You’ve probably heard of this case, it’s a fairly recent one. It just happened in August of this year. The attractive, hardworking, gym-going, Steelers loving father from Colorado that shocked the world by murdering his pregnant wife, 2 young daughters, and unborn son. I promise you, those are the only nice things I will say about him in this post, and even that was too much.

I really fell down the rabbit hole with this one. I spent almost two weeks watching every YouTube video and reading every news article about this case. I’ve done so much endless research I’m afraid the FBI or something of the sort is looking at my web history, and is on their way to my front door to say “should we be concerned..”. Something about this case I’ve never seen before, is that every step is documented on police body cam or via audio recorder. From the second the police show up at the Watts home for their initial welfare check, until the second Chris Watts is booked into prison, you can watch every detail unfold. It’s fascinating. There are hours upon hours of footage. Anyway, let’s get into the case.

Shanann Cathryn Watts was born on 1/10/84 to Sandra and Frank Rzucek in New Jersey. Christopher Lee Watts was born on 5/16/85 to Ronnie and Cindy Watts in (I believe) North Carolina. Shanann worked from home for Le-vel, selling Thrive, a line of health supplements. Aside from her husband and children, Thrive was her whole life. She was very motivated and this made her successful within the company. Chris was an operator for Anadarko Petroleum. Coworkers described him as laid back, hard working, and very knowledgable when it came to his job.

Chris and Shanann met on Facebook through mutual friends in 2009 and married on 11/3/12. They had 2 daughters, Bella Marie Watts, 12/17/13, and Celeste Cathryn Watts, 7/17/15. Shanann was also 15 weeks pregnant with a boy, Niko Lee (I’ve seen it spelled both Niko and Nico, but in the case file, Shanann spelled it “Niko” in a text to a friend, so that’s the spelling I’ll be using) who was due 1/31/19. They seemed like the perfect family; happy couple, beautiful children, beautiful home, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Chris and Shanann were reportedly in the early stages of a separation at the time of the disappearances.

In the early morning of 8/13/18, Shanann returned home from a business trip to Arizona. Her friend and coworker Nickole Utoft-Atkinson was on the trip with her, and dropped her off at home at 1:48 am. Nickole watched Shanann go into the house and close the door. Later that morning, Nickole texted Shannan but received no response, which she said was very odd. Shanann apparently always texted her the morning after a business trip and was pumped to get to work. Shanann did all her work from her phone, so it was pretty much attached to her 24/7, along with her Apple watch. Throughout the morning, Nickole sent multiple texts and made multiple calls to Shanann, all of which went unanswered. Shanann suffered from multiple health problems such as lupus and diabetes, and was not feeling well in Arizona over the weekend, (and was also 15 weeks pregnant) so Nickole started to panic. After a few hours of radio silence from Shanann, Nickole and her son drove to the Watts house.

When she got there, she noticed that Shanann’s car was parked in the garage. She looked in the front windows of the house, but didn’t see or hear anyone/anything. She did notice that the shoes Shanann always wore were sitting by the front door. She entered the code to the front door, and it opened, but it was latched from the inside so she couldn’t enter. She called Shanann’s husband Chris in a panic at 12:27 pm. He didn’t answer the first time, so she called again. He answered the second call and Nickole explained what was happening. She asked if he’d heard from Shanann at all that morning. Chris said Shanann took the kids on a playdate but he didn’t know where or with who. He almost seemed annoyed by Nickole bothering him because he was at work and kept getting phone calls from Shanann’s friends and alerts from the alarm system detecting Nickole trying to enter the house.

Nickole knew Shanann had a doctor’s appointment that morning at 10 am. In an act of desperation and concern, she drove to Shanann’s doctor’s office to see if he had shown up for her appointment. She hadn’t. Shanann’s friend Cassie, also worried about their wellbeing, texted Chris. He was rambling on about how he and Shanann were separating and how he didn’t want Cassie to think he was a bad person? Weird. She told him she didn’t care about any of that and she was just worried about his wife and kids. Cassie told Chris that Nickole was going to call the police because everyone was worried. His exact text back to her was: “I’m going home Cassie. On my way. Don’t call the police. I will be there in 45min.” He apparently also told either Cassie or Nickole “not to break the door down”. His wife and children are no where to be found and could be in danger inside the house and he says “don’t call the police and don’t break the door down”. Nickole went back to the Watts house and after waiting almost 45 minutes for Chris to arrive, she called police at 1:33 pm.

Officer Scott Coonrod arrived at the Watts house and walked around the entire perimeter, knocking on windows and doors, thinking that Shanann may have had a medical emergency, and that the children would hear him and come running to the door. He had Nickole enter the code into the front door and yelled inside. The house was silent. He noticed a keypad on the garage, but Nickole didn’t know the code. Officer Coonrod called Chris and asked for the code to the garage. Chris said the keypad didn’t work, but that he was 5 minutes away.

That’s where things start to get sketchy. Chris finally arrives home, 2 and a half hours after Nickole’s first call to him. You’d think if your wife and children were missing or potentially in danger, you’d run into that house like there was no tomorrow. That’s not what Chris did. He got out of his truck, walked around to the passenger side, fiddled around with some stuff and then walked over and greeted the officer. He opened the garage and again, instead of running into the house, he stopped at Shanann’s car, opened the passenger door, shuffled some stuff around, and then finally entered the house. I’ve seen a lot of people theorizing that he was taking Shanann’s phone or wedding rings out of her car at this point, to hide them. This theory doesn’t make sense to me, why would they be in her car when she’d just returned home from a trip? Unless he put them there earlier that morning and was planning to sell or dispose of them at a later date.

Chris went into the house to unlatch the front door to allow everyone in, but spent a minute and 15 seconds alone in the house before he opened the front door. I believe these are the moments that he hides Shanann’s phone (whether it was left in the house or he had just gotten it out of the car) and Apple Watch in an effort to cover at least some of his tracks. I don’t think he expected the cops to be at his house before he got home from work, and that he still had some cleaning up to do. While Chris was inside the house alone, his neighbor tells the officer that he has a security camera. He says he’s watched the footage and the only people that have left the residence that day are Nickole at 1:48 am, and Chris leaving for work around 5:45 am.

Upon entering the house, Chris, Nickole, and Officer Coonrod begin searching the house. Shanann and the girls are nowhere to be found, but they’ve left critical items behind. Nickole finds Shanann’s purse, including her wallet, license, credit cards, etc., in her office, along with a bag full of the girls’ important medications. Nickole’s son finds Shanann’s phone and Apple Watch shoved in between the cushions of the upstairs couch. They’re powered off. The keys to Shanann’s white Lexus are sitting on the center console of the car. The girls’ car seats are also in the car. There were no signs of foul play, forced entry, or any sort of struggle. The house was neat and organized and it seemed like everything was in its place, except one thing. Officers on the scene noticed the master bed had been stripped of everything on it. The comforter, fitted sheet, and pillows were on the floor next to the bed. The flat sheet was missing.

Chris tells Officer Coonrod that the girls’ blankies are missing and that they don’t go anywhere without them. I fully believe that Chris was trying to sell the whole “we got into a fight and she ran off with the kids” story. He was trying to hide her phone to make it seem like she took it with her. He “found” her wedding rings on the nightstand (which he really took off her finger after he killed her) also supporting his “she left me” story. Even though they were separating, everyone said she never took her wedding rings off. She was wearing them the entire weekend in Arizona. He kept offering BS “clues” to take suspicion off of himself.

Chris and Officer Coonrod go next door to watch the neighbor’s security footage. This footage presents one of the most damning pieces of evidence in this case: Chris is seen backing his work truck halfway into the garage and loading items into it. He backs it in just enough so that the bed of the truck is blocked by the garage and is not visible to the camera.

According to the GPS device on Chris’s work truck, he started the truck at 5:18 am (time seen backing into the driveway), and then the truck sits in the driveway for 27 minutes, still running. Nickole and Nathaniel, the neighbor, said they’ve never seen Chris back his truck into the driveway, and that this is very strange. Chris’s explanation? His truck had been broken into in the past, so on Fridays he would unload his work tools into the garage and load them back into the truck on Monday morning before work. I don’t think putting your water jug, backpack, and a couple of tools into the back of your truck would take 27 minutes. Loading 3 bodies into your car however, could probably take 27 minutes.

Let me just note: Chris looked incredibly nervous while viewing this footage. The second it showed him backing his truck into the driveway, he took a deep breath, turned away from the TV, then turned back around with both hands on his head. He was sweating bullets in anticipation of what that security camera would show. He kept swaying back and forth, keeping his hands on his head, biting his lip, looking at his phone. I think he was only watching the footage to make sure you couldn’t see him loading the bodies of his family into the backseat of his truck, but that’s exactly what he was doing.

The next day, 8/14/18, Chris does an interview with the media, begging for his family back. He keeps making odd comments like “I have no inclination where they could be” and appears to be acting very nervous and emotionless. At this point, police are suspicious. They discover Chris’s work truck has a GPS and immediately check to see where he went when he left the house the previous morning, after he was seen loading the back of his truck. According to the GPS, he drove straight to a work site called CERVI 3-19 in Roggen, CO. The police flew a drone over the work site and discovered a white sheet in the field near a freshly disturbed patch of dirt. They brought Chris in for questioning and a polygraph, which he obviously failed. He maintained his innocence and said he really has no idea where Shanann and the girls are. Although, this is where he admits he was having an affair.

I’m only going to talk briefly about the affair because again, this case has so much information. Chris was having an affair with a coworker named Nichol Kessinger. He told her he was in the end stages of a divorce and that he was a father of 2. He never mentioned he had a son on the way. Right before her business trip to Arizona, Shanann went to North Carolina for 6 weeks. The first 5 weeks, it was just her and the girls, then Chris joined her for the 6^th week. While Shanann was in NC, Chris and Nichol’s relationship developed and became more serious, likely because Chris had 5 weeks with no wife or kids. According to texts between Shanann and friends, when Chris arrived in NC, he was cold, distant, didn’t want to kiss her or hold hands or really have anything to do with her. She was heartbroken and confused. 

Okay, back to the main story. Chris fails the polygraph. They bring his father, Ronnie, into the interrogation room and Chris finally admits that he hurt Shanann. Chris says he and Shanann had an “emotional conversation” that morning and they were both crying. After said conversation, he went downstairs to make a protein shake and to get his work stuff together. While he was downstairs, he claims he heard a little bit of a commotion upstairs. He went back up and says he saw Shanann actively choking CeCe on the baby monitor and that Bella was laying there “limp and blue” (even though the baby monitor is black and white in the dark). Chris says in a fit of rage, he ran in there and strangled Shanann to death. He claims he panicked and didn’t know what to do next, so instead of calling 911 like any normal parent who just witnessed their children being killed by their mother, he wrapped his dead wife in a sheet and loaded her body and the girls bodies into the backseat of his work truck.

No one believes the whole “Shanann killed the kids” theory except Chris and maybe his parents, who are clearly in denial that their son could do something this horrible. Truth is, he smothered his two daughters, strangled his wife, and in turn, killed his unborn son. I believe his affair clouded his head. I think he wanted out of his marriage, that he was growing increasingly annoyed by Shanann, that he didn’t want to go through a divorce, that he didn’t want to pay alimony or child support, he just wanted a whole new wife-less, child-less life. He thought this was the easy way out. He thought he’d get away with it. But of course, this is just speculation. We’ll never get the true motive out of that monster.

This gets a little gnarly, here’s your warning. The most important question investigators had for Chris was “what did you do with their bodies?”. As previously stated, Chris drove straight to CERVI 3-19 after he put their bodies in his truck. CERVI 3-19 is an oil field that has 2, 20 foot oil batteries containing a mixture of crude oil and water. Chris put CeCe’s body in one tank, and Bella’s in the other. Shanann’s body would not fit through the hatch, which was only 8” in diameter, so he had to dig a shallow grave for her. He used a shovel from the back of his work truck. She was only 8” under the dirt. Shanann had also suffered a coffin birth, I’m not explaining what that is here, look it up. Remember earlier when I said the flat sheet from the master bed was missing? And that when police flew a drone over the field, there was a sheet visible in the field? Ding ding ding. That’s what Chris wrapped Shanann’s body in and dragged her across the field in. He didn’t bury her in it or take it with him, he just left it out in the open field.

With this confession and the location of Shanann and the girls, police arrest Chris at 11:02 pm on 8/15/18. He pleads guilty to all three counts of first degree murder, even though his story previously pointed the finger at Shanann for killing the girls. I believe he only did this to avoid 1) a trial, and 2) the death penalty.

Christoper Lee Watts was charged with three counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of murder in the first degree for causing the death of an individual under the age of 12 while in the position of trust, one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and three counts of tampering with a deceased body. He was sentenced on 11/19/18 to 5 consecutive life sentences for murder, 48 years for unlawful termination of pregnancy, and three 12 year sentences for tampering with a deceased body. He is not eligible for parole. He was originally serving his sentence in Colorado, but was just recently moved to a prison in Wisconsin for security reasons. 

I hope I’ve done this case justice. Like I said at the beginning of this post, this case is so well documented. From the body cam videos, to the 2,000 page case file, to the endless videos of Shanann and the kids on YouTube, to recorded interviews with friends, family, coworkers, and even Chris’s mistress, every detail is out there. I’ve never seen a case that covered every minute like this.

I’ll include the link to the case file if anyone wants to read through it. WARNING: It’s not for the faint of heart. It explains, in detail, the recovery and state of the 4 bodies, and it’s gruesome. There are no graphic pictures included in the case file, but beware: if you do your own research on this case, there are somewhat graphic photos of the clothing Shanann was wearing when they recovered her body, photos/video of the sheet she was wrapped in, and a picture of the shallow grave she was recovered from. View at your own discretion. 

I would include links to YouTube videos regarding this case but there are just so many. If you search “Chris Watts body cam” or “Chris Watts interviews” on YouTube, you should be able to find them all.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this lengthy post (they will not all be this long or in depth). I may do a follow up post in a very casual manner, maybe just bullet points of interesting information from this case that didn’t have a place in this post.

I hope that Shanann and her 3 beautiful children: Bella, Celeste, and Niko are together, happy, and at peace.

I hope that Chris spends the rest of his days rotting in a prison cell regretting what he’s done. 

Case file: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5219206-Christopher-Watts-REDACTED-FINAL.html