Carl Eugene Watts (November 7, 1953 – September 21, 2007), also known by his nickname Coral,[1] was an American serial killer dubbed the Sunday Morning Slasher who murdered numerous women and girls over an eight-year period.

[3] He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life imprisonment without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele.

In the rural region near his grandmother's home, Carl learnt to hunt and skin rabbits with his grandfather at this time, an activity he really enjoyed.

Watts struggled to keep up with other pupils when he returned to school since he had been held back one grade and had experienced chronic sleeplessness as a result of his sickness.

[7] During a psychiatric evaluation, Watts was asked if his dreams and nightmarish visions disturbed him, he replied, "No, I feel better after I have one," and claimed that they were not nightmares because "he enjoyed them."

According to a psychiatric assessment, Watts was revealed to have a mild intellectual disability with an intelligence quotient of 75,[8] and to have a delusional thought process and no evidence of psychosis.

[9] Watts graduated from high school in 1973 at the age of 19, and was given a football scholarship to Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, despite his subpar grades and sporadic drug use after his release.

The fact that many people at Lane College thought Watts was a suspect in the violent killing of a female student—even though there was insufficient evidence to hold him accountable for the crime—was another factor in his expulsion.

In 1974, when Watts enrolled in Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, a string of heinous assaults and attacks on women started to occur.

[3] On September 6, 1972, Zenaida Tomes, 20, was discovered in a field in Taylor, Michigan, adjacent to North Line Road and Lange Close.

[1] The police assembled a line-up, and Williams and Knizacky recognised Watts, who had just been apprehended stealing plywood from the campus of Western Michigan University.

[3] After being diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and attempting suicide with a length of cord at the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital, Watts was moved to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Michigan.

[9] When Watts was questioned about the death of Steele in 1975, he acknowledged that he had been nearby the day before Gloria died, but he insisted that he had not killed her despite having admitted to attacking around fifteen other young women.

[1] When Detroit police executed a search order at Watts' residence, they discovered wooden carving tools but no evidence connecting him to Gloria's death.

His psychologists classified him as being extremely hazardous, lacking in remorse for his crimes, impetuous, careless, and emotionally distant, with a high likelihood of recidivism.

He kept moving the furniture around, using knives to chop up houseplants, broke candles and melted them into the table, and dumped trash all over the floors without picking it up.

[3] Shirley Small, a 17-year-old high school student from Ann Arbor, Michigan, was fatally stabbed twice in the heart outside her home on April 20, 1980.

[1] On November 1, "Angus," a 30-year-old woman, spotted a black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt as she was making her way home from a Halloween party.

[9] Canadian authorities also believe Watts crossed the border into Windsor, Ontario that October, assaulting 20-year-old Sandra Dalpe outside her apartment, leaving her near death with multiple wounds to the face and throat but she survived.

A task force was organized in July 1980 to probe the Sunday slashings, and Watts was placed under sporadic surveillance; a November court order permitted officers to plant a homing device in his car.

[9] On November 15, in the early morning, two police officers on patrol in the vicinity of Main Street in Ann Arbor saw a suspicious man in a car following a woman who was walking home.

Watts choked Jefferson into semiconsciousness, threw her into the trunk of her car and drove her to White Oak Bayou as she frantically tried to escape from the vehicle.

There he killed her and buried her body, then returned her car to the street where she lived.=\]][ Michele Maday, 20, was assaulted, beaten, and choked in her Houston apartment on May 23, 1982.

[3] In May 1982, after the attacks on Aguilar and Lister, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Ira Jones brokered a plea bargain.

Susan Wolf, 21, was several steps from her apartment when she was fatally stabbed in the arm and chest while going home after purchasing ice cream from a grocery store.

Additionally, Watts said to authorities that on January 16 he later saw Julia Sanchez, a young woman, attempting to fix a flat tire on a motorway.

[3] Watts also admitted to killing Elena Semander, 20, Emily LaQua, 14, Anna Ledet, 34, Yolanda Garcia, 21, Carrie Jefferson, 32, Suzanne Searles, 25, and Michele Maday, 20, between February and May 1982.

However, shortly after he began serving time, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that he had not been informed that the bathtub and water he attempted to drown Lori Lister in was considered a deadly weapon.

[14] In 2004, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox went on national television asking for anyone to come forward with information in order to try to convict Watts of murder to ensure he was not released.

Joseph Foy of Westland, Michigan, came forward to say that he had seen a man fitting Watts' description murder Helen Dutcher, a 36-year-old woman who died after being stabbed 12 times on December 1, 1979.