True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
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“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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Wow. Those are some defective genes. Chris Watts never had a chance. He was literally a ticking time bomb. This is why families shouldn’t keep secrets. I guarantee you this was never discussed. I wonder if he had access to this information would the outcome for his family had been any different. My mom told my siblings and I,from a very young age, that alcoholism runs in our family and told us pretty graphic stories about how it felt to be raised by an alcoholic. I always appreciated those conversations, because it made me think twice before drinking too much and too often (and the same goes for my brother & sister). If we weren’t aware of my family history we all could’ve very well turned out to be alcoholics. Knowledge is power.
Extremely unsettling when laid out like that, and very telling.
Watts’ crimes against his children were a kind of suicide as he had really loved them, and had never meant it to end that way. Clearly he told NK he’d need an apartment with an extra bedroom for the children; he also told Shannan he didn’t want to lose the kids. All my sympathy is with him and his children.
I have very mixed feelings about Shan’Ann. There is very little that I like about her, I’ll be honest about that, from her overly-made-up fake face to her always posing fakely to her obsession with social media and the fact that she wasn’t able to learn from six prior MLM scams that diving into another was a bad idea. To be fair, though, I think she was trapped. She had mental problems – the OCD restricted her to very few possible avenues of how to think about things, despite how many options others could see. She was terribly fearful, hence her obsession with controlling every single little thing. She was desperate for approval and success – overly concerned with others’ opinions of her.
I think that it was after she started having children that she started falling apart. When she was 9 months pregnant with CeCe, they filed for bankruptcy – never the sort of thing a couple takes lightly or engages in blithely. And whatever the circumstances that led up to that major step, Shan’Ann was diving right into yet another MLM, “Thrive”, just a few months later! That’s not rational behavior! Whatever they had been doing thus far in their marriage during the years leading up to the bankruptcy had ended disastrously, and that run-up process had included at least 2 MLMs – Younique and LulaRoe. So why was she jumping into yet another money-losing scam? It seems like that should have been the very last thing Shan’Ann should be willing to take a risk on.
Just as we wouldn’t blame a cat for not being able to be a giraffe, I think we need to recognize that Shan’Ann was hurtling toward disaster and she couldn’t get off that runaway train. However it turned out, it was going to end in a fiery explosion of one sort or another, and like any tragic character, Shan’Ann was *compelled* to continue driving full-tilt toward that inevitable end, hoping to her last moment of consciousness that something magical would intervene and save her from herself. That she could wish success into being if she simply believed in it wholeheartedly enough. It’s like dog science: https://i.imgur.com/Hk8NgZO.png
She and Chris were a perfect storm of sorts. Very sad.
Agreed. You stated that objectively and well, and with fairness to her. 👍🏼
CBH –
“All my sympathy is with him and his children.”
Have you no sympathy for his dead wife?
Not as much.
I don’t get how you can be thoughtful enough to be sympathetic towards a triple murderer, a child killer, but think she’s SO BAD that you have no sympathy for her. I disagree that he loved his kids, not anymore than you’d love a doll that you throw away (oh wait he did that too.) I just don’t see how her wearing makeup and being phony or controlling is bad enough to warrant no sympathy, specifically compared to him. To have sympathy for him and the kids but not her I find is almost disrespectful of the kids, like if they could hear that what kind of fuck-ups would they think they were? If anything warrants no sympathy it’s watching a man beaming ear-to-ear after he murdered three people. That makes more sense to me than having no feelings for SW because she was an overspender or whatever. I don’t know, I’m not trying to be crotchety and certainly not politically correct nor pick on you personally but I just am having trouble understanding.
SideAffected, I think a lot of it comes from us putting ourselves into the scenario. How would we feel if we were Chris? How would we feel if we were the kids? It’s much more difficult to become Shan’Ann in this way, because she’s right there front and center in almost all her videos, telling us everything. The others are more the blank slates that we can project our own experience onto. We can also compare what we see of Shan’Ann to people who remind us of her in some way. We can think how we would feel being in the company of Chris, of the kids, in the company of Shan’Ann.
For me as an introvert, it would have been torture having to be around Shan’Ann – everything about her was loud-loud-loud. Her garish makeup, fingernails, all the outfits – everything. Maybe I’m a little on the spectrum, but her very presence is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Chris, by contrast, seems much more sympathetic – he dutifully gets up early, works like a dog all day, then comes home to mow the lawn and do laundry and clean and all those other things around the house, while Shan’Ann was apparently doing *nothing* all day, since the kids were in preschool. He seems like Cinderella, frankly, being ordered around by the wicked stepmother.
More recently, though, I’ve gained a perspective that Shan’Ann was just as trapped as Chris was – she was a victim of her own magical thinking, her delusional belief that the MLM scam would deliver on the false promises, even though the other 6 MLM scams she’d tried had failed. This one would work – this time! And, like a good casino, the MLM makes it easy for the new recruit to get a bunch of goodies early on, only to raise the bar ever higher until it’s completely out of reach and the recruit crashes and burns. Shan’Ann was an addict; she couldn’t help it. She was honestly, truly stuck. They needed to live with “minders” who would control their activities, but since they were grownups, there was no way to set up such a protective system to help get them solvent again, back on their feet, and make sure they were doing the right things financially and interpersonally.
There’s an excellent book on addiction – Dr. Gabor Maté’s “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.” He’s a psychiatrist who works with a homeless addicted population in Toronto, Canada. There’s a free pdf here: http://thezeitgeistmovement.se/files/In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_Ghosts_-_Gabor_Mate__M.D_.pdf
It’s an engaging read, and I promise you’ll never look at addiction the same way again after reading it.
…oh yeah….pooooor Chris Watts, whose father got into alcoholism when Chrissy left home to build his own life. Yes, his Daddy is his hero. And pooooor Chris Watts, who was not able to achieve his goals than by killing his whole familiy. Thanks to genetics^^. There is an interesting Quote given by a psychologist that says “Someone who kills himself often instead wanted to kill someone else before.” You might be right: Only someone with such a Family-trait in lack of empathy is able to slaughter his own blood, his own Kids an his own wife, whose wedding was neighter attended by the Killers Family nor recognized by most of their Friends because These poor People didn’t sent the Invitation Cards.
For some this will lead to have great sympathy and for some there will be nothing else than disgust.
And by the way:
It was NK who brought up the idea of extra bedrooms for the Girls – not poor Chrissy Chris. Lets wonder why….^^
Sarcasm is really off-putting.
@CBH
…so is ignorance
No ignorance save in your own opinion.
Brady Campaign graphic: I find raw numbers unhelpful, since those countries have such different population sizes. Try this on for size:
Finland: 3 people per million
Australia: 1 person per million
England/Wales: 0.7 person per million
Spain: 1 person per million
Germany: 2 people per million
USA: 29 per million
Thanks for the clarification. Everyone loves to make Americans seem worse than we really are ,but somehow everyone wants to live here🤔
Not everyone wants to live in this crazy country that is delusional like Shan’ann. In fact, the MLMs she was intoxicated with are a microcosm of this country’s predatory economy—now in full and unapologetic bloom per the ascendancy of our grifter president and his crime family. Despite this tragedy, the prevailing delusion is the belief in our exceptionalism, which spawns other bastard delusions, such as everyone yearns to live in this country and gun violence isn’t a problem, as high school and primary school students, as well as many others, are slaughtered year after year. I dare you to sit down with parents who have sent their children to school only for them to wind up murdered at the hands of an adolescent who wouldn’t have been able to perpetrate such a crime were it not for his ability to access “weapons of mass destruction”—thanks to the NRA gun lobby. Like Shan’ann, we need to take a hard look at ourselves before it’s too late.
No, ncam, “everyone” does not want to live here. A lot of USians are trying to flee to Canada and Australia, in fact. That “everyon wants to live here” nonsense is a fallacy put forth as part of the delusion of “American Exceptionalism” or “American Triumphalism”, which are toxic belief systems.
Ralph, That is a fair scientific point, the populations differ greatly in these countries.
“Increasingly, suicide is being viewed not only as a mental health problem but a public health one. Nearly 45,000 suicides occurred in the United States in 2016 — more than twice the number of homicides — making it the 10th-leading cause of death. Among people ages 15 to 34, suicide is the second-leading cause of death…The most common method used across all groups was firearms.” Washington Post
June 7, 2018
Cheryl, evidently you have never lived in another country. We live in the greatest country in the world. President Trump is a lot better than the witch that was running against him. She would have sold our country out completely. If you think it’s so bad, leave.
Thank you Marie. Calm down Cheryl…seriously. this is not the site for your exhausting political rants.
Sorry, Marie, but American Triumphalism is a failed and fascist illusion. We have a lot of problems in this country – one of the most glaring that we are the *only* developed democracy that does *NOT* regard health care for its residents as a human right and thus provide universal free health care for all – and our quality of life and life expectancies are going *down*, not up.
Open your eyes. Stop drinking the right-wing Kool-Aid.
I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, Marie. Howbowdah?
“Witch”, eh? Guess it takes one to know one, doesn’t it, marie?
Evidently, we live on different planets. I like mine better. Unfortunately, neither of our planets will survive the cataclysm wrought by your mass delusion.
Cheryl, I have served my country. United States Marine Corps. I am very proud of our country. You have mentioned that you worked a small government job. And you criticize this country while you will get yourself a cushy retirement check. Seek help for your TDS.
Cheryl, we have work to do here. Perhaps ignoring the unhelpful distractions would be a good idea.
Ralph Oscar, thank you. My thoughts exactly. I appreciate your comments by the way. The imperviousness to reason and compassion is what I find so deeply disturbing about our current political and cultural climate. That said, enough of my polemics and on with adopting your excellent advice.
Cheryl, I like your insights and analysis as well. I hate to see that energy being wasted unproductively when you could be applying it to this most perplexing mystery!
That said, I do wrassle from time to time with a troll or two – it counts as aerobic exercise.
Someone could look up the McLeod family. Cynthia McLeod Watts – age 63 born 4/15/1955. She drives a 2001 Ford Explorer, current home value is $75K, purchase price $75 (no appreciation there).
It was very telling when Dr. Keith Ablow revealed that Jackie Peterson’s (Scott Peterson, son) father was murdered – possibly in front of her. She was then sent to an orphanage. It would be interesting seeing what is in the McLeod family line, and how she came to be in Spring Lake NC and met Ronnie Lee Watts, mechanic.
It looks as if Cindy Watt’s paternal line has been in NC for a couple of hundred years. Her father served in the US Army for about 20 years and was in Germany part of that time. He married a woman who was born in Czechslovakia. They moved back to Cumberland County, NC, which is the county where Chris Watts and his family lived.
You mentioned Scott Peterson’s grandfather’s murder and how that could have affected the family. It is puzzling when terrible events like that can damage some members of the family and may be the cause of their acting out later in life, while others endure worse and lead seemingly normal lives.
That X factor – the known unknown or perhaps the unknown unknown is what is so compelling about these cases, the Watts case in particular.
This is extremely interesting to me, as I have wondered more than once if there was some type of mood disorder or depressive illness running in the Watts male family members. Both Ronnie and Chris appear to have a flat affect, melancholic type disposition and rarely spontaneously smile or appear joyful. (Based on their demeanour pre-murders). There is also the question of alcoholism (which is noted with depression as a contributing factor in one suicide in the chart) IIRC, Ronnie Watts also used substances at one point. It is well known that people with untreated mood disorders often self medicate with alcohol or drugs, leading to a psychiatric dual diagnosis (1: substance abuse. 2: The underlying untreated psychiatric disorder). Sometimes families will know something is ‘off’ but will not acknowledge it or seek treatment, either because they think it is ‘normal’ behavior or because of the social stigma surrounding mental illness. Of course, it is impossible to know without further information, but it indeed is very sad if this family has suffered through several generations of untreated psychiatric disorders with such horrible events resulting.
NK mentioned to her friend Charlotte that he was half American Indian. When i googled Watts, it came up as a Cherokee Name. When i googled Native Americans in North Caroline, the link that came up had a question from someone named Watts.( https://www.ncpedia.org/tribes) ! What a coincidence! Suicide, depression and alcoholism are seen in high numbers for Native Americans, but I do believe that has more to do with the dire lives they led for many years on reservations. I don’t know if I would say it is as much bad genes as it is bad socialization. People can and do break those cycles if it is in their family history.
Chris isn’t half Native American. Many people here in the South want to be part Cherokee and everybody laments what happened to those indigenous tribes…. removal from their land in the 1830s, wholesale slaughter of entire families and villages. But nobody offers any reparations. There has been no government issued apology to them that I know of. No one wills their land to some impoverished descendant of those victims. I tell these hypocrites to stfu (in nicer terms) until they turn over the stolen land they are squatting on to it’s original inhabitants. I also live in their land.
Rant over. 🙁
Watts is a known Cherokee surname. i am sure everybody wants to be Native American because it seems cool, however, it was mentioned in the text message, so I decided to search it. Maybe he isn’t, I don’t know.
I don’t see how reparations would have anything to do with Watt genealogy. Maybe he has none. Or maybe he does, unless there is specific information that not disclosed, it is possible.
K, I apologize to you if my reply to your post above (“Chris Watts is not half Native American”) came across as curt or rude.
I am in no position to make such a definitive statement. Written words can sound cold and snotty when not accompanied by voice and facial expressions.
What I was thinking is that Chris’s father, Ronnie, would have to be 100% Native American for Chris to be half.
Reparations has nothing to do with the Watts case. It has to do with people like Chris Watts (if it is true he said he was half Native American) being with the crowd who claims to descend from Cherokees without any proof, other than family stories. It may have been part of Chris’s emerging “game” to say that to Nichol K.
He may very well be part NA; A DNA test could indicate that he is related to Cherokees or other tribes in North Carolina, but DNA doesn’t confer tribal membership. (Ref Elizabeth Warren’s unfortunate foray into that arena.)
Tribal membership has more to do with relationships and other complex factors than it does DNA and “blood”.
Think outside the box! : )
I thought we were discussing family history and genealogy, not tribal membership. Maybe he did tell NK that so she would feel a magical attraction as part of his game as you say. But it doesn’t seem as if it was used in any aspect to gain an advantage such as EW. I look at it as a possible insight into his family and how that history influences interaction with other people.
Back in the early 1970s, it seemed that every other person was claiming a distant ancestor who was a “Cherokee princess”. My own family had a story about a “Cherokee princess”. I guess those “Cherokee princesses” really got around…
True. Reparations doesn’t really have anyathing to do with Watts family history. My point was, Chris Watts may have been claiming to be half Native American as part of his emerging “game”, wishing to impress Nichol K. — and that a lot of people make these claims without reflecting on the horrors those people endured. Was just taking a little detour of the main subject.
If Chris claimed to be half NA, he was hopping onto a bandwagon that’s been rolling along since the image of the “noble savage” became popular in movies and TV back in the 1950s and later.
Many people in NC actually do have Cherokees in their family lines and Chris may very well be one of them. He could have had stories passed down about this through the generations but due to an era where it wasn’t cool to be NA, the stories could have become hazy by the time they got to him.
Because of discrimination by whites, Native Americans often listed themselves as white on census records if, by appearance, they could “pass” as such.
A DNA test could show that Chris has markers that match those of some of the established tribes in North Carolina or elsewhere, but that doesn’t confer tribal membership. (Ref Elizabeth Warren’s unfortunate foray into that arena last year). Membership in a NA tribe in the Southeastern US often has to more to do with relationships and traditions passed down, rather than DNA and “blood”.
Think outside the box! : )
Sorry for the double post! Thought I had lost the first one and rewrote and posted again
From the above info I think we can all agree unless security measures where he is incarcerated go all FUBAR his manner of death won’t be gunshot. Although his cause of death could fall in line with tradition.
I think there is a missing piece of the Watts family puzzle and that’s definitely the relationship with his sister.
I get the feeling she might have been a bully to Chris during childhood. She was older and seemed to have behavioral issues because she constantly left home and caused stress. She probably was jealous of the close relationship between Chris and Ronnie.
I can’t help but see her as vindictive as she purposely messed up Shan’ann’s engagement party. She was there during the nut incident; her children were the ones getting the “special” ice cream.
Yet she is all but invisible in the discovery. She has never spoken up publicly on behalf of her brother. I think there must be a reason for that.
I am glad you brought that up because she is rarely mentioned, anywhere. I’ve heard she was rebellious in her youth but then later was part of the not- sending -out invitations thing and maybe the nut fiasco with Cindy though I don’t remember reading that in the discovery-I don’t remember Sha’naan texting about her. In my experience, and I refuse to mention the word “narcissism” because it’s lost all meaning now, and in fact I think the first writings about this come from ACOA, adult children of alcoholics-but there are family roles that people tend to take on, whether it’s cause of addiction or mental illness or whatever-my family fits it to a tee -where there’s one strong adult who leads the way, the other parent is passive and enabling, and the most common types of roles for the kids are rebel/scapegoat, golden child/hero, lost child, and mascot. The rebel is the one who “acts out” the family problems while everyone else wants to uphold the status quo. That’s the one people can say “see! She’s bad! Let’s all focus on that sideshow distraction.” They’re also supposed to be the most emotionally honest and willing to get help. The mascot is the sad clown who is cute and funny and most likely to suicide. The hero or golden child is mommy’s favorite and the lost child has a rich fantasy life and focuses on other things like pets and video games and is often forgotten about and ppl assume he’s fine.
It seems SW had some knowledge of these dynamics but she got them wrong when she called CW a scapegoat, unless roles reversed which they can, but it seems to me that he was never rebellious or a scapegoat. SW was a scapegoat in his family though for sure-so was that Jamie before? As my family “rebel”, I can tell you that her doing that in that family dynamic was probably healthy at the time. I think CW and the mother are the sickest in this family.
What I”m starting to see is life isn’t linear. It’s up sometimes and down sometimes there is no continuum. It’s not going somewhere. It’s just successive moments of now. One thing doesn’t necessarily cause something else. People get married for all sorts of reasons. These two knew each other for 2 years before they tied the knot. In that time period they should have realized they weren’t a match. Sometimes people think because they have been dating for a long time, “it’s time.” Then they had notions of what being married was – we all do. She wanted the fairy tale. She pulled him along for the ride – her ride. Children. Responsibilities but she really wasn’t minding the store (the financials) or being responsible. Can you imagine 6 years of this? Six years of quiet desperation punctuated by unreal fantasy fairy tale living. We all have strange things in our childhood – a dominating parent, divorce, some of us have worse but I don’t see that Chris’s childhood was any more normal or abnormal than anyone else’s – he wasn’t abused, he was clothed and fed and looked after. They provided him with an education he wanted. Why do people kill, why would you kill – would you? He may have been waiting around for a very long time for things to get better without taking any kind of stand to have them be better. Then he realized they weren’t ever going to get better in fact they could get worse and so he had to take some kind of a stand to stop it and he did.
Sylvester your post reads sad but true. One thought I had though — there are all kinds of abuse and I sort of get the feeling Chris endured some kind of unspeakable abuse from someone – maybe not inside his household, but possibly a neighbor, a member of his extended family, a teacher or somebody like that.