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Season Six: Another Plus: Deal or No Deal
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Today’s episode is about wrapping up the story of a serial killer who could be more prolific than we realize.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Carl Watts: The Early Years
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:57
Speaker
Where we left off in this case, Carl Watts, Carl Eugene watts coral Watts, he had decided that he needed to get out of town.
00:01:09
Speaker
Now, in terms of like what was happening in the timeline of his life, ah we were looking at the fact that he has a tracker on his car.
00:01:23
Speaker
So this tracker is warranted from right after Thanksgiving, 1980 up till January 29th, 1981. January 29th, 1981, this guy, Paul Bunton, he brings Watts in for questioning and he talks to him for five hours and they take his blood and they don't get anything from this 27 year old guy.
00:01:51
Speaker
March rolls around. And on March 10th of 1981, Paul Bunton sees Watts inside of a courthouse and he's on a pay phone.
Blending In: Life in Texas
00:02:05
Speaker
He goes right up to him and he tells him he's going to need to talk to him. Watts says he doesn't want to talk to the police anymore and he doesn't have anything to say to them.
00:02:18
Speaker
And as far as he's concerned, their conversation's over. But then he runs away. And not only does he like run away like from Paul Bunton at the courthouse from the payphone, he packs his belongings up and he leaves.
00:02:35
Speaker
He goes to his grandmother's house and from his grandmother's house, he heads to Texas. So in his mind, that's probably about as far away as he could possibly be. He specifically relocates down to Columbus, Texas.
00:02:51
Speaker
And he starts working for an oil firm. ah Oil firm, or just oil work in general, is pretty rough and tumble. is It is the kind of industry that has a lot of turnover.
00:03:06
Speaker
So he's able to blend in there for a pretty significant amount of time. Just to be clear, he didn't elude anything except a suspicion, right? What do you mean?
00:03:18
Speaker
he was he They weren't like trying to arrest him. They didn't have enough yet, right? No, they were just trying to talk to him. They were trying to build their case. Right. And so he you know when he left, he left them high and dry. Yeah, he left them high and dry.
00:03:30
Speaker
he starts out working for United Transport, and then he ends up moving over to Coastal Transport, and he gets like a late-night shift. um He does end up on March 23rd heading back to Michigan briefly, but he's really just back there so that he can pick up his car.
00:03:49
Speaker
And this makes Paul Bunton pretty mad. So Paul Bunton puts together any just under 20 page document and he sends it down to the Houston police department on April the 8th.
00:04:05
Speaker
detective there gets it and a week after Bunton sends it down there this detective his detective is Bostock is his last name he starts poking around asking questions about Watts at his new job And the manager for his job wants to fire him, but the detective says, no, don't do that. Like, keep him on, and then, you know, we'll start keeping track of him.
00:04:37
Speaker
And this lasts for about a month and a half.
00:04:41
Speaker
So over the course of this month and a half, I'm guessing he didn't do great at this job. And the manager ends up firing him in June of 1981.
00:04:54
Speaker
Coral Watts didn't care. Allegedly, he already had another job set up at another trucking company over in Dallas. And he like had some words with his manager.
00:05:06
Speaker
So the manager took that information and he gives it to the detective. And the detective makes a copy of that report he got from Bunton up in Michigan and emails it over to the Dallas police.
The Murders Begin: A Mechanic's Double Life
00:05:22
Speaker
Except... Carl Watts doesn't move to Dallas. He's been bouncing around in Texas outside the Houston area. And he finally at this time settles back into Columbus, Texas. And he starts a job at Welltech in May of 1981.
00:05:42
Speaker
By August of 1981, he gets hired on Watts. He gets hired on ah to the city of Houston's Metro bus system as an apprentice mechanic.
00:05:54
Speaker
He is now living in an area called Eagle Lake.
00:06:01
Speaker
This job starts, and he gets hired, on August 25th of 1981. On August 26th of 1981, a 34-year-old woman named Edith Ledet is found stabbed to death in Galveston, Texas.
00:06:18
Speaker
And then September 5th, 1981, Watts had been out drinking. He's still 27 years old. He's driving around and he sees this young white woman and he decides to follow her.
00:06:31
Speaker
She's 22 years old. Her name is Linda Tilly. He follows her into her apartment complex and he attacks her. She tries to fight him off and they end up fighting in the pool area of the apartment complex.
00:06:50
Speaker
And both of them end up in the pool. and Carl holds her down under the water by her underwear until she drowns.
00:07:01
Speaker
Two days later, in September 7th, 1981, Carl starts working his new job as an apprentice mechanic for the city of Houston, but he also keeps his job over at Welltech.
00:07:17
Speaker
And then on September 1981,
00:07:24
Speaker
Carl Watts decides to go to church. He starts going to St. Paul's Temple Church of God in Christ. And there he meets a woman named Sheila Williams.
00:07:37
Speaker
On September 13, 1981, a 21-year-old woman named Susan Wolfe is stabbed to death in front of her Houston, Texas home.
00:07:49
Speaker
This is the same day that Coral Watts quits his job at Welltech.
00:07:57
Speaker
On October 21st, 1981, while he's oh working ah Houston city buses job, he gets promoted up to a full-time mechanic and he buys a second car and he pays cash.
00:08:13
Speaker
We don't hear much about Coral Watts from October 21st of 1981 until January 4th, 1982.
00:08:24
Speaker
And I'm just going to throw this out there. I've noticed they're not exact, like not every single crime, but I've noticed that he has some kind of problem between August and his birthday every year where they're linking him to crimes that are occurring a lot in that time frame.
00:08:44
Speaker
But now we kind of go like way out of that. He turns 28 years old at the end of 1981, and January 4th of 1982, a woman named Phyllis Tam, who's 27, is out running by herself early in the morning.
00:09:04
Speaker
She is found hung from a branch by her exercise top.
Escalation and Survival
00:09:12
Speaker
It ends up being ruled a suicide, but her family does not believe that to be the case. on January 16th of 1982, there's a young girl who's had a few too many drinks and she falls asleep in her friend's car.
00:09:29
Speaker
When the friend returned, they said goodnight. They each got into their own vehicles and she drove home. On her way home, It's alleged that Coral Watts followed her and flipped the headlights up, making her drive into a curve.
00:09:47
Speaker
After this, he walked up to her and punched her in the throat, killing her instantly, then stuck her in the trunk of her own car, and he left.
00:10:01
Speaker
There was a woman the same night who was changing her flat tire on the side of one of the local freeways, And coral Watts walked up to her, grabbed her by the head, and allegedly slit her throat twice.
00:10:18
Speaker
She ran into traffic, and a man picked her up. According to later statements made by Coral Watts, he thought this was his second kill of the day.
00:10:32
Speaker
Two days later, a woman named Margaret Fossey, who's 25 years old, is strangled to death in Houston, Texas.
00:10:43
Speaker
Eleven days after she's strangled to death, a 19-year-old girl who's named Martell was attacked outside of her Houston apartment.
00:10:54
Speaker
She woke up in a hospital bed and doctors told her that she had been stabbed three times. The following day, another young girl, 19 years old, was attacked as she got out of her car while she was heading her house.
00:11:13
Speaker
A person on the second floor heard the attack outside and they came out and they yelled at Coral Watts. So she ends up surviving.
00:11:25
Speaker
Later on, she's shown a photographic lineup, but she does not pick out Coral Watts. She picks out a different man. Very early in the morning of February 7, 1982, a 20-year-old named Elena Samander was going to visit a friend after sure she'd been out late.
00:11:43
Speaker
There was someone parked in a car next to the dumpster who was sleeping there. This person becomes a witness and he says that he saw a black man come up to the young woman, drag her behind the dumpster.
00:11:56
Speaker
But the man who was sleeping in his car said he was half asleep so he didn't really notice what was happening. He said he heard the sound of a moan a little later and then a thud as if something had been thrown into the dumpster.
A New Apartment, More Murders
00:12:09
Speaker
A trash man came later on to pick up the dumpster and to empty it and was going to start compacting it when he noticed there was a human leg.
00:12:22
Speaker
March 19th of 1982, Coral Watts moves out of his apartment and into a new one. When he moves into this new apartment, he lists on the paperwork that Sheila Watts is his wife and is going to be a resident of the apartment.
00:12:39
Speaker
And he also lists her daughter as being a resident with them.
00:12:44
Speaker
The next day, and March 20th of 1982, a young girl gets into a fight with her dad and she leaves her house and is never seen again.
00:12:56
Speaker
She's last seen hitchhiking on Interstate 10, which is the same road that Coral Watts would travel on that day from his apartment to work. March 27, 1982, a young girl goes running early in the morning by herself.
00:13:12
Speaker
She is attacked and stabbed 17 times in the chest. Later the same day, another young girl is walking on the sidewalk and a man stops his car and starts walking towards her.
00:13:26
Speaker
He lunges at her But her his hands were too drenched with blood to keep a hold on her. So she slips through his hands and she runs away to get help.
00:13:40
Speaker
On April 15th, 1982, a 22-year-old woman named Yolanda Gracia leaves work to go home and never makes it. She's found stabbed four times.
00:13:54
Speaker
It was rumored that her coworkers thought she had been having an affair, and it was also pointed out that she had been receiving phone calls for over a month from someone described as a Hispanic male.
00:14:07
Speaker
The next day, on April 16, 1982, Carrie Jefferson, who's 32 years old, was going home, and as she reached for her keys, Coral Watts is alleged to have grabbed her, dragging her through the front yard, disturbing grass along the way.
00:14:24
Speaker
throwing her in the trunk of her own car, and then driving away. On April 25, 1982, Susan Searles, 25 years old, is found strangled to death in the parking lot of her apartment.
00:14:39
Speaker
Okay. Let's just pause and talk about some of these for minute. lot going on. There's a lot of different MOs happening here. There are.
00:14:51
Speaker
but But there are all attacks on women close to home or walking alone. It doesn't really delve into it. 1982. Springtime.
00:15:04
Speaker
Springtime, right, which is different. And ah haven't heard of any sexual assaults. None. Okay. And I'm not, I wouldn't say that like it's not possible. I just find it We've got stabbings, a drowning, what else?
00:15:22
Speaker
A lot of different things that ah require rage, right? Yep. And then i think like i think this is the first section where we have, what, two put in the trunk?
00:15:40
Speaker
Is it just two? i think it's three total, but yeah. Okay. It is a new thing. Right, and so... It's, oh, and some of the, let's see, we've got the, ah we've got somebody leaving work again, right? yeah Which we kind of, I think that was sort of one of the first. ah And let's see, what else? Oh, the dumpster, right? Yep.
00:16:06
Speaker
So there's a lot going on here. Yes. Yes, there is. um what One of the things that happens here is we have this thing called the Houston General Post Office.
00:16:19
Speaker
And essentially, several women that work at the General Post Office are alleged to have been assaulted by Carl Eugene Watts. June Reynolds was driving along and he bumps her car.
00:16:35
Speaker
She had been pregnant at the time. There are two other women, Lucia DeStefano and Karen Koslicki.
Confrontations and Escapes
00:16:42
Speaker
They also had someone who had been bothering them and like following them in the car on their freeways when they were driving home from work.
00:16:50
Speaker
On the night of April 14, 1982, so like right in the mix of like everything we were talking about here, um We have Cheryl Cibolo.
00:17:01
Speaker
She is alleged to have been assaulted by Watts at night. She spots him in the rearview mirror while she's exiting the parking lot. She pulls over in front of the general ah post office to confront him. She gets out of her car.
00:17:16
Speaker
She's yelling very loudly. She's flailing her arms at him with threats to leave her alone or else. He tries to get out of his vehicle, but Cheryl keeps threatening him. He appeared scared, gets back in his car, so did Cheryl, and Coral watches drives around her vehicle and leaves.
00:17:37
Speaker
She said that he was looking at her with a scared look on his face, but she thought he might have been mocking her, like imitating the look on her face. Right.
00:17:49
Speaker
So Carrie Jefferson happens right after this. So Carrie Mae Jefferson is the one on April 16th who's accosted outside of her home. She's choked ah unconscious, and she's thrown into the trunk of the car. and From what we know, she was driven to an area called White Oak Bayou.
00:18:08
Speaker
She tried to get out of the vehicle, and there he killed her. He buries her body, and he drives her car back to the street where she lived. have a woman named Michelle Madej. She's 20 years old.
00:18:21
Speaker
She's assaulted in her Houston apartment on May 23rd, 1982. She is beaten and choked. According to the records that are available, her assailant entered her bathroom, filled the tub with water, and drowned her while she was still lying on the floor before he left.
00:18:39
Speaker
Later that same day, he attacks Melinda Aguilar, 18, and Lori Lister, 21.
00:18:47
Speaker
The way they tell the story is he, the way that the story is told, they're living in Houston. He breaks into their apartment. He chokes Lori Lister and pushes her down the steps below the apartment ah when she's returning from work.
00:19:05
Speaker
He then goes inside her apartment and he chokes Melinda Aguilar as well. Melinda Aguilar had the wherewithal to pretend to be unconscious.
00:19:16
Speaker
Carl Watts wire ties her hands behind her back. So he uses a big piece of wire around her wrist. He then hauls Lori Lister upstairs and into the bathroom.
00:19:31
Speaker
He fills the bathtub with water. While he's doing that, Melinda is able to escape. She leaps out of a window to get assistance she's saved.
00:19:45
Speaker
What we know about this one is Carl Watts tries to get away, but he is finally called.
00:19:54
Speaker
Which is crazy to think about, um all the things that we've been talking about here. So the police go to Sheila Williams and they ask if they can search the the the house, the home she shares with Carl Watts.
00:20:12
Speaker
But she demands a warrant. So when they get back the next day with a signed warrant, the apartment the place they live in has been completely cleaned out.
00:20:24
Speaker
Now, he meets with ah set of attorneys at the Harris County Jail. And Sheila is going to hire this attorney named Cagan's.
00:20:38
Speaker
In June of 1982, Judge Douglas Shaver presides over a series of hearings related to Carl Watts. Judge Shaver thinks that Carl Watts needs to have a psychiatric evaluation.
00:20:53
Speaker
So he sends him to Rusk State Hospital. And this is a forensic hospital for mentally ill people, but also criminally difficult people.
Psychiatric Evaluations and Confessions
00:21:05
Speaker
While he's there on June 15th, at 28 years old, Watts is sent to the Skyview security unit of the hospital. His x-rays, his sickle cell tests, his blood and urine tests, all of his blood work, everything comes back fine.
00:21:23
Speaker
His psychological examination is a clinical interview with staff observations, and they do a couple of different tests along the way to see what's going on with him.
00:21:37
Speaker
the scores that he makes on these different tests under Texas law, Carl Watts would be considered mentally retarded. That was like the term they used back then.
00:21:55
Speaker
On July 9th of 1982, a woman named Harriet Samander, she started looking into things and she is able to uncover a total of 40 unsolved murders and she's able to get the police to talk to her and to give her even more information. Around this same time that this happens, a doctor named Dr. Sherman goes in to talk to Carl Watts.
00:22:28
Speaker
He gives him another IQ test and they improve, and I put that in quotes, Carl's IQ to around 75, whereas previously he had been performing at or just under 70.
00:22:46
Speaker
On August 2nd of 1982, Carl Watts agrees to plead guilty to aggravated burglary and attempted murder in the cases of Melinda Aguilar and Lori Lister,
00:23:00
Speaker
And he will give information about some of his murder victims. And on August 9th, 1982, Carl Watts starts confessing.
00:23:13
Speaker
His confession lasts 28 hours. 28 hours is a really long time to be talking. And I know they don't mean he talked for a solid 28 hours straight.
00:23:26
Speaker
But I suspect that Carl Watts probably talked for most of that time. Don't you? hey do. I don't know if it was. Oh, wait. Does it say straight? It's a 28 hour. It just says it lasted over 28 hours. it just has't lasted over twenty eight hours Right. So he's in custody at this point?
00:23:44
Speaker
Yep. Okay. and So I don't know if that's like you know four hours here or whatever. I don't know if it was a straight – I mean, that's a lot to talk – I don't even think that would be as productive as breaking it down would be to go – because that's a day and four hours, right? Yeah, it's a long-ass time.
00:24:01
Speaker
um But it is ah confined to that one date as far as what we see, right? Yes. And so he's giving all these confessions. Now, his initial, ah what do they call Compensy to stand trial questionnaire. Yep.
00:24:19
Speaker
His verbal, the initial one, Coral Watts' verbal score was 69. His performance was 71. And so that, I guess they averaged it. And the full the full scale was 68.
00:24:33
Speaker
And that would, now I know you said it under Texas law, he would be considered mentally retarded for competency reasons, right? Right. So that means ah he's not competent.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And they got his, let's see, was Dr. Sh... Hmm. It was... It doesn't say who the psychologist was on the first one, but Dr. Sherman...
00:25:03
Speaker
He's the one who comes in to talk to him and kind of pump his numbers. Right. So he that's about, it's like, it's less than a month later. So it it was on July 12th when the initial, the initial one happened. It looks like the June 15th. So we're, you know, just under a month later, he gets up to 75. So I'm assuming the 70, uh,
00:25:28
Speaker
point is that's the cutoff point right correct at least for this set of um evaluations which to this point he has these long confessions but i want to point out something in time we are a year ahead of henry lee lucas and his big rambling confessions with some of the same people did you realize that i did so coral watts is caught And I'm i'm gonna i'm i'm just going to say this for people so that you know there's a source for this, because he's passed away, and like there's not anything we can do about that.
00:26:04
Speaker
The author of a book, his name is Corey Mitchell. um He passed away a little while ago, but he was a true crime author. He wrote a book that you can go on, is it archive.org? Yes.
00:26:16
Speaker
ah yes So you can basically go on like what constitutes the Internet Library. it's it's a It's a part of the openlibrary.org.
00:26:27
Speaker
Right. But to get to this, you've got to go to the archive.org. Right. So you can get his book, Evil Eyes. And I say that because if you really want to know more about Coral Watts, it's a really good source.
00:26:41
Speaker
He did a lot of work on this book. um I read it as part of the series because I really wanted to understand a couple of things that we're about to talk about. um And we are going to talk about sort of the glossing overview to like wrap up his profile. But yeah,
00:26:57
Speaker
but I'll be honest with you, Carl Watts, Coral Watts, is as he changed his name to Coral, is ah confusing to me. But I would watch a 12-hour docuseries about this guy or
Detailed Confessions and Credibility
00:27:11
Speaker
a Netflix. like If this were like the next season of Monster on Netflix, the one they did Dahmer and then the Menendez brothers and now they're doing Ed Gein.
00:27:20
Speaker
I would watch this 100% because of the time and place of this particular serial killer and how he moved. like and As long as it's accurate, right?
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the thing that I was worried about. So there are transcripts of this. You can read them in the book, Evil Eyes. You can go get them through FOIA. um I've considered trying to get the recordings on this to like do something more interesting, but the truth is I didn't feel like ah it's Texas. So a lot of stuff gets rejected in Texas.
00:27:52
Speaker
Um, and I ran, I ran into that trying to get some of these things. I do think they all still exist. Um, but I want to like kind of talk about from the confessions going forward.
00:28:04
Speaker
I will say this, unlike Henry Lucas an honest tool and tool in 83 and on Carl Watts, Carl Watts,
00:28:15
Speaker
He says things in his interrogations and his confessions that, like, basically what they do, and and i i mentioned this earlier in the episode, but now I'm going to clarify what I meant.
00:28:28
Speaker
He has this, like, long talk with them, and he gives them rough sketches of victims in terms of, like, a paragraph about them.
00:28:39
Speaker
And they go and try and find details, and they really want to trip him up. And so he has this long period of time where he confesses to this huge number of victims.
00:28:51
Speaker
Like he's not been in Houston that long and it's insane. and then they, Basically come back in the next day and they have another full session where they spend some time on each victim and have him walk them through What's happening?
00:29:11
Speaker
So one he has details that I don't think they had and that in my opinion Shores up like are these confessions true? Are they not true? and that was one of the problems with like Henry Lucas and Audis Stoult. It's really one of the problems with any serial killer is like, how do you know they did all the things they said they did? Right. So if they give you information that law enforcement does not have, but it is corroborated in the, um, the life of the case, right? Yeah.
00:29:43
Speaker
That definitely would be important, especially like if he, if he gives them information that leads to a body of a victim that he has confessed to. Yeah. And so that's what Watts does. That's different.
00:29:56
Speaker
So over the course of this time that he's like confessing, um he leads them to several bodies and the way that he does it is so specific. It's not like anyone could have given ah this information, but I'll tell you, this is what like makes Watts like the Netflix, like drama series or docuseries candidate for me.
00:30:16
Speaker
The way he answers questions is so truthful. And if you haven't sat in tons of really boring interviews, like people may not completely understand this. I know you've seen tons of like i courtroom and trial information. I know you've watched some confession videos.
00:30:33
Speaker
um if I'll just say there's one thing that like I think you can't really get from just that part. Because I know people do this as true crime audience members. There's a lot of boring things that happen in interviews that you have to kind of pick up on on on what's being said and what isn't being said and the body language.
00:30:53
Speaker
Coral Watts is terrifying to me. The way that he answers questions in his interviews, even in the transcripts, is so accurate. Because he basically is saying without saying that he is so single-mindedly focused on just finding a victim and killing someone He's not paying attention to the streets around him. he can tell you the place he ends up. He can tell you where he left the body.
00:31:17
Speaker
He can tell you some things about them. But his description of one of the victims, and I'm not going to differentiate them in this part of the conversation, is that she had evil eyes.
00:31:30
Speaker
And the reason that he kept changing his m MO and kept changing how he stalked these women, found these women, in many instances killed these women, was because he was doing something in the moment that he could not explain to the police.
00:31:51
Speaker
You know, why did you use the coat hanger? Because it was there. ah why did you ah Why did you grab her and, like, take her purse with you? And for the most part, he says things like, I don't know.
00:32:05
Speaker
But he goes down this path that's really interesting to me. In the earlier murders down in Texas that, like, they are super well documented by Doug Boxstock or whatever that detective's name was who got his information from Paul up in Michigan.
00:32:24
Speaker
Um... he says he would take things from these victims because he was trying to burn the spirit out of them. And he felt like they were evil spirits. And he's not saying it in like a schizophrenic way or like, like he's just saying that like, he believes these women that he's taking have something in them that's evil.
00:32:47
Speaker
And I can't help but think that it's like a textbook projection because man, he comes across as evil. Right. ah Even one of his attorneys says he was evil. That's interesting.
00:32:58
Speaker
um And then, so he says that he switched up the bathroom thing where he starts putting the women in the bathrooms and running hot water over them and drowning them essentially. Right.
00:33:11
Speaker
Because he was trying to not have to keep burning things to get rid of the spirit. And he was thinking that the water would take the spirit away down the drain.
00:33:21
Speaker
It's crazy. It's like one of the most... And like, you know, it it was it was one of the most interesting things to read. I'm sure it is just as interesting to ah to have heard him say it.
00:33:36
Speaker
But he like seems to get that if he's a little dumber than he is... Then it'll help his his case. And I think that's just the habit of having been in the cases for so long.
00:33:50
Speaker
um Like he's been suspected by on so many occasions by police of having involvement in so many different cases. And he's gone to court and he's done all these different things where...
00:34:02
Speaker
I think he knows like the mental hospital might be my way out of all of this. Or he might've really needed to go to the mental hospital. I think, I think that he probably did. i just don't think it would be one of those.
00:34:15
Speaker
He's like one of those rare people that I think was both mentally ill and completely sane in the same breath. Yeah. Right, and that is typically evil, right? That's what I think of it, yeah.
00:34:26
Speaker
um There's a lot of work done by a woman named Harriet Samander in all of this, and she comes up in the profile, she comes up in the book. She is the ah mom of one of the victims. She gets a bunch of information from one of the ADAs down in Texas.
00:34:40
Speaker
She is given information on over 40 unsolved Texas murders that they think Watts is responsible for. But during that process, she's accidentally given the information from Michigan. Remember that yeah dossier on ah Mr. Watts that made its way down?
00:34:58
Speaker
So she is now aware of the fact that like the police know about him. And like at different points in time have been surveilling him. And on two different occasions, we mentioned one of them, but a second one has happened in 1982.
00:35:14
Speaker
He's had tracking devices on his car. They've been able to track his movements, but they've not been able to do anything because of how random his crimes are. So he has this confession. The bottom line on this confession is he is not going to get life in prison.
00:35:33
Speaker
ah He is not going to get the death penalty. He is going to plead guilty to aggravated burglary and attempted murder. And he's going to get to have that plea deal because he is going to start confessing. He has this long confession.
00:35:48
Speaker
And at the end of it, he tells one of the detectives in the room, I'm so glad that you caught me because I was going to just keep doing this. One of the later little interviews they have of Watts, they finally ask him, how many people did you kill?
00:36:06
Speaker
And he looks around the room and he says, there's not enough fingers and toes in this room to count on the number of people I've killed. Somebody did some quick math and there was over a hundred fingers and toes in the room.
00:36:19
Speaker
Whether that is true or not, I don't know. But I do know that the way Watts was carrying out these blitz attacks that I believe him far more than I believe braggadocious serial killers.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah. But at the end, it's a sign of if while they are serial killers, it's a sign of a loss of control, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely, he's have some kind of impulse control problem in the book, the way that it's mentioned.
00:36:50
Speaker
And, um, its you ever have those stories in your family where they're passed down and they turn out to not quite be accurate? Yes. So the nearest they get to like Watts having a motive for all of this is he has an uncle killed when he's very young.
00:37:06
Speaker
And the story in the family that's passed to Watts, and I don't know when or by whom, but but like it comes out sort of innocently in some of the documentation of Watts that he believes his aunt killed his uncle and got away with it.
00:37:21
Speaker
So I think there's something to the idea that he gets on this sort of misogyny evil train, if you want to call it that, where women are all evil, ah because he genuinely believes that his aunt killed his uncle and got away with it.
Motives and Psychology
00:37:45
Speaker
Now, turns out that his uncle was actually killed by a police officer.
00:37:51
Speaker
And the story that he had heard was more like, your aunt got your uncle killed, but his mind twisted it very early. And that's the closest I've seen to some kind of motive.
00:38:06
Speaker
i think that um I think that that, do you you have any idea how old he was? When the uncle got killed? Yeah. He was very young. He was under 10, I believe.
00:38:17
Speaker
Right. And so if it was like a legit uncle, like one of his parents' siblings, not like, you know, a great uncle a more removed uncle, that would be a big deal in the family, right? Yes. And I think it was the husband of one of his parents' siblings. Right.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And so that, ah so that's a close uncle, right? yeah um And that would make it, that has an impact on a family. All families have things that happen that have impacts.
00:38:44
Speaker
um But, you know, this would be a very specific one. And I don't know that it would matter, like what the truth of the incident was. I think it would be how he perceived it. And I think that,
00:38:58
Speaker
if he I think you're right. And it may have even been subconscious at the point that he was an adult. I'm not saying that you know he's not responsible for his murders because he would be. But you know the brain is a sponge for children. And however it's processing, whatever it's processing, it really does affect your behavior later.
00:39:21
Speaker
And for whatever reason... He didn't have the proper, I'm going to say tools, but I mean, it could be a variety of things to control himself, right?
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah. to so To, you know, have the reaction he had in these blitz situations. like, I don't know if they were split-second murders, but it was like it took him a split second to decide he was going to do it, right? Yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
Or maybe he decided while he was in the middle of it, because he did have a lot of survivors. yeah he did Yeah, he did have quite a few survivors. But I think, so the impulse control thing carries over into August of 1982. Even when he is, like, going through...
00:40:07
Speaker
ah In my opinion, some very quick legal machinations where they're like kind of making arrangements for him to confess and plead guilty to this and take us to this body. um When they take him to Susan Searle's body, he like can't even finish.
00:40:22
Speaker
them finding that body and getting that body and get back to the police station before he starts telling them about another body. And the next day is plea deal goes up and he again, like starts revealing locations of bodies.
00:40:38
Speaker
And then the police to verify some of the other stories, which like you were saying, some of the women survived and some of them were found on the scene because he did not take away and hide all of the bodies.
00:40:48
Speaker
In fact, he didn't take away and hide very many of them. Uh, but he went on a drive with the police and he was able to like, as opposed to what I said, like during the confessions where he didn't remember, ah the exact place and time that things would happen.
00:41:06
Speaker
He was able to use like hallmarks and landmarks to drive the police around and point out, yeah, I left one there. i attacked this woman there, but she survived. So, like, he hasn't been sentenced yet, but he's able to walk the police through a lot of details. And that impulse control is now taking sort of a new life.
00:41:26
Speaker
And I think what may be happening is it might be allowing him to sort of relive some of the attacks one last time. Do you think that he got, um i don't, I think you're probably right, but I'm not sure that that's the kind of killer he was. Oh, no, no. I don't think he's like getting off on it. I think he's able just happening. Yeah, I think it.
00:41:48
Speaker
So what he ends up saying that's so strange while he's in Skyview down in Texas, he says, and he said this, some version of this in Michigan as well in the previous problem that he had when he was put in there long time ago.
00:42:02
Speaker
Sort of. um he's He's basically saying, like, I have this terrible feeling inside of me. And he's describing what I would call anxiety and depression.
00:42:15
Speaker
But he says that after he kills someone... he feels better and like he's able to basically, um, relieve like whatever tension he had from the depression and the anxiety by at least attacking them.
00:42:31
Speaker
So I think what's happening with that, that I'm describing as he's going around and showing them places where he's buried people and attacked people. I think he's feeling better.
00:42:43
Speaker
Like that tension is releasing. I don't think it's sexual in nature because like there, yeah there are some things taken from these women along the way, but there's not really any sexual assaults.
00:42:54
Speaker
Right. But he's tap like, it, if it's true, he's taking the stuff to burn the evil out of them. Right. Right. and that So this was my thinking on that, and i this is pure speculation, so it may be completely off base.
00:43:08
Speaker
I think the reason that his crimes are occurring the way that they're occurring without the element of sexual assault is because of the age he was when he started to have this feeling that his uncle had been killed by his aunt and she'd gotten away it.
00:43:23
Speaker
Right, so it doesn't come into play. Right, so it's pretty bad. Yeah, that's very interesting. i I haven't found, i think this may be the very first case that i that I have pondered that, and I haven't really pondered it that much, but when you get whatever it is going in your sponge-like brain, and there's there was no
00:43:49
Speaker
like typical sadist, sexual sadist type of anything happening in a kid, right? Right. And you're right. it It explains a lot. And it it is rage, right?
00:44:03
Speaker
like It is. Yeah, it is rage. And it's also routine. Like, that's the other weird thing that we find out once he starts confessing is, like, a lot of these victims were tied to the same places, kind of like the Houston Post Office attacks. Like, we find out that some of the crimes he's responsible for in Michigan,
00:44:20
Speaker
Like the women were all tied to the same university or they were tied to at one point the same newspaper. So these women are like tied to like sort of a home base of sorts and he's stalking them from the home base and then committing these attacks.
00:44:33
Speaker
So there's a lot going on with this guy that like he has kind of made murder his job. Yeah, kind of. It seems like. ah And yeah.
00:44:44
Speaker
yeah So 1982, we have this plea deal going on. um He confesses to way more than what was expected. And in total, he's got 19 women that he's admitted to attacking, and he has murdered 13 them.
00:45:02
Speaker
So the police officers up in Michigan get in on this and they want to hear about some of the confessions. He does confess to the murder of 43-year-old Gene Klein up in Detroit.
00:45:14
Speaker
That's back in 1979. But he stops himself from confessing to some of the other things that had happened in Michigan. And the Michigan and authorities decide that like they're not going to go in on this plea deal.
00:45:28
Speaker
They don't want to. So he walks them through ah the murder of Phyllis Tam. He walks them through the murder of Linda Tilly, Elizabeth Montgomery, Susan Wolf.
00:45:39
Speaker
And you can read all about this in Evil Eyes. Like they have a lot of the transcripts of of his confessions. um Also Margaret Fosse. And she was the young woman who was found in the trunk of the vehicle. they asked That's one of the ones they ask him questions that like only the killer could have known.
00:45:56
Speaker
And I don't think the officers in the room necessarily knew the answers to all of the things. But, you know, additionally, he admits to Julia Sanchez. She's the young woman on the side of the road that he sliced her throat.
00:46:10
Speaker
Patty Johnson. um We have... ah
00:46:17
Speaker
A woman named Martel, and I don't know who that one is that's confessed to. We have Elena Samander, and her mom is Harriet. We have Emily Lacroix, her body is found.
00:46:29
Speaker
Anna Lede. We have Yolanda ah yolanda Garcia. We have Carrie Jefferson, Suzanne Searles, Michelle Madej. All of these are confessions that are sort of locked down during this agreement.
00:46:41
Speaker
He's never put on trial for the majority of these confessions, but the confessions um largely satisfy any question that someone else was involved.
Legal Battles and Sentence
00:46:52
Speaker
They do end up finding the body of Elizabeth Ann Montgomery. I believe she is found ah in September, so it's like maybe shortly after the sentencing date happens.
00:47:03
Speaker
The judge ends up sentencing Pearl Watts ah for the burglary and ah burglary... with intent to murder ah to 60 years in prison. And this is like a big hullabaloo. They closed down the courthouse. They have a lot going on ah security-wise.
00:47:19
Speaker
And ultimately, there are some weird things that happen with his Texas case. So that 60 years is for... this He sent us to this in 1982.
00:47:31
Speaker
But after he begins serving time, appeals start being filed. And the Texas Court of Appeals rules that... Coral Watts was not informed that the bathtub and water would be a deadly weapon. What think about that I haven't read the full situation there. i don't know if you have or not, but I haven't read the full situation there.
00:47:57
Speaker
i mean, it is what it is, i suppose, and I guess he should have been informed of that, but it seems like a nothing burger to me. It would be a nothing burger in most cases, but what it does is, and it's not a long ruling, it's not a long appeal.
00:48:12
Speaker
The ruling ultimately ends up reclassifying him as a nonviolent felon. They have to remove the concept that the defendant was aware that the bathtub and water were the prosecution's deadly weapon because they did not tell him it was a deadly weapon.
00:48:29
Speaker
So the 60 years changes. You know what I would have argued on that? What? Well, it killed somebody, so clearly it is deadly. Well, i I don't disagree with what you're saying. but i do agree that the law has to be followed, so hopefully that changed.
00:48:49
Speaker
So it does two things to his sentence of 60 years. The first thing it does, it makes him eligible for early release or parole. And at the time, Texas law allowed nonviolent felons to have three days deducted from their sentence for every day served as long as they behaved.
00:49:09
Speaker
And so that puts them at serving about a third of their sentence, right? i A quarter, but yeah, yeah. I mean, it's ah it's between a quarter and a third when they split the math and you include programs. But yeah, so he's a model model prisoner during this time. and And I wonder, like...
00:49:26
Speaker
i I'd like to know what the difference was, and perhaps it was just that he didn't see a whole lot of women in there. ah Yeah, I'm sure that like if there's if they if he is attacking solely women and now he's just in prison, then this is just...
00:49:42
Speaker
life without women. And I'm sure that the women who were coming in to contact him were avoiding him as much as possible, like as far as employees of the system. Right. Yeah, right. I would, that would be interesting to know.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah. And one of his, uh, one of his attorneys in the first go round, the criminal defense attorney he had to set the whole deal up was a woman as well. Um, she's well documented in, in the book and in several of the newspaper sources for this case.
00:50:07
Speaker
But ultimately mainly what happens because of all this is that they audit his prison time. And they realize that he will be eligible for early release.
00:50:19
Speaker
He will be eligible for release as early as May 9th of 2006. He is the reason that early release is now abolished in Texas.
00:50:32
Speaker
But the way the laws were written and the way the Texas state constitution is written It could not be applied retroactively.
00:50:44
Speaker
So in 2004, Attorney General of Michigan, Mike Cox, he starts press tour asking anyone who has information about Coral Watts to come forward because they do not want him to be released.
00:51:04
Speaker
And remember, there was a witness in Michigan, Joseph Foy. So ultimately Joseph Foy's memory.
00:51:16
Speaker
And I think I pulled this out of the 2004 Washington post, but Sarah, Sarah Karush wrote it.
00:51:27
Speaker
um I don't know what section was in. So if you're going to look it up, I'm going to say it was probably back then in the crime and justice section. um Here's the article that Sarah Karouche wrote. It says, 25-year-old memory to keep killer in prison.
00:51:43
Speaker
Their gaze was frozen for mere seconds all those years ago in the dimly lighted alley at a distance two men might keep while they were having a game of catch. But it was seared into Joseph Foy's memory, the face of a serial killer.
00:52:00
Speaker
Joseph Foy said, I always see his eyes.
00:52:05
Speaker
According to sources, Joseph Foy's remarkable recall of a 1979 encounter with Carl Watts, which was demonstrated by a sketch that he helped an artist create, and his immediate recognition of the suspect in TV footage many years later, was the only direct evidence that linked Carl Eugene Watts to a killing for which he was convicted November 2004.
00:52:29
Speaker
two thousand four He said, it was forged in my mind. It was a nightmare that wouldn't go away, said Foy, now 47. Watts, who had been scheduled for a release in 2006 by way of illegal technicality, was convicted of murdering Helen Dutcher.
00:52:44
Speaker
He now faces life behind bars without parole. He had a seven-day trial up there in Detroit, and Joseph Floyd testified that he saw ah Helen Dutcher, 36, being killed from his back porch in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale on December 1st, 1979.
00:53:01
Speaker
He said he'd been drawn to the window by his dogs barking, and he saw two people in the alley. When he went over for a better look, he saw a man bring his arm down in a slashing motion before Miss Dutcher fell to the ground.
00:53:15
Speaker
And Joseph Foy said the man, about 75 feet away, turned toward him before getting into his car. And Joseph Foy told the jury, "'We both locked glances and held it for what I thought was an eternity.'" Two years later, Joseph Foy was watching television with the sound turned down.
00:53:33
Speaker
He caught a brief glimpse of Carl Watts being led into a courtroom, but immediately he knew who it was. It was a killer from the alley. Joseph Foy contacted police again and told them he now knew the killer's name, the person whose sketch he had helped to create.
00:53:48
Speaker
But the case never went anywhere because Watts was slated to receive a lengthy prison sentence down Texas. prison sentence down in texas So they talk a little bit about that story and how he was coming up for release. And the what Joseph Hoy says is the police told him back in 1982, they told him to just put it to bed.
00:54:13
Speaker
But for him, it wasn't that simple. He said it was an individual thing for him. He had seen a life taken. He wanted justice for that life being taken. So I say that because...
00:54:25
Speaker
You said, why would a person not like... Right. but how How is it that a guy watched a woman get murdered, I think is what I said. Yeah. i So i think I think the reason that Joseph keeps contacting people about this case is because he feels so guilty.
00:54:46
Speaker
Now, he sat down with a forensic artist a day after ah miss Helen Dusser was killed, and they drew a composite sketch. And the sketch is strikingly similar to 1982 mugshot of Coral Watts.
00:55:01
Speaker
Have you, you've seen pictures of Coral Watts, right? In the course of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and and this is just my opinion. People talk about Ted Bundy being a handsome dude or whatever.
00:55:13
Speaker
Coral Watts is very good looking. He's five eleven He is well built. He's muscular. He's a little creepy looking, like in the way that like he's captured in images, but he is a good looking dude.
00:55:26
Speaker
And it's interesting to me because I could see myself being in Joseph Foy's place looking out a window and remembering his face because of like how striking he was back then.
00:55:39
Speaker
um This is like, look, the the Texas courts went through a lot with Coral Watts. And we'll talk about that in a second, but we're now in 2006, right? I say? I think four or six. Yeah. 2004 is when he was convicted for that. Yeah. We're now in 2004 and he's being convicted again for these Michigan crimes.
Convictions in Michigan
00:56:05
Speaker
Most of the time I would have a lot of questions about whether or not this is accurate, but the fact that there's an existing sketch from the day after. um, so Just to be clear, it's just the one murder, right? Yeah, this is just for one murder.
00:56:20
Speaker
Okay, but and it was Helen Dutcher. ye And they had an eyewitness. And so just for an overview type a summary, he's because of a because of a weird technicality, he's going to be eligible for parole, right?
00:56:37
Speaker
Yes. And so they have to do something because part of his plea deal was all these confessions. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so they're going with, they're going the path of least resistance, right? This case is um a murder that has an eyewitness that they feel like they can get something with. Because, you know, you only need the one conviction to to keep them from getting out.
00:57:04
Speaker
Yeah. but But by this point in time, all they have to do is make sure that they have a statute in place for... like essentially life without parole to be the punishment for a murder that was committed this many years ago. And as long as they have that, and they're good to go. So they have a, go ahead.
00:57:20
Speaker
Right, but it's anything that they discovered from his particular case, they like you said, they couldn't retroactively apply it. So they had to come up with something new, right? Yeah, and and then they realized like they could run into this again. So they do start looking at Gloria Steele's murder from 1974.
00:57:37
Speaker
and They bring him to trial for that in July of 2007. They get ah another guilty verdict. On September 13th, he's sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
00:57:48
Speaker
And essentially they lock him down with that one. That's the one that really keeps them in jail. To talk a little bit about like kind of the rest of his life here. So first of all, this book evil eyes talks about something that makes its way into this profile that we're kind of pulling from, from one of the sources.
00:58:08
Speaker
And I'm just going to read this sentence because it's one of the most fascinating things. And it's something that I stand by so many times. I think women and at times minorities are, vastly underrated as serial criminals, particularly serial killers.
00:58:22
Speaker
So it says that it's stated in the book, Evil Eyes, that about 22% of all serial killers are probably African American and that blacks make up about 12% of United States. that's a quote from the book.
00:58:36
Speaker
How accurate that is, I didn't find a source for it, but that's pretty I think it's about 17 now, but for when that was happening, that could be, it's probably right. Yeah. and so they list off like a list of other serial killers who are kind of always on my mind. I will note something about one of them.
00:58:55
Speaker
um They talk about Carlton Gary, Alton Coleman, Deborah Brown, ah all interesting killers who could come up at some point on the podcast. Kendall Francois, Vaughn Greenwood, Derek Todd Lee.
00:59:07
Speaker
They talk about John Allen Muhammad, who's a different thing than a lot of these guys. Gerald Parker, Brandon Tholmer, and they talk about Wayne Williams. And Wayne Williams, I'm going to hold off on him and John Allen Muhammad. They're probably not coming back up on True Crime Access, except in like a very particular kind of way, um because i look they're different.
00:59:28
Speaker
things. But they say September 27th, he is moved out of the Harris County Jail towards the Diagnostic Center for the Texas Department of Corrections. And then February of 1983, Coral Watch tries to ah corl watch tries to escape He talks his prison mates into acting as a shield for him, but he does end being caught.
00:59:50
Speaker
He gets sent to solitary confinement for a couple of weeks, and he loses a bunch of those good time credits we talked about. He loses 181 good time credit days. so He ends up being added to a higher security risk classification.
01:00:03
Speaker
By 1986 different appeals are being filed on behalf of Coral Watch. I don't think he has anything to do with these um So May 1986 there's a habeas corpus writ July 1987 there's another one ah by March of 1989 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled um that There's a ah couple of things wrong here and by January 15th of 1990, when Coral Watts is 36 years old, he gets his first parole hearing.
01:00:38
Speaker
His request for parole is denied, and his next parole hearing is scheduled out 36 months later in December of 1993. um He gets it a little early. he ends up going to the parole board when he's 39 in September of 1993, and he's denied parole with another 36-month stay.
01:00:56
Speaker
In October of 1996, he's denied parole he's 42 denied parole November 19, 1999, when he's 46 years old. he is denied parole on november nineteenth nineteen ninety nine when he's forty six years old That'll be his fourth ah denial um when he's 49 years old, November 7th, 2002, he has his fifth parole denial.
01:01:17
Speaker
And it is pointed out that he is scheduled for release from the Texas department of corrections, May 8th of 2006. Uh, obviously that didn't happen. Um, we know now that he is, he ends up being charged and he goes to an extradition hearing and then he goes to Michigan, um,
01:01:38
Speaker
and in by April of 2004, he is ah basically Michigan's problem for a while. But it is said that in November of 2004, that some victims' family members come to see him. This is the night before the trial begins up in Michigan.
01:01:57
Speaker
um And this is the two week period where basically ah the trial begins for the murder of Helen Dutcher. he has to listen to the ah ah attorney describing the murders, to the attorneys describing the murders.
01:02:14
Speaker
um Watts is described as being uncomfortable and anxious in court with his shoulders twitching and his face jerking. um The second day of trial, Joseph Foy testifies. The third day of trial, the sketch artist, Barbara comes onto the stand and testifies about how The sketch was made many years ago.
01:02:34
Speaker
On the fourth day of trial, um the following Monday, survivors testify from Houston, and so do various officers who've been involved in these crimes.
01:02:46
Speaker
And they end up getting, on November 16, 2004, the jury
Death and Legacy
01:02:52
Speaker
gets it. They find him guilty. Some other things. things happen in the meantime where they, ah the district attorney says they're going to bring another murder trial and it gets a lot of press in the middle of deliberations.
01:03:06
Speaker
They kick someone off the, uh, jury because one of the male jurors goes to the crime scene. Um, he is found guilty though, and he's sentenced to life in prison in the state of Michigan.
01:03:17
Speaker
And that sort of wraps up 2004 when, uh, Coral Watts 51 years Uh, 2007, has tried for, uh, ah two thousand and seven he has tried for the, the steel murder.
01:03:29
Speaker
And by July 27th, 2007, the jury returns a guilty verdict. Um, and then he is, convicted and, um, he is sentenced to life without parole.
01:03:44
Speaker
But unfortunately he doesn't do much of that time because on September 21st, 2007, Coral Watts dies of prostate cancer in a Michigan hospital. And it's kind of an unceremonious ending to it all, don't you think? well they they went through they had no idea how long he would live.
01:04:03
Speaker
but I feel like there was a bit of a panic. um you know Obviously, that's part of the way our system works, so as far as you know developing the law as it goes.
01:04:16
Speaker
But I'm interested to know what you think about his position on confessing, feeling okay about the confessions, giving credible information to police And then sitting through a trial, ah sitting through two trials.
01:04:37
Speaker
He thought he was done with it. And here's what I'll say about that. I think if you confess in 1982 and you get everything off your plate all at one time and give them a lot of stuff in order to have a certain sentence and live a certain life, and then in 2004 they come knocking and they want to try you multiple times on a different set of murders, I'm guessing you're probably at a different place in life if you're Coral Watts.
01:05:00
Speaker
i I believe that that could be true, but I also believe that it could not be true. Yeah. I don't have an answer for the question that I think that you're going for here. I don't know how many people he killed.
01:05:15
Speaker
I would, I would believe a, a number of victims. Cause like we have a lot of survivors. Um, I honestly think the reason i am so interested in Coral Watts's case is he has such, in my opinion, although they're evolving, such a unique type of modus operandi that you could potentially put a real number on his cases.
01:05:45
Speaker
Well, I agree. And I do think that, you know, there can be some... ah you know, slightly different or even completely different in different cases. But I believe it's, is it 15 to a hundred plus? Is that what is, is stated? I don't have it up in front of me. He has 27 victims. 15 of them were murder victims.
01:06:07
Speaker
Two of them come from Michigan. 13 of them are the original confessions down in Texas. He says it's over a hundred. And he describes circumstances that, you know, potentially you don't necessarily have to believe that there are a hundred murders.
01:06:30
Speaker
They could be a hundred assaults and some murders. Okay. Okay. So the cases you would be looking for would be unsolved stabbings and strangulations or attempted stabbings and attempted strangulations that occur in proximity to someone's home after they're leaving work. And like I think that like we have enough of a timeline on Coral Watts that like you could narrow down radii of where he could have possibly been when.
01:06:59
Speaker
Right. And so so the confession number is 13? The confession down in Texas is 13 murders. And then there were multiple victims that get us up to, I think it gets us to 25, but like a number of them were ah victims who survived.
01:07:17
Speaker
Right. Right, but so he confessed to 13 murders that had credibility attached to it somehow or another. Correct, correct. Okay, and then he's, there's two more murders that he's convicted of. One based on the testimony of Joseph Foy, and the other one was Gloria Steele, right?
01:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele. Right, and Gloria Steele. Okay, and so um i It could be as simple as he had different counsel.
01:07:52
Speaker
It could be as simple as, i mean, legal counsel, right? um It could be as simple as he was ah he realized how close he was to potentially getting out in Texas.
01:08:07
Speaker
Yeah. He could have had a time of confession. and He offered it to Michigan, by the way. I'm sorry? He offered to give Michigan a rundown of his victims. and At that time? i Yeah, it would have been...
01:08:25
Speaker
1982, 1983. was confessing to the rest. Yeah. It's within, it's, it he offers during the initial time. And I think there's another offer made, but it's all yes. Within proximity to his arrest, I would say four months. It's within that four month period.
01:08:41
Speaker
of And so we're talking about like 20 years later when he's actually charged and going to trial. 22 later. Yep. Okay, and the reason that Michigan said, Michigan said we aren't going to go in on this plea deal in Texas.
01:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, they did. Michigan, yeah, they did not want to give him any kind of deal because they felt like it would be a denial of justice. Okay, well, I mean, honestly, though, if you look at it, you can look at it that way, and that's not wrong, but I feel like it's, justice has still been denied.
01:09:17
Speaker
now well here's the so it is a it's a bit of a catch-22 so if they had gone in on it then he he would have gotten out they would know but he would gotten out like because it would have been all wrapped up in the texas deal so he would have got out in 2006 which turns out not to be that big of a deal because by 2006 he is dying and six he is dying But they didn't know that 1982 when they said no deal.
01:09:46
Speaker
So do you think that I guess my point is this.
01:09:53
Speaker
It is true that that was unfortunate that but the other part of that is it was a plea deal. And so i don't know what the terms and conditions they could have just like I don't know held something back.
01:10:10
Speaker
But it seems like a i'm just a little bit i did like i said i didn't read the opinion on the appeal and so i don't know what all occurred it just seems odd that a plea deal was appealed to begin with right yeah and then like what if they you know if it because all they would do is vacate it right or no and It made him eligible for parole is what happened because it was now a nonviolent offense. But see, it's the combination of that and being a nonviolent offender who
01:10:45
Speaker
but So you have a couple of things. So because of the bathtub thing and the water being the deadly weapon in the bathtub, like. You may have included other elements from the Michigan crimes that either made it where if something happened in Texas, he could potentially be
Implications and Challenges in Prosecution
01:11:05
Speaker
tried there, or it may have ah made the appeals court think,
01:11:10
Speaker
differently about his overall ruling. I mean, the way the charges were set up, like the burglary and the assault are what were affected by the appellate ruling, but they basically didn't charge him with homicide. They just closed them as he had, you know, accurately confessed to them.
01:11:27
Speaker
Right, and so was it
01:11:30
Speaker
Was it like a landmark ruling that decided this and he was lumped in? I just... No, that it it's... it is It ends up being a landmark ruling, but it that it's a ruling in his case. yeah Okay. And so I guess I'm just... You know, he had a whole lot of other crimes he confessed to, but it was all a deal. I would say personally that one side being negated would negate the rest of it as well, right?
01:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like there could have been more argument there as far as like... um If they're going to overturn the deal, then we don't have to stick to... Exactly. And we can now try again. We recharge you. Yeah. Exactly. Because like the water thing didn't apply to all the victims.
01:12:11
Speaker
Correct. Or all the situations that he had... 100% correct. Okay. And so because of that, it is much, much... ah I don't know. I feel like it would have been a good thing to know...
01:12:28
Speaker
what we were dealing with because in my mind, i especially since he was dying, that's the other thing. he had cancer treatment before that 2006 trial. So we know, we know he knew he had cancer, right?
01:12:44
Speaker
Yeah. And so they actually had to rehabilitate him. They had to treat him for the cancer in order for him to go on trial. Right, so he know maybe he didn't think he was dying, I guess.
01:12:56
Speaker
I guess I'm just trying to, like, what would motivate him to confess and feel good about the confession and say, I'm so glad you guys caught me because I was not going to stop. And then, like...
01:13:08
Speaker
Fast forward, and then he has to go, i guess, do a full trial because the jury decided that he was guilty of both of those murders, right? So two full murder trials.
01:13:19
Speaker
When he had confessed to 13 murders previously. i think it's Michigan. I think the difference is Michigan won't make a deal. Oh, and that is entirely possible. You're right. They may be completely... I don't think it's Coral Watts holding back the information here. I think Coral Watts, probably looking out for Coral Watts or through counsel for Coral Watts, probably would have made some kind of deal. It's Michigan. The people that you have a problem with are the governor and the attorney general in the state of Michigan.
01:13:51
Speaker
They're the ones who wreck this. Well, I feel like... Twice, I believe. i hear i hear what they're saying and and I get it, but at the same time, and with the benefit of of hindsight and looking back on it, right retrospect, I feel like I don't know that those are the best calls to make.
01:14:12
Speaker
No. I guess that's the way can put and like you know it fell on two different attorney generals and two different governors to get involved in that. And neither one of them...
01:14:26
Speaker
ultimately got involved in a way that this all wraps up for us. So the way they spin this story now, if you go and read about it, you will come across the statement somewhere. I don't know exactly where I read it. I think it might've been either dateline or 60 minutes. And honestly, I probably saw it 15 years ago, at least.
01:14:47
Speaker
um They, in Michigan state and a couple of the Texas officers were on whatever I saw. They state that they believe he's responsible for 90 unsolved murders. I think they don't know what they're talking about because I think Coral Watts considered, i don't always think that Coral Watts knew his victims lived.
01:15:11
Speaker
that That's entirely possible, but I was going to say it it is possible that he had tons and tons and tons of victims. And so, my My issue, and I just want to be clear, I'm not saying like, oh, he never did anything wrong, because that's clearly not the case. But my, you know, like we've said with other cases and situations, for every single murder that gets attributed to him, there's all these murders that essentially, if he didn't do them...
01:15:41
Speaker
The person's getting away with it, right? Yeah, and that was the other thing I wondered, and I wonder about this in cases like Coral Watts. Like, you know, how many women's husbands came home and were charged with their murder?
01:15:54
Speaker
or girlfriends were murdered and boyfriends were charged in Texas or Michigan or potentially West Virginia because that's one of the stops he makes along the way. But they're really pretty confined, unless he was killing while traveling, which there's no indication that he was.
01:16:11
Speaker
They're pretty confined radii in terms of the geographical locations he killed with that. So you could figure it out, but that's the part I wonder about, like them not making that deal, like Michigan not being a part of that early deal.
01:16:26
Speaker
And then Mike Cox being so hell bent on convicting cruel Coral Watts of something that like we go through these two trials with the local district attorneys, like without making that deal and being that pig headed a politician,
01:16:43
Speaker
um there are other things you might have uncovered that you didn't even realize. and you would have learned a lot more about Coral Watts from those confessions that could help you do that. Right. i um Obviously, there are exceptions, but I feel like when you've got a ah somebody like him talking, you should listen to everything they have to say, right?
01:17:04
Speaker
And i also, you said how many ah husbands got blamed, right? Or boyfriends or whatever. Or whatever, right. Partners got blamed for some of his murders. And I think to myself, how many got away with him?
01:17:20
Speaker
Well, I mean, i suppose that could be the way to look at it. I don't... Well, I don't like it that they got away with it, but also... I would have to see that. I would have to see a a case like that where, like, Watts was taking the blame for something. because like And that's what I'm saying. Like, reading his confessions...
01:17:36
Speaker
They're genuinely chilling. And like at some point in time, someone, probably not me, should do a really deep dive and try and get the recordings and get all of the transcripts and put it all together in a way that people can understand how strangely vicious and how ultimately motiveless Coral Watts was as a killer.
01:18:04
Speaker
And i I don't know that there's any other way to describe him. he's He was definitely vicious, yeah. even if Even if what I'm saying is true, it doesn't undo his confessions. and I mean, he was a bad guy he was a bad dude.
01:18:18
Speaker
But my concern is ah the big—I don't like the pluses either, the high numbers with the plus, because that means basically— They don't know. They may or may not have attributed all kinds of cases to him.
Conclusion and Reflection
01:18:32
Speaker
And I feel like it's not, i well, we know it's not uncommon for, ah especially killers like this, to have cases, like, not being worked, and they think it's solved but not adjudicated, and it's based on the proximity of this killer with maybe maybe they have evidence, but maybe not, um based on this, right?
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. And so those cases aren't being worked anymore. And did he do you know if he testified at either one of his trials? I don't believe so. His trials are really short. Yeah, I'm sure they are.
01:19:07
Speaker
I was just curious because, um you know, that's always interesting. But I also... That's part of of the legal system that's really interesting to me, especially, like, in this case, two convictions, an eyewitness, an eyewitness that was bolstered by the fact that, like, very close to the time of the crime, he went and had a...
01:19:28
Speaker
a A law enforcement sketch artist did a comp ah ah sketch of the perpetrator, right? Yep. And so it just gave it credibility because it's not like he was he could have known who Coral Watts was at the time, right? Right. And there was a lot of hallmarks of the crimes, like including that one, that like are relatively unique to Coral Watts.
01:19:52
Speaker
Well, sure, especially like time, place, and everything being added to those characteristics that were unique to him. But I guess my thought is, because, you know, obviously he's on trial, it goes all the way through the process, and he doesn't testify. Well, you know, i would just love to know what Coral Watts had to say about Joseph Foy, right?
01:20:15
Speaker
Yeah. Joseph Foy, that's his name, right? Yeah. And so anyway, yeah it's, you know, it's neither here nor there at this point. But I do think that there was a lot of information.
01:20:26
Speaker
i and so after the first conviction, i not sure why he didn't confess. Yeah, I don't know why he didn't keep going. I am positive that Michigan caused that problem, and I find it fascinating that they did that. i I think I looked it up at one point, and I was like, oh, it was election season in Michigan, and...
01:20:50
Speaker
Well, at some point, I'd like to know, i say it all the time, I never do it because it's hard, it's it's not as, like, written out in black and white as some of the other facts you can find.
01:21:01
Speaker
But what I would like to know is, at any point in time, when, like, in this case, Michigan said, well, we're not going in on the plea deal, um you know, we don't want the confessions. Right. Right. We'll do our own work and solve all these cases.
01:21:15
Speaker
Or we're holding back this little piece of information that could solve the case to solve the case. Right. yeah I'd like to know how that plays out. In this case in particular, we know for a fact that.
01:21:28
Speaker
that Coral Watts was sitting in Texas and he was about to take a deal, which, you know, again, there was a downside because he would have gotten out. Right. I think that there could have been more legal wrangling done on the other side of that to prevent it.
01:21:41
Speaker
However, you know, it is what it is. Right. Right. Including like, I don't know, setting the plea up to not be appealed. Anyway, um that's neither here nor there either, but we do know he's convicted of two things in Michigan.
01:21:58
Speaker
And even probably according to what we know for certain, there's way more victims. Yeah. And Michigan could have had that information if they if they had initially gone along with it.
01:22:13
Speaker
I think it's more important to know. i think that it would be better to know... You know, maybe Coral was just mad and he just wasn't going to deal with them and they weren't going to deal with him. And like, that's why he didn't confess. I just find it strange when you've got a situation where...
01:22:31
Speaker
There was no reason for him to be doing all those confessions at the beginning. But then at the end, he was older, he had cancer. um he had already seen the system deny his ability to get out. i mean, he did try to escape, so that might have been part of it. And also, once you've been in jail for a while, I feel like you could change your mind about the deals that you've made, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Absolutely.
01:22:56
Speaker
And so maybe, but I feel like there's so much more and I hate those plus marks out there. yeah Yeah. I mean, he is kind of another plus mark. I find his case to be one of the most fascinating I've ever read.
01:23:09
Speaker
And I encourage people who are listening to this and wondering like, what the hell have we been talking about for multiple episodes now? Go out there and read about him. I'm sure there's a Wikipedia on him. I'm positive there are courts of appeals documents in Texas and Michigan that you can read. And I know the Michigan one details a lot of the suspected murders because the state just went over the top.
01:23:32
Speaker
um And the book Evil Lies by Corey Mitchell. um you know There are so many ah different things ah related to all of this. um I believe, and and I could be wrong on this, um I believe the Michigan case, like when he died, if I read it correctly, so it would have been an unpublished opinion. I'm pretty sure you can find it like People of Michigan versus Coral Watts or Carl Watts or something like that.
01:24:01
Speaker
um I'm pretty sure... he would have had some of what happened in Michigan reversed because the way that Michigan goes down, know, even though they declined the other deal and they have to get their justice, they really screw up the case a lot.
01:24:19
Speaker
And they use a lot of the Texas stuff as sort of strange 404B evidence in order to bolster the case. But without the eyewitness, I think that case, the first one would have fallen apart completely.
01:24:32
Speaker
um and the second one There was something about it, and I'm not going to go into that for for the purposes of us talking here, but like I'm sure people will find this.
01:24:42
Speaker
There's something about it that doesn't feel like Watts. There was something there. um The race of the victim was different. Something about the the method was different. The timing was slightly off. um But anyways, at the end of the day, Coral Watts is one of the most fascinating serial killers that the U.S. has ever seen. i am convinced that we did not understand how to investigate African-American serial killers at the time.
01:25:04
Speaker
And it's sort of like one more thing that reiterates to me that prosecutors in whatever position you want to call the prosecutor, whether the attorney general or the district attorney, frequently do not know how to deal with serial killers.
01:25:21
Speaker
They don't. And I would say with any murderer, they're... it's common for them to think that they're doing the right thing for the time. but you know, in hindsight, it wasn't.
01:25:34
Speaker
Yeah. and And one of the biggest things is you have one shot when somebody starts confessing and denying that because you might or might not get reelected is a dumb, dumb move.
01:25:51
Speaker
Right. Because, you know, they will die and all that information will die with them. And if you could just have, um I'm not saying that killers should just automatically get everything they want when they confess. But I am saying that strategically, I see more cases backfire than not when they don't take the opportunity.
01:26:11
Speaker
Yeah, this is a case where very easily if you gave Coral Watts 60 years in Texas in sixty years and years in Michigan and get all of the information all at one time, he never gets out.
01:26:21
Speaker
no And that could have been run consecutively and the Texas part wouldn't have affected the Michigan part, right? Correct. So... That's all I got on Coral Watts for now. But I'll tell you what, if they ever come up with like a list of like other victims, I would be back on this in a heartbeat. I would be so interested in more of Coral Watts.
01:26:51
Speaker
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01:27:05
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01:28:15
Speaker
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