Coral Watts

Carl Eugene Watts (November 7, 1953 – September 21, 2007), also known by his nickname Coral, was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher" who murdered numerous women and girls over an 8-year period. He is suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in United States history. He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life imprisonment without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele, although the number of his victims may have exceeded 100.

Early life

Carl Eugene Watts was born in Killeen, Texas to Richard Eugene Watts and Dorothy Mae Young. His father was a private first class in the Army, and his mother was a kindergarten art teacher. When Watts was less than two years of age, his parents separated and he was raised by his mother. Watts and his mother moved to Inkster, Michigan, and in 1962, Dorothy Mae married a mechanic named Norman Caesar with whom she had two daughters.

When Watts was 8, he was infected with meningitis which caused him to be held back in the eighth grade. Upon his return to school, Watts had difficulty keeping up with other students. At school, he would often receive failing grades, and was reading at a fourth grade level by age 15.

Assault of Joan Gave

On June 29, 1969, 15-year-old Watts was identified by police in the assault of 26-year-old Joan Gave, a woman on his paper route, and checked in to the Lafayette Clinic, a mental hospital in Detroit. According to a psychiatric assessment, Watts was revealed to have mild intellectual disability with an I.Q. of 75, and to have a delusional thought process.

A police officer interrogating Watts after his arrest later stated that he appeared to be "very, very intelligent" with an "excellent memory." He was released from the Lafayette Clinic upon his 16th birthday and returned to the clinic for outpatient treatment multiple times in the following years.

Murders

Watts' time as a serial killer began when he was 20 years old in 1974, by kidnapping his victims from their homes, torturing them, and then murdering them. On October 30, 1974, Watts tortured and brutally murdered 20-year-old Gloria Steele, who was believed to be his second victim. She was found with 33 stab wounds to her chest. He may have also been involved in the disappearance of Nadine Jean O'Dell who was 16 years old when she disappeared on August 16, 1974. She was last seen walking down John Daly Street in Inkster, Michigan. Her body has never been found and no one witnessed her presumed abduction. Watts almost always killed young white women, using methods such as strangulation, stabbing, bludgeoning, and drowning. Victims ranged between the ages of 14 and 44. Watts murdered dozens of women between 1974 and 1982, and despite the many women he murdered, he was not discovered as a serial killer for almost eight years.

There were several reasons for this. He attacked in several different jurisdictions and even different states. Even with the advent of DNA testing, it was still nearly impossible to connect them because he rarely performed sexual acts on his victims; his crimes were not thought to be sexually motivated. Watts was questioned for murder in 1975, but there was not enough evidence to convict him, although he had spent a year in prison for attacking a woman who survived.

Canadian authorities believe Watts crossed the border into Windsor, Ontario that October, assaulting 20-year-old Sandra Dalpe outside her apartment, leaving her near death with multiple wounds to the face and throat but she survived. Dalpe recounted the incident on a Season 4 episode of '' I Survived...'' ("Laurie/Sandra/Melinda: Serial Killers"), which originally aired on September 30, 2012. By that time, Watts had fallen under scrutiny from local homicide investigators. A task force was organized in July 1980 to probe the Sunday slashings, and Watts was placed under sporadic surveillance; a November court order permitted officers to plant a homing device in his car.

Watts was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.

Arrest and discovery

On May 23, 1982, Watts broke into the apartment of Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar in Houston. As she arrived home from work, he choked Lister into unconsciousness under the stairs below the apartment. He then entered the apartment and began to choke Aguilar as well. Aguilar feigned unconsciousness while Watts tied her hands behind her back with a wire. He dragged Lister's body upstairs and into the bathroom and started filling the bathtub preparing to drown her.

While Watts was preoccupied with Lister, Aguilar was able to slip free and jump out a window to seek help. Lister was rescued and Watts was later arrested after fleeing the scene. While in custody, police began to link Watts with the recent murders of a number of women.

Until early 1981, he had lived in Michigan, where authorities suspected him of being responsible for the murders of at least ten women and girls. Watts was previously questioned about the murders in 1975, but there had not been enough evidence to convict him. At that time, Watts had spent a year in prison for attacking a woman, who survived.

Prosecutors in Texas did not feel they had enough evidence to convict Watts of murder, so in 1982, they arranged a plea bargain. If Watts gave full details and confessions to his crimes, they would give him immunity from the murder charges and he would, instead, face just a charge of burglary with intent to murder. This charge carried a 60-year sentence. He agreed with the deal and promptly confessed in detail to 12 murders in Texas. However, Michigan authorities refused to go in on the deal so the cases in that state remained open.

Watts later claimed he had killed 40 women, and has also implied that there were more than 80 victims in total. He would not confess outright to having committed these murders, however, because he did not want to be seen as a "mass murderer".
Police still consider Watts a suspect in 90 unsolved murders.

Watts is now suspected to have killed more than 100 women, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Michigan trial

Watts was sentenced to the agreed 60 years. However, shortly after he began serving time, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that he had not been informed that the bathtub and water he attempted to drown Lori Lister in was considered a deadly weapon. The ruling reclassified him as a nonviolent felon, making him eligible for early release.

At the time, Texas law allowed nonviolent felons to have three days deducted from their sentences for every one day served as long as they were well behaved. Watts was a model prisoner, and had enough time deducted from his sentence that he could have been released as early as May 9, 2006. The law allowing early release was abolished after public outcry, but could not be applied retroactively according to the Texas Constitution.URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSAdy93xIUI.

In 2004, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox went on national TV asking for anyone to come forward with information in order to try to convict Watts of murder to ensure he was not released. Joseph Foy of Westland, Michigan, came forward to say that he had seen a man fitting Watts' description murder Helen Dutcher, a 25-year-old woman who died after being stabbed twelve times on December 1, 1979. Foy identified Watts by his eyes, which he described as being "evil" and devoid of emotion. Although Watts had immunity from prosecution for the 12 killings he had admitted to in Texas, he had no immunity agreement in Michigan. Before his 2004 trial, law enforcement officials asked the trial judge to allow the Texas confessions into evidence, to which he agreed.

Watts was promptly charged with the murder of Helen Dutcher. A Michigan jury convicted him on November 17, 2004, after hearing eyewitness testimony from Joseph Foy.

On December 7, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days later, authorities in Michigan started making moves to try him for the murder of Western Michigan University student Gloria Steele, who was stabbed to death in 1974.

Watts' trial for the Steele murder began in Kalamazoo, Michigan on July 25, 2007; closing arguments concluded July 26. The following day the jury returned a guilty verdict. Watts was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on September 13. He was incarcerated at a maximum security prison in Ionia, Michigan. He died of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007, in a Jackson, Michigan hospital.

The case is featured in episodes of ''Cold Case Files'' and TruTV series ''The Investigators''.

Victims

Known victims

Suspected victimshttp://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Watts,%20Coral%20Eugen%20_2008,%20spring_.pdf

See also

* List of homicides in Michigan
* List of serial killers in the United States
* List of serial killers by number of victims

References

Bibliography

*

External links

Coral Eugene Watts
at Crime Library

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watts, Carl Eugene
1953 births
2007 deaths
20th-century American criminals
African-American people
American male criminals
American people convicted of murder
American people who died in prison custody
American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
American murderers of children
American rapists
American serial killers
Deaths from cancer in Michigan
Deaths from prostate cancer
Lane Dragons football players
Male serial killers
People convicted of murder by Michigan
People from Inkster, Michigan
People from Killeen, Texas
People with antisocial personality disorder
Prisoners and detainees of Texas
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Michigan
Prisoners who died in Michigan detention
Serial killers who died in prison custody
Violence against women in the United States