The True Story of the Watts Family Murders
By: Max Ngamla
Tags: History, True Crime, Crime, Murder, Justice

The True Story of the Watts Family Murders

Christopher Watts was a Wolf in Sheep’s clothing

(left) Christopher Watts mugshot, (right) Watts family photo. Image Source: Heavy.com

In 2018, Chris Watts murdered his three months pregnant wife and his two daughters of four and three years, Bella and Celeste. The 33-year-old had decided to murder his family to stay with another woman.

The story of the Watts family murders

It all starts in Frederick, Colorado on August 13, 2018. In front of a charming wooden and brick house at 2825 Saratoga Trail, there is a police officer with a woman. She is Nikole Atkinson and she has reported the disappearance of the woman who lives in that house, her friend Shanann Watts, a 34-year-old mother of two, who’s fifteen weeks pregnant.

Shanann’s car is parked in the driveway, but in the house where she lives with her husband and daughters, there are no signs of life. After a few moments, Chris watts arrives, Shanann’s husband, after being called by Nickole while at work. Chris is calm, even seraphic, under the suspicious eyes of the neighbors. He and the agents enter the two-story house with a sloping roof. Inside, between clean and tidy rooms, there is a bag and Shanann’s mobile phone, but the wife and daughters are no were to be found.

Suspicions about her husband

Chris Watts, who works for a company that extracts oil, says he has no idea where his wife and the two daughters are. Neither the detectives nor the public, to which Watts has made an appeal, believe he is sincere.

The Colorado Bureau immediately starts an investigation ‘which the FBI joins the next day. Watts agrees to undergo the ‘lie detector’.

The investigators ask Chris: “Do you know what happened to your wife and your daughters? Do you know where they are now? “‘

No’ is Chris’s answer to all questions. Chris stutters and breathes hard.

Investigators: “Mr. Watts, you didn’t pass the test, do you want to tell us the truth now? “

Chris urges them: “I told you everything, I don’t know what to add …”.



Chris Watts becomes the prime suspect.

An almost perfect family

The Watts family lived an idyllic existence, immortalized on a regular basis. Shanann, who with her mobile phone has methodically told her everyday life before her demise. Christmas photos, kids in costumes, lunches, games, parties, the first times of the girls, and even the announcement of the third pregnancy to Chris are cataloged in albums on Facebook for the benefit of fans.

The shadows in the life of the Watts

While Shanann got busy at work, Chris was at the gym, working out. From the wedding day, Chris underwent a slow and impressive physical transformation, forging muscles, and losing weight. Beautiful, fit, and happy, the Watts had become the TV commercial family that America scrutinized with curiosity and suspicion, imagining a very different face behind the smiling one of the perfect family.

THE economic problems, first of all. Old student loans, medical expenses, mortgage, credit card debts profoundly affected the well-being of the family.

It was not only economic problems. Even the couple, despite the arrival of the third child, was in crisis. Shanann had been complaining to him for weeks. Chris’s friends described him as being cold, and distant.

“He also refuses to hug me,” Shanann said with tears in her eyes, to her friends, before disappearing. Chris wanted a divorce, Shanann hoped to solve the marriage problems with couples therapy.

Chris Watts’ lover, admissions, and the arrest

To permanently undermine the perfect family image, a testimony arrives. A young woman, Nichol Kessinger, tells the investigators that he has been Chris Watts’ lover.

By now investigators know Chris murdered his family, there’s video footage of him on the night the mother and daughters went missing, spending about 50 minutes loading their bodies in his car and then, the next day, the school called Watts and announced that the girls didn’t show up, investigators recorded the call.



The only thing they still don’t know is where Chris Watts hid the bodies of his wife and children. To find out they choose to aggressively interrogate him. When Chris’s father, who had flown to Colorado, is in front of him in the interrogation room, Watts lets himself go and admits to killing his family. “They are dead, they won’t come back.”

Then, finally, he gets to the point, pointing to the place where he has hidden the bodies. Buried face down in a pit excavated in the property where Chris worked, Shanann”s lifeless body is found. At the bottom of two oil tanks, Bella and Celeste’s little bodies are recovered. The baby that grew in Shanann’s belly also lost its life, they would have called him Nico.

Chris was arrested on August 15, 2018.

On August 21, 2018, Watts was charged with five counts of first-degree murder.

The sentence

Chris tries to blame his wife for everything.

“I caught her strangling the girls, so I have done the same to her,” However, to avoid the death penalty, Watts confesses to all the murders. “I strangled my wife and my daughters with my bare hands. Then I loaded them into the car, I buried her and threw the girls in a tank of oil, “he admitted

On November 6, 2018, Judge Marcelo Kopcow sentenced Christopher watts to five life sentences for the murder of his wife, two daughters, and of the little son, Shanann carried in her womb. He was sent to Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, to serve his life sentences.