Billy Chemirmir, a 50-year-old Kenyan convicted murderer accused of killing about two dozen elderly women and a man in North Texas, was allegedly killed by his cellmate in a state prison on Tuesday morning.
Chemirmir was found dead in his cell, according to Hannah Haney, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The spokeswoman said she couldn’t reveal the identity of the cellmate or how Chemirmir was killed.
Chemirmir, who moved to Texas in the 1990s after marrying an American citizen, was originally from Eldama Ravine in Kenya.
He was charged with capital murder in the deaths of 14 people, while civil suits accused him of killing a further eight.
Detectives arrested him while trying to dispose of a gold chain he had taken from a house after suffocating its elderly owner with a pillow.
Homicide detectives responding to a tip-off found the 91-year-old woman dead in her bed. A pillow with her lipstick was nearby.
Many of the victims were confirmed to have died of natural causes, but after the arrest, authorities investigated hundreds of deaths for possible links to Chemirmir.
Family members of those killed by Chemirmir expressed shock and relief at the news.
“My mother died in fear. This man did not have a peaceful death. It’s a relief that he didn’t get off so easy,” said Shannon Dion, whose 92-year-old mother, Doris Gleason, was among those Chemirmir is accused of killing, at a press conference.
Chemirmir’s death comes just two weeks after Texas’ 100 prisons were placed on an unusual statewide lockdown due to an increase in the number of inmate deaths that prison officials said were drug-related.
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