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True Crime Rocket Science – how to have conversations on this site, and how not to

December 21, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 11 Comments

True Crime Rocket Science is supposed to be – and meant to be – exactly that.

TRUE CRIME

ROCKET SCIENCE

Intelligent discussion about true crime. Are your conversations and comments here intelligent?

This site is also meant to build the brand of a line of books. Incidentally, have you read any?

How to have conversations on this site

The idea is that people come here and make discoveries about crime, criminals, society and themselves. It’s meant to be a growing experience, a learning experience, and an affirmative experience. It’s meant to be interesting and meaningful, but meaningful above all.

How do we make sure it stays meaningful, and how do we avoid getting messy with one another?

Get personal about you

We can have meaningful conversations when we personalize what has happened in true crime, especially where we see errors of judgement or character flaws, and apply those to ourselves and our lives. Getting personal means being sincere – about ourselves. Am I materialistic? Is my community too preoccupied with appearances? Am I on social media too much? Is my work turning me into more of machine than a human being?

These are the conversations we want to have that enhance our coming together here.

Share technical or factual evidence

We can also extend the knowledge of cases by sharing information that we come across, or by providing facts, photos, forensic data, logic analysis etc. There have been some stunning contributions to date by a handful of readers, and what they all have in common is modesty and curiosity.

Test insights

This blog is also an excellent forum to test theories and insights, but it’s important to be humble when doing so. Is your theory off-the-top-of-your-hat, or have you thought about it, and do you have reinforcing information. Whichever it is, be honest about it.

Deepen the Hypothesis/Prove it Wrong

The narratives contain various hypotheses, one example being that Shan’ann’s murder took place downstairs. In order to deepen these theories, one has to have a superlative knowledge of all the evidence. If any information has been overlooked that supports a particular hypothesis, please be sure to let me know.

It’s not the goal of Rocket Science to be dogmatic about its own positions, especially if they can be improved upon, fine-tuned, or worse, if they are demonstrably wrong. All factual corrections are much appreciated.

It’s okay to be wrong

Nobody’s perfect. Mistakes happen. It’s okay to be wrong about something, but it’s not okay to always be in someone’s face about it. Move on. Remember the brief is:

TRUE CRIME

ROCKET SCIENCE

What Rocket Science is not about

It’s not about you. It’s not about me, either. It’s not Rocket Science when comments devolve into attacks, and it becomes us/me versus you/them. This isn’t high school, or a popularity context. We’re interested in true crime first, everything else is secondary.

As soon as the attempt to score ego points begins to dominate a particular discourse, everyone becomes distracted from the conversation, and concentration is squandered – thanks to your immaturity.

ALL CAPS, expletives, excessive use of question marks and quotation marks, name calling etc are all symptoms of this. If you’re doing that, you won’t last long here. If you’re doing that, I’ll see that and you’ll be on my radar. If you think you can misbehave and come back under a different email address, and a different avatar, ask the dozens who have already tried to do that and remain permanently banned from this site.

Insulting me will get you an express ticket off this site. I built this site. You’re welcome to take it all in, but if it’s not your cup of tea, please don’t stick around. If you don’t like it here and you do stick around, it will probably show. Just as in the real world, I decide who I want in my living room, and if I don’t like what you have say, or the manner in which you’re saying it, and if it’s the same negative stuff on repeat, just know it’s my prerogative to decide whether you stay or go, not yours. Like it or lump it, being here is privilege.

One way to avoid nasty repartee here, or on any forum, is by making sure you share your thoughts about the case and the characters involved. Not your thoughts about what someone else said. Your thoughts about the case and the characters. That’s all. That’s why we’re all here. So let’s discuss the case! If someone disagrees, be curious rather than threatened, and test your differences by referring to sources. What do the sources say? Do the sources agree on everything? Be interested in fact checking to advance what we know, not ego attacks, to advance your sense of self at the expense of knowing more.

On a personal note, I find moderating this site extremely tedious, frustrating and time consuming. I hope that will improve with time. Honestly, I would much rather be researching and writing, but I do see the value in having and growing a community, and exchanging new thoughts and ideas. It will obviously take time to gather a group of like-minded and smart people who want to engage with one another in a mature, and stimulating manner.

I would like the assistance of regular commenters to this site who have been here a while to assist in moderating the newcomers and guiding them where necessary. If the slurs and the nasty knee-jerk responses and the sarcastic shooting from the hip conversations continue, I will disable comments permanently. This is easy to do, I am tempted to do it and it will make life a lot easier for me. So it’s your call.

I also want to mention another ugly aberration that occurs from time to time at this site. Someone arrives, doesn’t like something they’ve read, don’t like something that’s said, and they then go straight to the books and leave troll reviews.

It’s spiteful, it’s malicious and it’s damaging.

I could name a few of the folks that have come here and done that, but what’s more important is that you know who you are, and I know exactly who you are too, and obviously once that line is crossed, it’s over. In spite of your addiction to this case, and this site, you are never coming back.

That kind of behavior actually makes an excellent case to not bother to put up this site to begin with, and a strong case can be made that the time spent here offering up research and analysis for free, I could be investing in writing books that readers happily and willingly pay for [despite the troll reviews].

It’s incredible to me that on a site that’s about honesty, and talking about crime and deceit, and specifically a narrative called TWO FACE, people can behave in this manner. And they apparently feel completely justified in doing so.

These same people, on this site, have wondered why Chris Watts lied and thought he could get away with it.

Every so often, someone mentions that I don’t tolerate dissent. It’s true, like Ripley in Aliens, I have a low threshold for bullshit, as I hope the above illustrates and emphasizes. When you’ve been around the block and survived a few monsters in real life, having a low tolerance for other people’s bullshit is necessary.

But it’s not true that I reject a difference of opinion out of hand, as long as that opinion has a lot going for it. Does it? If it doesn’t, it’s not me being an asshole, it’s me saying you haven’t really thought your theory through, try harder.

A theory that is based on facts and information is one thing, an opinion that comes to you willy nilly, and that’s held up to be equal to my efforts, thought and the deep rationales that go into my narratives usually simply aren’t on the same level. Sorry if that’s tough to hear. If you think they are worthwhile and meaningful, prove it. If they are worth their salt, go on, prove it. Make your case, but put as much effort into making your case as I have. I’ve written a book. Put some thoughtful effort into your paragraph.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again; if you come here and you think the “opinions” expressed here are cheap, unfounded, biased and fictional, you should do yourself a favor and let yourself out. Either you get that a lot of work and mental focus has gone into figuring out these crimes and criminals, and is worth something, or you don’t. If you don’t, if you’re here to strut around and be dismissive, if you find you’re just not convinced there’s any merit to any position, please don’t waste your time and my time – find a resource that suits your standards.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for being so conscientious. You’re one of the good guys.

On a more positive and constructive note, I’d like to encourage those who live in Frederick, Colorado or the general area to send through photos of the environment if at all possible. The list of photos wanted include:

The for-sale/foreclosure sign at #2825 Saratoga Trail
#6508 Saratoga Trail
#6507 Black Mesa
The new fracking battery under construction now opposite Saratoga Trail

Officer Coonrod’s Bodycam appears to show Watts retrieving something…in the garage [UPDATE]

December 21, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 19 Comments

By doing this analysis of Coonrod’s bodycam video again, what are we looking for and why does it matter? We’re looking for Shan’ann’s phone. We suspect it wasn’t inside the house when Chris Watts first arrived arrived home on the 13th. But we could be wrong. It could have been inside the house.

In the analysis posted five days ago [Officer Coonrod’s Bodycam appears to show Watts tucking something under his arm…] we explored the possibility that Watts snuck something, possibly a phone, under his arm when he opened the passenger door of his truck. Watts had two phones, so it could be that the one under his arm was one of them.

In time we’ll do a more thorough analysis, looking for instances where Watts has his phone, and we’ll see what that looks like.

One of the commenters on this site, MattyB, has suggested Watts retrieved Shan’ann’s phone not in his truck, but in the passenger area of Shan’ann’s Lexus.

Let’s take a look.

https://youtu.be/Jamym-lOZUQ

It’s worth looking at the the whole manoeuvre in real time a few times to get a sense of how he’s moving relative to the camera behind him. MattyB has a point. Watts does appear to scootch down towards the floor mat of the Lexus passenger seat, and retrieve something there, something inside the Lexus.

It may be a case of visual bias – we may be seeing what we want to see, rather than what’s really there, but it does seem like Watts is retrieving a flat, pinkish object with his right hand. The same can’t be said for the object from the truck, tucked under his arm [it may be a phone, but it’s definitely not pink].

As soon as Watts gets what he came for, he turns away from the camera. He skedaddles through the garage’s rear interior door just as Nickole starts to advance on his position at the passenger door. Nickole then inadvertently blocks Officer Coonrod’s video view of the suspect.

What does this mean?

Again, this could be reading way too much into fuzzy video images, and we saw how some folks got carried away seeing a phantom Ronnie Watts or Nichol Kessinger accomplice in Trisnatich’s surveillance video. We don’t want to do that here.

So let’s just say tentatively, there could be two possibilities here.

1. Watts left Shan’ann’s phone in her car

Taking her phone with him presented an enormous risk. If he was seen with it, or caught with it, he would be in deep trouble, and if he turned it on, then a cross-reference for his phone and hers would implicate him directly.

It just wouldn’t be a good idea to take her phone with him, unless he could be in two places at once. If he had an accomplice, he or she could impersonate Shan’ann and leave a bogus message. But that didn’t happen.

It makes sense that Watts would leave the phone in her car, because that’s what Scott Peterson did as well. When Laci’s phone was found, it was plugged into her 1996 Land Rover SUV’s cigarette lighter, but had virtually no charge on it. Shana”n’s phone, when found, was also off.

The phone is a vital piece of evidence, because it locates both the victim, and in the case of a cover-up, provides insight into where the murderer doesn’t want an inquiring mind to go. If Watts did move the phone first to the car before he left, then from the car when he got back, why put it on the couch and not next to her bed, or suitcase?

The answer is, Watts probably preferred it if the phone wasn’t found, because it could incriminate him. But he couldn’t have the phone be completely irretrievable, as that would raise serious suspicions that Shan’ann wasn’t simply missing, but had come to harm. That scenario wouldn’t be good for him. But that’s precisely what Nickole Atkinson thought when the phone appeared but Shan’ann didn’t.

Putting the phone in the car delays discovery. Putting it on the couch under cushions also delays discovery, but confuses the location of the crime scene.

Unfortunately the phone wasn’t seized immediately as evidence and dusted for prints. Chances are Watts wiped traces of himself from the phone both times when he placed it in the car, and under the cushions.

2. Watts is a cagey bastard

Let’s assume that Shan’ann’s phone was in the Lexus when Watts pulled up. Let’s also assume that foremost in Watts’ mind was a sense of, “Oh shit, I’ve got to get hold of that damn phone…”

I’m not sure why he’d think that, perhaps because the mismatch of the bed sheets on the floor and the phone in her car, would implicate him more directly. But looking at Watts arrival the first thing he does – making for the garage and the Lexus – it does seem Watts was intent on staging the phone, and we know Watts knew that her phone had some utility in exonerating him in terms of his call to her phone and the staged message [Scott Peterson did the same thing on the way from his fishing trip].

If Watts’ first thought when he got out of the truck was to retrieve her phone, then if did that, he achieved it virtually without being seen even though he was on camera. That’s stealth. If true, I think it also reinforces the notion of a stealth attack when Shan’ann arrived at 01:48. This is a guy who is acutely aware of his surroundings, and the digital eyes and ears of his world.

But as savvy as he was to all these signals, what he was attempting to do was insane. What he was trying to pull off reminds one, quite frankly, of the scene in Entrapment when the cat burglar [played by Catherine Zeta Jones] tries to outwit a spider web of cotton strands with bells on them [symbolizing a security systems of laser beams]. You’ve got to know what you’re doing. Watts thought he did until one bell after the other started going off, only he was the only one who couldn’t seem to hear them.

GUEST POST: The most overlooked and crucial pieces of evidence related to establishing a timeline of events that night by Ralph Cifaretto

December 21, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 17 Comments

Below is some excellent analysis and commentary in response to the 28th Tranche [NCRFL Digital Evidence Analysis]:

In my opinion this is one of the most overlooked and crucial pieces of evidence related to establishing a timeline of events that night. I’m surprised you posted this without comment Nick and have not delved into the subject more.

As a preface to the rest of my post: If you’re unsure what these graphs are you are looking at, they are “step counts” recorded by iPhones of both Chris and Shan’ann. An iPhone has a “health app” that passively records your movement based on a variety of factors using gyroscopes, accelerometers and other various good stuff. It does this as “step counts” and represents them in a graph. The [quality of the] photos here are shocking but I can tell you that the Y axis goes up in increments of 200 steps, and the x axis is a is a 24 hour time period in one hour increments, starting at 12am on the selected day. I personally use this app frequently and am quite familiar with it.

How accurate are iPhones in recording steps? Pretty accurate. Refer to this video to get an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljk7kAjvEd8

Its important to note: The iPhone can ONLY record your steps if it is directly on your person and in motion. It can still be on but not record steps you do not have it. Is it also not fooled by car/air travel movement. Given that both Chris and Shan’ann were almost constantly glued to their phones, I feel this would be a quite accurate way to track their movement.

Now on to what the iPhones show:

Chris’ work iPhone:
– Barely any activity on the Sunday, some very minor stuff late Sunday afternoon on the 12th. (possibly when he picked up the phone to text Kodi Roberts he will be at Cervi tomorrow morning).
– 0000-0400 on the 13th. NO recorded activity.
– 0400-0500 on the 13th. Some very minor movement in this hour. Establishes Chris as awake
-0500-0600 on the 13th – Lots of movement and activity, Chris takes over 400 steps with the phone in his possession
-0600-0700 on the 13th – Minor activity, this is when he had loaded the bodies and was driving the truck out to Cervi and dumping the bodies
-0700 – 1000 another flurry of activity, Chris takes a combined total of around 1400 steps during these hours with the phone in his possession

Chris’ personal iPhone:
– 2300-0000 on the 12th. Chris takes over 200 steps with his personal iPhone in his possession. We know he is awake at this time and the last time he texted Shan’ann was at 23:21.
– 0000-0400 on the 13th. NO recorded movement from Chris’ iPhone during this period. He receives an alert from his Vivint security system at 0148 telling him the front door has been opened.
– 0400-0500 on the 13th. Minor activity on the phone. Around 20-30 steps are recorded during this period. Establishes Chris as awake at this time.
-0500-0600 on the 13th. A similar story to the work phone, increased activity with around 200 steps with the iPhone in his possession during the hour.
-0600-0700 on the 13th. Another lull in activity with 20 or so steps record. Once again he is driving to Cervi and dumping the bodies.

Shan’ann’s iPhone:
0000 – 0100 on the 13th. Around 100 steps recorded
0100 – 0200 on the 13th. Around 800 steps recorded. She arrives home during this hour at 0148
0200 – 1500 on the 13th. NO recorded activity.
1500 – 1600 on the 13th. Just over 400 steps recorded. This is likely just after Chris ”found” the phone and switched it on again.

Summary:
-Both of Chris’ iPhones (work and personal) show absolutely no movement with the phone in his possession after 12am and before 4am on the day of the murder. There is slight activity during the 4am to 5am period on both phones, with increased movement between 5am-6am before another lull. They are both very consistent with each other.
– Shan’ann’s phone shows no movement after 2am Monday and before 3pm Monday. This means its likely that Chris turned her phone off completely after the murder and did not switch it back on until it was found by Nickole’s son.
– The Vivint motion sensors on the ground floor alerted to Shan’ann opening the front door at 1:48am and did not detect any other motion on that floor until 4:23am. This matches almost perfectly with the recorded movement from all 3 iPhones and I believe has huge implications for when the murders took place.

Side note: More shoddy police work done in this case. If detective Baumhover had tried a little bit harder at his job, he would have noticed that underneath these graphs on the iPhone is a menu that contains an option named “Show All Data”. Clicking this option will allow you to see the EXACT times that the iPhone was picked up and moved during a given day, and the time that it stopped moving, and an approximate distance traveled/step count for each time.

Unfortunate that this wasn’t done as it would have helped nail down both parties movements much more accurately in the given time periods. Unfortunately these graphs broken into hour increments is all we have to work with.

Postscript – The iPhone Data shouldn’t be confused with the iWatch Data

The data reference above is entirely drawn from the 3 iPhones described in the document (Items 40, 41 and 42).It is possible to synchronize your iWatch to the iPhone so the data appears the same on both, but in this case I believe if the data had been synced the step counts and activity levels throughout the day would be much higher. (Based on personal experience and the fact that the watch is literally strapped to your body the entire day.)

In the discovery I cannot find any information about the iWatches themselves being forensically examined. I believe this is another huge and glaring omission by the police again. Why? Because the iWatch itself has an even more advanced suite of biometric data it gathers from the person its attached to, the main one of interest being their heart rate. If Chris and Shan’ann were wearing their watches at the time of the murder, the iWatch would have most definitely detected the massive heart rate spike resulting from that (along with the fact that Shan’annss watch would stop giving a heart reading entirely), and could have possibly even given us an exact time of murder.

Incredibly, frustratingly, it wasn’t done. Why?

1st Review of RAPE OF CASSANDRA

December 20, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 2 Comments

TWO FACE RAPE OF CASSANDRA is available on Amazon at this link.

Christopher Watts’ Worst Nightmare is Coming True – and it’s not what you think

December 20, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 107 Comments

“Notice is hereby given that I will at public auction on Wednesday April 17, 2019, sell [your property at 2825 Saratoga Trail] to the highest and best bidder for cash.”

When someone else loses their home it’s no biggie, because it’s theirs. When it’s you losing your home, it’s a completely different story. If there was a lot of trauma behind having and losing homes in the past, then the trauma is so much greater.

There is no doubt that the mountain riding like an obese woolly mammoth on Watts’ shoulders at the time of the murders was the burden of the house. We know Shan’ann was in love with her home, and didn’t want to sell it. But the home didn’t belong to her.

Since Shan’ann was bossy, called the shots, and often told Watts what to do or how things were going to be, we can see how she would have opposed Watts on selling the house. Shan’ann was also very invested in the home, in terms of putting the names of her children on the walls, decorating rooms to color-coded specifications, and also using the house as a showpiece to brag on social media about how much she, and her husband and the family were Thriving ever after. It was easy to sell that spiel in a big, spacious, immaculate mansion, with a shiny new car in the garage, than in a grubby apartment with a battered 2006 Mustang.

Kessinger said Watts dragged his feet about selling the house, but it’s likely Shan’ann was the reason for this feet dragging. That seemed to end though when the Watts family were summoned by the Wyndham Hill Homeowner’s Association. Watts was also keenly aware of an oil battery that was about to spring up across the road from their big, new home, and cause its equity to hemorrhage.

For someone as OCD and fussy as Shan’ann, her laissez faire attitude to a fracking battery with all its health implications [she and the children had asthma] popping up nearby, says a lot about her level of attachment to the big home, and her determination to maintain the optics at least, of a lavish, successful lifestyle.

As soon as Shan’ann and the children were dead and disposed of, Watts went into high gear to get his house on the market, and to find a new one. He didn’t waste any time, did he? He was urgent, took charge, and got the ball rolling. This seems clear evidence that if he was dragging his feet, it was because of Shan’ann.

Perhaps this was the source of the furious screaming matches the neighbor overheard, and the reason why Watts was the one going crazy in them. He wanted to sell the house! Listen to 1:14 in the clip below:

https://youtu.be/hiHXZJM2f4Q?t=74

So a major reason for disagreement and dissension would have been the house. Watts would felt he HAD to sell it, but Shan’ann didn’t want to. Perhaps she convinced him that she’d have a good month selling Thrive and that would lift them out of their debt so they could breathe for a while. Maybe he believed her. Maybe he was betting that could work. Maybe he went along with it. Perhaps that’s what the trip to North Carolina was all about – a last ditch effort to drum up new business.

But did it?

The words “house” and “home” pop up 525 and 472 times in the 1960 pages of discovery, respectively, or at an average rate of once every two pages. The 4 177-square-foot home that is 2825 Saratoga Trail is by far the largest and most expensive of the Watts family assets. The owner is none other than Chris Watts himself. The house was purchased for $392 709 in May 2013, the same year their first child, Bella, was born.

The outstanding principal on Watts’ home as per the recent foreclosure filing served on the new inmate at Dodge Prison in Waupun, Wisconsin, is $349 938.09.

This means over five-and-a-half years, Watts had only paid $42 770,91 on his mortgage. That’s significantly less than $10 000 a year, and significantly less than $1000 per month.

In the 67 months that have passed since the house was purchased, an average of $638,37 has been paid off each month. That amount was supposed to be almost five times that, at $2700-$2800. Watts has acknowledged that insurance payments on the house alone comprised $500 of the total mortgage. Using that calculation, arguably the Watts family were still averaging less than a third of the mortgage payments that were due each month.

Many who remain mystified by the Watts family murders don’t think much of the finances, or the living-beyond-their-means spiel. District Attorney Michael Rourke also mentioned the Watts’ finances dismissively in court.

According to CBS Denver:

“I think it became pretty obvious that he found a new love interest and for whatever reason in his mind, divorce wasn’t an option.I can’t speak as to why anyone would take the steps that he did but during the course of our investigation, other than the normal stressers of financial stress that I think most of us have, the occasional marital stress, we couldn’t find anything else that was a significant enough motive to annihilate your family, in the manner that he did.”

This is poor form from the prosecutor. Couldn’t find? Don’t have a motive? Look harder!

Ironically, the very area the District Attorney is minimizing as “normal stressors” was the area that wasn’t. One reason is that unlike the District Attorney who is used to living in middle class America, and probably grew up in middle class America, both Chris Watts and Shana’nn were not from middle class America. They’d risen from another social class and by the summer of 2018 were desperately trying to hang on to an upper-middle class fairy tale picture.

It’s true that many couples go through financial hardship without literally killing each other, but it’s also fair to say financial issues tend to weigh heaviest on a marriage or relationship. And here’s the rub. The worse the finances are, the worse the fighting that happens inside families.

Chronic financial disaster is going to weigh a lot more heavily than run-of-the-mill bad debt.

In the Watts family, what made this second disaster so fraught was that it was a nightmare they’d previously eluded, only to be caught up in the crocodile-infested quagmire a second time. But the second time there were three children to fjord through the swamp, two of them often sickly. There was also Shan’ann’s $100 000 surgery in August 2017, that the Watts’ family were till trying service many months later.

Probably the biggest obstacle both Watts and his wife faced if they wanted to get out of the debt black hole they were stuck in, was themselves. Both Watts and Shan’ann came from relevatively poor backgrounds, so a lot of personal pride and status was invested in the house on Saratoga Trail. It was a symbol of their great rags to riches success story. It was something they had built together into a home, and an impressive one, the biggest on the block.

The problem with such symbols, especially when they’re not real, the symbol can make you, but it can also drag you down and destroy you. Most fairy tales when they encounter the real world, and real world limits, end in tears.

A case can therefore be made, that if the house was taken out of the equations of this crime [keep the unwanted pregnancy, keep the mistress, keep the so-so finances] – but take away the real monster, take away the unaffordable castle, then everyone is free. Poor, not living so large, but alive and free.

Watts clearly wanted the best of both worlds. To keep his lifestyle and start a new life. He got his second wish.

Nichol Kessinger has also lost her life – just desserts or a symptom of a cruel, vindictive society?

December 19, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 101 Comments

It’s been repeated ad nauseum by now: why didn’t Chris Watts just get divorced? Are we a society that permits divorce? Of course, I hear you say. Divorce is as common as muck [as they say in Australia].

How about divorcing your pregnant wife, taking responsibility and going bankrupt in the process? How does society – and the opposite sex – look on a potential partner who does the right thing, but is exposed as a worthless, no-good scoundrel in the process?

Is such a person allowed to go on with their lives, allowed to pursue some happily ever after, or is society wired to mire them in scandal, crushing obligation and reputational ruin? Shan’ann’s Facebook hovered like a giant guillotine over the Watts marriage [in the event of it unravelling]. The nuts meltdown on July 9th, where Watts’ mother was lambasted in public, was proof enough of this.

Many of us know of divorced couples who air their dirty laundry in public. It’s ugly, it’s damaging, everybody loses and it happens all the time.

Watts stood to lose a lot if he was honest – his home, his mistress, possibly even his job. In his mind, the risks of full disclosure outweighed the risks of triple homicide. That may be a damning indictment of him, but whether we accept it or not, and whether we like it or not, it’s also his damning indictment of the world we live in.

Who cares what Chris Watts thinks of society, right?

But it’s the same society that is now condemning an innocent bystander to the murders. Kessinger is innocent [yes, some people can’t abide those words side by side] in the strict sense that she didn’t directly destroy Watts’ family. It feels like heresy to say that, but to address the point more fully – in the history of cheaters and adulterers, how many have gotten away with adultery with zero repercussions?

In the history of human beings cheating on their partners, how many have cheated during a pregnancy, or during financial stress, or when the brood becomes too much to handle, with no blood being shed?

And how many of those encounters have led to triple murder? The answer is, almost none, but it did for Kessinger.

The court of public opinion can be just as effective, if not more so, at pronouncing judgment, and executing a sentence against perceived lawbreakers. Again, Kessinger hasn’t been put on trial, and at least in the eyes of the law, she’s not been found to be guilty of anything, not even obstruction of justice.

While Kessinger is clearly not blameless in this debacle, neither is it true that she was entirely to blame either.

If there is an argument that Kessinger losing her life [her home, her job, her married lover] is a kind of just desserts, there is, at the same time, a demonstration here for how society can destroy you if and when the tide turns. Just as it can destroy anything, including a song or anyone else when it makes up its mind.

Kevin Hart did not handle his PR fiasco well! Rather than issuing a proper apology for his homophobic comments, he posted a defensive Instagram post that ostracized many fans. Issuing and a genuine apology is crucial. Remember COGNITIVE empathy is necessary in all cases! #CM215bu pic.twitter.com/0yAxj7sLWl

— Eliza Shaw (@elizaashaww20) December 15, 2018

When they fired @JamesGunn because of stupid tweets that were meant to be edgy & provocative but were just gross and he had ACKNOWLEDGED & APOLOGIZED for – something called taking personal responsibility. The very theme of #GOTG2 (2 of 4)

— Jada Hope #RehireJamesGunn Diaz (@IamJadaDiaz) December 17, 2018

this is a better link:https://t.co/8uJUGW7r41

— hannah aka brie larson is still my wife (@hannahcantalope) December 13, 2018

So how about a thought experiment. Let’s imagine you [or I] are Nichol Kessinger. We’re her. We’re in her shoes. We’re the most hated woman in America. What do you do?

The first answer that comes to mind is that she [you/me] should have gone to the cops the moment she [you/me] learned Shan’ann and the kids were missing, and that the cops had been summoned. Let’s leave out the debate about whether or not she [you/me] knew about the pregnancy, or when she [you/me] might have known.

Our argument is that Kessinger [you/me] should have gone to the cops, and done so with full disclosure. No deleted messages. Just tell them what happened. Is that what you/me would do in similar circumstances? Wouldn’t that have made the public lynching even worse?

Whatever we may say in response to that, Kessinger thought it would, hence she stayed out of the spotlight and went underground for several months. When she did come out, she gave a carefully contrived interview with a defamation lawyer present, to a reputable media agency. She had to come out from the cold, because her part in the Watts case was days away from being confirmed for the first time at the sentencing hearing.

Kessinger’s story didn’t do much good. Her public lynching went ahead regardless.

So what would you have done, if you were her?

It’s a valid question, and one Kessinger is doubtlessly tormented with each day as she tries to begin a new life, with a new name, in some unknown place, while she considers her former life lost.

What can she do now?

Full disclosure now is no longer an option, because it runs counter to witness protection. So there probably aren’t any books in the pipeline like there was with Amber Frey.

So how about this. It may be that the cruel, vindictive society we are is no accident. A proper execution of justice, and disclosure, in this case, would have been in court, not in the media and social media. The reason that didn’t happen is sinister, and part of the way our lack of clarity on this case manifests, is through knee-jerk demonizing of Watts and Kessinger. But neither Watts nor Kessinger arose in a vacuum. They were once thought of fondly by their family, friends, colleagues and society, just as you are now.

Who cares what Chris Watts or Nichol Kessinger think of society. Who cares if they were both too scared – and remain too terrified – to take society into its confidence. Who cares! But it’s that fear of society that caused Watts and Kessinger to engage in a secret liaison, and when things went bad, to keep those secrets secret. We may wag our fingers at him and her, we may call them cowards, but we can only do that while we’re on the higher ground. What happens when we’re in their shoes?

This societal status quo reminds me of a famous scene in Kill Bill Volume Two that addresses the critique of a comic book hero on society. On us. Have a listen.

The operative part of Bill’s monologue is when he talks about heroes wearing costumes, and then Superman arriving on Earth already a hero, but donning a costume of human society as he sees it [as he sees us] to blend in as Clark Kent.

BILL: And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak. He’s unsure of himself. He’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.

It’s Time to Get to Grips with Chris Watts’ Tells when he Lies

December 19, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 5 Comments

Many of us, perhaps most, intuitively knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark when we first saw Watts’ seven-minute Sermon on the Porch. We didn’t know why, it wasn’t necessarily anything specific, yet there was a suspicion [if not certainty] that things just weren’t adding up.

By studying and analyzing the Sermon again and again, we became more familiar with Watts, with the content and context, and as we became experts in this piece of dialogue it was more and more difficult for microexpressions to remain hidden. The more we looked and listened, the more sure we were that he was hiding something. It turned out he was trying to conceal a triple murder.

His main ploy was to act normal, but what counted against him was:

He acted too normal
His version of normal didn’t meet our expectations of “appropriate” emotion. He didn’t appear concerned or overwhelmed as most people would have been had they been in a genuine missing person’s scenario

We can see that by his acting normal, he was trying to communicate that there was nothing to worry about, and that everything was probably okay. But this was an early miscalculation from him, and an early sign Watts’ ability to recognize when his chips were down was very poor.

Once the bodycam footage emerged, we quickly recognized telltale patterns in his deceits – lip licking, swaying, folding his arms.

Some of us also picked up a few others – stuttering, Watts curling his lower lip under his upper lip [a sign of stress or nervousness], looking at the sky for inspiration, throwing out his hands, shaking his head at the wrong time, appearing to smile at the wrong time, and blinking at the wrong moment. But many of these were assumptions, and subjective assumptions at that.

Now, with the benefit of the Discovery Documents, we’re able to test them.

A VISUAL POLYGRAPH

We can use what’s in the Discovery Documents to cross-reference what we know as absolute certainties of fact against the bullshit parts of his Sermon. So let’s do a bullshit check with only one piece of information, and watch for the microexpressions that leaks out.

We’ll apply our visual polygraph test to the moment when Watts explains Bella’s kindergarten attendance. The fact is the four-year-old was supposed to return to Primrose school that morning [August 13] if she hadn’t died.

Now, there are numerous texts in support of this fact [scroll to the bottom of this post to review them]. Prior to the weekend, on August 9, Shan’ann pertinently asked her husband to drive with her and Bella to be with them to share Bella’s first day of the new school year at Primrose.

At 2:42 in the clip below, during his Sermon on the Porch, Watts lies not by his denial that Bella was going to school, but the opposite. He volunteers that Bella was going to go to school, but then realizes this disclosure could be bad for him, so he tailors the end of that message by changing the timing of her return [and that’s the lie].

WATTS: Bella [long blink] was gonna start kindergarten…[pauses as he realizes he’s just said this in the past tense]…[stutters] n-next Monday…and they-they’re just getting ready to start.

So his basic tells are:

Extended blinking while talking.

2. Looking into the sky for inspiration + stuttering

3. A lip curl at the end of the lie, as if signing it off and getting on to the next one

In terms of the semantics, can you see how this statement makes no sense?

Bella was gonna start kindergarten…n-next Monday…and they-they’re just getting ready to start…

But why would they be getting ready on Tuesday if they were going to school next Monday? If Bella and Ceecee were [are, actually] going to start kindergarten the following week, then as he was standing there, that was still true [within his spiel]. And that would mean present tense:

Bella’s starting kindergarten soon…[Bella is…]

So Bella was going to start kindergarten was a big booboo, and the stuttering, blinking, looking at the sky, and pausing, were all telltale clues that he was dissembling and trying to clean up his verbal diarrhea.

We now know Watts knew they were dead, and so he knew he’d already pulled them out of kindergarten, and he was probably nervous as hell the staff at Primrose were watching this. What about other parents, like Jeremy Lindstrom, and Shan’ann’s mother, who knew their kids had gone back to school that day [and Sandi knew the same].

It’s clear from this one lie that the kids going back to that expensive school weighed heavily on him, otherwise there would be no need for nervousness around this subject, and no need to lie about it.

So just as it’s valid to ask “Why didn’t he just get divorced”, in terms of the murders of those poor little girls, it’s just as valid to ask, “Why didn’t he just take them out of kindergarten?”

Perhaps the answer to the one question relates and interrelates to the answer of the other.

Dr. Phil Covers Chris Watts – and uses the “N” Word

December 19, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 53 Comments

Dr. Phil is an expert when it comes to psychology, right? At 53 seconds into the clip below, Dr. Phil drops the “N” word [Narcissism] for the first time. Let’s listen in.

Dr. Phil describes Watts making “very dumb mistakes which narcissistic people often do, because they only see things from their points of view…”

This must mean narcissists are stupid, because they just can’t see past themselves.

So, like, celebrities…Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gagga, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen – how many of these celebrities are dumb because of their narcissism, or just plain narcissistic or just plain dumb?

The “N” word has become one of the most popular words in true crime today. It’s taken over from psychopath, in that regard, as a sort of of catch-all catchphrase label which basically explains who the criminal is and why he committed the crime.

Except it doesn’t.

In reality, our social media-infused society is more narcissistic, conceited and vain than ever – we as consumers are so self-absorbed in our own customized color-coded wants and desires for convenience we’re more narcissistic than ever – so to point the finger at a criminal and blame his narcissism for the crime is not only hypocrisy of the last resort, it’s blindingly disingenuous on our part.

IS THERE A PSYCHOPATH IN YOUR SOUP?

In the same way that the word psychopath was sticky and popular for a while, because a lot of the traits of psychopathy do translate directly into criminality [heartlessness, lack of empathy and pathological lying], narcissism also has a feel-good stickiness to it. Both terms are sticky because they resonate to some degree. It is invariably somewhat true that a crime is going to be, and appear to be, cruel, heartless and selfish. But the fact is, many people in ordinary society are selfish and cruel. Many others are high-functioning psychopaths and pathological liars – certain professions attract these psychopathic personalities: chefs, lawyers, CEO’s, salespeople, television reporters, surgeons, cops, journalists and members of the clergy.

So to call a criminal a psychopath is really to associate a criminal with a vast swathe of society. You’re not really narrowing it down by using the term, instead by using a cliche, you’re invoking a stereotype, and probably incorrectly.

More: Professor believes Christopher Watts could be a psychopath

IS YOUR NEIGHBOR A NARCISSIST – OR ARE YOU?

Narcissism is similar. To brand a despicable criminal a narcissist feels pretty gratifying, doesn’t it? The word has a powerful zing to it, like atheist or pedophile. A narcissist is characterized by extreme selfishness, he craves admiration, he has a grandiose or exaggerated view of his own abilities, and his self-centeredness may be so extreme that he struggles to differentiate himself from external objects [say, a large house, trophy wife or mistress, bank balance or pot of gold].

And like the psychopath, an extreme narcissist is a pathological liar. Thus, the real criminal character-trait we want to look out for is habitual lying.

And so, this is where the “N” word breaks down in the Chris Watts case. If you’re going to accuse Watts of being grandiose, never wrong, wanting to be the center of attention, addicted to something [or someone], arrogant, lacking in sympathy, controlling and/or manipulative, two-faced etc, to be fair you’ve got to apply those traits to Shan’ann as well. I know, I know, that’s victim blaming. But I’m not going to let those attached to the “N” word wriggle out of it that easily.

Blame Chris Watts all you like for being a narcissist, apply those traits to Shan’ann – or don’t – but before you’re done, apply them to yourself as well. That’s the real litmus test.

If we’re being honest, if the Narcissistic label describes Watts best then it also describes plenty of us too, and many people we know, doesn’t it? I’m not at all sure, for the majority of Watts’ life prior to the crime, whether he can be genuinely associated with grandiosity, arrogance, provoking others, putting others down, blaming others, or wanting to be the center of attention.

Some aspects do ring true, like his being potentially irresponsible with money, as well as with his wife’s pregnancy, and with the lives of his loved ones. But how many among us are loyal to a fault, have never cheated, and have solid bank balances right now?

How are your finances? How often do you lie? How do you [or I] respond to criticism?

None of this is intended to defend or justify Watts, it’s an effort to make the case for the applicability and appropriateness of the “N” word. I hope that much is clear. By now it should be obvious that the Narcissism label is about as apt as the Psychopath label, which is to say not apt at all. It’s a generalization. If we want to explain who Watts is, and why he did what he did, narcissism isn’t the diagnosis.

WHO ARE THE TRUE NARCISSISTS IN TRUE CRIME?

The poster boy for a narcissistic murderer is Oscar Pistorius. There is a huge amount of arrogance, conceit, self-centeredness etc, and much of it is based on massive attention and adulation in the face of massive inadequacy and insecurity. OJ Simpson is arguably also a classic case of a narcissistic criminal. Both these men are – or were – celebrities. That’s the level or dose of narcissism we’re talking about when it’s relevant to true crime, and guess what – our own narcissism and voyeurism played directly into the hero worship that created these celebrity personas.

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In reality, every psychologically healthy human being is a narcissist. We all have to maintain a healthy level of narcissism. It’s a minimum level of self-love we have that causes us to take care of things like personal hygiene, and basic socially acceptable behavior.

When a sibling sees another get a slightly bigger piece of cake, or a few more drops of soda, or a slightly more expensive toy come Christmas, they go crazy, demanding equal treatment. This is actually healthy narcissism; it protects them from being trampled on and taken advantage of. It reminds the parents not to favor the one over the other, or there will be hell to pay, and there should be when there is unfair favoritism.

So when it comes to true crime, who decides how much narcissism is excessive, and when it plays into criminal psychology when we’re all narcissists to some extent, and we’re a more narcissistic [selfish, vain, materialistic] society than we have ever been!

Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to decide this or that criminal is too narcissistic. Relative to who, or what?

IDENTITY IS THE KEY TO THE AUTHENTIC NATURE OF CRIMINALS

In order to fathom who a criminal is or why they do what they do, we have to do the much harder job of figuring out who they are. We have to get to know them. We have to construct a narrative. We have to find out about their history, life story, love life, backstory, family, friends, enemies, personality, attachments, failures – all of it. That takes time and effort. It’s through their identities that we figure out the who and why. It’s through spending a lot of time deciphering their language, behavior, body language, semantics, preferences, likes and dislikes etc. that we start getting into their heads. We listen to their music, examine their tastes [in clothes, food, sex], all of this tells us far more about a person than the “N” word.

If you’re a true crime fanatic and you’ve been banding the “N” word around a lot lately, please stop doing it. If everyone calls every murderer a narcissist, all we’re doing is agreeing that we have no fucking clue who or what we are dealing with. The “N” word, as far as I’m concerned, is almost as bad as the “he just snapped” explanation.

But that’s a rant for another day.

More: “Chris Watts Just Snapped”

Dr. Phil On Confessed Killer Chris Watts: ‘He Started Making Really Dumb Mistakes Really Early’

Was An Extra-Marital Affair The Motive For Colorado Killer Chris Watts To Murder His Family?

‘Chris Watts Is What We Call A Family Annihilator,’ Says Former FBI Criminal Profiler

https://youtu.be/5ETF0t_vlzI

Two More Critical Omissions from the Discovery Documents

December 18, 2018 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 17 Comments

In the early hours of August 13, a Ring doorbell camera records 34-year-old Shan’ann Watts arriving home in Frederick, Colorado from a business trip at 01:48. The pregnant mother enters her home on Saratoga Trail and is never seen alive again.

Where is this this footage of Shan’ann’s arrival, and why hasn’t it been released?

Also, did the cadaver dogs search the inside of Watts’ vehicle [where he said the bodies were stowed en route to CERVI 319]?

Why is there no footage of the interior of Chris Watts’ truck?

Shan’ann’s 33-year-old husband Chris Watts is seen on his neighbor’s doorbell camera from 05:27 onward. The camera records Watts backing his truck into the driveway, then heading back into the house and out to the truck several times. Although no bodies can be seen on the camera, during one of the trips to his truck he appears to be walking backwards, dragging something.

Exactly what happened in the 3 hours 39 minutes between the two camera recordings remains unclear and uncertain.

During the sentencing hearing on November 19, 2018, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said investigators don’t know the exact sequence of events. Because of the gruesome manner the bodies of his two children, Bella [4] and Celeste [3] were disposed of, investigators haven’t been able to establish time of death either. Were the children killed before or after their mother?

The Discovery Documents reveal how Watts’ story of the crime comes about. Eventually Watts is prompted: “Did Shan’ann do something?” But even Watts’ confession isn’t reliable.

In the moment that Chris Watts steps forward out of his quiet, introverted self and rises as the hero in his “confession”, Shan’ann falls as the villain, a convenient, symbolic and of course cowardly distortion of the truth.

So what is the truth?

TWO FACE RAPE OF CASSANDRA, published on December 17, 2018, investigates the exact sequence of events, from the time of the first death in the Watts home, to the disposal at the Cervi site, to how and why a “normal” family man wreaked a holocaust against his own family, and ultimately, himself.

Watts was undoubtedly devoted but weak during his marriage, inspired but duplicitous during his affair, and the murders themselves were the ultimate manifestation of his quintessential cowardice. But his resolve to murder didn’t arise in a vacuum. It germinated in a troubled paradise; that aspect has to be acknowledged as well. That aspect is RAPE OF CASSANDRA’s terrifying terra firma.