Originally Posted by
Deborah Siehl
Serial killer slated for release in 2006
BY PAM EASTON
Associated Press
HOUSTON -- The murders were as random as they were vicious: stabbings, hangings, stranglings, drownings. The women didn't know each other or the hooded man who, according to one survivor, enjoyed the killing so much he was "clapping and dancing."
Police eventually caught up with Coral Eugene Watts but couldn't connect him to the savage crimes in Texas and Michigan.
Desperate to close the cases, prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain. In 1982, Watts admitted he killed 13 women -- "They had evil in their eyes," he said -- but he went to prison for burglary with intent to commit murder.
He was sentenced to 60 years, and prosecutors, police and the judge thought that was enough.
Now, a quirk in the Texas legal system may short-circuit their intentions. Mandatory release laws aimed at relieving prison crowding require Watts' be discharged on May 8, 2006, unless he loses good behavior credits that he has accumulated in prison. He will be 52.
Watts is believed to have killed dozens of women, and authorities in Texas and Michigan are scouring old files, archives and evidence folders for any shred that might tie him to an open case for which he didn't receive immunity in the plea.
"Everybody knows he is going to kill again," said Houston police Sgt. Tom Ladd, who interrogated Watts after his arrest in 1982. "His last statement to me was: 'You know, Tom, if I get out, I'm going to do it again.' "
"He's a homicidal time bomb," Ladd said.
Finding new evidence will be tough, Ladd said. DNA testing wasn't done in the 1980s, and evidence collection was handled differently.
Watts first came to the attention of authorities in Michigan in 1974 when he was accused of choking and beating a woman in Kalamazoo. He was convicted of aggravated assault in 1975 and spent a year in jail.
He then moved to Ann Arbor, where police kept a close eye on him but never caught him committing a crime.
Michigan authorities eventually suspected Watts of attacking at least 14 women and killing eight in Ann Arbor, Detroit and the neighboring Canadian town of Windsor between October 1979 and November 1980.
But they could do little more than relay their suspicions and details of Watts' background to Houston authorities after he moved south in 1981.
"Logistically, it was impossible to keep a 24-hour tab on this guy," Ladd said. "We didn't have anything to follow him on."
Twelve Texas women died before Watts crossed paths with police again.
Bryan Collier, director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's parole division, said that if Watts gets out in 2006 he will be watched closely from his release until his 60-year sentence expires in 2042.
Harriett Semander, whose 20-year-old daughter Elena Semander was strangled with her own shirt, isn't convinced that will be enough.
"There's no doubt in my mind that he has been sitting in prison for the last 20 years planning his next murder," she said. "This man was street smart. He was cunning. He liked what he did. Of course he is going to do it again, and when there is the next victim, we can all take the blame for it."
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To me it sounds like no one thought those women's lives were worth much. Fine, they were able to convict him on "something" but NOT GOOD ENOUGH. In a case like this lawyers should have said "ok" to a deal and turned around and said to 0000 bad about your deal with his confession. Sometimes I think the extremely guilty have way to many rights. Alot more than the victim's, thats for sure. So where's the justice. Now in 2006 we all have to "watch our backs" because of a glitch? Unacceptable. That's my 2 cents.
