Evil Eyes (22 page)

Maday concluded with very succinct feelings: “I hate him. I hate his mother. I resent the fact that he has a three-year-old daughter who is alive and I don’t.”

The victims’ family members were not only frustrated with the plea bargain but with the Houston Police Department.

“I only wanted to know if she was wearing her contacts at the time of her death,” Harriett Semader exasperat-edly recalled. She believed the families received almost no help and no guidance from the detectives working the various cases. The official “blue tape” was thick and impenetrable.

“I tried going to Chief (Lee P.) Brown, the Beechnut substation, to (public information officer) Larry Troutt and wound up back at the chief’s office speaking to one of his assistants,” Semander detailed her frustrations.

“I wanted them to issue a public warning” (about the murders of young girls before Watts had confessed). “I was told that would start a panic, people would be frightened.

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Meanwhile, another girl was killed.” Harriett referred to Michelle Maday.

Semander mentioned how her meeting with the police chief Brown went earlier that month, where he stated that the murders were not the work of one person. “He said the media was just blowing the whole thing out of pro-portion.” When Semander asked Brown why Watts was not under constant surveillance, despite having been warned by Detective Paul Bunten, Brown responded, “If we were prophets, there’s a lot more we could have done. I’m sorry we’re not prophetic.”

Prophetic, no.

Pathetic, absolutely yes, as far as the victims’ families were concerned.

Michael Maday, Michelle’s father, was also disgusted with the Houston Police Department. “I really have seen nothing from the police from the beginning. No police report, no autopsy, nothing.”

Flo Maday spoke of directing her anger toward the Houston Police Department. In a letter to the
Houston Chronicle
, Flo wrote: “The tired tale of not enough police grows more tired when the Police Department chooses easy marks such as prostitutes, drunks and marijuana offend-ers.” She then slammed the officers themselves as looking for the easy bust as opposed to trying to stop a murderer. The grieving mother did not believe in quantity over quality. She concluded that having more cops would “only perpetuate the mediocrity that now thrives.”

Harriett Semander was furious when she found out that Houston police officers had been forewarned about Watts. “To think, my daughter was killed because a harassment charge might be filed against the police department. I was told (recently) there are other suspected killers walking the streets [because police are] afraid of

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harassment charges.” It was a miracle he was caught. That man could be walking the streets right now.” She added, “He was caught, not because we have an efficient police department. How can a man with an IQ of sixty-eight outwit our police?”

Coral Watts’s sentencing date was originally scheduled for Monday, August 16, 1982, before state district judge Shaver. The original date, however, was postponed so more investigators could question him. Assistant District Attorney Jack Frels noted that Watts had been cooperative. “We believe he’s obviously fulfilled his part of the plea bargain.” As a result, Judge Shaver rescheduled Watts’s sentencing hearing to Friday, August 27, 1982.

On August 27, authorities from Michigan, Indiana, and Canada continued to question Watts. Once again, at the request of Harris County DA John B. Holmes Jr., Judge Shaver postponed the sentencing hearing. The new date was September 3, 1982.

Before the new sentencing hearing date, discussions arose as to when Watts might be paroled. Ruben M. Torres, chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, explored the frightening possibilities. “If he’s never paroled, I would say [he could serve] somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years.”

Under the state of Texas’s “good time” provision, located in the Texas Government Code §508.142 (b)—

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PERIOD OF PAROLE—“Good conduct time is computed for an inmate as if the inmate were confined in the institutional division during the entire time the inmate was actually confined”; in other words, inmates are allowed to leave prison early without having to serve their entire sentence. This allows for crowded prisons to empty their bunk beds and bring in fresh new recruits on an ongoing basis. If prisoners behave behind bars, they will receive good-time days that will count toward their early release.

According to Rick Hartley, former spokesman for the Texas Department of Corrections, as well as an assistant director, the majority of inmates enter the Texas prison system with the title of “Class I” prisoner. Class I’s receive twenty days’ extra credit for each thirty days served. In other words, thirty gets you fifty.

“From that point,” Hartley said, “they can go up or down—up to thirty days extra for every thirty days they serve, or down to ten extra days for every thirty days.” Hartley added, “I’d say a large number of inmates are getting thirty for thirty. You’re getting sixty days’ credit, al-though you’re only serving thirty days.”

Hartley also stated that Watts could actually be restricted to the actual time served—if he misbehaved. “There’s a small percentage of inmates in the system that actually serve day-for-day time.”

In Texas, if a criminal is convicted of a violent crime, he or she is ineligible for good-time early-release credit. That could have posed a problem in the upcoming sentencing hearing for Coral Watts. The charge levied against Watts—burglary with intent to commit murder— did not necessarily fall under the purview of a violent crime. (To prove that a violent crime has been committed, the state has to prove that a deadly weapon was

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used in the commission of the act.) Watts did not use a traditional weapon, such as a gun or a knife, when he attacked Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar.

Judge Doug Shaver said, in regard to the deadly-weap- on inclusion, “We’re still looking into that. I will do everything possible to write the judgment to show Watts’s violent nature,” but he did not know if the Texas Department of Corrections would be bound to disallowing good-time credits.

The judge had one week to make it stick.

The following week, on September 3, 1982, at 11:15
A
.
M
., Watts stood before Judge Shaver. The atmosphere had taken on a more serious tone. Prosecuting attorney Ira Jones wore a bulletproof vest inside the courtroom. Apparently, the public dissatisfaction rose to an unaccept-able level with threats made against the judge, all of the attorneys, and Watts.

“All the people in the courtroom were advised to wear them,” Harris County ADA Ira Jones informed the media in regard to the bulletproof vest. Watts included.

Judge Shaver had also relocated the proceedings to a more easily securable courtroom. He ordered a metal detector to be set up at the front entrance of the courtroom. Thirty minutes before the hearing began, the judge had the courtroom completely cleared out and swept through with a bomb-sniffing German shepherd. He was not taking any chances.

Kathy Gregory, Meg Fossi’s sister-in-law, sat in the gallery, as did Harriett Semander. Watts’s girlfriend, Sheila Williams, also sat in the crowd. Surprisingly, two very conspicuous people did not appear in court: Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar. Lister begged out, claiming she could not take time off from work. It was unknown why Aguilar did not appear.

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Before the hearing Jones talked about Watts. “Our indication is he already is shutting up,” referring to any additional murders Watts may have committed. “He’s realized he might have talked too much.” The general consensus among all parties involved was that Watts would clam up once behind bars. Judge Shaver added that there was “some suspicion that Watts might shut up” after he received his sentence.

The time had come for the sentencing of Coral Eugene Watts.

The twenty-eight-year-old confessor of multiple murders slowly rambled into the courtroom dressed in a brown velour sport coat with thick grooves, brown shirt, and grayish brown dress slacks. He looked like a second-tier Billy Dee Williams, minus the Lando Calrissian cool. Watts took his place behind the defense table. He was flanked by Zinetta Burney to his left and Don Caggins to his right. Soon after Watts’s arrival, Judge Shaver entered the courtroom and took his place behind the bench. The judge wore a large white neck brace, due to a pinched nerve. The encumbrance would not hinder the judge in any way.

Zinetta Burney, Watts’s defense lawyer, hoped the proceedings would zip along quickly. She objected immediately to the presence of cameras in the courtroom. Judge Shaver let it be known that there would be no cameras during any testimony during the hearing; however, cameras would be allowed during the sentencing of Watts. A very unusual move in the pre–Court TV days of 1982.

Furthermore, Burney also objected to any testimony by witnesses in the hearing as “immaterial and irrelevant.” Her argument was that her client already had accepted the plea bargain and the hearing was merely a formal-ity. Judge Shaver overruled her objections.

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Prosecutor Ira Jones, uncomfortable in his bulletproof vest, stepped forward. He declared that the first witness would be Patricia Kay McDonald, Lori Lister’s upstairs neighbor and guardian angel.

McDonald recalled when Officers Schmidt and Domain knocked on her door in May 1982. She described the black man in a hooded sweatshirt. She described how she bolted up the stairs and into Lister’s apartment. She then described how she found Lori Lister.

“The first thing, the door was partially open,” she recalled. “I pushed my way in and heard the bathroom water running.”

“Did you proceed to where the water was running?” inquired Jones.

“Yes. I was in the area of the hall and looked into the bathroom and at that time I saw Lori. At that time I didn’t know who it was in the tub.” The twenty-three-year-old geophysical technician looked calm, cool, and collected on the stand—even with the gaze of Coral Watts drilling metaphorical holes through her like an offshore oil well.

“Is this Lori Lister?” prodded Jones. “Yes, sir,” McDonald replied.

“Was there any water in that tub?” “Yes, there was.”

“How did the girl appear to you?”

“Deathly.” The crowd of more than one hundred spec-tators drew its collective breath in like an asthma victim. “Her head was underwater. There was a blue coloring.”

“Of whom?”

“In her face. It was a very pale blue tint.”

“Did she have any type of thing around her head?” asked Jones.

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“There was some sort of gag twisted and tied around the back of her head through her mouth,” McDonald testified in regard to the restraints used on Lister.

“Did she appear to be breathing, to you?”

“Not at the time.” Neither was the gallery in Judge Shaver’s temporary courtroom.

“Upon seeing the girl underwater, what did you do, if anything?”

“First thing I did,” McDonald remembered, “I immediately lifted her out of the water, grabbed the ban-danna, or whatever it was wrapped around her head, pulled it out of her mouth and noticed her tongue was swollen. I then reached around under her arms and pulled her out of the tub, laying her on her stomach in the bathroom.”

“After laying her on the floor, could you observe whether or not anything was on her hands?” Jones asked, slowly getting comfortable with the environment of the court.

“I was amazed I could pull her out of the water just by grabbing her,” McDonald said with a look of bemuse-ment. “Her hands had been tied around the back quite well with a coat hanger. I tried to take it off, but I couldn’t.”

The crowd in the courtroom scooted forward in their seats.

“What did you do with her then?”

“I pounded her lower back.” What seemed like the entire courtroom finally exhaled as McDonald continued her tale of heroics. “I couldn’t remember any of the CPR or lifesaving measures. That’s the only thing I did. After a few seconds of that, she started coughing up water and a little bit of blood.”

“After doing this, what did you see Lori do?”

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“She started thrashing around, moaning, and groan-ing like she was still struggling with someone.”

Once McDonald completed her testimony, Jones passed the witness to the defense. Burney had no questions for the witness. McDonald stepped down from the witness stand.

Next up was medical examiner Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk. Again Burney objected to the testimony of the doctor as “immaterial and irrelevant”; again Judge Shaver overruled her objection.

Prosecutor Ira Jones questioned Dr. Jachimczyk about his educational background. The doctor received his degree in medicine from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He later served as the assistant medical examiner for the state of Maryland in Baltimore. He then served in the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, for over three years. He moved to Houston in 1957 and began work as the first forensic pathologist to the medical examiner. Three years later, he was promoted to chief medical examiner.

Prosecutor Jones asked, “During your course of duties as medical examiner for Harris County, have you come to examine few or many bodies with the purpose of determining the cause of death?”

“Approximately one hundred twelve thousand, as of the end of last year,” the doctor noted.

Jones directed the questioning toward the attack on Lori Lister. “Have you come to examine few or many bodies during the course of your profession to determine whether or not they were drowned?”

“Yes, sir, many.”

Jones showed the doctor a photograph of Lori Lister’s bathtub and also one of Lister.

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“If you will hypothetically assume that on May 23, 1982, an individual seized a young woman and choked her into unconsciousness . . . dragged her up ten concrete steps into an apartment and bound her hands behind her back with a coat hanger . . . then placed her on her back in a bathtub full of water. . . . Assume further, if you will, Doctor, that the depth of the water is such that it covers the woman’s face . . . that she has stopped breathing. Based upon those facts and your education and your experience, do you have an opinion as to whether or not that particular bathtub, with that particular amount of water, and those coat hangers were used in such a manner as to be considered, in your opinion, as a deadly weapon?” Zinetta Burney piped in with an immediate objection. She claimed that the doctor was not qualified to answer the question and that, again, it was “immaterial and irrelevant” to the agreed-upon proceedings at hand.