we've got several deaths in three and a half months

with stolen jewelry?

There should be alarms going everywhere.

Nobody's going through... there's nobody.

- The executive director said,

just want to let you know that there have been

been other deaths with thefts.

We suspect the paramedics did it.

- Norma's daughter called the police,

and they tell the police,

well, The Tradition's told us that there was a problem

with the paramedics stealing jewelry.

And so then Dallas Police

opens up a Public Integrity investigation.

- Sergeant Davis

starts interviewing various witnesses.

- Okay.

- There was only one entity with the full picture

of what was going on, and that was The Tradition.

But instead of being honest and forthright,

they actively started steering the investigation

towards the first responders.

- And so the sergeant focuses

on whether paramedics may have stolen

Norma French's wedding ring.

- The sergeant does ask if there's surveillance footage

in the residence area where Norma French lived.

- Well, as it turns out,

there were a total of zero cameras

on the fourth floor

and zero cameras on the third floor.

- The security cameras they did have

did not cover the doors of any of these people

or the hallways.

- Sergeant Davis told me, something is fishy.

Something about this is not right.

- What the police don't know

is that before this investigation concluded,

there was an intruder in November

and December of 2016.

- Tradition-Prestonwood doesn't tell Sergeant Davis,

we actually have a suspect

that might be a perfect fit for your crime.

That never happens.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

- And so the paramedics... they're all cleared.

- Okay.

- April 2017,

the case is closed, no arrests are made.

♪ ♪

- So this is the request I made

December 5, 2016,

for the open records from The Tradition

going back two years.

I just was trying to find information on this property

because my mother had had this suspicious death.

November 13, 2016,

a staff member called about a suspicious person...

Black male, 5'10", 180 pound,

dressed in a clean suit, carrying a satchel.

"The suspect has been seen on numerous occasions

"visiting the fourth floor

"and has stated he was there to check for pipe leaks.

Responding officers advised to tighten security."

And then I found Mrs. Abramowitz...

July 18, 2016...

unattended death

and the witness who called it in... Ed Sanchez.

And then robbery and death...

August 6, 2016, Juanita Purdy.

There's Leah Corken's report,

Glenna Day, my mom's report.

- The Dallas Police were investigating these deaths

as one-offs.

They weren't looking for a serial killer.

- Mom was not an isolated case.

- Shannon put a package together

and sent that to a reporter at "The Dallas Morning News,"

but he really didn't have interest

in pursuing the story.

- I felt frustrated, so I posted a review

on The Tradition-Prestonwood Yelp and Google.

"The food and ambiance are delightful.

The security is unacceptable."

And then it goes

into how there were these deaths with robberies

and that there was a reported trespasser.

I just felt at that point, March of 2017,

I'd done all that I could.

I could not have saved my mother,

but I look at all the lives lost

after her...

it breaks my heart.

- After Doris Gleason,

this long string of sudden deaths stops.

But then, suddenly,

in September 2017,

women start dying at a smaller complex

just over the county line in Collin County

in a little town called Frisco.

["Happy Birthday" playing]

- Oh, yeah. [laughs]

- ♪ Happy birthday, dear Marilyn ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

- My mom was living her absolute best life.

[people cheer]

- It was a big one. - Tequila!

- I don't feel guilt.

Go, Mama.

But, like, by putting her in this place,

how responsible am I...

- 91, here I come.

- For this happening?

[soft music]

She had five kids.

She was also an investment officer

and was very successful until she retired.

- Oh, my gosh, this is so beautiful.

- She poured so much into her family

that I just enjoyed being able

to turn the tables a little bit and nurture her

at this stage in life.

- I get so many compliments, not much jewelry.

[chuckles]

- We set up

her entire apartment at Parkview.

- Oh, my gosh. I love it.

Cheryl, didn't this turn out perfect?

- Mm-hmm.

She was in the marketing brochure.

Every time you turned the page,

there would be another Marilyn Bixler quote.

She was so proud of that.

Finally, she could relax and enjoy life.

She met women that were like her.

Helen was her best friend at Parkview.

They had dinner every night together at the fun table.

[light music]

- My grammy was the manager and buyer

of a women's clothing retail company,

a seamstress for over 45 years.

She was just the most loving, caring, compassionate person.

♪ ♪

- My mom's apartment and Helen's apartment

were the exact same location,

but whereas my mom was on the first floor,

Helen was on the third floor.

- The stairwell with access to Marilyn Bixler and Helen Lee

was constantly unlocked.

No video surveillance cameras whatsoever.

- I knew Helen.

I took care of her for a little bit.

When she died and Marilyn died, a bell should have gone off.

- Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help you God? - Yes, I do.

- At this point in time, in 2017,

how would you enter the facility?

- Well, you're supposed to enter through the front door

and sign in.

That isn't always the case.

In the past, you could enter

in and out of any door that wasn't locked.

The doors were not self-locking.

- Was it common for the exterior doors

to be unlocked?

- Yes.

I was in building five, third floor,

right within not even ten feet of Helen's front door.

And I caught out of my peripheral

somebody coming up a stairwell.

It was a dark-skinned gentleman...

black pants, tie.

His shoes were even shiny.

- It was not somebody that she had seen before.

- I asked him who he was here to visit.

- And he said, I'm here to see Maria.

- Maria from the dining room.

I said, you are completely

in the wrong part of the building.

You need to check in at the front desk.

And then I let people in the area know to lock their doors.

- She went and reported him

to somebody in the front office.

- I did see him two other times after that,

both within a week, week and a half.

- She confronted him a second time.

- I was very firm.

I asked him to leave, and he did.

Third time...

we made eye contact, and then he was gone.

- He just went down the stairwell

and left the building.

- I Went downstairs immediately this time

and told Christine and Rhonda.

- Those are Parkview employees?

- Sorry. Mm-hmm.

Rhonda said right away, I'm calling the police.

But the police didn't catch him.

Clearly he was there for a reason.

He was stalking.

He was stalking these people.

- I have several clients in the fifth building.

So, when I saw this strange person on this floor,

it was pretty upsetting.

But after that, I never saw him again.

- Sunday the 17th...

I found her.

They said she must have died

from a heart attack or a stroke.

But what are the chances

that she falls

perfectly in that space

between the couch and the coffee table

and that her glasses end up several feet away?

They were bent outward,

and the right lens had popped out.

And in the back of my mind, you know, I'm thinking

that her best friend just died two weeks ago.

- Sunday, September 3rd...

Grammy never made it to church,

so I decided to go check on her myself.

[dramatic music]

I saw her laying in her bedroom...

cane at her side, her bag over her shoulder,

getting ready to take down to dinner.

I do remember a stain in the living room,

and I trusted law enforcement when...

they said that she probably died of a heart attack.

- At this point, we're not dealing

with Dallas PD anymore.

We're dealing with Frisco PD.

Small police department, takes these reports.

And these new incidents...

they are not connected to those previous deaths

at Tradition-Prestonwood.

- The ultimate consequence of that

is that more people are going to die.

- The deaths with suspicious circumstances

stop at Parkview Frisco

but continue down Preston Road to Preston Place.

- Preston Place is in kind of the heart of Plano,

this massive suburb a few minutes from Frisco.

[mellow music]

- If you want to be busy, you want to have fun,

this is definitely a place to be.

It's a home environment.

The best thing here is our people.

- It's really nice.

The people are just great, my neighbors and everything.

We just have a ball here, and the parties are fantastic.

♪ ♪

- Preston Place was a little bit different.

It was previously just a regular apartment community,

so there's separate entrances to each apartment.

You had an exterior gate.

The gate was nonfunctional, almost always.

There were very few cameras,

and some of those were nonfunctional.

There were none in the parking lot.

- They assured us they had never had any issues

with security.

[applause] - Happy birthday!

all: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

- ♪ Happy birthday to Mimi ♪

- My mom was a Southern lady.

She'd never met a stranger, but she was the best cook.

You know, pot roast and fried chicken...

nothing healthy.

And she loved being close to my son.

When Jason came over and she could cook a meal for him,

it was the highlight of her week.

She was happy there.

But she had heard that there was a burglary.

They even changed the locks.

And then on March the 7th, she had the intruder.

[dramatic music]

11:30 in the morning,

she was sitting in her easy chair,

watching television.

She had some groceries delivered to her.

As soon as they left...

within a minute, there was a knock at the door,

and she assumed that they had forgotten something.

And so she said, come in.

A man came in that she didn't recognize,

and he said, I'm here to look for a leak.

We can hear water running downstairs.

And she was immediately rattled.

- He just kind of walked through her apartment,

went into her bedroom-bathroom area...

and then left.

It unnerved her so much

that she called the front desk at Preston Place

and reported it.

- My mom told me he was 5'10".

He was a Black man.

He had on a white dress shirt and black slacks.

But the alarming thing was that he was wearing rubber gloves.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

- Martha Williams was another resident at Preston Place.

The family discover her dead.

- Surveillance shows Martha Williams

in the parking lot at Preston Place

a few days prior.

She had just returned from shopping.

She had shopping bags on her bed,

and her body was found alongside the bed.

She did have some bleeding from the face,

and her shirt was actually pulled over her head.

There was makeup stains on the back of her shirt.

The family reported that there was jewelry missing.

We took that very serious.

- That's March 7th...

the same day that this trespasser entered

into Miriam Nelson's apartment.

- At the time, we had no idea.

Nobody at Preston Place told us anything.

It's infuriating.

If I had heard about one death with missing jewelry,

I would have moved my mom into my home that night.

That Wednesday that he came to her apartment,

my mother called all of her neighbors.

She spoke to Janine's mom, and Janine's mom said,

well, you know, I had a similar incident a year ago.

- The man had come into my mother's apartment

in November of 2016,

told her that there was a leak,

walked around kind of towards her kitchen.

And then my mom told him,

my daughter is on her way to take me to lunch.

And at that moment, he left.

My mom described him as Black

and wearing nice clothing,

like he was going to church.

- It just really surprised my mom.

A year ago you had somebody come

and ask if you had a leak?

- Here's Miriam Nelson upstairs from my mom

in the same building a year later.

Immediately I knew he was back.

- A signal went off then.

Let's make sure that she's protected and she's aware.

- I called Jason, my son,

and I explained how rattled she was.

He said, I'm on it. I will be there.

Tell her I'll be there within the hour.

When he got there, he sent me a picture

of the gun on her counter.

He said, I'm here. I'm guarding the castle.

Everything's going to be under control.

The next morning, Jason went to the office.

He was very upset

that this person could come on the property.

I mean, it was supposed to be secure.

- It was reported to staff,

and then it wasn't reported to police.

- They assure Jason

that they had hired some additional security.

I think these guys were going to drive around in golf carts.

- But not once was it disclosed

to Miriam Nelson's grandson

that, by the way, we've had several deaths

with reported thefts not soon before this happened.

- Friday morning, when I called my mom,

she seemed fine.

Jason's presence had definitely settled her down.

She said, you know, I think I'm fine.

You know, everything seems to be under control.

But she said, well, I'm looking for a necklace.

She goes, I'm pretty sure when that man came in on Wednesday,

he took my diamond necklace that was sitting out.

- Unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of this information in

until after we discovered even more bodies.

- I went into her bedroom and flipped the light on,

And that's when I saw her lying in bed.

The absolute worst moment of my entire life.

- Her mom's dead.

It's like you black out.

I ran stoplights all the way down Preston Road,

and when I got there, it was a crime scene.

- It just seemed like a normal death.

There were no, you know, injuries to her.

The officers that responded to the scene

didn't notice anything that looked out of place.

The only thing that was odd

was the person a couple days prior.

- I'm saying, wait a minute, she had this intruder,

and we think he stole a diamond necklace.

I started thinking, oh, my gosh,

did this man come back?

I can't imagine the horror she felt

seeing him again and knowing...

that he was going to kill her.

♪ ♪

- The fact that there was a suspicious person

that had come to the apartment, as well as the jewelry missing,

definitely heightened our concern.

- When the detective came in, he said to me,

do I have your permission to investigate this as a murder?

And I was just floored.

- People were scared, so I made some signs

and I put them up on the mailboxes.

"Lock your door when home and ask who is there

"before opening the door.

"This man entered my mom's apartment last year.

"He spent the entire day on the Preston Place campus.

"Finally, he was seen,

"and one of the Preston Place maintenance men chased him.

And he climbed the wall."

Then I went over to the office.

There was every expectation

that management would take seriously

the safety of the residents,

but they did not want my warnings to stay posted.

- Preston Place took those notices down,

like, within the day.

They said, well, because we did not authorize them.

Why would you do that?

- My gut feeling was, there's something wrong.

There's something really wrong here.

And so I sent out an email to our department.

I was like, there's deaths. There's jewelry missing.

Then I began to research the address.

I went back two years,

and there were a few additional deaths there,

and I started talking about it with other detectives,

contacted our crime analysis,

and asked them to pull the actual data.

I came to the conclusion

that we had somebody killing for jewelry.

- There certainly started to become a pattern

at Preston Place.

But my mom was not a gossiper,

so because of that,

there were probably a lot of things we didn't hear.

But my mom did go to a memorial at Preston Place

for Martha and Miriam.

They put them together.

And my mom says, this is strange, Jenny.

They don't seem ready to leave.

My mom was right on the money.

They weren't ready to die.

My mother wasn't ready to die.

My mom was a very happy person.

This is my mom as a young woman right out of college.

She was beautiful.

A brilliant individual...

went to med school, met my father,

dropped out and had four children in six years.

This was the Christmas before she passed,

and then last but not least,

this was a picture in my backyard

with her dog Helen, a blind dog.

This ended up being on her memorial.

The guilt is immeasurable.

[dramatic music]

I chose Preston Place.

I was responsible for her.

[voice breaking] Guilt, yeah, I'll always feel that.

Haunts me.

March 19th...

we were going to go have lunch.

[cell phone ringing] I did call her first.

I did say, I'm on my way,

and I didn't hear from her.

But nothing too overly concerning.

- Ann Conklin lives in building 8

right across the hall from a woman named Mary Bartel.

- My mom was up at about 4:30.

Quarter to 6:00, she drove herself

over to Prince of Peace for daily Mass.

She probably got back a little before 7:00.

She called Aunt Dawn, and they finished the call,

and about 8:30, she heard the pounding on the door.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

- Ah, yeah.

- Mary was a sweetheart.

She was just right around the corner from our apartment.

- I'm going to make real coffee.

8:00 in the morning, I left the apartment

to go buy a short list of groceries.

As I walked out my door,

well, there was a gentleman standing right there.

He was a Black gentleman.

He was dressed nicely.

I asked him if I could help him find somebody,

and he said, no, no, thank you.

I'm just waiting for my next therapy appointment,

which that happens every day out there,

so I didn't think anything more about it.

[doors chime]

And so I went on to the store.

- Our friend Jackie was picking up Mary

to come to exercise, which she did every day.

And she noticed that the door was ajar.

So she pushed it open and looked in,

and, oh, she saw Mary.

[siren wailing]

- That day, I was working the desk in the ER.

Plano Fire Department brought in Mary Bartel.

The fire lieutenant says,

we just picked this lady up at her apartment.

What's she saying is not making a whole lot of sense,

but I just thought I'd mention it to you

in case you want to go check it out.

- Brian Frantz is working an off-duty job.

A lot of people's goal on an off-duty job

is not to do a whole lot, right?

But he took it upon himself to go and talk to this lady.

- When I met her, she was out of it.

Her breathing was still a little bit labored.

She was distraught.

I think she was confused,

because she believed she was at the gym,

where she was supposed to meet her friends,

yet they had found her in her bedroom.

- But there was

a little bit of details that made it to where,

like, okay, let's listen a little bit harder

and figure out what's actually happening here.

- Things started coming clear.

She said a Black male came in and smothered her.

"He pushed me back onto my bed

and put the pillow over my face"

And then she says, "I should have known better.

"I saw him go into my neighbor's apartment earlier,

"and I knew he didn't belong there,

and I shouldn't have opened the door."

- Officer Frantz wanted to make sure what he was hearing

was legitimate.

- She gave me her phone, and I called her son John.

I said, she's pointing to her hand

and saying her wedding ring is missing.

He told me, she wears that wedding ring all the time.

She sleeps in it, she bathes in it.

It does not leave her hand.

If that wedding ring's missing, there's a problem.

- Officer Frantz contacted his supervisor

and made sure to impress the importance of this report

being taken seriously.

- We have this lady who was attacked

from the Preston Place Apartments.

Jewelry missing.

It reminded me of the bulletin Officer Chapman had put out

regarding thefts from deceased people.

That's when I get that sinking feeling,

like, oh, my gosh, this is serious.

We need to get people over to that apartment.

We have a crime scene.

- This thing has gone

into super warp speed at this time.

[siren wailing]

- Came back from the grocery store,

and I saw the police outside Mary Bartel's,

and I thought, that's strange.

What is wrong with Mary?

And at that time I saw Ann's daughter drive real fast

into the parking lot,

running toward Ann's apartment.

I heard her scream bloody murder twice.

It was just a very loud, piercing scream.

- I opened the door, and my mother's on the ground.

[sniffles, voice breaking] And...

the room was really dark, which would never be my mother.

The TV's blaring, and the shades are all shut.

Her yogurt bowl was sitting there,

and she had one pill sitting to the left of it,

and the dog was yapping,

and it's a vision I will never forget.

- The anguish that I heard in her screams,

that struck me to my core.

- I back out of her place...

and I back into a policeman.

I say...

my mom's on the floor.

[somber music]

[crying] Can you go resuscitate her?

[breathes deeply, shakily]

And he comes back, and he says,

ma'am, I can't resuscitate her because she's dead.

[sniffles]

- The detective that was there

was all hands on deck at that point.

Send everybody you got.

- There's, like, eight police cars,

and they yellow-tape her apartment,

and a cop comes up to me and asks me if...

jewelry's missing.

And I'm thinking to myself, jewelry?

I don't know. [sniffles]

I don't know.

- I received a call from my brother John

saying that my mom had been attacked.

Got to the hospital within 15 or 20 minutes.

She was sitting up in bed, very alert.

- When I first was speaking with her,

there was no noticeable injury to her face,

but as time went on, we observed the bruising

on her cheek underneath her eye.

We also observed some lipstick on her chin.

- But the policeman said,

I think we may have a serious problem here.

- Right.

- Okay, thank you.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- When I received the call, my heart just dropped.

She lives at that same location.

I immediately knew that somebody

had attempted to kill her for her jewelry,

and that person was the same person

that killed Martha Williams and Miriam Nelson.

- The detectives were doing a scene investigation

at both Miss Bartel's

and Miss Conklin's across the hall.

All resources are being deployed on this.

- We're knocking on doors, trying to figure out

if anybody had seen anything or heard anything.

At some point, check with the office.

- There was a guy, Richard Plink.

He had a suspicious interaction

and reported it to staff.

- A few days prior, Richard Plink observed

a male just sitting in a car.

- Sitting out there for hours in the parking lot.

- Plink approached him, asked him why he was there,

and the person said he was looking for work.

- Plink found that really odd and really suspicious.

- He thought enough of it to document a license plate...

big break.

Now we know what vehicle we're looking for.

- We run that plate.

That vehicle had been involved in an accident,

and the person that was driving was listed as Billy Chemirmir.

Chemirmir had a warrant for public intoxication,

so our detectives set up an ops plan

to arrest him.

- The same time, within hours,

I found Mary Bartel's ring on OfferUp.

The item was marked sold.

I was able to identify a buyer.

He didn't know who Chemirmir was at the time.

Zebzeb4 was the name of the seller's profile,

but he tells me that he met him at Starbucks.

I went to this location to check about getting video,

and right next door,

I find a diamond and gold place.

I went in.

I had a picture of Billy Chemirmir.

Instantly they recognized him as a repeat customer.

He had been in there that same day.

When I hear that, I'm thinking,

there may be a lot more to this than what we initially thought.

- In the arrest operation brief,

we were told that we were dealing

with a possible serial killer

who was preying on elderly women.

- There's a good chance that if we don't get him,

there's going to be more bodies.

- My unit deployed to 4500 Pear Ridge...

which was the apartment complex

where he was known to live.

The vehicle that Chemirmir was known to drive was wrecked,

so we had no idea what he was going to be driving.

Basically, we just had to sit and wait.

At about 5:50 p.m.,

we observed a vehicle enter the apartment complex

with the subject driving

that matched Chemirmir's description.

He just rolled in, parked in front of the dumpster,

and got out like it was any other day.

- They saw the suspect throw items into a dumpster.

- Eventually he parked in space number 67,

Chemirmir's assigned parking space.

- At that point, they take him down,

and they find him clenching on to jewelry and money.

- After we get Chemirmir secured in the car,

we go check the dumpster.

Inside, I could see this really pretty

bright-red jewelry box.

It had been broken into.

Some of the jewelry in Chemirmir's possession

was consistent with jewelry left in the jewelry box.

So then we were very concerned

about who the owner of the jewelry box was.

There was a really old name tag,

had the name Harris on it,

and there was another formal document,

had the name Lu Thi Vang on it.

We used those names to locate a possible address

for a Lu Thi Harris in Dallas County,

a few miles from where we were.

- There was a decision made quickly.

Go to that residence and do a welfare check.

- We went straight to that address on Warm Breeze Lane.

♪ ♪

Dallas PD, since it's in their jurisdiction,

ultimately forced entry into the residence.

After some time, they came back out

and informed us that there was a deceased female inside.

♪ ♪

- Initially, her death didn't appear abnormal,

except we've got all of her jewelry

on a murder suspect, right?

- Our detectives were like,

please look at the pillows.

- This guy is suffocating people with the pillows.

Find the pillow.

- Turn it over. Please look at it.

- One of the pillows on Miss Harris's bed,

they picked it up, looked underneath it,

and there was red lipstick on the bottom of the pillow.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- My family knew him as Benjamin Kortaba,

the caregiver for my father.

- We found a gun, a magnet.

Do you want me to go to the police?

And she said no.

- If it wasn't for my grandmother

and the evidence gathered, he would have kept going.

- Chemirmir's DNA was on the pillow

five months before he was arrested.

- If they would have got on this tip from day one

when I said homicide,

there could be 20, 25 more people walking this Earth.

there could be 20, 25 more people walking this Earth.