Carl Eugene Watts

Carl "Coral" Eugene Watts
Watts in 2004
Background information
Birth name	Carl Eugene Watts
Also known as	Coral The Sunday Morning Slasher
Born	November 7, 1953(1953-11-07) Killeen, Texas
Died	September 21, 2007(2007-09-21) (aged 53) Jackson, Michigan
Cause of death	Prostate cancer
Conviction	Murder
Sentence	60 years in prison, commuted to life
Killings
Number of victims:	12–suspected to be 100
Span of killings	1974–May 23, 1982
Country	United States
State(s)	Michigan Texas
Date apprehended	May 23, 1982

Carl Eugene Watts (November 7, 1953 – September 21, 2007), also known by his nickname Coral,^[1] was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher".^[2] He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele.

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.

As a child, Watts was described as being strange. Around the age of twelve, Watts claimed that this was when he started to fantasize about torturing and killing girls and young women. During adolescence, Watts began to stalk girls and is believed to have killed his first victim before the age of 15. When Watts was 13, 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 third grade level by age 16. He also suffered severe bullying at school.

On June 29, 1969, Watts was arrested for sexually assaulting 26-year-old Joan Gave. When Watts was tried, he was sentenced to the Lafayette Clinic, a mental hospital in Detroit. According to a psychiatric assessment, Watts was revealed to suffer from mild mental retardation, with a full scale I.Q. of 68, and to have a delusional thought process, though a police officer interrogating Watts after his arrest later stated that he appeared to be "very, very intelligent" with an "excellent memory".^[2] He was released from the Lafayette Clinic on November 9, 1969.

Despite his poor grades, Watts graduated from high school in 1973, and received a football scholarship to Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. However, he was expelled after only three months after being accused of stalking and assaulting women. He was also implicated in the brutal murder of a female student; however, there was not enough evidence to convict him of the murder. After his expulsion he moved to Houston, Texas.

Murders

Watts' career 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. Watts, who was African American, almost always killed young white women.^[3] Watts killed females between the ages of 14 and 44 using methods such as strangulation, stabbing, bludgeoning, and drowning. Watts had murdered dozens of women between 1974 and 1982, and despite the many women he murdered, Watts was not discovered as a serial killer for almost eight years.^[4] 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 because he rarely performed sexual acts on his victims, unlike most serial killers of women and girls, and his crimes were not thought to be sexually motivated. Watts was also not suspected to be involved with any of the murders by the people who knew him, and was not a police suspect in any of the murders until his arrest in 1982.^{[citation needed]}

Arrest and discovery

On May 23, 1982, Watts was arrested for breaking into the home of two young women in Houston, and attempting to kill them. 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 10 women and girls there. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Watts later claimed that 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.^[2]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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 36-year-old woman who died after being stabbed twelve times in December 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, which he agreed to.^[5]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[6]

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.^[7] He was incarcerated at a maximum security prison in Ionia, Michigan. He died of prostate cancer on September 21 in a Jackson, Michigan hospital.^[8]

The case is featured in episodes of Cold Case Files^[9] and truTV series The Investigators.^[10]

References

1. ^ Aamodt, Dr. Mike. "Carl Eugene Watts". Radford University Psychology Department. p. 1. http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Watts,%20Coral%20Eugen%20_2008,%20spring_.pdf. Retrieved June 29, 2009. "He acquired his nickname because his cousins had an accent and would draw out the letters in Carl's name until it sounded like Coral and Carl decided that he liked it and also started talking like that." 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "A Deal With the Devil?". 60 Minutes. October 14, 2004. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/14/60minutes/main649363.shtml. Retrieved June 28, 2008. 
3. ^ http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Watts,%20Coral%20Eugen%20_2008,%20spring_.pdf
4. ^ Aamodt, Dr. Mike. "Carl Eugene Watts". Radford University Psychology Department. pp. 10. http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Watts,%20Coral%20Eugen%20_2008,%20spring_.pdf. Retrieved July 19, 2009. 
5. ^ Kurth, Joel (November 9, 2004). "Confessed killer faces trial; The Inkster native is accused of murdering a woman in Ferndale in 1979; he could walk free in 2006". The Detroit News. 
6. ^ Kurth, Joel (December 9, 2004). "Watts faces new charge in Michigan; Convicted killer is slated to be arraigned today in Kalamazoo in 1974 stabbing death". The Detroit News. 
7. ^ "Coral Watts Sentenced". WWMT. September 13, 2007. 
8. ^ "Coral E. Watts, Imprisoned Serial Killer, Dies at 53". New York Times. September 22, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/us/22watts.html. Retrieved June 29, 2009. 
9. ^ "Cold Case Files: Episode 106". Crime & Investigation Network. http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/tv_programme/510/Cold_Case_Files_Episode_106.htm. Retrieved June 29, 2009. 
10. ^ "Investigators: Episodes". truTV. http://www.trutv.com/shows/the_investigators/episodes.html. Retrieved June 29, 2009. 

Bibliography

• Bell, Rachael. "Coral Eugene Watts, The Sunday Morning Slasher". Crime Library. http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/coral_watts/index.html. 

External links

• Coral Eugene Watts at Crime Library

Persondata
Name	Watts, Carl Eugene
Alternative names	Watts, Coral Eugene (nickname)
Short description	Serial killer
Date of birth	November 7, 1953
Place of birth	Fort Hood, Texas, United States
Date of death	September 21, 2007
Place of death	Jackson, Michigan, United States