Sex crimes earn life without parole for former MSU football player

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - A former MSU football player was sentenced to life without parole for the aggravated sexual assault of two MSU students and intent to sexually assault one other.

It took four days of testimony and just 25 minutes of deliberation for a Wichita County jury to convict Haeven Watson for what District Attorney John Gillespie said was “the stuff of nightmares.”

“We tell ourselves it doesn’t really happen. It’s fictional, or it happens in the big city, but it doesn’t happen right here in safe Wichita Falls,” DA Gillespie said. “It’s one of the worst things that I’ve seen.”

Two women, just days apart, each woke up to find Watson standing over them. Watson threatened them with a stolen gun and sexually assaulted them on campus.

“The first girl, he threatened that he would kill her. She said that it placed her in primal fear,” DA Gillespie said. “And then the second girl, eight days later, she wakes up, and she has a gun in her face.”

The DA said a third victim was awake when Watson walked into her dorm room. She screamed until he left. The accounts of each victim lined up. Gillespie said Watson was wearing a hoodie with a bandana on. One victim identified the gun he was carrying.

The three incidents indicated an escalating pattern of behavior, according to DA Gillespie. This was confirmed by information turned up by Wichita Falls Police Department detectives.

“One of the detectives, they got a search warrant, and they searched his phone... he had searched that dorm for room layouts and for incoming residents,” DA Gillespie said. “They also had a series of messages [through Twitter.] The searches were things like ‘dorm room rape,’ ‘mask man rape,’ and then the really chilling one was basically ‘serial killer rape.’”

At the end of the nearly week-long trial, Watson was convicted on theft of a firearm, burglary of habitation with the intent to commit a sexual offense, and four counts of aggravated sexual assault. 78th District Court Judge Meredith Kennedy determined the life sentences for each assault charge would be served stacked, not concurrently, and there would be no opportunity for parole.

“The fastest that you can get parole in Texas on a life sentence like that is 30 years. You’re not guaranteed parole, but you know, so 30 + 30 + 30 + 30, it’s 120 years,” DA Gillespie explained. “He’s never going to see the light of day again.”

The DA said though there is never true closure for survivors of such events, they have since graduated, testified in trial, and were able to give impact statements to Watson at the end.

“That was very, I think, empowering for them,” Gillespie recounted. “One of them said, you know, ‘You’re a loser. You’re a pervert... I will enjoy Christmas. You’ll be in prison. I will have a family. You’ll be in prison... You’ll be in prison for the rest of your life.’”

Gillespie said he is extremely grateful to the WFPD and its Crimes Against Persons Unit for their outstanding work.

As of the publishing of this article, Watson remains in the Wichita County Jail.