In the spring of 2004, a series of brutal killings shattered the coastal community of Port Salerno, Florida, revealing a predator in its midst. The first of three women to lose her life was Jacqueline Bradley, a 43-year-old mother who had fallen on hard times. To her friends in the local homeless community, where she sought refuge and companionship, she was affectionately known as "Jackie Clark."
Though facing personal struggles, she was a person, a mother, whose life held value and whose absence would be deeply mourned.
Jacqueline was last seen alive on March 24, 2004, leaving a homeless camp situated off U.S. 1 near Monroe Street. Witnesses later told Martin County Sheriff's detectives that she left with a man named Eugene Wayman McWatters Jr., then 26, who had lured her away with the promise of a hot shower. It was a simple offer of comfort that masked a deadly intent. That was the last time anyone from her community would see her alive.
One week later, on March 31, 2004, Jacqueline’s partially-clothed and badly decomposed body was discovered floating in a drainage canal in the Golden Gate community. The location was chillingly close to the home of McWatters' sister, where he had been staying. An investigation was immediately launched, and suspicion quickly fell on McWatters, the man last seen with Jacqueline. When questioned by detectives, he denied any involvement. On April 15, he took a lie detector test and was found to be deceptive when he denied strangling "Jackie Clark" or helping to dispose of her body.
Over the next two months, the community was gripped by fear as two more women, 29-year-old Christal Wiggins and 18-year-old Carrie Caughey, were murdered in a similar fashion. The pattern of violence led investigators to dub the killer "The Salerno Strangler." The methodical work of law enforcement finally paid off on June 23, 2004, when McWatters was arrested. He had been identified by another woman who survived a sexual assault by him the previous year. In custody, McWatters confessed to the three murders. He told detectives that he had consensual sex with each woman, but would "freak out" or "lose it" afterward and then kill them.
Eugene McWatters Jr. was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of sexual battery with great force. His trial in 2006 brought the harrowing details of his crimes to light. On September 28, a jury took only two hours to find him guilty on all counts. McWatters cried as the verdict was read. He was subsequently sentenced to three life sentences for the rapes and was initially given the death penalty for the murders of Jacqueline, Christal, and Carrie.
During the sentencing, Jacqueline Bradley’s daughter, Laura Crosby Dittmer, faced her mother's killer in court. Her words were a powerful testament to the enduring pain of her loss and a final, defiant reclamation of justice. "The joke you thought you were playing is now on you," she told McWatters. Prosecutor Tom Bakkedahl labeled McWatters "the worst of the worst." Though his death sentence was later commuted to life in prison on a technicality, Eugene McWatters will never again be free. He remains incarcerated, a permanent consequence of the lives he so cruelly extinguished.
