The Unraveling of Chris Watts Before He Murdered His Family

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The Watts family looked picture-perfect from the outside.

Shanann Watts frequently documented their charming domestic exploits in small-town Colorado for social media, aided and abetted by her two young daughters, 4-year-old Bella Marie and 3-year-old Celeste Cathryn. Her telegenic husband Chris Watts also made cameos in his wife's Facebook videos, readily agreeing to post-cookie-baking cleanup or scooping his girls up for big hugs.

And Shanann was pregnant with their third child, a boy they were going to name Nico, when Watts killed his wife and kids.

“This was like the epitome of being angry, the epitome of showing a rage, the epitome of losing your mind," the admitted murderer told investigators in 2019 during an interview from Dodge Correctional Facility in Wisconsin, where he's serving five life sentences—three consecutively and two concurrently—without the possibility of parole.

But he continued to interact with the outside world and, according to the Daily Mail, is planning to marry again. Oxygen.com reached out to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, as well as his reported intended, Lizzie Henderson, but did not hear back.

Watts and Shanann met in 2010 in their home state of North Carolina and married on Nov. 3, 2012.

During a trip out west, they fell in love with the scenery and overall vibe of Frederick, Colo. They moved into a five-bedroom house that they promptly started to fill up., welcoming Bella on Dec. 17, 2013, and her sister, called Cece for short, on July 17, 2015.

"Happy Husband Appreciation Day! I couldn't imagine a better man for us," Shanann captioned an April 2018 Instagram post. "You spoil us with love [and] attention! You put up with 3 impatient, demanding women in the house. You work so hard everyday to provide for us. I love you so much."

But the 34-year-old's cheery online presence was masking the unraveling of her marriage.

Nickole also called police to ask for a wellness check when no one answered the door. They found Shanann's cell phone stuffed between the couch cushions, her purse in the kitchen and a suitcase at the foot of the stairs.

Frederick Police contacted the FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation for assistance, and entreated the public's help in finding the missing mother and children.

Watts said he hoped his family was safe, wherever they were. "Last night...I had every light in the house on, I was hoping that I would just get just ran over by the kids running in the door and just like barrel-rushing me," he told Denver 7, "but it didn't happen and it was just a traumatic night trying to be here."

"I mean, my kids are my life," he continued. "Those smiles light up my life." He said he missed telling them they had to eat their dinner or else they wouldn't get dessert, and seeing them "cuddled up" on their Disney-themed child-size couches, watching Bubble Guppies.

"It was tearing me apart last night...to go into their rooms and...know that I wasn't going to turn their rain machines on and know that I wasn't going to turn their monitor on and know I wasn't going to kiss them," Watts said. "That's why last night was just horrible."

Which, it was.

Atkinson, who had been to Arizona with Shanann, told police that when she dropped her friend off at 2 a.m. on Aug. 13, she had been out of sorts. "She was very distraught over the weekend, wasn't eating normally, or drinking," Atkinson said, "and we kept trying to force it on her." 

Watts was arrested on Aug. 15, the day after he pleaded for his family to come home.

He at first claimed, however, according to an arrest affidavit, that his wife killed their daughters and Bella was already dead by the time he saw his wife on their baby monitor screen choking Celeste.

He was charged Aug. 21 with three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of murder of a child younger than 12 while "in a position of trust," three counts of tampering with a deceased human body and unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

"Yes, sir," was all the accused said when the judge asked if he understood that he could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Shanann's father, Frank Rzucek, wept and her brother, Frank Jr., glared at Watts throughout his arraignment.

After Watts' arrest, so surfaced the family's June 2015 bankruptcy filing, which indicated that, with a combined $90,000 income in 2014, they had $864 in their joint checking account while drowning under monthly $3,000 mortgage payments, $600 car payments, student loans, medical bills and credit card debt.

At the time, Watts had been working at Anadarko for six months with a salary of $61,500 a year, per the filing, and Shanann made $18 an hour answering phones at a children's hospital call center. 

But January 2016, Shanann started working as a brand promoter for nutritional supplement company Le-Vel.

"Every single person that connected with her felt her light," co-worker Cynthia DeRossett told KPHO after Shanann's death, noting that she seemed her usual upbeat self during their business trip. "Never in a thousand years would you think this."

When she saw on the news that Shanann had been pregnant, she was admittedly shocked. "If he was able to lie to me and hide something that big," Kessinger said, "what else was he lying about?"

Everything Watts told her after that "seemed off," she said, and "it got to a point that he was telling me so many lies that I eventually told him that I did not want to speak to him again until his family was found."

On the morning of Aug. 15, Nichol called the police and told them she'd been having an affair with the missing woman's husband. They connected her with the FBI and, hours later, Watts was in handcuffs.

"I just wanted to help," Kessinger explained. "With a pregnant woman and two children missing, I was going to do anything that I could."

And she didn't doubt that he was guilty. "He's a liar," she said. "He lied about everything."

In his prison interview, Watts didn't blame the affair for his actions, but it may have "accelerated the process," he said. Over the course of five hours, he proceeded to speak openly for the first time about what he did, even though he left plenty of questions unanswered about why and how he could do it. 

"If I was thinking," Watts he said, "this wouldn't have happened."

He said that she then told him he'd never see their kids again, and then he strangled her in their bed.

Bella walked into the room and asked, "What's wrong with Mommy?" he recalled. Watts told the the 4-year-old that Mommy didn't feel good.

So, he continued, he wrapped Shanann's body in a sheet and put her in the backseat of his truck on the floor. He had Bella and Cece get in the backseat, then drove them to the oil site, where he smothered Cece with her own blanket. He said that Bella asked him softly, "Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?'"

Her last words were "Daddy, no!" and she struggled as he smothered her, Watts remembered. He told investigators he kept photos of his late wife and children in his cell and "talks to them every morning and every night."