Man Murders Pregnant Wife and Two Daughters Over Affair
In August of 2018, Shanann Watts arrived at her home in Frederick, Colorado at approximately 1:48 am from a business trip. She was dropped off by her friend and colleague, Nickole Atkinson, and footage of Shannan’s arrival was captured on the doorbell camera outside their house.
That same morning, August 13th, Shannan had a gynecology doctor’s appointment at 9 am. Shannan was 15 weeks pregnant. When she didn’t attend the doctor’s appointment or answer any of Nickole’s texts messages about it, Nickole headed to the house that Shannan lived in with her husband Chris, and two daughters, Celeste (age 4), and Bella (age 3).
Nickole knocked on the door and rang the doorbell at the Watts residence but received no response, despite Shannan’s car being in the garage. It was at that point that Nickole called the police and Shannan’s husband, Chris, who was at work. Chris, 33 at the time, worked as an operator for an oil company called Anadarko. He had left for work that morning around 5:15 am and claimed that was the last time he saw his wife.
When police arrived, they are let into the house for a welfare check by an eerily calm Chris Watts. Inside the house, police find no sign of Shannan or the two girls but note that Shannan’s phone and purse are there. Chris makes it known that the girls’ blankets are missing, something they don’t leave home without. They also find Shannan’s wedding ring on the bedside table.
The police converse with a neighbor whose security cameras picked up Chris leaving for work at 5:15 am, as he had mentioned. After they watch the camera footage and Chris is taken by another office, the neighbor makes it clear to police that he had never seen Chris so fidgety or talkative before. He notes that is he normally very calm and subdued.
From there, Shannan and the girls were reported missing and the search for them began. During interviews with detectives, Chris mentions that they had an “emotional conversation” before Shannan and the girls went missing. He notes that they talked about the “spark” in their marriage being gone and potential separation. Chris then speculates that perhaps Shannan left because of that conversation.
On August 15th, 2018, police get a call from a woman named Nichol Kessinger. Nichol informs police that her and Chris met at work and were involved in an intimate relationship. While Shannan and the girls were in North Carolina visiting family, Chris was home alone for five weeks. He spent most of that time with Nichol.
Further into the interview, Chris averts conversation to his weight loss, how Shannan did not get along with his parents, etc. After a while, Chris agrees to participate in a polygraph test. During the test, Chris is clearly extremely nervous, and the proctor even mentions that he needs to regulate his breathing.
Chris does not pass the polygraph test.
After the test, the proctor and detective allow Chris to speak to his father, Ronnie Watts, who had flown to Colorado from North Carolina. It’s to his father, that Chris confesses to killing his wife, Shannan. He tells Ronnie that Shannan was the one to kill their daughters, so Chris felt he had no choice but to kill her as well.
Chris later confessed that he strangled Shannan in their bedroom and the girls walked in on the situation. He loaded Shannan into the truck on the floor and then buckled up the girls in their seats. Chris then drove his sleeping children and dead wife out to one of his work locations, 45 minutes away from home. When they arrived at the location, he smothered both girls with their blankets.
The location is referred to as “Cervi 319” and is home to two twenty-foot oil tanks with 8.5-inch opening. Chris shoved his two daughters through those small openings and buried his wife Shannan in a shallow grave just a few feet from the tanks. Chris marked her grave with an “S,” then discarded the sheet his wife was wrapped in the woods.
On November 6th, 2018, Chris pleads guilty to first-degree murder of Shannan Watts, Bella Watts, and their unborn child, Nico Watts. He also pleads guilty to three counts of unlawful tampering with a deceased human body. Chris Watts is currently serving three life sentences at The Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin.
On September 30th, 2020, Netflix released a detailed documentary called American Murder: The Family Next Door, which includes detailed footage from police cameras, security cameras, Facebook, and text messages taken from both Shannan and Chris’s phones. At the 7:38 minute mark of the Netflix documentary, police are inside the Watts residence, doing their initial welfare check. It is at that moment that you can see motion in the little girls’ room that the police had just left. The motion seems to be undetected by the policeman, but his bodycam captures it. This small movement blew up on social media, especially Tik Tok, shortly after the documentary aired. The internet speculated that the motion could have belonged to the ghost of one of the girls. A Youtuber named Arthur Cant did a detailed video about this theory which now has over 1.2 million views. Others say that the motion was Nickole Atkinson’s daughter, who was with her that day.
Regardless of any conspiracy or ghost theories, this case serves as a very sad reminder that anyone can turn on a dime. Chris was someone that Shannan, Bella, and Celeste trusted with their lives, and he was the sole person responsible for taking them. If we can take anything else from this brutal case it is that life is extremely precious and trusting your instincts is always the right choice. Justice was served in the Watts family case, and we can only hope that continues to happen in these situations.