TRUE CRIME ROCKET SCIENCE

True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek

Tag: Celeste

Bella and Celeste Watts: how were they murdered?

November 12, 2018 / / 46 Comments

We now know Chris Watts killed both his daughters. How did he do it? The cause of death will be clarified by the autopsy reports next week, around 24 hours after the sentencing hearing.

The true test of Rocket Science lies in the ability to join dots with insufficient information. So let’s do it. What’s our theory on the murders, what do we say caused the death of Bella and Celeste a week before the autopsy reports come out?

In his bogus confession Watts claimed Shan’ann strangled Ceecee, and implies Bella was murdered in the same way. Does that mean Watts strangled both girls to death as well? I’m not sure it does.

https://youtu.be/Z_25TM5vlMs

Complex Psychology

One way of figuring out what happened to the children is to look at what supposedly happened to their mother, but the psychology can be quite complex.

Watts may indeed have strangled Shan’ann. At 02:00 [or 04:00 or 05:00] in a subdivision of closely packed houses a silent murder would have been necessary. And in the schema of his version, it may have sounded right and appropriate if he saw Shan’ann strangling one of the children, because then he was “entitled” to lose his temper and do the same to her.

Maybe Watts felt this version was his best chance of beating the charges against him.

One thing we know for sure is that Shan’ann was buried in a different way to the children, and in my opinion, killed at a different time to the children. So why would the cause of death not be different too?

So what really happened?

If Watts had reason [in his mind, not ours] to murder Shan’ann, it’s difficult to see the same level of malice and intentionality towards his children. If he strangled Shan’ann it doesn’t necessarily mean he did the same to his children. The main difference, logistically, was that he had a lot of time to “put the children down” [permanently], whereas the moment Shan’ann arrived home, in a premeditated murder scenario he was hours behind schedule [in my opinion].

If the murders of the little girls was premeditated, and if he knew he had the whole weekend to do it, then he’d have the means and the opportunity to do it in a way that suited him best.

Fullscreen capture 20181022 145514

I believe the autopsy will show that the Watts children ate dinner, or some sort of snack in the late afternoon/early evening after they returned home from the birthday party. I believe the snack likely contained sedative or painkiller type medication, or both, intended to put the children to sleep. To render them unconscious. They could then be painlessly killed – asphyxiated – in their sleep.

An overdose of Amoxicillin [mentioned in the video] can cause loss of consciousness and trouble breathing. An overdose of the common household painkiller Tylenol [also mentioned in the video] can kill.

Oxycodone and morphine are painkillers typically associated with paintreatment by lupus sufferers. Both have a sedative effect at high doses. According to WebMD an overdose of Oxycodone causes slow/shallow breathing, slow heartbeat and coma.

According to drugabuse.com:

In 2014, the rate of overdose deaths caused by natural and semi-synthetic opioids like morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone was 3.8 per 100,000.

One of the typical side-effects of morphine is a bluish or purplish hue to the skin…

Fullscreen capture 20181112 160301

Other overdose symptoms of morphine include extreme sleepiness and loss of consciousness.

After rendering the children unconscious, it’s possible Watts tried one method on the one child, and another on the other. So, for example, one child may have been drowned in the bath [while unconscious], and the other strangled or smothered with a shirt, sheet or pillow.

Fullscreen capture 20181010 090709

What supports the psychology of a chemical component to the murders? 

1. The whole Thrive lifestyle is based on the ingestion of protein-bars, shakes, powders and chemical and vitamin laced patches that are placed onto the skin. In the same way that these chemicals were symbolically associated [and branded] with healthiness, if Watts’ personal [and financial] association with Thrive was negative, he may have seen the utility of chemicals in the opposite way: a murder weapon as opposed to a tool for wellness. I’m not suggesting Thrive products were used, but rather that Watts was used to the idea of chemicals being placed into and onto the bodies of his family, as well as himself.

If he wanted a lethal supply of chemicals/drugs/medication, or a supply sufficient to knock out a small child, he simply had to dig into Shan’ann’s enormous medicine stash, used to treat her lupus. This would have included a reservoir of adult-strength painkillers.

In the Christmas video above, at about 1:50  Shan’ann refers to giving both children “lots of Tylenol” while Chris Watts is standing beside her in shorts, holding Ceecee.

2. Watts himself worked with chemicals on a daily basis. As a mechanic he was well aware of fuels, lubricants, cleaning agents etc. As an operator for Anadarko he would have been well aware not only of the potentially dizzying impact of petrochemicals on his own safety, but the damage these chemicals can cause to human tissue.  The oil industry also uses strong chemicals to clean their complex distribution systems, including hydrochloric acid.

3. The fact that the girl’s bodies were dumped into chemical tanks, also suggests he had the psychology of chemicals in his mind when committing the murders. In his mind he wanted to reduce his children’s bodies to oil and his wife’s corpse to dust. On September 14 I posted an extended version of the same theory, and on October 3 reiterated that the bodies were “processed” in some way post mortem. This processing could have amounted to something as simple as shaving the hair off the girl’s heads. Watts often cut the girl’s hair, so this wasn’t new to him. Given his knowledge about chemicals, he may have treated the girl’s remains overnight in a chemical bath, or even an acid bath.

https://youtu.be/ehuD5tYnB0c

The release of the autopsy reports will soon provide clarity on these questions.

Murder of Bella and Celeste: Updated Timeline

November 11, 2018 / / 19 Comments

Saturday, August 11th: Jeremy Lindstrom’s daughter McKenna babysat the Watts children. It’s unclear where Chris Watts was during that time, during the day, but we know he liked a tweet about a “big time win” for the Rockies.

Was there also a concert after the football game in Denver that Watts [and someone perhaps] attended? Irrespective, Chris Watts may have watched the game at a friend’s house or a bar and celebrated afterwards.

Fullscreen capture 20181110 200453

Note, both tweets below have since been removed, which means the timestamps can’t be verified.

Fullscreen capture 20181015 111536

13:59: Shan’ann posts a message against a background of hearts saying she’s ready to get home to Chris and her girls.

Fullscreen capture 20181110 200308

14:25: About 26 minutes later, Watts and the girls are photographed at Jeremy Lindstrom’s house. They’re celebrating his son’s five birthday.

45657096_10204940546989700_5689006022631358464_n45797681_10204940545309658_1352669593046351872_nFullscreen capture 20181111 120454

17:20: Shan’ann posts a message about the baby moving twice over the weekend. Were Bella and Celeste still alive when this message was posted from Arizona?

Fullscreen capture 20181110 200242

PGA winds up during the late afternoon: Chris Watts also liked a post about Tiger Woods performance on Sunday. It’s unclear when exactly Woods played what, but what it certain he was playing until late on Sunday afternoon.

Fullscreen capture 20181111 130543Fullscreen capture 20181111 130608

17:22: A photo of Shan’ann is posted indicating that her flight has been delayed. Shan’ann and her friends settle down to eat dinner at the Thirsty Lion Gastropub & Grill.

Were the Watts girls still alive at this stage? Did they live long enough to eat dinner, or was birthday cake the last thing left in their stomachs? Shan’ann’s last meal was also likely whatever she at at the Thirsty Lion Pub, and anything she ate on the flight to Denver.

19:22: Chris Watts is observed barbecuing on his outside balcony. The Watts children, as far as we know, were not.

Fullscreen capture 20180930 014018Fullscreen capture 20180930 033416Fullscreen capture 20181010 091237Fullscreen capture 20181015 111412

It’s unclear when exactly the PGA finished that Sunday, but it’s likely Watts watched at least some of it, perhaps in-between barbecuing.

Fullscreen capture 20181111 130608Fullscreen capture 20181111 131346

Fullscreen capture 20180923 211411Fullscreen capture 20181111 120210Fullscreen capture 20181022 142922

23:09: Sha’ann’s final post repeated what she’s said earlier in the day:

Ready to be home with Chris and the girls.

Vm5i4R0

The fact that Shan’ann expresses the same sentiment twice suggests she felt uneasy, awkward or even guilty about being away all weekend, and the flight delay had compounded her absence. We also know from Nickole Atkinson that Shan’ann hadn’t been feeling well during the trip, though it’s unclear whether this was related to the pregnancy, to her being ill-at-ease, to lupus symptoms, or to some combination of these.

Within six hours of posting “Ready to be home” Shan’ann was dead.

Fullscreen capture 20181110 200616

30738682_10155371743781935_8724212586584160305_n

How Happy were Celeste and Bella?

October 10, 2018 / / 105 Comments

Someone left an off-the-wall comment on a YouTube video saying how sorry they feel for Deeter. He never seems to get any attention, does he?

What about the children?

This question is for the mothers out there. There are plenty of videos and photos with the kids in them. Do they seem generally happy to you? Were they normal, healthy children? Did Shan’ann’s autoimmune disease make her overly anxious as a mother, in terms of how she treated her daughters’ health?

What impact does social media addiction in the home have on small children, especially excessive focus on social media and selfies? What impact would the constant shepherding of kids as Thrive props have on their relationship with their mother. It’s now no longer fun and games, or spending time with mom in the kitchen, it’s the colder and more mercenary business of performing for and with mother towards a device – constantly.

My impression is that the children quickly began to associate the camera negatively. Just as children can be jealous and possessive of a parent, they can also feel their space impinged by the things that distract attention from themselves, especially the wholesale distraction which is social media.

The disastrous Christmas video is an excellent example of how this fixation on social media can spoil something as special and important for children as Christmas. Truth be told it can spoil it for everyone.

Social media seems to have had an above normal impact on the Watts home. It wasn’t just the photo taking, it was the extended videos on a daily basis, some lasting more than half an hour on a Saturday morning.

This continual distraction, especially of their primary care-giver, could have made them desperate to get their mother’s attention. In some videos one or both of the children are screaming, but Shan’ann continues recording regardless.

Another aspect is the napping of the kids. They both took regular naps with clockwork regularity, and Shan’ann often said they were napping while she was elsewhere in the house recording her sales pitches. As mothers, does this raise flags that they may have been sedated?

What’s your experience, and your observations? Do two and three-year-old’s easily nap together in the day.

Finally, well-balanced and attentive parents are better able to raise well-balanced children. Not always, but generally. Did an unbalanced family dynamic in the Watts home cause the children to feel more anxious and unsettled than they otherwise would, causing them to act out? Because of Shan’ann’s “health challenges”, did the children inherit poor health by default?

I guess the question we’re asking here indirectly is: Was Shan’ann a good mother?

Please leave your thoughts and impressions in the comments below. Additional examples from Shan’ann’s social media to illustrate your answer will be appreciated if you can find them.

© 2024 TRUE CRIME ROCKET SCIENCE

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑