American Murder: The Family Next Door

[Cristofle]

1 hour ago, Persnickety1 said:

After watching so many ID Discovery programs where someone says, "It was totally out of character for her not to show up somewhere," yet never made a move to send out an alarm, I hope all of us have a friend like Nickole in our lives and I hope we're all someone's Nickole and would take action quickly if that person turned up "missing."  

Yep. Her friend is the key reason he was not able to do a better job hiding any evidence - not able to hide her phone, her purse, her shoes, the medication for the younger daughter, etc. And because she called the police so quickly, they were also able to get access to the neighbor's footage quite quickly where it became increasingly obvious the only way they left was in his truck, and at least Shanann did not leave on her own two feet. Look out for your friends like this woman did, folks. And I can't imagine CW has ever had a friendship as close as these two women obviously had, or like she seemed to have with other friends she confided in, so I bet it never occurred to him there was so much documentation of his behavior in the weeks leading up to the murders. 

This case is also definitely an example to use to argue why cops should always have their body cams on, because CW's bizarre behavior was caught on film. 

[Bastet]

2 hours ago, Persnickety1 said:

I also think her quick-acting friend really threw a monkey wrench into his plans.

I'm sure he thought he could go back home, put fresh bedding on the beds, do the laundry, and all the other post murder cleanup.  

I can only imagine his reaction when he had to rush home straight from dumping the bodies, the police were already there body cams rolling, the friend telling the cops everything she knew, and the neighbor with the security camera and his insight into how Chris had never before backed his car into the garage to load it for work and that he was acting really strange. 

Absolutely.  He didn't account for the fact Shanann spent the majority of her waking hours on that phone - whether texting someone or posting her life to the world.  He called it her "lifeline" when it - and her purse - were in the house (because he'd been too stupid to take them with her like she would have had she left the house on her own), but he hadn't realized that meant her radio silence would alarm someone in such a short time.

My parents annoy the ever-loving shit out of me by checking in if they haven't heard from me in several days (I once called my parents back with a "What?!" to learn from my dad that my mom was on her way over to my house), but I grant that, unless I failed to respond to a time-sensitive work email/call, I'd otherwise be long dead and half eaten by my cat (or properly disposed of by my killer) by the time anyone else got worried enough to check, as it's not at all unusual for me to go a good bit of time without initiating or even answering conversation.  But Shanann going even an hour was strange. 

I wonder if he forgot she had that appointment?  Because not showing up for that was what really confirmed to her friend that something was very wrong and probably what got the police interested rather than just saying, "Um, maybe she just isn't answering calls/texts right now."

[Persnickety1]

1 hour ago, Bastet said:

Absolutely.  He didn't account for the fact Shanann spent the majority of her waking hours on that phone - whether texting someone or posting her life to the world.  He called it her "lifeline" when it - and her purse - were in the house (because he'd been too stupid to take them with her like she would have had she left the house on her own), but he hadn't realized that meant her radio silence would alarm someone in such a short time.

My parents annoy the ever-loving shit out of me by checking in if they haven't heard from me in several days (I once called my parents back with a "What?!" to learn from my dad that my mom was on her way over to my house), but I grant that, unless I failed to respond to a time-sensitive work email/call, I'd otherwise be long dead and half eaten by my cat (or properly disposed of by my killer) by the time anyone else got worried enough to check, as it's not at all unusual for me to go a good bit of time without initiating or even answering conversation.  But Shanann going even an hour was strange. 

I wonder if he forgot she had that appointment?  Because not showing up for that was what really confirmed to her friend that something was very wrong and probably what got the police interested rather than just saying, "Um, maybe she just isn't answering calls/texts right now."

I think he forgot about it, too, which is why he tried to tell her friend she had taken the girls on a "play date," which sent up the red flag immediately, especially when the car was still in the garage.  I remember hearing her on the body cam saying something about "I don't know what's taking him so long to get here" and I had a shiver down my spine since now everyone knows why it was taking him so long.    

I also wanted to scream when he pretended she was mad and had left her wedding ring by the bed, and that it wasn't out of the question she was seeing someone else.  What a piece of shit.  Ugh.  I assumed her hands and feet were probably swollen after her flight and she had taken off the ring and put it in a dish by the bedside.   But there's that piece of shit, insinuating she may very well have been cheating on his rancid ass.  

LOL, my parents used to drop by unannounced to check on me in the next town over.  Well, until the morning they dropped by and found I had had overnight company and were all sorts of weirded out by that (even though at the time I was 25 years old and had been living completely independently of them for years).  After I had Mini Pernickety, I made it a point to never live closer than a 1-hour drive just to make those "drop by" visits a real pain in their ass.  😄 

[Minivanessa]

I've watched the first few minutes of this show so far, up to some of the footage where the friend called the cops, and Shannan's parents, and CW came home and let everyone into the house. Yes - amen to the assertive concerned friend and the cop with his bodycam running. I paused it not long after Chris picked up her phone and said it was off, and turned it on, and I think then went into another room and came back with her wedding ring. 

It is SO amazing that he didn't have time to come back to the house and clean up the scene, as has been said here. I'd like to think he was about to sh*t himself in fear during that whole time the friends and the cop were in the house. 

So another big cheer for friend Nikole, and CW's stupidity in leaving Shannan's phone in the house. I wonder if his original idea was to somehow get her car out of the house and leave it far away (with help from his devoted stalkerish girlfriend?) along with her phone, to create a false trail. Which he never had time to do.

I'm still not sure if I can watch this whole documentary. This started as a local story (I live in the metro Denver area), I thought CW was a lying murderer the first time I saw him on TV standing in his driveway talking about his missing wife and kids., What he did was so horrific and repulsive, especially to those children, that I've had little desire to watch shows or read articles about the case. Although I'm a true crime book reader and longtime watcher of true crime TV shows, a Joe Kenda fangirl, and all that. But this case? Those kids, those poor little innocent children - it may be more than I can do to watch the rest of this documentary. 

Edited October 18, 2020 by Jeeves
corrected end of first para

[Persnickety1]

2 hours ago, Cristofle said:

Yep. Her friend is the key reason he was not able to do a better job hiding any evidence - not able to hide her phone, her purse, her shoes, the medication for the younger daughter, etc. And because she called the police so quickly, they were also able to get access to the neighbor's footage quite quickly where it became increasingly obvious the only way they left was in his truck, and at least Shanann did not leave on her own two feet. Look out for your friends like this woman did, folks. And I can't imagine CW has ever had a friendship as close as these two women obviously had, or like she seemed to have with other friends she confided in, so I bet it never occurred to him there was so much documentation of his behavior in the weeks leading up to the murders. 

This case is also definitely an example to use to argue why cops should always have their body cams on, because CW's bizarre behavior was caught on film. 

Oh, also in that nearly 2000-page discovery document, they found where he had thrown sheet(s) away in the trash that appeared to have dirt on them and a couple of other things that jumped out at me.  I'm not sure what to make of the discarded sheet(s), whether he had them in his truck when he got home and took them back into the house to throw them away or what type of dirt was on the sheets (I haven't gotten far enough in the document to see if the dirt matched the gravesite).  As soon as work slows down, I need to get back to reading that.  It's really fascinating.  

4 minutes ago, Jeeves said:

I've watched the first few minutes of this show so far, up to some of the footage where the friend called the cops, and Shannan's parents, and CW came home and let everyone into the house. Yes - amen to the assertive concerned friend and the cop with his bodycam running. I paused it not long after Chris picked up her phone and said it was off, and turned it on, and I think then went into another room and came back with her purse. 

It is SO amazing that he didn't have time to come back to the house and clean up the scene, as has been said here. I'd like to think he was about to sh*t himself in fear during that whole time the friends and the cop were in the house. 

So another big cheer for friend Nikole, and CW's stupidity in leaving Shannan's phone in the house. I wonder if his original idea was to somehow get her car out of the house and leave it far away (with help from his devoted stalkerish girlfriend?) along with her phone, to create a false trail. Which he never had time to do.

I'm still not sure if I can watch this whole documentary. This started as a local story (I live in the metro Denver area), I thought CW was a lying murderer the first time I saw him on TV standing in his driveway talking about his missing wife and kids., What he did was so horrific and repulsive, especially to those children, that I've had little desire to watch shows or read articles about the case. Although I'm a true crime book reader and longtime watcher of true crime TV shows, a Joe Kenda fangirl, and all that. But this case? Those kids, those poor little innocent children - it may be more than I can do to watch the rest of this documentary. 

Absolutely soulless piece of shit that he is, I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was planning on sending those "LEAVE ME ALONE, I'M FINE, I NEED TIME TO MYSELF" texts to her family and friends like a lot of other murderers have done.  

Also, so much for his fuck-and-awe tale of how the girls went quietly.  On autopsy, one of them apparently had a busted swollen lip and had bitten the inside of her cheeks.  I can't remember if it was Bella or Cece.  It made my physically ill to read that part of the discovery document.  

[Adiba]

30 minutes ago, Jeeves said:

I've watched the first few minutes of this show so far, up to some of the footage where the friend called the cops, and Shannan's parents, and CW came home and let everyone into the house. Yes - amen to the assertive concerned friend and the cop with his bodycam running. I paused it not long after Chris picked up her phone and said it was off, and turned it on, and I think then went into another room and came back with her wedding ring. 

It is SO amazing that he didn't have time to come back to the house and clean up the scene, as has been said here. I'd like to think he was about to sh*t himself in fear during that whole time the friends and the cop were in the house. 

So another big cheer for friend Nikole, and CW's stupidity in leaving Shannan's phone in the house. I wonder if his original idea was to somehow get her car out of the house and leave it far away (with help from his devoted stalkerish girlfriend?) along with her phone, to create a false trail. Which he never had time to do.

I'm still not sure if I can watch this whole documentary. This started as a local story (I live in the metro Denver area), I thought CW was a lying murderer the first time I saw him on TV standing in his driveway talking about his missing wife and kids., What he did was so horrific and repulsive, especially to those children, that I've had little desire to watch shows or read articles about the case. Although I'm a true crime book reader and longtime watcher of true crime TV shows, a Joe Kenda fangirl, and all that. But this case? Those kids, those poor little innocent children - it may be more than I can do to watch the rest of this documentary. 

I had to fast-forward through many parts and the videos with the kids. I just couldn’t take it. 

[Cristofle]

41 minutes ago, Persnickety1 said:

Also, so much for his fuck-and-awe tale of how the girls went quietly.  On autopsy, one of them apparently had a busted swollen lip and had bitten the inside of her cheeks.  I can't remember if it was Bella or Cece.  It made my physically ill to read that part of the discovery document.  

Bella 😞 Truly, what happened to her is maybe one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. Later, he admitted she put up a real struggle, and I think even indicated she tried to get out of the car. Thinking of that child and her sweet eyes just breaks my heart. I don't believe in the death penalty, but man, this guy is testing me. 

Quote

 I'm not sure what to make of the discarded sheet(s), whether he had them in his truck when he got home and took them back into the house to throw them away or what type of dirt was on the sheets

In the book I read, that footage that we see of the field in the documentary is actually drone footage they took before he confessed and they had JUST confirmed that the pattern of the sheet in the field matched the sheet in the trash around the time he admitted he killed her. I believe he wrapped her in one of the sheets and threw away the other. I'm not sure why he threw it away; I clicked on his confession and he had the bald-faced audacity to say he thought she was praying FOR him as she died (he quoted Luke 23:34 - "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do") and it was either turn it off or throw my computer out the window. So if he said, I'm not sure. The amount of evidence that exists in this case is really kind of mind-blowing, though - the body cam footage, the text messages, the drone footage of the field, the footage of the polygraph, the discovery, his later prison confession. I remember when Laci Peterson died and how one of the issues was such a lack of forensic evidence or anything but second-hand accounts of what Laci might have said, reported after she disappeared. 

[Bastet]

1 hour ago, Persnickety1 said:

I also wanted to scream when he pretended she was mad and had left her wedding ring by the bed, and that it wasn't out of the question she was seeing someone else.  What a piece of shit.  Ugh.  I assumed her hands and feet were probably swollen after her flight and she had taken off the ring and put it in a dish by the bedside. 

I figured he took it off her, as part of his plan to make it look like she left him (and took the kids away from him); I think showing the cops "look, she left her wedding ring behind as a message" was always the plan -- it just was supposed to happen after he'd also gotten rid of her purse, phone, and possibly car, too.  I don't know much beyond what was in the documentary, so I don't know if he has addressed this in interviews (and he's not a reliable narrator, anyway), but my guess is he thought it would be him making the missing persons report, that night - saying he got home from work and his family was gone with no note, but his wife left her wedding ring behind, and she's not answering his calls and no one else has seen or heard from her either and now it's late and he's getting worried. 

[CrazyInAlabama]

I really hope the friend who got suspicious about Shanann going missing, and started everything rolling with her parents and the police, realizes what a good thing that was in ruining Chris Watts plan to blame everything on his wife.     I suspect that there was someone who was going to help CW stage everything, by driving Shanann's car away, and I can guess who that was.      I wonder how the mistress got witness protection for this case?   I bet there is no way that she was hidden because of this case, if that's actually where she disappeared to.    

Yes, great point about the neighbor with the security camera.    The neighbor, and Shanann's friend were the true heroes, and also the police for believing them, and acting so quickly.  

I hate to think that he might have gotten away with it if some confederate of his had driven Shanann's car away, and pushed it over a cliff, or into a river, so the police wouldn't have proof that they were murdered by him.    I'm betting I can guess who was supposed to take the car away too, after he murdered his family, and hid the remains.    

Edited October 19, 2020 by CrazyInAlabama

[Persnickety1]

24 minutes ago, CrazyInAlabama said:

I really hope the friend who got suspicious about Shanann going missing, and started everything rolling with her parents and the police, realizes what a good thing that was in ruining Chris Watts plan to blame everything on his wife.     I suspect that there was someone who was going to help CW stage everything, by driving Shanann's car away, and I can guess who that was.      I wonder how the mistress got witness protection for this case?   I bet there is no way that she was hidden because of this case, if that's actually where she disappeared to.    

And the neighbor with the security camera, who stood by quietly and listened while Watts fidgeted, squirmed, and lied his ass off...then waited until was out of earshot to inform them that Watts never backed that truck up into the garage to load it and pointed out that Watts was acting really oddly.  

Kudos to both of them for doing the right thing immediately.  Those are the kinds of people I want in my corner if I should ever go "missing."  

[Growsonwalls]

2 hours ago, Cristofle said:

Bella 😞 Truly, what happened to her is maybe one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. Later, he admitted she put up a real struggle, and I think even indicated she tried to get out of the car. Thinking of that child and her sweet eyes just breaks my heart. I don't believe in the death penalty, but man, this guy is testing me. 

Here's the complete interview.

He said Bella said whether she would meet the same fate as Cece. So this poor little girl knew her father was going to kill her. What a horrible piece of shit. 

[Cristofle]

I still just cannot get over the fact that he seems to genuinely believe Shanann's last thoughts were concern for his well-being as he was strangling her to death. I feel like this example should be used in a class about narcissism. His utter lack of consideration that other people are human beings outside of him very much convinces me that whether Shanann was annoying or overbearing or too involved with an MLM has absolutely no bearing on this case. The man is profoundly depraved, broken in ways Shanann had nothing to do with.

51 minutes ago, Persnickety1 said:

then waited until was out of earshot to inform them that Watts never backed that truck up into the garage to load it and pointed out that Watts was acting really oddly.  

I loved the neighbor. He knew what was up. He didn't even wait for Chris to totally get out of his house before he made it clear to the cop that his behavior was bizarre and he was lying about his routine. CW was so convinced that no one would ever suspect him because he was such a "great guy" and that neighbor just said NOPE. We should all be so lucky to have a friend like Shanann's best friend and a neighbor like that. 

[Madding crowd]

I just watched this and feel heartbroken. You just never know what people are capable of doing. I have a question: when the police were first talking to Chris in his house there was a TV in the background showing his door cam and it showed his truck. Suddenly it showed a fetus in a heart, then a mushroom cloud and a skull. What the hell was that? Was it added in by the documentary crew somehow? It just looked so strange. I saw a social media thing asking the same question. 

Edit to add: I guess it was the neighbor ‘s house

Edited October 19, 2020 by Madding crowd

[bilgistic]

There were two commercials that happened to air when Chris was standing there watching the neighbor's home security footage.

https://www.truthorfiction.com/chris-watts-and-ring-footage-with-a-fetus-and-a-skull-in-oil-in-american-murder/

[Madding crowd]

Yes I saw that and didn’t know home web cams showed commercials. If you watch , it doesn’t show American Horror Story or anything but the images so it looks odd to me. 

[Cristofle]

5 minutes ago, Madding crowd said:

Yes I saw that and didn’t know home web cams showed commercials. If you watch , it doesn’t show American Horror Story or anything but the images so it looks odd to me. 

It switched from his footage to whatever he had been watching before he pulled the footage up, which was something on broadcast television. That commercial coming on at that exact moment was really eerie. Also, I did watch the bodycam footage and while Nikole told the cop right away that Shanann was pregnant and continually brought it up, Chris did not bring it up of his own volition at any point until that commercial where he blurted it out seemingly as a distraction. His guilt is just so, so obvious at virtually every point, because he clearly is not genuinely concerned about her. And it was obvious the cop caught on pretty quickly; at one point even prior to the neighbor's footage while they're still in the Watts house you see the cop fiddle with his body cam to make sure he's getting Chris. His behavior is all the more striking because Nikole is in such visible distress. 

[Persnickety1]

12 hours ago, Madding crowd said:

I just watched this and feel heartbroken. You just never know what people are capable of doing. I have a question: when the police were first talking to Chris in his house there was a TV in the background showing his door cam and it showed his truck. Suddenly it showed a fetus in a heart, then a mushroom cloud and a skull. What the hell was that? Was it added in by the documentary crew somehow? It just looked so strange. I saw a social media thing asking the same question. 

Edit to add: I guess it was the neighbor ‘s house

I was so busy watching that baby murdering piece of shit and his body language that I never noticed this.

How eerie and heart wrenching.  

I wonder if that piece of shit even noticed the images on the TV and, if so, if they had any impact on him. 

I'm assuming probably not, because I don't believe he has any conscience (nor a soul).  

Edited October 20, 2020 by Persnickety1

[Cristofle]

12 hours ago, Persnickety1 said:

I wonder if that piece of shit even noticed the images on the TV and, if so, if they had any impact on him. 

He did notice the fetus because that was when he first mentioned Shanann was pregnant on his own. However, it was pretty obviously an attempt to distract the cop from looking at the footage again or examining it any more closely. You can just tell on his face when that footage comes up that he did not realize he'd been even as much in the footage as he was, and he was not at all sure that if the tape was examined, it wouldn't highlight him putting her body in the car.

When I looked at the body cam footage for that moment of the cop fiddling with his camera, I realized the reason Chris never tried to send a message with her phone and likely the reason he didn't make any effort to bury it with her was because she had changed her passcode without his knowledge. Nickole knew it; he did not (sadly, it was Shanann's baby's due date). I'd bet he WAS intending to send messages as her and when he couldn't get in, he turned her phone off and intended to return to it later to see if he could figure out the code. There isn't much of an upside to this terrible story, but there's a tiny bit of cold satisfaction to see his attempts to cover up his crimes continually getting thwarted.

I kind of feel for the cop; you can hear and see it hit him in stages that he was called in for a medical distress call, but instead stumbled across something much worse. He curses to himself when he realizes Shanann's phone is in the house, and he goes from checking closets and such for any signs she's taken anything, to checking drains where he is likely looking for any evidence of blood. Several of the officers and agents of the case have reportedly been treated for PTSD, especially the ones involved in recovering the bodies. I kind of hate that CW has pictures of the girls in his cell. He shouldn't be allowed any pictures except ones showing what he did to them. He shouldn't get to remain in a delusion that he was a good father, or see photographs of them loving and trusting him.

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Cristofle

[CraftyHazel]

On 10/18/2020 at 5:01 PM, Persnickety1 said:

LOL, my parents used to drop by unannounced to check on me in the next town over.  Well, until the morning they dropped by and found I had had overnight company and were all sorts of weirded out by that (even though at the time I was 25 years old and had been living completely independently of them for years).  After I had Mini Pernickety, I made it a point to never live closer than a 1-hour drive just to make those "drop by" visits a real pain in their ass.

I wish that worked on everyone...

My ex and I moved from Michigan to Arkansas, leaving both sets of parents and his siblings behind.  Had a second child, bought a home, etc.  A couple of years later, I got a phone call from my MIL.

”Can you give me directions on how to get to your house?”

”From Michigan??  I don’t think...”

”No!  From Exit Whatever...(Sister-In-Law and...) I just drove down from Michigan!”

Yeah...not some spur-of-the-moment decision on their part.  I called my then-husband at work and told him, “ Guess what?  Your mom and sister are coming to visit!”  “Oh, yeah, when?”  “In about 20 minutes...you want to come on home?”  We were both livid, but they were both so proud of their wonderful “surprise”, and so lacking in understanding or empathy that it got us nowhere.

On topic again, I wouldn’t have likely been friends with Shan’nan, but those little girls were just precious.  Chris Watts is beyond contempt.

[Cristofle]

18 hours ago, Marmiarmo said:

Yeah...not some spur-of-the-moment decision on their part.  I called my then-husband at work and told him, “ Guess what?  Your mom and sister are coming to visit!”  “Oh, yeah, when?”  “In about 20 minutes...you want to come on home?”  

OMG, I would have been livid. I do NOT appreciate big visits being sprung on me. My brother HAS attempted that, and he doesn't even live that far from me, and I still pretty much refuse.

I don't know if I would have been friends with Shanann. I definitely would have muted the Thrive stuff on Facebook, lol (although I did see on another board a point I hadn't considered, that if she hadn't had her Thrive support system it might have taken longer and been harder to catch him). She seemed to have so much anxiety about her daughter's allergy that I may have- gently and privately- told her to take a Xanax. But she pulls at me now, because she just had no idea, and I don't know she could have. That last letter she wrote him is so heartbreaking to me. She's literally begging him to tell her what he needs, and she's telling him he's worth anything and any amount of hurt because she loves him so much, and I'm pretty sure that by the time she wrote it, he was already planning to kill her and her babies. From everything I can see, this is a woman who genuinely loved her husband and adored and lived for her daughters, and she had no idea she was living with a monster. I think on a gut level, it gets to me personally because my father was (well, presumably still is) a monster - but I knew that. I knew he was not safe, even as a very young child. Shanann and her daughters had no possible way of being aware or protecting themselves until it was far too late. She might have figured it out - if you are at a point where you have to profusely thank your partner for "allowing" you to hug them, you are almost certainly in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship - but she was not given that time before he went from emotionally damaging to lethal. 

I've already mentioned how much Bella gets to me, but little CeCe 😞 She is so cute. She is so full of life and spunk. I think it's one of the final clips of her in the documentary when she's talking how much she loves school, and it's so unfair - she never even got to go to kindergarten. Neither of them did. He just stole everything, their whole futures. 

[Dr.OO7]

On 10/25/2020 at 5:24 PM, Cristofle said:

. Shanann and her daughters had no possible way of being aware or protecting themselves until it was far too late.

It's a cruel irony that a woman (whether pregnant or not) who's already being abused by her husband/boyfriend knows that she needs to escape and take measures to protect herself, while one who isn't never has any idea that he's planning to kill her.

On 10/25/2020 at 5:24 PM, Cristofle said:

OMG, I would have been livid. I do NOT appreciate big visits being sprung on me. My brother HAS attempted that, and he doesn't even live that far from me, and I still pretty much refuse.

Heh. One of those myriad "MIL From Hell" stories featured a woman who did something very similar, asking if she could come to visit for a long weekend while the son and FIL went on a hiking trip. The DIL explicitly told her "No, it's not a good time" and the stupid woman completely disregarded this and decided to "surprise" her by coming anyway and now had the nerve to act completely confused as to why the DIL was so upset with her.

"Oh, dear! I don't want to be "that" MIL."

Newsflash, lady. You ARE.

[Annber03]

Just watched this documentary and...hoo boy. I was familiar with this story already, but man, seeing the footage of the family, watching it all unfold as it did here, listening to that confession...that was...a lot. Bella singing the "My Daddy is a Hero" song only for a picture of Chris to scroll on screen right afterward about broke me and sent a real shiver down my spine. There's another documentary I saw once, called There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, about a case from a little over a decade ago where a woman who drove the wrong way down a parkway in New York and crashed into another car. She, her daughter, her three nieces, and the three people in the car that collided with hers were all killed, with her son being the only survivor. 

In that documentary, on the day of the crash itself, they kept having time stamps leading up to the tragedy. I kept thinking about that while watching this documentary and seeing Bella and CeCe haivng fun on their vacation in the weeks before they died. Just the whole thing of seeing these children going about their normal lives and not having any clue what's coming for them, knowing they don't have much longer to live, and seeing them spending some time with their dad besides...it made the whole thing all the more haunting. Same with that footage of Shannan walking into her house for the last time. Like stated elsewhere in this discussion, you just want to stop time somehow or something and warn them. 

On 10/18/2020 at 5:57 PM, Cristofle said:

Bella 😞 Truly, what happened to her is maybe one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. Later, he admitted she put up a real struggle, and I think even indicated she tried to get out of the car. Thinking of that child and her sweet eyes just breaks my heart. I don't believe in the death penalty, but man, this guy is testing me. 

Same on the bolded. When they talked in the documentary about how Shannan's mom didn't want to be in the position of deciding whether he lived or died, I was like, "You're a far more compassionate person than I would be."  And your mention of the other details...Jesus. Really wishing I hadn't read that. When he was talking about how he killed his daughters I actually said, "You fucking son of a bitch." Seeing those oil drums really drove home the sheer horror of what he did to those girls. And to add insult to injury, they were separated from their mom. He put Shannan's body somewhere else entirely. Couldn't even let them be buried together. That's just...beyond cold. 

Frankly, I think the best punishment for him would be to dump him in one of those oil drums and leave him there to rot. 

I found it very hard to believe Shannan wouldn't have tried to fight back, too, so the people in here talking about how he slipped her a drug to try and knock her out, that explains a lot. Yeah. She would have had to be incapacitated somehow in order to not fight back.

I also echo all the kudos to her concerned friend, and that attentive neighbor, and the awesome people who interrogated Chris. I especially loved the woman who interviewed him and gave him that polygraph test. I was chuckling when she was all, "You'd have to be really dumb to come in here and take a polygraph if you'd actually done this." And I also liked how she tried to play on his attitudes about women as well. There was one point where he was talking about him and Shannan discussing the idea of him having an affair and he was like, "You know how women are" or something to that effect, and then later the woman interrogating him, when discussing the idea that Shannan murdered the girls, was like, "Chicks are crazy.". That was a great way to try and put on this sympathetic front with him in an effort to get him to open up. She knew exactly how to communicate with him and use his behavior and attitudes against him. Future interrogators should study her methods. 

I think this case also highlights just how much society's interest in true crime has influenced and affected people. The theories Chris put out there, and the way he tried to stay one step ahead of the detectives, showed he had some understanding of the kinds of theories that most investigators will think of. And he was actively involved in the case early on to try and look like he was helping as well, which, ironically, backfired on him. Because if he knew what kinds of behaviors investigators would look at, he would also know that being very involved in the investigation can be just as suspicious as not being involved at all can. I think that was a big part of what ultimately tripped him up in the end. 

And then on the flip side, Shannan's friend and neighbor could tell something was up right away based off their own clues and observations. Even if you aren't a true crime junkie, most people are well aware of certain things that indicate when something's just not right because of how often these kinds of stories pop up in the news and whatnot. 

As for Shannan herself, I think @EdnasEdibles' post/analysis was spot on. I'm with those who don't get the whole thing of posting every last bit of one's personal life on social media. But, again, given her job, it also explains a lot of that, and that's just how most people are nowadays in general. I have family and friends who are very open about their lives on social media in ways I'm very much not. I'm also not the sort who would talk so openly and frankly about my sex life the way she did, but again, I have friends who would be, and in that case, that wasn't something she was broadcasting to the world, she was talking to a trusted friend, which makes sense, too. So yeah. Those parts of her life were jarring to me simply because that's so different from how I would be on social media.

But outside of that, I just felt sad for her more than anything. Especially with some of her neediness. Her frustration at Chris not wanting to touch or kiss her was completely understandable, but watching her freak out because he doesn't contact her enough-I do think some people think couples need to be joined at the hip 24/7, and constantly in contact with each other, and if they're not, clearly that means there's something wrong. Now, in this case, obviously, there was something very wrong. But I feel like some of her neediness ran a lot deeper than even the issues she dealt with regarding Chris, and given what little we knew about her life before him, I think that could explain some of that behavior. The way she kept talking about how he found her right at the moment she needed him most...to her, she sees this guy who can give her whatever she feels she's missing. To me, I see that as a guy who saw a very vulnerable woman and took advantage of that. 

And her fear that she was too bossy and may have made him feel like less of a man made me sad, too, and made me roll my eyes at him even more, Between that and the whole thing of his parents apparently feeling like she "took him away" from them (which, wtf, people, he's a grown man), and his obsessiveness about working out and his affair, yeah, he definitely came off as something of a mama's boy, and he needed women to make him feel special and manly and he needed to look the way a man's supposed to look and seriously, what decade are we in again? If he felt she was too "bossy" or too "emasculating" or whatever, then he needed to get over himself and either find a way to deal with that and talk out those issues with her, or just move on. Maybe go back home to his mom or something. 

I also wonder if some of her decisions to film everything were tied to her constant suspicions about him. She took it upon herself to look up their balance the night Chris said he was at that game and that's how she found out he was lying about that, so I can see her filming moments with him as evidence to try and look back at later, gauge his reactions, his behavior, see if there's any clues in there that can help her figure out what's going on with him. I was struck by how, on the one hand, she was so excited about their upcoming baby, but on the other hand, she was also aware there were some serious problems in their marriage, and there was little if anything she could do to try and fix them. 

As for other stuff, glad I wasn't alone in noticing how much Chris' girlfriend looked like Shannan. And I felt so sad for that poor little dog, too, when they came to retrieve it from the house. I hope it found a good home. 

Also, I'm well past the point where, if I never hear about or from conspiracy theorists again, I will be so happy. Fuck those assholes who were bending over backwards to try and defend Chris online and push insane theories and mock not only Shannan, but her children as well. Her children. What the hell kind of gossip do you think you need to spew about young children, you psychos? Her father should not have had to make a point of telling people to stop with that crap. He's already suffering enough, for God's sakes. I like how even the newsanchors seemed a little stunned at having to do a report on that nonsense. 

Yeah. Fascinating documentary, but heartbreaking and haunting as hell. I appreciated the statistics at the end. We definitely need to continue to do more to try and educate people on domestic violence. This case is a perfect example of how sometimes the signs aren't so overt and obvious. Sometimes they can be very subtle. Shannan knew something was wrong, she just wasn't aware how wrong until it was far too late. That's chilling. My heart goes out to her, those poor girls, and her family. 

[CrazyInAlabama]

There was no point trying for the death penalty.   Colorado has several people on death row, and they will never be executed.     CW has a better chance of being executed by another prisoner who hates child killers, and who wants to be well known for doing that.   

[Cristofle]

On 11/14/2020 at 5:01 AM, Annber03 said:

To me, I see that as a guy who saw a very vulnerable woman and took advantage of that. 

The more I studied this case, the more this is exactly what I saw. I think CW is a so-called "covert narcissist" who comes off as someone very passive and laid-back, but who gets his narcissistic "fix" through everyone telling him what a wonderful guy he is. These types of people also don't have much personality on their own, so he would have used Shanann's very big personality and her drive to just sort of let him drift along. When he met Shanann, she was still very young, and she'd gotten married at 18 and it hadn't gone very well and so she was a divorcee in her mid 20s, and then to top it off she was having health issues. I think she was feeling extremely vulnerable and her self-esteem probably wasn't great and he preyed on that. And when she got involved with the whole Thrive thing, and she had a new network of friends and she was doing her Facebook videos, she would not have relied on CW to the same extent and he might have seen that as a betrayal. I think he turned on the girls for similar reasons - supposedly he was angry they were "talking back" to him and doing things like throwing chicken nuggets at him (???? They were toddlers, of course they were doing that). Also, several people including Shanann's father mentioned that in the months preceding the murders, the girls had stopped crying for their father first and started screaming for their mother even if CW was in the house. He even said something about how when he'd pick them up from daycare, they'd cry the whole way home asking where Mommy was. He supposedly told his mistress it was Shanann's fault they were disrespecting him and they were becoming more like Shanann. So he stopped getting his fix from his family, started getting it from his girlfriend, and when his family was a hindrance to what he wanted instead of what he relied on, he killed them.

Quote

I hope it found a good home. 

I was so upset about this I actually looked it up - thankfully, Dieter the dog is now living with Shanann's brother. 

[Annber03]

13 minutes ago, Cristofle said:

The more I studied this case, the more this is exactly what I saw. I think CW is a so-called "covert narcissist" who comes off as someone very passive and laid-back, but who gets his narcissistic "fix" through everyone telling him what a wonderful guy he is. .

Spot on description. That seemed to show through in the media interviews he kept doing after his wife and girls went missing, too-I kept noticing he kept flashing this little smile every time he was on camera. He clearly liked the attention he was getting. Even when the police were poking around the house, it seemed like he always managed to appear on their body cameras at some point. 

I think that also shows up in the fact he makes a point of talking about how he and Shannan had sex not long before he killed her. That seems to be something of a common theme in the cases I've seen where a guy's accused of killing his wife or girlfriend-he'll always mention at some point that they had sex not long beforehand. Part of that, of course, is because it's a way to try and explain away any DNA they know the investigators may find on the woman's body, but it also always tends to feel and come off as them bragging a bit, or something, too? I just always tend to think that most husbands/boyfriends who are legitimately worried about their loved one being in danger probably aren't going to think to mention something so personal like that unless they're specifically asked about it, and if they do, they'll be a little more gentlemanly about it.

I also think it's weird that they would have sex right before she died, considering he'd been avoiding being intimate with her up to that point. What would've changed that night in particular? Presuming, of course, their final hours together played out even close to the way he claimed they did. 

Quote

I think he turned on the girls for similar reasons - supposedly he was angry they were "talking back" to him and doing things like throwing chicken nuggets at him (???? They were toddlers, of course they were doing that). Also, several people including Shanann's father mentioned that in the months preceding the murders, the girls had stopped crying for their father first and started screaming for their mother even if CW was in the house. He even said something about how when he'd pick them up from daycare, they'd cry the whole way home asking where Mommy was. He supposedly told his mistress it was Shanann's fault they were disrespecting him and they were becoming more like Shanann. So he stopped getting his fix from his family, started getting it from his girlfriend, and when his family was a hindrance to what he wanted instead of what he relied on, he killed them.

Oh, wow. That's interesting. And disturbingly sad.

I also wondered if he killed the girls because he knew they might start talking about his new girlfriend when they were with their mom. He knew Shannan suspected something was up already, so if one of their kids confirmed her worst fears, that's it, they'd be done, and there'd be a divorce or other kind of hassle looming that he didn't want to deal with. 

Quote

I was so upset about this I actually looked it up - thankfully, Dieter the dog is now living with Shanann's brother. 

Oh, good. Thank you for sharing that. That's nice to know :). 

[Cristofle]

32 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

I also think it's weird that they would have sex right before she died, considering he'd been avoiding being intimate with her up to that point. What would've changed that night in particular? Presuming, of course, their final hours together played out even close to the way he claimed they did. 

I definitely don't think Shanann's death played out exactly the way he said it did. I think he either jumped on her while she was sleeping or made her believe he was going to have sex with her and then strangled her. I don't think he started to strangle her during a fight - I think that's the excuse he gives to pretend he just flew off the handle, instead of intended to kill his family. Also, the way the sheet was found and the way her make-up was on it suggests her face may have been at least partially pressed into the sheet, which fits with his overall cowardice. The fight he describes sounds somewhat like a fight Shanann described to her friends earlier in the week (where she said she "demanded to know who he was sleeping with"). If they were in the middle of a fight when he got on her, all of her defenses would have been up. I think one thing everyone who knew Shanann agrees with is that she was not a passive person. If she was able to see him coming at all, I think she would have fought with everything she had - to try and save Nico as well as herself, and she would have known her girls were right across the hall. However he came up on her, I don't think she saw it coming or had any defenses up whatsoever. 

Because of the state of Shanann's body when she was found, they were never able to tell if she'd had sex before she died. And he knew that; he'd had access to the discovery file and has even referenced causes of death according to the autopsies at points. So if he wanted to brag somehow, come off as more of a man, he knew it couldn't be disproven. 

[pigs-in-space]

Not to mention who exactly would be in the mood for sex at 3 AM after getting back from traveling when you're exhausted and (if you're me) feeling sweaty and gross?

[ChelleGame]

On 10/24/2020 at 8:01 PM, CraftyHazel said:

Yeah...not some spur-of-the-moment decision on their part.  I called my then-husband at work and told him, “ Guess what?  Your mom and sister are coming to visit!”  “Oh, yeah, when?”  “In about 20 minutes...you want to come on home?”  We were both livid, but they were both so proud of their wonderful “surprise”, and so lacking in understanding or empathy that it got us nowhere.

 Yikes. 

My grandmother could not stand people who dropped by unannounced. I was about eight years old and I remember her talking to someone out of the front window. Friends dropped by without calling and she was telling them calmly that they could not come in because they weren't expected because they didn't call first. They tried to change her mind but she would not open the door. My granddaddy opened the other side of the window and said, "Just run down to the pay phone and call her". (This was before cell phones). They drove off, called and my grandmother answered all friendly and invited them over.  When they arrived by grandmother said, "People have rules for a reason. If you don't know how to follow them it's my job to teach you how".

When my parents picked me up I couldn't wait to tell them. I thought it was so funny. Me and my sisters still say people have rules for a reason.

My husband and I loved the neighbor spilling his opinion immediately, and her best friend was so on it. Love the both of them for that. Their honesty and persistence probably thwarted his (and the mistresses plans) to get rid of more evidence.

But...he was a big ole dummy. Just a dim light/cracked bulb kind of guy. Hideous what he did to those little girls. He should be buried alive under the jailhouse.

 

[Growsonwalls]

Seems Chris Watts was drawn to domineering women. His mother, Shanann, and Nichol all seemed rather pushy and domineering. Nichol was looking up wedding dresses a few weeks into the relationship. 

I have no doubt had he divorced Shanann and gone with Nichol, his narcissistic, bland personality would have gotten fed up with her type-A ways eventually.

I wish he had gone that route instead of killing his whole family of course. 

[Cristofle]

Speaking of CW's mother, it came out recently that she and her husband went to court for Shanann's life insurance. Because it was based on CW's job (and included two smaller policies on the girls, but the vast bulk of it was Shanann's), they seemed to have used their stance as victims of the crime based on losing their granddaughters to receive a payout on Shanann's life insurance. They went to court with Shanann's parents over this. It seems it was settled privately, but I am just...appalled. How can you show zero indication of caring that your son murdered this woman, repeatedly attempt to slander her and insist she killed her children, start to write a book about how much you hated her, and still feel like you are entitled to the life insurance that is paying out because, again, your son murdered her? Every time this family does something, it starts to become more evident how Watts came to be the way he is. I hope that whatever they settled on, it is only some portion of the girls' insurance. It is repulsive that they would ever feel they should be allowed to touch a dime of Shanann's life insurance.

Quote

I have no doubt had he divorced Shanann and gone with Nichol, his narcissistic, bland personality would have gotten fed up with her type-A ways eventually.

I have thought this too. CW was in the midst of a very heavy infatuation, but there's no real indication these two had some sort of deep and meaningful connection or that they knew each other super well. Their bonding - outside of sex - mostly seemed centered on their fitness regimens. She would not have been able to satisfy his narcissism in the long term any more than Shanann was. 

[CrazyInAlabama]

The Watts family are just as disgusting as Scott Peterson's mother, and family, and the Powell family.    Shanann's family was able to get control of the remains of their daughter and grandchildren, and bury them.    

Susan Powell's family had to go to court to prevent the Powell family from burying their grandson's next to their murdering father, and to prevent that the Cox family had to threaten to sue the cemetery, and two local police officials bought the plots around the children's burial site, to keep the Powell family from burying the children next to their killer.   They also had to fight over life insurance.   As I recall (I may be wrong) but the Powells actually did get some insurance money.   I'm not sure the final insurance money settlement was ever made public.   

Edited November 18, 2020 by CrazyInAlabama

[Cristofle]

21 hours ago, CrazyInAlabama said:

The Watts family are just as disgusting as Scott Peterson's mother, and family, and the Powell family.

I was reading a couple articles about the Peterson case after the sentencing was overturned, and I always forget what a piece of work his mother was. His SIL isn't great either, but she more comes off as in severe denial. The mother and one of the sisters had/have a different vibe. The sister was always making underhanded swipes at Lacey. And the Powell family was really beyond it - I remember his sister ended up wearing a wire to try to get family members to confess to being involved in Susan's death.

I am glad Shanann and the kids are buried under her maiden name. He doesn't deserve one more thing from them. I remember his mother talking about how he was still a father, and the ONE time I think being a parent after a child's death no longer applies is when you are the one who murdered them. 

[Scarlett45]

On 11/16/2020 at 5:58 AM, Annber03 said:

I also think it's weird that they would have sex right before she died, considering he'd been avoiding being intimate with her up to that point. What would've changed that night in particular? Presuming, of course, their final hours together played out even close to the way he claimed they did. 

He may have propositioned her for sex to get her guard down psychologically so that he could slip her something and/or get her in a vulnerable physical position.
 

This boring single person over here assumes couples have sex on the regular- I could see the police needing to know to explain trauma to her body or DNA found on her, but I also think there’s a social perception that if a married couple is having sex they are getting along (now THAT I’ve never believed). 

How dare he talk about being a parent when he murdered his poor innocent babies. You don’t get it both ways!

On 11/18/2020 at 9:03 AM, Cristofle said:

I am glad Shanann and the kids are buried under her maiden name. He doesn't deserve one more thing from them. I remember his mother talking about how he was still a father, and the ONE time I think being a parent after a child's death no longer applies is when you are the one who murdered them. 

Yes. 

[Minivanessa]

On 11/14/2020 at 10:34 AM, CrazyInAlabama said:

There was no point trying for the death penalty.   Colorado has several people on death row, and they will never be executed.     CW has a better chance of being executed by another prisoner who hates child killers, and who wants to be well known for doing that.   

Not only does Colorado have people on death row who have been there for years - in 2015 a Colorado jury refused to give the death penalty to the evil conniving ruthless POS who meticulously planned and committed the mass shooting in 2012 (12 dead, I forget how many dozens injured, some grievously) at the Aurora movie theater. In addition to booby-trapping his apartment to explode and kill a few dozen more (which luckily didn't go as he planned, thank God.) That was in a county that is typically politically conservative, and IMO the DA did a good job prosecuting the case. As far as I'm concerned, if that guy didn't get death from a jury in that Colorado county? Forget about any jury anywhere else in Colorado giving anybody death. 

Personally, I'm not 100% anti-death penalty, but I'm also not particularly in favor of it. Theoretically it provides vengeance, and some kind of justice, but in modern-day reality, a case where the jury imposes a death sentence drags on approximately forever. So the victims' families and loved ones end up living with all of that crap and drama and pain for years and years. If Shannan's family just wanted the guy locked up for good, and to be able to try to somehow move on with their lives, I get it.

[heatherchandler]

On 10/1/2020 at 5:52 PM, bilgistic said:

Supposedly Shanann's parents owned the house.

 

 

On 10/2/2020 at 10:11 AM, Kelly said:

 

In terms of SW and her social media presence...it seems clear to me, that it had a negative impact on their family/marriage.  That being said, her LACK of social media activity the morning she was killed, alerted her friends that something was very very wrong.  He should have used her phone, as her, to respond to her friends.  But he wasn't smart enough to do that.  If her friend Nickole had not shown up at her house, I have to wonder, what would have CW done with her car, her phone etc

On 10/8/2020 at 1:27 AM, snickers said:

I am not surprised to hear her parents owned their home, I’m hearing houses in Colorado are averaging about a million these days???? Did they even have jobs when they moved out there?
 

Her parents may have the deed to the house now, due to Chris owing them from the wrongful death lawsuit, but Shannan and Chris owned their home.  They were in fact several months behind on their mortgage and I believe they were foreclosed on right after he was arrested.  They had serious money problems, I wish the doc got into that.  I think that’s a huge motive.

Wayyy behind on their mortgage, only about 2,000 in their checking account and the kids school tuition is due.  That is why he un-enrolled them minutes after he killed them.  (Seriously this guy is beyond stupid)

He wanted the new life with the new girl and his old life would never let him live the way he wanted... I think that’s why he killed them all.

I bet he would have tried to ditch her phone and car.  I was thinking, if she had just left them all dead at the house and opened the back door, there might have been some doubt about him doing it.  There was construction behind their house, he could have said that there were vagrants living in the houses...  Some kind of story to throw the police off.  But to bury the bodies at his work... I just cannot believe how terrible a criminal he is.

ETA-Sorry replies are out of order!  My phone won’t let me edit properly.

Edited November 30, 2020 by heatherchandler

[Cristofle]

On 11/26/2020 at 7:55 PM, Jeeves said:

If Shannan's family just wanted the guy locked up for good, and to be able to try to somehow move on with their lives, I get it.

Shanann's mother actually felt very strongly against the death penalty. She's very religious - Catholic, I think - and doesn't believe the state has the right to take his life even though he took the lives of her daughter and grandchildren. So yeah, all things considered, I think it was a good call to accept the plea and not go for the death penalty.

Quote

 They had serious money problems, I wish the doc got into that.  I think that’s a huge motive.

The producer of the film has said the documentary is very much from Shanann's point of view, especially in the last month or so of her life, and since Shanann wasn't talking much about the money issues to anyone, she didn't include it. She only included the brief snippet of his mistress to highlight that Shanann was correct in her suspicions about an affair; she otherwise didn't go into much detail about the woman or the affair. She also didn't go into much detail about CW's motivations at all because she was more focused on Shanann.

However, Shanann did mention their money troubles a few times in texts to her friends and one particular instance haunts me. When Shanann starts feeling very ill right after CW came to North Carolina, one of her friends encouraged her to go to the ER, but she said she couldn't afford to. If CW is telling the truth about spiking her drinks with Oxy, and she had gone to the ER, they might have run a blood test and it's perhaps the only way I think she could have figured out she was in physical danger. CW is a difficult source to take seriously on his own, so that part I'm not surprised didn't make the cut - it just makes me sad. Shanann also repeatedly said she could not afford to live in Colorado if they got divorced, and I am a little surprised those text exchanges were not included in the doc, because some people seem to have the impression Shanann would have refused to give him a divorce. She actually considered kicking him out a couple times after their arguments and she was very much aware their marriage might not survive. In the very last couple days, CW gave her false hope that he was willing to work on the marriage (I think because he had decided to kill her, so he took the path of least resistance until he could follow through with his plan) but prior to that, she had mentioned divorce to several of her friends and contemplated moving in with one of them. She also did not anywhere in these discussions indicate she intended to take him to the cleaners in a divorce - her only focus was that she wanted custody of the children. If he didn't know that, it's only because he never had one comprehensive discussion about divorce with her; he seemed to decide the only way to have the life he wanted was to kill them all. I agree that money was a motivating factor insofar as he started to believe it would prevent him from riding off into the sunset with his girlfriend, but I think that was one of several reasons he decided he hated Shanann and needed to get rid of her and the children. I also think his girlfriend's reported discomfort with him having children was a factor in him killing the girls, as terrible as that sounds to any normal person. And I don't think his brand of narcissism could have easily allowed him to be seen as the guy who left his pregnant wife for another woman, or who decided to have little to nothing to do with his children. Because he's an idiot on top of a sociopath, he instead ultimately took the path that led to him literally being internationally despised as a monster.

That he immediately unenrolled the girls from school and called his realtor to put the house on the market is maybe second only to the fact that he disposed of the bodies on his own job site where his own truck had a GPS tracker to confirm he'd been there for hours in "How can one person possibly be this dumb."

Here's one interview with the director where she mentions why she included and excluded some things. This isn't the one where she talks about the money specifically, but she does talk about why she didn't include more on the mistress and why she didn't generally go into depth about his possible motivations. 

 

[Dr.OO7]

On 11/29/2020 at 11:35 PM, heatherchandler said:

I just cannot believe how terrible a criminal he is.

These people always are. One thing I've learned from my love of true crime is that no matter how much these guys plan things out, they always say/do or don't say/don't do something that tips the cops off.

Especially the Incriminating Indifference trope--over and over again, I've seen numerous cops and/or friends/relatives, etc, noticing that this supposedly grieving person isn't acting like someone truly upset, if they're even bothering to act upset at all.

[CrazyInAlabama]

People magazine has a story about how hard Chris Watts' prison time is over the holidays.   

I don't care, and I hope his bland turkey gives him food poisoning, 

https://people.com/crime/chris-watts-hates-holidays-prison-says-source/

You would think keeping up with his multiple female pen pals would keep him busy. 

[Annber03]

18 minutes ago, Dr.OO7 said:

These people always are. One thing I've learned from my love of true crime is that no matter how much these guys plan things out, they always say/do or don't say/don't do something that tips the cops off.

And it's always the little things, too. They're so focused on the big picture that some small detail gets ignored/forgotten, or they never consider any potential minor wrenches in their plans, or whatever. 

The thing that always gets me most often about these cases is that they know their spouse's family and friends will start calling and looking for them eventually, I know that part of the appeal for them is the attention they'll get from the media as the "grieving" spouse, and their glee in believing they've committed the perfect crime and outsmarted the cops. But still, I dunno, if I committed a crime and wanted to try and get away with it, I'd want to do so in a way that would have as few people poking around and investigating as possible. Because eventually someone's going to figure out something's off. Especially given people like Watts know full well how similar stories like this have turned out-the husbands always get caught eventually. 

Guess that's just all part of the sick thrill, though, that risk. He must've thought he was smarter than some of those other husbands, too, or something. 

[Dr.OO7]

6 hours ago, CrazyInAlabama said:

People magazine has a story about how hard Chris Watts' prison time is over the holidays.   

I don't care, and I hope his bland turkey gives him food poisoning, 

https://people.com/crime/chris-watts-hates-holidays-prison-says-source/

You would think keeping up with his multiple female pen pals would keep him busy. 

That article enraged me.

"Wah, wah, Christmas in prison without my wife and kids sucks!"

Well, maybe if you hadn't BRUTALLY MURDERED them, things would be different.

Fucking asshole.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Dr.OO7

[Dr.OO7]

6 hours ago, Annber03 said:

Guess that's just all part of the sick thrill, though, that risk. He must've thought he was smarter than some of those other husbands, too, or something. 

They always do.

It's like the people who hire someone to do it and make certain to be seen thousands of miles away at the time of the murder. . .

. . .But in five minutes, cops find all the phone calls and bank transactions between them.

Idiots.

Even those who think that getting rid of the body will be enough never realize that there's usually still enough evidence to nail them.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Dr.OO7

[Annber03]

1 minute ago, Dr.OO7 said:

It's like the people who hire someone to do it, yet make certain to be seen thousands of miles away at the time of the murder. . .

. . .But in five minutes, cops find all the phone calls and bank transactions between them.

Yes! Anytime I watch one of these kinds of stories and they confirm that the spouse wasn't in the area at the time of the murder, yet the spouse still seems kinda hinky, I always expect to hear that they hired someone else to do it. And sometimes it seems like police don't think to look at that avenue, even if only to rule out that possibility, which surprises me. 

Quote

Even those who think that getting rid of the body will be enough never realize that there's usually still enough evidence to nail them.

Mmhm. And even when they are trying to get rid of the body, it's amazing (and kind of amusing, in a really dark way) how so many criminals don't realize just how hard it is to do that. Dead weight is tough to move around. Same with cleaning up crime scenes-blood is not an easy stain to get out. 

[Dr.OO7]

40 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

Same with cleaning up crime scenes-blood is not an easy stain to get out. 

Even if they do, luminol has been known to find things YEARS later, and in an amount that leaves no doubt as to what happened, as demonstrated in this ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING clip from a miniseries:

https://youtu.be/uhBm08WEgS8

[bilgistic]

Fuck People magazine for running that garbage.

[Minivanessa]

1 hour ago, bilgistic said:

Fuck People magazine for running that garbage.

Yes. And, because it can't be said too many times or too loudly: FUCK PEOPLE MAGAZINE FOR RUNNING THAT GARBAGE.

[Dr.OO7]

15 hours ago, Jeeves said:

Yes. And, because it can't be said too many times or too loudly: FUCK PEOPLE MAGAZINE FOR RUNNING THAT GARBAGE.

Every so often, they do something like that. I don't know what's worse, the people who continue to insist that they're innocent, despite all evidence to the contrary, of the ones who have the nerve to whine about how much they miss the loved ones that they murdered.

[CrazyInAlabama]

I used to subscribe to People magazine, and stopped several years ago.     I was working at a place where they covered a story, and their reporter's nasty remarks, and calling people liars because their press conference didn't match the narrative the reporter wanted was despicable.   That was when I said I would never buy their publication again.     

I would wonder in the Watts case what the murderer, and his horrible relatives received for talking to People?     I believe nothing that source says about anything.  

[Irlandesa]

19 hours ago, bilgistic said:

Fuck People magazine for running that garbage.

Yep.  Is it any wonder people on Facebook or social media were trying to justify the murder of his wife and kids?  It's pieces like this that have trained us to think--or at least encouraged us to think--of reasons/excuses for a man's actions.  (And usually a white man's actions.)

[Bastet]

21 hours ago, bilgistic said:

Fuck People magazine for running that garbage.

Yes.  I'm certainly not telling you, and probably not anyone here, anything new in saying that the People of the past, what, 15 years at its best merely regurgitates stories from other sources and at its worst churns out "sympathetic" shit like this, but that it's the bullshit we've come to expect does not mean we should stop calling it out at every turn.  So, indeed, fuck People for running that garbage.

[WhitneyWhit]

I finally got around to watching this and normally I'm against the death penalty but then a Chris Watts happen and I find myself wondering how he can be killed but make it like, take a few painful days.

It was interesting that they allowed Shanann in a less that pleasant light. She really didn't come off as someone who was likeable and I'm sure she's requested to speak to more than a few managers. I could definitely see how their relationship could be tense and even volatile. She seemed like the type who would latch on to something and keep going till it blew up into a much bigger deal like the ice cream fiasco. I don't get how that became such an issue that her in laws banned her from their house. Unless they were force feeding ice cream the girls were allergic to to them,  I think a simple "They can't eat that" would have sufficed.

With that said, Shanann, and those babies did not deserve what happened to them. My God, I had a hard time sleeping after watching this and knowing what they all must have seen and heard in their last moments, especially the girls, who were well aware what was happening to them. "No Daddy", I seriously hope he rots in hell.

As for Chris, he was stupid wasn't he? Did he not think that people in their neighborhood would start talking about the fact that his wife and kids vanished into the ether right after he backed his truck into the garage in the middle of the night? And even if that didn't get people talking, how would he explain himself when the bodies of his family were found at his place of employment?