Shanann started to cry, and mascara streaked down her face as she told Chris she loved him. Chris told her he didn’t love her and wasn’t compatible with her. He said he became angry again when Shanann told him if he left her, she would not let him see the kids. In his words to Cadle, “She was used to getting her way and when she saw she wasn’t, she would revert as always to threats and anger to get what she wanted. This time, though, I was not giving into her demands. That’s when my anger for her began. Years of her telling me what to do and what not to do. Keeping me from my own family for sometimes months at a time were over, keeping me in the background was over.”
Chris was not necessarily upset about losing the kids. According to one of his versions of the story, he had already smothered his daughters at this point. His anger was about his feelings of being out of control, and he resented Shanann for it. Now he felt empowered to have ultimate control over his wife.
Chris spent his entire life being the helpful guy everyone loved and wanted to be around. There was no way he could face being the bad guy. He knew if word got out that he had cheated on his pregnant wife, everyone would look down on him, and that was not something Chris could handle. Shanann was suspicious about possible infidelity. In a version of Chris’s story, she had even said, “I knew there was someone else!”
In his mind, he blamed Shanann for all his problems. In his mind, it was Shanann’s fault he had grown distant from his family and her fault his children didn’t have a close relationship with them. In his mind, it was Shanann’s fault he had cheated on her and put him in this mess. Everything was her fault. Chris’ narcissism and entitlement had reached their peak.
Chris watched her as she got drowsy, and then he put his hands around her neck, squeezing her jugular vein and cutting off the oxygen to her brain. Shanann did not fight back as she helplessly watched her husband, the man she had always referred to as the best thing that had ever happened to her, slowly squeeze the life out of her. As she died, Chris noticed she evacuated her bowels, and her eyes filled with blood.
Chris’ adrenaline began coursing through his veins. He claimed he was shaking uncontrollably. It was over. His wife was lying dead in front of him, and he had killed her with his own hands.
• • •
Sandi was having a spiritual connection to her daughter around this time. As she shared with Dr. Phil,7 at 4:30 am, she shot out of bed in a cold sweat. Trembling, she got up and sat at the foot of the bed. She felt as if a spear had gone through her forehead.
She heard a whisper in her ear. “Shanann.”
“Did something happen to my daughter?” she asked out loud.
An overwhelming feeling of pure horror and dread overcame Sandi. In that moment, she knew deep within her soul, that her daughter was gone.
Frantic, she woke up her husband Frank.
“Something is wrong with Shanann,” she said, panicked.
“She’s fine, don’t worry,” Frank said to her, patting her gently.
Sandi got up and rushed to her son Frankie’s room and pushed open the door.
“Frankie, something is wrong with Shanann.”
“Mom, you’re worrying again,” Frankie said.
“I’m telling you. Something is wrong,” Sandi insisted.
“Mom. You’re being paranoid. She’s probably sleeping or something.”
Sandi closed the door to Frankie’s room, but she was still shaking uncontrollably.
• • •
At the Watts house, Chris stood hovering over the bed and Shanann’s body. He glanced at Shanann’s hand and noticed her wedding and engagement rings were still on. Chris pried her rings off her finger. He would deal with them later. Chris decided he would stage the home to appear that Shanann left him. He could make it look as if she took off and left. No one would ever believe Chris would hurt her, but maybe they would believe that Shanann could get angry enough to leave him and never return. As far as the outside world could see, she was the fiery one with the Italian temper, and Chris was the rational, logical one,
Chris had just started wrapping Shanann’s body in the top bedsheet when he heard rustling at the door. As told to Cadle, and this was Chris changing his story yet again, much to his shock and surprise, it was Bella and CeCe. They stared at the lifeless body of their mother, lying face down, wrapped in a sheet.
“What’s wrong with Mommy?” Bella asked quietly with trepidation in her soft-spoken voice.
“Mommy doesn’t feel good. We have to take her to the hospital,” Chris responded. Chris said he noticed Bella’s eyes were bruised, and both girls looked confused and traumatized after his initial attempts to smother them. Chris felt no empathy for them at all. In fact, he told Cadle he was overwhelmed with anger that they were still alive. Although this part of the story seems farfetched to many, Chris explained that this was why the cause of death of the girls in the autopsy report was smothering. In my opinion, this is one of the most believable parts of the story. I believe this moment really shows who he always was. He was angry his children were still alive.
The girls watched in confusion as Chris tried to lift Shanann and carry her out of the bedroom. He lost his balance, stumbled, and then dropped Shanann’s body to the ground. He wasn’t going to be able to physically carry her down the stairs, so he began to drag her down them. The sound of her body hitting the stairs made loud thumps. Bella began to cry, and CeCe began to whimper.
Chris knew he had to move quickly. The sun was coming up, and people would be waking up. Chris left the girls inside the house and backed his truck into the garage. He carried Shanann’s body out and loaded it in the back cab of his truck on the floor. Then, he went back in the house and grabbed the lunch he had packed earlier, a gas can, a rake and a shovel. It’s quite astonishing to think that he was planning to eat only a few hours after murdering his family, and that he even remembered to bring lunch to work.
On his way back out, he spotted the self-help book, Hold Me Tight that Shanann had sent him. He grabbed it and callously tossed it in the trashcan in the garage. This could be another way to insinuate Shanann was done and leaving him. He grabbed some garbage bags to cover her face and feet.
In the house, CeCe was carrying her favorite NY Yankees blanket while Bella was clutching her pink blanket she took everywhere with her. Chris put the garbage bags on Shanann’s head and feet before he put the girls in the car. He picked up the girls one by one and put them on the bench in the cab with their feet dangling over their mother’s body on the floor below them. They cuddled up together, trying to console each other, confused and tired.
Chris started the engine and pulled away from the dream home he and Shanann had built. A home that held so much hope and promise for the future. A home and family that represented the American dream.
Chris began the forty-five-minute drive to Cervi 319, the very same oil tank site that he had texted Kodi Roberts about less than twenty-four hours earlier. He told Kodi he could go out there by himself. Chris knew he would be alone, at least for a short while, and he had planned for it. He had to act quickly to cover his tracks.
“Daddy, it smells,” Bella complained.
Chris caught a whiff of a skunk-like smell that was coming from Shanann’s dead body.
In the rearview mirror, he watched Bella and CeCe doze off as the steady movement of the truck in the early morning lulled them into an on-and-off sleep. Occasionally, they would open their eyes and then close them again.
When Chris pulled the truck into the Cervi 319 oil site, no one was there, just as he had anticipated. He stopped the truck, pulled out Shanann’s body, and coldly tossed her body to the side of the truck. Without much hesitation or thought, he reached inside the truck and grabbed CeCe’s beloved Yankee blanket from her hands. CeCe, too young to comprehend what her father was about to do, did not put up a struggle as Chris placed the blanket over her head
and simultaneously put his hand over her neck. He strangled her until he felt her body go limp and lifeless in his hands.
Bella sat silently and in shock next to her sister, watching the unthinkable as it happened. She watched as Chris took CeCe’s limp body and carried her up the stairs that led to the top of the oil tanks. He opened the hatch to one of the tanks, only around 8-inches wide, and dropped CeCe into the dark, viscous oil. He waited until he heard the splash her body made as it hit the thick liquid. Then he closed the hatch and went back to the truck for Bella. In his letter to Cadle, he recalled the details in the most detached way, saying, “I couldn’t believe how easy it was to just let her drop through the hole and let her go. I heard the splash as she hit the oil.”
She was still sitting silently in the truck, her mother’s lifeless body outside it, and her beloved sister and best friend, now dead and discarded in a tank of crude oil. Bella looked at Chris with fear and anxiety in her eyes.
“Daddy, is the same thing going to happen to me that happened to CeCe?” Bella asked.
Chris did not remember if he said, “Yes” or said nothing. He took the Yankees blanket and moved toward Bella.
“Daddy, no!” Bella pleaded her soft, quiet voice full of terror.
She did her best to try to fight her father off as she struggled for her life. Chris felt her head moving back and forth as she grunted under the blanket. She was no match for the strength of her father who lifted weights religiously. Chris seemed surprised that out of all three, Bella seemed to put up the biggest fight. He told Cadle, again, completely detached and clinical that, “Out of all three, Bella is the only one that put up a fight. I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life, saying, ‘Daddy, NO!!! She knew what I was doing to her. She may not have understood death, but she knew I was killing her.”
After Chris killed Bella, he took her back up to the top of the oil tanks and opened the hatch to the other one. Larger in stature than CeCe, Bella was harder to fit through the opening, and he had to do some maneuvering to push her body fully through. After hearing her body hit the oil below, he closed the hatch and made his way back to Shanann’s body.
He found a spot where he could bury her and shoveled the dirt away as quickly as he could. It was a shallow grave, and in a final act of disrespect, he shoved her in the hole he had dug face down. He noticed that Shanann had given birth, and baby Nico was no longer in her womb. In his letter to Cadle, he mentioned that he was so angry with Shanann he had no intention of “changing how she landed.” He used a rake to smooth some weeds over the grave and stood there for a minute. His entire family was gone. No one had arrived at Cervi 319 yet, so he could breathe a sigh of relief for now. He had successfully hidden the bodies of his family. He felt no remorse, only relief that he was finally free of them. Soon, his co-workers would show up, and it would be another normal day at work, except now he could go home to his girlfriend instead of his family. Later in the day, he would text Nikki and tell her, “My family is gone.”
* * *
7. Rzucek, Sandi Onorati. Interview with Dr. Phil. Life-After-Death: Did Spirits of Shan’ann Watts And Her Daughters Visit Mom After Murders? The Dr. Phil Show. CBS. March 11, 2019.
Chapter 17
“Chris Watts is an enigma to many”
“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly
transmit it- usually to those closest to us: our family, our
neighbors, our co-workers and, invariably, the most
vulnerable, our children.” —Richard Rohr
Chris Watts is an enigma to many. That is one reason I felt so compelled to write about him. I could not think of another criminal case in the public eye where the perpetrator had displayed so few warning signs. In fact, Chris seemed to fit a profile that was the opposite of a family annihilator, murderer, or psychopath. He lived a life that was defined by low conflict, a sense of calm, and being helpful to others. He was not controlling, angry, dominant, or jealous. Based on interviews with everyone close to him, there were zero red flags. Chris never displayed rage or violent episodes toward anyone, and he tried to avoid conflict and violence at all costs. He de-escalated conflict rather than instigating it. He seemed happy to let Shanann direct him and tell him what to do. The way he talked about his daughters was always with joy and affection. Anyone who knew him thought being a father and husband was his happiness and purpose in life.
Chris’s adult behavior was consistent with his behavior throughout his life. How did someone who was always so agreeable, likeable, kind, and conflict averse turn into a man who could violently obliterate his family and ultimately end up in the same maximum-security prison as infamous serial killer Ed Gein?
The other fascinating aspect of Chris is that up until those few months before he murdered his family, from a diagnostic perspective, he did not outwardly fit the profile of any diagnosis available in the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition).8 Mental health professionals use the DSM to diagnose their patients with mental illness and personality disorders.
Based on interviews, public information, and documents from the investigation, I will construct a theory based on all the factors that came together in the perfect storm to create the murderer that Chris Watts ended up becoming. Simply labeling him as a psychopath, family annihilator, or narcissist isn’t enough. Understanding how a person becomes a violent murderer can be much more complex than that. Understanding violence and how one becomes violent help us understand how we can prevent these types of senseless and horrific events from happening in the future. It is impossible to spot and avoid every tragedy, but with more understanding of how they come to happen, I hope we can learn to prevent some.
• • •
After research, interviews, and my own professional experience, I surmised that there were multiple factors that all came together at once in a perfect storm that culminated in the heartrending result. In the psychology world, we study a lot of theory, but for this book, I also wanted to look at science, specifically the brain. Messages in childhood, complicated relationships, unique personality traits, environmental factors, and life stressors all seemed to play a role in why Chris Watts ended up making the violent and catastrophic decisions that he did. Ultimately, everything that happened was Chris’s fault, and the accountability lies fully with him.
It is important to again state up front that I am not formally diagnosing or pathologizing anyone related to this case. As far as Chris and a “diagnosis,” I, of course, cannot say with 100 percent certainty, what condition he may or may not have. The Goldwater Rule is in the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics, and it states that it is unethical (for a psychiatrist) to give a professional opinion on a public figure whom they have not examined in person and without their consent.9 I am not a psychiatrist, and the Goldwater Rule is mostly cited when speaking about prominent political figures. Many mental health professionals feel the Goldwater Rule is outdated and that the mental health profession has a “duty to inform” or “duty to warn.”10 Some mental health professionals use “duty to warn” or “duty to inform” as a reason for breaking the Goldwater Rule. Although Chris is not a threat to the general public and is incarcerated for the rest of his life, I still feel it is my duty to inform the public about the profile and traits of people like him. Sometimes, the most dangerous people are the ones we least expect, and it is important to know how to spot them. However, I do not intend to give Chris any definitive diagnosis. I will discuss the personality traits and disorders that Chris has displayed that people have speculated about. To my knowledge, no one has discussed communal narcissism regarding this case, and I believe that understanding all the subtypes of narcissism is important so that we can protect ourselves from its harm.
I also hope that there are lessons to be learned, and I feel relationship education is a good place to start. I h
ave always believed that learning how to communicate feelings and resolve conflict in a healthy way are important skills that everyone needs to know. I wish they taught these things in school. Sometimes, I wonder if this tragedy could have been avoided if Chris had healthier coping mechanisms, and if he knew there were pro-social ways to get what he wanted, instead of using anti-social ones. At the end of the day, it may be wishful thinking to believe we could stop someone as determined and dark as he has proven himself.
Based on my education, professional work as a psychotherapist, and my extensive training in psychotherapy, relational therapy, and Imago Relationship Theory, I intend to make educated guesses based on all the information made available to me in the discovery documents released by Colorado Law Enforcement and other sources. These are my opinions, and what I have written here does not mean I have all the answers. Ideally, I would like you to look at the information presented and make your own decisions about what you believe to be true.
This analysis is not intended to blame anyone except Chris Watts for these murders. Although other relationships and dynamics may have contributed to his ultimate decision to kill his family, Chris Watts has free will, and every decision he made that ended up in the violent murders of his pregnant wife and daughters should be attributed to him and him alone.
I find his story, from birth to adulthood, a fascinating psychological profile. Beyond the morbid fascination many people have with stories like this, it is also a cautionary tale. There are lessons to learn, and hopefully those who read this can learn to spot even the most subtle red flags in their relationships or learn how to deal with their problems in a healthy way, so they don’t spiral out of control.
If you’ve followed this case, you may have heard experts such as criminal profilers and psychologists diagnose Chris in the media. Similarly, in social media groups focused on this case, armchair psychologists also speculate on a possible clinical diagnosis for Chris. The desire to diagnose someone makes sense because most people want to understand human behavior. If we can understand or make sense of a person and their actions, it seems less scary to us. If we can’t understand something or make sense of it, the world can feel very scary, unsafe, and unpredictable. Human beings hate feeling out of control. When that happens, we experience anxiety and chaos. We all want the world to make sense. For example, the cliché “Good things happen to good people” is an idea we want to believe in because then it feels as if we have an element of control.
My Daddy Is a Hero Page 17