Evil Eyes (3 page)

Watts claimed that his mother “beat him, hollered at him, didn’t act as if she liked me,” and that she also “struck him several times with a switch about the face.” Despite Coral’s protestations that his mother abused

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him, it is true that she helped him with his studies. With his mother’s help, Coral was able to overcome his academic struggles and graduate from Northeastern High School in 1973 at the age of nineteen.

Watts received a scholarship that same year to play football for Lane College, a predominately black college located in Jackson, Tennessee. He would play running back for the Lane Dragons. Unfortunately, he never hit the playing field due to a severe knee injury. Watts dropped out of Lane three months into his first semes-ter when it was determined that he could no longer play football. Coral moved back to Detroit and moved in with his mother and stepfather. He stayed in Detroit for approximately six months, where he worked as a mechanic for a wheel company called E&L Transport.

In early 1974, Watts returned to the Lafayette Mental Clinic for a checkup. He stated that not much had changed for him and that he was still suffering from the same problems. The psychological evaluation conducted on Watts indicated that he may have had problems with his sexuality and that there may have been hints of ho-mosexuality. Much was made of “primitive thoughts” and “fantasies” that “threaten to break through.” It was also noted on Watts’s evaluation that he had a “strong impulse to beat up women.”

Watts seemed to keep his impulses in check—for a while.

According to Michael J. Matthews, former director of information services at Western Michigan University (WMU), Watts enrolled in college courses on July 2, 1974. He was accepted under the Martin Luther King grant program, exclusively for minority students. He moved into Vandercook Hall, a student

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dormitory on campus, and shared a room with two roommates. Records indicate that Watts attended WMU to study engineering. Watts also secured a paying job in the university cafeteria for the Student Center Food Services Department.

The freedom accorded Watts did not help his desires. He slacked off in class and would instead spend his time in the dorm playing Ping-Pong and perfecting his couch potato skills. He also had plenty of time to sit and stew. His intense hatred for females only grew while in college. On October 11, 1974, Watts got into trouble. He was caught stealing plywood from the WMU campus. School police arrested him but eventually let him go and did not press charges. He never gave any explanation as to why

he stole the lumber.

On October 25, 1974, WMU student Lenore Knizacky sat in her apartment on the 100 block of Catherine Street, near campus. The time was 10:45
A
.
M
. She heard a knock on her door, which she answered by opening her chained door slightly. A well-groomed, handsome black man stood in front of her and asked “Is Charles home?” (Charles just happens to be the name of one of Watts’s many siblings.)

Knizacky informed the young man that there was no one by that name that lived in her apartment. “You might want to try some of my neighbors,” she offered helpfully. The man turned away from her and left. Approximately ten minutes later, he returned. Again he knocked.

Again Knizacky partially opened her door.

“Is Charles there?” His voice was a bit more urgent. “Would you like to leave a note for Charles?” the coed

asked. Before she turned away from the door to retrieve

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a pencil and paper, she removed the chain from its slot, which left the door open. The man seized the opportu-nity and forced his way inside her apartment. Instantly he pounced on Knizacky.

“He got on top of me and he put his knee on my chest and his hands around my throat,” she later recalled. He began to fondle her crotch. Knizacky let out a bloodcurdling scream for help. She kicked at her attacker with all her might.

“He was choking me. It was difficult to breathe.” The man choked her until she passed out. “I blacked out, but I vividly remember a shadow of him getting up and walking away.”

Just like that, the man was gone.

Four days later, Watts was spotted loitering around the Stadium Drive Apartments, at the 1900 block of Howard Street, at the southernmost tip of WMU. Several tenants complained that he had knocked on their doors and that he was looking for Charles.

The following day, at 1:44
P
.
M
., October 30, 1974, nineteen-year-old WMU student, and mother, Gloria Steele was found dead in her apartment at the Stadium Drive Apartments complex. The psychology student had been stabbed thirty-three times in the chest and had a crushed windpipe. Apparently, she had been stabbed to death with a wooden carving tool. The weapon was broken and lodged into her spine. Steele had not been raped, nor was anything taken from her apartment.

There were also no witnesses, except for an apartment resident who passed a black man heading up her apartment staircase. She watched the man as he knocked

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on one of the apartment doors. The woman called out to him and asked what he needed.

“I’m looking for Charles,” came the reply. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” came his forlorn reply. He then turned away from the door and left.

Mayola Steele, Gloria’s mother, had no clue as to why anyone would hurt her young daughter.

“She was very quiet, she was kind, and she wasn’t the real talkative type. I never had any problems with her going out to party . . . because she was always studying and she had a little girl to take care of,” referring to Gloria’s daughter, Chamice. Mayola also stated that her daughter, who graduated from Loy Norrix High School, on East Kilgore Road in Kalamazoo, had to study hard to maintain her grades.

“She didn’t really bother anybody.”

Gloria Steele shared her apartment with a bad man. Sam Waller, her boyfriend, had a serious drug problem. He admitted that he purchased heroin the night before Steele’s murder, but he added that he carried out his addiction in secret.

“Gloria was naive,” he later recalled. “She never messed with any drugs.”

Mayola recalled that her daughter had come back from a job interview that day. The interview with the Upjohn Company was a success and she had been given a job offer.

Twenty-year veteran WMU police chief John Cease believed Watts murdered Steele. It was almost impossi-ble for him to prove, however, because Steele’s friends and family members, including her boyfriend, upon discovering her body, cleaned up the crime scene and, in essence, destroyed much of the evidence, such as hair, fingerprints, or footprints. There was speculation that

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they also moved Steele’s body. They claimed it was not done to “impede the investigation.”

Gloria’s mother denied that anyone in her family messed with the crime scene. Mayola Steele insisted that “none of the family was up there.” She added that the police had arrived at the scene before her family did. “It sure wasn’t none of the family who went in there and moved everything.”

The medical examiner was the first authority figure to view the body and estimated Steele’s time of death between 11:30
A
.
M
. and 1:30
P
.
M
. Her body must have been moved from the time of the murder up until 1:44
P
.
M
. when the medical examiner arrived.

“They did it and unfortunately kinked us in investigat-ing for physical evidence,” stated an incredulous Cease. The police chief believed they could have solved the murder within seventy-two hours, but any evidence he might have been able to collect may not have been ad-missible in court. Police officers, however, did recover the murder weapon at the scene.

It was lodged in Gloria Steele’s spine.

Cease, who worked on more than 150 homicides throughout his career, described the Steele murder scene as “the most violent one I’ve ever seen. She was stabbed over and over and over again.”

On November 12, 1974, twenty-three-year-old Diane K. Williams, an apartment resident manager, noticed a black man absentmindedly walking around her apartment complex located at the 1600 block of Gull Road in Kalamazoo Township. The man was wandering aimlessly while “looking for Charles.” Apparently, it was not the first time the man had loitered on the property.

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At 12:12
P
.
M
., the man knocked on Williams’s door and asked her if she knew where Charles was. Like Knizacky before her, Williams gave the man a piece of paper to write on. The man grabbed the paper out of her hand and forced open her door. He then grabbed her by the throat and dragged her deeper into her apartment. He threw her onto the living-room couch and then to her floor. Again, as with Knizacky, the woman fought back. “I fought as hard as I could,” Williams admitted.

As the strangers struggled, Williams’s telephone began to ring. Thinking quickly, Williams managed to knock the telephone off the hook and began to scream for help. Her husband’s secretary was on the other line and could hear Williams’s bloody cry for help. The man panicked and took off.

“It was like my life flashed before my eyes,” the frightened yet resourceful manager recalled. After her attacker was gone, Williams stood up and looked out the window. She saw the man get into a tan Pontiac Grand Prix and speed off.

Williams called the police. She was able to identify the intruder’s vehicle. From that information police put together a lineup of eight black males who drove the same car. Both Williams and Knizacky were able to pick Coral Eugene Watts out of a lineup.

On November 16, 1974, Watts was arrested and charged with assault and battery in both the Lenore Knizacky case and the Diane Williams case.

Two days later, Watts admitted he was at the Stadium Drive Apartments on October 29, 1974, the day before Gloria Steele was murdered. He denied killing Steele and offered to submit to a polygraph test. He then demanded a lawyer. (Official police records indicate that Watts was released that same day.)

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Watts was arrested again, on November 21, 1974—this time for stealing the plywood from WMU. Watts kept his mouth shut and refused to speak to police. He was soon released on bond with no charges.

On December 6, 1974, Watts was interviewed by Ninth District Court presentence investigator Ronald Freemire. The twenty-one-year-old Watts admitted to Freemire that he had attacked at least fifteen other young women—mostly thin, attractive white women. He also claimed to have averaged nearly two attacks a week. Eventually, however, he clammed up and demanded a lawyer. Roman T. Plaszcak represented Watts and spoke with him for over thirty minutes to discuss his options. After conferring with his client, Plaszcak stated that Watts would like to commit himself voluntarily to the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital. Plaszcak also stated that “Watts should not be allowed back on the streets.”

On December 12, 1974, Detroit police officers executed a search warrant for Watts’s home on the 2200 block of Parker Street. They uncovered several carving tools, but nothing to tie Watts to the murder of Gloria Steele.

Less than one week later, on December 18, 1974, Watts was sentenced by the Ninth District Court to forty-five days in jail or the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital on larceny charges for the plywood thievery. Watts opted for the hospital stay.

Watts began to learn something about the legal system in Michigan: the mental hospital was his friend. His second extended stay at the hospital was practically a va-cation. He enjoyed the luxuries of shooting pool and playing basketball. He also was examined by a slew of doctors.

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Dr. James Katilius noted that Watts “has no special pre-occupations. He doesn’t believe in God. He has never heard any voices. No delusions. He doesn’t believe in ESP [extrasensory perception]. No suspiciousness. Nobody is against him. No gross psychotic symptoms noticed and all mental facilities are intact.”

Katilius was aware of Watts’s visits to the Lafayette Mental Clinic before the attacks. He was also aware that Watts believed he may have killed one or two of his victims. Katilius concluded that Watts suffered from antisocial personality disorder. “[Watts] is impulsive and unable to learn from previous experience. He blames others for his crim-inal acts.”

On the contrary, Watts was learning plenty from his previous experiences.

A few days later, on January 8, 1975, Watts attempted to kill himself. At least, that is what he wanted the doctors to believe. He grabbed a small cord from a laundry bag and hung himself. He was discovered by a nurse and cut down. The feeble attempt did not even render him unconscious. Watts was eventually released from the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital and received gainful employ-ment sweeping up a local church.

By late May 1975, the Gloria Steele murder still had not been solved. Captain R. J. Slater, of the Western Michigan University Campus Police, however, believed he knew exactly who killed Steele. He wrote, “As of 5/21/75 this case has been investigated to the point that this department has knowledge that one ‘Watts, Coral E.,’ a black male person, is the person that in fact killed Steele. This, however, cannot be proven with any type of physical evidence at this time.”

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*

Watts would make another visit to a mental hospital for another examination. This time it was leading up to his trial for the assault and battery charges against Lenore Knizacky and Diane Williams. In June 1975, Watts was admitted to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was examined by Dr. Elissa Benedek, who noted that Watts usually “feels good” after he beat up women. Dr. Benedek, like Dr. Katilius before her, did not believe Watts suffered from any form of mental ill-ness. She confidently stated that he was competent to stand trial. She also noted that “this patient is quite clearly dangerous and his potential for recidivistic behavior is great.” In other words, it was more than likely that Watts would continue to attack women if set free.