Chris learned how to mimic love and emotion by watching others, a common trait of psychopathy. As Walker mentioned in her article, “Nothing neurotypicals do makes sense to us. It’s like trying to figure out a foreign film without subtitles and no scene context. We just begin to mimic. As we get older, our skill increases and we do better, but in the beginning, we are bad at it.”
In retrospect, we can see that Chris mimicked Shanann. She was exuberant with her feelings, and that came through in her writing on her social media posts. She often posted using multiple exclamation points to convey excitement, something she felt often. I noticed that Chris often used multiple exclamation points as well. He wrote like Shanann, in both his text messages to her (even when he was blatantly lying to her) and in his love letters to Nikki. In a birthday card to Nikki, he wrote ecstatically: “You are truly an amazing, inspirational, and electric woman that takes my breath away every time I see you! You are Wonderful! Don’t EVER stop being you!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!”
As discussed previously, on Facebook, Shanann posted a picture of a text message exchange with Chris about a picture of the ultrasound of baby Nico. Chris responded, “Little peanut!! Love her/him already!!!” Chris never wanted Nico, so this proclamation of love was a lie. If you didn’t know Chris in person, you would believe, based on his writing style, that he was an exuberant, over-the-top, emotional person—just like his wife. Yet those who knew him in person said he never showed emotion. Did he learn to mimic Shanann just so he could fit into her world? Perhaps he was always nervous around her because he was acting the whole time and knew it wasn’t genuine.
If Chris was indeed a psychopath, he was able to hide his true self for so long because he probably mastered the art of mimicking others. As self-professed psychopath, Athena Walker said above, the masks of psychopaths are way more detailed than those of the average person. The reason he felt he couldn’t be himself around Shanann and always had to think about what he was going to say to her was because he was mirroring her personality. He had to think about what she would say or want from him in order to have a functional relationship with her.
When Chris was writing his love letters to Nikki, he was telling her what he believed she wanted to hear, and instead of using his own words and feelings, he was using song lyrics, which is again, a form of mimicking.
Chris also appears to have psychopathic traits because he was confused about what he thought he was supposed to feel as a father. He said the following in his prison confession: “No father would ever do anything to hurt his blood and flesh and I did that … and I just don’t understand how it happened. I’ve even read books that said no dad would ever do anything to hurt his children. So, I always think to myself: was I even a dad at one point? I don’t know.” Chris had to read a book to understand that a father has a natural instinct to protect his children. He didn’t have the normal feeling of wanting to protect your children from harm at all costs. He wasn’t like other fathers because it was easy for him to hurt his children when they got in his way of getting what he wanted.
Of course, Chris had some feelings, and he wasn’t totally void of emotion. We know, for example, that he felt rage and anger. Beyond his feelings of rage, anger, and sexual desire, his emotional landscape seemed to be a mystery to him. This is common when children don’t learn how to identify and label feelings in childhood, or when bigger personalities take up space in the home. The child then learns that their emotions are not the important ones and should be suppressed.
Boys are also universally socialized to receive the message that anger, and sexual desire are the only feelings that are socially acceptable. Add empathy deficits and an inability to understand emotions, and it’s clear that Chris didn’t know what love really was. He certainly said the words “I love you” and acted as if he loved other people, but it’s clear that he didn’t experience love for other people in a real and genuine way. He had to search, “what do you feel when someone says I love you” because he really had no idea.
Just because someone is psychopathic doesn’t mean they are aware they are one. In fact, some psychopaths may believe they feel love and experience some emotions that are typical to the human experience. The article, “The Scientific Signs You Are in a Relationship with a Psychopath” in Neuroscience News,40 states, “psychopaths do appreciate their relationships in their own way. They do suffer pain, feel loneliness, have desires and feel sadness if they do not receive affection.” If Chris is a psychopath, or has traits on the spectrum of psychopathy, that would help explain why his relationships worked for as long as they did. It also explains why he may believe he loved and still loves his family, regardless of his actions.
Chris would eventually end up explaining to the investigators that he doesn’t feel things the way “normal” people do. He said his attorneys told him he needed to show more emotion. In his confession, he told investigators, “I don’t show emotion. I hold it in as much as I can. I don’t want to know what I looked like or sounded like on the TV interview. People said I looked soulless. Everything was harbored deep down, and one night in my cell it hit me. That everybody was gone. In my head it didn’t register, and now it feels real every day. It’s weird how emotions process differently with me than everybody else. If I lost my kids at a grocery store, I wouldn’t panic. I’d walk around and look for them, but I wouldn’t cry. I don’t wanna think I’m a cold-hearted person. I just don’t show emotion as much as other people do.”
It’s clear that Chris does not want to think or believe he is on the spectrum of psychopathy and narcissism. He says he doesn’t show emotion as much as other people do and processes things differently than “everybody else.” However, he gives insight to the fact that he doesn’t feel universal human emotions like panic or anxiety. Again, back to Athena Walker’s article: “We lack empathy, we lack fear, sadness, anxiety, remorse, we lack many of the things that explain to you in silent code how to behave around others of your kind, and the world in general.”
The latest research from a Dutch university41 found evidence that “psychopathic individuals have deficits in threat detection and responsivity, but that the evidence for reduced subjective experience of fear in psychopathy is far less compelling.” Sylco Hoppenbrouwers, one of the people behind this study told Forensic Magazine,42 “We now show that psychopathic individuals mainly have deficits in assessing threats and risks but may in fact feel fear.” This could explain why Chris felt he could get away with murdering his family, because it’s obvious he has deficits in assessing threat and risk.
In describing how he might react if he lost his children in a grocery store, Chris Watts is a perfect example of such a psychopathic individual. He said if he lost his children, he wouldn’t panic. The image of him calmly walking through a grocery store and not experiencing panic or concern is an example of a deficit in threat detection and responsivity. Most parents know the immediate glimmer of panic and fear that instinctually kicks in when they are at a playground or store and can’t find their child. Chris does not experience this.
However, there are moments where he does feel fear and panic. This seems obvious from the bodycam footage from Nate Trinastich’s house as he is watching the security footage. As Chris puts his hands on his head and rocks back and forth, you can see he is in complete panic over the idea that he’s probably going to get caught. There are several other moments in the bodycam footage where you can detect alarm and fear on his face, but again, those moments are related to the possibility that he is going to get caught for his actions. Hoppenbrouwers’ study would explain how Chris could be a psychopathic individual and still feel fear.
One of the most obvious signs of Chris’ empathy deficits was his ability to drive a car for forty-five minutes with his daughters’ feet dangling above their dead mother. Then after all that, subjecting his daughters to horrific fear as he killed them with his bare hands. Perhaps out of all the cruel acts he carried out, the
most incomprehensible is subjecting Bella to watch her beloved CeCe die in front of her, and then watching her sister’s lifeless body dropped in the oil tank. All at the hands of the father she once joyfully sang about as her hero. As any average person with normal levels of empathy knows, the idea of killing your own child and putting that child through the hell Bella endured is beyond unfathomable and impossible to relate to on any level. Furthermore, for most people, the idea of killing any child is the most incomprehensible thing imaginable.
Another clue Chris gives in his confession with investigators is a story from grade school about the time he wrote an entirely made-up essay about having spent the summer in China. He seems to brag and takes delight in his ability to be convincing, even when making up a totally fabricated story. “When I was a kid, I convinced my teacher I went to Japan or China over the summer…I said oh, I went to China. She actually believed it! I was really convincing.”
One of the investigators prompts him more by saying, “So you’re a smart dude?”
Chris responds with, “Yeah. At the parent teacher conference, she said, oh how was China?”
A person with psychopathic and narcissistic traits is charming and deceptive. They can lie very easily and take delight in it. In fact, a phenomenon called “dupers delight” is the feeling of excitement, like a rush of endorphins when conning or manipulating someone else. In this case, you get a glimpse into the fact that not only does Chris feel proud of himself for conning another person, but he also thinks quite highly of himself and his intellectual capabilities. Of course, all children lie, and this incident on its own wouldn’t be a red flag, but it is worth noting as we look back at Chris’s life and the traits that empowered him to commit such unspeakable acts.
His state of mind is also reflected in his internet searches directly after the murders. Chris did tell Cadle that Nikki was the one who told him to look up the lyrics to “Battery” that morning, but who knows if this is true? His family had been dead only a few hours when he searched the lyrics to Metallica’s song “Battery” at 10:10 am. In the song, the lyrics illustrate themes such as the following: hypnotizing power, a hungry violence seeker feeding off the weaker, lunacy, pounding out aggression, and several times the lyrics use the phrase, “cannot kill the family.”
Even though Metallica’s meaning behind the song has nothing to do with killing a family, the lyrics discuss the intoxicating feelings of aggression, lunacy, power, and violence. Based on these lyrics, it almost seems that he got a euphoric rush after killing his family. The “hypnotizing power” speaks to the narcissistic and psychopathic desire to have power and control over others. If he did, in fact, feel a euphoria and connection to the song regarding “hungry violence seeker, feeding off the weaker,” this would be very indicative of someone with psychopathic traits.
For example, serial killer David Berkowitz described what he felt after the first time he killed someone: “I was literally singing to myself on my way home, after the killing. The tension, the desire to kill a woman had built up in such explosive proportions that when I finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, all the hatred, had just vanished, dissipated but only for a short time.”43
The ability Chris had to go about his life as normal after he had murdered his family is the most chilling part of this case to some people. Calling the school to tell them the girls would not be coming back, texting the real estate agent about selling the house, supposedly texting Nikki to tell her his family was gone, and discussing pawning Shanann’s ring—all these behaviors show signs of someone with absolutely no remorse. Chris would say he wasn’t thinking, was in shock, and couldn’t logically explain his behavior at that time. In prison, he has had time to reflect that if he were not so selfish and caught up in his own needs and desires, then he would still have the great life he always had. He feels remorse now because he is in prison for the rest of his life. He was coddled and spoiled by Shanann but couldn’t see it until, through his own actions, he lost it. This again just reflects his own selfishness and lack of regard for others. Hindsight is 20/20. Had he gotten away with this crime; he would have most likely lived his life guilt-free. Maybe Bella’s pleading “Daddy no!” before he snuffed out her life would come and haunt him in his dreams from time to time. However, his ultimate remorse, shame, and the few tears he has managed to shed seem like they are only coming from self-pity.
The communal narcissist
In addition to psychopathic traits, Chris also seems to have some traits of a communal narcissist, as he thrived off being helpful and good to others. He enjoyed being a martyr. He appeared to secretly harbor feelings of grandiosity around his helpfulness. He also cares, to an excessive degree, about what other people think of him. He wants people to think he was always good and is still good. His good deeds and his kind identity now seem disingenuous because it appears he only did them to make himself feel good and feel important. As a refresher, “communal narcissism may be understood as an agency-communion characteristic; that is, communal narcissists’ agentic core motives (i.e., grandiosity, esteem, entitlement, and power) are expressed through communal means (e.g., helpfulness and trustworthiness).”44
When investigators told Chris in prison that “they (Shanann’s family) still love you,” he perked up excitedly and said, “That’s amazing to hear that! I figured they would have hated me.” His deep need for approval from others—including the parents of the woman he murdered—is constantly present. I think this is where people get tripped up in this case, and this is exactly why people like Chris Watts are so dangerous. Because he seems so nice and cares so much about what others think, people reason that he must be a good person who loved his family and made a mistake, snapped, or was possessed by an evil spirit. By looking at Chris through the lens of a good person who made a mistake, we diminish the lives of the people he killed and how severe his actions were. He killed his pregnant wife and children in cold blood. He wasn’t on drugs, and he wasn’t mentally ill with psychosis. Remember that psychopathic and narcissistic people are incredibly charming and know how to appeal to people. Just because someone cares what others think about them does not necessarily make them humble, empathic, or a good person.
Chris exhibits detachment from reality about the magnitude of his crimes. In prison, he says, “Back when I was in Weld County [his first prison in Colorado], I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Some of my friends would say good things, but I was thinking, ‘how could anyone say those things about me now?’ Maybe that was what they would say back in the day. Now, they will say ‘Chris Watts the guy who did that horrible stuff to his family.’ I know I shouldn’t take to heart what other people think about me. It’s just a matter of what God thinks about me…what he thinks about me, not anybody else. Everybody’s gonna have their opinions about me. Before I got in trouble… I mean, there’s that somebody on TV, that guy killed somebody, that guy’s horrible. Now, when something comes out on the 6 o’clock news I don’t even pay attention to it. I don’t want to be in that position where I’m judging somebody else because that’s what people were doing to me. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I’m hoping I can step back and look at everything I’ve done in my life… and I did some good things but the most important thing, I screwed up the worst.”
Chris continues to show major detachment from what he has done. He apparently has photos of his family in prison, and there was a petition circulating trying to get the prison to take them down. The petition argued he shouldn’t be able to have photos of the wife and children he killed. Chris was angry and unable to comprehend why people would want him to suffer. He also doesn’t consider himself a murderer and thinks he should get out of prison and live his life as an ordained minister because, in his mind, this was just a one-time occurrence. In his words to Cadle, “Yes that petition really blew my mind that people really want to make me suffer like that. Even if they did ever take my pictures, they can’t tak
e my memories…Do I feel like I should be incarcerated? For the act I committed, I most definitely think so. Do I imagine myself ever doing anything like this or be a danger to society? I most definitely think NOT! If I were to ever be released, I know I would go straight to a ministry and start going to jails/prisons and help inmates.”
Chris also hinted in his letter that he hopes he could eventually be released for “good behavior.” Chris clearly believes he doesn’t deserve to live his life in prison, acts as if he made a small mistake that can easily be forgiven, and should go on to live his life in service to God and others. That’s not a luxury that Shanann, Bella, CeCe, and Nico were given. Lives were destroyed, even beyond Shanann, Nico, Bella, and CeCe. There was a ripple effect that extended to the families and everyone else who was touched or had their life permanently altered because of this senseless tragedy.
Steve Wrenn, the Deputy District Attorney for Weld County told Fox News regarding the Chris Watts case, “Police officers, first responders, prosecutors, defense attorneys—we operate in a world where we see bad people do bad things on a somewhat daily basis. This took it to a level that I don’t think a lot of people are still able to get their heads around. It’s impacted the way we go about our daily lives and how we interact with our families, how we are able to do our job sometimes.” Wrenn continues, “The ripple of one crime like this has been phenomenal. The first responders that had to remove the children from the oil tanks—they’ll never be the same. Some of the investigators I know had struggled to return to their jobs and go about investigations the same way.”45
• • •
Detective Baumhover, one of the lead investigators may never return to work because of his trauma from the Watts case. When you look at Chris in comparison, he wants people to know he is content in prison, talks about the murders in a detached way, and only delivered an apology to everyone he had hurt after Cadle mentioned he never apologized to them. The opposing reactions of Baumhover and Chris are like night and day. Baumhover never knew Shanann and her children personally and he is so emotionally affected that he can barely go out in public He lives in fear of seeing little girls because it may trigger a traumatic response.46 Chris is sitting in prison, writing letters to people and fantasizing about his story of redemption. He seems like he is enjoying the attention.
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