Admitted Serial Killer Coral Watts Dies; Was Serving Life Sentences in 2
Michigan Slayings
JACKSON, Michigan
Friday, September 21, 2007  14:46 EDT

A confessed serial killer who authorities said may have been responsible for
dozens of deaths died Friday, only a little more than a week after he
received a 2nd life sentence, authorities said.

Coral Eugene Watts, who said he targeted women with evil eyes, died in a
secure area of Foote Hospital, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman
Russ Marlan said.  He was 53, and the cause of death was apparently prostate
cancer, Marlan said.

The Michigan attorney general's office has said Watts was a suspect in more
than 25 slayings and may have killed more than 80 women.  He had confessed
to 12 killings, 11 in Texas and one in Michigan.

Last week, Watts was sentenced to a life prison sentence, his 2nd, in the
slaying of Gloria Steele, a 19-year-old Western Michigan University student,
in 1974.  He had been convicted of 1st-degree murder in July, and the
sentence of life without parole was mandatory.

Watts was already serving a life sentence in the 1979 death of 36-year-old
Helen Dutcher in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.

Michigan authorities revived the Dutcher and Steele cases in an effort to
keep Watts behind bars because he was to have been released from a Texas
prison in May 2006.

Watts received immunity for 12 killings to which he had confessed - 11 in
Texas and one in Michigan - as part of a 1982 deal with Texas prosecutors.
He was given a 60-year sentence for burglary with intent to murder, but
mandatory release laws and an appeals court ruling reduced his sentence to
less than 25 years.

Police had suspected Watts in Dutcher's death for years, but never charged
him because they assumed he would be in his 80s if he ever got out of prison
in Texas. When Michigan authorities learned of the reduced sentence, they
put him on trial in 2004 and he was convicted in her death.

Nearly all the killings to which Watts confessed happened in 1981 and 1982
after he moved to the Houston area from Michigan.  Watts, a mechanic, told
Houston police he targeted women he thought had evil eyes.

But aside from his detailed confession, prosecutors said there was little or
no physical evidence. The families of suspected victims pushed for the 1982
plea bargain because they saw it as the only way to find out what happened
to their loved ones. Ultimately, he led police to 3 of the bodies,
authorities have said.