Man gets 2nd life sentence in slaying

A convicted serial killer was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the 1974 slaying of a 19-year-old Western Michigan University student.

Coral Eugene Watts, 53, is already serving a life sentence in the 1979 death of 36-year-old Helen Dutcher in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.

In July, a jury convicted Watts in the death of Gloria Steele. A first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory prison sentence of life without parole.

Watts has admitted to killing more than a dozen women but denied having anything to do with Steele's death. She was stabbed more than 30 times in an apartment she shared with her then-3-year-old daughter.

Watts received immunity for 12 other killings to which he had he confessed _ 11 in Texas and one in Michigan _ as part of a 1982 deal with Texas prosecutors.

He was given a 60-year sentence for burglary with intent to murder, but mandatory release laws and an appeals court ruling reduced his sentence by more than 35 years.

Michigan authorities revived the Dutcher and Steele cases in an effort to keep Watts behind bars because he was to have been released from a Texas prison in May 2006.

The Michigan attorney general's office has said Watts is a suspect in 26 other slayings and may have killed more than 80 women.