Cold Case: Who Killed Kim?

LONG BEACH, Miss. (WLOX) – Ten years ago, Kim Watts was found stabbed and strangled in her Long Beach home. Since then, family members, including her son, have lived with the weight of this unsolved murder and continue to ask the question: Who killed Kim?

“She was special. A beautiful young lady. Very dedicated nurse, very caring for her patients,” recalled Long Beach Mayor George Bass, Kim’s brother-in-law.

“Often we looked at her more as a sister than an aunt,” added Kim’s cousin, Damian Holcomb. “She was fun, full of life. That’s what I miss most, how full of life she was.”

On the cloudy morning of November 7, Kim Watts’ family gathered at Bayou View Park in Gulfport to plant a tree in her honor – and to commemorate the ten years since her murder. The weather that day was eerily similar to that fateful day in 2014.

“I had been out of the fire service for four or five months at that point,” George said. “I was about to get in the shower before my phone rang.”

On November 11, 2014, Kim Watts did not show up for work. George’s wife Sherry asked if he wanted to check on her sister.

“The whole way there I had the feeling that something was wrong. I prayed, Dear God, let nothing be so wrong that it cannot be fixed.”

At Kim’s house, George saw that Kim’s car was still in the driveway. As he approached the house, he pulled out the house key, only to realize that the door was already open.

“I thought, oh, something isn’t quite right.”

Inside he made a gruesome discovery.

“I looked to my left and saw her lying on the floor, partly in her bedroom and partly in the living room. I said, ‘Oh God, no.’”

Unsure if the killer was still in the house, George ran outside to call the Long Beach police. He was so shocked he couldn’t remember 911.

When officers arrived on the scene, they discovered that Kim Watts had been stabbed twice and then strangled. The attack was so brutal that the blade of the knife broke off.

Detectives began their investigation. George Bass was interviewed and cleared as a suspect. A main suspect was subsequently identified, but he refused to answer questions.

Three years passed and the case remained unsolved. When George Bass was elected mayor of Long Beach in 2017, he asked the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office to take over the case to avoid a conflict of interest.

“(Sheriff Troy Peterson) deployed his team of investigators on it. He brought in more state investigators, and he called in the FBI.”

Ten years later, the case is still cold. But Harrison County detectives aren’t giving up.

“You could see there was a struggle. It looked like Kim had just come home,” said Deputy Hanna Hendry. “Her bag and her belongings were with her, as if she came out of her car and was attacked.”

Detectives hope new DNA evidence can give them the breakthrough they need.

“We have made some progress in DNA technology. New DNA was found on her bag. We entered it into the system to hopefully find a match.”

Kim Watts’ family believes they know who the killer is: the same person Long Beach detectives identified as the prime suspect in 2014. Yet that person was never arrested.

“I will say that person did not cooperate with the investigation. We didn’t have any information about where that person was the night of the murder, what he was doing, anything, because they were completely uncooperative,” Hendry explained.

For George Bass, he hopes the weight of the killer’s actions will convince them to come forward.

“It’s taken long enough,” he said. “First of all, confess your sins to the Lord and ask for forgiveness, so that one day you will be in heaven and not in hell. Second, do the right thing. I don’t know what happened, how it went on, but I feel like it’s time.”

If you know anything about Kim Watts’ murder, Harrison County Detectives wants to hear from you. Anonymous tips can also be submitted via Crime Stoppers on the Mississippi Coast.

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