Carl Watts, Donna Pendergrast, Glenna Whitley, John Semander, Joseph Foy, Maria Crawford, Michigan, Oxygen, Paul Bunten, reviews, Texas, true crime, TV, Unknown Serial Killers of America
May 21, 2025
by Carla Hay
“Unknown Serial Killers of America”
Culture Representation: The documentary series “Unknown Serial Killers of America” features a predominantly white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Various people share their stories about being involved in investigations of serial killers whose names aren’t widely known by the general public.
Culture Audience: “Unknown Serial Killers of America” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about how serial killers are investigated.
“Unknown Serial Killers of America” tells stories about seeking justice for crimes committed by lesser-known serial killers, with a different story per episode. The series follows a familiar true crime format but values the victims and their loved ones. It’s a straightforward, no-frills and well-edited series that can be recommended for true crime aficionados who want to find out more about serial killer cases that haven’t been overexposed in the media
“Unknown Serial Killers of America” is produced by Pantheon Media Group. Haylee Vance is the showrunner of the series. The Oxygen network only made the series premiere episode available for review in advance of the series premiere, so this review will cover this first episode, which is titled “Carl Watts.” Each episode is named after the serial killer who is the featured murderer in each episode.
Carl Eugene Watts, nicknamed Coral Watts, was born on November 7, 1953, in Killeen, Texas. He died of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007 at a hospital in Jackson, Michigan. At the time of his death at age 53, he had been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Watts confessed to murdering 13 women from 1974 to 1982 in Michigan and Texas. However, authorities believe he could have murdered as many as 100 people.
The documentary mentions Watts (who was raised by a working-class single mother) began assaulting women when he was about 14, and he went to prison for it for the first time when he was 20. His hatred of women seems to have begun after he recovered from a bout of meningitis when he was around 8 or 9 years old, according to the documentary. Decades later, after he was arrested for being a murderer, Watts told officials who interviewed him that he believed the women he killed were demonic and he needed to get rid of their evil spirits.
In Michigan, Watts had a pattern of murdering young women who were walking somewhere alone late at night or in the early morning hours. Many of his victims were college students. Some of his victims died just a few feet away from their front doors. Because most of his murders happened on Sunday mornings, he was called the Sunday Morning Slasher in the media before he was identified.
Over time, he changed his pattern to murder women in their homes. He also changed his method of killing from stabbing to strangulation. Watts’ crimes started in Michigan (in cities such as Ferndale and Ann Arbor) before he moved to the Houston area n Texas in December 1980. His crime spree continued in the Houston area.
He got caught in Houston on May 23, 1982, when he attacked three women on the same day. One woman (20-year-old Michele Maday) did not survive when he drowned her in her apartment bathtub. He then tried to kill two roommates—21-year-old Lori Lister and 18-year-old Melinda Aguilar—in their apartment, but Aguilar was able to escape by jumping out of a second-floor window. She got help immediately, and Watts was apprehended and found guilty of murder and attempted murder.
The story didn’t end there. Due to a legal technicality in Texas, Watts was scheduled to be paroled in 2006. The legal technicality was the Texas Court of Appeals had ruled that Watt was not told that in his attempted murder of Lister by drowning her in a bathtub, he had not been told that the bathub and water combined were considered a deadly weapon. Therefore, he was reclassified as a non-violent felon who was eligible for parole. The episode describes extraordinary efforts from community activists and law enforcement to find Watts guilty of murders that he committed in Michigan.
People interviewed in this episode are Joseph “Joe” Foy, a Ferndale resident who witnessed Watts stab 36-year-old Helen Dutcher near Foy’s house in 1979; investigative reporter Glenna Whitley; Paul Bunten, former captain of the Ann Arbor Police Department; Donna Pendergrast, former assistant district attorney of Michigan; psychologist Dr. Harley Stock; Andy Kahan, director of Victims Services; and John Semander, Joanna Semander-Nicolaou and Maria Crawford, the siblings of murder victim Elena Semander, who was 20 years old when Watts killed her on February 6, 1982. “Unknown Serial Killers of America” does not glorify these serial killers or their crimes. Instead, the show is about how victims’ loved ones, their allies and law enforcement can work together to get justice, even if that justice is sometimes delayed.
Oxygen premiered “Unknown Serial Killers of America” on May 18, 2025.