Elena Semander: Murder, the Plea Deal, and Her Mother’s Fight

Elena Semander was a 20-year-old University of Houston student who was strangled to death on February 7, 1982, by the serial killer Coral Eugene Watts. She was nine days short of her 21st birthday. Watts later confessed to her murder as part of a Texas plea deal that gave him immunity from prosecution for killing her, and her mother Harriett Semander spent the next two decades fighting to keep him from walking out of prison.¹

Who Elena Semander Was

Elena was the eldest daughter of Zack Semander, a math teacher, and Harriett Semander, a registrar at The Kincaid School in Houston. Family and friends described her as free-spirited and fiercely independent, a natural athlete and artist, and protective of her younger siblings Maria, JoAnna, and John. She graduated from Kincaid and attended the University of Denver on a field hockey scholarship her freshman year before transferring to the University of Houston as a sophomore.¹

The Night She Was Killed

On the night of February 6, 1982, Elena went out to meet friends near her Houston home. She never returned. The next morning, her body was found in the back of a garbage truck after she had been left in a dumpster at a nearby apartment complex.¹ She had been strangled with her own shirt.²

Watts had chosen her at random. Investigators later determined he had seen Elena driving at night and followed her. At the time, Harriett Semander tried to warn Houston police that a pattern of killings was targeting young women in the city. Local authorities insisted no serial predator was operating in Houston.³

The Plea Deal That Shielded Her Killer

Watts, known as the “Sunday Morning Slasher,” had been killing since at least 1974. After moving to Houston in 1981, he killed at least 14 women in the Houston and Austin areas within a year. He later told police he had killed more than 80 people, and crime researchers have estimated the real number may exceed 100.⁴⁵

Watts was arrested on May 23, 1982, after attacking two women at a Houston apartment. One of them, 18-year-old Melinda Aguilar, feigned unconsciousness, escaped, and called for help in time to save the other victim.⁵

Harris County prosecutors said they lacked the physical evidence to charge Watts with any of the Houston-area murders. They offered him a plea bargain: plead guilty to burglary with intent to commit murder, accept a 60-year prison sentence, and confess to 12 unsolved homicides in exchange for immunity from prosecution for all of them. Watts took the deal. Elena Semander’s murder was one of the twelve. He was never charged with or convicted of killing her.⁶¹

The Loophole That Nearly Freed Him

Sixty years should have meant life. Under Texas law at the time, however, a first-time offender earned “good conduct time” credits that cut actual time served. A Texas appeals court then reclassified Watts as a non-violent offender because his original plea had not specified that a deadly weapon was used. Together, the credits and the reclassification shortened his effective sentence to roughly 24 years. A confessed serial killer was on track to be released by 2006.⁵

Her Mother’s Fight

Harriett Semander joined Parents of Murdered Children and became a prominent victims’ rights advocate. She attended parole hearings, protested outside prisons, and lobbied Texas lawmakers to close the mandatory-release loophole. Those efforts contributed to legislative reforms in the 1990s that gave the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles authority to deny mandatory supervision releases for offenders who posed a threat to public safety. Watts was cited by name during the 1997 legislative debate.¹⁷

Andy Kahan, then director of victim services for Houston Crime Stoppers, became a central ally. In 2002, on the 20th anniversary of Watts’s arrest, Harriett organized a “Call to Action” event at her church that brought together other victims’ families and the advocacy group Justice for All. National media covered it. Harriett and Kahan appeared on NBC’s Today, which was rebroadcast on MSNBC.³

A viewer named Joseph Foy saw the broadcast and recognized Watts as the man he had seen fleeing the scene of the 1979 stabbing death of Helen Dutcher in a Detroit suburb. Foy’s identification gave Michigan prosecutors what they needed.³

Michigan and the End of the Case

The 1982 Texas immunity deal applied only in Texas. On November 17, 2004, a Michigan jury found Watts guilty of murdering Helen Dutcher, carrying a mandatory sentence of life without parole.⁸⁵⁶

Watts died of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007, in a secure area of Foote Hospital in Jackson, Michigan, while in state custody. He was 53.⁹ After his death, Harriett told her family she finally “had her life back.” Her children later said her work “saved lives that would have been ruined by Coral Eugene Watts had he have been released.” Harriett Semander died at 91 in early 2025.²

How Elena Is Remembered

An arts and sports scholarship was established in Elena’s honor at The Kincaid School, her alma mater.¹⁰

Her brother John Semander spent more than 30 years developing a screenplay about the family’s ordeal. The result is The Empty Chair, a 22-minute short film directed by Andrew Shebay of Pipeline Films and produced by Shebay and John Semander. The title refers to the empty chair at the Semander family’s kitchen table. The film stars Robyn Lively as Harriett, Chris Mulkey as Zack, and Andrea Figliomeni as Elena, and is set on August 9, 1982, as Harriett discovers the loophole that could free her daughter’s killer.¹¹¹²

The screenplay won Best Writer at SeriesFest’s Independent Pilot Competition in 2023. The short, released in 2025, is available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play, and the filmmakers are developing the material into a limited series or feature.¹¹

1
People. A Serial Killer Killed Her Daughter
2
FOX 26 Houston. Coral Watts Serial Killer Victim Semander Mother Dies
3
KPRC 2 Houston. The Evidence Room Episode 17: The Sunday Morning Slasher
4
Los Angeles Times. Coral Eugene Watts Obituary
5
San Antonio Express-News. Sunday Morning Slasher Serial Killer Coral Watts
6
CBS News. A Deal With the Devil
7
Texas House Research Organization. Mandatory Supervision Focus Report
8
NBC News. Coral Eugene Watts Found Guilty of 1979 Murder
9
New York Times. Coral Eugene Watts Dies at 53
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The Kincaid School. Kincaid Honors
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The Empty Chair. The Empty Chair Official Website
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Apple TV. The Empty Chair