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| Police Scrambling to Block Killer's Release |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 08/20/2002 |
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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. Watts declined an interview request from The Associated Press. His defense attorney in 1982, Zinetta Burney, did not return calls requesting comment. Finding new evidence will be tough, Ladd said. DNA testing wasn't done in the 1980s, and evidence collection was handled differently. And with Watts' attacks lasting just moments, he left little behind, the homicide detective said. 'He was a stalker, a predator,' Ladd said. 'He would get in his car at night and he would drive around and he would see a female, and he would follow that female, and he would kill that female, and he would get back in his car. He might look for another one, he might go home.' |
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