Episode 373 - Chris Watts Case | Tragedy & Haunting Aftermath

In this episode, we dive into one of the most chilling and heartbreaking cases we’ve ever covered, unraveling the story of a seemingly perfect family whose reality was far darker than anyone could have imagined. We follow the timeline from the early morning hours of August 13th through the unfolding investigation, piecing together the moments, relationships, and warning signs that led to an unthinkable outcome. But beyond the true crime, there’s something else here that stopped us in our tracks. As we explore police body cam footage and overlooked moments from the case, we uncover eerie details that have left viewers questioning what’s really being captured. Voices, shadowy apparitions, and possible messages from the other side. Is it coincidence, or could it be the voices of a family, still trying to be heard after their story was cut short? If someone in your life is showing warning signs of domestic danger please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. It's free, confidential, and available 24/7. You can also chat at thehotline.org. Watch the video version here. Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] New Episodes are released every Thursday and Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan. Original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenuvo in a couple of weeks.

• 0:05Corinne Vien?

  It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.

• 0:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenuvo's whole body scan is a radiation-free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs and systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenuvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.

• 0:47Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash TGOG. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenuvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenuvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenuvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenuvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  When you put your body in the hands of a surgeon, you assume your doctor will do you no harm.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow going, these people are [BLEEP].

• 1:30Speaker 02

  But when your doctors end it just for the money, something absolutely insane happens.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  One doctor says, yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was 25,000. And the other doctor's going, well, I only got 12,000 because I did a neck.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California, a fraud worth over $1 billion.

• 1:57Speaker 05

  Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes all at once, ad-free.

• 2:39Corinne Vien?

  Hello.

• 2:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hi, everyone.

• 2:40Corinne Vien?

  This is Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 2:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Two Girls, One Ghost. We are Ghostesses. That's Corinne.

• 2:46Corinne Vien?

  Hello.

• 2:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm Sabrina. And I realized I never talked about Iceland.

• 2:50Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We just kind of just jumped back into recording. Yeah. Because I really, because people were asking about it on my Instagram when I had posted a couple of things. And I was like, oh, I'll talk about it on the podcast.

• 3:02Corinne Vien?

  Well, because you asked for recommendations too, originally, right?

• 3:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 3:06Corinne Vien?

  You saw the Northern Lights?

• 3:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That was the coolest thing in the world. We can put a video in the beginning here.

• 3:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I was in such shock watching, like, we watched the Northern Lights dance.

• 3:35Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. What's better, honestly, than the Northern Lights in the video is your reaction to it. Like, you're like, oh, my God! And you're like laughing, like, you can just tell how absolutely mind-blown you guys are.

• 3:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, because it was, it was wild.

• 3:49Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And because prior to that moment, one, it was freezing, like, so goddamn cold that I was like, I don't know how long I can stay out here. Because you go out really late at night, too. Like, we were out until like 2:00 a.m. And the first couple of times, like, yes, it was really, really pretty, but you could really only kind of see the colors in the sky, but you could see it better on your phone.

• 4:08Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 4:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But in this moment, when it was dancing, it literally felt like aliens were coming down. I, the first thing I thought was, wow, it's like Disney's Fantasia.

• 4:20Corinne Vien?

  Sometimes I look at Northern Lights cameras because I have an app to track the Northern Lights on my phone. So that when they come here every once in a while, I can see. But it's not like, there's no dancing when they're here. I've never seen that.

• 4:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So cool. So we'll put the little video into this episode. It was a really cool trip, physically very cool, cold.

• 4:38Corinne Vien?

  Did you get ice cream?

• 4:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Uh, we got one, but I will say the Nutella waffle was the best part. The food in Iceland? I am not a foodie. I like what I like. I like hyper fixy on certain meals and I eat that until I literally get nauseous thinking about it. But the food in Iceland was so good.

• 4:57Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There was not a single thing, and we're vegetarians. There's not a single thing that we had that we were not happy with. Except for grilled cheese at like a random little like tourist site that we got.

• 5:08Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But otherwise, everything was so good.

• 5:10Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my gosh. And it's like kinda trendy. Like the places are very aesthetically beautiful, the restaurants.

• 5:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Reykjavik was very cool. There was a lot of like bad weather. So there were a couple of days that we had things planned, like snowmobiling. That everything got canceled because the roads like, I don't know how, I don't think they plow. Like I'm like, how do you get around?

• 5:31Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, I don't know. And Reykjavik, at least they have heated sidewalks.

• 5:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Corinne Vien?

  So there's no like ice on the sidewalks.

• 5:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But it was really, really cool. And we went and saw like glaciers and ice caves. It was really cool.

• 5:43Corinne Vien?

  Did you walk by the penis museum in Reykjavik?

• 5:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We walked past it.

• 5:48Corinne Vien?

  So I stayed at the hostel across from it. So that was like my very first impression of Iceland. When I got there, I like checked in and looked outside and I was like, oh, that's the neighborhood.

• 5:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Rise and shine.

• 6:00Corinne Vien?

  Rise and shine.

• 6:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Grab your coffee and stare at the penis museum. One thing that I really wish that we had done and we didn't get the time to do. And also my mom wanted to do it with me, but my sister had absolutely no interest, was snorkel the continental divide.

• 6:16Corinne Vien?

  I would have no interest to. Yeah, because it's scary and people have died there, diving.

• 6:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, scuba diving, but like snorkeling and apparently the water is like so beautiful and clear.

• 6:27Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but right now it's absolutely freaking freezing.

• 6:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, you get like, like all the like heavy duty gear.

• 6:32Corinne Vien?

  Enough to do it right now?

• 6:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Corinne Vien?

  The dead of winter? Damn.

• 6:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 6:36Corinne Vien?

  See, we were cold and I went in August.

• 6:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Corinne Vien?

  Or whatever. So I can't even imagine going in.

• 6:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. So if anyone is going, no matter what time of year you're going, pack extra layers, more layers than you think you need. Like you layer up when you're skiing, you need more layers than that.

• 6:51Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, I wore a winter coat and hat.

• 6:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  In the summer.

• 6:55Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. In the dead of summer. So.

• 6:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, the very, very cold place.

• 7:00Corinne Vien?

  Did you go to see the Continental Divide?

• 7:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So the day that everything got canceled was the day we were supposed to see it.

• 7:06Corinne Vien?

  Hmm. Okay.

• 7:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. And then we, because we drove to this area called Jokalsarlin, which is a five hour drive. And we were supposed to spend two nights there.

• 7:15Corinne Vien?

  Hmm.

• 7:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we got there and we were spending one night there. And as we were there, they were like, tomorrow night, there's supposed to be like a massive snowstorm. So like Thursday morning, we're supposed to see a massive snowstorm. And our flight was on Friday. We were supposed to drive back to Reykjavik.

• 7:30Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 7:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  On Thursday. And we were like, we have to drive back on Wednesday.

• 7:33Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, you can't risk it.

• 7:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So there were like just so many things that you had. You're at the whims of nature when you're in Iceland.

• 7:37Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was a very cool, very cool experience.

• 7:41Corinne Vien?

  Amazing.

• 7:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Corinne Vien?

  I do remember when, because the Continental Divide was like a stop on one of the tours that Marissa and I did when we went years ago. But there were so many like Game of Thrones tours going on there because that was one of the filming locations. So it's just like all these Game of Thrones super fans.

• 7:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep. There's a beach that we went to on our drive to Jokalsarlin. It's like right next to Vik, Veek, that town with the church where you're like, oh, my friends, I think got married there.

• 8:07Corinne Vien?

  You took a picture of a church and I was like, I swear to God, I've seen that church in wedding photos before because I know someone who.

• 8:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Corinne Vien?

  Got married in Iceland in this like cute little church.

• 8:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Probably looks like that. Yeah.

• 8:16Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Um, also maybe every church looks like that. I don't know.

• 8:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Where I took that picture from was, it was called like Black Sand Beach where Game of Thrones was filmed.

• 8:26Corinne Vien?

  Cool.

• 8:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. And then the Tomato Farm. It was the coolest thing. There's this little tomato farm. It's kind of in the golden circle area. And because the day we were supposed to do the whole golden circle, see the continental divide, like that tour got canceled. The day we were driving to Joksaarlin, we kind of stopped, we drove a little bit out of the way to go see the geysers. My mom really wanted to see the geysers. Underwhelming, but cool in concept.

• 8:56Corinne Vien?

  Also just scary to be like near.

• 8:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. But also crazy.

• 9:00Corinne Vien?

  Geysers water because you could die.

• 9:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, and it's the fact that all of Iceland's like a volcano or a glacier and the geysers are literally hot lava, like releasing the gases.

• 9:10Corinne Vien?

  Did you go to the geothermal like museum or it's not really a museum. It's like the plant.

• 9:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No.

• 9:15Corinne Vien?

  Oh, it's like not for, I swear it's only like 20 minutes outside of Reykjavik or something.

• 9:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Probably.

• 9:21Corinne Vien?

  Did a little nerdy tour. Oh my God. It was like, I can't even repeat anything that I learned from there, but it was unreal how they harness all of the energy to like power basically.

• 9:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Everything.

• 9:32Corinne Vien?

  Everything.

• 9:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Literally everything.

• 9:34Corinne Vien?

  And you're learning this and you're like, number one, how the fuck did we learn to do this? And number two, why is this knowledge not applied everywhere that this exists, like in, in the earth?

• 9:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Corinne Vien?

  And it just makes you realize how shady some other countries can be.

• 9:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  To be fair, also they have to do that because there's nothing else to rely on in Iceland. Like you are isolated, you are alone.

• 9:57Corinne Vien?

  But it was, it was, I was mind blown.

• 9:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Corinne Vien?

  And the person giving me the tour, I was like, you are 100 times smarter than me and you're just giving a tour.

• 10:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 10:04Corinne Vien?

  Like, this is insane.

• 10:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. It was a very cool place. It is so expensive. So know that before you go. And then, yeah, the tomato farm was so good.

• 10:14Corinne Vien?

  Gastro pub, make sure to read the menu. First.

• 10:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because often it just means strange Icelandic food. Yeah.

• 10:22Corinne Vien?

  Okay, wait, the tomato farm. Did it have tomatoes?

• 10:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was a whole tomato farm.

• 10:26Corinne Vien?

  I'm so confused because you were there in the dead of winter.

• 10:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So it's a bunch of greenhouses.

• 10:29Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 10:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And they grow tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, I think a couple of other things. They supply all of the, I think it's in Greenland has never been able to like grow. I think it's strawberries or blueberries, one of the two. So they supply all of it to Greenland.

• 10:47Corinne Vien?

  Oh, to their neighbor's Greenland.

• 10:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, but it's like all these greenhouses. And they have a restaurant in one and then they have this like bistro in another. So cool. You walk in, it smells like tomatoes. Their menus are very tomato themed, like tomato soup.

• 11:03Corinne Vien?

  Did you find all of this stuff on your own or were these?

• 11:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  These were recommendations. People recommended these to us.

• 11:08Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 11:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or to me. Yeah.

• 11:10Corinne Vien?

  Amazing.

• 11:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Corinne Vien?

  Damn, it makes me want to go back.

• 11:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know. I don't think I'll ever go back. Like it is one of those like, I feel like I saw most of the things. Like I'm bummed I didn't get to do the continental divide, but it was so cold. And I'm glad I went, but I feel like there's also so many other places in the world that I would want to go see before going back there.

• 11:29Corinne Vien?

  True. I also feel like seasonally you might have a different experience too.

• 11:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Corinne Vien?

  Because I feel like there's things that you got to do that like were not an option for me when

• 11:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 11:38Corinne Vien?

  I went and probably vice versa.

• 11:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Corinne Vien?

  Damn.

• 11:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was very, very cool. Loved it.

• 11:45Corinne Vien?

  Well, that was our upper for this episode.

• 11:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 11:49Corinne Vien?

  Because we're about to take a downer.

• 11:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Content warning.

• 11:53Corinne Vien?

  This episode contains detailed descriptions of abuse, domestic violence, murder of children, just general violence. So please listen with care.

• 12:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And will be a lot of anger from us.

• 12:06Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. And I told you that I, I've never balled, like I've balled.

• 12:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  While researching.

• 12:12Corinne Vien?

  Researching and writing and I could not like get a grip. I think I have no tears left to cry. We'll see. I might be able to reinvest again by the end. But we're going to talk about a case that many of us might be familiar with. It's a little more. Close to home and it really started on the morning of August 13th, 2018. A Monday morning in Frederick, Colorado, the sun is coming up over the Colorado plains, hitting the quiet suburb of beige houses and wide streets. A neighborhood where you know your neighbors, the kids are outside, they're riding their bikes. Everyone is hanging out, dropping off casseroles when someone has a baby, that sort of thing. The dream, a perfect place to have a family. At 2825 Saratoga Trail, there's a five bedroom house.

• 12:55Corinne Vien?

  It's a very nice house, a baby swing in the backyard, a dog named Dieter, drawings on the fridge, tiny shoes by the door. Everything looks as it's supposed to. Everything looks perfect. But just a few hours before, at 1:48 a.m., a car pulled up to the house. Shanann Watts climbed out, exhausted, 15 weeks pregnant. She'd been on a business trip in Arizona and she was finally home. Her friend Nicole, who picked her up from the airport, hugs her, has her get out of the car and watches Shanann walk up to the door. A good friend, right? Like she's dropping her off in the middle of the night, make sure that she gets in.

• 13:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Picture her from the airport, like, yeah.

• 13:33Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A great friend.

• 13:34Corinne Vien?

  Great friend.

• 13:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Corinne Vien?

  They are best friends and Nicole will play a larger part later, too.

• 13:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Can I say one thing about you that I admire so much?

• 13:42Corinne Vien?

  What?

• 13:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is anytime I came to visit you prior to living here, you always, except for when I arrived at like 6 a.m., you always picked me up from the airport.

• 13:52Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, that's friendship.

• 13:54Corinne Vien?

  Now that I don't live very close.

• 13:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You don't, but.

• 13:57Corinne Vien?

  Well, no, it's not, it's not proximity wise now. It's that I have a child.

• 14:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Corinne Vien?

  Because one time, it was during COVID, Marissa came to visit and we'd already pre-planned when she was coming, but it was like a few months into COVID. But I was up in Vermont and she had tickets in and out of Boston. And I was like, don't worry, I have nothing to do. Just drove the three and a half hours.

• 14:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 14:18Corinne Vien?

  Back and forth.

• 14:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Corinne Vien?

  Oh, man.

• 14:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I can't say-

• 14:21Corinne Vien?

  When you're a kid, it changes things.

• 14:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, I can't say I'm that person. I say- And I get that from my family because my family is not a drive you to the airport, pick you up from the airport.

• 14:31Corinne Vien?

  Anyway, Nicole is a friend that goes and gets her pregnant friend in the, in the middle of the night. So we're happy, happy about that.

• 14:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We like her.

• 14:37Corinne Vien?

  She watches her friend Shanann walk through the door safely, is home. A few hours later, when the sun is rising, Nicole is getting ready. She's supposed to accompany Shanann again to an OB appointment. She's been to a few before because she's a great friend. So she calls Shanann, but there's no answer. She texts Shanann, but there's no answer. Okay. She just came back from a business trip. She's back with her family, like she might be super tired. But this is so unlike her. She's never missed an OB appointment. She doesn't respond. She's very active on like social media, on her phone, communicating with friends. So even though there can be all of these excuses as to why she's not responding, it's still concerning.

• 15:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 15:19Corinne Vien?

  By nine AM, Nicole knows that there has to be something wrong. And so she drives over to her friend's house. She rings the doorbell and there's nothing. She peers through the windows and she can see Shanann's favorite shoes sitting by the door. She sees her friend Shanann's car in the garage. She calls, she calls, she calls, nothing, no answer every single time. So now she's like, I'm not hesitating. I'm calling the police. We're having like a welfare check, something is wrong.

• 15:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  She had literally just seen her.

• 15:49Corinne Vien?

  Hours before.

• 15:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 15:50Corinne Vien?

  Officers show up and then minutes after the officers show up, Shanann's husband, Chris Watts, pulls up in his work truck, fresh from a shift at the oil field. He seems calm, very measured. And when questioned about his wife's whereabouts, he says that earlier in the wee hours of the morning, they had this like emotional conversation, like bordering on a fight. It was basically like a disagreement and that she was like, I'm taking the kids and leaving the house. So Chris said basically that he didn't know exactly where she went. He presumed to a friend's house, but that she wasn't there and the kids weren't there either. And that it was due to their fight in the morning.

• 16:30Corinne Vien?

  But her car's still on the driveway or in the garage.

• 16:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But she hasn't told her best friend.

• 16:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it seems like all of her belongings, like just like the basics you would need to leave the house are all right there. So it doesn't make total sense. And then the neighbor across the street, seeing this sort of commotion, seeing what's going on, he's like, hey, I have a security camera outside of my house and it picks up their house, the Watts' house. I can put the, roll the footage back for the police and we can look for anything that might have happened between when Nicole dropped off Shenan and her being missing right now. The footage rolls and the only person who ever left that house after Shenan had walked into the door was Chris Watts.

• 17:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And it wasn't, thank God for neighborhood footage, like, or security systems in general.

• 17:18Corinne Vien?

  CCTV invented by a woman.

• 17:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cases.

• 17:21Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, no, totally. It's, it's like, it almost is mind boggling that anyone could get away with a crime these days.

• 17:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 17:28Corinne Vien?

  Just because of how much evidence there is. Like, that's why I feel like some disappearances of people where it's like, last seen on this video camera, like, running off in this direction into a field. You're like, how?

• 17:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 17:38Corinne Vien?

  How is that the last time? There's so much footage, there's.

• 17:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're thinking of Lars Maitan.

• 17:42Corinne Vien?

  Yes. Or just like even the background of like people's Snapchats. Like, there's gotta be something. There's evidence of something.

• 17:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 17:47Corinne Vien?

  But it doesn't always get pieced together. In this case, it wasn't just neighbors and friends providing evidence to help Shenan and her two kids be found. Police body cam footage would later reveal numerous messages from Shenan and her daughters Bella and Cece, messages sent from beyond the grave. I already have chills.

• 18:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  See, this is a part of the case I had no idea about.

• 18:10Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. That's the only reason I'm covering it. I never would have touched something that happened so soon and is so tragic.

• 18:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 18:17Corinne Vien?

  And like, I like, still feel kinda icky about it.

• 18:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Corinne Vien?

  But there's a lot of paranormal activity that came out after everything happened.

• 18:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Body cam footage.

• 18:27Corinne Vien?

  Mm-hmm. This is the case of the Watts family.

• 18:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And if, what's the Netflix documentary, like, America?

• 18:34Corinne Vien?

  Hold on, I wrote it down at the very end. Cause there's multiple documentaries. The Netflix one is American Murder: The Family Next Door.

• 18:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Corinne Vien?

  And that's actually where a lot of the paranormal evidence was first seen.

• 18:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, interesting.

• 18:48Corinne Vien?

  They didn't cover the paranormal evidence.

• 18:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It just, it didn't, and they didn't.

• 18:50Corinne Vien?

  People watching were like, what was that?

• 18:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, this case is really heartbreaking.

• 18:56Corinne Vien?

  It really is.

• 18:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Grab your stuffed animal.

• 19:00Corinne Vien?

  Grab like whatever comfort item you can.

• 19:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Weighted blanket.

• 19:03Corinne Vien?

  Or like I understand if you don't want to listen to this one. Cause it really is tragic and it's a little different from what we normally do.

• 19:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I did pick an uplifting, heartwarming listener story to wrap this up.

• 19:14Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 19:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  At the end of this.

• 19:15Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, we start with tomato farms and we end with uplifting ghostly tales. All right, so before meeting Chris, Shanann grew up in Aberdeen, North Carolina, in a very close knit family. Her two loving parents and her brother Frankie. And pretty much from day one, her personality was very loud, she was very loving, she was very enthusiastic about like absolutely everything. So she had that energy that pulled you in. So she had a lot of friends. And also, I didn't include this in my, in my research, but she was really big on Facebook, like posting videos. I think she was totally like the person that now would be like on Facebook Live.

• 19:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:51Corinne Vien?

  I'm at so and so's birthday party and like narrating it. So people felt very invested in her life, even if they weren't close friends. Because she just shared so much about like her children and her life and things that would come. So she was always this very personable, very easy to connect with, very kind and loving friend.

• 20:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep.

• 20:11Corinne Vien?

  So this is who she was, but that doesn't mean that her life didn't come without some struggles. Shanann was diagnosed with lupus at a very young age, which is an autoimmune disease that can be very debilitating. Isn't that what?

• 20:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Selena Gomez has.

• 20:24Corinne Vien?

  And she had to be very careful about what she ate, careful about stress, careful in ways that a lot of people her age were not thinking about at such a young age. And also as a young, young adult, she was kind of having moments of financial struggle.

• 20:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  As many people do, yeah, especially in this day and age.

• 20:41Corinne Vien?

  Guilty of spending my last $30 on a sound bath one time and then not eating for a couple of days.

• 20:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Corinne Vien?

  Priorities. When Shanann was just about thirty, she met Christopher Watts. Oh, I said that weird because I was gonna say Chris Watts and then I was like, I'll say his full name.

• 20:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Corinne Vien?

  And two years later, they married, they packed up their life and they moved to Colorado. They moved to Colorado because Chris had taken a job with Anadarko Petroleum, which was one of the biggest oil and gas companies operating in the state. And it was very good, stable work. And they were like, sure.

• 21:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Big skies, wide roads, Colorado living, clean air, let's go. Colorado has the most sun, like, days of sunlight in the US.

• 21:23Corinne Vien?

  Which is so wild because you would, like, I would have guessed Florida or something like that.

• 21:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Colorado.

• 21:27Corinne Vien?

  Colorado.

• 21:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:29Corinne Vien?

  Sunny, beautiful, clean air, Colorado. They bought a five-bedroom home in Frederick for just under four hundred thousand dollars and they started to build their life. On December seventeenth, twenty thirteen, their first daughter, Bella Marie Watts, was born.

• 21:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:44Corinne Vien?

  And then on July seventeenth, twenty fifteen, Celeste Catherine, who they called Cece, came along too. So they were basically like a year and a half apart.

• 21:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Corinne Vien?

  In age. So these girls were gonna be best friends.

• 21:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  My nieces.

• 21:58Corinne Vien?

  Yes, exactly. You're gonna cry in this episode. It's terrible.

• 22:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For sure. Like, yeah. I FaceTimed with my nieces literally two seconds before coming in here. Yeah.

• 22:06Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. Okay, so something about having these kids and having these girls, Shanann just, it like completely lit her up. She was always a positive person and always a kind person, but like this was everything. Like, she was mom and giving these girls the best possible life ever was just, that was like her purpose. She posted on social media constantly. She posted about them going to gymnastics and doing silly little dances and making funny faces and all of this stuff, which I didn't look it up, but apparently the Facebook is still up, I think, and people have said it does feel like they're still here because you get to see them live their life.

• 22:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's the wildest thing about social media is even after someone's gone,

• 22:50Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  their presence exists online as if they're still here.

• 22:55Corinne Vien?

  I know. It's almost like- Uncomfortable in a way. Like, sometimes I'm like, it feels wrong to be able to just like, for you to not have control anymore over your profile. Like, you can't go back and take a photo down or post an update if you want. Like, it's just, it's just there.

• 23:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's just there, yeah.

• 23:11Corinne Vien?

  So what a lot of people felt connected to in Shanann's posts were not just like this perfect family pictured on Facebook, but she really wasn't embarrassed or ashamed to show all of it. It was like the chaos, the laundry, the mess. It was like, truly like she was like mom blogging, like a day in our life sort of thing. Sometimes the kids would be crying in the background. Days didn't go perfectly. But that just made people feel more connected to her. And this was sort of the thing that she brought to her close friendships too, where she was just so completely open and blatantly honest about what was going on.

• 23:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Corinne Vien?

  She talked a lot about Chris in her videos and how amazing he was, how much he meant to her, how in love they were. So Christopher Lee Watts, he grew up in North Carolina as well, not far from where Shanann had grown up. And his life was a little bit different. He was pretty quiet. He kept to himself. His parents, Ronnie and Cindy Watts, would later describe their son as a gentle, sweet and not capable of violence type of guy. And he lived this kind of mild life. So he wasn't particularly ambitious. He wasn't particularly dramatic. He wasn't super loud. You didn't really notice him as the focal point of a party.

• 24:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Average.

• 24:22Corinne Vien?

  Average, yeah. He was the guy who went to work, came home, watched TV, liked the Colorado Rockies, liked cars, just like, honestly, it's a, it's a life a lot of people dream of having, like a normal life, quiet, drama-free life.

• 24:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like I'm just making the same face this whole episode.

• 24:38Corinne Vien?

  Well, because you know what's gonna happen. And I think a lot of people who are listening to this know what, this is a very popular, it's not the, like, it feels

• 24:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's very mainstream.

• 24:45Corinne Vien?

  Yes. Yeah. Friends of Shanann described the early years of their marriage as genuinely very sweet. Chris seemed very devoted. He played with the girls on the floor. He helped with bath time. He was very present. And people who knew both of them thought that they were actually a really good match for each other. Shanann had this fire and drive. Chris was very easygoing. It seemed to like Pair well, there weren't many conflicts, but behind the scenes, things weren't going as smoothly as they appeared. The couple declared bankruptcy in 2015, which was the same year Cece was born, their second. And obviously, a financial strain is terrible for anyone to go through, but especially for a young family who like just moved to this area more

• 25:26Corinne Vien?

  recently. There's so much pressure on them and it's like, it's not just you, it's your children that you're having to take care of.

• 25:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So that's when their second kid was born?

• 25:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Corinne Vien?

  They filed for bankruptcy.

• 25:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's very stressful.

• 25:38Corinne Vien?

  Shanann's friends would later tell investigators that there was something about the dynamic between them that actually seemed a little imbalanced for many years. So Shanann was the decision maker. She was the planner. She was the one who managed the house, managed the kids, managed the schedule. And Chris just like basically went along with any, with everything. He didn't really take the lead on anything. And on the surface, it looked like, okay, that works for them, right? He like doesn't have a very strong opinion. She gets to make the decisions. And he's just like, sure. And goes along and helps, but isn't contributing ideas.

• 26:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Can I just say, there's literally nothing more unattractive than someone who's unmotivated.

• 26:17Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ah, well.

• 26:21Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. He appeared to be unmotivated, but what he said he felt was that he didn't have a say in anything, that he couldn't hang a picture without her giving input, that he felt very controlled, that he wasn't happy for a really long time, that he didn't know how unhappy he was until someone came along to show him.

• 26:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which all of these things are real experiences that so many people feel and experience throughout their lives. I felt it in my marriage. I felt alone in a relationship where I've should have been partner. But the way you deal with that is your responsibility, and this is an asshole.

• 27:00Corinne Vien?

  Like beyond an asshole.

• 27:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is a horrible, monstrous person.

• 27:03Corinne Vien?

  This is like.

• 27:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Disgusting.

• 27:06Corinne Vien?

  I know that I shouldn't wish death on people, but like I do feel like sometimes.

• 27:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For him, a one hundred percent.

• 27:12Corinne Vien?

  Unfortunately, Darwinism and evolution.

• 27:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 27:15Corinne Vien?

  Doesn't weed out the evil.

• 27:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I wish it did.

• 27:18Corinne Vien?

  Is it bonobos, those monkeys that will?

• 27:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Do they?

• 27:22Corinne Vien?

  It was a big story. I think it was bonobos. It's a matriarchy. And recently, there was a story about how they found a male bonobo, like the colony, the trip, I don't know what they're called, the group of monkeys. They found a male bonobo abusing a young bonobo, like a youth, a child bonobo. And they beat and tore him to death immediately.

• 27:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The female bonobos.

• 27:47Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm. Yes. And they're like in all the history of bonobos and all the studies of bonobos, like there has really been very little evidence of them having any sort of aggression. They're a very like peaceful group. But if you mess with the peace and if you do something evil, you're immediately eliminated.

• 28:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow.

• 28:04Corinne Vien?

  And I feel like that energy.

• 28:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Corinne Vien?

  Should be brought to human beings.

• 28:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, anyone who can hurt a child.

• 28:11Corinne Vien?

  Gone.

• 28:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Corinne Vien?

  Sorry.

• 28:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Corinne Vien?

  Better luck in your next life. Okay, so this is what he said. These are like parts of his excuses as to like what went on. But first, let's talk about May twenty ninth, twenty eighteen. On May twenty ninth, Shanann set up a camera in their kitchen. She walked in wearing a shirt that said, oops, we did it again. She waited for Chris to come home. And when he walked in, she stepped in front of the camera. He saw the shirt. He grabbed the pregnancy test. He's grinning. He seems very excited. He kisses her. Seems genuinely happy. I can't remember like what the comment was. I think they had like what he had actually said, but he.

• 28:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Appears happy.

• 28:49Corinne Vien?

  Appears very happy that they are pregnant with their third child. Later, they would find out that they were pregnant with a boy and they were planning on naming him Nico. But 76 days later, Shanann, Nico, Bella, and Celeste, Cece, were no longer alive.

• 29:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenewvo in a couple of weeks.

• 29:14Corinne Vien?

  It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.

• 29:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenewvo's whole body scan is a radiation-free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs and systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenewvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.

• 29:56Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenewvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenewvo.com/tgog and use code T G O G. That's P R E N U V O dot com slash T G O G. Terms and conditions apply.

• 30:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenewvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenewvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenewvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenewvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider.

• 30:27Corinne Vien?

  In June of 2018, Shanann took the girls to North Carolina for an extended summer visit with family. So she and her girls were going to be gone for six weeks, and they were gone for six weeks.

• 30:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Without Chris?

• 30:37Corinne Vien?

  Yep. So, six weeks. She has the girls. Six weeks where the house is quiet. His family isn't there. There's no schedule to adhere to. And his wife is not present. At work, Chris Watts needed to drop off a dysfunctional gas meter to the environmental department, which I guess is like, it was a normal.

• 30:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is it his brain?

• 31:00Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah, it's his whole being. But this is where everything changed. So he goes to drop it off. And he, in this moment, meets a colleague that he has never met before. Her name is Nicole Kessinger. So there's two Nikoles in the story. One is Shanann's friend Nicole. Nicole Kessinger is not friends with Shanann. She gets with Chris.

• 31:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Corinne Vien?

  Different. So I'll just say Nicole Kessinger every single time I'm referencing the woman who ends up having an affair with Chris. She's thirty years old. She has dark hair. She's very outdoorsy. She's very confident in a way that is new for him, which I'm like, I feel like Shanann is pretty damn confident, but.

• 31:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For sure. If anything, it's he feels like someone's giving him attention, making him feel a way that he himself can't make himself feel.

• 31:44Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, there we go.

• 31:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Corinne Vien?

  He needs therapy or for Sabrina to just tell him exactly what is going on with his little messed up brain. According to Chris, they kept running into each other in the office. And the fourth time they crossed paths, she asked what we meant when he said that we moved from North Carolina in conversation. So that's when he shows pictures of Bella and Cece, his daughters, on his phone. So she knew he had kids. His lock screen was also Shanann, his wife, on his phone.

• 32:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But does he purposely leave out Shanann when he shows the pictures of the kids?

• 32:20Corinne Vien?

  Um, no, I think she knew that he was married, but I think he was like, we're at the end of our marriage. I think he lied about where they were in their relationship.

• 32:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 32:30Corinne Vien?

  Most people just get a divorce.

• 32:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Corinne Vien?

  And move out. So basically, that's what he said. He said that they were separating, that they'd filed for divorce. It was almost final and that he was currently looking for an apartment.

• 32:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 32:42Corinne Vien?

  That is what Nicole Kessinger told investigators. He told her. Chris told investigators that she actually knew that he was married with a family and that she was just saying that to save face. So there's conflicting stories between the two of them as well.

• 32:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Listen, I don't trust a thing that Chris has to say, so.

• 32:58Corinne Vien?

  No. What we do know for certain is that by late June. Nicole Kessinger and Chris Watts were meeting up outside of work. By early July, they were in a physical relationship and Chris was seeing Nicole four to five times a week while Shanann and the girls were gone. They were only gone for six weeks. So this is like

• 33:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So this is progressing quickly.

• 33:14Corinne Vien?

  This whirlwind romance is happening in this six week span.

• 33:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Corinne Vien?

  He took her to the car museum in Boulder. They went on an overnight camping trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park. They were using a secret app, something called Secret Calculator, to send private messages and photos to each other on an app that their partners couldn't discover, or I guess she didn't have a partner, but Shanann couldn't discover. And in early August, he told Nicole Kessinger that he was in love with her.

• 33:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So within this six week period, that his wife, his pregnant wife and two daughters are visiting family.

• 33:51Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He just built a full blown relationship.

• 33:53Corinne Vien?

  Yep. Yeah, he falls in love with someone else. Full relationship, they're going on vacation, all of this. Nicole Kessinger will say later that she had been told about Shanann. She'd been told about his kids. She had not been told that Shanann was pregnant. So she says she did not know that Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant.

• 34:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I'm not trying to excuse Nicole in any way because it takes two people for a relationship.

• 34:17Corinne Vien?

  Well, and also I'll say some things later where

• 34:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Corinne Vien?

  you might feel like she's lying.

• 34:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But the fact that Shanann is out of town.

• 34:25Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like, it would make you believe, oh, they're not in a relationship.

• 34:29Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 34:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because she's not present.

• 34:31Corinne Vien?

  They're like separated.

• 34:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it's not his weekend. It's not his six weeks. Full six weeks. I understand that totally. Apparently, when Nicole found out about the pregnancy, after everything went down and she's talking to police and working with investigators, she said, quote, "I thought if he was able to lie to me and hide something that big, what else is he lying about?" So she's kind of trying to plant the seed of doubt as well. And maybe, like Chris was saying, save face a little bit because like, we're not really sure how much she truly knew or not.

• 35:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 35:04Corinne Vien?

  Meanwhile, Chris and Nicole had begun this whirlwind affair. And back in North Carolina, Shanann was picking up on something. She and Chris video called each other and she started to notice that he was seeming different over these six weeks. He was a lot more distant. And like I said before, Shenan is a very open book. She confides a lot in her friends. She's very blatantly honest about what she's going through.

• 35:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Corinne Vien?

  She gets a lot of emotional support. And so she texts her friends, like, something is off. Like, I don't know what it is, but he seems really distracted when he's on the phone with me. And I just feel like there's something weird going on.

• 35:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Women's intuition.

• 35:41Corinne Vien?

  So because of this, she decides to end the trip a little bit early. They're supposed to be gone for six weeks. Early is, and I think they come back at like five and a half weeks.

• 35:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure.

• 35:49Corinne Vien?

  So it was like just enough where she was like, okay, I like can't do this anymore. I can't wait.

• 35:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cause the anxiety she must have felt.

• 35:54Corinne Vien?

  Yes, totally. On August 5th, Shenan texted her husband, Chris. I don't know how you fell out of love with me in five and a half weeks. Or if this has been going on for a long time, but you don't plan to have another baby if you're not in love. He texted back the next morning.

• 36:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my God.

• 36:12Corinne Vien?

  That he didn't want to erase the eight years together. He just wasn't sure what he wanted and what was going on in his head. So not really some real reassurance there. Like, that's not really the text you want to get back. But it's also not him walking away from his family. It's a very like non-committal response. So she's like, okay, there's a chance that we might be able to figure things out. And for the next couple of weeks, Shenan is trying so, so hard to fix their family.

• 36:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 36:39Corinne Vien?

  She confided in friends, several of them, that her marriage was in trouble. She suspected Chris was having an affair, but she couldn't fully bring herself to believe it because she, she like literally texted a friend saying that the only thing she could think of to make this happen would be that there was another girl, but she didn't think Chris had it in him to do that to her.

• 36:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 36:57Corinne Vien?

  And their family. She told another friend that he hadn't touched her in weeks, hadn't kissed her, barely spoke to her unless she pushed. She texted, quote, "He has changed. I don't know who he is."

• 37:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 37:10Corinne Vien?

  She ordered a relationship book on Amazon called Hold Me. Tight and wanted Chris to read it and he threw it in the garbage without opening it. She wanted to go to couples counseling. He refused. On August eighth, she texted her friend Taylor, quote, Chris said, we are not compatible anymore.

• 37:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ew.

• 37:29Corinne Vien?

  He refused to hug me. Said he thought another baby would fix his feelings. Said he refused couples counseling. Taylor, who had just landed in Chicago, saw the messages and typed back, oh, my God, what? And Shannon replied, I've cried myself to sleep over a week now.

• 37:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And she's pregnant.

• 37:47Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. And there are, like, I just pulled a few of the texts. There are, this case was investigated so heavily. There are multiple documentaries, multiple spotlights on what happened. And because she was so

• 37:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Communicative.

• 37:59Corinne Vien?

  Yes, there are lots and lots of screenshots as to what she was telling her friends and whole threads that people can read on the internet. It just makes it more and more devastating. She told another friend that she no longer felt safe, that she felt scared, but she was gonna keep trying. She talked to

• 38:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which is such a distinction. Like, a lot of people going through that are just feeling the sadness and the pain of it. To feel scared.

• 38:27Corinne Vien?

  Right, like, there's something really cold.

• 38:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Corinne Vien?

  Where you're like, who is this?

• 38:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 38:31Corinne Vien?

  They have a mental break? Like, what's going on?

• 38:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, that breaks my heart.

• 38:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. She talked to a lawyer about custody. She thought about moving with kids back to North Carolina. She thought about fighting for her marriage, but she just couldn't decide. And in the middle of all this, she's fifteen weeks pregnant. She's running a business. She's managing two toddlers. She's trying to figure out how the man that she built her entire adult life around had just stopped loving her in five and a half weeks. And mind you, this is, this is all happening. The trip she went on was five and a half weeks. Then she fought to get their marriage back on track for a couple of weeks. Like, this is two months. That all of this is happening in, like, just a few weeks span. Before she left for her final business trip to Arizona, she wrote a letter to Chris, a handwritten letter, and she left it for him on the counter.

• 39:21Corinne Vien?

  And at first, you can find it on the internet. At first, I like put screenshots for like the YouTube video of her handwritten letter. And then I felt so

• 39:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Corinne Vien?

  icky because like this is her.

• 39:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so emotional.

• 39:35Corinne Vien?

  Little bubbly handwriting on like a piece of like lined notebook paper, just pouring her heart out.

• 39:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It feels so intimate.

• 39:42Corinne Vien?

  It's so intimate. So if you want to read the whole note, if you want to look it up, it's there. I'm just gonna read a couple sentences, basically. She essentially said, I can't even explain how much this pain hurts. The last five weeks have been so hard. I missed everything about you. I missed your morning breath, your touch, your lips against mine. I miss holding you. I miss smelling you in the sheets. I miss talking to you in person. I miss watching you laugh and play with the kids. Yeah. And then at the very end, she signed it, I love you, baby, with all my heart, with love, Shanann. And she also wrote like happy anniversary. So I'm not sure if it was on their anniversary or not.

• 40:19Corinne Vien?

  Chris Watts did not respond to the letter. On August 11th, Chris met Nicole Kessinger for dinner in Denver. And this was the last time that Nicole Kessinger and Chris would see each other in person.

• 40:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wait, so like literally Shanann goes on a work trip? Chris is responsible taking care of the kids? And

• 40:34Corinne Vien?

  Goes on a date with his.

• 40:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The second she leaves.

• 40:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 40:38Corinne Vien?

  On August 12th, Shanann texted Chris from her business trip, asking, what kind of vegetables do you want with dinner tonight?

• 40:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Literally, she's preparing the meal when she gets home.

• 40:48Corinne Vien?

  Yep. She's just trying, yes.

• 40:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  She's still

• 40:51Corinne Vien?

  Normal life. Oper- and that, he doesn't respond to any of this other stuff, but he responds to this. Broccoli works, green beans work too. Fuck you. I hate him.

• 41:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hate him so much. I was really craving green beans last night, though, and now this makes me want green beans more.

• 41:07Corinne Vien?

  Sorry. Should have warned you.

• 41:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  God damn it, those green beans.

• 41:11Corinne Vien?

  Mention of green beans in this episode.

• 41:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Content warning.

• 41:14Corinne Vien?

  Green beans. Apparently, this is the last text message that Shanann Watts would ever send to Chris. Shanann got home just before 2:00 AM, dropped off by her friend Nicole on Monday, August 13th. The security camera across the street caught the moment that her friend Nicole's car pulled up. Shanann climbed out, walked up the driveway. She's tired, she's pregnant, she's carrying her bags. She's finally home with her family, with her daughters.

• 41:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, and also like probably so excited to go see her daughters.

• 41:42Corinne Vien?

  Oh my god, yes.

• 41:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But they're sleeping and she's probably like, I don't want to wake them up.

• 41:46Corinne Vien?

  Right. The house is quiet, the girls are asleep, Chris is in bed. And according to Chris's later confession, he woke up around four or five AM to get ready for work. And at some point, Shanann woke up too. And this is when they began to talk. She said she knew he was cheating. She'd been putting it together for weeks. So she confronted him and he did not deny it. He told her he didn't love her anymore and that their marriage was over. Shanann, who had been fighting for weeks to save their marriage, who had cried herself to sleep almost every night, who had written him a love letter, who was fifteen weeks pregnant with their third child, was now just told by the love of her life that he did not love her anymore and that their marriage was over.

• 42:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which could have been the end of this story. And it could have just been a heartbreaking end to a marriage.

• 42:37Corinne Vien?

  She felt so broken in that moment, so she didn't know what else to say. And she just said, well, I don't think you're ever gonna see your children again.

• 42:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Also very valid and fair.

• 42:46Corinne Vien?

  Chris then put both of his hands around his wife's neck and strangled her to death.

• 42:54Corinne Vien?

  I'm already gonna start crying because now we're gonna get to the kids. I'm gonna cry probably for like ten minutes straight. I wrote this in my pajamas, like not even brushed my teeth and I was like, just a mess, okay?

• 43:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, you're pregnant too, like it's just like all of these things. Yeah, I I am shocked you chose to cover this case.

• 43:11Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it does feel more like close to home because I'm living every day with like a child who's the same age.

• 43:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Corinne Vien?

  In his confession to investigators months later, he said, every time I think about it, I'm just like, did I know I was going to do that before I got on top of her? It just felt like there was already something in my mind that was implanted that I was gonna do it. And when I woke up that morning, it was gonna happen and I had no control over it. So basically, he was admitting that like it was kind of premeditated.

• 43:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But still taking no accountability, being like, I had no control.

• 43:42Corinne Vien?

  I had no control, my mind just made me do it. I've been thinking about it forever. Is that not premeditated murder, basically? He later admitted to investigators that he'd also been giving Shanann oxycontin for weeks.

• 43:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What the fuck?

• 43:55Corinne Vien?

  Trying to end her pregnancy.

• 43:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I did not know that part.

• 44:00Corinne Vien?

  Yep. I know there's been a lot, like since.

• 44:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He was poisoning her.

• 44:04Corinne Vien?

  He was poisoning her, he, yeah, he thought if there was no baby, but leaving her.

• 44:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  For weeks.

• 44:10Corinne Vien?

  Bella and Cece would be easier for weeks. Yeah. Letters he wrote from prison later confirmed this. He had been planning this for a long time. I don't, he might have been planning this before Nicole Kessinger was even in the picture. But basically, it all indicated that this wasn't this like heat of the moment crime. This was premeditated. He wrapped Shanann's body in their bed sheets and attempted to carry her downstairs. He lost his grip, so he ended up dragging her down the staircase.

• 44:41Corinne Vien?

  Getting to the bad part.

• 44:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Worst part. It's pretty bad.

• 44:44Corinne Vien?

  I don't know how I'm gonna do it.

• 44:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You want me to read that part?

• 44:47Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 44:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I didn't know it was this.

• 44:52Corinne Vien?

  I know, it's so bad. There's bad parts after that that I'm gonna sit through.

• 44:59Corinne Vien?

  Why did I choose this?

• 45:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Also, why'd you write it like this?

• 45:03Corinne Vien?

  I don't know. I'm sorry.

• 45:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, God. Okay, yeah, if you don't want to hear this part.

• 45:09Corinne Vien?

  Just stop the whole episode because it doesn't get better.

• 45:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But like specifically this detail, like, yeah, maybe like fast forward a couple of minutes. Okay, so that is when a small voice came from the hallway. It was four-year-old Bella. She had a pink blanket in her hands. She was standing in the doorway and asked, what's wrong with mommy? Chris told his four-year-old daughter, she doesn't feel good.

• 45:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Chris backed his truck into the driveway, loaded Shanann's body into the back. He came back inside, and by then Cece had woken up too. He put both girls in the backseat without car seats, just the girls with their blankets. And Cece had her stuffed animal with her. And then he drove in the dark down the Colorado plains toward the Anadarko oil field where Chris worked. And on the drive, the girls dozed on and off in the backseat, laying against one another. Bella asked again, is mommy okay? And he told them she was going to be okay. Corinne wrote another content warning here. Because these are the last moments of Cece and Bella's lives, a three and four-year-old who were truly just babies.

• 46:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, who loved Minnie Mouse and reading and spending time with mommy's daddy.

• 46:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  God damn it.

• 46:29Corinne Vien?

  That's the thing is like Shanann and the shared so much of their lives that like you

• 46:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can really know them.

• 46:35Corinne Vien?

  Kids are.

• 46:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Chris Watts took Shanann's body out of the truck when they arrived. And he turned back to his girls. And he smothered Cece in the backseat with her own blanket. The opening at the top of the oil tanks at this work site measured eight inches in diameter. Eight inches, that's less than a foot.

• 46:53Corinne Vien?

  Babies are basically that size. Like it's so small.

• 46:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Chris Watts forced his three year old daughter's body through an eight inch opening. He then walked back to the truck where Bella was still there, this four year old who had seen things that she never should have seen and couldn't even comprehend. She looked at her father and asked, is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece? And then he smothered Bella with the same blanket. But Bella fought and her last words were daddy, no. And then Chris Watts placed her in the tank as well. The medical examiner later found evidence, which Karen said, I won't share every graphic detail, but it showed where her body had been forced through the eight inch opening.

• 47:44Corinne Vien?

  Thank you for your help. Sorry.

• 47:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  My eye is twitching again.

• 47:47Corinne Vien?

  Some of the worst of it.

• 47:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  My eye twitch has been going on for like four months, but now recently changed to when things are like triggering or I don't like agree with it morally, my eye twitches.

• 47:59Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's the only time my eye twitches.

• 48:01Corinne Vien?

  Oh, really?

• 48:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Corinne Vien?

  Oh, it's like your little.

• 48:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's my tic. My batso raven.

• 48:08Corinne Vien?

  Something's off with this. I don't think we need a shit twitch to know this.

• 48:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, no, my twitch, yeah, my twitch is like Karen from Mean Girls where it's like there's a 30% chance it's already raining. No, it's like this is obvious information and now my eye is twitching. Ugh.

• 48:26Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 48:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sorry to everyone.

• 48:29Corinne Vien?

  Chris Watts then dug a shallow grave nearby and buried his pregnant wife, Shanann. He then drove back home. He removed Shanann's wedding ring, left it on the counter so that it would look like she had taken it off herself. I think he also, I didn't write this down, but it was in a bunch of the articles and stuff. I think he like did something with the book that she had given him about like a marriage help or whatever.

• 48:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 48:54Corinne Vien?

  Like relationship counseling book and displayed it in some sort of way to make it look like she had like given up that she was leaving. Be like, I'm done with their relationship, my ring is off.

• 49:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Calculated and evil.

• 49:06Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 49:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And also the manner in which he killed all of them is the most intimate.

• 49:12Corinne Vien?

  He looked into his children's eyes.

• 49:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's no situation in which killing your children, your wife and your children, your pregnant wife and your children is okay. But the manner in which he chose to do it is so intimate and violent.

• 49:28Corinne Vien?

  We talk about like demons and poltergeist and this is like the most evil case I've ever.

• 49:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  People are a million times worse than demons.

• 49:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, this is not why we're not a weekly true crime podcast. I literally could not handle it.

• 49:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Corinne Vien?

  Chris made himself breakfast. He went on about his day. And that same morning, when it got a little bit later and more appropriate to make a phone call, he called Bella and Cece's preschool, said that they wouldn't be coming back. He then called a realtor, asked about listing the house.

• 49:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What a disgusting human being.

• 50:00Corinne Vien?

  It like zero time to even accept what happened, just fully moving on with his next life.

• 50:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's no shock. There's no like going through motions. He's literally, yeah, a monster.

• 50:11Corinne Vien?

  Yep. He's like, perfect. It's done. I can move on with my life. He texted Nicole Kessinger that he was moving on. By mid morning on August thirteenth, Nicole Atkinson, Shanann's best friend, arrived at the house. She had already called the police and the officers had already arrived. And Nicole, Chris and the officers were inside of the house looking around. Chris went around the house, checked on the girls' room. Nothing was out of place. He came back downstairs. He smiled for the camera.

• 50:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Is this the like body cam footage of the show in the Netflix documentary? It is so chilling.

• 50:44Corinne Vien?

  It's.

• 50:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He is cool as a goddamn cucumber and I'm so sad that cucumbers are brought into this, but like truly.

• 50:52Corinne Vien?

  Green beans, cucumbers, justice for the vegetables.

• 50:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Leave my vegetables alone.

• 50:56Corinne Vien?

  No, the body cam footage, there's so much that you can, because the Netflix documentary has a good amount of it.

• 51:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:03Corinne Vien?

  And there are some others that like you can see, but I think that there's a good amount that's just available online, like full length clips.

• 51:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, because this is in, like, shown in court, it's evidence.

• 51:13Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, it's very disturbing.

• 51:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Corinne Vien?

  He told officers he wasn't concerned, this was Shanann's choice, she'd taken the kids and left. Nicole, Shanann's friend, who'd known her for years, told investigators, no, there is something deeply wrong here. She pointed out Shanann's shoes by the door, her car in the garage, Shanann doesn't leave without shoes, she said. Then the neighbor across the street, Nathan Trinastich, offered up his security cam footage. They stand in front of the TV, the police, Chris, the neighbor, and on the TV is an intro to American Horror Story. Chris is getting visibly more uncomfortable as they're about to pull up the security camera footage.

• 51:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, also, did Shanann text Nicole about the marital issues? Probably. So like, Nicole is already...

• 52:01Corinne Vien?

  There was something going on.

• 52:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Corinne Vien?

  She knew. He's visibly more and more shaken, the like, cool as a cucumber facade is starting to drop, he's getting nervous, he's like standing right by the TV, almost like as if he's going to step in front of it and block it.

• 52:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ugh.

• 52:14Corinne Vien?

  And as they're getting ready to fast forward with their remote or whatever, like change the settings to go to the security camera footage, the American Horror Story promo plays next to Chris, showing a fetus, then an explosion, then a skull floating in dark liquid. And people believe that this is a message from Shanann.

• 52:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, that is so chilling.

• 52:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, we're gonna play that clip. She's pregnant as well.

• 52:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  How far along?

• 52:45Corinne Vien?

  Four to fifteen weeks.

• 52:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, but the chances of that being the first thing prior to watching the video, that's, I mean...

• 52:53Corinne Vien?

  This is where the paranormal starts coming in.

• 52:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 52:57Corinne Vien?

  Then the footage plays. It shows Chris loading something into the back of his truck in the wee hours of the morning. Something long, something wrapped. The truck backs out of the garage and drives away.

• 53:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wait, like, that part, shock, I didn't realize, so he loads the car.

• 53:13Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Carrying Shanann's body.

• 53:16Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And that is caught on camera.

• 53:20Corinne Vien?

  Yep, I'm pretty sure you can see like.

• 53:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Not only is he a goddamn monster, he's a fucking idiot.

• 53:24Corinne Vien?

  Such an idiot. Well, he didn't know, he clearly did not know or didn't think at all about.

• 53:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, didn't think, that's, he's an idiot.

• 53:31Corinne Vien?

  He's an idiot. And even, this wasn't in the part that I watched, but I remember this from like, the original case, I believe even the neighbor was like, he's acting weird. So everyone was like, there's something off. Like everyone who was around him.

• 53:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like even before they, it's not like, oh, after the fact, they were like, oh, I thought he was acting weird. No, it's in the moment, they're like, he's weird.

• 53:49Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, like there's something weird going on. This guy's acting weird. Like pulling the police aside, being like, there's something not right about the way he's acting. By the next morning, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had issued an endangered missing alert. FBI joined the search. The story was going national and everyone was looking for Shanann, Bella and Cece. Chris Watts walked outside of his house to give an interview to the Denver's local ABC affiliate. And said, Shanann, Bella, Celeste, if you're out there, just come back. If somebody has her, just please bring her back.

• 54:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What a monster.

• 54:23Corinne Vien?

  It's just like this whole thing about like, oh, the house is incomplete without you. It's so, it feels like Gone Girl.

• 54:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, I was just thinking about that. But Gone Girl, he's actually innocent.

• 54:31Corinne Vien?

  He's actually innocent, but like, it's that where like people watching, you're like, some people were very convinced by it.

• 54:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, he's a psychopath. That's, that's psychotic.

• 54:40Corinne Vien?

  It is. Those close to Shanann did not buy Chris's bullshit for a single second. By August 15th, the investigation had honed in. Police were watching Chris. They found inconsistencies. They had the security footage. They talked to Shanann's friends. And on the morning of August 15th, Chris Watts walked into the Frederick Police Department with his father Ronnie, who had flown in that morning from North Carolina. He sat down across from investigators. He agreed to take a polygraph. He failed, which doesn't really mean anything, but like.

• 55:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So he's still proclaiming to know nothing.

• 55:16Corinne Vien?

  At that moment, but then he asks if he can speak with his father alone. And this is not something that like, the police would normally say yes to, but they're like, okay, like, we'll just see what he says. Cause he's mic'd up, hot mic, whatever.

• 55:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, so it's like, they can listen in on this conversation?

• 55:32Corinne Vien?

  So Ronnie Watts is sitting with his son, Chris Watts. The investigators leave the room. I don't know if they knew that they were being watched through the glass. Again, I feel like that's kind of idiotic if you.

• 55:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, because only if you were with a lawyer, right?

• 55:46Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 55:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That conversation couldn't be.

• 55:47Corinne Vien?

  Yes, but he's just talking to his dad. Chris cries to his father and said that he'd walked in on Shanann strangling the girls and he snapped and killed her.

• 55:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Are you fucking kidding me?

• 55:58Corinne Vien?

  So he, this is a planned false admission. At eleven forty PM on August fifteenth, Christopher Lee Watts was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first degree murder and three counts of tampering with a deceased body.

• 56:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which I'm like so glad the police are, are like, we see through this.

• 56:14Corinne Vien?

  Hmm.

• 56:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Even the story he's trying to spin, no, he is.

• 56:17Corinne Vien?

  There's.

• 56:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One hundred percent.

• 56:18Corinne Vien?

  He's already lied.

• 56:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Corinne Vien?

  He's handcuffed, he's taken into custody. On August sixteenth, investigators were already looking at the Anadarko Petroleum work site near Rogan, Rogan, Colorado. It was about forty miles northeast of Frederick and this is where Chris worked.

• 56:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 56:34Corinne Vien?

  They had gotten there because Chris's cellphone data and GPS tracking put him in that area the morning of August thirteenth. Around this site, investigators had spotted something from a distance. There was a patch of white sheet and some disturbed earth. So they brought in some excavators.

• 56:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hmm.

• 56:51Corinne Vien?

  At a distance of about one hundred feet from the cluster of oil storage tanks, there was like two big tanks. They found Shanann's body in a shallow grave. She had been buried face down, still wrapped in part of her bed sheets that she had shared with her husband, Chris. Fifteen weeks pregnant with her now deceased son, Nico.

• 57:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Four lives.

• 57:13Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm. Then they looked into the tanks. The tanks at his work site were crude oil storage containers. They were not transparent, so you could not see inside from the outside. So they opened the top of each tank and the only way in or out was a diameter of about eight inches. And to put that into perspective, a standard dinner plate is ten and a half inches? Ten point five inches?

• 57:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So like.

• 57:36Corinne Vien?

  I think. So smaller than your dinner plate. The tanks were drained. Investigators waited as the crude oil pumped out. Then they looked inside. In tank one, there was Cece. In the other tank, there was Bella. This is what Christopher Watts did with his children. This is how he disposed of his beloved family. These are the details that Judge Marcello Copcaw would later call at sentencing, "Perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of thousands of cases that I have seen." Shanann, Bella, Cece, and Nika were buried together in September of 2018 at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

• 58:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  To find one silver lining here, like, there are so many cases where bodies are never discovered, or at least they were found and given this burial together, like that they can rest together.

• 58:28Corinne Vien?

  Well, I'll say, in the beginning of this episode too, I have pictures of the whole family together. And the second we get to the part where he murders, all the photos, I chose all the ones where it's just Shanann and her daughters. He's not in them.

• 58:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  He's disgusting.

• 58:43Corinne Vien?

  A 90-minute service was held for the family, and Chris Watts was not mentioned once.

• 58:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Good.

• 58:50Corinne Vien?

  Shanann's father Frank read a statement that said, "You are nothing but pure love, always caring for everyone. You will always be daddy's little girl."

• 58:59Corinne Vien?

  Investigators knew about Nicole Kessinger before Chris admitted to the affair. They found evidence on his phone and emails, and the cards that he'd sent her, photos of the two of them together on their overnight trips, their camping trip, whatever, the secret calculator app, all of that. When police informed Chris during the investigation that they had already known about the affair, something visibly shifted in him. It was like the wall came down. Like, he knew he was caught.

• 59:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Fucking idiot. Like, I'm sorry, what do you think's gonna happen?

• 59:30Corinne Vien?

  Also, like, how evil too. Like, the shift of being like, oh, fuck, like...

• 59:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I've been caught.

• 59:36Corinne Vien?

  The evil got, yeah. The villain gets caught, and they're finally like, okay, I'll take my mask off.

• 59:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, the level of delusion.

• 59:42Corinne Vien?

  Totally. Nicole Kessinger, for her part, had already gone to investigators herself. She called them because there was something about Chris's behavior in the few days after Shenan had disappeared that felt deeply wronged her.

• 59:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So before he ever confessed?

• 59:58Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  She went to police?

• 1:00:00Corinne Vien?

  Yes. He had texted her the day that Shenan went missing. He asked to FaceTime her and she told investigators that the call made her really uncomfortable because she saw that there were sheets missing from his bed. He seemed disturbingly fixated on Nicole, like nothing else existed. And literally, he had a missing pregnant wife and his two daughters were missing. And it was like, that never came up in conversation. It didn't matter, like.

• 1:00:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's you and I, baby.

• 1:00:27Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. So she was like, that seemed disturbing. So that's what drew her to go to police. And this is where she kind of becomes a complicated figure in this story. And there's a lot more about her, but I didn't want to focus on.

• 1:00:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Corinne Vien?

  On her in this case. She did cooperate with investigators and her information was described by the Weld County District Attorney, Michael Rourke, as bombshell. So she really did help build the case. She had a lot of evidence and a lot of stuff that indicated that this was like premeditated and that what he did was planned.

• 1:01:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Corinne Vien?

  She seemed genuinely to not know at that time that Shenan was pregnant. But then, this is where it gets a little complicated. They did look into her own phone searches and before the bodies were found, in the days when Shenan and the girls were technically still missing, Nicole Kessinger was Googling Shenan's name, which I feel like that part is normal.

• 1:01:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So normal.

• 1:01:24Corinne Vien?

  But then she searched, can cops trace text messages? Do people hate Amber Frey, which was a mistress of Scott Peterson, who murdered his pregnant wife, Lacey Peterson, in 2004? And then she Googled Frey's net worth and book deal.

• 1:01:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:01:43Corinne Vien?

  She searched for wedding dresses?

• 1:01:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, that part's crazy.

• 1:01:47Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah. And just like some other things that kind of made it a little more gray area where it was like, did she actually know what happened?

• 1:01:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, well, here's my question, and you might not even have the answer, but we would probably have text messages or some type of evidence if he had told her he was going to do this.

• 1:02:04Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 1:02:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Prior, and she clearly was suspicious. I would be looking up that information, too. And did she specifically search Amber Frey's net worth and book deal? Or did it like naturally come, like, was it like?

• 1:02:18Corinne Vien?

  The Wikipedia game where you click the next hyperlink or whatever? That's a good question. I don't have the answer to it.

• 1:02:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Not to excuse her involvement with Chris, but like.

• 1:02:28Corinne Vien?

  I mean, also, like, he could have told her on that phone call.

• 1:02:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Sure, true.

• 1:02:32Corinne Vien?

  Right? And then she has a few days to, like, think about things and kind of.

• 1:02:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Corinne Vien?

  Question where she wants to be in this story. I don't know. All I know is that she wasn't charged of any crime. She cooperated with the investigation. And after the Netflix documentary dropped, she basically realized how much scrutiny was brought on to her in this case. And so she petitioned the Colorado court for a legal name change. She then moved out of state, and as of 2026, she has successfully disappeared from public view and is living under a new identity.

• 1:03:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which I think is the best because.

• 1:03:05Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Regardless of her involvement.

• 1:03:07Corinne Vien?

  Truly know what her involvement was, so there's too much speculation. She could be totally innocent.

• 1:03:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And also, that's what I'm saying, like, she, she's not the monster who committed the heinous murders.

• 1:03:17Corinne Vien?

  There's so much more information on her role here, but I was like, again, like, this isn't about her.

• 1:03:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Let's talk about the monster.

• 1:03:23Corinne Vien?

  Yes.

• 1:03:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Corinne Vien?

  The case against Chris was pretty airtight. The neighbors had footage showing him backing a truck out of the garage in the early morning hours, with the dark shape of a body being brought into the car. They traced his cell phone and GPS to the work site where the bodies were found. His call log, his texts, calling the preschool to have his kids removed.

• 1:03:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then later saying that Shanann took the kids and left. Like, it's just, there's so many things that don't add up. Yeah.

• 1:03:51Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. He literally was trying to start a new life while his daughter's bodies were still warm. It's so deeply disgusting.

• 1:03:59Corinne Vien?

  On November 6, 2018, Christopher Watts pleaded guilty to all nine charges. Five counts of first degree murder, one count for unlawful termination of a pregnancy, three counts for tampering with a deceased human body, and in exchange, the Weld County DA, at a specific request of Shanann's family, who did not want another life taken, took the death penalty off the table for Chris.

• 1:04:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Shanann's family.

• 1:04:26Corinne Vien?

  Which like in a way.

• 1:04:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Such good people.

• 1:04:28Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, they're being good people, but I'm like, like, what's worse?

• 1:04:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Force this person to live in prison and have to face what he's dealt, like what he's done.

• 1:04:36Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I do feel like that is more of a fair punishment. Like, you have to live with the consequences of your actions.

• 1:04:44Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. On November 19, 2018, Judge Marcello Copcaw sentenced Christopher Watts to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 48 years for the unlawful termination of Shanann's pregnancy with their son Nico, and 36 years for tampering with the bodies. So Chris Watts will never leave prison.

• 1:05:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep.

• 1:05:11Corinne Vien?

  Okay, so now we'll talk about the body cam footage, because this is the only reason why this is on Two Girls One Go Speed, is because there's paranormal evidence involved.

• 1:05:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Corinne Vien?

  When police arrive on August 13 and enter the home with Chris and Shanann's friend Nicole, the officers were wearing body cams, which is standard procedure, right? The footage is rolling the entire time that they move through the house, through the living room, upstairs, down the halls, into the girls' room, into the master bedroom, where Shanann's phone was still sitting on the nightstand. And a lot of this footage later became part of the Netflix documentary, American Murder: The Family Next Door, which was released in 2020. Millions of people watched it. And that is when people started saying, hey, we're noticing something in the body cam footage. In an early scene, while the officer was speaking with Chris on the second floor of the house, in the hallway, in the girls' corridor, something appears in a room behind them, just for a second.

• 1:06:06Corinne Vien?

  A small figure, low to the ground. People paused it, screenshotted it, posted it and was like, oh my God, this is a little girl. It has to be Bella or Cece. Now, I will debunk this very first one, but everything I tell you after is not debunked.

• 1:06:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay.

• 1:06:20Corinne Vien?

  Nicole Atkinson did bring her young daughter into the house that day.

• 1:06:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh.

• 1:06:24Corinne Vien?

  So at the time, she very much could match the height of these other small children, Bella and Cece. And so that specific scene where people are thinking that they're seeing a little girl playing and like walking through the door frame, that is Nicole's daughter.

• 1:06:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because they are seeing a little girl playing.

• 1:06:40Corinne Vien?

  They are seeing a little girl.

• 1:06:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's not a ghost.

• 1:06:42Corinne Vien?

  But there's another video, a shadowy apparition about the height of a child descending the stairs.

• 1:06:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:06:49Corinne Vien?

  That is definitely not a living child. So we're gonna watch that.

• 1:06:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:02Corinne Vien?

  They slowed down again. Do you see that?

• 1:07:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, it's not even like shadowy. It like fully looks.

• 1:07:07Corinne Vien?

  It looks like a, like a person. It like only becomes kind of shadowy, like it almost like disintegrates as it goes.

• 1:07:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:15Corinne Vien?

  Right? Then later in the body cam footage, there's a dog that's brought from the canine unit. And the canine, the dog and the handler are going into Shenan's closet. And another officer is, the body cam footage is like picking this up because there's another officer, female officer, that's like right behind, kind of like in the bedroom, watching them go in. And you hear a giggle and the officers both stop and they're like, did you hear that? What was that? So it wasn't just later caught on.

• 1:07:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, like they react to it in the moment.

• 1:07:49Corinne Vien?

  They react in the moment.

• 1:07:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm getting so many chills.

• 1:07:53Corinne Vien?

  Me too. And they even say like, okay, well, there's this thing on the floor, like maybe it's that. And they're like stepping on it to try to, they're trying to recreate the noise because they're like, what the fuck was that? Okay, we're gonna listen to that.

• 1:08:10Corinne Vien?

  There's a canine perched under here. Yes.

• 1:08:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  My eye twitched again.

• 1:08:25Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. So what's creepy about this too is at first people were like, oh, it's like a little girl's laugh. But in the evidence that came out with Nicole Kessinger and her relationship with Chris Watts, there are voicemails left and messages and whatnot. And you actually, there's a recording of Nicole Kessinger's laugh and it sounds exactly like this. So that kind of fueled some more theories that like she was working with Doc Magic and like all this other stuff. Because they were like, why is her laugh just like existing in here unless it was?

• 1:08:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Could also just be people trying to connect things that.

• 1:09:02Corinne Vien?

  Right. But it literally is hee hee hee that you hear on the video. And they recognize it live.

• 1:09:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That is wild.

• 1:09:09Corinne Vien?

  Some people who've watched the original uncut body cam footage, not the documentary cut, but the raw footage, have seen a lot of other stuff. There's lights turning on and off behind officers when no one else is in the room behind them. There's shadows, there's numerous EVPs. And there have even been people of the public who have gone to the house with their cell phones, with thermal cameras, with just different evidence.

• 1:09:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which does make me sad.

• 1:09:34Corinne Vien?

  Right. Cause now it's like this spectacle, basically. Um, but they have captured things. They've captured what looks to be a shadowy figure, like walking at the top of the stairs. They've captured in thermal body cameras, what looks to be a person moving through the house. And so there are a lot of pieces of, tons of pieces of evidence. We're barely going to even like scratch the surface of how much, paranormally, is here. But I did grab a clip from TikTok. I did edit it a little bit so that it's shorter, but this was from the user, This Can't Be Real with Kayla, who had a compilation of some of the EVPs. Just a few of the EVPs. It's like every compilation that you can look up on TikTok, it's like different EVPs presented. There's a lot of like moaning that was caught on camera.

• 1:10:16Corinne Vien?

  There's EVP saying like, get out alive and like just different, different things. You can look them up and, and see a lot of them, but we're just going to watch a compilation of just a few.

• 1:10:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:10:47Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, there's a lot.

• 1:10:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Whoa, that breaks my heart and it is really sad. I mean, I have so many thoughts. I mean, one, if we believe these are all EVPs from Shanann or the children, it does sound like they're active and they're trying to share messages with the police to help solve the crime. And it gives me hope that they're all together in spirit form and it's less confusion.

• 1:11:16Corinne Vien?

  That's what people said.

• 1:11:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like.

• 1:11:18Corinne Vien?

  Like it's clear like they went back home.

• 1:11:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or together.

• 1:11:21Corinne Vien?

  Together. And that they're in their home and that they're providing clues to investigators, but like they are together in their family home. Where there was a lot of love until this sudden, because it was very sudden. There wasn't much of a buildup to.

• 1:11:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Corinne Vien?

  Their father slash husband just absolutely losing it and doing this. Yeah, so it is said that they are together. One more thing, later Chris Watts was transferred to Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin to serve his life sentence. And he has a bunch of pen pals and I think like relationships or whatever. But he did reportedly tell a pen pal that the ghosts of his daughters keep coming to visit him in prison. And it's almost like tormenting him, where it's like he has to keep seeing them and be reminded of what he did.

• 1:12:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, it also breaks my heart because I'm thinking of these like little children who don't realize like they think of him as their dad.

• 1:12:12Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, because he was a really good dad before. After the case broke and the documentary aired, reports of strange activity at 2825 Saratoga Trail did not stop. Neighbors reported seeing lights turn on in the house at night that had been vacated. One neighbor called police in August of 2018 after Chris was already in custody to report that the garage lights were being turned on and that there appeared to be a dark haired female intruder moving about the property.

• 1:12:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Shanann had dark hair.

• 1:12:38Corinne Vien?

  Shanann had very dark hair. Investigators checked it out and there was no evidence of anyone on the property or any signs of forced entry.

• 1:12:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because unfortunately, when there are big cases like this that do become mainstream, I'm sure there are some questionably, I don't know what's going on in their minds, but people who are like, ooh, I'm gonna go break into that house.

• 1:12:57Corinne Vien?

  Totally, yes.

• 1:12:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, there are a lot of houses that even, remember when I covered American Horror Story? And like the American Horror Story House, which was the set, was like being bombarded with people coming just to see it. And it's like, this is just, it's like the Breaking Bad house. There's so many things that aren't even in crime that people just can't stop going to go see.

• 1:13:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, there's like a-

• 1:13:18Corinne Vien?

  And then when there is a horrible crime, for a long time, there's a lot of-

• 1:13:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, there's like a gross community of people who like sell serial killer memorabilia, like stealing, was it Ed Kemper's grave? Like, people were stealing pieces of his gravestone. Like, it's just-

• 1:13:35Corinne Vien?

  It is icky.

• 1:13:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ugh, get a better hobby.

• 1:13:38Corinne Vien?

  Like, I do feel like if I was like in a thrift store or something and saw something like that, and knew what it was, then I might purchase it to make sure no one else does. But I don't think I'd go on like eBay and actively grab things.

• 1:13:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Collect that?

• 1:13:51Corinne Vien?

  Then you're just like, you're actually like paying the people.

• 1:13:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:13:54Corinne Vien?

  You're encouraging it in a way.

• 1:13:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Corinne Vien?

  When we went to Zach Bagans Museum in Vegas, there was a lot of it.

• 1:13:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So disturbing.

• 1:14:00Corinne Vien?

  And we were very disturbed by it.

• 1:14:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Very disturbing.

• 1:14:02Corinne Vien?

  This is the hard thing about paranormal. It's like, it borders so much on true crime, but we usually get away with like scurrying past the really horrific things because we're either like a century apart from this horrific crime, or there's enough paranormal that we like don't have to overly focus on-

• 1:14:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right.

• 1:14:20Corinne Vien?

  On the terrors before. But there is such a like mashup sometimes. And it's, it's hard because it's like I find one piece very interesting and then the rest is very disturbing.

• 1:14:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right, because like how come we can talk about, like, I think about Tower of London and like Ambulans and like all of the King Henry, I think it's the eighths, like wives who were brutally murdered.

• 1:14:38Corinne Vien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But because it took place so long ago, it doesn't feel as raw emotionally.

• 1:14:44Corinne Vien?

  It's like you can distance yourself from it. You're like, oh, well, those were people of another time. They don't even think like me. I'm not connected to that.

• 1:14:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Meanwhile.

• 1:14:52Corinne Vien?

  But it's all the same all the time, like humans have always been horrible.

• 1:14:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Corinne Vien?

  There's actually a stand up comedian that made a joke about that, about how like humans have always been terrible. And that, was it like the fourth person that ever existed in the Bible then like killed his brother or something like Abel?

• 1:15:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Cain and Abel?

• 1:15:07Corinne Vien?

  Yeah Cain and Abel. He was like, so from the start of humanity, 25% of humans have been murderers.

• 1:15:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One of my favorite books is East of Eden from, it's written by John Steinbeck. It's an older book. It's tangentially related to like biblical stories, but it is kind of a human experience story about how kind of monstrous we are.

• 1:15:28Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, I hate this forest and I think we should channel Bonobo energy.

• 1:15:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Let's go to Iceland and sleep beneath the Northern Lights and ask the aliens to come take us away.

• 1:15:40Corinne Vien?

  Iceland has very low crime rate.

• 1:15:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  See, do you understand now why I so badly want to be abducted by aliens?

• 1:15:47Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, but I just don't know what the aliens are bringing. I'm sure not.

• 1:15:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It can't be worse than what we do.

• 1:15:52Corinne Vien?

  We have. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:15:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There are enough stories that sound better than humans.

• 1:15:57Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That I'm willing to take the risk.

• 1:16:01Corinne Vien?

  Alright, so the house itself went into foreclosure. The lender tried to auction it off in 2018, but there were no takers. You can like look at when they were trying to list it and they constantly are changing the price. Attempting to like get anyone to buy it.

• 1:16:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There should be some type of law, I don't know, I mean, or something that goes into motion where those houses can't be sold again. People can't live in them, but like a community center or something is built in place of it. That is more of like a place of peace. Like I'm thinking about a playground.

• 1:16:32Corinne Vien?

  Just think about like how many places, like it's so.

• 1:16:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know, I know.

• 1:16:36Corinne Vien?

  Unfortunately, there's like, luckily, there's not a femalicide situation as, as often.

• 1:16:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Corinne Vien?

  But like

• 1:16:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 1:16:45Corinne Vien?

  Even apartments that people are renting, like there's just horrible things happening to people everywhere. It's really

• 1:16:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Corinne Vien?

  terrible, but I love that idea and the energy that you're bringing towards this, but that's unfortunately not what happened.

• 1:16:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Corinne Vien?

  The house that cost them nearly $400,000 in a neighborhood where houses were selling and like hot on the market. Nobody would come near it because of what happened.

• 1:17:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Fair.

• 1:17:07Corinne Vien?

  It did finally sell four years later in 2022. And then again in 2024. Shanann's family asked that people honor the girls and their mother, not with grief, but with action. By supporting domestic violence prevention. By looking out for people in your life who might be in a dangerous situation. By believing women when they say something feels wrong. And because Shanann said something was wrong, she texted her friends that she didn't feel safe. That she didn't know who Chris was anymore. That the only thing she could think of was that there had to be another girl. She knew on some level and her friends came to support her.

• 1:17:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Corinne Vien?

  She couldn't have known how far this would go.

• 1:17:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, this is like the most horrible thing and we've recorded an encounters that comes out in June, so after this episode. But we were talking about this in that episode where it's so upsetting in specifically domestic violence cases. Where there are so many reports, there are so many things that lead up to what ultimately sometimes does end in like death.

• 1:18:10Corinne Vien?

  We were talking specifically about stalking.

• 1:18:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, and it's just like, there's just not a system set up to intervene or like help

• 1:18:18Corinne Vien?

  There's not enough protection.

• 1:18:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  efficiently.

• 1:18:20Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because it's like the mentality of like, well, until something happens, we can't do something, but when that thing happened, it's already too late.

• 1:18:29Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It's like the aura of a crime, just like circling around someone isn't enough. But in those cases, when it is enough, it's too much, it's gone, it's done.

• 1:18:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't, and I don't know the specific statistic, so don't quote me on this, but I think the statistic is. Most violent crimes related to domestic violence actually happens when someone tries to leave or after a, um, what's it called?

• 1:18:55Corinne Vien?

  Like separation.

• 1:18:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or a, what's the warrant, the legal thing? Why am I blanking? Where you can't be around that person.

• 1:19:02Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my God, why can't I remember either? Oh, restraining order. Restraining order. Before you even Google that finally came back to me.

• 1:19:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There we go.

• 1:19:08Corinne Vien?

  Just have to start typing in the process of like describing what you're doing. Restraining order. Okay, to end this episode, we can remember that Shanann and her children Bella, Cece, and Nico are together at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Pinehurst, North Carolina, close to home, close to family, in a town that loved them together forever. And also, if someone in your life is showing warning signs of domestic danger, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Also in the show notes, it's free, confidential, and available 24/7. You can also chat at thehotline.org.

• 1:19:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Um, okay.

• 1:19:51Corinne Vien?

  Aren't you glad I didn't make this a two-parter?

• 1:19:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:19:53Corinne Vien?

  Originally, I was gonna do two parts because there's so much to the crime piece. And I was like, I can't, I'm a blubbering mess.

• 1:20:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Instead, you got-

• 1:20:00Corinne Vien?

  We can skip over a lot of this.

• 1:20:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Instead, you got a two-parter about a haunted doll. Which was gonna be a one-part episode, and then I was like, actually, I can make this two.

• 1:20:09Corinne Vien?

  Okay, that's perfect.

• 1:20:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay. And this is from our listener, Amy, and like I said, it is heartwarming. We'll end on something heartwarming. "Hi, I would love to share a story that still gives me chills. It is about how my daughter's great-grandfather saved her life when she was a baby, and then a couple of years later, taught her how to tie her shoes."

• 1:20:29Corinne Vien?

  Oh, thank you for choosing this. This is so much better.

• 1:20:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I was like, I don't know what to pick for this. And then I was like, I have to do like something where a spirit like saves a child.

• 1:20:38Corinne Vien?

  It's good, yeah.

• 1:20:40Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, so my husband and I live in a farmhouse that was built in the 1700s in Maine. The house has a lot of original features, wood pine floorboards nearly two feet across, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, hand carved etchings and wood paneled walls, and staircases that are narrow, steep, and frankly unforgiving. But one staircase in particular curves sharply from our first floor hallway, right by our laundry room, up to the entrance of our daughter's bedroom on the second floor. It's dangerous enough that when we first moved in, my grandmother actually broke a bone in her back falling down that staircase.

• 1:21:13Corinne Vien?

  Oh damn.

• 1:21:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So yeah, dangerous. Anyway, one morning when our daughter was about a year old, I left her upstairs with my husband and went downstairs to switch to the laundry. I had been gone for maybe 60 seconds. When I went back to the staircase, my heart stopped. There was my daughter, completely alone, sitting perfectly still on the very top step, and her legs were dangling over the edge. She was calmly sucking on her pacifier and not moving at all. Any parent knows that moment of pure terror when a crawling baby gets anywhere near stairs. And this isn't just any staircase, it is the one with the history I had just told you. If she leaned forward less than an inch, she would have fallen an entire flight of wooden steps straight into a wooden wall, and I was panicking in that moment.

• 1:21:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I screamed for my husband, obviously angry, panicked, shaking. But it was an honest mistake. He thought I had her with me and I thought he had her. And this had never happened before and has never happened since. Somehow, though, she did not fall. Hold on to that, we'll come back to it. So fast forward two years. My daughter is now three years old at this point, and she woke up one morning and casually starts tying her shoes. Like perfectly.

• 1:22:21Corinne Vien?

  Oh my god.

• 1:22:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No instruction, no practice. I had never, ever taught her how to do this, shown her how to do it. There's never been help from us.

• 1:22:29Corinne Vien?

  You don't have to go through that frustrating process.

• 1:22:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. This is a three-year-old who never knew how to tie her shoes, all of a sudden knowing how to tie shoes perfectly out of the blue. So I asked, "Where did you learn how to do that?" Without hesitation, in a little sing-song toddler voice, she said, "From Grandpa Heron." I asked who Grandpa Heron was. She said, "You know, Grandpa Heron with the dark wrinkly skin." He showed me. Now here's the thing. My husband's middle name is Harrison, named after his grandfather Harrison.

• 1:23:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Who passed away in his seventies, long before my husband and I even met.

• 1:23:07Corinne Vien?

  Oh my God.

• 1:23:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We don't mention him, not because of any reason, but just because he passed away so long ago. We don't have photos of him in the house. My daughter had never heard stories about him or seen pictures. But from everything my husband told me, that was the exact description of Harrison. He lived in Florida.

• 1:23:28Corinne Vien?

  How cool.

• 1:23:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Loved being outside and because of this had very tanned, weathered, wrinkled skin. I was caught off guard by her answer, so I asked one more question. Have you seen him before? She didn't pause. She didn't think about it. She just said, "Yeah, mama, he kept me from falling down the stairs when I was a baby."

• 1:23:46Corinne Vien?

  I love this because they have not called out to him. They don't talk about him. They don't, they're not even really thinking about him.

• 1:23:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No, it's her guardian angel.

• 1:23:54Corinne Vien?

  This is my great grandchild and I will protect her.

• 1:23:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And teach her how to tie her shoes.

• 1:23:58Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. I honestly feel like this brings the most grandparent energy I've ever heard because like just thinking about my parents when they come to see Noah, they very frequently forget to say hi to me and Brian. And I'll take them like a good eight minutes and they go, "Oh, hi, Brian." And we'll go like give him a hug. We're like, "Oh, great."

• 1:24:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's just about Noah.

• 1:24:14Corinne Vien?

  I get like a pat on the shoulder, like barely any recognition. And that is exactly what this great grandpa is bringing. He's like, "I don't, I'm not here for them. I'm here for the baby."

• 1:24:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Corinne Vien?

  I'm here for the wee child.

• 1:24:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But this is like two years after the stairs accident.

• 1:24:28Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That Amy is figuring it all out. In that moment, everything snapped into place and my best guess is that she was trying to say Harrison, but she's three and said Heron. And somehow, some way, this man she had never met not only stopped her from falling down those stairs as a baby, but later came back to teach her how to tie her shoes. So yeah, she's a very helpful guardian angel. We've had other unexplained experiences, like the time my husband once saw a full body apparition in our old 1800 Portland apartment. But this one is truly so special. So I'll see you on the other side, but hopefully not just yet. Amy.

• 1:25:04Corinne Vien?

  Wow. I love that. That's so special.

• 1:25:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And Amy did say after that experience with the stairs, they ripped them out and raided those stairs.

• 1:25:12Corinne Vien?

  Oh, that's good. Yeah, because it's not a normal flight of stairs. That's like, you pick up speed going down those ones. Your daughter's gonna have the coolest two truths and a lie.

• 1:25:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Corinne Vien?

  The ghost of my great grandpa taught me to tie my shoes.

• 1:25:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:26Corinne Vien?

  This is making me realize I need to come up with some more creative. I'm gonna start using people's other real experiences as my lie. Because like, that's so cool.

• 1:25:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That is very cool and amazing. And also just like, she might not have ever known that stair experience.

• 1:25:41Corinne Vien?

  Totally.

• 1:25:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And for her, like, she was three, and that happened two years earlier.

• 1:25:46Corinne Vien?

  I know. Yeah, she, I mean, there was no way for her to know.

• 1:25:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Grandpa Harry.

• 1:25:49Corinne Vien?

  Until her daughter started talking.

• 1:25:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The one with the dark wrinkly skin, because he tanned a lot in Florida.

• 1:25:54Corinne Vien?

  The Floridian.

• 1:25:58Corinne Vien?

  That's so good.

• 1:25:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Wow.

• 1:26:00Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my god. Thank you for picking that up.

• 1:26:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Please email us any paranormal experiences you have. Email us at twogirlsmegos podcast at gmail dot com. And you could join us on Patreon for episodes that are ad early, whoa, ad early, one week early and ad free.

• 1:26:19Corinne Vien?

  Sounded right to me.

• 1:26:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we also have a bunch of other bonus content on Patreon, bonus episodes, witch classes, book club, all the good stuff over there.

• 1:26:27Corinne Vien?

  Thank you to Jamie Ryan, who edits and produces our podcast.

• 1:26:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And sorry for making you cry. This is a really tough case.

• 1:26:34Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But.

• 1:26:35Corinne Vien?

  We very rarely, almost never do stuff like this, so.

• 1:26:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You know what it actually reminds me of?

• 1:26:40Corinne Vien?

  Next week.

• 1:26:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Actually, next week is vampires.

• 1:26:44Corinne Vien?

  Lovely.

• 1:26:44Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We do know what we're doing. It's vampires. And I collab with Crimes of, true crime, but vampire, so.

• 1:26:53Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Not tragic. I meant to say earlier, this reminds me of the case that recently has been in the news about the man in Hawaii who tried to kill his wife on a hike.

• 1:27:03Corinne Vien?

  Oh my God. Yes.

• 1:27:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And thank goodness she was able to get away and these like bystanders were able to help her.

• 1:27:12Corinne Vien?

  He like smashed her face with a rock or something.

• 1:27:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And he had like a syringe.

• 1:27:16Corinne Vien?

  Over the edge.

• 1:27:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:17Corinne Vien?

  Wasn't he a doctor?

• 1:27:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Uh, he's a monster. I know that for a fact.

• 1:27:21Corinne Vien?

  Thank God. Like seeing the pictures of her, it wasn't even pictures. I was watching like videos of her just like bleeding and like panicked and like breathing and all these other.

• 1:27:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:31Corinne Vien?

  Hikers just going and trying to like help her and wrap her up and thank God.

• 1:27:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't trust men.

• 1:27:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I don't trust men.

• 1:27:39Corinne Vien?

  There's, did you see the thing? There's like some sort of like quote, uh, who knows where it came from, but it was like when people say, oh, like without men in the world, who would protect you? And then.

• 1:27:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, from what?

• 1:27:52Corinne Vien?

  Protect me from what?

• 1:27:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The thing we need protection from is men. Like, like if you're saying, oh, you're sad man head here, look at statistics.

• 1:28:00Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I, it speaks for the, for itself.

• 1:28:03Corinne Vien?

  There are plenty of lovely men in our lives, but we're talking about the general.

• 1:28:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The number, the statistics.

• 1:28:09Corinne Vien?

  Our greatest threat as women are men.

• 1:28:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes.

• 1:28:13Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. So you can't get mad at someone who lives in bear country for constantly talking about the threat of a bear attack.

• 1:28:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We live in men country.

• 1:28:20Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Anywho, um, we love you all.

• 1:28:24Corinne Vien?

  And we will.

• 1:28:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  See you on the other side.