Carl Eugene Watts

Finally, there was his reaction to sex. After intercourse, Watts would disappear.


"He would get up and leave the house," Goodwill told police. "He would just get in the car and go. He'd be gone hours and hours."

Police believe they know where he went. Between October 1979 and November 1980, at least 14 women were attacked and eight of those were killed in a similar manner in the Detroit area, in Windsor, Ontario (just across the border), and in Ann Arbor. The attacker either strangled or stabbed his victims. He never raped or robbed, and those who lived usually described him as a muscular black man, often wearing a blue, hooded sweat shirt.

One of the first women killed in Detroit was Jeanne Clyne, stabbed on Halloween in the suburb of Grosse Point Farms.

Watts was out driving, he said, when he saw her walking on the sidewalk. He parked, got out and crossed the street toward her, passing a group of children in trick-or-treat costumes. He approached her from the front, pulled a screwdriver from beneath his blue sweat shirt and stabbed her several times in the chest.

"She kept saying something like, `OK, OK' and she fell back on the grass," Watts later told police. "I just walked back to my car and drove away."

Clyne's killing showed less fumbling than Watt's Kalamazoo assaults. He was improving.

His marriage was deteriorating, however. His range from childish indifference to dark anger had become too much for Goodwill. She finally became afraid of Watts , left him and filed for divorce in January 1980. Watts was unperturbed. He moved back to his mother's home in Inkster, and the series of attacks continued.

They happened in the early morning hours of Sundays in Ann Arbor and began on April 20, 1980, with Shirley Small, 17. Small had argued with a boyfriend at an Ann Arbor skating rink late Saturday night and had walked home. She was found near her front door the next morning, stabbed twice in the heart, expertly.

A little more than two months later another young woman, Glenda Richmond, 26, was stabbed outside her home. On Sept. 14, a third woman, Rebecca Huff, 20, a student, was killed under almost identical circumstances.

It was too much for Paul Bunten and Dale Heath, two felony investigators in Ann Arbor, a quiet, picturesque college town on the Huron River, less than 20 miles but fully a world away from Detroit. Old, well-kept homes nestle under the trees that border Ann Arbor's rolling streets. Students from the University of Michigan jaywalk with aplomb. People wave at one another across the city square.

A murdered woman causes alarm in Ann Arbor. Three can cause panic, and this one already had been dubbed "the Sunday morning slasher." Police were without clues until the night of Nov. 15, 1980, when two patrolmen saw Watts and a young woman engaged in a deadly game of maneuvers along Main Street.

As police watched, Watts would drive slowly past the woman, then park just ahead of her. The woman would turn the first corner she came to in an attempt to avoid him, and Watts would follow. The activity continued for nine blocks until the woman ducked into a doorway and Watts lost her.

"He almost went nuts," says Bunten. "The police who were watching him said he got frantic, started craning his head around in the car, trying to see where she'd gone. He even got out and ran around trying to see her."

Watts then spotted the police who had been watching him, and he attempted to drive away. He was stopped and arrested for driving with a suspended license and having expired license plates. In his car, police found a box containing small, rectangular wood files. In the back seat was something that reminded Bunten of the Rebecca Huff killing, something Coral Watts would have little use for.

It was a large, collegiate dictionary. There were no identifying marks in the book, but scratched on its cover, etched there as though by the force of a pen bleeding through from a separate surface was the sentence, "Rebecca is a lover."

Bunten began dogging Watts . The detective finally had a suspect in his baffling murders and he didn't intend to lose him. A cursory check turned up the Kalamazoo assaults and Gloria Steele murder. Watts ' former attorney and psychiatrist told Bunten that, short of implicating Watts , they could tell the detective he need look no further for a suspect in those cases.

Bunten was ecstatic. He now had a target to focus his investigation on. He called a meeting of area police agencies and obtained a court order to place a tracking device on Watts ' car and a search warrant for his mother's house.

The search warrant produced little. Police found another set of woodworking files in the basement, this one used by Watts ' mother in her art classes, but those were free of blood traces. They found what appeared to be blood on a tennis shoe, but it proved to be untraceable.

And they made Watts wary. The tracking device was placed on his car on Nov. 29, 1980, and police began an around-the-clock watch on him, but he did nothing.

"He got paranoid," Bunten says. "He knew we were watching him, and the longer we watched him, the less he'd move around. He got to where he almost wouldn't leave his neighborhood."

For the next two months, there were no more killings of the sort police had seen in Ann Arbor. On Jan. 29, 1981, the tracking device was removed, and Bunten decided to bring Watts in for questioning.

"The whole thing took eight hours," Bunten says. "I used every means I know to get somebody to confess...He's so streetwise, nothing would work.

"He was nice. He was polite. If you can forget about what he does, he seems like a soft-spoken, timid but personable, pleasant person.

"I think I got close once. We knew the women had been attacked from behind. The killer had wrapped his left arm around their throat, then reached over their right shoulder and stabbed them. The blouses were pulled up at the front, and marks on the throat of one, just under the chin, came from a man's wristwatch on a left arm.

"Finally, toward the end of the session, I told Watts , `I not only know you did these, I know "how" you did them.' I got up and walked behind him and said, `You grabbed them like this. Then you pulled their heads back like this, and you reached over with your right arm and stabbed them like this!'

"And he started crying. Just broke down and started crying. It was the first real emotion we'd seen from him. I thought he might break for a minute, but he didn't. He wanted to talk to his mother and we let him - that was probably a mistake - and, after that, he wouldn't say a word. It was all over."

Watts ' life in Inkster was over as well. His anonymity was lost, and the constant police surveillance was frustrating. He began asking co-workers at the trucking company about work prospects in other states, and he settled on Texas and then-boomtown Houston.

Sometime in March 1981, Watts left Michigan. His first stop was in Coalwood, where he visited his grandmother. From there he drove on to Columbus, where two acquaintances from Detroit were working and he soon found work as a diesel mechanic.

Columbus was a hiatus for Watts . Paul Bunten and the worrisome Ann Arbor police were a thousand miles away. For the first time he was living alone. For the first time he had made a major move without consulting his mother.

"He didn't even tell her where he was going," says Lula Mae Young. "He'd never done that before. He'd always lived at home with his mother or stayed with me except when he was in college.

"She didn't know what to think. He'd just gone off and left his whole family."

He wasn't rid of Paul Bunten, however. The policeman had kept up daily checks on Watts and learned he had gone to the Houston area in April. Bunten immediately sent Houston police an 18-page packet on Watts , including pictures, fingerprints, vital information and details of the killings in which he was a suspect.

The packet arrived April 8, 1981, but Houston police couldn't find Watts . Tom Wine, then police chief in Columbus, knew Watts because of the crowd Watts associated with, but he knew nothing of the murders Watts was suspected of.

"As far as we know, he didn't kill anyone while he was in Columbus," says Wine. "We had no unsolved murders during that period. The strange thing is that, later, he always insisted there was one he killed here and buried, but we didn't have any missing persons either, and he couldn't find the grave."

Houston police, operating on the assumption that Watts was working and living in Houston, found no trace of him. A detective was assigned to check on him and found that he was working in Columbus, but nothing else was done. It was a time of political unrest in the Houston Police Department. A new police chief was to be hired, but Lee P. Brown had not yet been chosen. There were complaints of understaffed divisions, no funds for overtime, no time for investigations.

There were no continuous watches such as those in Michigan. After Watts moved to Houston late in the summer of 1981, a tracking device was placed on a van he owned, but it was later learned he was using a car he drove from Michigan. At one point - in November, 1981, after Watts had started work for the Metropolitan Transit Authority as a mechanic - a patrolman who lived in his neighborhood in southeast Houston was asked to watch Watts ' house during his time off. A few detectives spent their own time attempting to follow him, but learned little or nothing.

And Watts was busy: Elizabeth Montgomery, 25; Susan Wolf, 21; Phyllis Tamm, 27; Margaret Fossi, 25; Elena Semander, 20; Emily Laqua, 14; Anna Ledet, 34; Yolanda Gracia, 22; Carrie Jefferson, 32; Suzanne Searles, 25; and Michelle Maday, 20, all died at his hands.

Whether Watts killed during the three months he was living in Columbus may never be known. The exact number of women he killed in Texas almost certainly never will be. His first known Texas killing was that of Linda Tilley, a young woman he drowned in a swimming pool in Austin Sept. 5, 1981. During the next nine months he attacked at least 18 women and killed a dozen of those. He stabbed, strangled, hanged and drowned them.

And, finally, he was caught. It took bad luck and overreaching on Watts ' part. He'd already killed in the early morning hours of May 23, 1982, already followed Michelle Maday to her apartment, dragged her inside and drowned her in a bathtub of hot water, but he wasn't satisfied.

Lori Lister was supposed to be next. He'd spotted her turning into her apartment parking lot just before dawn, seen her back her car in and glance toward a nearby fire station before she started for her door. She walked quickly, but Watts was faster. He caught her just before she started up her stairs.

He choked her then, not enough to kill her, just enough to leave her senseless. He dragged her up the stairs, took her keys and opened the door.

And there was her roommate. Melinda Aguilar, standing in a bathrobe staring wide-eyed at Watts , who was only able to stare back. He recovered momentarily, forced Aguilar into her bedroom and bound her with coat hangers. Then he filled the tub and and lowered Lister under the water.

The rest happened quickly. A neighbor, having seen Watts standing over Lister by the stairs, had called police. Aguilar, her wrists still bound behind her, had made her way to a balcony and jumped to the lawn below, just as police arrived. Watts , realizing one of his victims had escaped, attempted to run.

He was arrested in a courtyard just below Lori Lister's apartment.

When lawyer Zinetta Burney arrived at the county jail a few days later, she expected to find a client whose rights had been violated. She didn't expect to be frightened.

"I thought I'd find a young, black man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and got arrested," says Burney. "When I got there, when I started talking to him and he started telling the things he'd done, I thought he was lying or crazy."

After listening to Watts for a few hours, Burney's attitude changed from incredulity to shock. Within the next few days she had gone to the police with an offer: Watts would clear a large number of unsolved homicides and plead guilty to a lesser crime in return for immunity from prosecution for murder.

Joe Ture Serial killer

Convicted murderer Joseph Ture was indicted by a Stearns County grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder in the 1978 shotgun killings of Alice Huling and three of her four children in their home near Clearwater.

The children, Susan, Patti and Wayne, were shot to death in their beds in the middle of the night. A fourth son, Billy, survived by lying still in his bed after shots were fired at him.

"I'm kind of relieved that it's kind of happening. I can't really say I'm happy, but just relieved," Billy Huling told WCCO-TV today in a telephone interview. "As far as timing goes, I think it all should have gone back 21 years ago, four days after the murder when he was first picked up. Why wasn't anything done then? After that came out, after I got information about that, during this last trial, it kind of upset me, just knowing of the other people he hurt."

According to WCCO, investigators believe Ture broke into the home to rape Susan Huling. Ture has denied any involvement in the murders, reports WCCO. Ture was convicted last year of the 1979 murder of Afton teenager Marlys Wohlenhaus. He already was serving time for the murder of West St. Paul waitress Diane Edwards.

Joseph Edward Duncan the third

Duncan has a long history as a violent sexual predator. His first recorded sex crime occurred in 1978 in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington, when he was 15 years old. In that incident, he raped a nine-year-old boy at gunpoint. The following year, he was arrested driving a stolen car. He was sentenced as a juvenile and sent to Dyslin's Boys' ranch in Tacoma, where he told a therapist who was assigned to his case that he had bound and sexually assaulted six boys, according to a report by the Associated Press. He also told the therapist that he estimated that he had raped 13 younger boys by the time he was 16.

In 1980, also in Tacoma, Duncan stole a number of guns from a neighbor and then abducted a 14-year-old boy and sodomized him at gunpoint. Duncan was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but was released on parole in 1994 after serving 14 years. While out on parole, Duncan is known to have lived in several places in the Seattle area. He was arrested in 1996 for marijuana use and released on parole several weeks later with new restrictions. Authorities believe that during his parole, Duncan murdered Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias in Seattle in 1996 and Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, California in 1997; however, both those cases went cold and were not tied to Duncan until after his arrest in the Groene case. Duncan was arrested in Kansas and returned to prison in 1997 after violating the terms of his parole. Duncan was released from prison on July 14, 2000 with time off for good behavior, and moved to Fargo, North Dakota

In March 2005, Duncan was charged with the July 3, 2004 molestation of two boys at a playground in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. On April 5, 2005, he appeared before a Becker County judge, who set bail at US$15,000. A Fargo businessman with whom Duncan had become acquainted helped him post bail; however, Duncan skipped bail and disappeared. On June 1, 2005, a federal warrant was issued for Duncan's arrest on the charge of "unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Do you know they're out?

Karla Homolka was one half of the murderous couple that haunted the people of Canada. Homolka, along with her psychotic husband Paul Bernardo, raped and murdered multiple women, including her own sister. When the couple was discovered in 1993, Homolka turned over evidence on her husband in exchange for a reduced sentence. She was released in 2005 after serving only 12 years in prison.

As one of the scariest serial killers in human history, Pedro Lopez was responsible for the rape and murder of hundreds of women in Columbia, Eduador, and Peru. He was caught in 1980 but only served 14 years in an Ecuadorian prison. Once he was released, he spent three years in a mental hospital in Colombia. He was declared sane in 1998 and released on $50 bail. Lopez is currently free and suspected of further murders in Colombia.

When Mary Bell was just 11 years old, she had already killed two young boys in separate incidents by strangling them and mutilating one with scissors. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1968. Twelve years later, when she was age 23, Bell was freed and able to change her name to start a new life. She won a court order that permanently protects her identity and that of her daughter – a protection for convicts now known as a "Mary Bell order." According to reports as recently as 2009, Bell had become a grandmother. 

In South Africa, Louis Van Schoor killed at least seven men who he claimed were burglars. After each murder, he'd be cleared by officials without so much as a caution. However, he was finally discovered in 1992. After serving only 12 years for the crimes, he was released in 2004.

Cannibal killer Nikolai Dzhumagaliev murdered and ate the remains of at least seven women (with the number probably closer to 50) in the Soviet Union. He was often known as the Metal Fang since he replaced his own teeth with white, metal teeth. He was caught in 1980, escaped in 1989, was recaptured, and then released after 10 years of psychological evaluation. 

Swedish serial killer Nikita Fouganthine (born Jua Veikko Valjakkala) killed three people in 1988. He was caught soon after and convicted of the crimes. Although he received a life sentence in a Finnish prison, he escaped in 1994. During his brief time of freedom, he held a teacher hostage but was soon caught afterwards. He escaped and caught again three more times in 2002, 2004, and 2006. In 2011, Fouganthine escaped from prison, and he has been on the lam ever since.

Italian serial killer Bartolomeo Gagliano was responsible for the death of at least three prostitutes in the late 80s. He was sentenced to eight years in a criminal asylum before the deaths of two of his victims, but he broke out with a fellow inmate in time to kill two prostitutes on Valentine's Day 1989. He said he was targeting people who spread the HIV virus. In December 2013, Gagliano escaped prison again in Genoa, Italy, and is allegedly armed and dangerous.

Norwegian serial killer Arnfinn Nesset worked as a nurse when he killed 22 people and attempted to kill more. Throughout the 80s, Nesset poisoned his patients with a muscle relaxer. In Norwegian law, the maximum time for a prisoner was 21 years; however, he only served 12 years of his sentence. He was released under parole terms, which have since expired. He is currently living under an assumed name in Norway. 

The Lainz Angels of Death, also known as Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Mayer, and Waltraud Wagner, were a group of Austrian nurses who murdered their patients. In most cases, they gave them purposeful overdoses of morphine, or forced water into their lungs. The exact number of people that they killed in Lainz, Vienna, between the years of 1983 and 1989 is unknown, although they confessed to 49 of them. Wagner and Leidolf received life sentences at their 1991 trials, while Mayer and Gruber were given lighter sentences on charges of manslaughter and attempted murder. As of 2008, all have been released from prison and are living under assumed names. 

Aleksandr Rubel killed 6 people in Estonia between November 1997 and June 1998. His methods of attack varied, but most of his victims were stabbed, beheaded, or had their throats slashed. Rubel was a minor at the time of his crimes, so he received a mandatory sentence of 8 years. He was released on June 8, 2006, and now reportedly lives in the Ukraine. 

Mika Muranen killed three people over a three-day period in 1994. His first victims were his Kotka, Findland-based neighbors, Reino and Sirkka Vulkko. He shot them with arrows fired from a crossbow. Two days later, on April 19, 1994, he used an assault rifle to kill a local mailman, Matti Olli. This led to an epic shootout with police that ended with Muranen's incarceration. He served 20 years in prison, and was release in 2014. He remains in Finland.

Wolfgang Abel and Marco Furlan killed at least 7 people in a violent spree that began in August, 1977 and ended in March, 1984. They called themselves "Ludwig," used the a symbol that was a combination of a swastika and a Nazi eagle, and traveled around Italy doling out their own twisted form of justice. The two were caught in March, 1984, and were sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1987. Furlan was released in 2009, while Abel was freed in 2013. 

Charlene Gallego, alongside her husband Gerald, raped and killed ten women, most of whom were teenagers. They were active killers in Sacramento, California, between the years of 1978 and 1980. Both were captured in 1984, and went to trial shortly thereafter. Charlene testified against her husband in exchange for a lighter sentence of 16 years and 8 months in prison. Gerald received a death sentence, and he died in prison in 2002. Charlene was released from prison on time, moved to the Fair Oaks, California area, and reportedly changed her name.

Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden are not traditional serial killers - instead, they are school shooters. In fact, they are the only school shooters in the United States who are not currently in prison. In 1998, they brought guns with them to Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. They killed four students and one teacher, and wounded ten other people. Since they were minors at the time - Johnson, 14 and Golden, 12 - they were only imprisoned until they were 18. Johnson has been in legal trouble since his release, but is no longer in prison for those additional crimes. 

Genene Jones technically hasn't been freed yet, but she is scheduled to walk out of prison as a free woman in 2018, thanks to Texas laws designed to prevent inmate overcrowding. Jones committed her crimes and was sentenced prior to 1987, so she falls within a legal loophole that lets her good behavior credit drastically reduce her sentence. Her crimes? She gave children under her care (she was a pediatric nurse) purposeful overdoses, killing many of them - although she was only charged with the deaths of two. 

Ken and Barbie transcripts from court GRAPHIC

The Bernardo-Homolka crimes – apart from their impact on the victims and their families – had a wide-ranging impact long after the trials concluded. The videotapes showing the rape and murder of their victims were ordered destroyed by an Ontario court. Bernardo's lawyer Ken Murray, who initially retrieved the tapes from their hiding place in the Bernardo home, was charged in 1997 with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice for failing to turn the tapes over to police. Murray was acquitted of those charges in 2000.

In 1996, a government inquiry into the investigation of Bernardo found that police had made numerous mistakes, that rivalries among police agencies had further harmed the investigation, and that some of Bernardo's crimes might have been prevented if his DNA sample had been processed and matched more quickly.

Karla Homolka served her full 12-year sentence and was released from prison in 2005 under a series of judge-imposed conditions, including restrictions on her movement and a ban on any contact with anyone under the age of 16. Those conditions were overturned by another judge only months later, prompting criticism from the Mahaffy and French families. Homolka settled in Montréal, where she gave birth to a son in 2007.

Homolka then lived on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe under the name Leanne Bordelais – along with her new husband, Thierry (brother of her prison lawyer Sylvie Bordelais), and her then three children. In 2012, after being discovered in Guadeloupe by a Canadian journalist, Homolka returned to Québec.

How do you give parole a bad name

 As if he was a victim, he stated:

"I'm ready to be released," McDuff, 52, said when asked by Warden Jim Willett if he had any final statement. "Release me."

He made no other comments, gasped several times and then exhaled before slipping into unconsciousness. 8 minutes later, at 6:26 p.m. CST, he was pronounced dead.

It was a quiet ending to a nearly three-decade history of ghastly murders that earned him the tag of predator and monster. He also was believed to be the only condemned man ever released from one of the nation's death rows to be returned there for another killing.

McDuff's 1st death sentence was commuted in the 1970s when the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional.

While McDuff asked for a final meal, his attorneys were at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a delay so additional tests could be conducted on hair samples that authorities said linked him to Ms. Northrup's slaying.

Both requests were denied. And the high court refused Tuesday night to stop the punishment from being carried out.

"I want you all to know I'm very glad," said Brenda Solomon, who watched McDuff die and said he "looked like the devil."

McDuff was put to death for killing her daughter, Melissa Ann Northrup, 22, of Waco.

"He's going where he needs to go," she said. "I feel happy. I feel wonderful."

Ms. Northrup was abducted March 1, 1992, from a Waco convenience store where she worked. Her body surfaced weeks later and dozens of miles away in a Dallas County gravel pit. Her hands were tied behind her and she had been strangled with a rope.

McDuff also had a 2nd death sentence for the 1991 abduction and slaying of 28-year-old Austin accountant Colleen Reed, and authorities say he may have killed as many as a dozen other people, primarily in central Texas between Austin and Waco.

Confessions John Hughes

"This defendant viciously murdered two people in two weeks. He stabbed

his first victim to death, stole his gun, and then used that gun to kill

another innocent man," Platte County prosecutor Eric Zahnd said in a

statement. "For the safety of society, it is good that he will never

live outside prison walls again."

Hughes admitted wanting to rob Kirilchuk, who he spotted parked in a

rest area on Interstate 29 north near Dearborn on September 8, 2008.

Hughes' girlfriend, Dana Tutor, allegedly went to Kirilchuk's

truck and told him she needed $100. Kirilchuk went into the rest area's

main building with Tutor. Once inside, Hughes forced Kirilchuk into a

men's bathroom at gunpoint.

Hughes tried to rob Kirilchuk, who fought back. Hughes shot Kirilchuk in

the head one time with a 9mm handgun at close range. Hughes took

Kirilchuk's wallet, which had $200 in it, and a cell phone.

Police arrested Hughes for DUI in York County, Nebraska. During the

arrest, police found the 9mm, which they used to link him to Kirilchuk's

killing. Hughes stole the 9mm after robbing and stabbing David Durben

to death in Zanesville, Ohio.

In an interview with KMBC, Hughes claimed that he killed

15 to 20 people. He also showed off his lion tattoo

(you know, he's a lion among men) and a biblical quote

tat about the Antichrist (yes, he thinks he's the Antichrist). 

Hughes will never see life outside of prison again. He pleaded guilty today to charges of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, and

armed criminal action. A judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is also serving a life sentence in Ohio. 

Tutor has been charged with second-degree robbery and second-degree murder. Her next court date is November 16.