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Chris Watts’ mistress claims their relationship was “never serious” – ANALYSIS

Nichol Kessinger sketches a portrait of Chris Watts as a lying, duplicitous slimebag, who duped her into thinking he was divorced. She had no idea, she maintains, that Watts’ wife of eight years was a few weeks pregnant when they started sleeping together.

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But why would the finality of Watts’ divorce or the status of his kids be so important if their relationship wasn’t serious? And why did Chris Watts disable his Facebook a week before the murders if it wasn’t important to hide the truth from a serious relationship-in-the-making? And why would Watts ask her to help him [them?] find an apartment that “would be good for him” [them?]. And did she start prospecting for a new place for Watts to stay?

Remember this prospecting for a new place to stay also formed the backdrop to the murder and protracted disappearance of Casey Anthony’s daughter Caylee.

No matter how you cut it, if Watts was trading out of his family to start a new chapter with Kessinger, it’s difficult to imagine it wasn’t serious. Chris Watts believed their dalliance was serious enough to murder his pregnant wife and both daughters. Did he do something as serious and significant as commit triple murder because the mistress in the wings wasn’t serious?

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In the Casey Anthony case, Tony Lazzaro was a serious flame in her life at the time Caylee went missing. Ditto Scott Peterson. In fact Peterson was so fixated with him [and vice versa] he maintained serious contact with her for weeks after Laci’s disappearance. Wasn’t that relationship really serious too?

On the other hand, Nichol Kessinger may have had a point. She may have put the brakes on, letting Watts know they could take things to the next level once Shan’ann and the kids were taken care of. Not murdered of course, but no longer in the picture. If that’s the case, then Watts started calculating how best to go about that. Separation? Maybe. Divorce? Alimony? Custody? How about making them disappear literally

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Kessinger wanting to take it slow and wanting Watts to take care of his daughters within the schema of a divorce suggests a deeper level of commitment to the relationship and his children than the impression of a “brief affair” with a dude she “barely knew”.

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It’s also worth noting that Watts worked at Anadarko from January 2015. The way Kessinger sketches it, each morning Watts gathered in an office break room and Kessinger walked through the operators – including Watts – to place her lunch in the refrigerator. Every day. But she never spoke to Watts until one day in the middle of June when he approached her.

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Really? But wasn’t he supposed to be shy, cautious and not having any game?

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21 Comments

  1. Karen

    ….And do you ask someone you “barely know” to help you find a place to live

  2. Kaye

    I would think hanging out four to five times a week for almost a month gives you plenty of time to get past the “barely knowing” stage. But maybe talking was not high on their list of things to do.

  3. K miller

    I just don’t believe everything she says. There is no way she didn’t check sha’ann Facebook to see what’s up. Also 5 days a week isn’t slow and wasn’t there rumors she was or is married as well.

  4. Diana

    Nichol stated her relationship with Chris was discussed in online forums. That tells me she likely looked at Shan’ann’s Facebook while she was seeing Chris since she obviously is an online snooper. Chris started working at Anadarko in January 2015. I don’t recall exactly when Chris lost 50 pounds and started bulking up, but if Nichol had also been at Anadarko since 2015, maybe she never took notice of Chris earlier because he wasn’t as attractive to her as he was in June of 2018.

  5. Nick

    Well spotted Diana.

  6. Sam

    I agree with all of this.
    But I assume we won’t have any answers about it soon🤷‍♀️

  7. Shannon

    But she got married in 2015 to Michael turtle Kelly. Not sure if Seperated or Divorced. But if doesn’t sound like thst marriage lasted to long.
    They say everybody knew was unhappy and seeking a Seperation.
    I think she is a Liar.
    Chris closing Facebook…maybe just maybe he knew something was going to happen with Shanann and he wouldn’t be needing it anymore. I don’t think it has anything to do with this other person.

    • LT

      She is definitely a liar. Nichol & Chris we’re probably inseparable the whole times that Shannan was away. I’m sure she had been to his house & everything. Their relationship started around the time of her long trips. Then she came back. I think he was pissed she came back because it would mess things up with Nichol. She did ALOT of grimey things. It’s in the discovery report. For one- she was searching “can cops see deleted text messages” and had been doing hours of searches on Shannon watts since 2017. She had her eye on him for a while & got what she wanted. She knew he was with her & she knew ALOT more than she’s claiming to know. “She barely knew him” my ass. What a nasty woman

  8. Shannon

    Eeek, we don’t know if they spent an hour or couple of hours, those so called 4-5 nites.
    How would we know, Chris can’t confirm any of her story .
    Unless a Trial.
    I also think, if they had Seperated, she’s pregnant, needs time off to watch new baby plus other 2. Without Chris. She wouldn’t be able to work, unless like past tense, she ignored kids continues on Video…I find that hard. I think Chris stay in same city, his job. She ends up moving back to her Dad’s. She’s going to lose everything….house, husband, location, trips. I’m sure she’s pretty mad, upset and was going to do anything to keep him, her life. They sell the house, he told neighbor he was going to sell house. Pay off debt, probably not to much money left over. He knew how she was as a mother, wasn’t Happy with new baby news. Apt for him and girls, perhaps she’s dead.

    • Pip

      You and everyone else who is trying desperately to find a way to blame Shannan for her own death, as well as those of their daughters are disgusting!
      You know absolutely nothing about her , except for the videos she did to sell the supplements which was her way to earn money. I don’t see you accusing Chris (the cheating murderer) for how much time he spent with his children. If she was SUCH a horrible person and mother, perhaps he shouldn’t have told her that he wanted to have another child and impregnated her?

      I swear, the level of denial is just astounding!

  9. Eleni Palmos

    I will read this post but I never thought he killed his family for the sake of one woman. Chris Watts was just getting started. No way he would settle down again if he got away with the murders. He was going to start over as a “carefree playboy.”

    • Eleni Palmos

      Has Kessinger had other liaisons at work? That would tell us a lot. It was probably the only place he could find someone to have an immediate sexual relationship with. Chris having a mistress adds an element of interest to the case but I just don’t see a man so burdened with wife, kids and debt-debt-debt to want to settle down with anyone, male or female, post-divorce.

    • nickvdl

      I don’t think he killed his family “for the sake of one woman” either, but I think it’s fair to say she played a significant role in his reasoning, if one can call it “reasoning” around this horrible tragedy.

      The Scott Peterson case is worth considering, in terms of this oft repeated idea that he killed his family so he could be free. It’s this idea that he killed his family so he could be single, and sort of hang out like a single dude. In Scott Peterson’s case many people said he didn’t want to be a dad.

      When I researched the case [I wrote a trilogy on Scott Peterson] it quickly became clear that Peterson was taking Amber Frey’s kid to school, cooking for his new family, putting in a car seat, giving Amber gifts etc etc. He seemed to be getting very serious, and he remained serious after Laci disappeared, regularly calling her. My impression of Scott Peterson wasn’t that he wanted to be free and single, but that he wanted to be free of Laci and free of the constrictions [financial, emotional, time etc] that came with her having a baby.

      To me it didn’t seem like he wanted to be single at all. It seemed like he wanted to be unencumbered in his relationship with Amber and her child. In other words, he wanted to trade/swap out one family for another. Make sense?

      So I’m not sure that wasn’t the case with Kessinger.

      • Eleni Palmos

        Nick, wow! That’s absolutely crazy. I can see being “free” but swapping out one set of responsibilities for another set?

      • Kaye

        If that’s the case and he did envision having some sort of new family with NK, he was probably reading too much into their affair. All of the pictures being posted online of her seem to characterize her being a drinker, a partier, someone who liked being carefree. I wonder if her dismissal of him as someone she barely knew has thrown him for a loop—if he’s had the chance to hear about it, of course. He might have been a fling in her mind while in his mind the dalliance with her was a big deal.

  10. nickvdl

    @Kaye Bear in mind many of those photos are circa 2009-2012. And if we’ve learned anything in true crime and the Watts case in particular, it’s not to ignore the other side to any story. We don’t know for certain if Nichol Kessinger had children herself. I’m not going to speculate on what’s out there right now, but the idea that he was more into her than she was into him is just that – an impression. The question is is it true?

    • Kaye

      Good point—i didn’t realize the photos were from that long ago. Very interesting that someone seems intent on putting them out there, to encourage that perception of her.

  11. Shannon

    Yes but Chris Watts isn’t Scott Peterson.

    Shanann got pregnant to keep Chris. This does happen in relationships, and marriage. You can tell he wasn’t happy.
    Re: Video.

    • cc

      If he “wasn’t happy”, he shouldn’t have been screwing her unprotected. She didn’t get herself pregnant, nor did she “force” him.

  12. BAMS13

    Well clearly she’s just saying all of this *after the fact* because he’s a disgusting murderer and she’s humiliated and ashamed that she was personally associated with him and is regarded as contributing to the reason all this happened. She saw him 4-5 days weekly and worked with him for years but barely knew him and didn’t know he was married. Ya right.

  13. Shannon

    From the Discovery Documents, we are now learning more.
    Shanann’ might have been on the Pill, stopped it and didn’t tell Chris. She gets pregnant. Because they were having problems. For someone who supposedly has Lupus, she had no problem getting pregnant, also she tanned was out in the sun. With Lupus you don’t do this.
    Some of her friends said if a commercial came on…health problem, Shanann said she had that!
    From some of her posts to friends, they figure out she is lying to them about time of baby.
    She probably lied to Chris.
    She probably lied about alot of things.

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