folllow up on TDCJ releasing serial killer story But they will not release a man who is within 3 months of death to die at home. Police hope to keep man in prison By MICHAEL P. McCONNELL ,21st Century Newspapers 01/31/2004 January 31,2004 FERNDALE - The unsolved case of a woman fatally stabbed 24 years ago may become the last barrier between a confessed serial killer and freedom.Ferndale police met with state investigators and a witness to determine whether a woman killed here in a 1979 knife slaying died at the hands of notorious killer Coral Eugene Watts, an Inkster native.Watts, 50, is due to walk free from prison in Texas in 2006 unless authorities can convict him of a killing outside of the 13 murders he confessed to in 1982. All the known victims are women and police suspect there are dozens more."He was a one-man killing machine," said Andy Kahan, who heads the mayor's crime victims unit in Houston, Texas, and has led a massive campaign to make sure Watts never leaves prison. "We've always felt Michigan is our only hope."The body of Helen M. Dutcher, 36, of Detroit was found lying in a pool of blood in a Ferndale alley behind a Woodward Avenue dry cleaner's one block north of Eight Mile at 9:49 p.m. Dec. 1, 1979. She suffered at least a dozen stab wounds in the neck and upper back, police said.A Ferndale man who lived nearby had seen a man struggle with Dutcher in the alley before backing out in a car with the lights off, police said.Police at the time did a composite sketch and the man,who now lives in Wayne County, met with Ferndale police, state police and a prosecutor from state Attorney General Mike Cox's office, authorities said. The witness contacted Cox's office after Cox appeared recently on Dan Abrams' MSNBC legal talk show on cable television in a bid for tips on killings connected to Watts, said Matt Davis, a spokesman for the attorney general."This tip looks good and we have a lot of followup investigating to do,"Davis said. "The (state) Attorney General's Office is vitally interested in making sure Watts does not get out of prison. We are looking for tips on some old cases, and we believe we found a good one."Ferndale Police Chief Michael Kitchen was with the department when Dutcher was slain."It sounds good," Kitchen said of the witness' tip, "and it fits."Cox's office along with prosecutors in Wayne County, Ann Arbor, Allen Park, Kalamazoo, and other jurisdictions are investigating at least a dozen slayings involving Michigan women that might be connected to Watts, Davis said."Watts is certainly Michigan's most malevolent and prolific serial killer," Davis said.Kalamazoo police said they expect to seek charges against Watts in the 1974 stabbing death of Western Michigan University student Gloria Steele, 19. Watts was also a student there at the time and had been arrested for assaulting a female student in the weeks before Steele was slain, authorities said.Authorities also suspect Watts might be the "Sunday Morning Slasher" who killed three Ann Arbor women in daytime attacks in 1980.Watts was a suspect in a string of killings from Detroit to Kalamazoo,but police were unable to build a solid case against him before he fled Michigan for Texas in 1981."He's killed dozens and dozens of women ... more people than Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy," Kahan said. "He was diabolically brilliant and went on for so long with no eyewitnesses, no evidence. He didn't leave anything."Plea bargain backfires First suspected of attacking a woman when he was only 15, Watts attended Western Michigan on a football scholarship and was an amateur boxer before he arrived in Texas, Kahan said. His victims were from 14 to 40 years old with nothing in common besides what Watts in his confession later called "evil" in their eyes. Nor did Watts favor a particular method of killing. He is suspected of choking,stabbing and even trying to drown victims.Large and muscular, Watts cruised for victims wherever he happened to be, ultimately preying on female victims of all sizes, ages, complexions and socio-economic backgrounds, Kahan said. "During his confessions he said he would pick out his victims by the look in their eyes," Kahan said. "He would want to extinguish the 'evil'in them."Houston police arrested Watts when they caught him fleeing an apartment where he had tried and failed to kill two female roommates in 1982.With no evidence to convict Watts of killing anyone, Texas and Wayne County authorities granted Watts immunity when he confessed to killing 12 women in Texas and Detroit News reporter Jeanne Clyne in Grosse Pointe Farms on Oct. 31, 1979. The immunity deal was granted in exchange for Watts pleading guilty to a 60-year sentence in Texas for burglary with intent to commit murder. Prosecutors believed the conviction would keep Watts in prison until at least 2035 when he would be in his 80s. But Texas law dictates that Watts has to be released by January 2006 unless he loses credits for good behavior. Now serving his time in a Huntsville, Texas, prison, Watts has been denied early parole but has to be let free in less than two years unless authorities can bring new charges.If prosecutors fail, Watts would become the only known serial killer ever to leave prison alive. Kahan started a quest in 1992 to put Watts behind bars for life. He says the Inkster native is the most diabolical killer in U.S. history.And Michigan authorities are the only - and last - way to keep him off the streets."We're looking for your state to be our knight in shining armor," Kahan said. Texas authorities already have a plan for Watts' release, with a level of supervision unprecedented in the American legal system."Basically, we're going to 'Hannibal Lector-ize' him," Kahan said."He'll be under the highest level of supervision known to mankind, he'll be under a 24-hour surveillance, he'll be escorted every place he goes."Old cases, new tips The attorney general's office is still taking tips on a hotline at (517)373-1110. Davis said that while police and prosecutors don't have a definitive number of killings they can connect to Watts, they are looking at whether he was in particular areas where slayings occurred as they sift through tips."We'll consider first whether he had the opportunity, then try to develop other facts from there," Davis said.With so many different jurisdictions involved, Davis said he expects the attorney general's office will assign a prosecutor to whatever case or cases present the best hope for a conviction against Watts.State Assistant Attorney General Donna Pendergast, a former assistant prosecutor in Oakland and Wayne counties, is working with state police and others as they re-examine killings in southern Michigan. She was among those who interviewed the witness in Ferndale from the 1979 Helen M. Dutcher slaying.Pendergast referred all questions to Davis.The witness was in his early 20s at the time, police said, and Davis acknowledged the difficulty of trying a case a quarter of a century after the fact. "It involves old cases, old physical evidence, records and memories of witnesses," he said. "We'll go to trial where we have the best evidence.The bottom line is keeping Watts in prison."(Michael P. McConnell is a staff writer at The Daily Tribune in Royal Oak. Daily Tribune staff writer Christy Strawser contributed to this report.)The Oakland Press 2004