Cancer kills US serial killer

A confessed serial killer responsible for dozens of deaths died Friday, only a little more than a week after he received a second life sentence.

Photo: Cancer kills US serial killer

Cancer kills US serial killer

Coral Eugene Watts died at Foote Hospital of prostate cancer, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said. He was 53.

The Michigan attorney general's office has said Watts was a suspect in more than 25 slayings and may have killed more than 80 women. He had confessed to 12 killings, 11 in Texas and one in Michigan.

Last week, Watts was sentenced to a life prison sentence, his second, in the slaying of Gloria Steele, a 19-year-old Western Michigan University student, in 1974. He had been convicted of first-degree murder in July, and the sentence of life without parole was mandatory.

Watts was already serving a life sentence in the 1979 death of 36-year-old Helen Dutcher in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.