Evil Eyes (29 page)

The calm and collected Tilley stood behind the phalanx of microphones and began to speak. He gripped the lectern firmly with his left hand and spoke. “Having jour-neyed from the far country of Arlington”—he chuckled— “we had absolutely no knowledge that there was a group such as this, with the dedication you have, and obviously have had, and the work that you’ve done to bring some justice to the occasion.” He looked admiringly at his fellow mourners. “You all have done tremendous work up to this point.” Tilley took three-or four-second pauses before resuming his speech. “And you have an awful lot of work, and hopefully myself and we included, will be able to work with you effectively toward preventing this happening again.”

Tilley spoke of how he and his family got lost on the way to the memorial earlier that morning. It “called to mind the need for having a good road map wherever you go and having the ground plowed and the way well-marked,” he added. “ That will lead you to an eventual victory”—he stressed the final with a finite punctuation—“in what you seek [as] evidenced by your effort here this morning.”

Tilley continued with what he described as his own personal thoughts. “I might suggest to you that what we work for and what we seek so earnestly, here, now, has nothing to do with punishment, nor vindication, but it has to do with protection.” He added, “I would further suggest to you that the object of the work of this group and other groups has nothing at all to do with Coral

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Eugene Watts, and it has nothing to do with a broken or bent criminal justice system.” Tilley believed, “Instead, I would suggest to you that what we face here, at this time and place, is confrontation with pure evil.” Many nodded their heads in agreement.

“And I don’t think any of us here would confront the adversary without the tools that are necessary to accom-plish the task.” Tilley brought his message home when he concluded, “I will further suggest to you that the work we do and the
war
that we do is not with flesh and blood, but with the principalities and powers of the air.” He finished with, “And I would suggest that the guidance, with the help of God, in the pursuit that is undertaken here today, and no doubt will be successfully concluded, will have to do with the—not the forgiveness, because we know that forgiveness cannot be bestowed when forgiveness is not sought”—in direct contradiction to Laura Allen’s belief—“and we know that Coral Eugene Watts has vowed to do again what he so very effectively did so many times. And to spiritualize the attack, enlist the aid and the protection of God, then we cannot but be successful in this effort.

“I thank you.”

Joe Tilley was followed by Lori Lister, who survived Watts’s final attack on May 23, 1982. Lister, now remar-ried and known as Lori Baugh, came to the stage with her son, Blake, sixteen, and daughter, Cher, thirteen, in tow. She stated that she wanted them behind her because she would break out into tears if she had to look at them as she spoke of the suffering she had endured after the attack by Coral Watts.

Baugh recalled how, for the first four years, after Watts attacked her, she hid in her closet with a gun in her hand, sweating. She also mentioned how she would see Watts’s

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face everywhere out in public, even though she knew he was locked up in prison.

Baugh also talked about how she would read the papers about Watts’s victims and the photos of the girls and how she was supposed to have been the next photo. She was shocked at “how little each article said of these girls.” She also thanked the families in attendance for bringing a part of their loved ones back to life at the gathering. “I was so proud and glad to hear about your loved ones. They were very special people.”

Baugh also expressed her disgust with the fact that Watts was scheduled for release in 2006. She believed that the Texas criminal justice system was more concerned with the rights of criminals than with the rights of the criminals’ victims. “I’m in denial,” she stated, referring to Watts’s impending release. “Something has to be done. I’m hoping against all hope that something will be done.”

Baugh concluded, “I’d like to see an end to this.” After a closing prayer by Father Brendan Pelphrey,

Andy Kahan reminded everyone why they had come this day. Not only to remember the victims, but to manage somehow to keep Coral Eugene Watts behind bars. Then, with a chilling reality, Kahan stated that there were only 1,370 days until Watts would be released.

To drive the impact home of the murderer’s deeds and the negative impact he had—not only on the victims, but their loved ones as well—Kahan asked all of the surviving family members and friends to come to the stage. Forty-three people of all ages, races, and sizes ventured forward together. The ceremony ended with the plain-tive wails of bagpipe player Keegan Bratsch, of the Houston Police Bagpipes Band.

Tears mingled with smiles.

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One week later, the purpose of the memorial was finally realized. Michigan assistant attorney general Donna Pendergast opened up her morning paper. She came across an article that covered the services held in Houston. The name Coral Watts immediately rang a bell for her. Pendergast had been a college student at the University of Michigan during the late 1970s when Watts allegedly had killed several women in the Ann Arbor and Detroit areas.

Pendergast got on the phone and contacted Andy Kahan. She informed him that she had no idea that Watts was going to be released and she immediately asked what she could do.

Pendergast, along with the Michigan State Police (originally conceived on April 19, 1917, as a mounted pre-cursor to Homeland Security) created a task force entirely devoted to finding evidence in old cases to use against Coral Eugene Watts. Their goal was simple: to prevent Watts from being let loose among the minions and avoid-ing the inevitable slaughter.

“He is diabolical,” Pendergast stated. “There really is no other word for him. He is a killing machine and he has told a sergeant from Houston, Texas, that if he gets out, he will kill again.

“A battle plan needs to be drawn, but it sends shivers up my spine because if we don’t come up with a case here in Michigan, he will walk out the door on May 8, 2006, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

Michigan State Police lieutenant Charles Schumacher informed the media that the Watts case was their top priority. “When you are dealing with a serial killer, especially one that may present a danger again, it is something important, something we want to do our best work on.” That work included looking back on more than a dozen cases,

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including the Lena Bennett strangulation murder in Harper Woods.

The lieutenant hoped that the advent of new crime-fighting technology might somehow connect Watts to any of these old cases. “Perhaps we could find some DNA under fingernails in some of the victims, or perhaps some hair was found in a victim’s hand or something like that that we may be able to connect to Watts,” presumed Schumacher.

Pendergast also stated that “he hasn’t received im-munity in the other Michigan cases, not the ones in Ann Arbor, not the single case in Kalamazoo, not in any Detroit cases. So, that could be the luckiest thing that happened to us.”

It would take an awful lot of people to create that luck.

With Coral Watts’s release on the horizon, Texas officials also scrambled to figure a way to keep him behind bars. One of their best bets was the case of Emily LaQua, Watts’s youngest known victim. Police officers, and Watts, mistakenly assumed her body would be located in Harris County, thus making him eligible for the plea bargain, along with the other women’s cases. LaQua’s body, however, had been discovered in a metal culvert ditch off In-terstate 10 in Brookshire, Texas, which is located in Waller County, whose officials would not offer a plea bargain to Watts. LaQua’s murder, subsequently, was not part of any deal offered to Watts.

There was a major flaw in the LaQua case. Key evidence, including Emily’s clothes, had gone missing over the years. The authorities had no idea where to locate them, thus making it impossible to use something other than Watts’s confessions.

In lieu of potential prosecution in the LaQua case, the Texas authorities also had to turn over every stone to see if there had been a case that they had missed—one that Watts had not confessed or struck a plea bargain for.

Kahan stressed the importance of the search. “Either

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we do something now, or he gets released.” Kahan also added the commonly mistaken assessment that “we will have the dubious honor of being the first state to legally release a serial killer in this country’s history.”

In reality, there were at least two previous serial killers, both females, who had been released. Fourteen-year- old Caril Ann Fugate, along with her boyfriend, Charles Starkweather, went on an eight-day killing spree from Ne-braska to Wyoming, slaughtering eleven innocent victims, including Caril’s parents and two-year-old baby sister. Fugate and Starkweather would later inspire such films as
Badlands, Natural Born Killers,
and
Starkweather
. While Starkweather was executed on June 25, 1959, Fugate was paroled in June 1976. Some argue that she is considered a “spree killer,” instead of a serial killer.

Another female serial killer who was legally released was Terilynn Wager, who, according to author Wilton Earle, murdered nine people before she turned fifteen. Since she was a juvenile at the time of the killings, she was sentenced as a minor and released when she was eighteen.

Watts, however, would be the first male serial killer to be released from prison.

Harris County ADA Ira Jones, who assisted in the plea bargain for Watts, added, “It’s not over.”

Many of the victims’ surviving family members, who could not attend the “Call to Action” memorial service, expressed outrage at Watts’s mandatory release. “I can’t imagine that the prison system would let him out,” proclaimed Judy Wolf Krueger, Suzi Wolf’s older sister. “They plea-bargained my sister’s life away.” She added, “The people in the United States should be outraged that

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this man is getting time off for good behavior after murdering thirteen women for which he was not punished.” Krueger held out little hope that she could do anything to help keep Watts behind bars. “I don’t know what we’ll be able to do in the next four years. I don’t think there will be any healing that goes on if he becomes a free man.”

November 7, 2002, was Coral Watts’s forty-ninth birthday. It was also the day of his fifth parole hearing since he had been imprisoned back in 1982. Watts sat once again before the board members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to learn his fate. Watts was denied parole once again. Chairman Gerald Garrett stated, “The parole review process is complete. The parole panel recommended against parole.” Garrett and two other board members voted unanimously to keep Watts incarcerated.

When asked about Watts’s parole review, Andy Kahan stated, “That was about as big a no-brainer as you will ever see. I wish I could say I was shocked. Parole has always been a moot point in this case. The imminent issue still is his release.”

Watts was scheduled for release on May 8, 2006.

On November 8, 2002, Donna Pendergast stepped up to the plate. The Wayne County Assistant District Attorney officially opened a probe into the Harper Woods murder of Lena Bennett, the sixty-three-year-old waitress whose

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nude body was found hanging in her garage on Van Antwerp Street.

“We’re reprocessing every piece of evidence that was found in the room,” informed Pendergast, who led the investigation. “There’s a possibility of finding DNA or some other evidence with technology that wasn’t in existence in 1980.”

When asked about the differences in the murder victim and the modus operandi, Andy Kahan stated, “This would be an anomaly, but it could be before he perfected the art of killing. This was very early in his killing career.”

Simultaneously with the Michigan probe, Texas officials petitioned the Texas Department of Corrections for a sample of Watts’s DNA.

The walls seemed to be closing in on Coral Eugene Watts.

The Michigan State Police Department retrieved the evidence in the Bennett case. They began by conducting DNA testing on a broomstick and a belt. Unfortunately, unlike television crime dramas, such as
CSI,
results would not appear overnight or at the snap of fingers. In the reality-based world of crime fighting, DNA results take months to retrieve.

State police lieutenant Ted Monfette stated, “We really don’t know what we have until we look at everything. We don’t want to charge Mr. Watts with a crime he didn’t commit, because that means the person who did it is going to walk free, but we’re looking for something to connect one of these crimes so we can take Mr. Watts to trial.” It seemed as if any person in the state of Michigan who

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wore a badge was on the cold-case trail of Coral Eugene Watts.

One of those officers was Sergeant Tom Seyfried, of the Ann Arbor Police Department. He, along with another task force, had been investigating the murders of Shirley Small, Glenda Richmond, and Rebecca Huff. The team was not able to connect Watts to any of the evidence, but they continued to look at different aspects to find a match.

“We’re not going to make a case unless he confesses,” Seyfried declared. “We don’t have any witnesses or any evidence. As far as I’m concerned, this case is done.”

Paul Bunten, the former Ann Arbor felony investigator, who was now the police chief of Saline, Michigan, located just over nine miles southwest of Ann Arbor, believed that Watts might get tagged for the Bennett murder.

“This looks like Watts,” Bunten affirmed. “She was followed home. He attacked her when she pulled her car into the driveway. That’s his MO.