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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/ap11-08-075125.asp?t=apnew&vts=11820041249

 

Jury selected as trial of admitted serial killer opens

By SARAH KARUSH
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PONTIAC, Mich., Nov. 8 - A murder trial got under way Monday for a man who 
confessed to 13 slayings in the early 1980s but received a sentence that will 
release him from prison in two years.

 

     Coral Eugene Watts, 51, is charged with the murder of a 14th woman, 
Helen Dutcher, whose body was found in an alley in 1979. If convicted, 
<>Watts faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. 
Michigan does not have the death penalty. 
       A jury was selected Monday and opening arguments were to begin Tuesday 
in the trial, which was expected to last two weeks. 
       Watts confessed to the 13 killings in 1982 in a deal with Texas 
prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty to a lesser charge of burglary 
with intent to murder if he helped officials solve his crimes. He is set to 
be freed in April 2006. 
       Prosecutors had no evidence of Watts' involvement in the slayings. The 
killer wore a hood, picked his victims at random, struck quickly and left 
little or no physical evidence behind. 
       The families of Watts' victims pushed for a plea bargain, saying they 
wanted to know what happened to their loved ones. Twelve of those killings 
took place in Texas and the other one - not Dutcher - was in Michigan. 
       At the time, prosecutors expected Watts would serve 60 years, which 
would have meant he would either die behind bars or be in his 80s when he was 
freed. But an appeals court ruling and mandatory release laws lopped more 
than 35 years off his sentence. 
       In Dutcher's case, Oakland County Circuit Judge Richard Kuhn has ruled 
that Watts' decades-old confession can be admitted in his trial, saying the 
other 13 killings show a pattern of behavior. He has not confessed to the 
Dutcher slaying. 
       Defense attorney Ronald Kaplovitz had fought to keep the confession 
out. 
       Prosecutors also have a key witness, Joseph Foy, who says he saw the 
killing from his back porch. 
       Foy said he told police years ago what he saw, but the killing of 
Dutcher remained unsolved. He resurfaced in January after he saw Michigan 
Attorney General Mike Cox on television appealing for help in solving the 
case. 



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