Carl Eugene Watts

Carl Watts is also known as "Coral" and "The Sunday Morning Slasher."

Watts was born on November 7, 1953 in Killeen, Texas. His father was a private first class in the Army, and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. When watts was less than two years old his parents separated, and was raised by his mother. As a child Watts was described as "strange." Around the age of 12, Watts claimed that this was when he started to fantasize about torturing and killing girls/young women. During his teen years, Watts began to stalk girls and have believed to killed his first victim before the age of 15.
School was hard for Watts. He was held back in the eighth grade due to meningitis. He would receive failing grades, and was reading at a third grade level by the age of 16. He also was bullied very severe at school.

On June 29, 1969, Watts was arrested for sexually assaulting a 26 year old women. When Watts was tried he was sentenced to the Lafayette Clinic, a mental hospital. From a psychiatric assessment, Watts was revealed to have suffered from mild mental retardation. He would often have delusional thought process but very good memory. He was released from the Clinic on November 9, 1969.

Watts graduated in 1973 with a football scholarship to Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. He was expelled from Lane College because he was accused of stalking and assaulting women. He was also expelled because a lot of people thought he was the suspect of the murder of a female student, but there was no evidence to convict him.

Watt's serial killing began when he was 20 years old in 1974. He would kidnap his victims from their homes, torture them, and murder them. He would almost always kill white women (Watts was black.) He would kill females between the ages of 14 and 44 using methods like strangulation, stabbing, bludgeoning, and drowning. Between 1974-1982 Watts had murdered dozens of women.

On May 23, 1982 Watts was arrested for breaking into the home of two young women in Houston, attempting to kill them. While in custody, police began to link Watts with recent murders of women. Watts confessed and they gave him immunity from the murder charges and would instead face just a charge of burglary with intent to murder. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Watts later confessed that their were a total of 80 victims he killed. Police still think that Watts is a suspect in the 90 unsolved murders.


Bell, Rachel. "Coral Eugene Watts: "The Sunday Morning Slasher"." n. pag. Web. 4 Apr 2011. <http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/coral_watts/index.html>.


Coral eugene watts: "the sunday morning slasher". (2011). Retrieved from http://www.nndb.com/people/608/000071395/


Montaldo, Charles. "Carl Eugene Watts-The Sunday Morning Slasher." n. pag. Web. 4 Apr 2011. <http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/watts.htm>.