Watts, however, refused to answer most of Bunten’s questions. At one point in the interview, he did admit to Bunten that he was “possibly emotionally ill.” He did not elaborate.
Bunten believed he knew how to break through Watts’s steely exterior. “I not only know you did these, I know ‘how’ you did them,” he assured Watts.
The detective rose from the interrogation-room table, walked up directly behind Watts, and thrust his left arm around the man’s neck. He was attempting to emulate what he believed was Watts’s preferred method of attack. “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,” Bunten recalled. “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.
“I got up and walked behind him and said, ‘You grabbed them like this. Then you pulled their heads back like this’”—as he jerked back the African American’s head—“‘and you reached over with your right arm and stabbed them like this!’”
Watts began to cry. Bunten had finally struck a nerve. “He started crying,” Bunten stated incredulously. “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.”
Watts wanted to see his mother. Bunten, somewhat
EVIL EY ES 57
taken aback by the regressive emotions on display, decided to go along with it. He suspected that if Watts got to see his mommy, he would confess. He agreed.
“That was probably a mistake. After that, he wouldn’t say a word. It was all over.”
Coral Eugene Watts was no longer talking.
Officers had also drawn blood from Watts at the Detroit Receiving Hospital. The blood work failed to tie Watts to any of the crimes.
With no confession and no blood tie-ins, Bunten had no choice but to resume the campaign of antagonism. The officer would “accidentally” bump into Watts on a more-than- regular basis. He would walk up to Watts and blurt out, “I want to talk to you, Coral” in front of other people. He would follow him to the grocery store and when Watts would walk out of the store, Bunten would be there waiting for him ready to have him “answer a few questions.”
On March 10, 1981, Bunten was inside the Washtenaw County Courthouse when he noticed Watts chatting on a pay phone. Bunten decided to pay his favorite suspect a visit. He walked up to Watts and said, “Hi, Coral. You want to come talk to me?”
Watts looked up at his tormentor and said, “I am not interested in talking to the police no more.” He then dropped the phone and took off.
The pay phone swung from its metallic cord.
It was the last anyone saw of Coral Eugene Watts . . . for a while.
Paul Bunten drove Coral Watts out of Michigan. The suspected murderer packed up his bags and headed out of state the same day as the encounter at the courthouse.
He didn’t even let his mother know.
Watts’s first stop was Coalwood, West Virginia. He ran to his grandmother Lula Mae Young. His stay was brief, as he needed money, so he packed up and headed back to his original home: Texas. Somehow, he managed to scrape up enough money to buy a plane ticket.
Watts had asked some of his coworkers where the best place to get a job would be. They all told him Houston, Texas. Once again he drove off to get away from everything that haunted him, especially Paul Bunten.
Watts flew to Houston. He made plans to be picked up by a friend of his, forty-one-year-old Garland Silcox and his wife, Pat, who lived at the 7600 block of Lemma Drive on the northwestern side of Harris County, in the Chimney Hills subdivision. Silcox and Watts knew each other from working together at E&L Transport Company in Michigan five years earlier.
Silcox offered to let Watts stay with him until he got
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himself situated with a job and a place to live. Watts, however, declined because he did not want to impose. Subsequently, he slept in Silcox’s car for the first few weeks in Houston. Silcox also let Watts use his house as a location to retrieve his mail.
Watts began to look for work. He first went to United Transport, located on the 6500 block of Homestead Road, to find work as a mechanic and a parts man. One of his buddies from Michigan, Jerry Brock, worked there, and Watts hoped their friendship might open some doors for him at United. According to assistant manager Woody Meyers and maintenance superintendent Jerry Mooty, Watts applied for the job on March 23, 1981. He came to the company wearing a backpack. Meyers and Mooty did not hire him.
Watts next went for a job as a diesel mechanic at Coastal Transport Co., a Houston trucking firm, located on the 8600 block of Wallisville Road. Jerry Brock’s brother, William Brock, worked there, as did Watts’s friend Garland Silcox. Watts secured the shift of 4:00
P
.
M
. to midnight. Afterward, he moved into the Liberty Courts motel, off Highway 90 and Interstate 10. A few days later, he trekked back up to Michigan to pick up his trusty brown 1978 Grand Prix.
He felt safe.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Officer Paul Bunten continued his search for the elusive Coral Watts. He continued to call Watts’s family and friends to see if they had any idea where he went, but they all claimed not to have a clue. Bunten contacted his former employer at E&L Transport and found out that Watts had left a forward-
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ing address to receive his final paycheck. The 7600 block of Lemma Drive in Houston, Texas.
He finally found his man.
Bunten knew he needed to act quickly. He created a nineteen-page dossier, or case history, on Watts that de-tailed his suspicions of Watts. On April 8, 1981, Bunten mailed out the package to the Houston Police Department’s homicide division, where it was received by Detective Doug Bostock. Bunten added a letter that stated his belief that Watts was a serial killer—but he had no physical evidence to prove his theory.
The Houston Police Department (HPD) initially acted on the tip from Bunten. On April 15, 1981, forty-one-year-old Detective Bostock dropped in on Watts’s new job at Coastal Transport and began to ask terminal superintendent Jim Coats about his newest employee. The detective informed Coats that Watts was a suspect in several murders in Michigan.
Coats believed Watts was a decent employee when he first started to work at Coastal. He tended to keep to himself, put his head down, and work. In short order, however, he began to make many mistakes. His focus was lacking. The boss was ready to fire Watts.
Detective Bostock needed a favor from Coats. He asked him to keep Watts on board so police could keep track of his movements. Coats acquiesced to the officer’s wishes.
After two months on the job and with no progress made on the police’s behalf, Coats went ahead and fired Watts, who informed his boss that he could forward his last paycheck to Dallas. He claimed he already landed a job at J-R Trucking and would move in with friends from Dallas. Coats informed Bostock, who, in turn, mailed out
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a copy of Bunten’s dossier on Watts to the Dallas Homicide Division.
Watts, however, did not move to Dallas. Instead, Watts continually moved all over Houston, using Silcox’s home address on all of his job applications. He would move more than six times. Watts’s nomadic nature threw the Houston police officers off his scent. They were never able to locate him again.
By the summer of 1981, Watts had settled into the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Columbus, Texas, about seventy-three miles west of downtown Houston. Columbus is mainly considered a gassing up point for travelers coming into Houston from San Antonio or Austin. The tiny town resides “west of a lazy horseshoe bend in the Colorado River” and is also the former location of the legendary Indian village of Montezuma.
Watts found a decent job, with the help of two former coworkers from Michigan, at a company called Welltech, Inc., located just east of town on Farm Road 949. It was here that Watts worked as a mechanic and helped overhaul well service rigs. He started his new job on May 26, 1981.
According to former Columbus police chief Tom Wine, Watts liked to hang out at the local bars at night and on the weekends. Wine also stated that Watts wasted no time in hooking up with a young lady.
Wine could not tell that Watts was a bad man.
“If you met him, you would like him,” the affable police chief stated. “He was always a real gentleman. He would see you in the streets and say ‘Hi’ all the time.” Watts would even approach the chief and speak to him frequently.
“You would never have known what he was up to.”
*
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Eventually the Houston Police Department did not know what Watts was up to either and pulled back on their search for him. Detective Doug Bostock, however, made it a point to continue his search for Watts on his own time, often when he was off-duty. He was determined to find his man.
Watts, despite living and working in Columbus, did not stay away from Houston. He would often drive into the city on his days off—Fridays and Saturdays. He once drove into the big city on June 18, 1981, to attend the Kool Jazz Festival at the Astrodome. He even got several speeding tickets on his many trips to Houston.
Watts stayed in an apartment in Columbus for two months. He then moved into another apartment in nearby Eagle Lake while maintaining his job at Welltech. Police did finally learn that he had relocated to Columbus, but no further moves were made to follow up on the
suspected serial killer.
One of the reasons why nothing was done was due to political unrest in the nation’s fourth largest city. Lack of police officers, severe underfunding, and a general malaise from the Houston Police Department and City Hall contributed to a lethal time in Houston.
It was an unfortunate time to suffer from so many difficulties. Houston had recently gained the unsavory title of “Murder Capital of the World,” a title it unwillingly tussled over back and forth with—ironically enough— Detroit, Michigan. In 1980, there were 633 homicides. In 1981, Houston saw an increase of 68 homicides and raised its total to 701.
The city was a prime killing field perfect for a mobile, hard-to-pin-down individual with blood lust in his soul.
Perfect for a man like Coral Eugene Watts.
By August 25, 1981, Watts was hired to work for the city of Houston’s Metro bus system as a mechanic at the Milby Maintenance Facility. He would work the graveyard shift from 11:00
P
.
M
. to 8:00
A
.
M
., with Fridays and Saturdays off. He still lived in Eagle Lake and would commute to work every day in his reliable companion, the 1978 brown Grand Prix.
During that summer Detective Bostock still continued to follow Watts. He was even able to place a tracking device on Watts’s vehicle, just like Detective Bunten had done earlier that year in Michigan. Bostock was able to pinpoint where Watts was at all times.
When not working, Watts still hung out in the local Columbus bars. On the weekends he continued to cruise the city streets of Houston, usually with a good buzz brought on by copious amounts of alcohol consumption, especially his favorite, straight Tennessee whiskey.
The following month, on September 5, 1981, Watts had a good buzz and was aimlessly driving around Houston when he spotted a young woman in her car. The attractive white woman appeared to be headed west out of the city. Watts decided to follow her. Indeed, he followed
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her all the way, over 160 miles, to the state capital of Austin, Texas. When he arrived in the city, he got dis-tracted, lost the car that he had been following, and then found it again. He followed the young woman to an apartment complex on the 4500 block of Speedway, just nineteen blocks north of the University of Texas campus.
Linda Katherine Tilley was born on March 30, 1959, and raised in Arlington, Texas, near Dallas, by her parents, Joe and Carol. Linda was a very loving, relaxed child who enjoyed drawing and creating. She grew up into an excellent student and an excellent artist.
Her education took her to the University of Texas in Austin, where she majored in art. By 1981, her senior year, the twenty-two-year-old student spent the summer in New York, where she participated in a specialized art class at the Parsons School for Design. When she returned for the fall semester at Texas, in the last week of August, she moved into the apartments on Speedway.
Watts followed Tilley into her apartment complex. He silently crept up behind her and snatched her from behind. Tilley did not back down. She struggled with her attacker and flung both of them into the complex’s swimming pool. The former Golden Glove boxing champion was too strong for her as he held her head under-water until she drowned. Once he determined she was dead, he quietly exited the swimming pool, got back into his car, and drove all the way back to Eagle Lake.
The following morning, Austin Homicide sergeant Bob Jasek stated that Tilley’s completely clothed body was found floating in the swimming pool. There were no indications of struggle, no cuts or bruises, and no wit-nesses. No one heard anything. No one saw anything.
The Austin medical examiner declared that Tilley’s death was accidental. Toxicology reports determined that
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she was intoxicated. The assessment was the young woman likely had tripped, fallen into the pool, and drowned.
Two days later, on September 7, 1981, Coral Watts began his new job working for the city of Houston. He also kept his job at Welltech and would continuously drive back and forth between Columbus and Houston. He also maintained his residence in Eagle Lake during this time.
Three days later, on September 10, 1981, Watts attended the St. Paul’s Temple Church of God in Christ, located on the 400 block of Massachusetts Street, where he met Sheila Williams. Watts had been invited to the church earlier in the year and was introduced to Williams by a mutual friend during a homecoming dinner the month before.