Watts confesses to 12th Texas killing

LOCAL

Watts confesses to 12th Texas killing

By STEPHEN CAIN

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Coral Eugene Watts, a suspect in the stabbing and strangling murders of some two dozen Michigan women, has confessed to his 12th killing in Texas in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

And there are indications that Watts may also have admitted to the stabbing death of a Grosse Pointe Farms woman three years ago under the protection of a written guarantee from Wayne County Prosecutor William Cahalan that such a confession would not be used as evidence.

Watts, a 28-year-old bus mechanic who fled the Detroit area for Houston 18 months ago, is the only suspect in the stabbing death of 44-year-old Jeanne Clyne, a former Detroit News food writer who was attacked while walking near her Grosse Pointe Farms home on Oct. 31,1979.

WATTS IS THE prime suspect in Ann Arbor’s three “Sunday Morning Slasher” killings in 1980, the stabbing of a Kalamazoo woman, the stabbing-drowning of a Flint area woman, the stabbing-strangulation of a Toledo woman and is considered a possible suspect in the unsolved murders of some 15 to 20 Detroit women, based on his methods of killing.

The latest admitted victim is Linda Katherine Tilly, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Texas in Austin, whose drowning death last Sept. 5 mistakenly had been ruled accidental.

In a chilling account, Watts told Austin Police Homicide Lt. Robert Wisian that he had spotted a young woman driving alone on a Houston freeway and stalked her the entire 160 miles to Austin, before losing her in an apartment complex near the Universitv of Texas campus.

The lieutenant said Watts then spotted Tilly, who was coming home from a date on campus, and jumped her just outside her apartment. They struggled and fell into the apartment complex swimming pool. Watts held her under water until she drowned.

“It would have been one of those perfect crimes,” Travis County (Austin) Medical Examiner Roberto Bayardo. “There was no evidence.”

Bayardo said he found abrasions on Tilley’s face and neck, but said such injuries were not inconsistent with an accidental drowning.

THE ALCOHOL LEVEL in her blood, which an autopsy showed to be more than twice the legal limit for driving, bolstered his conclusion that she simply stumbled and fell into the water, Bayardo added.

“She was intoxicated, which would have caused the drowning to happen faster,” Bayardo said. “It normally takes four minutes to drown, but when the person is intoxicated, it takes only one or two minutes.”

The medical examiner said he might have been suspicious if he had found scratch marks on Tilley’s face, or flesh or hair under her fingernails. She was fully clothed, and there was no evidence of sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, Grosse Pointe Farms Det. Eugene Field - the investigator assigned to the Clyne murder - has returned to Michigan after interviewing Watts in Houston, according to Houston officials.

A Grosse Pointe Farms Police spokesman said the content of that interview will be kept secret until Field has a chance to review his findings with the Wayne County prosecutor and that Cahalan will call a press conference “sometime next week” to announce the findings.

Cahalan, while not granting Watts immunity in the Clyne case, did stipulate – in a letter to Watts’ Texas attorneys – both that no admission made by Watts would be used as evidence in court and that no evidence derived from any such interview would be used in court.

WASHTENAW COUNTY Prosecutor William Delhey and Ann Arbor Police investigators Lt. Dale Heath and Sgt. Paul Bunten were denied access to Watts last week after Delhey refused to give the suspect immunity in advance.

The Kalamazoo and Genesee County prosecutors have adopted similar stands to Delhey.

The Associated Press also contributed to this report.