In Houston, Texas, on the morning of May 23, 1982, Coral Eugene Watts, 28, trapped two young women in their apartment. Only hours before, he'd killed another woman by drowning her in her bathtub. As Watts attempted to do the same to 20-year-old Lori Lister, her roommate Melinda Aguilar, 18, made a daring escape, leading to Watts's arrest.
Watts was a sadistic slayer with a lust for killing in a variety of ways: strangulation, suffocation, drowning, and stabbing.
He confessed to thirteen murders, but with no direct evidence to link him to the crimes, he managed to plea bargain his sentence down to 60 years for burglary.
Due to a legal flaw in the Texas criminal justice system, Watts was supposed to be released from prison in 2006. Through the ceaseless efforts of investigators and the mother of one of the victims, Watts was finally tried and convicted to life in prison for a murder he'd committed in Michigan in 1979. He remains the prime suspect in approximately 90 other slayings.
