Although he confessed to numerous murders, on the books Coral Eugene Watts is little more than a small-time burglar.

But to the parents, children and friends of his victims, Watts is a cunning, cold-blooded killer who eluded real justice when he was incarcerated 22 years ago in Texas.

But that could change when Watts, who is a suspect in as many as 40 killings, stands trial for murder in Oakland County, Mich., on Tuesday, two days after his 51st birthday.

If he is convicted of first-degree murder in the 1979 stabbing death of Helen Dutcher, Watts, who was extradited from Texas to Michigan in April to face the charge, faces life in prison without parole.

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If he is acquitted, Watts will be a free man by 2006 and the first admitted serial killer in the United States to be released from prison.

Watts, who was raised in Michigan by his mother and stepfather, was first convicted of assaulting a female neighbor at age 15 and entered a mental health facility soon after. Clinicians reportedly acknowledged "strong homicidal impulses" during their treatment.

Five years later, while a student at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Watts was arrested again on two counts of assault and spent a year in jail for one of them. At about the same time, there was a spate of murders and assaults on women in the area, but Watts was never charged in connection with them.

His name continued to come up in connection with attacks on women, and Michigan authorities began surveillance of Watts in 1980 after he was cleared of at least three murders in the Ann Arbor area for lack of evidence.

In 1981, when Watts fled Michigan for Texas, Detroit authorities alerted law enforcement in Houston of their suspicions. Police in Houston noted that a number of attacks occurred almost immediately after his relocation, but they had nothing to link Watts to any of them.

When Watts was arrested in Houston in May 1982 for attempting to drown a female victim in her bathtub, he was already a suspect in a number of homicides in Houston, Michigan and Canada, but police did not have enough evidence to charge him.

With Watts in custody, Houston authorities anxious to close the book on the unsolved homicides offered him immunity for crimes he committed in Texas between September 1981 and May 1982.

In exchange, Watts received a 60-year sentence on charges of aggravated burglary when a judge ruled the scalding water Watts attempted to drown student Lori Lister in was a deadly weapon.

They got more information than they bargained for. Watts confessed to killing 13 women in Texas and Michigan and assaulting six more.

Michigan authorities also granted Watts immunity in Wayne County, where he admitted to murdering reporter Jeanne Clyne.

Since then, Watts has been named a suspect in 26 more deaths in the two states. Aside from his confessions, police could not link Watts to any of the murders, the nature of which varied from strangling to drowning to stabbing.

None of the women were sexually assaulted, and, aside from Watts' claim that he targeted women with "evil eyes" they appeared to have been chosen at random.

"He's the nation's most prolific serial killer, yet the name Coral Eugene Watts barely even registers on the public radar because he's never been convicted of murder," said Andy Kahan, a member of the Crime Victims Unit in Houston, who has followed the case since 1982.

A chance encounter while channel surfing

This most recent chapter in the story of Coral Eugene Watts — whose first name comes from his relatives' southern pronunciation of his birth name, Carl — began in 2002.

Watts was about four years away from release after a Texas Court of Appeals ruled that he had not been notified at the time of his indictment that his felony could be considered aggravated because of his use of a deadly weapon — water.

With that ruling, Watts was deemed a nonviolent felon and became eligible to receive three days' good-time credit for every day served in prison.

The development compelled authorities in Texas and Michigan to begin investigating ways to block Watts' impending release.

"We had resigned ourselves to the fact that he was going to be released to kill again," Kahan said. "You can't rehabilitate a serial killer, considering that his parting words were, 'If I'm released, I'm gonna kill again.'"

Kahan and the victims' families embarked on a media blitz to promote news of Watts' release, highlighting that he had been denied parole six times because he was considered a public threat.

In January 2004, Michigan resident Joseph Foy was channel surfing when he came upon Watts' mug shot on MSNBC.

He notified police that he recognized the man from an unsolved stabbing he witnessed 25 years ago in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, near the 8-Mile Road made famous by rapper Eminem.

After confirming that Foy had reported the multiple stabbing death of 36-year-old Helen Dutcher in 1979, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox sought to extradite Watts to stand trial.

"This man is a confessed killing machine who has admitted he will kill again," Cox said in a press release. "The specter of Watts' release has haunted Michigan families, the nation, and untold victims and their families for too long."

But Watts' lawyer, Ronald Kaplovitz, says the charges were trumped up to sustain the witch hunt to keep his client in jail. "They're trying to pursue anything they can against this guy at this point in time," Kaplovitz said.

In a blow to the defense, prosecutors will be allowed to introduce details from the murders he confessed to. "That information will be damaging, but the real key here is the eyewitness testimony — one witness who claims to have seen my client in a dark alley 25 years ago," Kaplovitz said.

Kaplovitz describes Watts as a cordial man who has been very cooperative and receptive to his court-appointed lawyer. "Incidentally, he's one of the easier clients I've dealt with. He listens to me," Kaplovitz said.

In the end, Kaplovitz hopes the jury will be able to focus solely on the facts at hand. "There's real doubt in my mind whether he committed this murder, and if he did not, he should not be convicted, regardless of what else he's confessed to," he said.