“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded.
“And had you heard any information about this individual when you made your identification?”
“No, ’cause I had the volume down.”
“Did you know that he was from Michigan?” “No.” He emphatically shook his head.
“Did you know that he had lived in Michigan at the relevant time?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Did you know whether or not he was a suspect in any Michigan incident?”
“Nope. Just seeing his face and I knew it was him,” he said, and continued to shake his head.
“You said as soon ‘as it came on the screen,’ did this strike you instantly?”
“Instantly.”
“What did you do after you viewed the image?”
“Uh, that’s when I turned it up and watched the news program.”
“That was the
Nightly News
?” “Yes.”
“Did you do anything after making your observation and telling your wife that this was the guy?”
“Yes, like I said, it was around five o’clock, six o’clock, somewhere around there. Right away I called the Ferndale
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police and at that time the desk person told me that detectives had gone home and all that, and they told me to call back in the morning.”
“Did you call back in the morning?” “Yes, I did.”
“Do you recall, for sure, who you talked to?”
“No. It could have been [Detective] Sullivan, it could have been [Detective Robert] Geary, it could have been any of them.”
“After you contacted them the next day, the Ferndale Police Department, what happened?”
“I went in and again we talked about it and they said they were gonna hand it, the case, over to the Oakland County prosecutor.”
“Was there any other activity relating to you that you remember of ?”
“They kept in contact with me on a phone basis and they kept telling me to be prepared to go down to Texas to pick Watts out of a lineup,” Foy offered.
“And then did anything ever happen after that?” “No.”
“Now I wanna move ahead to January of this year, 2004. Once again, did something pertaining to this case occur?” Pendergast asked as she leaned on the lectern. “Yeah. I got home from my part-time job and I was sitting there listening to the wife telling me about her day and I’m just flicking through the channels and listening to her at the same time and came across a news thing with Watts’s face again, and I was like, ‘What’s he doing on TV?’”
“All right. And this clip that you saw, what show was this on?”
“The Abrams Report.”
“And when you saw that Mr. Watts was on TV and you
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made this identification, was this footage similar to what you had seen back in 1982?”
“Basically, yeah, it was him being led into a courtroom.”
“And were there other segments of footage that you had saw that you had seen before in 1982?”
“Yes, ma’am. You mind if I get some more water? This is kinda small,” Foy stated as he lifted up the tiny Dixie cup. Ron Kaplovitz doubted that Joseph Foy could so quickly identify Coral Watts on a television newscast back in 1982. On cross-examination, Kaplovitz wondered aloud, “A man walks through a courtroom door, one second, that gives you enough time, he’s the guy?” “That’s all I needed,” Foy confidently retorted. “He’s the guy?” Kaplovitz asked again.
“Yes.”
“One second?” “Yes.”
“The same person whose eye color you couldn’t tell?
Is that right?” “Yeah.”
“And on that video, you didn’t even have time to see whether or not he had a full beard or not?”
“I don’t . . . it was the eyes, it was his face. In his eyes I could tell it was him.”
“So, you’re saying to me, I just want to make sure that I understand this and make sure the jury understands this too. You’re sitting at your couch. You just got home from work. You sat down on your couch. You flipped on your TV. You see this video, and, instantaneously, you’re able to recognize the person’s eyes of someone you haven’t seen in two-and-a-half years?” Kaplovitz countered.
“Yes.”
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“That’s what you want us to believe?” “Yes.”
“Okay.”
“And if you ask the question again, I’ll tell you ‘yes’ now,” Foy defiantly replied.
And on and on, it went. Kaplovitz was determined to paint a negative picture of Foy, who was determined to convince the jury that he saw what he said he saw.
The first, most important day of testimony came to a conclusion. Outside the courthouse Jane Montgomery was asked if seeing Watts being tried finally for murder made everything easier.
“This never gets easier,” declared Montgomery, “but we’re hanging in there. You know what’s going to help is taking a killer off the street so he can never taste freedom or touch another woman again.”
On Thursday, November 11, 2004, the courtroom was dark for Veterans Day.
The day after, Friday, November 12, 2004, the trial against Coral Eugene Watts continued. If you planned on watching the trial on Court TV, however, you would have been in the dark as well. On the same day that Joseph Foy’s wives testified that he told the truth each time, and sketch artist Barbara Martin confirmed that Foy gave a vivid description of the man who killed Helen Dutcher soon after the attack, the Scott Peterson trial verdict came back.
The majority of the so-called “news” channels, including Court TV, switched their coverage to watch a bunch of people standing outside a courtroom listening to a broadcast of the verdict. The fact that a highly respected sketch artist displayed a sketch that
so
closely resembled Coral Eugene Watts—the worst serial killer in the history of our country—was overshadowed by the latest “trial of the century.”
In Ferndale, Michigan, however, it was “Joseph Foy Credibility Day.”
Barbara Martin testified about her procedures for
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completing a composite sketch of a suspect. She then indicated that Foy sat down with her for more than two hours and described the man he saw murder Helen Dutcher. She informed the court that she believed the sketch she drew was indeed a sketch of Coral Watts.
Martin’s testimony was followed by former Ferndale police officer Lieutenant John Marshal, who spoke about why no charges were filed against Watts back in 1982 for Dutcher’s murder. He indicated that Michigan authorities acquiesced to Texas. They believed that Texas had plenty of cases to keep Watts behind bars for the rest of his life.
“The case in Texas was such we felt there was no need to do so. It was not because of the credibility of the witness.”
The following Monday morning, Andy Kahan was concerned. First, one of the jurors was dismissed by Judge Richard Kuhn. Apparently, one of the jury members discussed the case with an assistant prosecutor from Wayne County, who informed Donna Pendergast, who informed Judge Kuhn. The judge released the juror immediately.
Kahan was also concerned about Julie Sanchez. He knew that the woman who had been brutally attacked by Coral Watts on the Southwest Freeway, back in 1982, feared this trial. Not only had Sanchez never flown before, she also had never spoken about the attack in over twenty-two years. Kahan hoped she could overcome these fears and make the flight to Michigan.
On Monday, November 15, 2004, Kahan’s fears sub-sided. He received word that not only would Lori Lister Baugh and Melinda Aguilar testify, so would Julie Sanchez. It was a day for Watts’s Texas survivors to exact some revenge on their monster.
Julie Sanchez was up first. The five-foot-tall woman quietly walked to the witness stand. Her head was bowed down and her long, straight black hair covered most of her face and eyes like Sadako from the Japanese horror
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film
Ringu
. The hair, in reality, was not her own. Sanchez donned a wig while in Michigan.
The slightly heavyset woman, dressed in a gray business suit with a black blouse, took her place in the witness-box. She identified herself, swore in, and sat with her head down as Judge Kuhn informed the jurors that the ensu-ing testimony fell under the purview of 404 (b) evidence of Coral Watts’s “prior bad acts.”
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Cameron stood directly behind the wooden lectern. He wore a blue-gray suit, white button-down shirt, and maroon tie. He seemed pale, thin, and had the beginnings of a receding hairline. In a monotone voice, he questioned Sanchez, “I want to draw your attention back to January 17, 1982. Do you remember that day?”
“Yes,” she calmly replied.
“Back on that day, did anything unusual happen?” “Yes.”
“All right, I’d like to talk to you about that something unusual that happened. Drawing your attention back around six-thirty in the morning, back on January 17, 1982, could you describe what kind of day it was?”
“It was a very cold day.”
“Was it bright out or was it overcast?” Cameron asked. “It was bright.” Sanchez nodded as she rubbed the tips
of her fingers together. “It was daylight.” “Okay, was it still a bit dark out?”
“Not real dark out.”
“Okay. Back around that time, at six-thirty in the morning, were you alone in your car?”
“Yes.”
“Could you tell the jury what happened?”
“I was driving on the freeway and I had a blown tire.” “Did you say a blown tire?” Cameron inquired.
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“Yes. And I pulled over to fix the tire,” Sanchez replied. She already began to appear disgusted and angry at the memory.
“Was this on a residential street or on the freeway?” “No, it was on the freeway.”
“Did you pull off to the side of the freeway?” “Yes.”
“After pulling off to the side of the freeway, what did you do?”
“I got out of my car. I went and opened my trunk. I got my jack out and I left my car,” Sanchez recalled as she slightly tilted her head to her right and toward the jury box, without actually looking at the members of the jury. She consciously kept her eyes averted from her nemesis, Coral Watts.
“When you say [that] you left your car, you left the car with your jack?”
“With my jack to change my tires. I took my spare”— she paused—“and I put it to the side.” She instantly bowed her head down and stared at her hands.
“At this point did you see someone unusual?”
“Yes, I saw a man”—she hesitated as she furtively glanced in Watts’s direction. Watts was not too concerned. He had his left hand underneath the right side of his jaw and was immersed in his own world of note-taking— “coming from behind me.” Her voice began to crack under the pressure of the pain of the memory. “I stopped doing everything that I was doing and I just stared at him and thinking he was gonna offer me some help.” Her cracked voice began to turn into audible sobs at each pause. “But he didn’t. He walked by and I could not see him anymore; then I feel like I was safe. And I got on my knees . . . ,” she stopped, bowed her head down again, and began to sob even more. She rubbed her teary eyes, with
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her left hand and began to sob some more. She then clenched her hands into fists and placed them on her eyes with, her head still down.
“Ma’am, there’s some water by you, if you need it,” Cameron offered.
Sanchez lifted her head, nodded, and wiped her nose with tissue. “I got down on my knees and I took off the first [lug] nut off the tire.” Again Sanchez bowed her head. “And I was gonna take the second one, I was attacked from behind me.” She sniffled. Then she began to shake and cry harder as she recalled, “I feel the knife cutting my throat from my left side to the middle of my neck. At that point I tried to get loose, I turn around and tried to scratch his eyes, but he wouldn’t let me go. Instead of that, he pushed the knife all the way down in.” Sanchez began to break down on the witness stand; however, Judge Kuhn let the questioning continue. “When he did that, I feel like he was, he was cutting
bones or cartilage or something.” Sanchez continued to sob, but she was looking up at Watts with more fre-quency. “It was so painful, but I was still trying to fight back.
“Then he cut me the second time, all the way around to the middle of my neck.” She paused for nearly ten seconds. “At that point I was getting loose from him, he smashed my face against the car, and I feel like he was pushing my nose all the way down into my face.” She continued her tears for at least thirty seconds.
The silence overwhelmed.
“At that point I tried to run away from him, crawling. But I couldn’t get out. I was in so much pain I didn’t have the strength in my body. I was losing too much blood. He starts trying to stab me. I had cuts all over my back. But he didn’t went deep down, ’cause I have a lot of clothes
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on me because it was very cold. And the second time I fall down and he stabbed me in between my legs and I kept crawling. I told him, ‘Let me go.’”
Julie Sanchez’s young adult daughter sat in the audience matching the tears of her mother.
“Did something happen that interrupted the attack?” Cameron asked.
“Yes.” She sniffled and nodded, her head still pointing down.
“And what was that?”
“My husband’s car pull over, and when he saw the car, he let go and then start running. And my husband saw me, he was in shock, he got real nervous. And I told him, ‘He cut me! He cut me! I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! I’m not gonna make it!’” Sanchez’s tears were even more forceful.
She brushed back the thick black hair of her wig and continued. “And he said, ‘Who did it? Who did that?’ He tried to follow him and I told him, ‘There’s no time! If you follow him, I’ll die. Get me to a hospital.’ I got in the car and he had a good chance to turn around and see me.”
“When you say he had a ‘good chance to turn around and see me,’” Cameron inquired, “who are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the man who attacked me.”
“Did you see the man who attacked you turn around as he was running away?”