Carl Eugene Watts: The Sunday Morning Slasher
Overview
Carl Eugene Watts, sometimes called Coral Eugene Watts, was an American serial killer whose violent crimes spanned Michigan and Texas during the 1970s and early 1980s. Known as the “Sunday Morning Slasher,” Watts attacked women and girls using an assortment of methods, including stabbing, strangulation, drowning and bludgeoning. He was convicted of two murders in Michigan, confessed to numerous additional killings in Texas and was suspected by investigators of committing many more.
The exact number of people murdered by Watts remains unknown. He confessed to thirteen killings under an immunity agreement, later claimed responsibility for dozens of deaths and reportedly suggested that his total number of victims could exceed eighty. Some investigators believed he may have killed as many as one hundred women, although that larger estimate has never been conclusively established. His habit of attacking strangers, moving between jurisdictions and changing his methods made it exceptionally difficult for detectives to connect his crimes.
Early Life and Emerging Violence
Carl Eugene Watts was born on November 7, 1953, in Killeen, Texas. His parents separated when he was young, and he was primarily raised by his mother. The family eventually settled in Inkster, Michigan. Watts reportedly experienced serious behavioral and academic problems after suffering meningitis as a child, although no medical condition can adequately explain or excuse his later violence.
By adolescence, Watts was stalking, threatening and attacking girls. In 1969, when he was fifteen, he assaulted a young woman near her home. He was placed in a psychiatric facility, where evaluators described him as dangerous and warned that he was likely to commit further violence. Despite those warnings, he was eventually released.
Watts later attended Lane College in Tennessee and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. His college career was brief and troubled. Women reported being followed or attacked, and Watts was repeatedly associated with suspicious behavior around apartment buildings. He frequently approached doors while pretending to be searching for someone named “Charles.” Once a woman opened the door or lowered her guard, he attempted to force his way inside.
The Murder of Gloria Steele
On October 30, 1974, twenty-year-old Western Michigan University student Gloria Denise Steele was murdered in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was attacked inside her apartment, stabbed repeatedly and suffered a crushed windpipe. The brutality of the assault demonstrated the extreme force Watts was willing to use against women he apparently did not know.
Several women in the same area had encountered a suspicious man asking for “Charles.” Two surviving victims identified Watts after he was arrested on an unrelated matter. He was charged with assault and battery in connection with attacks on women, but authorities were not able to prove at the time that he had murdered Steele. More than thirty years later, he was finally prosecuted and convicted of her murder.
The Michigan Murders
During the late 1970s and 1980, a series of women were stabbed or otherwise attacked in communities surrounding Detroit and Ann Arbor. Several attacks occurred during the early hours of Sunday mornings, leading newspapers to identify the unknown assailant as the “Sunday Morning Slasher.” The victims were often alone near their homes, cars or apartment buildings.
Watts did not consistently use one murder weapon or one method. Some women were stabbed dozens of times, while others were strangled or drowned. The crimes were generally not accompanied by an obvious sexual assault or robbery. This complicated the investigations because detectives could not easily identify a conventional motive or connect Watts through the forensic evidence normally associated with sexually motivated serial killings.
Among the Michigan victims connected to Watts were journalist Jeanne Clyne, teenager Shirley Small, restaurant manager Glenda Richmond and graduate student Rebecca Greer-Huff. Watts was also eventually convicted of murdering Helen Dutcher, who was attacked in Ferndale in 1979 as a witness watched from nearby.
Known, Confessed and Suspected Michigan Victims
- Gloria Denise Steele — October 30, 1974 — Kalamazoo, Michigan: The twenty-year-old Western Michigan University student was attacked inside her apartment. She was strangled or choked and stabbed repeatedly. Watts was convicted of her murder in 2007.
- Jeanne Clyne — October 31, 1979 — Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan: The forty-four-year-old Detroit News reporter was attacked near her home in daylight and stabbed eleven times. Watts later confessed to killing her, although he was not tried for the crime.
- Helen Mae Dutcher — December 1, 1979 — Ferndale, Michigan: The thirty-six-year-old woman was stabbed twelve times. Witness Joseph Foy observed the attack and later identified Watts as the killer. Watts was convicted of her murder in 2004.
- Shirley Small — April 20, 1980 — Ann Arbor, Michigan: The seventeen-year-old high school student was fatally stabbed outside her home during the early morning hours. Investigators connected the circumstances of her death to the series attributed to the Sunday Morning Slasher.
- Glenda Richmond — July 13, 1980 — Ann Arbor, Michigan: The twenty-six-year-old restaurant manager was attacked near her residence and stabbed twenty-eight times.
- Rebecca Greer-Huff — September 14, 1980 — Ann Arbor, Michigan: The thirty-year-old University of Michigan graduate student was found outside her home with approximately fifty stab wounds. Evidence and witness information linked Watts to the killing.
Move to Texas
As police scrutiny increased in Michigan, Watts relocated to Texas. He initially lived in the Bay City area before moving to Houston, where another series of women began disappearing or being found murdered. Houston was already experiencing a high homicide rate, allowing the apparently unrelated deaths of women in different neighborhoods to remain disconnected for a considerable period.
Watts stalked women near apartment complexes, roads, parking areas and college campuses. He sometimes followed women home, entered their apartments or attacked them while they were dealing with an ordinary problem such as a flat tire. Some victims were stabbed, while others were strangled or drowned. The absence of a consistent method again prevented investigators from immediately recognizing that a single offender was responsible.
Texas Victims
- Linda Tilley — September 13, 1981 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-two-year-old University of Texas student was drowned in the swimming pool of her apartment complex. Watts confessed to killing her.
- Elizabeth Ann Montgomery — September 11, 1981 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-four-year-old woman was attacked while walking her dog near her apartment and was fatally stabbed. Watts confessed to her murder.
- Susan Wolf — September 1981 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-one-year-old woman was attacked near her apartment after returning from a store. She was stabbed in the arm and chest. Watts admitted responsibility, although accounts differ regarding the precise date of the attack.
- Phyllis Tamm — January 1982 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-seven-year-old woman was attacked while jogging. Watts confessed that he strangled her and suspended her body from a tree using an elastic strap.
- Margaret Fossi — January 1982 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-five-year-old woman was found dead in the trunk of her vehicle at Rice University. Watts confessed to killing her.
- Elena Semander — February 7, 1982 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-year-old University of Houston student was strangled. Watts later admitted that he had killed her.
- Emily LaQua — February 1982 — Brookshire area, Texas: The fourteen-year-old girl was abducted and killed. Watts confessed to her murder and directed investigators to information concerning the disposal of her body.
- Anna Ledet — March 1982 — Galveston County, Texas: The thirty-four-year-old woman was among the Texas victims Watts admitted killing. Her name has also appeared in records as Edith or Annie Ledet.
- Mary Ann Castille — March 30, 1982 — Texas: The twenty-year-old woman was murdered during the period in which Watts was actively stalking women in southeastern Texas. She has been identified among the victims associated with him.
- Yolanda Garcia — April 1982 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-one-year-old woman was among those Watts confessed to murdering during his Houston-area killing spree.
- Carrie Jefferson — May 1982 — Houston, Texas: The thirty-two-year-old woman was attacked and placed in the trunk of her vehicle. Watts drove her to the White Oak Bayou area, killed her and concealed her body.
- Suzanne Searles — May 1982 — Houston area, Texas: The twenty-five-year-old woman was killed during the final months of Watts’s known murder spree. Watts confessed to responsibility.
- Michele Maday — May 23, 1982 — Houston, Texas: The twenty-year-old woman was beaten and strangled inside her apartment before being drowned. Her murder occurred only hours before Watts was captured.
Survivors and the Attack That Ended the Spree
Watts left several surviving victims throughout his criminal career. Their accounts established a pattern of stalking, surprise attacks and attempts to strangle or stab women near their homes. In October 1974, Lenore Knizacky survived after Watts entered her Kalamazoo apartment under the pretense of looking for “Charles” and choked her into unconsciousness. Another woman, apartment manager Diane Williams, fought him off and later helped identify him.
In Texas, Julia Sanchez survived after Watts approached her while she was changing a tire on January 16, 1982, and cut her throat. Patty Johnson survived a January 30 attack in which Watts also slashed her throat. Another man was reportedly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for that assault before Watts’s confession exposed the mistake.
Watts’s freedom ended on May 23, 1982, after he attacked roommates Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar at their Houston apartment. He choked Lister outside the apartment and dragged her inside. Watts then assaulted Aguilar and bound her hands. Aguilar pretended to be unconscious while he turned his attention back to Lister.
Watts carried Lister into the bathroom and began filling the bathtub, apparently intending to drown her. Aguilar managed to free herself enough to reach a balcony. She jumped from the second floor, injured herself during the fall and ran to neighboring residents for help. Police arrived before Watts could escape and arrested him at the scene. Both women survived.
The Controversial Immunity Agreement
Despite catching Watts during an attempted double murder, Texas prosecutors were concerned that the available evidence might not secure murder convictions. Much of the physical evidence was circumstantial, and Watts had not sexually assaulted his victims or left an easily identifiable forensic signature. Prosecutors therefore offered him an extraordinary agreement.
In exchange for detailed confessions and information about his victims, Watts received immunity from prosecution for the murders he disclosed. He was instead convicted of aggravated burglary with intent to commit murder for the attack on Lister and Aguilar. On September 3, 1982, he was sentenced to sixty years in prison.
The agreement was intended to keep Watts incarcerated for decades while allowing families to learn what had happened to their loved ones. Changes in Texas sentencing law and the calculation of prison credits later created the possibility that Watts could be released after serving approximately twenty-four years. Because the immunity agreement protected him from prosecution for his confessed Texas murders, authorities urgently searched for a crime outside the agreement that could support a new conviction.
Conviction for the Murder of Helen Dutcher
Michigan authorities were not bound by the Texas immunity agreement. Their strongest opportunity involved the murder of Helen Dutcher. Joseph Foy had witnessed Dutcher’s stabbing in Ferndale on December 1, 1979. After seeing later reports concerning Watts, Foy identified him as the attacker he had observed.
Watts was transferred to Michigan and placed on trial. Prosecutors presented Foy’s eyewitness testimony along with evidence concerning Watts’s pattern of stalking and attacking women. On November 17, 2004, a jury found Watts guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced on December 7, 2004, to life imprisonment, eliminating the immediate possibility that he would be released from custody.
Conviction for the Murder of Gloria Steele
Authorities then renewed their investigation into the 1974 murder of Gloria Steele. The case was more than thirty years old, but witnesses had previously connected Watts to attacks committed near Steele’s apartment. Prosecutors argued that the circumstances of her murder and the surrounding assaults demonstrated his responsibility.
Watts’s trial began in July 2007. On July 27, a Kalamazoo County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. He received another life sentence without the possibility of parole on September 13, 2007. The conviction provided long-delayed legal recognition that Watts had murdered Steele, one of the earliest known victims in his prolonged series of attacks.
Death in Prison
Carl Eugene Watts died from complications of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007, at the age of fifty-three. He died in a Jackson, Michigan, hospital only eight days after receiving his second life sentence. His death ended any realistic possibility that investigators could obtain a complete and reliable account of his crimes.
Many murders and disappearances in Michigan, Texas and surrounding areas have been examined for possible connections to Watts. Some were linked through his confessions, while others shared similarities with his methods but lacked sufficient evidence for a definitive attribution. Because he often gave incomplete, inconsistent or deliberately vague statements, investigators were unable to determine exactly how many people he killed.
Criminal Methods and Victim Selection
Watts generally targeted women and girls between their teens and forties. Many were attacked while alone at night or during the early morning. He followed women from public places, watched apartment buildings and exploited moments when a victim was entering a home, leaving a vehicle or dealing with a roadside problem.
Unlike some serial killers, Watts did not maintain one ritualized method of murder. He stabbed some victims numerous times, strangled others and drowned several women. This variation was probably one reason law-enforcement agencies initially treated the deaths as separate crimes. The murders were spread among different cities, counties and states at a time when police departments had limited systems for rapidly sharing case information.
Watts described some of his victims as having “evil eyes” and claimed that killing them released their spirits. Such statements reflected his distorted thinking but provided no meaningful explanation for his deliberate selection, stalking and murder of women. His attacks were predatory, repetitive and frequently planned, despite his attempts to portray them as reactions to something he imagined in his victims.
Uncertain Victim Count and Legacy
Watts was legally convicted of murdering Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele. He confessed to thirteen additional murders as part of the Texas agreement, although historical reports differ slightly over whether the total represented twelve Texas victims plus one Michigan victim or thirteen killings spread across both states. He was also considered a strong suspect in numerous other deaths.
Claims that Watts killed eighty or more people remain unproven. Nevertheless, the known duration of his activity, the number of surviving victims, his movements between states and his own admissions strongly indicate that the officially established cases represent only part of his criminal history.
The investigation of Carl Watts exposed serious problems caused by fragmented jurisdictions, limited forensic evidence and plea agreements offering broad immunity. His case is particularly remembered because an arrangement intended to solve multiple murders nearly allowed an admitted serial killer to leave prison. The persistence of survivors, witnesses, victims’ families and Michigan investigators ultimately ensured that Watts remained incarcerated for the remainder of his life.
