A lil’ disclaimer: I am not trying to make this dirtbag famous or disrespect his victims. I merely have an interest in true crime and enjoy researching and writing about it. Any humor in the below post is in a good-natured attempt to lighten the mood a little.
I decided I wanted my first subject of the new crime blog to be a fellow Michigander, but I didn’t want to go with the ever-present John Norman Collins, a.k.a the Ypsilanti Ripper, because I’ve read a fantastic book about him and didn’t feel I could do it justice as of right now (that book is The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes). Therefore, after some research, I’ve decided to dive in deep to the life and crimes of Carl Eugene Watts. He has a fun murder-y nickname as well, but we’ll get to that later. His real-life nickname was Coral, which is probably 49% of the reason I decided to write about him.
*insert that one Walking Dead meme here*
So anyways, our boy Carl was born on November 7th, 1953, exactly 44 years before my own birthday, which is slightly less exciting than Marie Curie being born on my birthday. He was actually born in Killeen, Texas, which according to my research is the home of Fort Hood AND Tia and Tamera Mowry lived there for a time. There was also a massacre at a restaurant there in 1991, but that’s a story for another day. Carl’s father Richard Eugene Watts was in the Army, and his mother was a kindergarten art teacher, which is a very specialized type of kindergarten teacher that I didn’t know even existed. When Watts was about two in 1955, his parents separated, and his mom moved herself and Carl to Inkster, Michigan.
Inkster has a fascinating history but the main fact many people ‘round here know about it is that it’s one of the few Detroit suburbs that has a majority African American population. In current times, it’s also known for incredibly high crime rates, but the two are NOT mutually exclusive so don’t go there. Most notable guy I can find from Inkster is a member of Earth, Wind, and Fire, but my personal experience is that Inkster is a city of people just trying to do their best with very, very little support from other communities or the government.
Back to Watts, his mother remarried in Michigan to a mechanic whose name was Norman Caesar, and she had two daughters with him. He must’ve been an okay dude because I haven’t found anything else about him, same with mom. This is where the weird stuff starts. Along with some stuff about really liking hunting rabbits, apparently Watts was a bit of an odd child, and he claims that he began fantasizing about torturing and killing girls and/or women. When he was 13, he contracted meningitis, causing him to miss a lot of school. This isn’t proven or anything, but I think it could’ve also strengthened his ruder impulses, as some complications of meningitis include learning disabilities, memory difficulties, and brain damage.
The general consensus is that he most likely killed his first victim before the age of 15, at which time in my life I was probably hanging out in the mall (with my dad 10 steps behind) wearing a “mad ninja skillz” hoodie. Age 16 was when Watts got caught doing something illegal for the first time, namely knocking on the door of an apartment on his paper route and attacking and sexually assaulting the woman inside, 26-year old Joan Gave, because “he felt like beating someone up.” (Side note: just get a punching bag if you feel like this.)
After this arrest and on the advice of his lawyer, Watts was sent to the Lafayette Clinic, a mental hospital in Detroit, which was apparently closed by the governor in 1992. There, he was diagnosed with a mild learning disability, as his I.Q. was either 68 or 75 (sources differ). He also had a delusional thought process. Watts must’ve done well there because after 3 months, he was moved to outpatient treatment, and continued high school. Watts was apparently very able athletically but didn’t do well academically or socially. He was accepted to Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, but left after 3 months either because of football injuries or being expelled for accusations of assaulting women and suspicion of murder. Seems like two VERY different options for such a thing, but there’s no way to know for sure. According to one source he moved to Houston after this, but most say he returned to Detroit and returned to college, this time at Western Michigan University (Go Broncos?) on a scholarship program.
Watts’s known murders began in October of 1974, while he was at WMU. On October 25th he attacked Lenore Knizacky by knocking on her door and summarily attacking her, choking her and leaving her for dead, but she survived. His next victim was Gloria Steel, who he stabbed 33 times in the chest at her apartment complex on October 30th. Diane Williams was also attacked by Watts and survived, seeing his vehicle. At all three of these scenes, Watts claimed that he was looking for someone named Charles in order to get a foot in the door. The two surviving women picked Watts out of a lineup, at which time he confessed to attacking up to 15 women but did not admit to murdering Gloria Steel.
Watts’s lawyer again arranged for him to enter a mental institution, this time being the Kalamazoo State Hospital, one of Michigan’s largest psychiatric hospitals, which was closed in 2000 by the governor taking away all of its funding. It’s now apparently an intensely creepy building that I very much want to explore but also never want to see. Anyways, he was diagnosed there with anti-social personality disorder. Before his trial, Watts was evaluated at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor, where he was found competent to stand trial (side note: I took a class taught by a former employee at the Center and she was very cool and had tons of experience with competency evals). The doctor there found him dangerous and likely to repeat his offenses, but Watts was sentenced to only one year in county jail and was back home by June of ‘76.
Remember the murder-y nickname I mentioned earlier? Here’s where that comes in! Carl Watt’s nickname in the press was “The Sunday Morning Slasher.” I think Saturday Morning Slasher rolls off the tongue easier, but that’s beside the point. These murders began in Ann Arbor, which is probably about as far from Inkster as it gets, in terms of money and resources. Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan, our state’s snobbiest college, as well as a massive U of M medical center. In April 1980, Shirley Small was cut repeatedly with a scalpel-like weapon outside of her home and died there. Quickly following this attack, two more women were attacked and killed: 26-year-old Glenda Richmond and 20-year-old Rebecca Greer.
I feel like this is a god time to mention that Watts was married for a short time after his release from jail, marrying Valeria Goodwill in August of ’79 and divorcing in May of ’80. His deep-seated hatred of women probably had something to do with this short marriage. An interesting fact about Watts is that most of his victims were white women, though it is very unusual for serial killers to kill outside of their own race. He also very rarely attempted sexual assault, which is another surprising facet of these murders.
After these three deaths, a task force was formed to investigate the murders, but they had little evidence and no witnesses. They were, however, contacted by another officer who had previously dealt with Watts, who offered forth the similarities between his prior crimes and these current murders. Watts was arrested in ’79 for general creepiness in Southfield, another suburb of Detroit, but the charges were dropped, although there had been 5 similar attacks in the neighborhood in the past 5 years. Between October 1979 and September 1980, there had been 8 similar deaths in and around the city of Detroit, with some victims being stabbed and some strangled. The victim’s names were Peggy Pochmara, Jeanne Clyne, Hazel Connof, Denise Dunmore, and Linda Monteiro. Soon, attacks were also reported in Windsor, Ontario, which is just over the bridge from Detroit. Each of the three women attacked in Ontario survived, one being stabbed, one who had her throat slashed, and one escaped attack by screaming that she was being followed.
Back in Ann Arbor in November of 1980, a woman calls the police when she suspects she is being followed. The police arrive and search the vehicle of the accused man, one Carl Eugene Watts, and among various pointy objects, find a book with Rebecca Greer’s name in it, his third known murder victim. Watts was brought in and his blood tested, but as it failed to link him to the crimes, he fled to Columbus, Texas, about 70 miles from Houston. He found a mechanic job there and continued murdering, even though the authorities in Texas had been forewarned by the Michigan police. In Texas, Watts committed more murders, stabbing Edith Ledet as she was jogging and Elizabeth Montgomery as she was walking her dog. Susan Wolfe was killed two hours after Elizabeth, and a few months later, Phyllis Tamm was also killed, as was Margaret Fossi. Elena Samander, Emily LaQua, Mary Castillo, Christine McDonald, Suzanne Searles, Carrie Jefferson, Yolanda Degracia, Sheri Strait, and Gloria Cavallis were the remainder of Watts’s Texas victims, and since this post is getting very long I won’t specify each of their stories but I want to acknowledge them.
Let’s get to how this guy got caught, shall we? In May of 1983, Carl Eugene Watts was arrested in Houston. He had broken into the apartment of Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar, and as Lori lay in the bathtub, half drowning, Melinda was able to escape off the balcony and call for help. The same day, another of Watt’s victims, Michelle Maday, was found dead in her apartment. When examined by psychiatrists, Watts was found sane, and his extreme hatred of women blamed by him on the alleged killing of an uncle by female relatives. Watts was held on bond, and as his trial was shaping up, he struck a deal. In exchange for a guilty plea and 60-year sentence, he would claim responsibility for several unsolved murders in the Houston area. After these confessions, the total number of confessed murders reached thirteen.
After Watts’s sentencing in Texas, through various machinations of the criminal justice system, it happened that he was soon supposed to get out of jail, about which many people were outraged. At this point, the Michigan Attorney General stepped forward to call witnesses to any of Watts’s Michigan crimes, in order to keep him in prison. After witness testimony, he was charged with the murder of Helen Dutcher, and convicted on November 17th, 2004, sentenced to life in prison. Later he was put on trial for the murder of Gloria Steel, and was convicted again on July 26th, 2007, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was moved to a maximum-security prison in Ionia, Michigan (home of “the world’s largest free-admission fair”) and died there of prostate cancer on September 7th, 2007. And may I say, good riddance.
As a final note: Carl Eugene Watts officially killed 22 women, but the potential number of victims is over 100, as there are many unsolved murders that may be linked to him. If you have information about any of these, please contact the police.
True Crime Time 