Chris Watts 2018

A picture-perfect family. A shocking disappearance. A truth no one saw coming.

In this episode, we take a closer look at the Chris Watts case, following the investigation from the moment Shanann Watts and her children were reported missing to the evidence that exposed what really happened. We'll break down the timeline, examine the key moments in the case, and discuss why it remains one of the most widely discussed true crime stories in recent history. 

Transcript

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Hello, listeners. Welcome to Case by Case. This is a true crime podcast for educational purposes only. Nothing that I say is intended to be disrespectful or offensive to anyone. I research and rant. If that sounds good to you, let's carry on. We are still on the topic of family annihilators. Family annihilators are defined as a person who kills multiple immediate family members. Episode two, we will be discussing Chris Watts. This takes us to Frederick, Colorado, on August 13th, 2018. Our victims are Shanan, who is Chris's wife. We have Bella, who is Chris's daughter. Celeste is his other daughter. And then he has an unborn son who they were going to name Nico. Christopher Lee Watts was born May 16th, 1985, in Spring Lake, North Carolina. His parents were Ronnie and Cindy Watts. By all accounts, he had a seemingly normal childhood. People did say he was emotionally reserved, but that's all I can find about his like earlier years. Didn't find anything that was like anything that would be something where it was like, oh, well, maybe this what the heck caused him to do this. You know, it was all just normal stuff. He graduated high school and went on to be an auto mechanic. Uh, and then he got into the petroleum industry. Um, so again, just like the case that I did before, everything just kind of seemed uh normal, successful. He went on to do this, then he went on to do this, and everything just kind of seemed like, okay, you're a contributing member of society, you're cool, everything's alright. Um, but again, something breaks, something just does not flow well. Um, so he goes on to meet uh Shanan in 2010. Uh so he sends Shanan a Facebook request because they have like this mutual friend. His mutual friend's like, hey Chris, there's this girl. I think you should friend her. I think y'all would work well. And so Chris is like, oh, okay, cool. I'll go ahead and try to add her on Facebook. So Shanan actually ignored him for like two months. She was just, I don't like I don't think it was like a ew, I ain't trying to talk to him. Uh, she was just kind of going through her own thing. So um Shannan was have having like a medical, a medical situation. She was diagnosed with lupus, and upon see receiving this diagnosis, she decided, okay, I'm going to accept his friend request, which is funny to me. And the reason why is it's funny because it's kind of like, all right, I'm kind of down in the dumps, you know, like I guess, I guess so. And so it's almost like a rebound kind of situation. Like, I ain't got nothing else to do. Anyways, they go on to get married in 2012. Um, a year after that, uh, they would they would have Bella and then they would have Celeste the following year. Shannon was a promoter for a health supplement for the company Thrive. And um, I did look this up, and Thrive is an MLM. If you don't know what that is, it's um a multi-level marketing. A lot of people call it a pyramid scheme kind of situation where it's like you have to like recruit people, and as you recruit people, you make more money. Uh, and so that's that's what she that's what she was doing. I don't know how well she was doing within that that um that company, but I think she was doing I think she was doing all right, you know, I think she was doing pretty good. Um on her social media, she would do her promotions, but she would also showcase her family because what she was promoting was like a health supplement, so it was okay that she kind of showed off her family and everything. Um, so it's pretty cool. And in her showing off her family, like it looks like a good little family, you know. It was like, oh, here's our two beautiful daughters, and they were so gorgeous. Um, and then it's like, oh, and here's my husband. And you know, the thing with Chris Watts, he's he he's not an ugly guy, you know what I mean? So it's just like there is this beautiful little American family. Um, and then again, it's just like something just breaks and it's like ew. So they struggled financially um in and they had to declare bankruptcy in 2015. I'm not really sure what happened, I don't know why they were struggling. Like, I don't know what happened, but anyways, the finances wait on their marriage, uh, as finances always do, right? Like in marriages, there's always like somebody who's let's save, let's do this, and they have like this goal to do financially, and then there's somebody who's like ch-ching credit cards, spend, buy, you know, you always just have that, those um budting head kind of things. Um, not to say that that was what's happening here, but finances is definitely one of those situations or or topics that can can be, you know, a burden within a relationship. Uh, and so that's what it was for them. But again, I'm not really sure what caused like this downfall with him being what he was and with her being what she was. Uh so I'm not really sure if they were just spending outside their means or what was happening, but that happened. 2018, Shannon is pregnant with the baby boy. Again, they were gonna name him Nico. Um, and she was telling her friends that like Chris was becoming super withdrawn, and so she had told them, like, yo, I'm afraid he's gonna have an affair. And that's exactly what happened, right? So, like I was saying in the case before this, there are two things that I've noticed in my my true crime um that most people kill over, right? And family annihilators are usually like uh there's money involved, there's something going on financially, um, or they're cheating. And Chris has two of those things happening, two of them. And the other thing that I wanted to point out that I missed saying last time is life insurance. Okay, because if somebody is struggling, where can they get some money from? Your life insurance. So, you know, be wary if somebody has life insurance out on you, okay? Just pay attention, pay attention. Um, so I'm not trying to scare nobody, but you know, pay attention for real though. Like, cause it's a real life situation. So, anyway, a fair, whatever, he's gonna do that. That's exactly what's gonna happen. So, the summer of 2018, uh, pregnant Shannon and her daughters, they went to North Carolina to visit family, and Chris stayed back in Colorado. During this time is where Chris meets Nicole Kissinger Kessinger. Kessinger? Sure, let's say that. Well, I won't say he met her, she's a coworker, but they started canoodling with one another. He told Nicole that uh he was separating and divorcing from Shanan. So, you know, when a person who's in the marriage tells the the person who they're messing with, like, hey, this is what's going on in my household, like, okay, well, they lied to her. You know, they lied to him. You know, we can't fault them for what they think is is happening, you know, we just can't do that. So it is what it is, but anyways, he meets her. So Chris and Nicole, uh, or like I said, so that happens. And then Chris and Nicole, they go on trips together, right? Chris is living a good old life in Colorado while Shenan and the girls are in North Carolina. He's just out here living it up. They were even taking pictures and everything. Like, if you are one of the people who watch any of the documentaries on Chris Watts, you'll see that they had pictures and stuff together. Uh, so late July, Chris goes to North Carolina because it's like the last little bit of the vacation. So he's basically going to North Carolina because he and the the kids and all of them, they're gonna go back to Colorado. And so he's there, and everybody kind of notices exactly what Shanana was talking about when she said, Hey, he's pulling away from me. Like he's emotionally unavailable, he's just super withdrawn, like it's like he just doesn't want to be around me. And so people start to notice that, and they're like, Yeah, you right. We see it, girl. Uh, and so at this point in time, she sends this really long test text message expressing her feelings to him. Uh, and she's also saying to him, like, is it that you didn't want me to have the baby? Like, did you not want me to get pregnant? I feel like you're not happy with what happened. But at the same time, I'm sitting here and I'm like, you can't get pregnant by yourself, baby. Okay, it you it wasn't an immaculate conception. He was he was there when it happened. So if you didn't want me to be pregnant, there's there's things you could have done to ensure that I didn't get pregnant and you didn't take those steps. So for you to sit here and be unhappy because I'm pregnant, you should, you know, look in the mirror. Okay, you should be looking at yourself and be unhappy there. I don't know what to tell you. But anyways, once he when he was responding, he was very short. Like it was like he was not acknowledging what she was saying about his distance. He wasn't talking about or he wasn't acknowledging the things she was saying about their relationship, he wasn't answering the questions when she was sitting here trying to see, like trying to gauge where they were in their marriage. He wasn't answering any of those questions, further proving what she was saying about him being emotionally withdrawn. So um, everybody goes back to Colorado. Boom, they're there, and so Shan's company has like a retreat kind of thing, or maybe a training situation in Arizona. So she has to fly to Arizona. I don't know how long she was in Arizona, but she was there. August 13th, 2018. Shan comes back from Arizona and excuse me, she comes back into the house about 2 a.m. She gets dropped off by her friend, and she returns to the house. And again, if you see any of the documentaries, you see the footage of Shanan walking up to the door at this 2 a.m. hour. And that is the last time anybody will see Shanan alive. Um, Shannon had a baby appointment that morning, and she didn't make it to the baby appointment. And Shanan is not the type of person to not make it to a doctor's appointment. Uh, if she's gonna be late, if she's going to miss it, she's gonna call. Uh, she's just she, you know, she's responsible, she's organized like that. So that was the first thing. Like, first red flag, something is wrong. Um there's uh uh the neighbor or the lady who dropped her off noticed that her car was still in the driveway. So she goes to knock on the door to be like, hey, what's up? And she doesn't answer the door. So Shannon is one of those people who I guess like if you can't get in contact with her, you know something's wrong. And I would like to know how long would it take for my friends and family to call the police to do a welfare check on me if they don't hear from me? Because I don't think I'm one of those people. I don't think I'm a person where it's like, oh my gosh, I haven't talked to her. Oh my gosh, she's not returning my phone calls. Like, I have to check on her. Something's wrong. I don't think I'm that person. I think if I don't answer somebody's phone call, they're gonna be like, oh, okay. And then if I don't call them back, they're gonna be like, oh, okay. You know what I mean? I I'm scared now that I think about it because I live, I live alone. So I'm just like, how long would I be sitting in this house? Like, have y'all thought about that? Have you ever thought if you are the person who doesn't respond to people, who does not call people back, to the point where if you were really in some, if you were in some mess, how long would it take for somebody to recognize you were in trouble? That's crazy to think about. That is nuts. But, anyways, because Shanan is the type of person who would answer a phone call or at least return a phone call if she couldn't answer, people were like, something is wrong. So they call the police to do a welfare check. So the police go out to the house, and when they arrive at the house, Chris is also arriving to the house because her friend called the police and or called Chris and was like, yo, where is Shannon? What is happening? And so he arrives at the house, like, oh my gosh, where is she? Is she not here? You know she's not here, you know that you I'm gonna calm down. I'm gonna save all my cusses for later. I don't want to do too much cussing. So he shows up, they go in the house. Shanam's car is in the in the the driveway. I wanted to say in the house. Her car is not in the house, everybody. That's not where cars go. So her car is in the driveway, her belongings are in the house. Shanan and the girls are missing. Shanan's friend realizes hey, her lupus medication is in her purse. Shanan would not leave without her lupus medication. So I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, if she were trying to like disappear her and her girls, like let's say she did a runaway situation, why would she leave her lupus medication? She wouldn't. Like she needs that. So she's not just gonna be like, oh, okay, well, come on, girls, let's run away. But she's gonna leave that. No, that doesn't make any sense. So at first, Chris pretended to have no idea where his wife and children were. Um, police found out about Chris's affair by going through his phone records. Okay. So gigs up. We know you have enough air. What the hell is going on? Okay. So here we go. Now, Chris is busted at this point. Okay, you're sleeping around with somebody, your wife and kids are missing. We need you to go ahead and and and point us in some direction. We need you to go ahead and fill in some gaps. What what's happening? So Chris, I don't know if he was trying to like uh uh play a game. I don't know if he was trying to be a smooth operator, I don't know what he thought he was doing, but he decided, hey, I'll take a polygraph, right? I'ma let y'all know. I don't know where my wife and children are. I'll take this polygraph. So they were like, all right, go ahead, take the polygraph. Go ahead. They strap him up, they do all the polygraph stuff. Buddy failed the hell at polygraph. Like, his numbers were in hell, they were so low. Why did you even consent to that polygraph if you knew there was no way you were gonna pass it? You didn't have any tricks up your sleeve for you to even attempt to pass it, you didn't Google how to pass a polygraph test, none of that, sir. You're an idiot. Then he said to them, All right, all right, okay, okay, y'all got me, y'all got me. I will confess if I can speak to my dad. If you let me speak to my father, I will confess. So they're like, All right, go ahead and speak to your father. Me, you see, this is why I can't be a detective, okay? Because you failed this polygraph test. We know you're having an affair, your wife and kids are missing, and then you sitting over here talking to them, I'll confess if you let me talk to my dad. Bitch, what do you think is happening here? What in control do you think you are? Because at this point, now you playing with me, you play it in my face, and I promise you, I promise you, I don't like it. I don't like it. So for me as a police officer, and please understand, I do not condone police brutality. I don't, okay? But in this situation right here, if they wanted to turn off those cameras and beat this man whole ass, that's fine with me. That's fine. Cause at this point, you're just you think it's funny. You think this is funny. You talk about I'll take a polygraph test. You failed it. Okay, I'll confess if you let me speak to my dad. What? No, you doing too much. You starting to piss me off. You're starting to piss me off. All right, so this is what his confession was. His confession was he told Shanan that he wanted a divorce because he wanted to be with his mistress. So basically he tells Shanan, hey, I've been cheating on you. I want to be with the person I'm cheating on you with, so we can't be together anymore. He says that Shannon became enraged. She was like, No, I don't want you to leave me. You can't be with this person. This isn't possible. And she became so upset and so angry with him that she went and suffocated the children. And so to avenge his children's death, he strangled Shanan. That was that's what happened. So yes, I killed Shanan, but I killed her because she killed my children in a fit of rage because she didn't want me to leave her. Sir, and this is what I'm saying, he playing. You think this shit is funny? Because you mean to tell me that this lady was so upset with you because you wanted to leave her that she was just like, no, and she killed your children. Where were you when she decided she was going to suffocate the children? That's my thing. Where'd you go? Were you in the house? How did you how did this play out where you you left the kids, she was able to suffocate both the children? Because suffocating. Anybody is not a quick task. It does not happen quickly. So she was able to do this two times, then you stumbled upon the scene for you to then strangle her. That's what you're telling me happened. We don't have any records of you leaving the house. So what are we saying here? And we do have records of you leaving the house at a certain time. She came in the house at 2 a.m. So at what time did you tell her you wanted to divorce her? When she came in at 2 a.m. You decided on your heart that you needed to have this conversation at 2 o'clock in the morning. You boy, shut up. Shut up. Oh my gosh. I just went on the furthest tangent. I am so sorry. I was just so caught up in that. He okay, anyways. So then he goes on to say that he took their bodies to the site where he worked. That's what he says. Okay. So August 16th is where he's he told them, like, okay, Shanan is buried over here. So Shanan and Nico, because of course she's pregnant with Nico, so they were buried in a shallow grave. But the girls were in the oil tanks again at the site where he worked. So technically, he did not lie about the way that Shanan and her children were killed. But he did it. He suffocated the girls and strangled Shanan. So technically, you know. Okay. So August 21st, he was charged with five counts of first degree murder. So two of the counts for each of the baby girls, an unlawful termination of pregnancy, and three counts of tampering with a corpse. He pleaded guilty to three murder charges, uh, to the three murder charges on November 6th. And because Shannon's family was just like, we can't deal with anybody else dying, he wasn't sentenced to death. And I was just like, oh my gosh, they are better than me. Because I would be like, can I inject the damn needle? Can I do it? Okay, can I pull down the lever on the electric chair? How are we killing him? Okay, can we do this execution style? All right, I want to be part of it. That's that's how I feel. So a Chris, so uh Chris, Jesus, Chris admitted um to everything, like he he went into detail to how the actual everything played out. So he says that while he was moving Shanan's body downstairs, the girls woke up. And so, of course, he still had to get rid of Shanan's body. So he put her in the trunk or truck. Sorry, he put her in the truck, and he also put the girls in the truck. The girls are still alive at this point. So he drives to the site and he had a blanket in the truck, and he decided he was gonna suffocate the girls. So he suffocates Cece first and then puts her in the oil tank. Bella is still sitting in the truck. Uh, Chris admits himself that Bella then says to him, Are you gonna do to me what you did to Cece? And then he does. And in my mind, I'm like, what kind of evil, sadistic piece of shit can hear his own child say, Are you gonna do to me what you did to her and just do it? What are you that you're nasty? Nasty. So again, the girls, and that's that's the end of that. Now, what I do know is again, after all the documentaries and everything like that, and people went on Reddit and did their own little things, there's this whole thing dealing with Nicole Kessinger herself, right? I did not speak on Nicole Kessinger because I don't feel that she is relevant to what I'm trying to get across. Um, because even if she did say to Chris, I want you to kill your family, I don't want children, I don't want you to have children if they aren't from me, even if she did say that to him, you are an adult man, those are your children. So if you decided to listen to her and take the lives of your children, that is not her fault. Is it a shitty thing for her to say? Absolutely, absolutely it is, but you did it. You're the shitty person for actually taking the lives of your children because the woman who you are currently intercoursing said she didn't want to have children or take care of children that weren't hers. That's when you because you could have definitely just divorced your wife, and I'm pretty sure she and the children would have just gone right back to North Carolina. It would have been hard for her, she would have been heartbroken. But she had a whole family to support her, she would have been okay. She didn't need you in the capacity that you think she did. You didn't have to do that at all. I'm sure she did fight with you. I'm pretty sure she did argue because any person who doesn't want a divorce is going to fight to try to keep her relationship, to try to fight for her marriage, because that is what you do when you are emotionally vulnerable. When you know what you want, you fight for it. She had every right to tell you that she loves you, that she does not want you to do this, that y'all can work this out, that y'all can go to marriage counseling, that she forgives you for stepping out on your marriage. She had every right to say those words to you. She had every right to be upset at the betrayal that you placed upon her. She had all of those rights to do that. But I am pretty sure if she sat down for just a little bit and had time to fucking process, she would have been able to remember who the hell she was. And she would have been like, hold on, I am Shanan Rusick. I am good in my own fucking power. I don't have to stay with a man who doesn't want to be with me. She just needed to to process that. She needed a girl's night, some wine, and to fucking remember who she was. But you took that away from her because she argued you or argued with you. How dare you? How dare you? And then after taking her life, you looked dead into the eyes of your little girls, and you decided you had to take them too. You had to stop everything that they could become. For what? Because somebody told you that they didn't want to be a stepmother? Well, bitch, then I guess you can't be here. This ain't the spot for you. So it's not on her, it's not on her. So I refuse to even put blame on a stupid thing she said for a grown man to play out. So that's that for that. But I would like to add this little piece to lift up this case a little bit. So Shan's parents uh buried her in North Carolina, and they put on her tombstone, they did not put Watts as her last name, they put her maiden name. So it says Shanan Rusick, and um her tombstone and all of the kids' uh tombstone, it's all one tombstone. And so they also did not put Watts for the last names of the children, and they shouldn't have. You don't get to have your last name placed upon their tombstone. Well, you're the one who took their lives. Fuck now. Who do you think you are? So the names on the kids' tombstones uh are just their first and middle names. So it says Bella Marie, Celeste Catherine, and Nico Lee. Uh, it's a beautiful tombstone, it really is. Um, and I just hope that um their family finds peace. I hope that Shanan and her children find peace. And that Chris Watts never finds peace. I hope that every day that he sits in jail feels like ants crawling upon his skin. Every day. Just feels little tickles of ants crawling upon his skin. I hope he itches constantly. Just itches. Because how dare you? Just disgusting. But for this particular case, like I said, it's popular. There's loads and loads of documentaries. Um, there's just so much on this case. You can go find interrogations and all of that. Um so I hope that I satisfied you enough for you to continue listening and move on to season. Nope. Sorry, not season, move on to episode three with me. Um, okay. Stay safe.