Coral Watts: Fixed in childish nightmare
CORAL WATTS:
Fixed in childish nightmare
QUOTE...
Birmingham psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Danto is a frequently quoted authority on suicide, editor of a new book of essays entitled "The Human Side of Homicide” and student of mass murder. Through both press reports and private communications, he has followed the unfolding story of Coral Eugene Watts, who has confessed to 12 murders in Texas and is the key suspect in at least as many in Michigan, including Ann Arbor’s three ‘‘Sunday Morning Slasher” killings in 1980.
By STEPLHEN CAIN
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Q. — Watts has a 13-year history of choking, stabbing and occasionally drowning attractive young women. Why?
A — He uses the knives as symbolic teeth.
The fact that he has one knife is offset by the fact that he stabs the victims many times and thus has multiple teeth. He does this because he sees the women as being possessed of teeth which will bite his penis ... the medical term for this is vagina dentatie. Coupled with this, his psychodynamic problem is the fact that he also views sexual relationships as assaults. Like the small child who has seen or overheard parents having intercourse, he assumes his mother is being choked and assaulted. That’s why he split off the act of intercourse from the act of homicidal assault. These two insights clearly show the regressed state which forms the foundation for stating that he is a paranoid schizophrenic. These two pieces of material, together with the diagnosis, are consistent with his lethal behavior toward women. He’s a little boy viewing women from the standpoint of the nightmare of what he perceives sex to be at that age. He is fixated at that level.
Q. — What types of incidents might touch him off?
A — If he even suggestively feels that a woman is going to assault him, in other words reject him, humiliate him or even be sarcastic with him, this reminds him of the basic fear he has of women. When this fear surfaces, he feels impotent. His only way of achieving balance with himself and mastery over the fantasy conflict is to employ violence and homicide. He has to prove he has survived the impending conquest by a woman, and proof of his survival is killing of women.
Q. — He told Houston psychiatrists that, when he was a child, both he and his mother were beaten by his step-father. Is that enough to account for what Watts has become? What other types of things happen to children who turn out that way?
A — It helps; this is added insult to the other injury. His mother is not strong enough to prevent him from being beaten nor does she love him enough. He sees it as rejection. Another hurt that was added to the list was his dyslexia and underachievement in school. He couldn’t compensate by succeeding intellectually. He was in fact smarter than he showed but could not be competitively successful. He was possibly humiliated by some teachers, likely women. It may be no accident that many of his early assaults were in Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, college towns.
Q. — He was diagnosed in Houston as a paranoid schizophrenic, pathological woman hater, someone engaging in a fantasy-world struggle against evil which he associates with unfaithful, deceitful and parasitic women. Is that consistent with his actions?
A — Yes.
Q. — He took small personal articles from many of his victims which he later destroyed. He wasn’t able to explain why he did this. One policeman suggested he was exorcizing demons. What do you think?
A — You can’t look to demonology for an answer. Taking something and destroying it is a final insult, a final act of power. It is very atavistic, very primitive behavior.
Q. — According to homicide investigators, Watts had maintained normal sexual relations with a number of women over the years. None of his victims were sexually molested. Is this consistent?
A — What do the police or the witnesses consider normal? I am sure he did not engage in tender, compassionate, feeling, intercourse. Probably he was mechanically functional in an effort to discover love and safety, but it never worked. Sex for him was an effort to reach out. He probably wanted to be like everyone else but couldn’t pull it off because of his disease. Lack of sexual molestation was because his assaults were anger reactions. The thrusting of knife, in this case, made it a purely violent instrument of death, not a substitute penis.
Q — He frequently attended a Pentecostal church in Houston but never sang or spoke in tongues. He also attended church in Michigan but describes himself as non-religious? Does this tell you anything?
A — Going to church – as in having intercourse with women – was really a reaching out to develop faith and control over his aggression that never worked. He has been estranged from humanity and caring for too long. He was as estranged from God as he was from women.
Q. — Watts’ I.Q. was tested as 75 and 68 in separate Houston exams. Michigan records list his I.Q. in the 90s but diagnose him as having dyslexia, a reading disorder. How smart is he?
A — He’s at least average intelligence.
People who are paranoid aren’t dumb. He was too smart, too capable in carrying out his crimes. He knew when to get out of town. He knew what he was doing and tried to escape. He is bright, but I wouldn’t go farther than that by saying how bright. Certainly he was not below normal.
Q. — Presuming Watts serves 20 years of his impending 60-year prison term and is released at age 48 without receiving any meaningful psychotherapy, would you judge him a danger?
A — Absolutely! He would be a danger even if he gets therapy. There aren’t many competent therapists who work with homicide. He is a high risk kind of patient.
...UNQUOTE