Evil Eyes (33 page)

According to the
Daily Oakland Press
, Kuhn’s father, Dr. Charles Kuhn, died when Richard was only six years old. Little Richard grew up quick and learned how to become a man, way too early, from his mother, Ella Kuhn. Richard had several siblings, who pitched in and helped their mother take care of things. Mrs. Kuhn did a fantastic job raising her children, eventually churning

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out from her nine sons: three doctors, two lawyers, a mor-tician, a teacher, a county drain commissioner, and a busi-nessman.

Richard Kuhn kept his family close throughout his life. He currently took care of his oldest brother and also held a regular Sunday dinner at his house for the surviving members of his family. Kuhn was also coming up on his forty-ninth wedding anniversary with his bride, Sally.

The Kuhns had four children of their own, including son Richard Kuhn Jr., who followed in his daddy’s foot-steps. Kuhn Jr. was also a district judge for the Waterford Township.

“He’s a strong family man,” relayed his fellow judge Gene Schnelz. “He is a steadying influence within the courtroom.”

Judge Kuhn would oversee courtroom 2F. He would also keep Assistant Attorney Generals Donna Pendergast and Tom Cameron, along with defense lawyer Ronald Kaplovitz, in check.

Donna Pendergast, a former Wayne County prosecutor, made her name in the high-profile 1999 retrial of Jonathan Schmitz, in the case known as the “Jenny Jones Murder Trial.” In March 1995, Schmitz and his neighbor Scott Amedure appeared as guests for a taping of Jenny Jones’s talk show. The theme for the show was secret ad-mirers.

Schmitz, a heterosexual, had no idea that his neighbor Amedure had his sights on him. In the episode Amedure spoke of a fantasy involving champagne, whipped cream, and Schmitz. Schmitz was allegedly furious and humiliated. Three days later, Schmitz blew Amedure away with a shotgun.

Schmitz was tried and convicted in 1996; however,

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the verdict was overturned in 1998 due to “an error in the jury selection process.” Pendergast successfully prosecuted Schmitz in the second trial in 1999.

The trial of
The State of Michigan
v.
Coral Eugene Watts
would be an entirely different beast for the sophisti-cated prosecutor.

The first order of duty was to select a jury. At approximately 9:00
A
.
M
., a prospective jury pool of more than sixty candidates was ushered into courtroom 2F. The first round consisted of one-on-one interviews between the attorneys and the potential jurors. This was conducted behind closed doors. After the brief interviews, Judge Richard Kuhn let the attorneys toss out eleven candidates. The doors were then open to the public and the media.

Coral Watts was also ushered into the room.

The defendant was dressed in black slacks, a clean powder blue long-sleeved button-down shirt, and a black pullover sleeveless sweater given to him by his family— specifically, his sister Sharon. Watts’s family opted not to attend the trial, though they did support him.

“I feel bad for these people,” Sharon Watts said of the victims’ families, “but I don’t know what I can say to change things for them or bring their [loved ones] back.” She also spoke of the stress the trial would have on the Watts family. “Coral’s family is as innocent as anyone else’s family.”

Sharon told the members of the press that she was un-

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willing to go on television to talk about her brother “because it won’t change anything.”

Coral Watts wore his prison-issued thick black glasses. He also was adorned with the Oakland County Jail regulation body cuff for the protection of the individuals in the gallery.

Watts entered the courtroom, flanked by two well-built court officers. Watts slowly sauntered over to his chair behind the defendant’s table, next to his counselor, Ronald Kaplovitz. He did not, however, take a seat. Instead, he paused in front of his chair and waited for one of his personal escorts to assist him. The court officer pulled out the key to the prisoner’s handcuffs and unlocked each restraint. The cuffs dangled off each side like a janitor’s batch of keys. The officer then rotated the chain around Watts’s waist so that the lock was readily ac-cessible. He unlocked the waist chain, slipped it around Watts’s minimal girth, and removed all of the bindings. Watts took his seat.

Surely, he felt the eyes of Harriett Semander, Jane Montgomery, and Betty Rankin, Dutcher’s sister, as they tried to burn metaphorical holes into the back of his skull. Watts seemed disinterested as the prosecution and his defense attorney whittled through the jury pool. Kaplovitz wanted to make sure that the jurors could dif-ferentiate between Watts’s previous murders and confessions from the murder that occurred on the night of December 1, 1979. Pendergast wanted to make sure that the jurors believed that an eyewitness may give vary-ing levels of information upon witnessing a horrific crime and later when the information had seeped into one’s subconscious.

Eventually the attorneys completed the voir dire and settled on a panel of fourteen jurors: the regulation

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twelve, plus two alternates in case of emergency or other extenuating circumstances. Among the six men and eight women were an engineer, a pharmacist, and a registered nurse. The jurors were allowed to go home so that the attorneys could file motions to delay opening arguments until the following day. The reason for the delay was that some of Helen Dutcher’s relatives still had not been able to make it to Michigan, but would be there the next day.

For some of those who were already there, maintain-ing control seemed to be a top priority. Jane Montgomery, for instance, seethed with rage when she thought of Watts.

“I’m not afraid of him,” she expressed. “I’m afraid of myself.” She further explained herself. “It was all I could do to keep from taking a butcher knife, cutting off both of his hands and making him sit through the rest of the trial. That would be a starting point to justice.”

On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, the starting point to justice began in earnest. Before Judge Richard Kuhn could ask the attorneys to begin their opening arguments, Jane Montgomery whispered to no one in particular, from her seat in the second row behind the prosecution’s table, “God, forgive me for my thoughts.” Prosecutor Donna Pendergast, immaculately dressed in a feminine business suit, stood up and confidently strode toward the jury box. She did not carry any notes with her.

“The defendant’s motive may remain incomprehensi-ble even at the end of this trial, [but] the evidence in this courtroom will reveal his identity as the person who committed the murder of Helen Dutcher in cold blood,” she said, with a none-too-subtle nod to Truman Capote’s “true crime” classic.

“You’ll see the most gruesome images available of a woman, literally butchered alive,” the assistant attorney general declared. “Slashed, sliced, and eviscerated, carved up, and left to die in a pool of blood. Unfortunately, this was no nightmare. This was real. What you are about to hear in this courtroom will terrify you, will horrify you,

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will haunt your dreams for a long time to come.” She drew out each word for emphasis. “Maybe for the rest of your life.

“It has all of the elements for a grade-B horror movie: terror, torture, a knife. This trial will tell the twenty-five- year-old story of the brutal and vicious obliteration of a human life.

“He spotted, targeted, and murdered Helen Dutcher in an act of brutality so diabolical, so monstrous, I guar-antee, it will chill you to the bone.

“True Halloween horror.

“Helen Dutcher was chosen for murder not because she had a relationship with the defendant or any pre-existing animosity,” Pendergast informed in a calm, even voice, “but simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“The defendant’s pattern and scheme was to target women who were alone”—Pendergast paused—“and Helen Dutcher fit the defendant’s plan just like the thirteen other women he admitted to killing.”

Pendergast began to describe, in detail, the murder of Helen Dutcher. “What is known from the physical evidence at the scene is that the defendant first had contact with and first cut Helen out in front of that establishment because blood belonging to Helen was found in the snow in the front of the building. After Helen was first cut, she was either chased, or, more likely, once you know the specifics of the defendant’s pattern, forced to the alley end of that same service drive. The same alley that abuts Mr. Foy’s yard. Same spot where Helen Dutcher would ultimately die, just inside the entrance, the alley entrance to that service drive, after being stabbed twelve times in the neck, the chest, and the back, but it wouldn’t happen without a witness. Joseph Foy.

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“At the end of this trial, when you leave this courtroom, you will leave it a changed person because you will have an understanding that evil can wear a human face.” She flashed the youthful picture of Watts onto a projection screen with a PowerPoint presentation. “And you will have looked, square, into the face of evil. You will have the luxury of doing that from the jury box. Helen Dutcher had no such luxury. She looked at evil up close on December 1, 1979.

“At the end of this trial, when you’ve heard all of the evidence, and when you understand all of the evidence, I will ask you for a fair and just verdict based upon that evidence. A verdict that says, ‘Mr. Coral Watts, it’s been a long time, but justice is a concept that never gets old.’” Coral Watts seemed uncomfortable throughout Pendergast’s opening statement, especially as she described the various murders he confessed to committing. He appeared to twitch his shoulders, and his face seemed to jerk involuntarily. To ease the tics, he constantly rubbed his large hands over his face.

Once Pendergast completed her opening, Judge Kuhn turned his attention to defense attorney Ron Kaplovitz. The attorney sauntered over to the jury box.

“Your role,” he addressed the members of the jury, “as I said, will be passive for most of the time, but at the end you will have the full responsibility as to what’s going to happen in this case. And at the end of this case, when I ask you to return a verdict of not guilty, you’re not gonna like it. You’re not gonna want to do it. It is not something that’s gonna come easy for you to do. And the reason it’s not gonna come easy for you to do is no matter what I do, no matter what I say, you’re gonna hate this guy. You hate him already, right now, there’s no doubt about that. I understand that. And I sympathize with that and I sympathize with

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the victims and the families in regard to all the other cases involved, there is no doubt about that.”

Watts’s defense attorney warned the jurors of his client while pointing directly at him with his finger. “But I’m gonna have to ask you to set aside that hatred, I’m gonna to have to ask you to look at this case harshly and fairly to determine what exactly happened on December 1, 1979, because that, in fact, is what is actually important in this particular case. No matter what you think, no matter what you want, the role that you play, that I play, the prosecutor plays, and the judge plays is to ensure that Mr. Watts has a fair trial. And no matter how horrific, how much you hate Mr. Coral Watts he must have a fair trial. It is a perversion of justice if Mr. Watts, is convicted of this case, if, in fact, the evidence does not support that he committed this crime. No matter what you think, no matter what you want to do with Mr. Watts, you have to follow the law and you have to look at the evidence in regards to whether or not Mr. Coral Watts is the person who killed Helen Dutcher.”

Kaplovitz then began to attempt to discredit the state’s key witness, Joseph Foy.

“You will hear a great deal of inconsistencies and un-certainties. It will become clear to you that while somebody murdered Helen Dutcher, and there is no doubt about that in my mind and there should be no doubt about that in your mind, there really is no significant evidence to establish that, in fact, Mr. Watts was the person who committed this crime.”

Kaplovitz also tried to lessen the blow of the 404 (b) evidence of Watts’s prior bad acts and his confessions that detailed those acts. “The evidence in this case clearly establishes he committed those murders and the reason he confessed to them is that he did them.” Kaplovitz laid it

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out very clearly that his client was no angel. “But the issue here is, did he kill Helen Dutcher? He confessed to those cases, but to this case, Coral Watts pleaded not guilty.

“The issue isn’t that Helen Dutcher died. The issue is who killed her, and the prosecution can’t establish beyond a reasonable doubt who killed her. If someone else did this crime, they would have done it the exact same way.”

Both Pendergast and Kaplovitz presented their arguments with clarity and succinctness. Their professionalism was broadcast live on Court TV with their opening arguments. Unfortunately, the twenty-four-hour “Investigation Channel” had other plans. Instead of sticking with around-the-clock live coverage of America’s most notorious serial killer that no one knew about, the execu-tives at Court TV opted to cover the Scott Peterson murder trial. Of course, the jury had been in delibera-tions for five days and the Redwood City, California, courtroom was completely empty; however, Court TV brass believed that incessant nattering nabobs of negativism were more compelling than the Watts case.

The Watts case would not be covered live from gavel to gavel. Instead, the country’s premier trial network showcased endless yapping from talking heads Lisa Bloom, Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, Nancy Grace, and Fred Graham, discussing the finer points of “jury watch” in the Peterson case and what the jurors may or may not be deciding. The network decided that feeding the American masses a story about a distraught couple and a tragic spousal murder was more important that the most dangerous serial killer in the United States and the fact that he could be set loose on the streets.