In the late summer of 1972, a gruesome discovery was made in a field in Taylor, Michigan. The body of 20-year-old Zenaida Tomes, a female of suspected Hispanic descent, was found on September 6th near North Line Road and Lange Close. The young woman had been the victim of a brutal attack, having been stabbed 45 times. The sheer violence of the act suggested a motive that was deeply personal or possibly psychotic.
Investigators determined that Tomes had last been seen in southwest Detroit and believed she was abducted from that area before being murdered and left in the field. The initial investigation yielded few leads, and with no immediate suspects, the case went cold, leaving a community in fear and a family without answers.
For decades, the murder of Zenaida Tomes remained a haunting unsolved mystery. However, in the early 2000s, a renewed focus on cold cases across Michigan brought fresh eyes to the investigation. A special task force was formed to explore potential connections between unsolved homicides and known serial killers. This effort led authorities to re-examine Tomes's death in the context of the crimes of Carl Eugene Watts, a notorious serial killer also known as the “Sunday Morning Slasher.” Watts was active in Michigan and Texas throughout the 1970s and early 1980s and is suspected of murdering up to 100 women.
Investigators found several factors that pointed to Watts as a possible suspect in Tomes's murder. He was known to have been in the Detroit area at the time of her death, and the extreme level of violence in her case was consistent with his other known crimes. Watts's typical victims were young, slender women, and his methods often involved stabbing. While some aspects of Tomes's case, such as her abduction from one location and murder in another, did not perfectly align with Watts's usual modus operandi, the Michigan task force included her case among those potentially linked to him. Despite the strong suspicions, no formal charges were ever brought against Watts for the murder of Zenaida Tomes, and therefore no arrests have been made in her case. Carl Eugene Watts died of prostate cancer in prison in 2007, taking any certainty about his involvement in Tomes's death with him. The case remains officially unresolved, one of the many tragic and unanswered questions left in the wake of a prolific killer.
