Sept. 19, Charlie Scudder, a professor of practice in journalism at SMU Dallas, for a commentary examining emotional issues reporters and news sources navigate during the process of storytelling. Published in Texas Monthly under the heading What interviewing a suspected serial killer and his victims taught me about empathy: https://tinyurl.com/8ccapy6y
The first time he called, I was home with family on a Saturday afternoon in 2022. I asked if he had time later to continue our conversation. “Yeah, I have nothing planned,” he laughed.
It was a funny line. His name was Billy Chemirmir, and he was in the Dallas County jail awaiting trial on eighteen counts of capital murder. Just a few months earlier, his first trial had ended in a shocking mistrial. Of course he had time. It wasn’t like there were pressing appointments to schedule around while he was incarcerated.
I’d been covering the case against Chemirmir for three years as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He’d been accused of stalking elderly women at luxury senior living communities in the Dallas area, posing as a maintenance worker to get access to their apartments, smothering them to death with a pillow, and then rifling through their personal belongings so he could steal their cash and jewelry. He had been linked to two dozen deaths in all.