A former inmate locked up with Chris Watts claims the Colorado killer has one regret after choking his pregnant wife and smothering his two young daughters as they begged for their lives – and it has nothing to do with murdering them.
Before the murders turned the Watts family into one of the country’s most infamous true crime cases, Chris and Shanann Watts looked like a normal suburban family raising daughters Bella, 4, and 3-year-old Celeste, “CeCe,” in Colorado.
But by the summer of 2018, the marriage was quietly unraveling.
‘Doesn’t want another baby’
While Shanann traveled to North Carolina with the girls to visit family, Watts stayed home in Colorado and turned up the heat with Nichol Kessinger, his co-worker and mistress.
When he later joined his family for the final stretch of the trip, his wife quickly noticed something had changed.
“He has changed. I don’t know who he is. He hasn’t touched me all week, kissed me, talked to me except for when I’m trying to figure out what is wrong. He’s been distant since I left,” Shanann texted a friend on Aug. 7, 2018, per KOAM.
That same day, Shanann – who was roughly 15 weeks pregnant – revealed Chris no longer wanted their unborn son, Nico.
“Chris told me last night he’s scared to death about this third baby and he’s happy with just Bella and Celeste and doesn’t want another baby,” Shanann wrote.
After the family returned to their Frederick home, Shanann left for a short business trip to Arizona and after she returned home, she disappeared.
Mom and girls vanish
On Aug.13, a concerned friend reported her missing after she stopped answering messages, and when police arrived at the family’s home in Frederick, Colorado, nobody was there.
Watts initially told investigators he and Shanann had an emotional conversation about separating earlier that morning, claiming she took the girls and left for a friend’s house.
Then came the television interview that would later haunt the case.
Standing outside the family home during an interview with ABC affiliate Denver7, Watts pleaded for his wife and daughters to return while investigators searched for clues.
“I mean those smiles light up my life,” Watts said, under the guise of a desperate father. “I want everybody just to come home. Like, wherever they’re at, just come home. That’s what I want.”
Behind the scenes, investigators were already noticing holes in his story.
Morning of the murders
According to Watts’ later confessions, he strangled Shanann inside the couple’s bedroom during the early morning hours of August 13 while she was pregnant with their unborn son.
He later described the moment Bella walked into the room while he was moving Shanann’s body off the bed.
“I was getting the sheet off the bed, and (Bella) walked in,” Watts recalled, according to CBS News.
“She had her little pink blanket with her. She was like, ‘What is wrong with Mommy?’”
Watts told her: “She doesn’t feel good.”
“And that is when I started to carry [Shanann’s body] downstairs. I attempted to pick her up, but lost grip. I just had to pull.”
He then loaded Shanann’s body into his truck before placing the children inside the vehicle beside their dead mother as he drove them to an isolated Anadarko Petroleum oil site where he worked.
Smothered girls with same blanket
According to his confession, he suffocated CeCe with the blue New York Yankees blanket she was clutching while Bella watched.
He then placed CeCe’s body inside an oil tank before returning to the truck, where Bella was waiting alone.
“Daddy no!” were the final words Bella cried before Watts killed her with the same blanket he had just used to kill her baby sister.
After murdering Bella, Watts forced the child’s body through an 8-inch hatch of another oil tank before burying Shanann and Nico in a shallow grave.
Though he initially denied harming his family, Watts finally confessed to killing Shanann before eventually admitting he had murdered Bella and CeCe as well, People reports.
He pleaded guilty in November 2018 and was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without parole, avoiding the death penalty through a plea agreement.
Watts was later transferred to Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, where he’ll stay locked up in a specialized unit for high-profile inmates.
Biggest regret
Since arriving in prison, Watts has gradually started speaking more about the events leading up to the murders, and according to people who have spent time with him, his focus rarely seems to land on the crimes.
“He wanted her to have an abortion,” former inmate Miguel Canteros told the Daily Mail. “He said he really felt bad about that, asking her to get rid of the baby.”
Canteros, who was in a prison Bible Study group with Watts, explained that “He’s really focused on the abortion. That’s what he confesses about, that he was ungrateful for the gift of a new baby.”
That same fixation reportedly surfaced again in letters Watts shared with a 43-year-old female pen pal.
“I didn’t want another child,” Watts allegedly wrote in a November 2021 letter reviewed by The Daily Mail.
“I was selfish. I didn’t want more responsibility. It was wrong of me to tell her to do that, because that’s not what she wanted.”
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