Two Face- the Man Underneath Christopher Watts

by Nick van der Leek

  The court date in August. The court date filed in July [while Shan’ann was away] but due to be heard on August 24th was an accountability test. Who was going to be held accountable for the real house on Saratoga Trail. Who was going to step up and pay for that? The 15 week milestone of the pregnancy halfway through the same month, Chris’s birthday in May and Celeste’s third birthday on July 16th were all significant ticks of the clock – inexorable markers pushing Chris where he didn’t want to go. Perhaps while they were both in North Carolina together for that final week, Shan’ann and Chris petitioned their family for bailout money. During the same period Shan’ann’s folks both make an appearance sporting Thrive patches on their arms. Was this the best, the most they could offer? A colorful patch on the arm and glittering smile for Facebook? Not a good harbinger for Chris’s future, was it?

  And so when Shan’ann made one more trip to Phoenix, Chris had had enough. He stewed and he sulked, he fretted and perhaps fucked someone else while she was away – but when she returned – the second she stepped inside – he put a stop to the Thrivin’ permanently.

  *Follow these links for further reading on multi-level marketing, pyramid schemes, coverage and reviews [positive and negative] of Le-vel/Thrive. According to the Federal Trade Commission:

  If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it’s probably not. It could be a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the vast majority of participants lose money.

  Motive and The Psychology of Oil

  “Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” ― J. Paul Getty

  Something woke Christopher Watts from his dream in the Colorado suburbs. What was it? What normally rouses us from our sleep in the middle of the night, besides noises, or the cries of children? Nightmares.

  It just seems like I’m living in a nightmare, and I can’t get out of it.

  Not I can’t wake up, but I can’t get out.

  Motive is the most difficult aspect of true crime. It’s difficult because it’s hidden. In some cases, motive apparently remains a mystery in the mind of the media, the court and the public. Sometimes in the most high profile cases, from Stephen Paddock to Casey Anthony, from Adam Lanza to Scott Peterson, why is never revealed. One reason why defeats us is because we look at the suspect and we try to put the cloak of motive onto his shoulders, and see if it fits. But motive doesn’t work that way. Motive comes from the suspect, it can’t come from us. So in order to intuit motive we have to get to know Chris Watts. Not our version of Chris Watts, not the monster standing on the porch lying about his family before their blood was even cold, but Chris Watts the way he saw himself.

  A simple way to illustrate how and why motive is so often misinterpreted, is to look at a romantic relationship you were once part of. What was your partner’s version of why the relationship didn’t work? What was your partner’s version of who was to blame? Often, especially when there’s a great deal of ignominy, someone else’s version of who you are, what you did or what motivated you aren’t likely to be accurate. The best spokesperson for your motives is you, but can you be relied on to be honest when it’s not about a breakup, but a murder?

  A key way around this impasse is to consider what is integral to ourselves when we try to find love. We present the best version of ourselves to the world, and on social media. We convey ourselves – as best we can – as the conquering hero. But is it true? When any person masturbates, especially when using fantasy, the fantasy tends to elevate the person at the center of it. In true crime it’s the same, but although it’s just as simple, it’s not necessarily as straightforward.

  In order to fathom Chris Watts’ motive, we have to see inside his fantasy for himself. We have to see what’s going on in his mental masturbation. The good news is, from a distance, this is so easy it’s a joke. It’s easy because it’s so fundamentally human it’s a cliché. But let’s turn to Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death for an eloquent explanation of what this boils down to:

  “An animal who gets his feeling of worth symbolically…must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value…he must stand out, be a hero, make the biggest possible contribution to world life, show that he counts more than anything or anyone else…”

  They key word in all this is “symbolically”. Becker describes our self-worth as “feeding on symbols”. This is a fancy way of describing all our various activities on social media. What do you think those likes and thumbs up mean on Facebook? They’re symbols reinforcing in the most primary and even facile manner, our sense of self. It is by definition symbolic, and it is by definition a thoroughfare to our primary sense of self, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. No matter how glorious our heroism is on Facebook, in the real world it may or may not be real, and for most people it’s not.

  This same set of circumstances exists in the real world, and in our characters. Becker refers to the struggle for self-esteem in childhood as “the least disguised”. The child is unashamed, according to Becker, about what he needs and wants most. But Becker takes it further:

  “His whole organism shouts the claims of his natural narcissism. And this claim can make childhood hellish for the adults concerned…”

  On June 26th, Shan’ann posted to Facebook a rare complaint about her younger daughter:

  “Remind me to NEVER fly with Celeste till she’s 15!”

  Less than two months later, when Chris was alone with an unusually talkative older daughter, and a perpetual busy-body in the younger one, did he wait for Shan’ann to return home, or did he kill both of them early on while Shan’ann was away?

  Scott Peterson, in terms of Laci’s pregnancy, waited almost till the last possible moment to murder her. There’s a sense of reluctance perhaps. She was murdered at eight-and-a-half months pregnant. In Chris Watts, 15 weeks was his limit, and this also suggests he may not have waited to kill his daughters. If the pregnancy had to be terminated, and Shan’ann had to be terminated with it, he may have reasoned, well then the whole family had to be. And so why wait? Why not start with the girls, get that out of the way, and then deal with Shan’ann the moment she arrived?

  Consider, in this context the children left in the care of their father, and the reality that their self-extension came at his expense [the way he was seeing it]. They were going to cost him everything, and they already had.

  According to Becker:

  “An abstract idea of his own worth is comprised of sounds, words, images in the air, in the mind, on paper…[but] when there are several children competing at once for the prerogatives of limitless self-extension…it is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration…it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation….This is the reason for the daily and usually excruciating struggle with siblings: the child cannot allow himself to be second-best or devalued, much less give out.”

  What Becker’s really getting at here is that we want to be the heroes in our own stories. That’s what we want most. That’s the nightmare that woke him from his slumber, the realization that his hero project was being lost, being suffocated, by the agonizing and unbearable struggles of these new mouths feeding voraciously off him. And the numbers weren’t adding up; they would never add up. Those numbers also symbolically represented his lack of heroism in the suburbs of Frederick – in effect, his failure as a man.

  When Chris Watts stands on the porch talking, we see a liar, a monster, a narcissist, a murderer. We see body language clues and ticks. What we don’t see is the most obvious aspect of all: he’s trying to be a hero in his own story, and this motive expressed on camera, also goes through the door of #2825 Saratoga Trail through the family dynamics, through the crime scene, all the way back to their wedding day. Each of us share the same motive. All of us want to be the heroes of our own stories. What happens when
the one closest to us, the one we have given the most to, invested ourselves in, threatens to expose us as the villain of the story?

  Motive

  Imagine what could have happened if Shan’ann decided to divorce Chris? Her social media in which he played a starring role, far from being validating, could invalidate him as a cheat and a scoundrel. If he was tied into the Thrive stuff, and her commissions were contingent on him play-acting the good and happy husband for the foreseeable future [in exchange for some future payout], then he may have felt locked in to a symbolic construct that did that anyway, and Shan’ann was simply never going to stop.

  A Facebook post which may or may not be authentic suggests that Shan’ann may have been “condescending”, and blamed him for things spiralling out of control.

  In a scenario where one depends symbolically on others for one’s sense of self, they may rely on others to cope with demanding situations, but if the other person reveals himself to be less than in any way – insecure, or weak for example – then the person depending on that person suddenly feels threatened too, and may lash out. In the Watts household, this probably went both ways.

  In The Birth and Death of Meaning, Becker describes how this plays out when couples go on holidays and enter into unusual or uncertain environments.

  “They are almost wholly underneath their situation, and if their spouse…fails to show the requisite strength they will often lash out at him angrily….A reverse variation of this same [dynamic] is when a person feels a surge of anger and extreme annoyance at another who is dependent on him.”

  Becker goes further, illustrating how this anger can lead to aggression, and why. Citing Erich Fromm’s “compensatory aggressions”, Becker alludes to “severe deprivations” of a long standing nature. Think about the severe deprivation that’s part and parcel of network marketing, or people who are permanently on social media to get their fix.

  It’s endless selling, it’s selling everything, yet somehow one ends up losing everything. Becker refers to this as a “severe cheating of life-experience” resulting in a “truly crippled psyche” and a “genuinely deprived emotional development”.

  It’s not clear if Chris’s deprivation is as a man, as a gay man or both, just that the deprivation is there, and that it’s chronic. The Thrive business might have emotionally compromised Shan’ann, but it was killing him. Killing her was perhaps his way – symbolically at least – of wresting control back of his hero project.

  Think about network marketing as the slayer of the hero project. Instead of a man or a woman becoming their own father, they become slaves, and they enslave. It’s the absolute antithesis of heroism. The opposite of a hero is a coward, a faint-of-heart, a chicken, a loser, a yellow belly, a craven, a swindler, a sneak, a mouse, a weakling, a good-for-nothing. Although Thrive promises its patrons wealth and wellness, can it really deliver them from their dysfunction, or in their desperation, does it sadistically enhance it?

  If this seems farfetched, consider Fromm’s description of what he describes as the “necrophilic character”. It’s someone who values death over life. It’s a person who prefers mechanical things over what Becker vividly describes as “pulsating” and vital. The necrophile, a very anal character [like the gambling Stephen Paddock, or the gaming James Holmes, or the able-bodied double amputee Oscar Pistorius] “takes revenge on life for what it [life] did to him…he allies with death over life…”

  Becker refers to “crippling a person by repressing their spontaneity”. In Shan’ann’s final video, she records her daughters walking out on the lawn in North Carolina during a shower of rain. Having just spontaneously gone out in the rain, she sets up her camera, and orders them to go back out there. When Bella doesn’t want to, Shan’ann cuts her off and focusses on her younger child, saying manipulatively:

  “Ce-ce’s having fun. She’s like…is this what rain feels like? This is nice. In Colorado it only lasts two seconds, and then we get things that come out of the sky and beat you to death.”

  When Ce-ce comes in, Shan’ann asks her to go out a third time, and this time she says no. Shan’ann tells her daughter that her father’s watching her; it’s an incentive to get her out there again. July 5th was a Thursday. Is Chris really watching?

  Then Ce-ce starts shivering. Shan’ann continues filming regardless, while her father heads out to get her a towel. In all Shan’ann asks Ce-ce to go out six or seven times in the short clip. Finally she tells her daughter there’s a squirrel in the garden and she should chase after him.

  In this final clip, she implores her children again and again to act in front of her phone, to greet her phone, and yet one can see on their faces that it’s gotten very old already. Before wrapping up, Shan’ann reminds her pals she has Thrive product trial packs with her in North Carolina, in her parents’ bedroom if anyone wants any.

  In a 2013 study from the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice four separate types of family annihilators were identified out of 71 perpetrators. Virtually all were loving husbands and good fathers. The most common cause for family murder, ironically enough, was family break up. This was followed by financial trouble. Interestingly, Chris Watts and Scott Peterson fall into the same category. Neither are Paranoid killers. Neither are Disappointed killers who believe their family have let them down [perhaps for not following a religious custom]. Nor are they self-righteous killers blaming their wives, although given what Chris Watts did after he was arrested, there’s clearly an element of self-righteousness with him that’s absent with Scott Peterson.

  Anomic killers, according to the study, see the family as a symbol of their own economic success. In circumstances of economic failure [and bankruptcy is exactly that] the family no longer serves this function.

  So in a word, Chris Watts’ motive is greed. Greed in all its many layers.

  The Psychology of Oil

  Just as a man’s sense of identity, his sense of self and his esteem may be an entirely symbolic construct, a collection of artificial renderings that we may collectively refer to as a man’s character, a motive is symbolic. Consider the symbolism in home ownership, in driving a certain kind of car, in consuming a certain alcoholic beverage, or smoking one brand of cigarettes over the other. All the motives activated in consumers are symbolic – it might have to do with egoism, or aspiration or simply expanding our sense of self through association.

  On the other end of this crime is the burial site. Dust and oil. Dust for his wife and unborn child, oil for the two children that were alive at the time. They were murdered first, and yet he blamed his wife for their deaths. There may even be some truth – symbolically speaking – to this claim, the way he saw it.

  The psychology of oil suggests an idea of renewal. Where the fruit of his body are submerged in the organic detritus and recycled back into a fuel for engines, a fuel for life. But his wife and unborn child are given a different burial. A shallow grave. Dust. A single bedsheet fluttering in the wind like a withering stalk of grass. This isn’t accidental. The mother and foetus – in his mind – were harbingers of doom for him, and by killing them he was simultaneously delivered from his obligations and doomed by new ones.

  Why did he kill her? Because she killed him financially. And through her, she killed them too.

  Revisiting the Porch

  “Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low.” ― Henry Ward Beecher

  For 20 years, the French artist Claude Monet painted the same scene again and again. It was a simple scene in his garden. Water lilies. Every time he painted it, he saw something different. Different light, different seasons, different insects, different colors, different energies. In all Monet produced around 250 oil paintings all dedicated to the same study. Each execution was another impression of the same scene, and each one, in its own way, expressed a unique truth about the world.

  We need to apply similar patience and penetratin
g insight when looking to the man on the porch. Yes, we’ve seen it once. But what do we see second time round, or the time after that?

  CHRIS [Sounding confident, conveyed with fortitude]: I’m Chris Watts. W-A-T-T-S.

  REPORTER: What’s going on right now at your house?

  CHRIS: Right now [little shake of the head] you got canine units, the sheriff’s [little curl of the upper lip] department [intake of breath] everybody, they’re doing the best [blink] right now to figure out…if they can get a scent.

  That’s what’s going at his house. Dogs sniffing. Not his wife and family missing.

  If only the reporter had asked what’s been going on inside, before August 13th. What it been like being part of this family. What was it like to live with Shan’ann? What was hardest to put up with? Not that he would have answered honestly, but seeing his reaction would have been useful on these pertinent questions. He’ll almost certainly be asked these questions in court, assuming he elects to testify.

  CHRIS [Stuttering]: S-s-see where they went. If they went on foot [glances into the house], if they went in a car. If they went somewhere.

  As he continues speaking, a smile leaks through, he shrugs and glances across the road to the neighbor’s dog barking in response to dogs barking in the house.

  When the reporter asks a very open-ended question about “what happened” his response is telling. He looks directly up, for inspiration. It sounds like he starts off saying “she didn’t make it”, he seems to be trying awful hard here not smile, and then corrects himself with a gulp.