Nichol Kessinger’s Phone Narrative Demystified

In true crime we spend so much time trying to figure out what’s missing, or what’s misconstrued, we often miss what is right in front of us. It takes insight and familiarity to get to the stage where what we see in plain sight begins to mean something.

This certainly applies to the Phone Narrative. We can spend countless hours analyzing thousands of messages across several devices, and trawl through Shan’ann’s seemingly infinite social media posts, but there is an aspect to the phones that is so obvious it’s almost laughable, and yet many have missed it.

Even when the information is provided out of context in the Discovery Documents, on page 569, we don’t necessarily see what it means.

In the above screengrab Nichol Kessinger’s August 16th interview with CBI Agent Kevin Koback is summarized in a third person narrative. The yellow highlighted text reveals a minor, throwaway discrepancy. Do you see what it is?

We get a clearer picture of this discrepancy by looking at his and her email signatures. When all the phones were analyzed, four handsets were chosen. Kessinger’s phone [highlighted in pink below – 720 656 9605], Watts’ phones [highlighted in yellow – 910 309 1702 and 720 390 9424] and Shan’ann’s phone [highlighted in blue – 910 3286].

Watts is the only one of the three with two phones.

The 910 number circled above is Watts’ personal phone, with the 910 prefix referring to North Carolina, just as Shan’ann’s phone is a 910 North Carolina number. Watts, however, also has a local 720 number, his work phone.

Kessinger also has a 720 number. And this is the crucial difference.

On Kessinger’s email signature, two numbers are listed. The 970 office number is in fact a landline.

In other words, unlike Watts, Kessinger was using her phone for personal and business use. The Discovery Documents, quoting Kessinger, say as much.

Once their relationship developed, Kessinger said Watts moved their communication from his work phone to his personal phone [and the Secret Calculator app]. But Kessinger didn’t. She couldn’t, because she only had the one phone.

When shit hit the fan, Watts deleted information off his personal phone. In his case, he did this in a premeditated fashion before the shit hit the fan, whereas Kessinger did so reactively off her work/personal phone after the shit hit the fan.

This means that when Anadarko, who paid for her phone, did a GPS and phone data review at the request of the FBI and CBI on Tuesday [August 14, 2018], they likely knew about the affair based on Kessinger’s phone activity with Watts as well.

Although this is not explicitly mentioned in the phone data review, it’s difficult to imagine if the company had the capacity to investigate computer network traffic, emails and Watts’ work phone logs, that they wouldn’t do the same with Kessinger’s.

It should also be noted that to date, many have tarbrushed Kessinger for deceitfully deleting Watts from her phone. They see this as an effort to defeat justice and to undermine law enforcement efforts. While this is possible, it’s also possible Kessinger was trying to clean up her “work phone”.  She may have feared that sending risque images to a coworker could be seen as a fire-able offence, and perhaps that’s how it was seen. Do you see what I’m driving at? It’s possible she was far more fearful of getting into trouble at work than with the cops, and ultimately, her fears were well founded.

More: Why did Anadarko Fire Nichol Kessinger on August 22nd, less than 10 days after the murders?

This clearly places Kessinger in a somewhat different light, doesn’t it? If you had one phone, and you were cheating, and your boss finding out would mean losing your job and income, wouldn’t you delete evidence of being in flagrante delicto?