Evil Eyes (14 page)

Caggins focused on civil matters in his practice, so he informed Williams that he would ask his law partner, Zinetta Burney, who handled all of the criminal matters in their office, to take the lead on Watts’s case.

Burney, forty-one, a 1974 graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at TSU, had no problem taking on Watts. “When I heard about the case, he sounded like a churchgoing working man with a nice fiancée. He seemed like a stable person to me.”

Burney’s opinion would change soon enough. Burney was informed that Watts was a suspect in multiple murders. Watts himself had been convinced by the police that they had a rock-solid case against him. As a result, he admitted to Burney that he had, indeed, murdered several women.

Burney was scared to death. Watts confessed to her and wanted her to strike a deal with the prosecution. She could not believe the tales of horror that spilled from Watts’s lips. Despite the heinous nature of his crimes, however, Burney and Caggins knew Watts needed their

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support and representation. “Everybody has a right to have their rights protected and Coral Watts is no exception,” Burney later told reporters.

As Burney spent more time with Watts, she would come to fear him. She began to wear a crucifix around her neck every time she met with him. “He never threat-ened me. He was always quiet and polite to me, but he scared me more than anyone I’ve ever dealt with.”

She added, “There’s something evil in the man.”

Despite her fears of her own client, Burney represented his interests to the best of her ability. She and Watts decided their best avenue was to request a plea bargain in exchange for information and confessions to numerous murders, as well as locations to some of the missing bodies. Negotiations between Burney and the prosecuting attorneys lasted several months.

In June 1982, Judge Douglas Shaver presided over Watts’s hearings. Judge Shaver had a successful career as a Harris County prosecutor prior to his judgeship. He worked on many high-profile cases out of Houston, the most notorious being the prosecution of Elmer Wayne Henley, the young charge who aided Dean Corll in the sexual killings of at least twenty-seven boys and young men in and around the Houston and Pasadena areas.

On the request of prosecutor Jack Frels, one of Judge Shaver’s first orders of business was to compel Watts to receive a psychiatric evaluation. The reason for this was to establish whether Watts was mentally sound to understand the nature of the charges against him. Frels cited “the grotesque nature of the crime” as reason for the evaluation request.

Watts was admitted to Rusk State Hospital, located in Rusk, Texas, 130 miles east of Waco, Texas, by court order. Rusk State Hospital was a hospital for the mentally ill. It was opened in 1919 as a care facility for the “Negro insane,” according to
The Handbook of Texas
. Watts was admitted to the Skyview Maximum Security Unit of the

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hospital on June 15, 1982. At the time he was one of 952 patients.

Watts received physical and neurological examina-tions. Doctors took blood and urine samples from him and his chest was X-rayed. He also received a sickle-cell anemia test to screen for a blood disorder that adversely affects the hemoglobin, usually found in African de-scendants. Watts also undertook a psychometric examination and a psychiatric examination.

Watts’s physical exams all came up negative, as did the X-ray and sickle-cell test. His blood and urine tests also came back fine.

Watts’s psychological examination consisted of several parts. They included the following:

• Clinical interview
  

• Staff observations
  

• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised
  

• Projective Human Figure Drawing Test
  

• Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test
  

• Sentence Completion Blank
  

• “Competency to Stand Trial” Questionnaire
  

Dr. James A. Hunter, the clinical director of the security unit, conducted the battery of tests on Watts. The first thing that jumped out to Dr. Hunter was the fact that Watts performed poorly on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or IQ test. Watts’s scores were 69 verbal, 71 performance, and 68 full scale. In other words, Coral Watts’s IQ was measured at only 68. Under Texas law at that time, he would be considered to be mentally retarded. Dr. Hunter attributed a portion of Watts’s poor performance on anxiety and apprehension.

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Dr. Hunter considered Watts’s intelligence level actually to be in the normal range.

The doctor described Watts’s drawings for the Bender test as “expansive in arrangement with perseveration” on two drawings, which meant that he was prone to re-peated gestures or responses without appropriate stim-uli, and “flattening of curves” for two different sketches. The doctor interpreted Watts’s drawings to show “emotional constriction and transient anxiety.”

Watts’s human figures were “large in size and unde-tailed with no significant elements.”

Dr. Hunter noted that Watts tended to respond to the sentence-completion questions with one word responses. As a result, Watts was marked as resistant to the test-taking conditions.

Watts also was rather uncooperative when it came to answering the competency questionnaire. He mainly responded with “I don’t know” answers.

Finally Dr. Hunter denoted that Watts’s results from the pencil-and-paper tests suggested “limitations in reading and writing skills which may be embarrassing to the patient.”

Dr. Hunter observed that Watts was “guarded and evasive in his answers to questions. He has good eye contact, but also appears sullen and unconcerned during the interview. He is alert and appears to be controlling his hostility.” Dr. Hunter’s report added that Watts was “oriented as to time, person and place. His memory is intact. Mood is guarded and his affect is controlled but he smiles appropriately at times.” Dr. Hunter added that “his grasp of general information is good. Insight and judgment are impaired. His psychiatric diagnosis is: Without Psychosis.”

Dr. Hunter concluded his findings on Coral Watts:

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“Based on the above findings, it is my opinion that there is no justification for a finding of incompetence to stand trial in that he has sufficient ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding. He also has a rational, as well as a factual, understanding of the proceedings against him.”

Less than one month later, Watts’s attorneys scheduled a psychiatric evaluation from one of their experts, Dr. Jerome N. Sherman, of the Sherman Clinic in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Sherman examined Coral Watts in the Harris County Jail on July 12, 1982, along with psychiatrist Nicky Edd. Dr. Sherman’s analysis, unsurprisingly, was different from Dr. Hunter’s.

Watts discussed his family background. He spoke of the poor relationship his mother and father had and how his father left the family. He spoke of attending several different schools in Michigan and West Virginia. He also spoke of his stepfather and how he became the oldest child of ten siblings. Watts also claimed that his stepfather, Norman Ceaser, physically abused him and his mother. He also spoke of his criminal history that included aggravated assault, assault, larceny, theft, kidnapping, and attempted murder.

Dr. Sherman described his impressions of Watts’s be-havioral mannerisms during the interview as “quiet, re-strained, reticent.” Watts was also “alert, coherent, and oriented.” As the conversation progressed, Dr. Sherman noted that Watts began to show a bit more spontaneity. Watts appeared to be “mainly flat and depressed.” In-terestingly enough, Watts also appeared to be “reacting at times to apparent hallucinations.” This observation was based on inappropriate responses by Watts, which was measured by “sudden and unexpected motor activity

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and expressions (facial and gestural) not relevant or in reaction to the present proceedings.”

Even more surprising was that Watts actually broke down and started to cry. Sherman wrote that he “broke down and wept while discussing the demise and subsequent elusive search for an uncle who was supposedly killed by his wife when the client was much younger.” This was in reference to Watts’s uncle Smitty, who was killed, he claimed, by Watts’s aunt, Smitty’s wife. Sharon Watts, Coral’s sister, later disputed this claim. She detailed that their uncle Smitty was actually killed by a male police officer and not his wife.

Dr. Sherman admitted many of the same tests that were performed by Dr. Hunter, in addition to a Rorschach Psy-chodiagnostic Technique, a Thematic Apperception Test, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

Watts’s score improved slightly on the IQ test, with a 75, which was considered borderline as far as intellectual functionality is concerned.

Watts also displayed a “concrete orientation” based on his responses to what he believed certain proverbs meant. One example was the proverb “Strike while the iron is hot.” Watts’s response was “Be the first to strike.” Another proverb, “Shallow brooks are noisy,” was interpreted with “They make a lot of noise.”

Dr. Sherman interpreted Watts’s concreteness to mean that Watts was mentally impaired. The doctor also believed that Watts was not able to cope with incoming stim-uli or situations. He also commented on Watts’s lack of concentration.

From an emotional perspective, Dr. Sherman believed Watts to be disorganized, alienated, and somewhat para-noid and suspicious of those around him. Watts described

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his world as unfriendly and that others were out to harm him. As a result he felt the need to defend himself.

Dr. Sherman wrote about Watts’s inability to function with others: “He appears only marginally attuned to the practical realities of the world around him. Instead, he is absorbed in his own fantasies which revolve, to a large extent, around the struggle against ‘evil,’ which he sees lurking everywhere.”

Watts’s anger also caught the good doctor’s attention. “The client harbors a great deal of internalized anger,” the psychiatrist examined. “Much of this hostility is directed at female figures, whom he tends to perceive as deceitful, unfaithful, and parasitic. It is primarily to the female that he attaches the ‘evil’ quality.” Sherman believed that Watts felt that all women have “ulterior motives” and that it would be dangerous to have a relationship with a woman. Dr. Sherman noted that Watts was not prone to over-the-top self-expression or even the most basic of interper-sonal skills: “It is not characteristic of the client to freely display his emotions or to express himself spontaneously, as he is a guarded individual. He is capable of maintain-ing a marginal façade of outward intactness. However, rational controls are weak and his actions are likely to be determined strongly by irrational, emotional forces.” Dr. Sherman concluded that Coral Eugene Watts suffered from “Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type.” The results indicated that Watts suffered from “psychotic thought disorder” and that “he is especially sensitive to the existence of ‘evil.’”

According to Sherman, Watts also “harbors a great deal of internalized hostility, which is directed primarily at females. He is defensively reactive to the perceived threats around him, which intensifies the dangerousness of the situation.”

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Dr. Sherman added that Watts’s condition “is chronic and of long standing and is likely to persist. This client is in need of attention and close supervision. Psychiatric help is essential.”

The conclusions reached by Dr. Hunter and Dr. Sherman could not have been more diametrically opposed.

In between Watts’s psychiatric evaluations, Harriett Semander continued to demand answers. She, along with three parents from the Parents of Murdered Children group, including Michael Maday, father of Michelle Maday, contacted Harris County district attorney John B. Holmes Jr. and requested a meeting. Representatives from Holmes’s office agreed and scheduled a visit to Semander’s home for June 29, 1982.

While dining over a traditional Greek meal, Holmes, ADA Jack Frels, Semander, and Maday gathered to discuss the Watts situation. Semander felt nothing but hostility from Holmes and Frels. Semander believed that neither man was there to help her and were only there hopefully to get her off their backs.

They had no idea whom they were messing with.

Harriett Semander wanted to know a few things: how was Watts allowed to roam the streets of Houston if there was evidence provided to the Houston Police Department that he was a murder suspect in Michigan, and why did HPD drop surveillance on Watts despite knowing what they knew about him?

DA Holmes, known as one of the toughest law en-forcers in the nation, seemed to cower before the small Greek mother. His response let Semander know he was not going to be any help whatsoever.

“No way! I wouldn’t touch HPD with a ten-foot pole.”

Harriett Semander was not about to give up. On July 9, 1982, she received a surprise in her mailbox. Assistant District Attorney Ira Jones had sent her detailed information on forty unsolved murders in Houston: it included victims’ names, addresses, dates of death, and methods of murder. She was grateful to receive the information, since she had tried to receive the material from her city council member Jim Westmoreland. Jones informed Semander that Westmoreland was “just passing the buck” and that Jones would take care of it for her. The bonus surprise, however, came in the form of confidential police records that Jones included in the package. Upon discovering these documents, Semander called Jones to tell him about their inclusion. Jones, however, was not in and Semander chose not to leave a message. Instead, she decided she would make copies of the material before she gave it back to Jones.

According to Semander, Jones called her at approximately 2:00
P
.
M
. and told her that he needed the material so he could “study” it over the weekend. Semander stated she knew Jones was lying, so she rushed to finish making copies. When Jones arrived, she recalled, he