Scramble to keep serial killer in Texas jail

By Pam Easton
The Associated Press

AP Confessed serial killer Coral Eugene Watts sits in a courtroom during an extradition hearing in a photo from earlier this year.

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Sixty years was the most Watts could receive, based on evidence available to prosecutors, Texas Judge Doug Shaver told him in 1982. "Sad to say," he added.

The sentence turned out to be even less than the judge imagined.

An appeals-court ruling knocked decades off Watts' term. And instead of being locked up until his 80s, he could be back on the streets by spring of 2006 — unless the state of Michigan can put him away for good in a murder trial set to begin Monday.

Prosecutors are rushing to avoid what the Michigan Attorney General's Office says would be the first release of a serial killer in the United States.

"He is a cold-blooded killing machine who randomly preyed on women," said Andy Kahan of the Houston crime-victims assistance office. "I don't think there is any doubt in anybody's mind that if he is released, he will resume his carnage against humanity."

Nearly all the killings to which Watts confessed occurred in late 1981 and early 1982 after he moved to the Houston area from Michigan. Watts, a mechanic, targeted women he thought had "evil eyes" but never sexually assaulted them.

He was captured in 1982 after he choked and beat 19-year-old Lori Lister in a parking lot, then dragged her to her apartment and tried to drown her in the bathtub. He bound her roommate with wire hangers, but she escaped and called police.

The slayings to which Watts confessed — 12 in Texas and one in Michigan — were as varied as they were grisly. Most victims were stabbed or strangled. One was drowned in an Austin swimming pool. Another was found hanging from a tree near Rice University in Houston. Watts told police that he strangled a Houston woman and then held her head in a flowerpot full of water to make sure she was dead.

But aside from his detailed confession, prosecutors had no evidence of his involvement in the killings.

The killer wore a hood, picked his victims entirely at random, struck quickly and escaped cleanly, leaving little or no physical evidence.
 
In one case, authorities did not even realize a homicide had been committed; they thought they were looking at an ordinary drowning.

The families of Watts' suspected victims pushed for a plea bargain, saying they wanted to know what happened to their loved ones.

So prosecutors made a deal: They let him plead guilty to one offense — burglary with the intent to commit murder — and granted him immunity for the killings so that he would cooperate. He ultimately led police to three bodies.

The confessed serial killer was put away without an actual conviction or pleading guilty to murder.

In sentencing Watts, Shaver ruled that he had used a deadly weapon — the bathtub filled with water — in an attempt to kill Lister. The finding meant that Watts had to serve his full 60-year sentence, without time off for good behavior. He would die behind bars or be an old man when he was freed.

But an appeals court ruled in 1989 that Watts had not been notified properly of the finding, and was thus entitled to good-behavior credit.

The ruling, combined with mandatory-release laws that had been in place at the time to relieve prison overcrowding, lopped more than 35 years off his sentence. He is scheduled to be released in April 2006 at age 52.

"This is a guy who just happened to hit the legal system in Texas at a strange time," said Gerald Treece, an associate dean at South Texas College of Law.

When victims' families realized a few years ago that Watts was going to be freed, they put together petitions and pleaded with authorities to do something to keep him behind bars. Investigators in Michigan and Texas scoured old case files.

A Michigan man who saw a TV report on the Watts case came forward this year to say he saw Watts struggle with 36-year-old Helen Mae Dutcher, who was stabbed 12 times in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale in 1979. Watts will go on trial next week in Pontiac, Mich.

Although Watts did not confess to the Dutcher slaying, the judge plans to admit his confession in the other killings as evidence of a pattern of behavior. If Watts is convicted, he would receive an automatic life sentence without parole.

Watts' attorney, Ronald Kaplovitz, questions the witness's 25-year-old identification of Watts and said he does not think prosecutors have any scientific evidence. But he conceded Watts' confession will be difficult to counteract.

"It certainly is very damaging to hear all this evidence about all of these other similar crimes he supposedly did," Kaplovitz said.

Kahan, of the crime-victims office in Texas, said the confession is critical because Watts has been adept at leaving little evidence behind.

"That is how good this guy was," Kahan said. "We are not exactly known for our leniency down here."