Full Circle

by Donna Pendergast

“Oh, my God, it was him,” I thought to myself as a cold shiver ran down my spine one afternoon at work in 2002.

The memories all flooded back in a rush. “Oh, my God, it was him.”

The time was the school year starting in the fall of 1980. The place was the University of Michigan campus located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The climate was one of tension and fear.

I was a senior at the university and lived at South Quad, one of the largest dormitories on campus. I was a resident advisor (RA) on the fifth floor of the dorm and got free room and board for acting as an advisor/mentor to all the students on my assigned hallway. Every one of them was an incoming freshman that fall semester. Their names, for the most part, have now long since faded from memory, but I’m sure that there is one memory we all still retain and that is the memory of being in fear. A killer who would be dubbed the “Sunday Morning Slasher” was killing women on and near campus and the campus was in a state of high alert.

As a Resident Advisor it was my job, amongst other things, to make sure that the girls on my hallway took safety seriously. That year the job was easy. There was a shadow over the campus, four women had been killed and everyone was scared.

We all went about our normal campus activities but there were signs of tension everywhere. I kept a sign up sheet outside my dorm to pair women up for night time excursions to the library and other campus events. The men in the dorm were volunteering to escort women to and from nighttime activities. Another volunteer service was posting a phone number all around campus that women could call for a free ride if they got caught out after dark. If you were a female and you lived in Ann Arbor that year, plain and simple, you didn’t walk alone at night. A killer of women was out there and although then nameless he was very real to everyone on campus.

I foolishly risked a nighttime walk only once that year and I still remember that walk like it was yesterday. Caught late at night at an athlete’s party that had degenerated into a rowdy free for all, I wanted to go home and my friends wanted to stay. They stayed behind and I left risking a mile long walk home at 2:00 am. I remember the fear and jitters as I looked over my shoulder every two steps as I walked home through a desolate area of campus on that dark night. I was lucky, I made it back to the dorm safely. I never knew how lucky until many years later.

Fast forward some twenty two years later. The former Resident Advisor is now a prosecutor working in the Wayne County, Michigan, Prosecutors office. I was the Principal Trial Lawyer and a supervisor in the Homicide Unit the day I got a fateful call that was about to bring all those long suppressed frightening memories rushing back in a flash.

A reporter from Texas called the prosecutors office wondering what the state of Michigan was doing about Coral Eugene Watts. Coral Eugene who? I thought as I began the research to find out what I could about this serial murderer who was allegedly going to be released from prison in Texas. What I was about to find out was far more frightening and horrific than any of us had ever dreamed of back in the school year of 1980 - 1981.

Some twenty two years later the Sunday Morning Slasher now had a name to me, Coral Eugene Watts, (pictured right) and what I was about to learn about Coral Eugene Watts was far scarier than the plot of any grade B horror movie. Coral Eugene Watts had been the nameless, faceless killer of my senior year. It had been him lurking in the campus shadows and he was a diabolical killing machine.

As it turns out, unbeknown to most of the students on campus, the Ann Arbor police had focused on Coral Eugene Watts at some point during that frightening school year after watching him follow a lone women walking on campus late one night. In fact, the subsequent dogged police surveillance of Watts caused him to leave Ann Arbor and head for Texas in March of 1981.

The Sunday Morning Slasher had left the University of Michigan campus but he wasn’t done with coeds and he wasn’t done killing. The trail that he left behind in Michigan was a bloody one. To this day we don’t know how many women were killed in Michigan but we know that there were many. After later being apprehended he admitted to one murder in Michigan but the police consider him to be the suspect in dozens more including the four women murdered in Ann Arbor. The trail that he was about to leave in Texas would become bloodier yet.

The police now believe that Coral Eugene Watts may have been the most prolific serial murderer in the history of the United States. This post would be pages and pages long if I were to attempt in any way to give you a taste of the monster that was Coral Eugene Watts. Suffice to say that his trail of murder and destruction almost defies comprehension.

After leaving Michigan, Watts surfaced in the Houston, Texas, area where he would begin a killing spree that would end only after he was apprehended in May of 1982. Between September of 1981 and May of 1982 Watts killed at least twelve women and probably many more than that. On the day of his apprehension Watts had already killed a 21 year old woman as she was returning home from her birthday celebration. A short time later he was in the process of killing two young women in their apartment when one of them dove off a second floor balcony to escape him. This caused Watts to flee right into the arms of police who were responding to calls about commotion in the apartment.

After Watts was apprehended the District Attorney in Houston and the police department made a plea bargain with him in an effort to resolve a number of open missing persons and murder cases that they couldn’t prove but believed were tied to Watts. After receiving full immunity Watts confessed to twelve Texas murders in great detail. He later led police to all the murder locations and to several undiscovered bodies as well.

Pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement Coral Eugene Watts pled guilty to Aggravated Burglary in the case of the two roommates. He was sentenced to sixty years in prison by a reluctant judge, the Honorable Douglas Shaver. The judge went along with the plea bargain because he understood the prosecution and police dilemma. Without Watts’ confession the crimes would have never been solved, but Watts wouldn’t give a statement without immunity for the murders. The sixty year sentence was a reassurance to everyone that Watts would spend the rest of his life in prison. Judge Shaver said at sentencing that it was his suggestion to the Department of Corrections that he be made to serve each and every minute of the sixty years that he had been sentenced to.

It wasn’t a perfect result but a monster was off the streets and everyone could breathe a sigh of relief –or could they?

Fast forward to September of 2002. Watts is scheduled for release from the Texas Department of Corrections in May 2006 because of the quintessential “technicality” one always hears about when they find out about a criminal getting off after committing a crime. This technicality is too complex to go in depth about in this post, suffice to say that it was based on a legal nuance that no one had ever anticipated or prepared for.

By the time I hear about the case, the state of Texas had exhausted all of it’s options to keep Watts in prison. Texas was looking to Michigan to review old cases where Watts was a suspect to see if anything was overlooked and whether there might be a viable Michigan case still out there.

After learning what I could about the monster that was Coral Eugene Watts, I called the Michigan State Police. An informal task force was formed to comb through almost two hundred old Michigan cases that were possibly tied to Watts. This informal task force contained myself from the Wayne County Prosecutors office and others. I was a participant because the bulk of cases suspected to be tied to Watts were from the Detroit area, which is within the jurisdiction of Wayne County. The Michigan State police and the Michigan Attorney General’s office were also a part of the task force, as were law enforcement members from various localities where murders suspected to be tied to Watts were located.

The task force effort was a frustrating one. We knew that Watts had committed a number of murders but we did not have sufficient proof to charge him on any of the cases. Lt. Bill Hanger of the Michigan State Police continued to comb through the cases but the clock was ticking towards May 2006 and nothing was screaming out on any of the cases other than the ticking clock. I began to dread the calls from Andy Kahan, the head of the Crime Victim’s Assistance Unit for the Mayors office in Houston because I had no good news to tell him.

I changed jobs from the Wayne County Prosecutors office to the Michigan Attorney General’s office in August of 2003, but I couldn’t escape Coral Eugene Watts or Andy Kahan. I took over the job of the lawyer handling the Michigan Attorney General’s end of the Watts' case so it was still mine just in a different forum.

TICK, TICK, TICK,…

A fortuitous break was about to occur much to everyone’s surprise.

On January 15, 2004, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox went on national TV on The Abrams Report to talk about Coral Eugene Watts and the ticking clock. The phone number to the Michigan Attorney General’s office Criminal Division was running across the bottom of the screen asking for persons to call if they had any information.

Call it divine intervention or whatever you will, Joseph Foy, a witness to a crime committed in Ferndale, Michigan, in 1979, was flipping through the channels and saw the footage of Watts being shown on The Abrams Report. Foy had come forward in 1981 identifying Watts after seeing footage on TV when Watts was apprehended in Texas. The case hadn’t been pursued in Michigan because Watts was expected to be locked up for the rest of his life in Texas. I, of course, didn’t know any of this at that time The Abrams Report aired.

The morning after the broadcast I went to work and found a pink message slip waiting. It said “Joseph Foy, saw one of Watts’ murders," along with a phone number.

“Sure you did," I instantly thought, having been frustrated over the case for so long.

I looked at my secretary and said one word “Wacko?"

She replied, "I don’t think so."

Before I returned the call to Joseph Foy, Lt. Hanger called to talk to me about the previous night’s broadcast on national TV. I mentioned the message that I had received and I can still hear the skepticism that I heard in Lt. Hangers voice when he said “Oh yeah?" I was skeptical as well, we had been frustrated at every turn for so long.

Later that day I returned Mr. Foy’s call. What I found on the other end was a lucid, coherent, well spoken individual who seemed to know what he was talking about. After that call I quickly called Lt. Hanger and spoke to him for the second time that day but this time things were different.

“I think we have our case” I told him.

We did indeed finally have our case. It wasn’t a perfect case, but it was a case and the gods were about to smile on us in a number of ways.

The original Ferndale Police Department file had been lost, but the Detroit Police Department had a full copy of the file from a task force effort on Watts, which occurred right after his arrest in Texas. The original composite sketch of the suspect which was drawn the day after the Ferndale murder, with Mr. Foy’s assistance, was in a box in the basement of the sketch artist who still worked for the county sheriff's department. What are the odds of that twenty two years later?

It wasn’t a great case. It was old and it was based on one witness, but it was a case. Complicated legal maneuvers later strengthened the case when the judge ruled that evidence of Watts’ murders in Texas could be admitted to show a pattern and scheme of behavior.


The trial was held in November 2004. The headline of the local paper on the first day of jury selection read as big and bold as if World War Three had just started. In large bold black type the headline screamed that Michigan was the last hope to keep this monster in prison. My first task of the day was a frantic call to the jail lockup area at the courthouse, which is manned by the county sheriff’s department. My plea to the deputy sheriff stationed at that post was to tape over the newspaper boxes in the courthouse to prevent potential jurors from seeing the headlines.

The trial was dramatic and stress filled. Many of the family members of victims from Watts' Texas murders attended the trial because this had become their trial as well. They were finally getting a chance to see Watts put away on a murder charge. The trial was broadcast live on Court TV and there were 32 other media agencies in attendance in a make shift media center set up at the courthouse. The pressure during the trial was enormous, the stakes were just so high. Suffice to say for the purpose of this post, I didn’t sleep much for a few weeks.


When we got word that the jury had a verdict my heart was beating so hard that I thought it was going to beat out of my chest. The words “Guilty of First Degree Murder” have never sounded so sweet.

In retrospect I often think about how strange it is that things all came together in the manner that they did. The fortuitous appearance of the Attorney General on national TV, the likelihood that Joseph Foy would be flipping through the channels at that very moment, and the way that we were able to reconstruct the file and locate the composite sketch in a basement box like we did.

However, nothing is as strange to me as the fact that the scared 22-year-old coed of my senior year in college ended up with the upper hand. How weird that I was the one who put the monster that was Coral Eugene Watts away for good. Who would have dreamed it back in the school year of 1980?

The hunter had become the hunted. All I can say is full circle.

Note: Coral Eugene Watts died of prostate cancer in a Michigan prison in September 2007.

Statements made in this post are my own and do not reflects the views, opinion or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

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Donna Pendergast opens up for the WCI interview

By Kathryn Casey

Sometimes we take those around us for granted. That shouldn't be, but it's human nature. Then we step back, take a look and say, you know, I wonder if readers understand how truly amazing some of these women are. Donna Pendergast is one of those women. She's one of our stalwarts, here with us from day one. And she's been repeatedly described as one of the top prosecutors in the nation. I recently asked her to sit down for an interview. I'm sure you'll agree that Donna is one incredible woman.

KC: Why are you a prosecutor? What in your past led you to law school and the Michigan Attorney General’s office?

DP: I'm a prosecutor because I want to make a difference. When I look back on my life, I want to know that I helped people. It's a difficult and stressful job, but I feel like it's my calling. My father was a police officer in Detroit for 39 years and that is probably where I get my law enforcement bent. When I went to law school I realized quickly that I was comfortable and did well in the litigation-type classes and exercises. I decided that I wanted to spend my career in a courtroom. There is no area of law where you get as much courtroom time as criminal law. I sure didn't want to represent the other side. As I have been quoted as saying, "I understand that everyone is entitled to a defense. I just don't want to be the one providing it."

KC: You’re well known for prosecuting murder cases, which is understandable since you’ve taken on more than 100 such cases. You’ve never lost one, right?

DP: I have prosecuted hundreds of cases but my specialty is homicide cases. I have prosecuted 100 homicide cases through verdict and won 98 of those cases. The two that I lost--there really was very little evidence. In one case, the main witness recanted and we were left with an identification of the murderer by another witness who said he saw his face "in a dream." The judge dismissed the case at the preliminary examination. The Court of Appeals reversed that decision and ordered it to trial. The other case involved a voice ID made by a mentally challenged person--tough cases.

KC: Tell us about the first murder case you tackled?

DP: Edna Hollis killed her husband while he was sleeping in bed. We never really did learn her reason for doing so. I have my suspicions but they are based on speculation so I won't mention them. Edna fled the scene and was apprehended after a car accident. In a stranger than life twist, a passerby to the accident scene stole the murder weapon from the scene. It was never recovered.

KC: You’ve been called Michigan’s best prosecutor. What case taught you the most about your profession?

DP: That's a flattering characterization, but I don't know about the best-prosecutor thing. There are a lot of topnotch prosecutors out there. I just try to do my very best in every case. When you hold people's lives in your hands, you have to be able to look in the mirror after a trial and know that no matter what the result was, you did your very best. I honestly can say that I have never given less than 100%. But, trust me, it takes its toll.

KC: What was your most important lesson?

DP: Very early on I learned never to say to the surviving victims of a homicide case: "I understand how you feel," because as a homicide victim's family member once told me,"You could never understand how I feel." Instead I learned to say "I know that I could never understand how you feel, but I've been through this with other families before, and this is what I have seen in the past..." I've also learned that there is true evil in the world. How else do you explain something as diabolical as a serial murderer like Coral Eugene Watts? As I often tell juries, "There is no explanation for pure evil--just recognition of what it is."

KC: Looking back, you’ve handled so many sensational murder cases. In the Lady in the Lake case, the murder of Florence Unger, you had little forensic evidence, only the bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence to work with. Tell us about that case.

DP: The Unger case was a mammoth undertaking. The case was circumstantial, and the medical evidence was very complex. We were also up against a very well funded defense and multiple lawyers on the defense team. Fortunately, I had two great teammates. I'm usually the lone prosecutor in the courtroom, so this was a new experience. My two teammates were brought in specially for the trial. One teammate was my former boss when I was a county Assistant Prosecutor. He was brought onto the team because of his extensive medical malpractice knowledge. My other teammate was a former colleague at the same prosecutors office. My other teammate had been his boss as well. The second teammate had been involved in the child parental-rights termination proceedings against Mr. Unger, and was intimately familiar with the case like I was. In the nearly three years that it took to get the case to trial, he had left the prosecutor's office and gone into private practice. He came on board as a special prosecutor for that case only. It was such a wonderful experience having three very experienced trial lawyers working together for a common goal. When they came on the team we all agreed that I would be the ship's captain. We were all used to being the alpha dog in the courtroom and were not sure how it was going to work. It was a dream experience--we all worked together; there were no egos involved.

KC: Have the shows like CSI influenced juries? Do you have to account for the public’s fascination with forensics?

DP: There is no question that shows like CSI have influenced how juries think. In the Prosecution world, we call it the CSI effect. Jurors see things on TV and expect real life to be the same way. It's not. As prosecutors, we have to work very hard, beginning during jury selection, to educate jurors so that they understand that forensic evidence is not always left at a crime scene. In the case of serial murderer Coral Watts, he killed many many women and never left behind ANY forensic evidence at any of his crime scenes. In fact, as prosecutors we often present what we call negative evidence. Say there are no fingerprints at a crime scene. Often, I will call an expert in just to explain what factors figure in to whether or not fingerprints are left behind and how common it is for there to be no fingerprints at a crime scene or on a weapon, etc. Things like temperature, weather, humidity, the smoothness of the surface and whether or not a person is perspiring all affect whether or not a fingerprint is left behind. That's just one example.

KC: You’re also the prosecutor who kept serial killer Coral Eugene Watts from being released from prison. As I remember it, a paperwork mistake had cleared the way for his release. How anyone could consider releasing a serial killer from prison is beyond my imagination, but it was happening, and there was nothing anyone in the Lone Star State could do to stop it. That’s when you stepped in and prosecuted Watts in Michigan for the 25-year-old murder of Helen Dutcher. The pressure must have been overwhelming, knowing who Watts is, what he’s capable of, and that if you failed, a serial killer would go free. What was that like?

DP: The pressure was enormous. The stakes were so very high, and the case was covered live on national TV. Luckily, we had a judge who admitted similar evidence and testimony so I was able to present evidence of Watts' diabolical pattern of behavior. Thank goodness for an awesome appellate lawyer who wrote the brief and argued the motion to admit similar acts testimony. Being able to present that testimony at trial made a huge impact on the jurors.

KC: Like the Dutcher case, many of your cases are what we’d call cold cases, some decades old. What are the added challenges in these cases?

DP: The Dutcher case was 25 years old when it went to trial. A cold case presents a unique set of challenges. Memories fade and evidence can get lost. When a case is as old as the Dutcher case, oftentimes the witnesses are now deceased. As a prosecutor, you also have the unique challenge of explaining to jurors why the case is being prosecuted years later. As I often tell jurors in a cold case---justice is a concept that doesn't get old.

KC: Another of your sensational cold cases is that of the Duvall brothers, Raymond and Donald, whom you prosecuted for the 1985 murders of two Michigan hunters, cutting up their bodies and feeding them to the pigs. I have to admit that particular case reminded me of the old movie Deliverance. You prosecuted the Duvalls in 2003 and got convictions, resulting in life sentences. Looking back, how do you see the Duvall case? Why wasn’t it prosecuted sooner? How could anyone be that evil?

DP: The Duvall case has often been referred to in the same sentence as the word Deliverance. The Duvall case was like a Michigan legend. Two hunters went up hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving in 1985 and disappeared off the face of the earth. Their bodies and their vehicles were never found. I remember being in law school when the case happened. Every year when hunting season came around there would be stories in the newspaper and the case would be talked about. I, like everyone else, wondered what happened to them. I never dreamed that nearly two decades later I would be the one prosecuting the people who murdered the hunters. The case wasn't prosecuted earlier because everyone was afraid of the Duvall brothers--in fact, terrified of them. A very determined detective from the Michigan State Police found the eyewitness who eventually testified at trial. It took him two years to gain her confidence before she told what she saw. As it turns out, the case was prosecuted just in time. The key eyewitness died a year or so after the trial. There is no understanding of the evil in that case. It's evil, plain and simple.

KC: I know you’ve had a lot of tough cases, but what was the most challenging you’ve ever tackled? Why?

DP: The Mark Unger trial was the most difficult that I have tackled based on the complexity of the evidence and the length of the trial (nine weeks). However, there was a case when I was a Wayne County prosecutor that logistically was nearly as difficult. It was a case with three defendants who each had their own jury. To have three juries going at the same time is extremely difficult. To complicate things further, it was a case without a body, and the officer in charge of the case was arrested the night before the trial started. So, I was in the courtroom alone with no officer in charge to coordinate. That is an experience that I don't want to repeat.

KC: You’ve been portrayed in, I believe, four true crime books. As a crime writer, I’m wondering what that experience is like. If I popped in on your next trial, would you be glad to see me?

DP: When I'm in trial, I don't really notice the media once I launch into my case. A trial is all-consuming. If you start worrying about the media, it's going to affect your performance--and not in a good way. It is a strange experience to see yourself portrayed in print in a book. You ask yourself: "Wow. Do I come across like that?"

KC: I worry that spending so much time writing about terrible crimes affects the way I see those around me. I don’t honestly know if that’s good or bad, but do you have the same concerns? Do your experiences color your worldview?

DP: Seeing the terrible things that I do, you try not to let it affect you, but the truth is, it does. So much senseless violence and sadness and so little reason why. It has affected my worldview to the extent that I realize that evil is a very real thing. I am also a far more cautious person than I used to be. When I was young, I didn't think twice about day-to-day actions like getting out of my car to get gas at night. Now I do things like that only when absolutely necessary, and I'm always looking over my shoulder.

KC: I know there are victims and families living with incredible pain and struggling to get a prosecutor’s attention. They or their loved ones have been victimized, and they want the cases pursued. Can you give them any insight into the best way to approach authorities?

DP: Approach them politely and document what they say. Stay in frequent contact but don't become a pest. Above all, never give up. I have prosecuted three cases nearly 30 years old and many more decades or so old. There is always hope that the critical piece of the puzzle will fall into place.

Statements made in this post are my own and are not intended to reflect the views, thoughts or position of the Michigan Attorney General or the Michigan Department of Attorney General.

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