Inside his prison cell, Chris Watt sits with photos of his dead family – the pregnant wife he choked to death and the two young daughters whose pleas he ignored as he killed them with the same blanket.
Long before the murders horrified the country, Chris and Shanann Watts appeared to live an ordinary suburban life in Colorado with their daughters, Bella, 4 and CeCe, 3.
Behind closed doors, however, their world was collapsing.
‘Epitome’ of anger
During the summer of 2018, Watts secretly started a relationship with a co-worker while distancing himself from his family. According to investigators, Shanann grew suspicious in the weeks leading up to her death and confronted him during the early morning hours of Aug. 13 after returning home from a business trip.
Watts later told investigators he admitted he no longer loved her, and during the argument, emotions spiraled out of control.
“This was like the epitome of being angry,” he later said, according to CBS News.
Bella walks in
Investigators say Watts strangled Shanann inside the couple’s bedroom while she was 15 weeks pregnant with their unborn son.
In later confessions, he described the horrifying moment their oldest daughter, Bella, entered the room while he was moving Shanann’s body.
“I was getting the sheet off the bed, and (Bella) walked in,” Watts recalled.
“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.”
After dragging the body down the stairs, he then dropped Shannan on the floorboard of his truck before placing Bella and CeCe in the seats near their dead mom. He was driving them all to an oil site owned by Anadarko Petroleum, where Watts worked.
“What are you doing to mommy?” the Colorado killer said the girls kept asking.
Watts later claimed he could not remember his response.
The final moments at the oil site
At the isolated work site, Watts placed Shanann on the spot she would later be buried before turning to his daughters.
In his confession, Watts said he suffocated CeCe with the blue New York Yankees blanket she was holding while Bella watched.
He then dumped the toddler’s body in an oil tank and returned to the truck, where Bella was waiting alone, ABC News reports.
“Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?” Bella asked her father after watching her sister die.
“I don’t know if I said yes, like a horrible person. Or, if I just put the blanket over her, and did the same thing,” Watts said, adding that Bella put up a fight and cried, “Daddy no!” as he killed her with the same blanket he used to smother CeCe.
“I hear it every day (in prison), when Bella was talking to me,” the teary-eyed killer told the FBI during the investigation.
Afterward, he stuffed Bella’s body through an 8-inch opening of a separate oil tank before burying Shanann in a shallow grave nearby.
Desperate dad searching for answers
In the days after Shanann and the girls disappeared, Watts publicly portrayed himself as a worried husband desperately trying to find his family.
Standing outside the family home during a television interview with Denver7, he insisted he had no idea where they were.
“When I came home and then walked in the house and nothing, just vanished, nothing was here,” Watts said.
“I mean she wasn’t here, the kids weren’t here, nobody was here.”
Investigators quickly noticed inconsistencies in his story, and suspicion intensified after Watts failed a polygraph examination.
Life without parole
According to People, Watts first confessed to killing Shanann before eventually admitting he had murdered Bella and CeCe as well.
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 remains incarcerated in a specialized unit for high-profile inmates.
Talks to photos of wife and kids
Years after the murders, one detail from Watts’ prison interviews continues disturbing people who followed the case closely.
During conversations with FBI investigators, Watts, after claiming he wished he never killed his family, revealed he keeps photographs of Shanann, Bella, and CeCe inside his prison cell.
“I have pictures of my wife and kids in my cell, and every morning and every night, I talk to them,” Watts said, adding, “I have this book I used to read for CeCe, and I remember that book, I read it to her every night.”
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