Carl Eugene Watts, also known by his nickname Coral, was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher". Watts is now suspected to have killed more than 100 women, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history. He obtained 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. 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.
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". 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. He was expelled from Lane College after only three months because he was accused of stalking and assaulting women. Another reason he was expelled was because many people at Lane College believed Watts was a suspect 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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 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.
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. In 2004, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox went on national TV asking for anyone to come forward with information in order to try and 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. 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 in a Jackson, Michigan hospital. The case is featured in episodes of Cold Case Files and truTV series The Investigators.
Childhood Years: Carl Eugene Watts was born in Fort Hood, Texas on November 7, 1953, to Richard and Dorothy Watts. His parents divorced in 1955 and Carl began spending a lot of his time with his grandmother. When his mother relocated to Detroit, Carl remained with his grandmother for awhile. She told the Houston Chronicle that even as a young child, Carl enjoyed hunting and skinning rabbits. During his childhood, he developed meningitis and suffered high fevers, resulting in learning disabilities. By the 1960s, Watts was described as a polite and soft-spoken young man. He had athletic ability and participated in the Golden Gloves boxing program, although academically he was considered below average. By the age of 15, he demonstrated violent behavior. While doing his paper route, he knocked on the apartment door of a woman and attacked her when she opened the door. When arrested he told police, "He just felt like beating someone up." In September 1969, prompted by his lawyer, Watts was institutionalized in a hospital in Detroit. Within three months, he was evaluated and placed on outpatient treatment by Dr. Gary Ainsworth. In his final review of Watts, Dr. Ainsworth stated, "This patient is a paranoid young man who is struggling for control of strong homicidal impulses. His behavior controls are faulty, and there is a high potential for violent acting out. This individual is considered dangerous." Watts continued high school after his release from the hospital. He was involved in sports but continued to decline academically. He was a drug user, a loner, and was often disciplined by school officials for his volatile behavior with female classmates. He graduated at age 19. During this time, he rarely attended outpatient treatment. He was accepted to Lane College on a football scholarship, but due to injuries he was unable to complete his first year, and returned home to Detroit.
Watts returned to college after being accepted into a special scholarship and mentoring program sponsored by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Prior to attending the program, Watts was again evaluated at the outpatient facility, where it was determined that he was still a danger and had a "strong impulse to beat up women," yet due to the right to confidentiality policies, staffers were unable to alert authorities or the college Watts was attending. On October 25, 1974, Lenore Knizacky answered her door and was attacked by a man who said he was looking for Charles. She fought back and survived. On October 30, Gloria Steel, 19, was found dead with 33 stab wounds to her chest. A witness reported speaking with a man at Steele’s complex, who said he was looking for Charles. Diane Williams reported being attacked on November 12, under the same circumstances. She survived and managed to see the attacker's car and make a report to the police. Watts was picked out in a line-up by Knizacky and Williams and arrested on assault and battery charges. He admitted to attacking 15 females, but refused to talk about the Steele murder. His attorney arranged for Watts to commit himself into the Kalamazo State Hospital. The hospital psychiatrist investigated Watts' background and learned that at the previous institution, Watts was said to have possibly killed two women by choking them. He diagnosed Watts with an anti-social personality disorder.
Prior to Watts' trial, he had a court ordered evaluation at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor. The examining doctor described Watts as dangerous and felt he would most likely attack again and was found competent to stand trial. Carl, or Coral as he now called himself, pled 'no contest,' and received a one year sentence on the assault and battery charges but was never charged in the murder of Steel. In June, 1976, he was out of jail and back home in Detroit with his mother. Ann Arbor is 40 miles west of Detroit and the home of the University of Michigan. In April 1980, the Ann Arbor police were called to the home of 17-year-old Shirley Small. She had been attacked and repeatedly cut with an instrument resembling a scalpel. She bled to death on the sidewalk where she fell. Glenda Richmond, 26, was the next victim. She was found by her doorway, dead from over 28 stab wounds. Rebecca Greer, 20, was next. She died outside her door after being stabbed 54 times. A task force was formed, led by Detective Paul Bunten, to investigate the murders that occurred within five months of each other. The task force was dealing with no evidence and no witnesses. Sergeant James Arthurs contacted the task force after reading about the murders. He told them of his past experience with Watts and the similarities of Watts' previous crimes to those now under investigation. By this time, Watts was working with his stepfather at a trucking company, had a child, then later met another woman who he married. In October, 1979, Watts was arrested for prowling around in Southfield, Detroit suburb. The charges were later dropped. Investigators did note, however, that during the previous year, five women in the same suburb were assaulted on separate occasions, but with similar circumstances. None were killed, nor could any of them identify their attacker. By 1979 and 1980, attacks on women in Detroit and surrounding areas became more frequent and violent and similar in style. By May 1980, Watts was divorced. His wife stated that it was due to his strange behavior, which included his habit of leaving their home for hours, immediately after they engaged in sex. Within months, attacks in neighboring Wisteria, Ontario were being reported that were of the same nature as those in Ann Arbor and Detroit.
