[ominous music] He is considered the
most prolific serial killer in North American history. He did more than John
Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer combined. You could tell that he
was having fun by the noises and the clapping and
things that he was doing. So I knew that I was in trouble. I feel this knife slice right
through my t-shirt and my bra, which is right tight to
my body, in an instant. I even touched the
bones on my face, and I smelled steaming blood. [ominous music] That area I thought
was a really safe area, particularly because
it was mostly elderly and there wasn't young
people living there. And it was an
older neighborhood. And it was very
beautiful because they had big beautiful trees
on the boulevards. And I was standing
at the bus stop, and it was pretty
quiet in the morning. It was 6:20 in the morning. And then I noticed a
guy sitting in a phone booth across the street. He was a very thin Black man. And he was just sitting there. He looked-- I didn't know
if he was tired or ill, but I noticed he
was watching me. And I looked over at
him a couple times, and I was actually considering
to cross the street to see if he was OK. But I noticed my bus coming,
and I got on the bus. And I looked back at him, and
then I kind of felt guilty. I thought if he was ill, I
should have helped him first. I went to work and
worked the full day, as if I didn't see him at all. And I did-- during the
day, I did think about him a couple times, and
wondered if he was OK. And I just took my shift
and came back home. And when I got home off
the bus, I looked around. I didn't see anybody. I didn't see him at all. I wanted to be a social
worker and work with children. It was dark out. It was about 9:30 at night. I walked all the way home,
and I was two houses back from where I lived. And I'm walking along, and I
notice a dark shadow, someone-- it looked like someone
crouching down. And I saw something shiny. I thought maybe it was like
a little pen light, somebody looking for something
on the ground. I walked past and I started to
cross the street when I heard two footsteps behind me. And I started to turn around,
and that's when I was attacked. I live in a town
that is very quiet. The neighbors are great. We would share, like, swing
sets and basketball courts, and it was like a
family community. Yeah, it was
considered very safe. It was a weeknight. Cooked supper, puttered
around the house after supper, cleaned up dishes and, later
on, curled up on the couch and watched some crime
shows that I normally did during the week. My favorites. I remember falling asleep
about a quarter after 11:00 that evening, because
I was just so tired, I felt myself dozing off. And that was it. I was sound asleep,
and all of a sudden, there were these sparks. Everything was black, and
all the sparks and fire that was going around my head. I was getting the sensation
that the whole house was on fire and I was trapped. And I started to panic. There was not a fire. It was blow after blow
to the side of my head. It felt like somebody
was hitting me, and they were getting
worse and worse. I didn't know what to think. It was just so confusing. I had to come to. I could feel myself fighting. There was something or
someone heavy on my chest, and I couldn't see anything. And I figured out
that the comforter was pulled over my head. And then all of a
sudden, the voice. I heard a man's voice. And I was, like, struggling. And he said to me, do you
not know what's going on? And I'm like, no, I have
no idea what's going on. What?
What? What? And he said, there
are others here, and you are being cleaned out. He says, I am here
to control you. And I started asking him,
well, why is this taking place? What? Like, I don't understand. And the more I asked
questions, the tighter he was getting on my throat. I couldn't breathe at all,
and it was getting worse. I was crying, and I said,
please, don't let this happen. I have my daughters. I'm going to die here. I can't breathe. I was walking down the street,
and I felt something really heavy hit me in the back. It felt like a branch
had fallen off the tree. It seemed to happen,
like, in slow motion. And then I was down on the
ground, and I was screaming. I realized at that point there
was somebody there, harming me. I was confused. I was trying to figure out
what was actually happening. I knew I was being
hurt, but I didn't-- I couldn't get my bearings onto
what exactly was happening. Well, the person who
was attacking me I felt was maybe about my size. And that was all I could figure. I didn't know if it was a
male or female, or anything else about the person. At some point, the
person reached around and he cut me here. There's about a
four-inch scar here, and I've got the two
really bad wounds here and a stab wound here. But I don't know how
quick it happened. Maybe-- it just-- the whole time seemed to,
like, go by so slowly. I thought I was going to die. I didn't-- I felt like
I couldn't fight back. I screamed, and I
was yelling, as well. I was yelling for help. And I remember getting up, and
I started walking to my house. And I could barely walk. When I was crossing the street,
I had trouble breathing. And when I first
noticed blood, I put my hand on one of the
vehicles to balance myself. And I left a handprint of blood. I saw it, and then I realized
I was really injured. It probably took me a
good five minutes just to cross the street. And I had to hang on to the hand
railing going up the few steps. I got into the house and
made the phone call for help. I initially phoned my parents
because I was afraid to phone for an ambulance
because I didn't know who'd come to the door. I expected the
person to come in, walk into that house
anytime to finish me. I wanted someone familiar
to take me to the hospital. I walked into my
brother's bathroom and I looked in the mirror. And then I was really shocked
at how much blood I saw. And I could see my
bones in my face because everything
was swollen open. And what I was looking at,
I didn't think it was real. I even touched the
bones on my face, and I smelled steaming blood. I was very confused. My head was pounding. I didn't know what to do. I was crying, begging on my
children's lives to live. He was telling me to
keep it down, be quiet, and sitting on my chest. And then he would start to
ease up a little tiny bit. And I was just trying to push-- get some air with
my hands like that, trying to push up
on this comforter. And I didn't have
much luck there. So we struggled there
for, I don't know, it seemed like it was
going on and on and on. I was really getting
panicky and scared. And I had an accident. I wet myself. And I told him that. And finally-- I don't know
how long this went on for-- and he started to ease up a bit
because I kept asking him, can I, please, please, please
get some air so I could just breathe, even if I could
just breathe a little bit. And he let me breathe finally. He let me sit up, and made
sure that the comforter-- I couldn't see anything. He made sure that that
was well over my head. Finally, he took
the comforter off. And he stood up and he said,
you don't want to see me. And I said, no, I
don't want to see you. He now says to me, I've got
to go check on the others. I could hear him walking. He said to me, you're not
looking at me, are you? And I said, oh god, no. I said, no, I'm
looking straight ahead. You have no worries there. I will not look at you. He left for a couple
minutes, came back. I didn't hear anything. And now he would like to
tie my hands behind my back. I was taking it that when he
was reporting to these others, maybe it was one of
their suggestions. I didn't know. The intruder seemed to have a
bit of experience behind him. And he was talking,
like, really low, and he wasn't yelling
at me or anything. He was just telling me
how things had to be done, and I was believing
what he was saying. I was convinced
that the whole time, right from the start,
when I came to, that this was a robbery. And I was trying to figure out
who these other people were. Were these people that knew
me, had known my ex-husband? What was-- was he in on it? Something wasn't
adding up there. My plan was to try to drag some
more information out of him. I wanted to get control
of the situation, find out as much as I could
from him without him knowing. The most I could get from
him was this has to be done. And I thought, something is
not making sense here to me. So I just went-- I thought, OK, I'll
just go with the flow. Keep playing the mind
game, but don't let him-- I didn't want to cross him. This person seemed majorly,
majorly emotionally disturbed. He could snap at any moment. After I hung up from the
phone, I looked down at myself. Everything had
blood all over it, and there was blood
on the kitchen floor. I went up to my
part of the house and grabbed some towels
that were on the counter, and came back down and sat
on the bottom steps waiting for my father to come. And I was holding the
towels to my face. I took the towel off to
show the woman at the desk, and I noticed how
shocked they looked. And they immediately called for
someone to bring a wheelchair. And that's when I went
into the trauma room. I was stabbed through my back,
right through the scapula. It was about a three-inch
scar on my back. And through the scapula,
it broke the ribs and punctured my
lung underneath. I was cut-- I have a
four-inch slash here, which isn't too deep, but
it does cause sensory nerve damage. I have two very deep cuts here
that are very similar ones. They look like long
letter J's on the side. The second one goes
back really far. And I was sure that I was
going to die that night. I came from a
family of seven kids, so I felt like I needed
a place of my own. There was a couple of reasons my
dad didn't want me to move out at my age, 17. We came from a big
family, Hispanic family, so usually they don't move
out unless they're married. And then just the safety of
moving out, being so young. He always told me, you know,
why do you want to move out? Something's going to happen. Someone's going to break in. But at the time, I
was ready to move out. And so I did. Lori had told me
on Saturday night that she would be home
early in the morning, that her boyfriend had to go
in to the fire station early. So she told me to expect her
about six o'clock on Sunday. As I'm making coffee, I heard
Lori's keys at the door. They-- she always
collected these key chains, so they always made a loud
noise, jingled, jangled. And so we always
teased her about that, that we always knew
when Lori was coming in because of her keys. So I headed for the door, and
when I went to open the door, it had come open. And when it opened,
it wasn't Lori. It was a man, a tall Black man. He was wearing a red hoodie
that went around his face. And the only thing
that I can see from him are his eyes, and just the-- how tall and big he was. At the time, I didn't know
what had happened to Lori. I knew that he had her keys, so
I knew something had happened, but I wasn't sure. But everything
happened so quick. He grabbed the knife,
brought it up to me, and said if I screamed
that he would kill me. My nerves were just
about shot at this point. I remember I was not
feeling good at all. He left again to
check on the others, and the whole time I was trying
to listen to see if I could hear anything more. I just sat there,
and I didn't even-- I just wanted this
to be all over with. I just-- hurry up, hurry up. Hurry up and get this over with. He now comes back, and he-- instead of heading back over to
the couch where I was sitting, I hear the blinds come down. And I thought, oh
great, now what? All of a sudden, he asks me
if he can take some pictures. And I was like, take pictures? What are you talking
about, take pictures? I even said to him, this
isn't making any sense to me. Why do you have
to take pictures? And he said, so that you
know that the others have these pictures. And I'm thinking, oh great. What are these guys involved in? What other people are they
going to be meeting after? I'm thinking, but I couldn't-- I couldn't worry about
that right at that moment. So I thought, OK, he's
going to take some pictures. So he stands up
and he snaps away. And all of a sudden, I hear
this breathing-- this breathing changing all of a sudden. And I said, oh my god. I said-- I said, are you OK? And he said, yeah, why? And I said, well, your
breathing, it's-- something-- your breathing is
sounding funny. And going through my
mind, all I could think of is that he was like
having an anxiety attack or it had something
to do with his heart. I was actually
concerned about him. And he said, oh, don't-- I'm OK, don't worry about it. He's getting closer to me. I could smell his breath. The next thing I feel, I
feel this knife slice right through my t-shirt
and my bra, which is right tight to my
body, in an instant. I had never seen anything or
experienced anything so fast in my life, the way he took
it and just [slashing noise].. Just like caught me
totally off-guard. I couldn't see a thing. I could just feel it. I could almost hear it. My brain went into
overdrive, total shock. That just blew my
mind at that point. I'm thinking, oh
god, this is bad. Everything happened so
quick that he immediately then came towards me,
and came from behind me. And when he did, he grabbed
me from my neck-- you know, with his arm, and grabbed me. And he was holding me so
tight that it was hard for me to breathe. I thought, OK, what
is he going to do? What do I do? I can't breathe. I was afraid, if he continued to
hold me the way he was, that I was going to pass out
and then, you know, not know what was going to
happen after that, if he was going to kill me, if he was
going to rape me or, you know, what was going to happen. So I let myself go and pretended
to pass out so that he would let loose so that I
could breathe and get some air into me. That's when he dragged me to the
bedroom and laid me in there. And from there, he
left and went out. I could hear him going down
the steps of the apartment. We lived on the second
floor of the apartments. I was trying to think,
how can I get away? What do I do? Where's Lori? I just had so much going on,
thinking is she in trouble. And then I immediately heard
him dragging her up the steps, because I could hear her
body hitting the steps. And when he brought her
in to the apartment, I could hear her body
dragging on the carpet. And I could hear her moaning. I knew that she was in
no condition to get away or to even help me think
of a way to get away. I knew that she was
hurt, but I didn't know how hurt, because we
were in two separate rooms. After he put her down, he came
in to the bedroom, where I was. He immediately took the hangers
and the belts off the dress, and he grabbed my
arms and my hands and put them behind my back. And he tied me up quickly. I could hear him. When he was doing
all these things, he would like rub his hands and
like kind of jump and like-- you know, and like
he was so excited. And that's when I knew that
he had done this before, because he did it so quick
and he was so comfortable. And you could tell that he
was having fun by the noises and the clapping and
things that he was doing. So I knew that I was in trouble. I was just left
totally exposed. Then he stands up, and
he's taking more pictures. And he's arranging my clothes. Like, he's pulling them
over so he can get, I guess, apparently
the best shot. And I'm like sweating
and I'm going, oh my god, but I didn't want to let him
know how really scared I was. I was trying to
keep my composure. He started going
down with his hand, like sort of just going down
until he came to my belly button. He noticed that I had
belly button jewelry on, and he became like really,
really obsessed with it. Like, he was like touching it. And I almost had this
sense that he was smiling. Oh, he says, that's nice. And next thing I know, he's
starting to put his hands down my pajama bottoms. I'm saying, no,
please don't do that. He pulls his hand
out immediately. So I sort of did a breath of
relief, but next thing I know, I feel-- I feel that knife. I feel something there. That was it. They were off. I said, oh my god. I said, you're going
to rape me now. And he said, no, he says,
I'm not going to rape you. He says, if I get
these pictures, he said, there's
no need to rape. I can hear the camera clicking. I could tell he was starting
to circle around me, taking all these shots. That was the worst for me
because I was totally-- now I'm totally vulnerable. At that point, I
was standing up. I was shaking. Every part of me was shaking. Next thing I know,
he's covered me up. And he's going to go
and check on the others. He said, this is
just about done here. And he said, I'm just
going to go and see how far along they're coming. In my mind now, I'm piecing
things together a bit differently, and I'm
thinking, what's next? He's touching me. He's positioning my clothes. He's-- it's almost
like a photo shoot. And I'm feeling like this is
getting really, really scary. Like, this is a little bit
more than just watching me and keeping control of me. So he returns and he
says, yeah, he said, this is just about over. He said, I need you to
do one more thing for me. And I said, what's that? He says, I need you to get
up on your hands and knees and put your forehead
on the armrest. I just freaked then. I said, oh my god. I said no. And I was blatantly arguing
with him at this point, crying. I said, no, I'm feeling sick. I can't even get up. And he says-- this is
the first time I really heard his stern voice,
and he said to me, don't you make me make you. And I just went, oh. And it was just like-- it let
the air right out of my balloon when he said that, because
this was the stern voice, and all that went
through my mind is, oh, they're
going to kill me now. I could hear him
walking into the bathroom. And then I heard him
turn on the bath water. And my first thought
was, oh my gosh, he's going to put me
in there, and then we're not going to survive. And I could hear Lori moaning
even more, and she was-- her moaning was getting
closer and closer. And I could hear him dragging
her in to the bathroom. So at that time, I thought, OK,
this is my time to get away. I've got to get help for Lori. She needed help immediately
for her to survive. I knew then that
I had to get away. I walked to the
bedroom door, quietly, because I didn't
want him to hear me. I immediately turned
around and closed it and locked the bedroom door. I then immediately
felt a little relief knowing that the
door was locked, and that I was going to at
least have a little chance to figure out what to do next. So I walked to the sliding
door, and I was thinking, OK, all I need to do is
go out the sliding door, get off this balcony,
and get some help. So when I went to open
up the sliding door, part of the hanger got caught. And I remember getting stuck
with that, and I'm thinking, what do I do? What do I do to get away? I need to help Lori. So I walked with
the sliding door and tried to jiggle my
arms at the same time. And I finally got the
hanger loose from the door. And I was able to go
out to the balcony. I remember standing
out there thinking, I'm on the second floor. How do I get off the balcony
with my arms tied, you know, behind my back? Being as short as I am and
the railing being so high, and it being 20 feet down,
thinking, what do I do? But I knew that that was
my only option to get away. But I finally
decided what I need to do is jump as high as
I can and do a somersault, aim to get over the railing
so that I can get some help. And that's what I did. I landed, thank god, on
my knees on the ground, and didn't break anything. But I ran as far
as I could, and I saw a woman sitting outside
her balcony drinking coffee. I screamed and
hollered and told her that there's someone
trying, you know, trying to kill my roommate. Please call the police,
please call the police. Thank god that, when
she did call the police, they were one block away. All I remember next was that
I had hot tea in my hands and a detective was in
front of me telling me that my roommate was fine,
and that they had caught the attacker. His name was Carl Eugene
Watts, and they knew that he had killed other women. I later found out when the
police captured our attacker that our neighbors underneath
us had gone up to our apartment and found Lori underwater
in the bathtub. So they immediately took
her out and started CPR. And the paramedics got there,
and they said if our neighbor wouldn't have done that, that
Lori would have had died. Going into the bathroom and
seeing where he had tried to strangle her, and I saw
the blood in the bathtub, and I went into my
closet and sat there, and I just broke down and cried. And I took my things and
moved back home that day. I survived because of the-- by the grace of God. And my determination to
get out of there alive, and to make sure that Lori
got out of there alive. You have someone that's a serial
killer, someone that has killed all these women, and
you're thinking about, wow, I almost didn't live today. SANDRA: It was a cold case. The police had no leads,
and I was in constant fear that person was going to come
back and harm me because I thought the person may have
realized that they didn't kill me. Almost two years went by. I was watching the news,
and suddenly a story came on about a serial killer. REPORTER: Carl Watts, a
28-year-old bus mechanic, led police on a search
today for the body of a woman he said he killed. And when I saw his face, I
realized it was the same person I had seen. The attacker was
Carl Eugene Watts. Carl Watts just
wanted to kill women. He was-- he didn't rape anyone. He didn't rob them. He just wanted to kill them. Because he got
immunity to 12 murders, he wasn't charged with murder. He was in prison for burglary
and aggravated assault only. And he was eligible
for parole in 25 years. They scrambled in Michigan,
and found two cases to charge him with murder,
extradited him to Michigan, kept him in prison until
he had both trials. And he actually ended up dying
eight days after he heard his second life sentence. They figure that he killed a
minimum of 80 to 100 women, is what he confessed to,
although the detectives felt that it was probably more
than 200 women he attacked in Michigan and all the way
down to Texas, and including Windsor, Ontario. Carl Watts is considered the
most prolific serial killer in North American history. He did more than John
Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer combined. But he's relatively unknown. I survived because I remember
thinking that night when I was injured, before I even
crossed the street, that this isn't fair. I'm only 20 years old. I want to-- I want to get older. I want to get married. I want to have children and
watch my children grow up. I survived because I
was too stubborn to die. I was totally
humiliated at this point. This was the worst humiliation
of the whole entire hours that I had spent with him. He was doing
different positions. I could feel him under-- sort of
like underneath me, behind me. I don't know how many
pictures he took, but then he helped
me sit back down. And actually, he laid me
on the couch this time, and he covered me
up with a blanket. So he left, and then
finally it was done. I was listening. I couldn't hear
anything outside, but I wasn't sure if he was
still just down the hall watching me. So I waited-- it had to
have been 20 minutes. And finally, I pulled
my blindfold down. I was sweating. I didn't even want to look. And finally, I just said,
oh, I'm going to phone-- I'm going to make that call,
whether he's there or not. At least if he kills
me, at least they'll be able to find me. It won't be days or
anything like that. Cops finally arrive
at about 17 minutes after I made the phone call. I opened the door. They came in. They seemed suspicious
about what had happened. They weren't believing
me or something. This hit the news
full-blown the next morning to warn all the people
around what had happened. On a Monday morning, two
detectives came to my door and told me that
it was all over. Laurie, they had caught the guy. He had confessed to everything. They told me he lived
three doors down. I asked who he was, and they
told me it was some Colonel Russell Williams, and he was
the head commander of one of the busiest bases in Canada. He had a very powerful
position, and nobody was aware of what he was
doing in his nighttime work. They found mounds and mounds
of women's underwear, lingerie, you name it. He had taken many, many
pictures of himself in their underwear, things that
he was doing in their bedrooms, taking them home, compiling them
all on disks and storing them and labeling them. Apparently, he had been doing
this for at least two years in two different neighborhoods,
one in Ottawa where him and his wife, former
wife, lived, and then at-- in my neighborhood. He was just all over the
place, terrorizing, basically, these neighborhoods. As it turned out, he was
responsible for her death, as well as another death. There was never anybody with him
the night that he attacked me. And his going to visit
the others, which he did during the course of the hours
that he had spent with me, but I would say at
least a dozen times, apparently he was
going into my bedroom, trying on my underwear,
taking more photographs. I survived because I
clearly wanted to live. I knew that there was a lot
more that I had to accomplish. When I found out what this
guy had been doing to me, when he had been in my home,
I went into terrible shock. Still, to this day, I still
have a hard time comprehending or grasping all of this.
