Article BY Chris Bartholomew
Coral Eugene Watts (born November 7, 1953 – died September 21, 2007) was an African American serial killer. He managed to obtain immunity for a dozen murders as a result of a plea bargain with prosecutors in 1982; at one point it appeared that he could be released in 2006 despite possibly having committed as many as 80 murders.
Carl’s mother and father had an unhappy marriage, ending in divorce in 1955. His mother moved with her two children (he had a sister) to Inkster, Mich., where she found a job as a high school art teacher. In 1962, his mother married a mechanic and they had two more children. Coral did not like his new stepfather.
At age 8, Coral developed meningitis, which almost killed him. It was suggested his fever ran so high that doctors feared it could have caused slight brain damage. Coral missed a year of school because of the illness. He would never be the same again.
At age 15, Coral knocked on the apartment door of Joan Gave, 26, while delivering papers on his route. When Gave answered the door, the boy, who was unusually strong for his age, beat her up. He then continued his delivery route as if nothing happened.
After the incident, Gave immediately called police. The authorities apprehended Coral at his home. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment at the Lafayette Clinic in Detroit.
During a psychiatric evaluation, Coral talked about his dreams, which were nightmares in with women would try to kill him. He said he felt better after he had a dream. The psychiatrist believed Coral was a danger to society. Everyone hoped that he would get better after counseling.
On October 25, 1974, Lenore Knizacky, 23, heard someone at her door. When Lenore answered it, a young black man stood before her asking for someone named Charles. Before she knew it, the man was strangling her. Lenore was able to fight off the man until he fled the apartment. and Lenore called police, yet they were unable to apprehend the attacker.
On October 30, Gloria Steele, 19 also received a knock on her apartment door in Kalamazoo. It was a man also looking for someone named Charles. When Steele let in the stranger, he attacked her with a knife. She was stabbed 33 times.
The same man looking for Charles tried to attack another woman at her apartment on November 12. She luckily managed to fend him off. As the man sped away from the scene, the woman was able to catch a glimpse of his license plate. She informed police who learned that the car belonged to Coral Eugene Watts.
Coral was arrested that December for assault and battery after the two surviving women identified him in a police line-up. He confessed to attacking at least a dozen more women but he never admitted to the murder of Gloria Steele.
He was eventually diagnosed him with anti-social personality disorder.
Without enough evidence to convict him of Steele’s murder, he was sentenced to one year in jail. He was released in the summer of 1976.
Over the course of a year, many more women were attacked and murdered. One of them was Detroit News reporter Jeanne Clyne, 44, who was attacked on Halloween Day, 1979, as she walked home from a doctor’s appointment. She was accosted in broad daylight along a busy suburban road near her home in Grosse Point Farms. She died from 11 stab wounds.
On April 20, 1980 Ann Arbor, Mich., high school student Shirley Small, 17, was stabbed to death twice in the heart outside her home. A similar attack against Glenda Richmond took place outside her Ann Arbor area home that summer. The 26-year-old manager of a diner was found dead with 28 stab wounds to her chest. There was not enough evidence at either scene to convict anyone.
On September 14, University of Michigan graduate student Rebecca Huff, 20, was found murdered outside of her home. She had been stabbed approximately 50 times. Her case was unique because it was one of the first murders to be directly linked to Coral. Moreover, it prompted one of Ann Arbor’s largest murder investigations. It took two months before the link between Coral and Rebecca was made.
A task force was formed to increase the patrols in and around the town and catch the ‘Sunday Morning Slasher.’
Two policemen patrolling noticed a man in a car slowly following a woman walking home. She noticed that she was being followed and ducked into a doorway hoping the follower would lose sight of her and give up. The police pulled him over and arrested him for driving with expired license plates and a suspended license. They found in the car a book belonging to one of the victims, but that was not enough proof to convict. They put a tracking device in his car and began surveillance.
Coral knew he was being watched so he didn’t kill for two months. With nothing to go on, the surveillance was suspended.
On Sunday, May 23, 1982 – Watts knocked at the apartment door of Michele Mayday, 20, and beat and choked her into unconsciousness. He ran a bath and the drowned her before he ran away.
Lori Lister, 21 walked towards her front door, not knowing she was being followed. A man with a red hooded sweatshirt came up behind her and strangled her into semi-unconsciousness. She made some noise that the neighbors heard and they called the police. Meanwhile, the man pulled her up the stairs to her apartment where he found her roommate Melinda Aguilar, 18. The attacker choked her until her body went limp. She was pretending to be unconscious. He tied them both up with hangers. While he was running bath water, Melinda jumped out of the window and called for help. The intruder heard the sirens and tried to run but the police got him in the apartment complex courtyard. A neighbor found Lori with her head submerged in the bath water, and pulled her to safety.
After arresting Carl ‘Coral’ Eugene Watts, they asked him why he tried to kill the women and he told them that the women had evil eyes and he was trying to release their spirits. During further questions, he told them he claimed responsibility for up to 80 murders.
Coral told investigators, “If they ever let me out, I’ll kill again.” They had no doubt he would keep his promise.
Watts later claimed that he had killed forty women, and then implied the total was as many as eighty. Several of the killings were not linked to each other. Serial killers normally select victims within a certain age group, and usually kill by the same method. Watts, on the other hand, killed females aged from 14 to 44, and they were killed in a variety of ways: stabbing, slashing, strangulation and bludgeoning. Also, serial killers usually kill people of their own race; Watts, who was African American, selected mostly white victims.
Watts was sentenced to the agreed 60 years, but the prosecutors did not take into account the rules for early release. Watts was a model prisoner, and under Texas law he could have up to two days deducted from his sentence for each one day served, as long as he was well-behaved. This meant that Watts could be released as early as April 2006.
In 2004, authorities made appeals to possible witnesses in order to try and convict Watts of murder to ensure he was not released, given that he had made it clear he would kill again if he ever got out of prison.
Several months after Coral was imprisoned he attempted an escape. He greased himself with hair gel and tried to squeeze out of his jail cell window. However, his attempt failed when he got stuck.
In 1989, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed Coral’s case. Moor said that the judge failed to inform Coral that, “the bathtub water he attempted to drown Lori Lister in was construed as a lethal weapon.” Consequently, he was not required to serve his entire sentence. After serving 36 years, he could get out.
Twenty-two years after Coral’s initial sentencing new evidence was exposed that linked him to a murder. In 2004, Joseph Foy came forward claiming that he witnessed Coral kill a woman in December 1979. According to a March 2004 Dallas Observer article by Whitley, 45-year-old Foy responded to a popular television news program that appealed to viewers for any information concerning Coral’s crimes. He immediately contacted the police and told them what he witnessed approximately 25 years earlier.
Whitely claimed that the Foy saw Helen Mae Dutcher, 36, struggling in an alleyway outside a Ferndale dry cleaners with a man who repeatedly stabbed her in the neck and back. Dutcher died moments later from 12 stab wounds. Foy went to the police station to report the crime and a composite of the attacker was drawn up. However, after an investigation the authorities were unable to identify the attacker
Foy saw a television program in 1982 about Coral that prompted him to call the police again.
After Foy saw the MSNBC show The Abrams Report in January 2004, concerning the Coral Watts case, he called the police again and filed a complaint. He hoped that his story might be able to prevent Coral’s early release. Foy provided the big break that surviving victims and families of those murdered by Coral wished for.
Coral was finally charged with murder. According to MSN Hotmail News, Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan, initiated proceedings to extradite Coral to Michigan to stand trial for Dutcher’s murder. If he was found guilty he would have to serve a mandatory life sentence without parole. It would be the very least he deserves.
In April 2004, Coral Eugene Watts was extradited from his Texas prison to Pontiac, Michigan to face charges for the 1979 murder of Helen Dutcher.
Watts eventually received a life sentence.
On Friday September 21, 2007, Watts died in a Michigan hospital of prostate cancer. He was 53-years-old.
