Coral Eugene Watts

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Coral Eugene Watts (born November 7, 1953) is an 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. However, he is now serving a life sentence.

1 History
2 A new discovery
3 A new conviction
4 External links

[edit] History

On May 23, 1982, Watts was arrested for breaking into the home of two young women in Houston, Texas, 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 ten women and girls. Watts was previously questioned for murder in 1975, but there had not been enough evidence to convict him; although he 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 sixty-year sentence, which the authorities felt would be enough to keep 29-year-old Watts off the streets for good. He agreed with the deal and promptly confessed in detail to twelve murders both in Michigan and Texas.

[edit] A new discovery

Watts later claimed that he had killed forty women, and then implied the total was as many as eighty; A lot 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 victims both of his own race and of others.

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 Texan 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 April 2006.

[edit] A new conviction

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. A man, Joseph Foy of Westland, Michigan came forward to say that he had seen a man fitting Watts' description fleeing the scene of the murder of Helen Dutcher, a 36-year-old woman who died after being stabbed twelve times in December 1979. Watts had immunity from prosecution for the twelve killings he had admitted to, but that did not apply to other murders such as that of Dutcher, which Watts had not specifically confessed to.

Watts was promptly charged with the murder of Helen Dutcher and, on November 17, 2004, after hearing chilling eyewitness testimony from Joseph Foy, a Michigan jury convicted him. On December 7, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, virtually ensuring that the 51-year-old Watts would never get out of prison. 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.

The case was featured in an episode of the TV program Cold Case Files [1]