After leaving not one but two scathing one star reviews, one reader’s outlook shifts markedly in book 5, DRILLING THROUGH DISCOVERY.
The reviewer makes a good point that one book isn’t the final analysis on Chris Watts. The books need to be seen as a continuum. Each narrative exposes another facet of the case, and each narrative reflects the knowledge-base known at the time it was written.
In ANNIHILATION I’ll be dealing with Watts “Second Confession” and addressing how the information in that final interview changes things, and why and where it doesn’t. I’ll also be providing a final analysis for where, how and why the crimes took place [based on all the information we now have] and what the murder weapons were. ANNIHILATION will also be explicit about the exact time of death of the three victims.
Something else worth noting – although this series of books is designed not to be read at a snail’s pace, racing through the content and skipping links means you miss most of the really good stuff. Many subtle, intricate, carefully laid out and meticulously reasoned arguments are missed when the reader starts detaching from the narrative and scrolling on. Don’t do that.
Give the narrative time and opportunity to present its case. Explore some of the reinforcing material if you’re curious or unconvinced. Be curious! Believe me, all the building blocks and explanations are in place, just give yourself the space to absorb them and then decide for yourself how much they resonate.
I appreciate that this licensed professional counselor of mental health, and also a licensed chemical dependency professional has taken the time to familiarize himself with the minutiae of this case.
Interestingly Dr. Grande said he formed and recorded an initial prognosis but felt, on second thoughts, that it didn’t sit well with him and so he went back, did additional research and reconsidered.
The Chris Watts case seems perfectly simple. It’s not.
The words “I miss you” appear a total of four times in the 1960 pages of discovery. Three instances are from Shan’ann Watts. None are from Chris Watts.
The first instance is at 19:42 on July 10th, almost two weeks into Shan’ann’s trip away from home.
“I miss you and I feel like you just want to work out and run.” [Discovery Documents, page 2085].
Watts’ response was that running helped him “clear his head”. It’s an interesting turn of phrase, as if he was saying indirectly to Shan’ann running helped him clear his thoughts and feelings about her. In a certain sense this was exactly what he was doing, though not in terms of jogging but “running to another woman” and allowing his thoughts and feelings to “run away”…
Even then Shan’ann didn’t buy his excuse, and told him so.
“I wish my husband wanted to talk to me.”
Early the next morning, at 05:02 Shan’ann called Watts and spoke to him for seven minutes. She called him again at 16:20 on the same day [July 11th] and they spoke for thirteen minutes. The next morning at 04:46 [in other before he went to work] Shan’ann made two unanswered calls to Watts. Half an hour later, presumably when he was ready to leave Watts called his wife back and they spoke for ten minutes [05:16-05:26]. Whatever they discussed, and whatever Watts said to her, unfortunately Shan’ann allowed the situation to slide. What could she really do or say from North Carolina, especially while he was at work [where Kessinger was]?
The second instance is on July 24th, approximately the 4th week of Shan’ann’s six week stint in North Carolina. At 18:02 she tells Watts:
“It’s not hard texting love you and miss you“.
In other words, she’s telling him – remind him – that he’s not missing her or not letting her know he’s missing her. Shan’ann’s actually onto something here, but unfortunately she’s tempted to believe he’s not saying these words because of Watts’ introversion, his “crushed-in” emotional world and his poor communication skills. We know in hindsight that this wasn’t the case as much as the fact that Watts wasn’t missing Shan’ann, in fact quite the opposite – he was enjoying his time away from her and [perhaps surprisingly for him] the kids too.
And so when Shan’ann told Watts on the 24th, hey, why aren’t you telling me you miss me, it’s not clear whether Watts told Shan’ann what she wanted to hear. Maybe he did and he removed these message. Maybe he didn’t tell her. Maybe he told her even though he didn’t want to. And maybe Shan’ann bringing it up as an issue [probably during their many phone calls] Watts started to realize:
I don’t miss you. I say I do but I don’t.I say one thing but feel very strongly another way. I say one thing and then I act another way with someone else…
And each deceit started to build up a cowardly but murderous resolve.
The third instance, at least in the chronology of the discovery timeline, is from Kessinger, leaving a voicemail with Watts on July 25th at 16:35:
“I miss your face.”
At the time Watts was on the phone to Shan’ann. Immediately after ending his call with Shan’ann, Watts called Kessinger. After his conversation Watts Googled “sand dunes weather”, showing where his heart and mind was at [camping in the Sand Dunes National Park which they did on July 28th and 29th].
The final “miss you” in the discovery [Page 2114], and the third and final time Shan’ann is recorded saying these words was on the morning of August 12th, the day before her murder, and in the view of TCRS, the same day both children were murdered.
Some of you may or may not have seen this bodycam footage. The YouTuber speculating about “blood on the comforter” based on very fuzzy video isn’t helpful, and is [I believe] confirmation bias based on the scenario of the murder supposedly happening in the bed in the master bedroom.
The Yankee blanket question is more interesting. Was there one blanket or two? How many blankets in total did the kids have? Which blankets were missing? Which toys were missing? What did Watts dispose of at the dumpster on Black Mesa on his way home?
This bodycam footage also provides some of the best views of the downstairs television lounge, and the layout of the kids’ couches.
I’ve been covering the Chris Watts case since the news broke in mid-August 2018. I’ve been blogging about the case daily, often multiple times daily. I’ve also written six books over the last six months. Right now, since the case itself is finally taking something of a breather, so am I.
In the last two weeks it’s fair to say the tap of coverage relating to the Watts case went from running, to dripping to no longer dripping at all. And it was within this window of the Watts case finally “drying up” that Hickenlooper leaped and announced his candidacy. Coincidence?
On February 9th, a few days shy of the doorbell footage showing Shan’ann arriving home [which scorched the internet], Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy. Hickenlooper meanwhile, bided his time.
What does former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper have to do with the Chris Watts case? Nothing? What does the timing around a criminal case that’s been mothballed have to do with a Colorado governor, whose term expired on January 8th, 2019, running for president? Maybe nothing, or maybe more than nothing.
“You want to minimize the unintended collateral damage…This [fracking] is a big part of state’s economy. You’re talking 15 percent, some people say as much as 20 percent, of the state’s economy. And suddenly it goes to half? That is how you spell recession. And I think everybody needs to take a long, slow look and say ‘Alright, how do we go forward?’ — if it passes — ‘How do we get to what was intended?’”
“Based on experience and science, I recognized that fracking was one of our very best and safest extraction techniques. Fracking is good for the country’s energy supply, our national security, our economy, and our environment.”
“It seemed to me at the time that the way some media and activists were going after fracking was reminiscent of the early twentieth century, when the media skewered the oil and gas industry, personified by John D. Rockefeller. Only in our era, it was often bloggers wedded to a particular agenda who led the charge, cherry-picking some shreds of truth, or untruths, to make popular but inaccurate stories.” (Pg. 279; emphasis added)
“The number of people in Colorado who want to ban hydrocarbons is probably a small minority,” he said…
...when she moved her family from Louisiana back home to Weld County, Colorado, in 2016. Soon after, Nelson’s friend encouraged her to come out to a meeting where Lisa McKenzie, an environmental chemist and epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, was presenting her research on the health impacts of oil and natural gas drilling.
Weld County has one of the highest concentrations of oil and gas wells in the country — 23,000 within county limits. Its air quality carries an “F” rating from the American Lung Association, with infant mortality rates twice as high as those in surrounding counties. With around 50,000 active wells overall, Colorado just surpassed California to become America’s third-largest oil and gas producer after Texas and North Dakota.
“It was a crash course in fracking,” Nelson told me by phone. Colorado law, she learned, states that drilling operations have to be 1,000 feet away from school buildings, but that ordinance — known as a setback — doesn’t include surrounding school properties, like playgrounds or soccer fields. There, as McKenzie would explain, kids playing and running around breathe harder and heavier, increasing the amount of poisoned air that enters their lungs and bloodstream.
All of this hit too close to home: As she also learned, oil companies had just been approved to open 24 new drill sites near her then-4-year-old son Diego’s school, the kindergarten through third grade campus of Bella Romero Academy; the drilling would take place just behind the fourth through eighth grade campus, where her niece and nephew were students. The decision to drill near Bella Romero at all — where 87 percent of attendees are students of color, and 90 percent fall below the poverty line — was made after parents at an overwhelmingly white school refused to have the same rigs in their kids’ backyards.
Shocked by what she discovered, Nelson joined a coalition that would later become known as Colorado Rising and traveled around the state, telling people about the stakes at her son’s school. Colorado Rising’s work included a push for Proposition 112, a ballot measure to mandate a 2,500-foot setback zone between drill sites and homes, schools, and other vulnerable areas. That measure was defeated 57 to 43 on Tuesday night, in large part thanks to a full-fledged freakout by the fossil fuel industry, which, with $40 million, outspent Prop 112 proponents by at least 40 to 1.
…one clear takeaway from the midterms ballot initiatives is that fossil fuel money can buy elections. Apparently, $100 million can buy four of them. “They’re putting up big numbers,” said Edgar Franks, a Bellingham-based labor organizer who helped draft and campaign for I-1631 with the environmental justice group Front and Centered. “You can tell that where this is actually a threat to the way that they do business, because they know it’s going to work.”
The bar for improving Hickenlooper’s record on extraction has been set pretty low. The outgoing governor had threatened to call a special lame duck session of the state legislature in the event of Prop 112’s passage.“ It’s incredibly undemocratic,” said Parkin in advance of the vote. “The very idea that he would think it’s OK to turn around and ignore the will of the people, when thousands of his own constituents have worked so hard.”
The statement wasn’t unprecedented for Hickenlooper. In 2013, he openly threatened to sue any city that banned fracking within its borders and in fact, did sue Longmont and Fort Collins after they implemented restrictions on fracking. The state’s suit also undermined the legal standing of three other bans and moratoria. “Topics like these,” Nelson told me, “are the ones that enable the true colors of our representatives to come out. It just shows that he’s never been on the side of the people, he’s been on the side of industry.”
I have a very controversial, strange, eccentric theory why Chris Watts may have felt he couldn’t just walk out the door. It has to do with the fact that Shan’ann was fifteen weeks pregnant. I think that was sort of a factor for why he felt locked-in, but more important, why Shan’ann would have felt even more locked-in and ready to do battle [for the house, custody and alimony].
I also think if Shan’ann was a less controlling personality, including less controlling of the family finances and bank accounts, Chris Watts may have felt he had the chutzpah to just chuck the marriage and walk out.
I think it’s naive, and more than a little disingenuous, for Frank Rzucek to sort of imply that Watts was completely free to leave, and if he did, Shan’ann [and everyone else] would be fine with it. Sandi Rzucek also told Dr. Phil that Shan’ann would have coped, and been just fine without Watts’ help and support? Really? Well Shan’ann didn’t think so.
Chris Watts clearly didn’t think walking out and not looking back was an option. And neither did Cassie or Nickole.
As unpleasant and difficult as it is for many people to do, we also have to imagine what it is like for an introverted/non-confrontational personality type to deal with a dominating/intimidating/wear-the-pants type of controlling person. To many ordinary people, confrontation – even confrontation of a domineering, extroverted personality [say, someone like Trump, or even Oprah] – is no big deal. But to an introvert confrontation itself is so terrifying it’s taboo.
We know how Shan’ann reacted to “small” things like the $68 charge on her credit card. She Googled the menu, checked prices, checked when the Rockies game ended and called Chris Watts, questioned him and told him to keep the receipt.
Her response to nutgate was to make a scene of Facebook, and block Chris Watts’ parents out of her children’s and husband’s lives, and this was sketched as for everyone’s own good and in their best interests.
Whether you agree with Shan’ann’s approach or not, the point is, if she reacted in this way to a $68 bill and nuts in icecream, imagine how Watts felt or imagined Shan’ann might respond to something really fucking serious, like a full-blown betrayal [during her pregnancy] like an affair and the prospect of them losing/selling the house.
That was really the bottom line. Watts thought of the house as his. Since we have no idea how much Shan’ann was actually earning [or spending] it’s difficult to tell whether Watts was holding the entire fort financially, or most of it, or how much of it. But for various reasons he didn’t want to share the house with his wife or children.
In the real world, if he [or anyone else] had said to his family, do you mind going away and letting me keep the house? No one would! So this idea punted on Dr. Phil by Shan’ann’s father, that Watts could simply walk out of his house [obviously leaving his house to his family] is ludicrous, and explains why Frank can’t begin to understand “why”. Chris Watts didn’t have a good reason reason for committing his diabolical crimes against his beautiful family, but that’s different to saying he had NO reason.
What do a phoenix, a dragon and the sun have in common. Simple. Each in their own way represent not only absolute power, but rebirth, transformation, victory of life over death, and ability to magically transcend and bind of ashes and dust.
In true crime one of the major gripes I feel with most people involved in the genre is there one-dimensional thinking, in fact their one dimensional approach to virtually every fucking thing. True crime feels like it’s at least a duality of some sort, good versus evil, light versus dark. It’s more than that, it has many interconnected layers, shades of grey, hidden meanings and dead ends. And yet to the average person it’s always dead simple. X is totally and absolutely innocent, and Y is a monster. Of course the average person casting these aspersions sees him or herself invariably as X [and thus perfectly innocent too] and everything that is unfair, wrong or to blame about their world as Y. And they spend a lot of their time making sure what they see and believe conforms to this prescribed, self-reinforcing transference. That’s not true crime, it’s a kind of self-perpetuating voyeurism. It’s what the tabloids run on.
At TCRS we like to be a lot more sophisticated in our approach, and we like to think not a little, but a lot about how crimes and criminals fit into the larger human condition. Some people roll their eyes when, for example, we dig into the extended history of one or other character. What the fuck has history or geography got to do with why Chris Watts strangled his pregnant wife? Excellent question. The answer is both nothing and everything – simultaneously. Try to figure that one out.
One essential aspect to true crime that is highly misunderstood, underestimated and minimized [especially by the criminals themselves] is the emotional dynamic. It’s so ironic to me how people invariably notice how emotionless a murderer appears, and they hold this up as a sort of summit flag to plant on the top of the Mount Everest of the case file.
SEE, they scream, I TOLD YOU HE HAS NO FEELINGS. HE IS A PSYCHOPATHIC EVIL NARCISSISTIC MONSTER. THAT’S WHY HE COMMITTED THIS CRIME.
No, it’s the opposite. The crime was committed not because of an absence of feelings, but because of a surfeit of emotion. The nonchalance mask is the last resort of the criminal to hide exactly those slippery little sensations that drove the motive to commit the crime in the first place. From the outside looking in we see the lack of emotion and damn the criminal for it, but from the inside, the criminal is doing his best not to show emotion, not to show the reason why he was driven out of his body and mind to do what he did.
Chris Watts’ affair with Nichol Kessinger isn’t evidence that Watts is a heartless man with no feelings, it’s the opposite. The affair drew him outside of himself, pulled him outside his shell and reminded him that he HAD feelings, and had a whole dimension to his heart and his head and his life that he wasn’t given voice to. These emotions played a cardinal role in activating ultimately a murderous response from Watts, but that’s only one side of the emotional coin.
https://youtu.be/A8j0m1rw3ng
The other side of the emotional coin was the suppression of healthy feelings and emotions. Those feelings that made him like his wife, and love his children had to be dealt with too.
Of course those feelings never existed and never came into play, because Watts isn’t a human being, he’s an alien psychopath remember. And when you deny Watts feelings, you throw away the good with the bad, and all chances of figuring out why what happened happened. That’s why he committed this crime. Not because he’s human, like the rest of us, but because he’s NOT human and not like the rest of us.
Yup, keep on telling yourself that. It ought to make you feel better as the X part of the equation. The reason Watts did what he did is because we don’t understand him. Yeah right.
“I TOLD YOU HE HAS NO FEELINGS. HE IS A PSYCHOPATHIC EVIL NARCISSISTIC MONSTER. THAT’S WHY HE COMMITTED THIS CRIME….”
If Watts had no feelings, then it wouldn’t have been necessary to begin to break away and disassociate himself from Shan’ann and the kids over a premeditated period of time.
In the TWO FACE series I refer to this distancing process as Psychological Preparation. Just as athletes mentally prepare and physically train for an important race, so do murderers. They gather intel, they run through the maneuvers, but most important, they prepare their hearts for the most extreme event of their [and their victim’s] lives.
If you haven’t seen Captain Marvel, be warned of spoilers below.
The key to Captain Marvel’s power is letting go and losing control of her human side, specifically her emotions. Once she does that, she releases her true power and she literally glows in the dark with Godlike Phoenix-like plasma energy. Dragons function the same way, at least in symbolic literature.
Emotions, like dragons, guard a great treasure. But counter-intuitively, emotions can hold treasures prisoner. They can trap us in ourselves, in our grudges, resentments, our anger, our jealousy. Anger can rob us of our true potential. Your own anger – not the world, not your boss, not your parents or your spouse – can keep you poor. In this spiel your biggest enemy, your biggest obstacle is you, or more specifically, your persistent failure to master your self.
Often a dragon set loose can devastate and destroy lives not as some externality or beast, but as a part of ourselves that if we don’t, won’t or can’t control. A dragon released will burn through our lives, our homes and burn families to the ground. And the fire that fuels that dragon comes from within. It’s us.
When I traveled to the East I understood the dragon through a Western, Christian mindset. I also thought the Asian and Chinese notion was evil. But when I lived in Asia I understood the dragon as neither good nor evil, but simply as a source of immense power [which could be used for good or evil].
The idea of the sun rising over a frozen, dead Earth, or of a phoenix filling with golden light and coming alive, or of a person reclaiming their memories, their power, themselves – all of these are affirming, in theory.
But there is another side to all this affirmation, a balancing aspect. The MLM Thrive spiel also operates on emotions. If you want something you can have it. It couldn’t be easier. If you want to be healthy, wealthy, be with your family, go on free holidays, have a fancy car, just put up your hand and get yourself a magic patch and all will be well!
If you want to be happy, just SAY SO! Make the choice, and you can change your life with the snap of a finger.
In the Lord of the Rings the ring of power is precisely the same. You want power? Just take the ring!
Of course as soon as you do, you are consumed and destroyed by it, and your world laid waste.
It’s precisely this kind of thinking Chris Watts used to murder his wife. Do you want a better life? Do you want a better wife? Do you want to be healthy and choose to do exactly what you want? Do you want to be free? Do you want control over your money? You do! Well then just make a decision to be happy! Just make the choice! JUST DECIDE TODAY WHAT YOU WANT! It couldn’t be easier.
And so he did.
Chris Watts didn’t kill his family because he felt nothing. He killed because he felt more than he ever had before.
The 6-part TWO FACE series is available at this link.
When Special Agent Grahm Coder gently prods Chris Watts about whether he’s “sure” the kids were still alive, do you notice how he answers? What does he reference?
This YouTuber is spot on in picking up the inconsistency of the so-called “last words”. While the CBI Report quotes Watts consistently repeating Bella’s last words as “Daddy, No!, the Daily Beast quotes Watts saying Bella said, “No Daddy!”
I doubt there were any last words by Bella, or any running around the house around mommy’s body, and I don’t believe the children were taken to the CERVI 319 site alive and killed there. It didn’t happen.
What did happen is worse, and it occurred before Shan’ann’s death as I’ve maintained throughout the TWO FACE series all along. The whole point of killing the children when they were, and the way they were, was to prevent what Watts once referred to as a “cry fest”. Just as Shan’ann’s murder was done to ward off a rowdy confrontation in the early hours of the morning, the girls were killed silently and discreetly and behind four walls.
It’s interesting how in the first confession Watts also refers to this idea of “doing the same thing [murdering in the same way] to her [to a second person]”. In the Second Confession it swings from the first version of murdering Shan’ann the same way she murdered the kids to murdering Bella the same way he murdered her sister and/or Shan’ann.
Unfortunately in the actual report of the discovery file, McKenna isn’t quoted talking about babysitting Bella, and Bella’s distress at being unable to sleep, and “what if Ceecee doesn’t wake up”. It is nevertheless recorded in the audio interview.
I will be spending a lot of time deciphering these details and the overarching psychology of the Second Confession, as well as providing brand new insights, in TWO FACE ANNIHILATION, the seventh book in the series available in April 2019.
On July 9th, 2018, about a month before the Watts Family Murders, and the very same day “nutgate” happened, a Moore County couple were charged with neglect after their 4-year-old found a gun in his mother’s purse and shot himself.
It appears the shooting happened on Saturday, July 7th at 19:00, but was reported in the media two days later on Monday, July 9th.
The shooting occurred Saturday evening in a room of the Oceans One Resort [in Myrtle Beach, North Carolina]. Isaiah Odom was playing by himself in his parents’ suite when they heard a gunshot from the next room, police said.
Isaiah remained in critical condition Monday at Grand Strand Hospital. Parents Heather Lyn Odom and Jeremy Jermaine Barrett, who are from Aberdeen, have been charged with unlawful neglect of a child, and they pleaded with a judge Monday to let them out of jail so they could be with their son.
“I just wanted to say that this was just a tragic accident, and it’s something that shouldn’t have happened, but it did,” Odom told Municipal Judge Clifford Welsh. Family members of both parents spoke in court on their behalf.
“They take care of themselves. They don’t ask anybody for anything. They rely on themselves. They’re good people,” said Odom’s mother, Robynn Remers-Odom.
Welsh got choked up as he granted their request to be released.
There appears to be a link between Shan’ann Watts, Sandi Rzucek, Frank Rzucek and Robynn Remers, though at this stage it’s difficult to establish whether they are family, friends or coworkers.
What this potentially shows is that the idea of child-neglect and mortal danger to a child may have been high on Shan’ann’s radar, and remained high because of the local news brewing at the time.
It’s likely folks in the small town of Aberdeen were thinking and talking about it constantly, and probably the Rzuceks in particular [since they knew the victim’s family] and Shan’ann keyed into this. This may have prolonged and aggravated Shan’ann’s response to the original incident and the reason why she reacted to it as an ongoing emergency.
During their trip to Myrtle Beach during the first week of August, local coverage and gossip of the incident may have hung like a cloud over the resort, and may have re-triggered a preoccupation and arguably ongoing overreaction from Shan’ann.
In hindsight it could be argued Shan’ann’s instincts were right, that she was right to be worried about the safety of her family. On the other hand one could speculate that if her concern was extreme or seen to be excessive to certain other people in the equation, it may have fed into a pernicious psychology swilling at the time, or even precipitated it.
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.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
TCRS MERCH available now – just in time for Christmas!
Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
Read the entire 9-Part TWO FACE series, the most definitive book series covering the Chris Watts Case
Visit the TCRS Archive of 100 Books dealing with all the world’s most high-profile true crime cases.
Join the TCRS Community on Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Multiple daily posts, interesting discussions, amazing audiobooks narrated by the author, ongoing series and powerful, informative weekly podcasts.
Subscribe to the Growing TCRS YouTube Channel
Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“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.”
Recent Comments