There are few criminal cases that have gripped the US over the past two decades quite like the one involving Christ Watts.
The now-40-year-old was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murdering his pregnant wife, Shanann, and the couple’s daughters, Celeste, 3, and Bella, 4.
When Shanann and the girls were reported as missing in August of 2018, Watts tried to portray himself as a panic-stricken husband and father desperate to have his family back. He pushed the narrative that Shanann had taken the girls without his knowledge, even appearing on TV to issue a plea for them to come home or be returned.
All the while he was attempting to cover the horrific truth: that he had murdered Shanann and the girls and woven a web of lies in a bid to mask his tracks. Having strangled Shannan and then suffocated his two young daughters, he dumped the bodies of Celeste and Bella in crude oil tanks at the site of an oil and gas company in Frederick, Colorado. He buried his wife’s body in a shallow grave close by.
It would later emerge that Watts had been having an affair with one of his colleagues, Nichol Kessinger, with the aim of beginning a new life with her after murdering his family.
Detectives quickly caught on to his ill-planned scheme, however, and when he failed a lie-detector test, they pressed him for answers. Having initially (and disgracefully) pivoted to claim that Shanann had killed the girls, Watts ultimately caved and confessed to his heinous crimes.
He was handed three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 84 years – he avoided the death penalty as part of his plea.
Since his incarceration, Watts has been holed up in the maximum-security Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin.
And, according to the Daily Mail, the depraved killer now believes that he has been “forgiven” for his crimes by God. In a set of handwritten letters to a female pen pal, he is said to have scrawled:
“I am a new man. I am not the person who committed those horrible acts.
“2 Corinthians 5:17 says ‘if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new’. That’s me. I’m a new creature.
“I know that God does not see me as a sinner who killed his family; he sees me as His child.
“I have confessed my sins. I am forgiven. The hardest thing I have had to do was to forgive myself.”
Watts them went on to discuss self-forgiveness in more detail, stating that he was “finally at peace” with himself.
“God has separated me from my sin as far as the east is from the west,” Watts wrote.
“But forgiveness of self is another matter entirely and it has taken me years to find my peace, the peace that passes all understanding.
“I am finally at peace with myself.”
A former fellow inmate who shared the Dodge Correctional Institution with Watts claimed that Watts is deeply reviled there, even among criminals.
“A lot of guys would like to get their hands on him,” former Dodge inmate Eddie Nieves told The New York Post. “He killed two little girls who didn’t do anything to deserve it. He’s the lowest of the low.”
According to Nieves, Watts now lives a life of near-total isolation. He reportedly spends most of his time alone, reading the Bible and writing disturbing letters recounting his crimes. Though he receives occasional mail from pen-pals outside prison, he is largely shunned inside and requires extra supervision from guards for his own safety.
READ MORE
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- Chris Watts ‘revealed guilt’ with four gestures and a look of ‘genuine pleasure’, expert says
