Shan’ann Cathryn Rzucek, Shanann, was born in 1984 in North Carolina. When she was about 18 she married for about six years, before it ended in divorce. It was during one of her challenging life experiences in August of 2010, having just been in a car accident and facing the painful recovery process, as well as just being diagnosed with lupus, that she met Chris Watts. She received a friend request on Facebook from a man she didn’t know. He was a cousin of a friend of hers.
Christopher Lee Watts was born in 1985 in North Carolina. As a child Chris loved playing sports, including basketball, baseball and football. He also loved NASCAR racing which he’d attend with his father. Chris was always described as quiet and easygoing. Someone who got along with everyone.
Shanann and Chris’s relationship flourished. After almost 2 years of dating the couple decided to move to Colorado.
Their daughter Bella Marie Watts was born in 2013. In 2015 they welcomed their second daughter Celeste Cathryn, “CeCe”.
Chris landed a new job as a field coordinator at Anadarko, a local oil and natural gas drilling company, and Shanann was working at a call center at a children’s hospital. The couple was bringing in about $90,000 per year, but it wasn’t enough they had accumulated a significant amount of debt. They filed for bankruptcy. At the beginning of 2016 Shanann joined Le-Vel, a multi-level marketing company, selling vitamin, infused patches. Shanann friends and family could see that she was happy and, by all accounts, those same friends and family without exception knew Chris to be a kind, quiet and loving husband and a dedicated, doting father.
Later that morning friends grew worried that they didn’t heard from Shanann and that she wasn’t returning their calls or texts. Nickole Atkinson drove to Shanann’s house. She became even more concerned when there was no answer and she could see the shoes Shanann wore every day just inside the front door, and her car was still in a garage visible through the windows at the top. She called police, requesting a welfare check. They arrived within minutes.
Police officer: “Nickole? What’s going on?”
Nickole: “So my friend… Um, we were out of town for a business trip this weekend and I dropped her off at 2:00 this morning. She’s 15 weeks pregnant. She wasn’t feeling well. And she had a doctoring this morning at 9:00, and I told her to let me know she needed me to take her. She’s got two little girls and she was very distraught over the weekend, wasn’t eating normally or drinking. And we kept trying to force it on her because she’s pregnant. Um, her husband and her supposedly are separating but she didn’t know this. She thought they were just having issues. He disclosed that to me today, cause I called him and I was like ‘have you talked or heard from Shanann since you left for work this morning, cause I can’t get a hold of her.’ I’ve called, I’ve texted her, car’s in the garage, her shoes she wears every single day by the front door.”
Police officer: “She only has one vehicle?”
Nickole: “No, they only have the one vehicle and his work truck.”
Police search the outside of the home. The officer got Chris on the phone and asked him if he knew where his wife and children were. He said he didn’t, but that he would be home in about 5 minutes. After a few minutes Chris arrived home. He immediately went into the garage and began searching Shanann’s car. Then he went into the house through the inner garage door and closes it. He was in the house alone for just over a minute, before opening the front door for police and Nickole. Then Nickole discovered Shanann’s cell phone.
Police officer: “Does she work?
Chris Watts: “Yeah. She works from home…”
Police officer: “You guys have any kind of issues, marital issues?”
Chris Watts: “Separation… We’re going to sell the house and we are separating.”
Police officer: “How’s that going?”
Chris Watts: “It’s going civil for the most part.”
Police officer: “Did she tell you anything about leaving, moving out?”
Chris Watts: “Not moving out. I mean, the last time I talked to her was this morning. She said she was going to take the kids to her friend’s house and she that’s where she was going to be. And then I’ve texted her today. I’ve never heard anything, but car’s here. Unless somebody came, picked her up, but the people that I know, nobody’s heard from, nobody’s seen.” Police noticed that there was no bedding on the bed. It was stripped off and bundled on the floor. They found pillowcase and the top sheet in the kitchen trash, but the fitted sheet was missing. Other than that, they didn’t see any signs of foul play. Chris explained that Shanann usually liked to wash the sheets after she slept in them after traveling to get the airport off of them. One thing that was clear to everyone searching was that the house was locked up from the inside, so there would be no way for an intruder to escape the home, leaving everything locked from the inside, unless they left through the garage.
Police learned that the next door neighbor has a surveillance camera and they headed over to see what he could capture. About that time detective Baumhover, the sole detective of the Frederick Police Department was called in to join the search. The camera was pointed directly in the direction of the Watts home. The footage showed that the only person to come or go from the Watts home at least from the front was Chris himself. While Chris began to over explaining himself.
Chris Watts: “… I load my stuff up, my coolers, my water jugs, my book bag, my computers, some of the tools that I had from the tool box. I knew I was going to have to do some pumping, pumping in rubbers today, what I was out so far.”
The neighbor explained how the camera would pick up any movement in the vicinity, while an increasingly anxious Chris continued rambling about questions he wasn’t asked.
Chris Watts: “It like we had, we had issues the other, other week when people were stealing stuff out of like garages and stuff like that and I have parked here. I parked right here…”
Neighbor: “He’s not acting right at all… He’s never fidgety. He’s never rocking back and forth (showing that Chris is shifting weight back and forth between his legs while standing). He never loads his stuff in and out of the garage ever. He doesn’t look worried. He looks like he’s trying to cover his tracks. You know what I am saying? And if he’s loading his stuff, why isn’t he walking back and forth? But I can’t see what he’s doing in the back of the truck, cause he pulled into the garage. And he knows my camera’s there. I’m just saying it’s kinda odd that he pulls his truck back behind my camera. He never backs his truck into the driveway. You can ask them, he’s normally quiet, real subdued. He’s over here telling us, telling you three times what he took out, what he did… He never talks. So the fact that he’s over here blabbing his mouth, makes me kinda suspicious.”
34-year-old Shanann, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old CeCe were officially considered missing. Watts’s official storyline was that Shanann arrived home just before 2 a.m. from her business trip. He claimed they had an emotional conversation before he left for work at about 5:15 a.m. No one heard from Shanann for about 7 hours until her neighbor arrived at her home at about noon, finding no one there. Once Chris arrived they find Shanann’s phone, her purse, her wallet, money and ID and even the children’s critical medication which she never left home without. Her car was in the garage and still contained the girl’s car seats.
The next day the FBI and the CBI joined the investigation. While police were searching his home with police dogs, Chris agreed to be interviewed by two News stations.
“When I got home yesterday, it was like a ghost town. Like she wasn’t here, kids weren’t here. I have no idea like where they went. If she wasn’t here, like where did she go. Like once I got here it was like all right, who can I call? If she’s vanished, like I want her back so bad, I want those kids back so bad. Last night I wanted to see, I wanted see this kid just running, running, just, just barrel rush me. And just give me a hug and knock me on the ground. I’m hoping that somebody sees something or somebody knows something and comes forward. Right now, now it’s got K9 units, the sheriff’s apartment, everybody’s like… They’re, they’re doing their best right now to figure out like if they can get a scent. I called her three times, texted her about three times just to say, you know… Right now I don’t even want to just like throw anything out there, like I hope that she’s somewhere safe right now and with the kids. That’s why last night was horrible. I couldn’t do it. I just… Shanann, Bella, Celeste, if you’re out there, just, just come back like… If somebody has her, just please bring her back, I need to see everybody. I need to see everybody again. This house is not complete with, without anybody here. Please, bring it back.”
Investigators called Chris Watts to the police department that evening for questioning. FBI special agent, Coder conducted the first interview with Watts. Agent suspicions of Watts were already heightened by his near emotionless behavior during the television interviews. Then as the questioning with investigators progressed, there were red flags. He kept referring to his wife and daughters in the past tense. When he was shown a picture of his daughters: “No matter it was 100 degrees or what, she loved those shoes. She always loved those shoes. And Bella… She always wore some flip flops. She just like… She was a girly girl.”
For the most part, during the three plus hour interview Watts stuck to that story that he and Shanann had planned to separate, that she said she was going to stay with a friend and that he had no idea where his wife and kids were. He admitted that things were beginning to look worrisome.
Agent Coder: “What do you think happened?”
Watts: “At first, I really thought maybe she was just at somebody’s house, just decompressing. But after today, like with the onslaught of all the cars… It’s making me lean the other direction, about someone took her. But there’s just, if someone took her, it would have to have been someone she knew, because there’s, there’s no sign of anything like being disturbed, broken. But like, that’s the way I’m leaning now. At first I thought for real she was just too compressing somewhere, just I mean, I thought she was safe, even though everything in the house was left there. But now, it’s just after the day with the News crews and everything, it’s just, it feels more the other direction, and it’s freaking me out.”
Watts didn’t know that detectives were already aware that he was having an affair. Early that morning they had been alerted by the head of security at Watts’s job that the company had discovered email evidence of a possible affair between Watts and a coworker. Shortly after that the coworker herself Nicole Kessinger also came forward to police, claiming that she wanted to divulge their relationship to them and share what she knew about Watts. So while Watts was being interviewed, police were also interviewing Kessinger. During the first of several police interviews which took place, Kessinger downplayed her relationship with Chris, stating that it wasn’t that serious and that Watts was more into her than she was into him. She claimed Watts told her that he was separated and at the end of divorce proceedings. According to Kessinger, after The disappearance she learned that Shanann was pregnant and that Watts had lied about it. She said that if he could lie about that, she wondered what else could he lie about and worried for the missing family’s safety.
Police asked him if he would undergo a polygraph test. He agreed. So at 11:00 p.m., after nearly 4 hours of questioning and no probable cause to hold him, they planned to part ways for the night and had Chris return in the morning for the polygraph.
On August 15, 2018, two days after the disappearance, Chris’s father flew into Colorado to support his son. Chris picked him up from the airport and the two of them headed for the police station and Chris’s polygraph. Before the test began, CSI agent Tammy Lee who would be administering the test explained what he could expect: “There’s actually only two ways you can fail a polygraph. The first way would be if you fail to follow my instructions. I’m going to give you a lot of instructions today about how to sit still, how to answer questions, things like that. So if you fail to follow those instructions, you will not pass today’s test. The second way would be if you choose to lie to me today. Obviously this is about 100% truth. Even if there’s, you know, something that you didn’t tell the investigators, you know, since Monday, I guess is when you ended the police were involved. If there’s something that you didn’t tell them since Monday, like that is totally fine, like I get it, you know. People aren’t going to remember every single detail every time they talk to someone. As long as you tell me what the truth is today, you will have no problem with passing. I promise you that. And obviously, I mean, I hope that you know if you did have something to do with their disappearance, it would be really stupid for you to come in and take a polygraph today. It would be really dumb, like you should not be here right now sitting in this chair if you had anything to do with Shanann and the little girls disappearance.”
Agent Lee: “I just find it hard that hear you talk about, is having this emotional, you know, conversation with Shanann and you’re balling and crying together and you have not shed one tear in 2 days that you’ve been here. Not one. Help me understand that, because I don’t get it. These are your baby girls and you have not shed one tear over them not being around. Chris, I lose my four-year-old in the store for 10 seconds and I start to go panic. I have not seen any of that from you at all. Help me understand that.”
Watts: “I love those girls. I would never do any… Just because I haven’t shed a tear, you get…
Agent Lee: “No, that’s weird. Is that weird?”
Watts: “… don’t, don’t look into that like I don’t love my kids, love my wife.
Agent Lee decided to deploy a proven strategy of offering Watts a scapegoat. She did it by vilifying Shanann.
Agent Lee: “Did Shanann do something to them?
Watts: “No. No.”
Agent Lee: “I’m serious.”
Watts: “I have no clue.”
Agent Lee: “You would have known cuz they didn’t leave the house. Did Shanann do something to them and then did you feel like you had to do something to Shanann?
Watts: “They were at the house when I left. They were there.
Agent Lee: “They weren’t there. They didn’t leave. They vanished. I mean, I want to believe that maybe Shanann did it and you felt compelled to fix this so Shanann didn’t look bad. That’s what I want to believe, but I don’t know, you’re not telling me that, so makes me think the worst.”
The strategies were starting to pay off. He started to get emotional, but still would not admit anything. Agent Coder: “How about this, if we brought your dad in here would you please tell him what happened?”
Chris’s father: “Do you want to tell me what’s going on or anything?”
Watt’s: “It’s the polygraph. Failed it. “
Chris’s father: “Is there any reason why you shouldn’t?”
Watt’s: “They know that I had an affair. They know… I came clean about that.”
Chris’s father: “Anything else you want to tell me? What’s going on? What happened or anything? Do you know anything about it?”
Watt’s: “I mean… I don’t want to protect her.”
Chris’s father: “What?”
Watt’s: “I don’t want to protect her.”
Chris’s father: “You don’t want to protect her? She hurt them?”
Watt’s: “Yeah. And then I killed her. I hurt her.”
Chris’s father: “You hurt her? So she killed both CeCe and Bella, choked them to death. And you lost it and you choke… You choke her…”
Watt’s: “That’s just rage.”
Chris’s father: “So I mean did you haul the bodies off or something?”
Watt’s: “I mean I didn’t know what else to do. I freaked out and didn’t know what else to do. That’s the last time I’ll see the light of day again.”
Chris confessed to the very scenario agents offered up to him.
In an effort to help locate the bodies without Chris having to go to the site again, agent Coder asked whether a coworker could help.
Chris was breaking down at every mention of returning to the site.
Chris’s father told agents that Chris would never do anything to harm his children. He also repeatedly referred to Shanann as unstable, bipolar, as having mood swings and generally manipulative and antagonistic toward him and his wife.
The agents returned with a fresh photo of the site where Chris claimed he disposed of the bodies. Physical and drone searches were being conducted on the site. After investigators obtained Chris’s work trucks GPS data it pinpointed his location on the morning of the disappearance. The searches revealed in photograph the missing fitted sheet from the couple’s bed along with freshly moved dirt consistent of a shallow grave, presented with the photos. They asked Chris to mark the locations where he disposed each of the bodies. The reason he was so reluctant to divulge their locations was because he had disposed of his little girls bodies in two huge tanks of crude oil. An environment where trained engineers in hazmat suits would only be able to survive for a few minutes due to the toxic fumes that they give off. With the locations of the bodies now identified, agents returned their attention to Chris in search of more answers. His claim was that after he told Shanann that he wanted to separate, he went downstairs. Then after hearing noises upstairs, he went back up and first noticed Bella on the baby monitor lifeless in her bed, then the monitor cycled to CeCe’s room and Chris saw Shanann strangling her. He said that he ran to where they were, threw Shanann off of CeCe and in a fit of rage strangle Shanann. The agents never believed a story that so conveniently match the one they lobed to him to get his confession rolling. It didn’t match the evidence at all. They were all but certain, he was the culprit behind all the killings, supported by the fact that he had changed details of his account at least three times between his confession to his dad and the interrogations immediately following, but he would only acknowledge murdering Shanann not the girls.
Agent Coder: “It looks like is that you found a new life and the only way to get that new life was to get rid of your old life, and I think that you killed these girls before their mom came home and then killed Shanann.” Agents didn’t extract a full confession.
Chris Watts was arrested. Within two weeks of being arrested Watts confessed to also killing his daughters. It was part of a plea deal where prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty in exchange for his guilty plea based on the mountain evidence that would be collected after Watts’s arrest. A painfully detailed jailhouse confession he would make to agents a few months later, and subsequent letters he’d write to an author. A clearer picture of the events surrounding the murder came into focus.
Up until August 18, 2018, Shanann was confident that she was living a picture perfect life. She had a beautiful family, was a top producer t La-Vel and was married to the most loving, caring soulmate anyone could ask for. She was scheduled to go on a five week trip to North Carolina, so the girls could spend time with both her and Chris’s families. Chris would join them for their last week there, but would stay home for the majority of the trip since he had to work. While the girls spent time with family, the trip was not going well. There had already been extreme friction between Shanann and Chris’s parents dating back to the start of their relationship. Chris’s family didn’t attend their wedding, simply because his mother didn’t like Shanann. And that visit was no different. The tension grew to an irreconcilable level, when Chris’s mother served CeCe ice cream with peanuts in it, and according to Shanann, his sister laid out an actual bowl of peanuts. After Shanann became angry about the peanuts and the ice cream, with CeCe being dangerously allergic to peanuts. Shanann finally lost it. She was furious, left their house as soon as she could, and never went back. Chris was beginning to behave differently as well. Shanann texted him: “This isn’t the only thing. This doesn’t get your head all screwed up. Something changed in the last 5 weeks. Something you won’t say.” She tried to both text and to talk with him about it, even growing angry, but he insisted everything was fine. Once Chris finally joined them in North Carolina, it didn’t get any better. He was distant and cold and everyone noticed. Shanann had booked a trip to the beach for the four of them to get away and even Bella and CeCe who were normally all over Chris, uncharacteristically shot away from him as a result of him seeming so annoyed with them which he was actually fine with. They were an obstacle and he genuinely was annoyed. Also on his first night there Shanann said she had a bad headache, so Chris gave her what he told her was an over-the-counter pain reliever, she vomited most of the night and he didn’t help her. On that same night he texted Kessinger and told her he couldn’t talk and could only text for the night. She replied ‘Why not, are you with her?’ Chris had as little interaction with Shanann as he possibly could. He avoided any and all intimacy and would simply leave the room whenever it became clear she wanted to be intimate. Shanann shared with her good friend that he hadn’t touched or kissed or really even talked to her all week. She noted how they couldn’t get enough of each other before the trip. Something was wrong and she knew it. According to a friend, Shanann had speculated about Chris having an affair, but dismissed it telling the friend that Chris didn’t have it in him. Chris Watts that many saw for the first time on National Television barely resembled the man that Shanann met some eight years prior. 60 pounds heavier as he ironically and chillingly delivered a presentation on infidelity for a speech course he was taking two years into their relationship. She assumed that the rift that she had with his parents may be causing his behavior. He would eventually confirm that he was no longer interested in continuing their marriage. He even bizarrely deleted his Facebook account.
The night before they were set to return to Colorado, Chris told Shanann that he’s happy with just Bella and CeCe and doesn’t want another baby. She said that she doesn’t feel safe with him after what he said about the baby. The trip finally came to an end. They returned to Colorado on August 7th, 6 days before the disappearance. They would be home for a few days before Shanann would have to leave for a business trip to Arizona. She considered cancelling given the tension in her marriage, but Chris insisted she should go and promised they would talk when she got home. In reality he saw it as another opportunity to spend more time with Kessinger, but Shanann saw it as a glitter of hope, especially since Chris agreed to go in on a romantic weekend together the following weekend. At some point, since they now knew the gender of the baby, Shanann was now 15 weeks pregnant with they decided to name him Nico. Shanann left for her trip that Friday hopeful, but it would be short lived. Just one day into her trip, on Saturday night she noticed a $60 credit card charge. Chris just made at a restaurant. It was the first and only slip up Chris had made, exposing his affair to Shanann. Prior to that point he was able to use gift cards to pay for all their meals, but he’d run out of them on this final dinner date and needed to use their joint credit card. Watts met Nicole Kessinger also called Nikki, through work at Anadarko. Kessinger worked there as a contractor. The two began communicating via work email and Watts immediately tried taking their relationship to a romantic level again via email, but Mickey originally rebuffed his flirtations, claiming it was out of respect for herself and directly referring to his wife and kids. Eventually the two began seriously dating. Based on the evidence they were obsessed with each other. Chris was searching the internet for secluded vacation spots. He used to date women who were more in control and dominating in their relationships, but it wasn’t like that with Kessinger. She would always ask him what he wanted. It was different and he liked it. Kessinger went to their home, saw family pictures and Chris consoled her afterwards. According to Watts, from that point on their intimate encounters decreased from three to four times per day to one or two. The day before the disappearance, Chris was wrapping up the weekend’s events with the girls by taking them to a birthday party. Prior to their bedtime, Chris texted a coworker, telling him that he could go out to the work site survey 3:19 in the morning and that there was no need for his coworker to go.
Despite Chris’s original claim that the murders were due to a spur of the moment, fit of rage in reality to his own acknowledgement he had been planning to kill his family for weeks. Based on letters Chris Watts wrote to an author from prison, on that morning prior to killing Shanann, he went to each of his daughter’s rooms and tried to smother them with a pillow. Then he returned to his and Shanann’s bedroom where they began arguing. Chris told her that he was having an affair, didn’t love her and wanted to separate. According to Chris, Shanann was first hurt, then angry. She said that if he left her, he would never see the children again. He became angry and suddenly all the things he resented now hated about their relationship came bubbling up. He strangled her. As she looked back at him, he thought about stopping, but knew that if he did, it would prevent him from being with Kessinger.
He didn’t sustain any defensive wounds because he said she couldn’t fight back. Chris wrote at one point that he also gave Shanann a narcotic a second time, just before he killed her, but later retracted that statement. He described how after Shanann had passed. How he was unsuccessful at killing his daughters as he was wrapping his wife in a sheep, Bella and CeCe had woken up came into the room and asked what was wrong with mommy. He said they were crying but that he had no desire to comfort them. He struggled to get Shanann’s body down the stairs which distressed the girls even further. He said that he recalled being angry that they were still alive, forcing him to have to deal with killing them a second time. Once he dragged Shanann into the truck and got her inside, he told the girls to follow him out to the truck as well. They brought their blankets and stuffed toys along with them. Bella told him that they needed their car seats and he told them that it was all right this time. Still fuming and shaking with what Watts claims was years of built up anger finally released.
Then he dug a shallow grave for Shanann and tosses her into it before covering her in dirt.
“My entire life lay there on that oil sight. All I could feel was now I was free to be with Nikki. Feelings of my love for her was overcoming me. I felt no remorse. I felt like I could kill anything and be justified for doing it. I didn’t feel any remorse for what I did. I didn’t feel bad for killing my entire family. I really didn’t feel anything. My mind went to the dog did I remember to put him in the cage.“
After the murders Chris made a series of calls, including calling his daughters’ school at around 8:30 a.m. to tell them that the girls would not be attending there anymore. Then he came to his senses and asked them if they were there. Chris’s co-workers arrived at 8:30 a.m. and, according to them, he appeared completely normal. Watts later reported that the hard part of the interrogation for him was that he did not feel any remorse, but he had to pretend like he did.
On August 21st, Chris Watts was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, two which were special counts for children being under 12-years old, unlawful termination of a pregnancy and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body.
