Photo via Weiss Paarz
The attorney for an accused serial killer facing capital murder charges in the robberies and smothering deaths of 18 elderly residents at retirement communities has been charged with soliciting prostitution.
Phillip Hayes is accused of offering $110 to an undercover officer in exchange for sex, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reports. He was arrested Friday in Smith County, taken to jail and released after posting a $2,000 bond.
Phillip Hayes
Hayes, who is defending accused serial killer Billy Chemirmir, was in Tyler for another capital murder case, that of a nurse accused of killing multiple patients by injecting air into their arterial systems.
Police in Tyler say Hayes, 48, answered an ad that law enforcement posted on a website commonly used for human trafficking and prostitution. They say he began exchanging texts with an undercover officer on Oct. 5, while that capital murder trial was ongoing.
Police arrested and questioned him at that time but decided to delay the charge and get a warrant after the trial, the newspaper reports. The trial ended in a guilty verdict on Oct. 27.
Hayes has been practicing law since 1999, and he frequently defends people facing capital murder charges, including Billy Chemirmir.
Chemirmir, 48, is the suspect in about 24 deaths of elderly people, and he’s been charged in 18 murders, including those of Joyce Abramowitz, Doris Wasserman and Margaret White The Tradition Prestonwood in Far North Dallas.
Investigators also suspect Chemirmir in the death of Catherine Probst Sinclair, a resident of Edgemere Luxury Senior Living, in April 2016.
