7 OctOber 10 - 16, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents its way to the top of local headlines follow- ing his 2018 arrest, 2019 indictment, 2021 trial and after his death last year. Chemirmir worked as an in-home caregiver and often posed as a maintenance worker to gain ac- cess into high-end living communities for the elderly. Authorities say Chemirmir would smother his victims to death with a pillow and steal possibly millions of dollars worth jewelry and other valuables in order to sell them. In both trials that ended in conviction, Chemirmir pleaded not guilty, a stance he maintained throughout his arrest, trials and af- terwards. Now, a new podcast from a local journalist who has covered the case for years aims to reveal new details involving one of the state’s most notorious suspected serial killers. Charles Scudder, host of The Unforgotten: Unnatural Causes, started covering the Chemirmir murders in 2019 when he was a breaking news reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He went on to write a two- part series about the murders entitled “Guardians” that won the national Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing for large digital news organizations. As excellent as his award-winning pieces on the Chemirmir murders were, that was a long time ago — long before the overall story took several twists and turns. “I should say that the vast majority [of the podcast interviews] are new interviews, or people I reinterviewed,” Scudder ex- plains. “If you followed my reporting at the Morning News, first of all, thank you, but this is going to be much more than that. You’re going to learn things from this.” The premiere episode of Unnatural Causes, available on Oct. 14, opens with har- rowing audio from a 911 call before switch- ing to audio from court testimony. The woman at the center of the audio, Mary Bar- tel, was one of Chemirmir’s victims, al- though she, perhaps miraculously, survived. Bartel’s is one of many notable voices fea- tured in Scudder’s podcast. Family members of some of the victims, attorneys involved in some of the individual cases, forensic pa- thologists, state lawmakers and senior living industry experts are just some of the people who weigh in on this story, which is far from a simple true crime tale. Perhaps most chilling is the inclusion of Chemirmir’s voice in the podcast. Scudder says he was the only journalist to whom the murderer spoke after his arrest. Scudder re- cently wrote about some of his conversations with Chemirmir over the years in which the murderer repeatedly denied any wrongdoing even when Scudder presented him with the mountain of evidence against him. Understandably, Scudder, who has also written about Chemirmir for The Guardian since leaving the Morning News to become a freelance journalist and SMU journalism professor, has picked up on a number of threads that connect the two-dozen-plus murders and attacks carried out by Chemirmir. He says that when inspected as a whole, the case shows some serious cracks that Chemirmir was able to slip through un- detected. Those cracks will be inspected over the podcast’s nine episodes, but a spe- cific one is introduced in Episode 1. “The method Chemirmir used is a big crack,” Scudder says. “Smothering deaths don’t leave the same signs as a strangulation, where there’s bruising, hand marks, a bro- ken trachea and that kind of thing. When someone gets stabbed, there’s a knife wound. Someone gets shot, there’s a bullet wound, right? Smothering deaths don’t do that; they leave very few traces.” Some of the other “cracks” that enabled Chemirmir to possibly kill dozens, Scudder says, include the loopholes in the in-home caregiving industry and the lack of regula- tion in the cash-for-gold industry, which op- erates differently from pawn shops, which are regulated. “It was a system of systems that worked together that he was able to find holes in all over the place,” Scudder says. Another thread that Scudder will pull on in the podcast is the disconnect between society’s general perception of the elderly and the reality of just how vibrant Chemirmir’s victims were, regardless of their advanced age. “It’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘Oh, they were frail old women on death’s door,’ but this wasn’t the case,” he says. These women were active and healthy, with many of them driving themselves on errands or to church… They were out running and gunning and ac- tively living. We aren’t talking about frail se- niors, we’re talking about older adults who were in a new chapter of life.” As he notes in the first episode, Scudder spent countless hours poring over thou- sands of pages of court transcripts, police re- ports, autopsy reports and other documents. The problem he mentioned earlier about how a suffocation murder can look all too natural adds a level of complexity that might be too difficult for investigators to ever navi- gate. As thorough as Scudder’s reporting on this case has long been, he admits that even now, at least 8 years after Chemirmir is first believed to have killed, some questions about this horrific case will never be an- swered. “One of the things we talk about on the podcast is that we don’t really know how many [victims] there, are and we never will,” he says. “It’s impossible for us to know the real number because of how the cases were treated early on by police … We just don’t know.” ▼ RELIGION THE STATE OF CHURCH DISGRACED CHURCH LEADERS DRAW NATIONAL ATTENTION, GOVERNMENT INTEREST. BY KELLY DEARMORE A rguably one of the biggest stories of the summer in North Texas contin- ues to develop well into the fall, as yet another North Texas church leader has made news for the wrong reasons. David Scarberry, who serves as a staff “evangelistic outreach leader” at Revival City Church in McKinney according to church watchdog site Watchkeep, was ar- rested last week and charged with continu- ous violence against family, a charge he told KERA was the result of “false accusations.” Scarberry’s story doesn’t end with these latest charges, however. KERA also reported that Scarberry “spent five years in an Okla- homa prison after he was found guilty of us- ing an offensive weapon in a felony and for two additional drug felonies in 2002,” and that “[h]is ex-wife filed for the domestic abuse protective order in 1994.” Revival City Church isn’t a large church, not one of the many mega-churches that have long been a presence throughout Dal- las-Fort Worth. In the past, Scarberry’s ar- rest could’ve rather easily avoided the media spotlight. But since prominent pastor Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship stepped down from his role in June after admitting to an undisclosed “sin,” North Texas has seen an alarmingly steady progression of pastors, many of them leading large and prominent congregations, leave their posts due to an ar- ray of moral failures and even crime. Shortly after Evans’ announcement, Robert Morris, the best-selling author, television host and pastor of one of the largest churches in Texas, Gateway Church in Southlake, stepped down after admitting to sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. In August, we noted a few of the now- disgraced pastors in a report looking at how churches and the victims of clergy abuse may try to move on. WFAA has been keeping track of pastors and church leaders that have become entangled in controversy, with the list now totaling 17. Scarberry is only the most recent addition. It’s a disturbing trend that’s gained atten- tion across the country thanks to the high profile of some of the pastors as well as the sheer regularity of the troubles. The New York Times published a story late last week about the matter. Ed Young, the outspoken, feather-ruffling pastor of Fellowship Church, arguably the biggest-name pastor in the region, is interviewed for the story. In a somewhat off-color manner, he says the string of pastoral indiscretions and miscon- duct is “like the unbuckling of the Bible Belt.” New York Times writer Ruth Graham, who lives in Dallas, attempted to connect the dots between the controversies. “There’s no clear pattern to the scandals, which range widely. The churches are all Protestant but belong to different denomi- nations — or none at all — and have different theological beliefs and worship styles,” Gra- ham wrote. “But the cumulative impact has been unsettling for many Christians and their leaders in Dallas, a city that the maga- zine Christianity Today once declared ‘the new capital of evangelicalism.’” Mary DeMuth, a religious author from Rockwall interviewed for the Times story, views the added attention to such develop- ments as a result of the #MeToo movement and “a rising appetite for transparency in church circles” the report stated. In some cases, not much has been heard from the churches or pastors once a resigna- tion or firing has been announced, but there are possible ripple effects in some other in- stances. Last week, according to KERA, Cindy Clemishire, the woman whom Morris reportedly abused when she was a child, ap- peared before a Texas House committee hearing, where she said she rejected $25,000 from Morris’ attorney to stay silent and take blame for the abuse in 2007. Republican Rep. Jeff Leach, who attends Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, accord- ing to his official website, was one of the lawmakers at the hearing. He seems to be ready to put a greater spotlight on what has been happening in North Texas churches and look for ways to support the victims. “I fear that if we don’t act in a real, mean- ingful, and strong way,” Leach is quoted in the KERA report as stating. “[W]e’re going to almost become a sanctuary for criminals who are preying on our children.” ▼ CITY HALL A STORM’S ON THE WAY DALLAS GETS ANSWERS FROM ONCOR FOLLOWING SLOW SPRING STORM RESTORATION. BY KELLY DEARMORE F our months after a severe storm ripped through Dallas, causing many thou- sands to lose power on May 28, the city and Oncor are looking to be more prepared for the next round of catastrophic events. During a recent community meeting at W.T. White High School, City Council member Gay Donnell Willis and Oncor’s Andrea Sanders presented a look at some areas the two entities managed to Unfair Park from p5 Erica Shires/Getty Images The Texas House of Representatives is looking into the recent rash of North Texas pastoral controversies and abuses. >> p8
