The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers

by Trevor Marriott

  On 20 April 1980 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, high school student Shirley Small, 17, was stabbed to death outside her home. A similar attack took place against Glenda Richmond, also outside her Ann Arbor home, during that summer. The 26-year-old manager of a diner was found dead with 28 stab wounds to her chest. The police found no evidence to point to a viable suspect.

  On 14 September, University of Michigan graduate student Rebecca Huff, 20, was found murdered outside her home. She had been stabbed approximately 50 times. Her case was significant because it was one of the first murders that would point to Watts being involved and thus prompted one of Ann Arbor’s largest murder investigations. However, it would be two months before the link between Watts and Rebecca Huff was made.

  On 15 November, police had a lucky break. Two policemen were patrolling the area around the main street of Ann Arbor around 5am. They noticed a suspicious man in a car slowly following a woman walking home. The woman realised she was being followed and tried to hide in a doorway, hoping the man would move on. The police officers pulled over Watts’s car and arrested him for driving with expired number plates and a suspended licence. They also searched his car and found several screwdrivers and a box with wood-filing tools. Yet their most significant find was a dictionary with the etched words, ‘Rebecca is a lover’, which belonged to Rebecca Huff. It turned out to be their biggest clue yet linking Watts to the murder, yet it still was not enough evidence to convict him.

  The police began 24-hour surveillance of Watts. His movements were monitored with the help of a tracking device that was hidden under his car. Officers hoped to catch him in the act so they could arrest and convict him. They were certain that he was the murderer they desperately sought.

  However, Watts knew that he was being watched and he suppressed his urge to kill or assault for two months. With no evidence to go on, the police ended their surveillance and decided to bring him in for questioning. He was interviewed for approximately nine hours, but by the end police were still no further forward. Eventually, he was released from police custody due to lack of evidence.

  At the time, police suspected Watts of at least two attempted murders and believed him to have possibly committed five in and around the Detroit area. In the spring of 1981, Watts moved to Columbus, Texas, where he found work at an oil company. He spent the weekend nights driving more than 70 miles to the Houston area, which became his new hunting ground.

  On Sunday, 23 May 1982, Michele Maday, 20, heard a knock at her Houston apartment door. When she opened it, a suspicious-looking man stood before her. Suddenly, the stranger attacked; he beat her and choked her into unconsciousness. While she lay on the floor, the man went to her bathroom, filled her bath with water, and then drowned her before running away.

  Later that day, Lori Lister, 21, left her boyfriend’s home and drove back to her Houston apartment. She parked her car and walked towards the front door of her apartment building. She was not aware that she was being followed. As she got out her key and approached the stairs to her apartment, a man with a red hooded sweatshirt suddenly came up behind her and strangled her into semi-unconsciousness. She was certain she was going to die, but managed to let out a small scream. The neighbours overheard the muffled cry and immediately called the police. In the meantime, the man dragged Lori up the stairs to her apartment where he confronted her room-mate Melinda Aguilar, 18. The attacker threatened to slash Melinda’s throat if she screamed. He then choked her until her body went limp. The man had no idea that she was just pretending to be unconscious. He took some hangers and wrapped Melinda’s hands behind her back and placed her on the bed. Then he wrapped Lori’s hands and feet with hangers. While Melinda was in the bedroom, the intruder went to the bathroom and filled the bath with water. Melinda waited for an opportune moment and then jumped off the bedroom’s first-floor balcony. She screamed for help, hoping that it wasn’t too late to save her friend.

  Moments later, the police arrived. The intruder, who heard the sirens, tried to escape but police apprehended him in the apartment complex courtyard. The neighbour who had initially alerted the police ran to Lori’s apartment and found her head submerged in the bath. Luckily, she just managed to escape death. Police identified her attacker as Carl ‘Coral’ Eugene Watts, 29, a Houston mechanic. When they asked him why he tried to kill the women, he told them that they had ‘evil eyes’ and he wanted to ‘release their spirits’.

  However, it was difficult building a full case against Watts because of the different methods he had used to kill. He never sexually assaulted his victims and chose strangers to attack. He rarely left evidence behind at the scene because he killed within minutes of encountering his victims.

  Following the attacks on Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar in May 1982, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Ira Jones came up with an idea that would prompt Watts to make a specific and detailed confession to the crimes of which he was suspected. Jones offered Watts a deal. In exchange for information and murder confessions, he would receive immunity to murder charges. Watts agreed and several days later he took police to the burial sites of three of his victims. Watts eventually admitted attacking 19 women, 13 of whom he said he murdered.

  Watts told police that he was responsible for the 1979 Detroit murder of Jeanne Clyne, although he did not admit to killing Glenda Richard, Shirley Small or Rebecca Huff, despite Huff’s dictionary being found in his car. He was more forthcoming about his Houston victims. He confessed to drowning University of Texas student Linda Tilley, 22, in her apartment complex swimming pool in September 1981. He also admitted to stabbing to death Elizabeth Montgomery, 25, one week later.

  Watts confessed to killing another woman just a few miles away on the same day Elizabeth Montgomery was murdered. Susan Wolf, 21, was returning home from a shopping trip for ice cream when she was stabbed to death several feet from her apartment. Watts admitted to another murder that occurred in January 1982, that of Phyllis Tamm, 27, whom he attacked as she was out jogging. Watts claimed that he choked her with his hands and then hung her from a tree branch with an elastic strap.

  Two days later, he murdered architecture student Margaret Fossi, 25; who apparently died from a blow to the throat. Her body was found in the boot of her car at Rice University. Watts said that he took her shoes, the blueprints she was carrying and her handbag and burnt them. Interestingly, Watts often stole items from his victims and burnt them, hoping to ‘kill the spirit’. He claimed that the reason he committed the murders was because the women had ‘evil eyes’.

  Watts also told police that he slashed the throat of a woman trying to change a flat tyre on the side of the freeway. That same month, he claimed to have attacked two other Houston women, one whose throat was also slashed and the other who was stabbed with an ice pick. Amazingly, all three women had managed to survive the fearsome attacks.

  Watts also confessed to the murders of Elena Semander, 20; Emily LaQua, 14; Anna Ledet, 34; Yolanda Gracia, 21; Carrie Jefferson, 32; Suzanne Searles, 25 and Michele Maday, 20. He also admitted to attacking three other women. Despite his confession, he was never charged with any of the murders because of the immunity bargain he had struck.

  Watts is alleged to have admitted to at least 80 more murders in Michigan and Canada. However, he didn’t give investigators the details of any of those crimes because he was not granted immunity for them. In the end, his strategy to receive the lightest possible penalty for his crimes worked. In court, he pleaded guilty to one count of burglary with intent to kill, just as he bargained for. He eventually received 60 years in a penitentiary, and made a chilling statement. He told the police, ‘If they ever let me out, I’ll kill again.’ They had no doubt that he would keep his promise, for he had long since lost control over his violent impulses and needed to kill to be happy.

  Several months into his sentence, Watts attempted an escape. He greased himself with hair gel and tried to squeeze out of his cell window. However, his attempt failed when he got stuck. From that
moment on, he adopted a more legal method for getting out of prison – he began appealing against his sentence. In 1989, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed his case. The Appeal Court judge stated that Watts, when initially arrested, had failed to be informed that the bath water he attempted to drown Lori Lister in was construed as a lethal weapon. Consequently, the court ruled that he was not required to serve his entire sentence. With remission for good behaviour, his sentence would be halved, giving him a final release date of 9 May 2006. With this, he would be considered one of the first self-confessed serial killers to be legally released in US history. During the interim period, he was eligible for parole. However, he would not be granted it. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused him parole on six occasions between 1990 and 2004.

  In view of Watts’s impending release, police in Michigan and Texas were working hard to find old cases in which evidence might have been overlooked. State police forensic scientists were also hoping to use DNA tests, unavailable in the 1980s, to link Watts to some of the crimes. It was clear to the authorities that should Watts be released he would pose a threat to society and undoubtedly kill again.

  At last, 22 years after Watts’s initial sentencing, new evidence came to light that linked him to a historic murder. In 2004, Joseph Foy came forward claiming that he had witnessed Watts murder a woman in December 1979. Foy had recently seen a television programme where an appeal had gone out to viewers to come forward with any new information on Coral Watts or his crimes. He immediately contacted the police and told them what he had witnessed approximately 25 years earlier.

  Foy claimed he had seen murder victim Helen Mae Dutcher, 36, struggling in an alleyway with a man who repeatedly stabbed her in the neck and back. Dutcher died moments later from 12 stab wounds. Foy went to the police station to report the crime and a composite picture of the attacker was drawn up. However, after an investigation the police were unable to identify the attacker.

  The police, now in possession of Foy’s statement, charged Watts with Dutcher’s murder and he was extradited back to Michigan to stand trial. If he were found guilty, he would have to serve a mandatory life sentence without parole.

  In November 2004, Watts’s trial began and he entered a plea of not guilty. There then followed various legal arguments about the admissibility of his original murder confessions. In the end, the trial judge agreed for them to be used as they showed evidence of similar fact and a definite pattern of behaviour.

  The main prosecution witness was Joseph Foy. The defence suggested that he could not have been close enough to make a positive identification. Foy was 25yd away from the suspect and it was dark on the night in question. On 18 November, the jury returned a verdict. Watts was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Helen Dutcher. Watts reacted to the verdict by rolling his eyes and shaking his head, whereas the victims’ families rejoiced after hearing the verdict and ‘embraced each other and Joseph Foy’. On 7 December, Watts was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole.

  Following on from this trial, authorities in Michigan started making moves to try him for the murder of Western Michigan University student Gloria Steele, who was stabbed to death in 1974. On 25 July 2007, Watts’s trial for the Steele murder began in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was found guilty and sentenced to a further term of life imprisonment.

  Watts was at that time incarcerated at a maximum-security prison in Ionia, Michigan. He died there of prostate cancer on 21 September 2007.

  ANDREW KOKORALEIS, TOMMY KOKORALEIS, ROBIN GECHT AND EDWARD SPREITZER, AKA THE RIPPER CREW

  It was almost a case of history repeating itself. Over 100 years had passed since the infamous murders of Jack the Ripper in Victorian London in 1888. But in 1981 in Chicago a series of grisly murders rekindled the memory of those horrifying murders.

  A serial killer, dubbed a modern-day Jack the Ripper by the media, was stalking young women in Chicago, killing them and mutilating their bodies. Like the detectives of Victorian London, police had no clues as to the identity of the killer.

  The series of killings began on 23 May 1981, when 28-year-old Linda Sutton was abducted from a Chicago suburb. Ten days later, her mutilated body minus the left breast was recovered from a field nearby. She had been bound with handcuffs, had a cloth gag in her mouth and still wore a sweater and knickers; both had been pulled down to her thighs. Stuffed in her socks was a small bundle of dollar bills, so robbery had not been a motive.

  On 12 February 1982, a 35-year-old cocktail waitress was abducted from her car. She had possibly sought help at the time of abduction. Her handbag was on the front seat and the keys were still in the ignition. A search turned up her naked body on an embankment near the road. She had been raped, tortured and mutilated; one of her breasts had been cut off.

  A few days later, the body of a Hispanic woman wearing an engagement ring was discovered. She had also been raped and strangled. While her breasts were not removed, they had been badly bitten. Her killer had also masturbated over her body. A psychiatric assessment of this crime pegged the attacker as a local man who probably loved animals and had a family. He also had a dark side that no one knew about, turning into a cruel psychopathic murderer at night.

  The next acknowledged victim in the series disappeared. On 15 May 1982, 21-year-old Lorraine Borowski was due to open up the office where she worked. When the other employees turned up for work, they found the office locked. Borowski’s shoes and scattered contents from her handbag were strewn outside the door. Police were called at once, but it would be five more months before her body was found, on 10 October, in a nearby cemetery. Advanced decomposition left the cause of death a mystery.

  Two weeks later, on 29 May, Shui Mak was reported missing from Hanover Park, in Cook County. Her mutilated body was found at Barrington on 30 September.

  On 13 June, prostitute Angel York was picked up in a van. She told police she had been picked up by two men in a red van who initially handcuffed her. They then raped her and tortured her, forcing her at one point to use a large knife to cut her own breast. This, she stated, drove one man into a frenzy. He cut her more and then masturbated into the wound before closing it with duct tape. They then threw her out of the van. She gave police details of her attackers but they were unable to trace them.

  The murders then became more frequent. On 28 August, teenage prostitute Sandra Delaware was found stabbed and strangled to death on the bank of the Chicago River, her left breast neatly amputated and her bra knotted around her throat.

  Rose Davis, aged 30, was found in an identical condition in a Chicago alley, on 8 September – stabbed, raped and strangled. A black sock was tied around her neck and her clothing was in disarray. Her face was crushed and she was lying in a pool of blood. She had been beaten with a hatchet. Deep cuts were evident on her breasts and her abdomen was full of small puncture wounds.

  Three days later, 42-year-old Carole Pappas, wife of the Chicago Cubs’ pitcher, vanished without a trace from a department store in nearby Wheaton, Illinois.

  On 6 October, police got their first break in the case. That morning, prostitute Beverly Washington, aged 20, was found naked and severely wounded beside a Chicago railway track. Her left breast had been severed, the right deeply slashed, but she was breathing and emergency treatment saved her life. Hours later, in a seemingly unrelated incident, drug dealer Rafael Torado was killed and a male companion wounded, when the occupants of a cruising van peppered the phone booth they were in with rifle fire.

  The details of the van and occupants as given by the two surviving victims proved to be helpful in making an arrest. Within three weeks, on 20 October 1982, the police pulled over a red van and questioned the driver. He had red hair and did not resemble the victim’s description, but the van was a perfect match. The driver told them his name was Eddie Spreitzer, and that the van belonged to his boss, Robin Gecht (b. 1953). The officers directed Spreitzer (b. 1958) to Gecht’s house and had him beckon Gecht outside. They hoped that he wo
uld be their man and, when he came out, he did indeed fit the description, down to his shirt and boots. Yet he acted as if he had no worries at all and was quite willing to help. Either he was innocent of these crimes or utterly arrogant, confident that he was untouchable.

  Gecht was an unemployed carpenter, aged 28. He was identified by one of the victims and police charged him with the assault on Beverly Washington. They also suspected him of being responsible for wounding prostitute Cynthia Smith before she escaped from his van. Gecht was an odd character, once accused of molesting his own younger sister. Authorities immediately linked him with the Ripper slayings, but they had no proof and he was released on bail.

  At first, Spreitzer and Gecht did not yield much useful information, but eventually Spreitzer appeared as if he would break down. He seemed to be genuinely afraid of Gecht. Police questioned Spreitzer yet again and he succumbed, feeling guilty about what he had done. Spreitzer’s interrogation produced a 78-page statement.

  Spreitzer first admitted to driving the van as Gecht committed a drive-by shooting in which a man died and another was left paralysed. Police quickly identified the incident. Then Gecht directed him to slow down to pick up a black prostitute. Gecht had sex with her, then took her into an alley and used a knife to remove her left breast. He placed it in the van, on the floor. Spreitzer was quite upset as he spilled out these gory details, claiming he did not like all the blood. He added that during such incidents, Gecht sometimes had sex with the breast on the spot. He also described how Gecht had shot a black woman in the head, chained her up and used bowling balls to weight her down in water. He believed that she had never been found. He also told how he had watched Gecht batter a woman with a hammer; the sight of this had made him vomit. But on another woman, he removed the breasts himself, cutting off both. He thought she was dead when he did this, but did not try to find out for certain. He said that Gecht had forced him to have sexual contact with the woman’s gaping wounds. By the time Spreitzer was finished, he had given details of seven murders and one aggravated battery.