My Daddy Is a Hero

by Lena Derhally

  “I slept like two hours last night, so running on empty right now,” Chris said.

  “I know. I can see it. So why don’t we do this? I’m sure you don’t mind if we take a break for the night. I’m sure that you are feeling some of the pressure from me.”

  “You’re doing your job,” Chris said, resuming his affable demeanor.

  “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t grill you a little bit, right?” Coder said.

  “I’ve seen you turn into two different guys,” Chris said, replying with a similar assessment to Coder’s pointing out earlier that there were two Chris’s. “Honestly, I’ve seen where you’re smiling, and I’ve seen where it’s different. You’re doing your job though. I can’t fault you for anything you’ve asked.”

  “So, can I make a commitment to you?” Coder said firmly. “I’m going to commit to you that we’re not gonna stop working until we find them. And I want to commit to you that there is going to come a time when you’re going to feel this pressure from other people. I’m not the only one who thinks that there’s a possibility you have something to do with this.”

  “Like, another FBI agent?” Chris asked. “Pressure like this?”

  “Everyone. Have you ever watched the news and saw two girls and a pregnant woman go missing? And if that’s all you heard, what do you think the public thinks?”

  “Husband,” Chris replied.

  “Husband. So, I’m going to make a commitment to you, okay? I’m going to commit to you that I’m going to be your guy, okay? I’m going to be your guy that handles the investigation. And I’m going to be your guy that you can come to. Because I hope that you realize I’m a nice guy. Tonight, we had to talk about some tough things, but I hope that you know that I did it respectfully. I think that you can see that. As we go on through tonight, the hours, the days - and I hope we don’t get to hour or days - I hope its minutes, right, until this is over. But just in case it’s not, I want you to know that I wanted to be in this room tonight. I wanted to talk to you. And I hope that you want to talk to me. When you have questions, when you have concerns, I want you to call the detective that you work with, and I want you to call me. I want you to know that if you have a question, if you think we’re not doing something enough or well enough, I want you to say I gotta call Grahm. I gotta call Dave. When you need to have a night to yell at somebody, and maybe have a good cry, I want you to call me. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I just can’t.”

  Chris thanked Coder and left to stay the night with Nick and Amanda Thayer. He said he couldn’t sleep in his house alone. Chris’s dad Ronnie was flying into Colorado first thing in the morning for support. Coder wanted them to come directly to the police station so Chris could take the polygraph, and Ronnie could do an interview.

  “I would love for you and me, as a team, to talk tomorrow, to do a polygraph tomorrow and move past all of it,” Coder said. “Move past me wondering about Chris, about wondering which Chris I’m talking to. I want to move past it. I just want to get it behind us. And then our talks are gonna be a lot more comfortable than they were tonight. So, can we say that tomorrow at eleven o’clock?”

  “Okay,” Chris answered, knowing the walls were closing in on him.

  * * *

  2. Watts, Chris. Interview with Tomas Hoppough. Denver 7 ABC. August 15, 2018.

  Chapter 5

  “Hold Me Tight”

  At six o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, August 15, Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent, Matthew Sailor arrived at the Watts residence. Upon arrival, he met up with Detective Baumhover, Officer Steve Walje of the Frederick Police Department, and CBI crime scene analyst Dave Yocum. They had already received consent from Chris to search the house and gather evidence, but first Baumhover needed to call Chris to obtain the code to enter the residence. Once inside, they found Dieter in a kennel. They took him out and put him in the backyard while they conducted their search.

  As they walked through the home, Sailor noted how neat and organized it was. The items in the kitchen were all labeled, and the clothes in the closets were organized by type and color. The beds had all been made, but Sailor knew that, in the initial search of the house, the children’s beds were unmade, and the bed in the master bedroom had been stripped of its sheets.

  As Sailor made his way through the house, he noticed that every single trash can in the bathrooms and bedrooms had been emptied. Lucky for investigation purposes, when he looked in the kitchen trash bin, he found the garbage bags from all the rooms. As he lifted a large trash bag up and out of the bin, he saw a bedsheet and three pillowcases underneath it. The bedsheet and one pillowcase had what appeared to be a dark substance smeared on it. The team took some photographs before collecting it as evidence.

  When Sailor walked into the garage, he saw a cardboard box with a return address from Amazon in a trash receptacle. When he picked up the box, a book fell out. He reached down to pick up the book and examined the title: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, a relationship self-help book by Sue Johnson. Sailor recalled hearing from colleagues that Shanann had sent Chris a book while in North Carolina in an attempt to save their marriage. This must have been the book, and it had clearly never been opened or read.

  There may have been more than one reason Chris had no interest in reading a book intended to keep couples together when he wanted only distance between Shanann and him. As Coder had pointed out to Chris, he had improved his appearance since his marriage. And Coder had also pointed out that when something like that happened with a man, a woman was usually involved. He had even asked, “What’s her name?”

  Chris had denied the accusations, suggesting that if Shanann or he had wanted to stray they would have discussed it with each other. But Chris Watts was keeping a secret. There was another woman. Her name was Nikki Kessinger.

  Even as Chris was speaking with the detectives, insisting on his innocence, Nikki, his coworker and lover, was obsessively searching for news stories on the whereabouts of Shanann Watts and her daughters. She was starting to get increasingly anxious about the fact that she was about to be in a situation that was way over her head. A contractor at Anadarko Petroleum, where Chris was a field coordinator, she had met him there, and since late June, had been having a very serious and intense affair with him.

  At age thirty, Nikki had a few similarities to Shanann Watts. They were both curvy with long, dark brown hair and green eyes, but that was the extent of the similarities between the two women. Shanann was softer, more feminine and striking. Nikki was considered attractive by the men in her office. They would check her out as she walked in in the morning as they stood around together at their morning meetings. She was the athletic type: muscular and stocky in build.

  Nikki wasn’t aware that police already had work emails between Chris and her. Tony Huskey, Anadarko’s regional security manager, had called the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and told them that something was going on between Nikki and Chris based on the emails he had retrieved. These emails, which began in early June, hinted that there was more than a friendship brewing between them.

  Nikki likely knew that the longer Shanann and the girls were missing and the longer she withheld important information to the investigation, the more suspicious she would look to the police. The media attention was also going to bring out many secrets. As much as Nikki probably wanted to disappear, she had to know the affair would be discovered and didn’t want to risk looking like an accomplice. For her to come out of this somewhat unscathed, she would have to help the police and give them any incriminating evidence she had on Chris, as soon as possible.

  Nikki said Chris had acted as if everything were totally normal up until later in the day on Monday, the day Shanann and the girls vanished. He had nonchalantly texted Nikki that his family was “gone.” She assumed they had some kind of spat, and Shanann would be back. Chr
is had told her Shanann had left her wedding rings behind, and perhaps it was over for good. He asked Nikki what he should do with the rings, and she suggested pawning them. Maybe Chris’s marriage really was over, and they could be together now. But, no. Now, his wife and daughters were missing.

  Nikki was probably aware how bad it would look if the affair came out in the media. It would give Chris a very real motive and expose him as a liar and a cheater. It would also make Nikki look like a super villain. After all, she had been sleeping with a married man with young children and a pregnant wife. Before she decided to contact law enforcement, she did a search on her phone to find out if cops could trace deleted text messages and how long phone companies kept messages. She deleted everything she could on her phone: text messages and internet searches. Nikki would later say she deleted her messages because she was embarrassed about the raunchy texts between her and Chris.

  Then Nikki called her father, Dwayne. She was not about to deal with this alone, and she needed him to help her navigate the storm that she feared was about to ruin her life. As she called her father, Chris was also reaching out to his.

  • • •

  At 7:47 a.m., Chris texted his father, Ronnie Watts, and told him he would come pick him up at the airport. Ronnie had boarded a flight as soon as Chris told him he needed him to be in Colorado with him. Ronnie had come alone as Chris had specified; he wanted only his father there. A quiet, subdued man, who much like his son, never showed emotion, Ronnie had a slow, southern drawl and snow-white, neatly combed hair.

  When Chris saw Ronnie at the airport, he had a strong feeling this would be the last time he would see his father outside a prison cell. Still, other than asking Chris if he had any clue about where Shanann, Bella, and CeCe were, Ronnie did not address the reason for his being there. Mostly the father and son made casual small talk. They talked about sports because that was all they knew how to do in the face of a crisis.

  When they arrived at the police station around eleven o’clock that morning, Ronnie was taken to an investigation room to be interviewed separately, and Chris went to take the polygraph test.

  In the questioning room, Ronnie explained some history about Shanann and Chris and how they met. He gushed about how Chris had always been a role model son as far as Ronnie was concerned. He was never in trouble, never did drugs, or had any mental health issues. He was a great student in school, focused on sports, and he prioritized those activities over dating and girls. In fact, for prom, a girl had asked him to go.

  Ronnie gave background details about the recent trip Shanann had taken with the girls to North Carolina. The trip was designed so Shanann and the girls could spend quality time with both sides of their family. CeCe had never met her Uncle Frankie, Shanann’s younger brother, or Jamie, Chris’s older sister. Ideally, this trip would give CeCe and Bella the opportunity to get to know their uncles, aunts, and cousins better and spend more quality time with both sets of grandparents. The history between Shanann’s and Chris’s families were tense to say the least, and the visits with Chris’s family were sometimes a disaster.

  “So, I definitely want to hear about that and what’s been going on,” the interviewing agent said to Ronnie, referring to a blowout fight between Chris’s mother, Cindy, and Shanann.

  “We hadn’t talked to her since that blowout, and she sent this text to us. When they got back (to Colorado) they did a sonogram for the baby. She sent this picture of the sonogram to me.” Ronnie pulled out his phone and showed a picture of Shanann’s unborn son to the agent. “No comment or nothing on it. No nothing. She was reaching out, and I think that’s when Chris initially told her he wanted the separation and stuff. He told me he wanted the separation when he was down for the visit. He said, ‘I don’t love her anymore.’”

  “And was that the first time… or were you aware of prior marital problems?” the agent asked.

  “I didn’t sense something was going on until now. They weren’t all lovey-dovey like they used to be. And anytime we would come visit them a couple times a year and FaceTime with them and stuff, she’s sitting on her ass, on her phone doing her Le-Vel (Thrive) stuff. Chris is running around, taking care of the kids, feeding the kids, doing this, doing that. He loves them kids. Believe me, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt either one of the kids,” Ronnie said, in an attempt to paint Chris as the “good” one.

  “Did it seem like there were serious marital problems prior to this visit?” the agent asked.

  “He said he should have done this a long time ago...and just like the baby now they’re having. She was telling us it was Chris’s idea to have it 80/20 because he wanted a boy. And I mentioned it to him, and he said, ‘It wasn’t me. It was all her. Everything is about her. She has this image, this persona that she wants. This image that she wants out there all the time. Everything is hunky dory. Everything is beautiful in the world and stuff. The things on Facebook is a mask she puts on.’”

  Ronnie continued to speak unfavorably about Shanann. He called her “paranoid” and “extremely bipolar.” In particular, he described Shanann as paranoid toward his wife, Cindy. With the recent trip to visit them, Ronnie said Shanann accused Cindy of trying to kill her children by exposing them to nuts. CeCe had life-threatening nut allergies, and Cindy did not take the allergies seriously, causing Shanann to feel a great deal of anxiety and distrust toward her mother-in-law. Ronnie also explained that the rest of the visit to North Carolina was extremely contentious. After the incident referred to as “nutgate,” Shanann spent the rest of the trip with her family, refusing to let Bella and CeCe see him or Cindy.

  Chapter 6

  “I love those girls to death.”

  While Ronnie was being interviewed, Chris was taking the polygraph that would ultimately seal his fate. Special Agent Tammy Lee of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation administered it. Tammy, a skilled investigator with shoulder-length blond hair, a warm smile, and a jovial laugh, was astute and likable. People felt comfortable in her presence. On that day, she wore a navy-blue shirt with a black-and white-striped cardigan.

  When Chris walked in the room and was introduced to Tammy, she got up from her chair to shake his hand and warmly said, “Hey Chris, how are you?”

  In her mind, Tammy did a quick assessment of Chris as she watched him take a seat in the chair at the table where she sat. Chris, by all accounts, was kind, respectful, easy-going, calm, and cooperative. Every single person who had been interviewed for the investigation—coworkers, friends, family—not one had even the most miniscule criticism of Chris. Everyone loved him and thought he was the greatest, most solid guy on the planet.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked him.

  “I feel sick to my stomach,” he said lifelessly.

  Tammy laid on the flattery, commending him for helping the investigation and being willing to do the polygraph. She assured him that this was just standard protocol, and they did it for all the missing persons cases. She made sure to tell Chris that he wasn’t being singled out. Just as Coder had done, Tammy needed to make him feel comfortable so she could get him to talk.

  Tammy carefully walked him through what to expect on the polygraph. She read him his Miranda rights and told him the polygraph was completely voluntary and that he would be recorded. He signed documents giving his consent, and the polygraph began.

  Tammy eased into the test, asking basic questions first, about Chris’s childhood, life, family, and occupation. She asked if he had any nicknames, and he told her people at work referred to him as “Rainman,” after Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of an autistic savant in the 1988 film. This was because once Chris went to an oil site, he would always remember explicit details after. Chris recalled being a young boy and going to pick up his sister Jamie at middle school with his grandmother every day. While they waited for Jamie to come out of the building, his grandmother would quiz him on all the state capitals. He said he thought
that maybe that’s where his sharp memory and uncanny ability to recall tiny details came from.

  Chris told Tammy that he had fallen out of love with Shanann and no longer felt compatible, and that they no longer had “that connection anymore.” In North Carolina, when they were together, Shanann’s parents and kids were around all the time, so most of their talks about their relationship were through text messages and not face to face. Chris said that he and Shanann both wanted to make it work and were at a point where they were wondering what they could do to make that happen. Shanann didn’t know what to say, and she wanted to work on it, either by reading a book or going to counseling.

  Chris mentioned that the last time they had sex was when their unborn son, Nico, was conceived sometime in May. He said he was usually the one to initiate sex, and most of the time, he was “shot down” but acknowledged that “that’s married life,” and on average, they had sex once or twice a week, and it was always enjoyable for him.

  Tammy asked Chris if Shanann had directly asked him if he had been unfaithful to her. Chris said she did, but he denied it, saying, “You know that would never happen. You know what kind of guy I am.”

  Chris boasted that his friend Jeremy Lindstrom said, “You’re the type of guy I could send you with my wife for a week and know nothing would happen.”

  Chris seemed to brag quite a bit about his stellar reputation with others.

  “People know what kind of person I am,” Chris said. “I’m not the type of guy that’s gonna say, ‘All right, my wife is gone. Who’s the girl I can find in five weeks?’ That’s not me. I respect my wife, and she respects me. If she’s somewhere safe right now, I don’t think it would be with a guy. If it is, I’m fine. I want her to be safe. I want the kids back home. If it was with a guy, great. Come back home. We’ll talk about it later. I never had an inkling that she would do the same…that she would do anything to me.” He quickly caught his slip up.