Texas(!) set to release serial killer in weird legal loophol
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory2/1501726
If schedule holds, Texas may be first to free serial killer
By EVAN MOORE
A day is worth more than 24 hours to Coral Eugene Watts.
It's worth 72, a three-for-one bargain, a triple-time countdown to May 8, 2006. On that date, Watts, a man known to have killed 13 women and suspected of more than six times that many slayings, is scheduled to walk out of the Texas prison system.
He will be the nation's only known serial murderer to be released.
He will be 52 years old.
Next month will mark the 20th year since state District Judge Doug Shaver sentenced Watts to what was then thought to be an immutable 60 years without parole for burglary with intent to commit murder. If something is to be done in the Texas Legislature or in court to prevent Watts' release, the work must begin now.
It was a compromise that sent Watts to prison, the best that could be done with a case with scant evidence, and it brought some minuscule measure of relief to dozens of survivors of Watts' victims. A glitch in that sentencing, however, a missing phrase, gave Watts the opportunity to have that charge reduced and to become eligible for "good time" benefits of three days' credit for each day served.
And that leaves Watts with a sentence that will be satisfied on the second Monday in May 2006.
On that day it will have been 24 years since Watts was halted in an 11-month rampage in which he killed 12 Texas women. It will have been 24 years since Watts killed his last Houston victim and was caught in an attempt to kill another. It will have been two decades since Watts' arrest and its subsequent revelations made him an albatross of embarrassment around the neck of the Houston Police Department.
It will be almost 40 years earlier than anyone might have hoped.
"It makes me kind of sick," said Shaver, now retired. "It's the most unforgettable case I ever had before me, and he's the most dangerous person I've ever come face to face with.
"When he gets out, some woman is going to die."
Oddly, except for the efforts of a few individuals, the Watts case has gone largely untouched for the past two decades. Despite the advances in the science of DNA, no sample has been taken from Watts. In Michigan and Canada, where Watts is suspected of scores of murders, only Ann Arbor has examined its files to see if DNA material might be available, unfortunately without success.
Now, as Watts' release date approaches, the compliant, soft-spoken inmate is becoming the focus of 11th-hour efforts to keep him in prison.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., detectives are attempting to group information from other cities and neighboring Canada to determine if any DNA evidence might tie to Watts.
"It takes time to gather this material," said Ann Arbor special crimes Detective Mauro Cervantes. "We do have four years, so it's not pressing yet, but we do recognize the need to get it done."
In the Houston Police Department, homicide Detective Tom Ladd periodically reviews old files, hoping to happen on a case he might link to Watts.
In Brookshire, investigators are searching for lost evidence from a killing Watts is known to have committed there.
At City Hall, Andy Kahan, the mayor's victims' advocate, is organizing a rally of survivors of Watts' victims to bring attention to Watts' case and put pressure on legislators to amend the laws that would free him.
And in the Ellis Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Watts spends his days working as a machinist in the wood shop, counting the days until his release.
Watts was born in Killeen. His parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother, an elementary school art teacher, moved to the Detroit suburb of Inkster. There, Watts became an outstanding athlete who won a Golden Gloves boxing championship and, later, received a football scholarship to college.
He was a predator as well. He began assaulting women at age 15 and later turned to killing them. He was suspected in a series of attacks between October 1979 and November 1980 in which 14 women were attacked and eight killed in the Detroit area, in Windsor, Ontario (just across the border), and in Ann Arbor.
Michigan police then began around-the-clock surveillance of Watts.
"He couldn't stand it," said Paul Bunten, a former Ann Arbor homicide detective. "He was street-smart, and he knew how to cover his crimes, but he couldn't shake us. Every time he turned around, one of us was there, watching him. So he left and moved to Texas."
Watts arrived in Columbus in April 1981 and began working as a diesel mechanic. Bunten called Houston police to warn them of Watts' arrival and sent them an 18-page bulletin, detailing Watts' crimes and personal information.
It was a bleak period for Houston police.
More than 700 murders occurred in Houston in 1981, overwhelming an understaffed, underpaid department that had no permanent police chief. As a result, it took weeks for police to locate Watts, and then little, if any, surveillance was conducted.
Watts took advantage of his new freedom. Nightly he would cruise the freeways and side streets until he spotted a woman he believed to have "evil eyes" and then follow her home.
He would wait until she had placed her key in the door, then grab her from behind, choke her into semiconsciousness and drag her inside. He stabbed, strangled or drowned his victims, and over the next 11 months he killed nine in Houston, one in Brookshire, one in Austin and one in Galveston.
He rarely took anything from a victim, and he never raped or sexually molested one.
Then, it all culminated on the night of May 22, 1982. At some point that evening, Watts drowned Michele Maday, 20, in her bathtub. He left that scene and was soon hunting again when he happened on Lori Lister, who was entering her apartment in the early dawn.
Watts choked Lister, then dragged her into her apartment. He had filled the tub and was in the process of drowning Lister when he was surprised by her roommate, Melinda Aguilar. Aguilar escaped, screaming for help, and in the ensuing confusion, Watts was arrested.
Within hours he had hired an attorney, Zinetta Burney, who was aghast when her client, apparently believing police had a better case against him than they did, revealed to her that he had killed a string of women.
"There's something evil in the man," Burney later recalled. "He never threatened me. He was always quiet and polite to me, but he scared me more than anyone I've ever dealt with."
Burney began wearing a crucifix to her meetings with Watts, but she didn't stop working on his behalf. She cobbled an agreement with Assistant District Attorneys Jack Frels and Ira Jones that resulted in Watts' pleading guilty to burglary with intent to commit murder in exchange for the 60-year sentence and immunity in the slayings to which he had confessed. Travis and Galveston counties and one county in Michigan made similar agreements, though others declined.
The burglary charge was considered aggravated because the water in which Watts was attempting to drown Lister was construed to be a deadly weapon, leaving Watts ineligible for parole.
Watts began detailing the killings he had committed since coming to Texas. He alluded to others as well, though he was not as explicit. At his last interrogation by police, he admitted to more than 80 slayings, though he refused to give specifics in any crime for which he was not offered immunity.
Watts has never granted a media interview, and he did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.
Many families of victims, already angered at the failure by police to monitor Watts, were doubly offended at the immunity agreement.
"I've taken a lot of grief over that plea bargain over the years," said former Harris County District Attorney Johnny Holmes. "But we had absolutely no evidence in these murders. We could never have tried him on any of them, and it was the only thing we could do."
Two mistakes occurred, however.
One was in Watts' favor. Shaver failed to specify the water as a deadly weapon in the court record. The other mistake may work against Watts: Investigators mistakenly placed the killing of Emily LaQua, 14, in Harris County.
The first mistake allowed Watts to appeal his conviction, and in 1989 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reduced his crime to burglary because there was no evidence a deadly weapon had been used. The decision made Watts eligible for parole, good time, bonus time (for acts such as donating blood) and, eventually, release.
The second error could work against Watts. The LaQua slaying occurred in Waller County, placing it outside the immunity blanket Watts received from Harris County prosecutors.
That leaves Watts vulnerable in the LaQua slaying if evidence other than his confession can be found. The science of DNA, in its infancy in 1982, might be applied if a single hair from Watts' head was left on LaQua's clothing.
That evidence, however, has been misplaced.
Sherry Robinson, Waller County district attorney since 1993, is now attempting to locate LaQua's clothing, which disappeared from the Brookshire Police Department shortly after LaQua's body was recovered.
"We think it's in the Department of Public Safety lab (in Austin)," said Robinson. "We just haven't been able to locate it there."
In Seattle, Elizabeth Young, LaQua's mother, was shocked to learn that the evidence in her daughter's case was missing, that Watts' sentence had been reduced and that he had been scheduled for release.
In Grosse Pointe, Mich., Michael Clyne, the widower of one of Watts' victims and a suspect in his wife's slaying until Watts confessed, similarly was unaware of Watts' impending freedom. So were Beverly Searles of Des Moines, Iowa; Phyllis Tamm of Memphis, Tenn.; and Laura Allen of Dallas, all mothers whose daughters were killed by Watts.
In Waltham, Mass., Jane Montgomery has kept abreast of developments in Watts' case, as has Harriet Semander of Houston. Both lost daughters to Watts, and both have been active in opposing his release.
Many of those survivors, already ired over the original handling of the Watts case, are further exasperated at the thought that he could go free.
Several plan to attend a rally Aug. 3 in Houston, organized by Kahan, the mayor's victims' advocate. There, survivors will attend a memorial service and pass a petition that will ask the governor to form a committee to study Watts' case and come up with a way to prevent his release.
"The purpose of this rally is twofold," said Kahan. "We want to draw attention to Watts before his release date draws too near, and we want to bring some pressure on the Legislature.
"That's one reason we're starting now. It's a slow process to get things moving in the Legislature.
"We call it the beginning of a four-year war."
Kahan, citing previous errors in the Watts case, has called Watts "a poster child for incompetence." Kahan agrees, however, that it is unlikely any legislation will rescind Watts' good time. Previous efforts have failed in committee.
In the event Watts is released, the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles will be forced to make special efforts to monitor him, said Perry Ivey, deputy director of field operations for that bureau.
Under the guidelines of that bureau, Watts would be sent to some facility in Houston. To the prison system, he is a burglar. As a result, there would be no public notice of his release or whereabouts, no posting of his name on a list of sex offenders or violent criminals.
"But we'd have to have him under high control," said Ivey. "Electronic monitoring; global positioning satellite monitoring; he could only engage in work or school; otherwise, he'd be locked down.
"With someone like this, if we have to put someone on him 24-7, we will."
That does little, however, to appease the families of those who died at Watts' hands or the police who investigated those deaths.
"He'll kill some other woman," said Houston police homicide investigator Tom Ladd. Ladd spent days interrogating Watts, listening to his confessions and building a rapport with his prisoner.
"Coral Watts is as streetwise as any killer I ever saw," said the detective. "I remember the last time I spoke to him. He was calling me Ladd by then.
"As he was heading off to prison, the last thing he told me was, `Ladd, you know if I ever get out, I'm gonna do it again.' "