Shan’ann Watts’ parents are blue collar folks. Frank is a carpenter. Sandi a hairdresser. Does it matter who Shan’ann’s parents were, where they work and where they’re from, what their financial circumstances were [and are], or is it unkind and irrelevant even to ask?
If we’re to determine the journey to rise beyond one’s raisin’ [and if that even applies], doesn’t it matter that we know where the accused and the victim’s family arose from?
A simple way to answer this question, especially if you’re married, is to ask whether it matters who your partner’s parents are, where they’re from and their circumstances. Does it? And does it matter who your parents are to them?
Could it have any relevance to a family murder?
In the Scott Peterson case, the night before Laci’s murder, Scott Peterson and Laci made a final stop at Salon in Modesto, where Laci and her husband got a haircut. Laci’s sister Amy Rocha worked there.
In the image below left, Amy can be seen cutting Scott Peterson’s father’s hair.
The entire Peterson case, arguably, turned on a hair. A single hair found in the yellow needlenose pliers in the boat was the only evidence found of Laci. This puts the haircut in perspective, especially when we intuit a premeditated murder.
CCTV footage of the haircut inside Salon also confirmed what Laci was wearing the last time she was seen alive.
In the Watts case, Nickole Atkinson helped her cut and color her hair.
In Aberdeen, Shan’ann’s mother cut her killer’s hair a few days before her daughter’s death.
While Hair Jazz doesn’t play as prominent a role in the Watts case as Salon does in the Peterson case, it’s through the hairdressers at Hair Jazz that we’ve discovered that Shan’ann and Chris Watts planned to separate. They knew this because Sandi had told them, and Sandi knew, apparently, because that’s what she’d been told – presumably by her daughter sometime during her 6 week stay in North Carolina.
We also know that Shan’ann posted a picture of a house she was looking at in North Carolina, which suggests she was thinking about moving home, back to her family. Her Thrive business, which she took with her on her trip, could theoretically be operated from anywhere with an internet connection.
Now let’s take a closer look at Hair Jazz and where and how it fits into Aberdeen and the fabric of North Carolina.
During my first run-through on Google Earth, Aberdeen looked and felt a lot like Vass Road, outside Spring Lake, where Chris Watts grew up.
While floating through the street view, however, I couldn’t seem to find Hair Jazz. Google took me to the street corner but couldn’t do any better than that. I had the street and address, and yet I couldn’t seem to locate it between a number of nondescript buildings. It is in one of the images above [besides the top image], if you look carefully.
So I looked at the building as it’s presented on its Facebook page, and during a television interview.
It still wasn’t easy to find, but eventually I did.
This is it.
And this is it from directly opposite.
One has to consider this place and juxtapose it with Shan’ann’s bold statement in February 2018 that she wanted to by a Tesla ModelX for $80 000.
In the collage below we see Shan’ann and her friend [and part-time hairdresser] posing next to luxury cars. Both Shan’ann and Nickole spoke on camera about their intentions to by Teslas. In the collage on the left is Chris Collins’ daughter posing beside two of his Lamborghini’s.
According to the gurus behind Thrive, if you want a nice car, put a picture of the Lamborghini – or Tesla – on a vision board, and if you wish very hard and say the right words, it can be yours. Simple as that.
In the first two image on the left are Chris Collins’ daughter and his vision board. Notice the picture of the car in the vision board corresponds to the color of the Lamborghini in the collage above [which is from his garage]. The message is clear: you can get whatever you want, all you have to do is ask, and then believe in yourself [and sign up to be a promoter with Le-Vel].
The impression that Aberdeen feels like Vass Road turns out to be not such a long walk in the park after all. Where Sandi works today and where Chris Watts parents live is separated by less than 30 miles by car.
Saratoga Trail probably felt like another world to the Watts family, where the laws of finance and the universe didn’t apply. Until they did.
It may not have been as affluent, but at “face” value their Aberdeen life appears to have been more authentic/honest than their Fredrick life.
The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves… yes?
“Saratoga Trail probably felt like another world to the Watts family , where the laws of finance and the universe didn’t matter. Until they did.” This is a great point and possibly the overarching motivation for moving to Colorado—to have the freedom to reinvent themselves unfettered from a past that defined them in North Carolina, as well as liberation from the social, economic, and possibly religious restraints readily accepted by those who remained behind. I’ve often wondered how the North Carolina Macmansion was viewed by Shan’ann’s family and community. I recall that Shan’ann tried to justify her acquisition by rooting it in the hard work ethos that might make it more understandable and acceptable to small town folks otherwise inclined to cluck their tongues and shake their heads. Did they see her as ridiculous, unrealistic, overreaching? Was her failed attempt to transcend her modest means derided by locals? Was this the juncture in the road where Chris became Shan’ann’s rock—the adviser who gave her solace and reignited her dreams in the midst of failure, in the midst of what she called her “dark time”? The cautionary tales of hitting the road to pursue a better life and ultimately a better self is strewn with the wreckage of fast vehicles that promise you can outrun your past.
Grammar correction: it should “are “ strewn with the wreckage, not “is.”
I loved this. It made me think back to the interview I saw her brother Frankie do on some YouTube channel. I believe it was an interview, even if it wasn’t all that professional but I do recall him saying something like “My sister’s really income with Level was $500,000” or something to that affect and I just laughed. I could tell you the moment I looked at Shanann and friends that she was nowhere near as wealthy as some outlets tried to make her seem when the news originally broke. When I heard her brother say that it was after I learned that she “worked” for an MLM and I knew she wasn’t making anything close to that. Now it makes sense though. Her brother was like a child with no understanding of money when he blurted out what he believed her income was. From the outside be saw a comfy middle class existence. If she was making 500,000 a year she certainly wouldn’t have lived where she did, knowing how she was she would’ve bought a million plus how she couldn’t afford. Her brother just threw out a number he thought sounded congruent to her lifestyle, not realizing that the small percentage that make half a million usually don’t live in an area where the median home price hovers steadily in the 200,000.
If that was his understanding of money, I have to wonder if she viewed it the same way. After all, they grew up together, and Shannon seemed to have a poor grasp on both business and finance. The fact that she gave up a job with a guaranteed paycheck to hop from MLM to MLM makes me wonder what, if anything, she knew about money. The moment they started contemplating pulling 10k from the husband 401k (which comes with a hefty penalty) that home should’ve been up for sale. The fact that she said in one of her speeches that she believed having a kid can repair a relationship, I knew she didn’t have a firm grasp of reality. A child can tax even the most solid of marriages. I almost feel like she had a very rudimentary understanding of most “adult” concepts and just followed what she thought other “grown ups” did.
It was Chris that thought the baby would fix things-not Shannan. Everything else was spot on tho.