Chris Watts: The Family Man Pt. 1

In August 2018, Shanann Watts, 15 weeks pregnant, vanished from her home in Frederick, Colorado, along with her two young daughters, Bella and CeCe. Her husband Chris had been living a secret life: conducting an affair, hunting for apartments, and building a future that had no room for his family. As investigators closed in, the gap between his public image and private reality became impossible to sustain. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Serial Killers & Murderous Minds to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped together on Monday ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com http://crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Serial Killers & Murderous Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Murder True Crime Stories, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudiosYouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:42Vanessa Richardson?

  Most of us carry two sides to ourselves. There's the one we show the world, the photos we post, the stories we tell at dinner, the version of our marriage we describe to friends. And then there's the one that exists behind closed doors when nobody's watching. For most people, the gap between those two is small. A little exaggeration here, a few things left out there. But for some people, that gap is a chasm. The public self becomes a performance. The private self becomes a secret. And the two lives can't share the same house forever.

• 1:17Vanessa Richardson?

  In the summer of 2018, Chris Watts presented himself as a devoted husband and father in a Colorado suburb, smiling in his wife's Facebook videos, expecting a third child. But in private, he was a man in love with someone else, hunting for an apartment and planning a future his family knew nothing about. By August, the gap between those lives had become impossible to hide. And Chris decided one of them had to end.

• 2:03Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 2:16Tristin Engels?

  And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:27Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Before we get started, be advised that this episode contains descriptions of infidelity and domestic conflict and discussion of the murder of a pregnant woman and two young children. So please listen with care. Today, we begin our deep dive on Chris Watts. In August 2018, his wife, Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant,

• 3:12Vanessa Richardson?

  and their daughters, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Cece, disappeared from their home in Frederick, Colorado. Within a day, the search for them was national news. And the man on television pleading for their safe return was the same man investigators were already watching most closely.

• 3:31Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through this story, I'll be talking about things like how a lifelong habit of swallowing conflict can shape the way someone handles a marriage in crisis, why the lies Chris told his girlfriend kept growing, and what they reveal about the future that he was building in his head, and how investigators and psychologists read a person's behavior in the first hours after a loved one disappears.

• 3:56Vanessa Richardson?

  And as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer?

• 4:03Vanessa Richardson?

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• 4:46Vanessa Richardson?

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• 5:30Vanessa Richardson?

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• 6:13Vanessa Richardson?

  That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/pave. Forhers.com/pave. Weight Loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.

• 6:36Vanessa Richardson?

  In the summer of 2010, 26-year-old Shanann Rusek was at one of the lowest points of her life. A few years earlier, she'd come out of a divorce she later said took everything from her. She had to start over financially, from nothing. And she'd rebuilt fast. By 25, she'd built her own house outside Charlotte, North Carolina, and she was earning a good living managing a pair of custom car shops. Then, that spring, she got sick. Her hair started falling out. She lost 20 pounds in a month. Some days, she couldn't get out of bed. That May, doctors diagnosed her with lupus, an autoimmune disease with no cure. The medication made her feel like she constantly had the flu. She quit her job.

• 7:20Vanessa Richardson?

  And like a lot of people who feel cut off from the world, Shanann turned to the internet to stay connected, posting photos and videos about her life and building a following. Months earlier, she'd gotten a Facebook friend request from a stranger named Chris Watts. They had a mutual connection. His cousin worked with her. But Shanann hadn't responded. Then, in late July 2010, Chris messaged her again. This time, she replied. 25-year-old Chris Watts had grown up a couple of hours east of Charlotte in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His father, Ronnie, was a parts manager at a Ford dealership. His mother, Cindy, was a secretary. His sister, Jamie, was six and a half years older and helped raise him.

• 8:04Vanessa Richardson?

  From the start, Chris was his father's shadow. Ronnie was quiet and reserved, and Chris idolized him. They went to more than 200 NASCAR races together. Ronnie taught him how to work on cars, and Chris turned out to have a real gift for it. But he did not have a gift for people. Chris was so shy that in high school, he barely spoke to his classmates. He never dated in high school. A girl had to ask him to prom. Someone on his football team said he'd never once seen Chris get angry. They said he was the kind of kid who wouldn't hurt a fly. His sister saw something else. Chris was rigid about his routines, the way he ate, the order he did things, even the way he said his prayers at night. It was pronounced enough that Jamie later said

• 8:49Vanessa Richardson?

  she'd wondered whether something was going on beneath the surface. But it wasn't enough for anyone to get worried about. And after high school, Chris enrolled at a technical institute to chase his dream of working on a NASCAR team. He graduated with honors and sent out applications. He got one interview, although nothing came of it. So Chris took a job as a mechanic at a Ford dealership, the same kind of work his father did. According to his family, he never complained about the dream that didn't happen. He just bottled it up. That was the man who messaged Shanann in the summer of 2010.

• 9:27Tristin Engels?

  Ordinarily, it's not alarming when a child likes routine and order. Children generally function best with structure. But when there's a level of rigidity there that makes someone that's close to them wonder about it, or when that rigidity extends into areas where it doesn't seem necessary or it's not serving them like the way they eat, then it becomes something worth exploring. And Chris also seems to have had a very narrow area of interest by what you described, which is cars. He enjoyed them. He thrived as a mechanic, but they also were reportedly one of the few things that he could really engage with other people about. Otherwise, he was very shy. He was withdrawn.

• 10:08Tristin Engels?

  But with that, he also doesn't seem to be expressing much of what's going on internally either. So I wonder whether some of that rigidity was a way of creating predictability for himself. When things feel uncertain or outside of our control, sometimes we cling more tightly to the things we can control, like what we eat, or the order we do things in, or even how we do them. He may not be expressing what's going on, but collectively, these things, these behaviors, they are telling us something, and they're certainly something that I would want to explore.

• 10:40Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris's own mother described his father as someone who never told you how he felt. How much does a child absorb from watching a parent handle emotions that way?

• 10:50Tristin Engels?

  A lot. Children learn partly through modeling, and parents are their earliest models for what you do with feelings. So if Ronnie rarely communicated how he felt or what he felt, or if the sentiment taught to him was that men should not experience emotions, then Chris could have learned that emotions are something that you contain rather than communicate or feel. That doesn't mean that this is causal. Plenty of children have emotionally reserved parents, and they develop appropriate emotional processing skills. But at least it gives us a possible developmental context for why, at least in part, Chris was reportedly quiet, he rarely showed any anger, he wasn't complaining, and he kept things to himself.

• 11:35Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, when Shanann first looked through Chris's profile, she thought he seemed a little nerdy. He wore glasses, he weighed around 245 pounds, and he didn't have the best fashion sense. But that actually made her feel safe with him, and he was clearly interested. He struck up conversations, commented on her posts, and made her feel wanted at a time when she was struggling. Eventually, he asked her to meet up in Charlotte, where they both lived. The attraction was immediate, and it wasn't long until they were dating. Still, Shanann was cautious. She was worried that her health problems would be too much for a nice, normal guy like Chris, so she tested him. She later posted about how she'd pushed him away in those early days, giving him every opportunity

• 12:18Vanessa Richardson?

  to walk out the door. He never did. Chris promised to stick by her through the lupus and whatever else came. And that was when Shanann decided he was the one. On November 3, 2012, 28-year-old Shanann and 27-year-old Chris got married. Shanann's health was on the mend, and her family welcomed Chris with open arms. Meanwhile, Chris's family stayed home. His parents didn't come to the wedding. Years later, his mother said it was because she and her new daughter-in-law just couldn't get along. She didn't like the way Shanann treated her son. From Shanann's side, the feeling was that Chris's parents

• 12:58Vanessa Richardson?

  thought she was stealing him away from them. Whatever the truth was, Chris was upset. But he didn't confront his parents about it, and he didn't really tuck it through with his wife either. Instead, he did what he'd always done. He went quiet. In the first months of the marriage, Chris became distant and cold with Shanann. Then came news that changed everything. In the spring of 2013, Shanann was pregnant with their first child.

• 13:27Tristin Engels?

  And now we're seeing what his emotional reservation and potential conflict avoidance looks like in an intimate relationship. If his parents are who he is upset with and whom he's hurt by, and understandably so, then confronting them or withdrawing from them would make sense. Even if he didn't go about it in a healthy way, at least he's expressing himself and it's being directed at the source. And there's something else to be said entirely about his parents for not going to their own son's wedding too, especially if the reason is what you stated. There could be some psychological enmeshment there within that family system. But instead of addressing their absence, he's withdrawing from Shanann instead. And that's one of the problems with chronic conflict avoidance.

• 14:10Tristin Engels?

  Not expressing anger doesn't make the anger disappear. It can be displaced onto a more vulnerable target. Or it can come out indirectly, like it is here, through distance or coldness, becoming withdrawn, withholding affection or resentment. And on that note, I think we're starting to see a pattern here. When Chris is caught between people or is confronted with an emotionally difficult situation, he doesn't seem comfortable with the confrontation necessary to resolve it. He avoids or retreats. And in a marriage, that can become damaging because problems aren't actively being worked through.

• 14:47Vanessa Richardson?

  That is really tough. And being caught between a spouse and your parents is actually a common pressure. Why do you think it pushes some people to shut down entirely?

• 14:57Tristin Engels?

  Because it creates a loyalty conflict. It makes the person feel like whatever position they take, they're betraying a relationship with someone, and both of those relationships are important to them. That's not an emotionally safe position for anyone, which is why I highlighted the significance of his parents not attending the wedding. Whatever their personal reasons were, their decision put Chris in a difficult and emotionally distressing position. And it makes me curious about the larger family dynamic. Was withholding or withdrawing something that happened when Chris made choices that his family didn't agree with? Was it a form of punishment? Because if that's a pattern, then we're getting

• 15:41Tristin Engels?

  into something different. Loyalty testing and withholding affection or love can become a means of control.

• 15:48Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, in the short term, Shanann's pregnancy seemed to brighten things for the newlyweds. Before the baby came, they visited Colorado and fell in love with it, specifically a small town of about 12,000 people 30 miles north of Denver called Frederick. They found a five-bedroom house for roughly $400,000. It was more than they could afford, but they bought it anyway, packed up their lives in North Carolina, and moved west. That December, Bella was born. Shanann was over the moon. Because of her lupus, she'd never been sure she could have children at all. Less than a year later, she was pregnant again. In July 2015, they welcomed a second daughter, Celeste. Everyone called her Cece. But their

• 16:31Vanessa Richardson?

  kids couldn't paper over all the cracks in the Watts's marriage. A month before Cece was born, the couple filed for bankruptcy. Their income the previous year had been around $100,000. Between a roughly $3,000 monthly mortgage, car payments, credit cards, student loans, and medical bills, it wasn't nearly enough. They were falling so far behind that their homeowners association was suing them over unpaid fees. Chris had taken a better-paying job about six months earlier as an operator for Anadarko Petroleum, an oil and gas company. It didn't fix the problem. So Shanann found a way to help. In January 2016, she started working as a brand promoter and sales rep for a nutrition

• 17:15Vanessa Richardson?

  and supplement company called Lavelle. The job kept her glued to her phone, but she was good at it. She signed up more than 200 people and was soon earning $65,000 to $70,000 a year. The company rewarded its top sellers with travel, and Chris and Shanann started taking trips to San Diego, Las Vegas, and Puerto Vallarta on the company's dime. She even sold Chris on the products. He started using the company's weight loss supplements and saw fast results. Soon, he was obsessed with working out. The heavyset, awkward man Shanann had met online was gone. In his place was someone lean, fit, and it seemed happier than ever. Friends and neighbors said the two of them couldn't keep their hands off

• 18:00Vanessa Richardson?

  each other. And in late May 2018, Shanann found out she was pregnant with their third child. She decided to surprise Chris with it. She ordered a T-shirt that read, "Oops, We Did It Again." And May 29, she put it on before he got home from work, then filmed his reaction. On camera, Chris looked thrilled. He said, "I guess when you want to, it happens." Wow. A few weeks later, on Father's Day, Shanann gushed about him on Facebook. She wrote that their family was blessed to have him, and that Chris was the reason she'd felt brave enough to have a third child.

• 18:37Tristin Engels?

  Before we get into the physical transformation that Chris had, because I know this was central to discussions about him that came later, I think it's important to highlight the amount of stress they were under. They got married. Chris's parents did not attend the wedding, and there was significant conflict surrounding that. And then they had their first child, Bella, which is an exciting time, of course, but that also comes with its own inherent stressors, especially when they knowingly bought a house that was outside of their budget. And less than two years later, they had Cece, which added even more financial strain to an already limited budget. And they began to feel the impact of that with bankruptcy and everything that came with that.

• 19:20Tristin Engels?

  So marriage, parenthood, family conflict, and financial strain are all significant stressors, and they are experiencing them within a relatively short period of time. And when we think back to what we were wondering about earlier with, Chris may have used routine and predictability as a way of managing things that felt outside of his control when he was younger. I find it interesting that he now becomes intensely focused on something else he can control again. And in this case, it's his health and his physique. Previously, we saw that rigidity around his routines and this intense interest in cars. But remember, this also included food as well. It was how he ate.

• 20:00Tristin Engels?

  And now his focus appears to shift again to what he eats, the supplements he takes and working out. So if we're right that Chris historically managed feelings of uncertainty or lack of control by becoming more rigid about the things that he could control, then this actually makes sense. His body becomes the thing that he can control. But unlike his routines or the cars and all of that from before, transforming his body actually changes the way he experiences himself and potentially the way other people experience him too. And that may be new for him, especially with what we know about him being shy and maybe a little bit overweight growing up. And that can be very enticing if you're not happy with yourself, if you're not happy in your current stressful circumstances,

• 20:44Tristin Engels?

  and you don't know how to communicate that, or you are in these circumstances because you don't communicate to begin with.

• 20:53Vanessa Richardson?

  Shanann built a very public image of a perfect family. Can living inside that kind of image make it harder for the people in it to admit when something's wrong?

• 21:02Tristin Engels?

  Yes, I've, like probably everyone listening, seen Shanann's videos. She's spoken adoringly of her family, and that included Chris, as you've even highlighted. She seemed genuinely happy and grateful. And when I answer this, I in no way want to take away from that. Her family was her life. But her family also became a large part of her public identity, which was connected to her livelihood. She was selling products to help supplement the family's income and get them out of the financial hardship they were in. And she was successful. If her identity as a wife and mother had become somewhat combined with the way she marketed those products, then publicly acknowledging any discord in her marriage

• 21:46Tristin Engels?

  could potentially threaten something to her, both personally and financially. But let's take the financial incentive out of it. Let's say this was strictly personal, and it was just social media for family and friends. If every time she posts something positive about her family and she's met with positive comments in return, that can be validating and reinforcing to someone who, when she turns off the camera or the computer or her phone, feels less positive about those things. But in this particular dynamic, if you have a husband who is avoidant and is not communicating any unhappiness, then what reason do you have to question the life that you're actually presenting online?

• 22:30Tristin Engels?

  There could also be some cognitive dissonance happening in that too. She's been presenting outwardly one way, and it's in conflict with the reality. And it's easier psychologically to minimize any information that threatens that public identity than to revisit it altogether.

• 22:47Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, Shanann had no idea the man in that video wasn't who he seemed. Because within days, a coworker would catch Chris's eye. And it wouldn't be long before Chris decided she was worth sacrificing everything for.

• 23:07Vanessa Richardson?

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• 24:34Speaker 01

  Did you know a volcano once blocked out the sun and accidentally gave us Frankenstein? Or that the most feared pirate in the Atlantic, the man who terrorized an entire ocean, may never have actually killed anyone? Hi, I'm Connor Tomlinson. You might know me from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing and has been my whole life. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Every week, we take three of the wildest true things ever recorded and tell you the whole story behind them. The facts that sound made up, the stories that got buried, the moments that changed everything. Carter brings the history. Connor brings the facts, the tangents, and the occasional British accent. Pip, pip. The wildest stuff is real.

• 25:19Speaker 01

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• 26:21Vanessa Richardson?

  In late May of 2018, 34-year-old Shanann Watts told her husband, 33-year-old Chris Watts, that she was pregnant with their third child. In the video she posted to Facebook, it looked like a celebration. The truth was more complicated, because within days, Chris met someone at work. Nicole Kessinger was 30. She worked in the environmental department of a contractor that partnered with Anna Darko. Chris noticed her first in the break room. He didn't say anything to Nicole then, or the next few times they crossed paths, but he couldn't stop thinking about her. In the middle of June, he walked into her office and introduced himself. They started things off by having casual conversations. Nicole thought Chris was soft-spoken and a good listener.

• 27:07Vanessa Richardson?

  He told her he had two daughters. She noticed he wasn't wearing a wedding ring. When she asked about it, Chris told her he and his wife were separated and finishing up their divorce. He said he was living in the basement until it was finalized. None of that was true, but Nicole had no reason to doubt him. And by the end of June, just weeks after learning his wife was pregnant, Chris met up with Nicole outside of work for the first time.

• 27:32Tristin Engels?

  Flat-out denying that he's married would appear intentionally misleading, and it would prevent any possible path forward with Nicole. So instead, he constructs a new reality where he combines truth with deception. But the deception can't be easily, independently verified. Or at least, if she tried to with the mutual colleagues they have, she could reasonably conclude, he's just not discussing his personal business at work. So instead, he's separated. They're almost divorced. He's sleeping in the basement. Now he's created an identity where pursuing another relationship can feel appropriate and feasible to Nicole. That's where compartmentalization becomes useful. You keep conflicting parts of your life separated psychologically,

• 28:15Tristin Engels?

  so you don't have to fully confront the contradiction between them. Chris can be the married father, the devoted husband, participating in Shanann's family life in one compartment, while presenting himself to Nicole as a man whose marriage has already ended in another. And I find the specifics of his lie interesting, because it almost sounds like he's describing the marriage or lack thereof that he wants to already have. It's the one where the difficult conversations that he avoids have already happened. The separation's already been mutually decided, and he's free to move on without having to actually do anything, do any of the hard work. And given everything we've been discussing about Chris and his conflict avoidance,

• 29:00Tristin Engels?

  that fits with him, and it's just a really interesting framing and context.

• 29:06Vanessa Richardson?

  Back at home, Shanann could tell something was off. After the pregnancy surprise, Chris had been acting distant and strange in a way she couldn't pin down. She told a friend she thought he was having an affair. When Shanann told her mom, she advised her to "give Chris some space." But Shanann couldn't let it go. She tried to pull Chris back in by giving him self-help and relationship books. He didn't read them. One of them ended up in the trash, unopened. Shanann was at a loss. Her one hope was a trip she'd already planned, five weeks back home in North Carolina with the girls. Chris would join them at the end when he could get time off. Maybe the distance would help make him miss her. Maybe it would fix things.

• 29:48Vanessa Richardson?

  On June 26th, Shanann, four-year-old Bella, and three-year-old Cece flew to North Carolina. Chris stayed behind in Colorado, alone and free to see Nicole whenever he wanted. By early July, they were having a full-blown affair. To Nicole, it was just a normal new relationship. They saw each other four or five times a week, going on dates to a car museum and Great Sand Dunes National Park. Still, Nicole told Chris she wanted to take things slow. She didn't want his daughters to be hurt, and she suggested he focus on helping them adjust to the divorce. As far as Nicole knew, there was no rush. They had their whole lives ahead of them. Meanwhile, Shanann was getting more and more frustrated.

• 30:32Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris kept missing her calls. He hadn't initiated a single FaceTime with the girls since they'd left. He was acting like he didn't miss his family at all.

• 30:42Tristin Engels?

  Shanann is pursuing an emotional connection with Chris, and Chris is withdrawing. And that's actually a pattern that can happen in relationships. And as the pursuer, she's trying to close the distance with these efforts. But with a withdrawer, the more that the person pursues that connection, the more pressure they can experience. So every attempt that she's making to reconnect can be a reminder that there's a relationship problem that the withdrawer doesn't want to confront. So they create more distance, which makes the pursuing partner more anxious and more likely to reach out. And then both of their responses intensifies the others.

• 31:23Tristin Engels?

  So here, every book that Shanann gives him, and every time she calls him, she's reminding him that there's something he needs to address, but he doesn't want to. And every time he avoids that, it signals to her there's something she should be worried about. And interestingly, when they started this relationship, Chris was the pursuer of Shanann. He sent a message to Shanann, and when that went unanswered, he sent another. She wasn't so sure about him. So Chris isn't inherently a withdrawer. He just seems better at pursuing something he wants than dealing with interpersonal conflict when it exists. And we've seen this before, when there was conflict with his parents around the wedding,

• 32:05Tristin Engels?

  he responded by withdrawing, and now there's conflict within his marriage, and once again, he creates distance rather than addressing it directly. And the pattern is just becoming more and more clear.

• 32:16Vanessa Richardson?

  If someone feels their partner is pulling away, what actually helps in that situation? And is there a point where the pursuer should just stop pursuing?

• 32:26Tristin Engels?

  Yes. If you feel a partner pulling away, pursuing harder often is not what restores the connection, particularly once you're caught in this cycle that I just described. What tends to help is interrupting the cycle and communicating directly how you're feeling, not passively. You have to communicate what you're noticing, how it's affecting you, and solutions, like, here's what I think we should work on together. But another hard part for many is that after doing that, after communicating all of this, you have to give your partner room to actually answer those questions. And some people don't like the answer that they're going to get, because there absolutely is a point where the pursuer has to stop pursuing.

• 33:11Tristin Engels?

  One person cannot repair a relationship by themselves. And that's what makes this so difficult for Shanann. She's responding to the information she has, which is not much. She just has distance. She knows he's distant. She knows he's missing calls, and he's not initiating contact with their daughters. What she doesn't know is that while she's trying to figure out how to reconnect with him, how to get him to communicate with her, he's already created an entirely different version of himself for someone else. She can't make an informed decision about her marriage, about what she wants to do, how she wants to solve this, or even if she wants to solve this, when Chris is withholding

• 33:56Tristin Engels?

  the most important information that she needs in order to do that.

• 34:02Vanessa Richardson?

  On top of everything, there was the problem of Chris's parents. They also lived in North Carolina, not far from Shanann's family. And even though the relationship had never been good, Shanann brought the girls over so their grandparents could spend time with them. The visit went badly. Chris's mother served ice cream that contained ingredients Cece was severely allergic to. When Shanann confronted her, Chris's mom got defensive, and it turned into a full-blown fight. Shanann accused her of trying to kill her child. In response, Chris's mom kicked her out of the house. Shanann took the girls and said she'd never let them go back. She texted Chris right away and told him to deal with his parents. Chris agreed it wasn't right and said he'd fix it.

• 34:46Vanessa Richardson?

  Although privately, he thought Shanann was blowing it out of proportion. He wanted his parents in his daughters' lives, and he thought it was unfair for Shanann to cut them out without asking him. But he didn't say any of that to her. He just agreed, and the wedge between them drove deeper. At the same time, Chris was falling harder for Nicole every day. A few weeks after the ice cream fight, he wrote Nicole a love letter. He told her she'd taken his breath away the first time he saw her, and that he'd gotten lost in her green eyes the first time they spoke. He listed their firsts together and said he wanted to keep collecting more of them with her. Then, still daydreaming about a future with Nicole, Chris boarded a plane to North Carolina

• 35:31Vanessa Richardson?

  to rejoin his wife and kids. Things didn't get better once he arrived. Chris kept texting and calling Nicole from North Carolina. He told her his divorce was now finalized. He asked her to help him find an apartment that would work for him and his daughters. Nicole jumped in. As far as she could tell, she'd met a good man doing the right things for his kids. She'd never met any of his friends or family, but she told him she wanted to take things slow, so that made sense. By early August, Nicole was searching online for wedding dresses.

• 36:05Tristin Engels?

  There's a concept called limerence. Limerence is an intense, almost-consuming infatuation that can happen at the beginning of a romantic relationship, because there's novelty, anticipation, idealization, and a lot of reward attached to every interaction that happens. And because the relationship is so new, you haven't really had an opportunity to experience the actual realities of being together yet, because there's no bills, there's no children, no conflicts or personality clashes. You haven't had years of disagreements or disappointments, and no stressors. So you're comparing a marriage that contains all of the complications of real life to

• 36:47Tristin Engels?

  a five-week-old relationship that, right now, is just simply a possibility. This is not like the honeymoon phase either. Limerence is much more intense. It's much more one-sided, and it can last longer than a honeymoon phase, and it often involves fantasizing and idealizing the person. And when it comes to Chris, his lies and how they progress are actually very revealing. He started off telling Nicole that he was separated, but now they are finally divorced, and he's saying this after having weeks of freedom to spend four or five days a week with her. He's now enlisting her help, so he's moving into action and constructing a future with her.

• 37:31Tristin Engels?

  But he's also made no mention of a baby on the way either. He's only acknowledged his daughters in this new future. That's interesting to me. This is the same behavior that we've also seen before, because he's once again describing the life he wants to have, one that does not include Shanann or another child. And his daughters are included in this, perhaps because Nicole already knows about them, and excluding them would impact her opinion of him as this devoted father. He's already psychologically living inside a future he wants before he's done anything in his actual life to make that future possible. I mean, he's saying all of this while he's with Shanann at her family's home.

• 38:16Vanessa Richardson?

  Well, at some point, the story he told Nicole, all these things he's making up, is going to collide with reality. How do people in this state of limerence deal with that pressure? Do they plan for it, or do they just not even think about it?

• 38:30Tristin Engels?

  That depends on the person and their psychology. Some people have plans for that. They have constructed lies and excuses for when those realities collide. Others don't think about it, and some don't really care at all about the long-term consequences because they're so concerned about the present benefits or needs. And then there are those who do think about it, but they avoid it.

• 38:54Vanessa Richardson?

  By the time the family flew home to Colorado on August 7th, Shanann's frustration had peaked. She was 14 weeks pregnant and felt more estranged from her husband than ever. Chris was distant and unsupportive. According to a close friend, Shanann said he told her he didn't want the baby. She texted another friend that she wasn't sure she could raise three kids in that kind of environment and admitted she was having doubts about keeping the pregnancy. If she didn't, maybe she'd sell the house and move out of state with the girls. Maybe it was time to leave him. Then, on August 9th, the night before Shanann left for a work trip to Arizona, she and Chris had a conversation she described to a friend as their "best talk yet."

• 39:38Vanessa Richardson?

  They'd just learned the baby was a boy. Chris had always wanted a son. Maybe that would be enough. Whatever the talk meant to Shanann, it meant something different to Chris. On Saturday, August 11th, while Shanann was in Arizona, he hired a babysitter for Bella and Cece and met Nicole at a sports bar in the next town over. That night, Shanann got a bank alert on her phone, a $68 charge for dinner. Chris told her he'd gone to a baseball game with coworkers and eaten alone afterward. $68 seemed like a lot for one person. Shanann told her friend and coworker Nicole Atkinson that she suspected Chris was cheating and that she'd confront him when she got home.

• 40:21Vanessa Richardson?

  Early on the morning of August 13th, after a flight delayed by bad weather, Shanann finally landed in Colorado. Nicole gave her a ride home. They agreed to talk in the morning after Shanann's doctor's appointment. Shanann would never make it to that appointment. Within hours, she and both of her daughters would be missing.

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• 41:47Speaker 01

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• 42:28Speaker 01

  From A&E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48. Step inside the critical window, the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. I'm Carter Roy. Each week, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation with a depth you know and immersive, long-form storytelling built for your ears. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. This is The First 48. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to and follow The First 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

• 43:12Speaker 01

  or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 43:21Vanessa Richardson?

  Just before 2:00 a.m. on Monday, August 13th, 2018, Nicole Atkinson pulled up outside 34-year-old Shanann Watts' house in Frederick, Colorado. Shanann was exhausted and in pain. She was 15 weeks pregnant, and the weekend had been hard on her. Before Shanann got out of the car, Nicole made her promise to text her after her doctor's appointment that morning. Shanann was supposed to hear her son's heartbeat for the first time. She said she'd let Nicole know right away. Nicole waited until Shanann was safely inside, where 33-year-old Chris and the girls were asleep, and then drove home. The next morning, there was no text. Nicole called, then texted.

• 44:06Vanessa Richardson?

  Nothing. That wasn't like Shanann. She lived on her phone for work, and she always answered. Nicole thought about the lupus and the pregnancy. What if Shanann had passed out somewhere in the house with no one there to help? Around midday, Nicole drove over and knocked. No one answered. She looked through the windows and saw nothing moving. Shanann's car was in the garage. So she called Chris at work. He didn't sound worried. He said Shanann had taken the girls to a friend's house for a playdate. He didn't know which friend. Then, without being asked, he told Nicole that he and Shanann were separating and planned to sell the house. Nicole told him she didn't care about his personal business.

• 44:49Vanessa Richardson?

  She wanted to know where his wife was. Chris said he was busy and hung up. Nicole got Shanann's mother and a few friends on a conference call, and they told her to call the police. So she did.

• 45:02Tristin Engels?

  Him eliciting personal information that she didn't ask for when she is concerned about Shanann's well-being and the well-being of her girls was very interesting to me. When someone offers an explanation before an explanation is actually required, I pay attention to it. It can mean they're anticipating a question that hasn't even been asked yet. And they're already thinking about how the situation is going to look to the other person and trying to shape how they want it understood. But more importantly, given the context, rather than express concern regarding Shanann's well-being, he's centering it on personal information regarding their relationship, and he's offering it as an unsolicited explanation.

• 45:45Tristin Engels?

  And given what we've been talking about, it's even more interesting because this is essentially the same reality he's been constructing with Nicole. His marriage is ending. They're separating. He's moving on. Except now, he's introducing that to Shanann's friend. At the same time, I'm not saying that this statement by itself proves guilt because people volunteer irrelevant information for all kinds of reasons all the time. But given the circumstances, his attention appears focused on explaining the status of their relationship rather than locating his missing family. And that's a very concerning priority in that moment.

• 46:28Vanessa Richardson?

  Shortly after 1:40 that afternoon, Officer Scott Kuhnrod of the Frederick Police Department arrived at the Watts' house. Nicole explained that Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant and had lupus. If she wasn't answering her phone, something was wrong. Officer Kuhnrod checked the perimeter and called through the front door, but he couldn't go inside without more cause or permission from a homeowner. Nicole told him Chris was on his way. Every time she called for an update, though, Chris pushed his arrival time back. Finally, his truck pulled into the driveway. Chris gave the officer permission to search the house. Inside, it was clear that no one was home, but Shanann's car was in the garage with both car seats still in it.

• 47:10Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris found her wedding ring on the nightstand and her phone on a couch upstairs. Officer Kuhnrod asked if they could look through the phone. Chris said yes, but he didn't know the password. Nicole did, though. It was the due date of Shanann and Chris's unborn son. No calls had been made that morning. It was clear that something was wrong here, so Officer Kuhnrod called for a detective. When the detective arrived, the two of them searched the house more thoroughly. There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle. Shanann's wallet, credit cards, and purse were all there, and her lupus medication was inside the purse. Nicole confirmed it. Shanann wouldn't leave any of that behind, least of all her phone.

• 47:55Vanessa Richardson?

  In the master bedroom, the comforter, fitted sheet, and pillows were on the floor. The top sheet was nowhere to be found. Otherwise, nothing looked out of place. The last thing to do was check with the neighbors. The man next door had security cameras. He pulled up the footage. At 1:48 a.m., Nicole's car left after dropping Shanann off. At 5:27 a.m., Chris's work truck backed into the driveway, far enough that its rear end was inside the garage, hidden from the camera. A short while later, the truck drove away. No other vehicle came or went after that. The way Chris had backed in caught everyone's attention. Both the neighbor and Nicole told Officer Kuhnrod they'd never seen him do that before.

• 48:41Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris had an explanation ready, though. He said his tools had been stolen recently, so now he unloaded them into the garage every Friday and reloaded them Monday morning. Standing beside the officer as the footage played, he walked through exactly what he'd loaded in detail without being asked. After Chris stepped away, the neighbor told the officer he'd never seen Chris so fidgety or so talkative. Normally, he was quiet and subdued. Chris also filled in more of the morning. He said Shanann had been in bed when he left for work and that she'd told him she was taking the girls to a friend's house later. He hadn't asked which friend. He admitted that after she got home, they'd talked about separating.

• 49:23Vanessa Richardson?

  It was emotional, he said, but it was a talk, not a fight. It wasn't new either. They'd been discussing it for weeks, and they hadn't resolved anything before he had to leave. Afterward, he'd driven out to a job site near Hudson, Colorado, about 17 miles away, and worked alone there for several hours. Nicole listened to what Chris had to say, and she didn't buy it. His demeanor was off, like he was defending himself against an accusation nobody had made.

• 49:54Tristin Engels?

  I want to preface by saying that there's no universal way an innocent person is supposed to act in a situation like this. There just isn't. People can be calm, frantic, they can be detached, disorganized, they even behave in ways that seem totally inappropriate. None of that by itself tells you whether someone is responsible. But what investigators and even forensic psychologists like myself do is we pay attention to consistency, or whether someone's behavior seems responsive to what is actually happening in the room. So, for example, everyone is asking questions about where Shanann might be and what happened to the kids.

• 50:37Tristin Engels?

  And rather than provide answers to those questions directly, Chris is explaining exactly what he's putting in his truck before anyone asks him to. He's making sure the officer understands that he and Shanann had a talk, not a fight. Those aren't necessarily lies. Involunteering information isn't evidence of guilt, especially in the context of a missing wife. The husband is the number one suspect, and even an innocent person is consciously aware of that and can be anxious about that. But he appears to be anticipating areas of suspicion before anyone has actually expressed suspicion to him actively. Right now, they're just missing.

• 51:18Tristin Engels?

  And going back to what Nicole said regarding him defending himself against accusations that weren't made in forensic interviewing, that can be interesting because it raises the question, what question is this person actually answering? They are asking what happened to his family, and some of Chris's responses just seem oriented toward eliminating him as a suspect rather than directly answering the question. And that is suspect. It doesn't prove anything on its own, but when you consider all of it, it absolutely warrants more exploration.

• 51:54Vanessa Richardson?

  I thought it was weird, too, that Chris kept pushing back his arrival time while the officer waited outside his house. What do you think might have been going on in his head during that drive back home?

• 52:04Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, that is definitely strange. Obviously, we can't know for sure. Chris knows for sure. But given how anticipatory he was and how he offered explanations for things that weren't really asked of him, I think it's completely probable that he was rehearsing responses and explanations on the way there. I don't think that he expected someone to notice her absence so quickly. I think it's highly possible that he thought that he had more time to establish a story or an alibi for his explanations and solidify them. I think that's more likely the case.

• 52:47Vanessa Richardson?

  Around 3:45 that afternoon, after the officers had left, Chris texted his girlfriend, Nicole Kessinger. He told her his family was missing. Shanann had taken the girls to a play date and hadn't come back, and he didn't know where they were. For a message like that, he seemed oddly calm. Nicole was worried that something terrible had happened, but she didn't want to overreact, especially if it might upset Chris. Then she turned on the TV. Local news crews were setting up outside the Watts's house. Nicole couldn't understand why reporters would be there if all this was was some kind of misunderstanding. As the night went on, the reports filled in the details.

• 53:28Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris Watts's two young daughters, his wife, who he was very much still married to, and who was 15 weeks pregnant. Nicole was at a loss for words. He'd lied about everything, and now a very bad feeling settled over her. If Chris could lie to her about being married, what else was he lying about? Then came a darker thought. Could he have done something to his family to be with her? All through that night and into the morning of August 14th, Nicole confronted Chris over the phone. She demanded answers about his marriage and asked pointed questions about his missing family.

• 54:08Vanessa Richardson?

  Chris admitted he'd lied about being separated, but he insisted he would never hurt his family. He figured Shanann was upset and had taken the girls somewhere to teach him a lesson. Nicole was done listening. She couldn't trust a word he said. She cut off contact and told him she didn't want to speak to him again until his family was found.

• 54:29Tristin Engels?

  Earlier, we talked about compartmentalization, and Chris had been transforming physically and creating this single father identity with Nicole. And now that his family is gone and missing, he clearly has no plans to abandon that identity. He continues trying to preserve it, and he's telling her that he would never hurt his family. And instead, it's Shanann that was harming him and that she took his children to punish him. So suddenly, she's vindictive, and he becomes the victim, and that's classic Darrell. When someone has committed a serious offense, often they start constructing narratives very quickly. And initially, it's because they need an explanation for the people around them.

• 55:13Tristin Engels?

  But they can also minimize responsibility and externalize blame and create that distance between the person and what they've actually done. And I'm not suggesting Chris actually believed Shanann had taken the girls. Obviously, he knew she didn't. This is not the same story that he told Shanann's friend either. He told her that Shanann took the girls to a friend's house. So I'm saying that he's constructing a version of events that he needs other people to believe, and they're not all the same. The only difference with each story is that there's a different audience for it. And I believe that he is trying to hold on to Nicole now because, from a purely practical

• 55:56Tristin Engels?

  standpoint, she's a liability. They've been having an affair. She has texts and damning evidence of his infidelity and deception. He needs to keep her appeased in his mind to keep her compliant and on his side in protecting him. Otherwise, I imagine that he'd likely avoid the conflict he's facing with her like he's historically done.

• 56:18Vanessa Richardson?

  Nicole's instinct, that reaction, could he have done this to be with me, was there instantly, or at least within hours. Why did the people around Chris see it so much faster than he seemed to expect?

• 56:29Tristin Engels?

  Because she had information that others didn't. So Shanann had spoken to trusted people, like, you know, her mom, about concerns in her marriage and about Chris being distant, or about concerns about an affair. But they didn't know whether that was actually happening, or who the other woman was, or how far that relationship had actually progressed. But Nicole did. She was more than just an affair. They were looking at apartments together. They were actually talking about a future that included his daughters. But more importantly, it was all being done under deception and lies, because he was not separated, let alone divorced.

• 57:11Tristin Engels?

  And again, there was no mention of Shanann being pregnant. So it makes sense why she, having had so many intimate conversations under lies and false pretenses, would immediately come to that conclusion before other people in his life would or could.

• 57:29Vanessa Richardson?

  By the morning of August 14th, investigators were growing more worried by the hour. Every minute that passed made it less likely anyone would find Shanann and her daughters alive. That morning, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation officially declared the three of them missing and issued endangered missing person alerts. Investigators still didn't know what had happened to Shanann, Bella, and Cece, but they were almost certain Chris Watts had something to do with it. Later that day, Chris would stand in front of TV cameras and plead for his family to come home. And within 48 hours, the story he'd been telling everyone would fall apart completely.

• 58:13Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time for the conclusion of our deep dive on Chris Watts.

• 58:33Tristin Engels?

  Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at @CrimeHouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 58:57Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, join Crime House Plus and get both parts of every story dropped on the same Monday, completely ad-free. No waiting three days for part two, plus Crime House bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com, or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap Try Free at the top of the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds page. Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team, Max Cutler,

• 59:39Vanessa Richardson?

  Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pritzowski, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Mara De La Rosa, Claire Swartzlander, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

• 59:52Speaker 06

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