Today, Valentine’s Day 2019, is six months and a day – give or take – since the Watts Family Murders back in mid-August. Having kept up with all the coverage of the case [in the media and on social media] it’s been illuminating, and quite alarming, to see how the media narrative has fallen away precipitously and been taken over – hijacked in a sense – by armchair detectives.
There’s nothing wrong with cogent analysis in true crime. There’s also nothing wrong with a sincere effort to get to the truth even if one fails dismally. The fact that one cares about crime and fixing the fabric of society to begin with is a redeeming quality, I feel.
There is something seriously wrong with purposefully peddling conspiracies to make a buck. If there’s something cynical about that, what’s really frightening is just how popular these sites and posts can become.
We criticize at times the manner in which Shan’ann and Chris Watts didn’t seem to know the difference between reality and fantasy. Shan’ann in terms of their financial situation, and the reality of the affair Watts was having behind her back, and Watts in terms of committing the crime in the first place and imagining he could get away with it.
We question what was he thinking, and perhaps in terms of Shan’ann’s MLM – what was she thinking. But we ought to turn these questions back to ourselves, and we do when we look at how we are talking and thinking and addressing this case. The conspiracies don’t reflect well on us at all. If the Watts couple had elements of delusional thinking, so do we. If the Watts’ couple thought they could beat the system [him in terms of duping the law, her in terms of beating the MLM odds] then the conspiracy peddlers are no better. I can sell fake news better than I can trying to package reality – that’s the concession, and it’s a cowardly one.
One way to spot the opportunistic peddlers is by observing how each week they come up with a new conspiracy. It started with Watts having an accomplice [his father, wearing white shoes]. Then shadows became a child running around the crime scene [but still invisible]. Then Nichol Kessinger was on the scene. Then there were two children. Then Watts intended to blow up the CERVI 319 site. Then Kessinger was pregnant. Have I left anything out?
Another way to spot the conspiracy peddlers, the worst offenders, is when their content gets taken down. Does it get taken down once or habitually?
A few have also criticized me for occasionally posting “silly” content on CrimeRocket, as a cynical attempt to keep the ball rolling. Silly is a matter of opinion. The ongoing coverage on CrimeRocket is actually a sideline to the narratives that are still being written. Once that process is complete the coverage of this case is likely to become intermittent and then likely cease altogether [sorry].
A lot of the content posted here isn’t just banging a drum, wanting to be heard for the sake of it, it’s functional – the content here is linked to the narrative so that the books aren’t burdened with excessive description, explanations and background. Sometimes key concepts [like interiority, intertextuality and agency] are introduced here so that readers will be somewhat familiar with them when they come across them in the narratives.
The idea is that CrimeRocket provides a sort of stepping stone between prospective readers and the narratives. It’s a chance for you to get to know me, and for me to get to know you. For those who don’t read any of the books, you might find yourselves feeling a little lost on occasion, not knowing why certain ideas are adopted and others rejected. You might feel a little behind the curve. [If so, get reading, but make sure you read the books in the correct order!] And while readers who’ve gobbled up the series anxiously wait for the next installment, they can – by hook or by crook – keep up with the basic flow of research right here and even, theoretically, inform where it goes.
CrimeRocket, in keeping with the narratives, has a very strict policy on conspiracies. We avoid them, mostly, we don’t entertain them when they are brought up and we only repeat them to defeat or debunk them.
She’s a Facebook maven, he’s an introvert. That’s the Chris Watts case, and the relationship dynamic in a nutshell. It’s very simple, but as we begin to educate ourselves on this case, we see a myriad of complicated psychologies spewing out of the opened can of worms.
At Rocket Science we’re allergic to labels, but I’ve recently started thinking about the psychopath label in a new way, which is often the opposite of what labels intend because labels put our thinking in a box, close it, package it and we’re done.
Chris Watts – a teenage psychopath?
I was thinking of Watts – just an aspect of his identity – as a teenage psychopath. Teenagers are trying to be something, aren’t they? Teenagers often are faking it to make it. But you only get to be who you are in the theater of the real world, and many of those early existential stabs end in failure. Nevertheless, it’s important to try, to fail, to fall, in order to live and develop as individuals, to eventually find our ways from raw idealism to real and true identities and our superhero costumes [fashioned by ourselves, for ourselves].
School shooters are invariably teenage psychopaths, but it’s also a mistake to think they exist in a vacuum. If they managed to not blow up and graduated high school, probably they would go on to lead normal, perhaps even productive lives. It’s the equivalent argument to: “Why didn’t he just get a divorce” [“why couldn’t you just graduate?”]
Of course we wouldn’t be here talking about true crime if every criminal simply “managed not to blow up”. The point is they did, many have and many will. Why do people blow up, and what does that say about us?
I’ve studied mass shooters in detail, but that’s not what I want to get into here. Rather, it’s this idea of agency and how it relates to true crime. Agency is of course precisely what the mass shooter in the school setting is trying to achieve, and though their methods suck, they act as spocial failures but their actions do succeed in making them celebrities of a sort.
This attraction to notorious killers by teenage girls and young women is their attempt to gain agency by piggybacking onto the newly achieved agency the criminal achieves by becoming famous because of his criminal act. Does that make sense?
But let’s try to get to grips with how this idea of agency actually plays into the why of a crime. It’s especially relevant in the Watts case, so it’s worth a deeper look into.
At 18:10 in the clip below Cameron Kasky talks about how the March for our Lives changed America. [Watch the rest of the video if you want to understand the broader context of the conversation]. I’ve highlighted just the snippet the comes up about agency below.
https://youtu.be/EYLm6baQ89A?t=1090
KASKY: I think the thing that the March for our Lives did to this country was we told a whole generation of kids, we need to start working together, we need to start thinking, and just because we are little does not mean we are inadequatewhen it comes to being part of a conversation.
SACKUR: I find that so interesting because, clearly, in the reaction to what you did, there were some people…who spoke of you as young people who couldn’t possibly be agents for yourselves, for change. You must have been controlled by either your parents or by liberal advocacy groups, and I guess what you showed is that particularly in the age of social media, young people do have agency. They actually have a means to get a message out there for themselves and of themselves. You’re a real, interesting example of what now young people can do and achieve.
If we apply this concept of agency to the Watts case [I’ll explain what is means in a moment] we have a similar scenario of a teenager at home leading a double life doing shit, while at the same time being under the thumb of parents, or in Watts’ case, his wife. That’s how he felt anyway.
In the same way that teenagers do or do not engage with their parents or society because they feel inadequate, insecure, intimidated or just small, there’s a similar introversion with Watts. He just can’t stand up for himself. He wants to, but he can’t. He’s afraid for some reason.
Live in a box, or explode out of it?
Teenagers can be kept in a box, and introverted teenagers even more so, but invariably something happens, some drama or trauma, which causes them sooner or later to explode out of it. This is necessary, and part of the leaving-the-nest process. It’s necessary but nevertheless painful. When this happens, the teenager begins the process of developing his own agency.
Having agency is like having a sense of identity but it goes further than that. It is having the capacity to assert oneself in one’s environment, and in particular, towards society. It’s how we establish where we fit in the social fabric. Those with powerful agency become leaders or influencers, those with little or no agency play second fiddle [sometimes for their entire lives].
Agency is the capacity…to act in a given environment… In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure. Notably, though, the primacy of social structure vs. individual capacity with regard to persons’ actions is debated within sociology. This debate concerns, at least partly, the level of reflexivity an agent may possess.
In trying to understand agency we stumble across another concept: reflexivity. We won’t interrogate that here, but it also has a bearing on the Watts case:
A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a relationship in which neither can be assigned as causes or effects.
When we impute the idea of reflexivity in the Watts case, what we’re asking it to what extent Shan’ann’s death was as a result of the underlying dynamics of their relationship. Was it directly related, was it somewhat proportionate, or was Watts simply a monster and these issues are simply meaningless chaff?
Back to our definition of agency:
Agency may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action). An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing. In ‘goal directed action’ an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior.
Premeditated or Involuntary – or both?
In the context of true crime, and the Watts case in particular, we need to be sure to what extent Watts’ agency was unconscious or even to some extent involuntary, or whether it was intentional. This is a tricky one because the premeditated murder aspect makes what he did seem very purposeful. In the high profile cases I’ve studied, Watts went to more trouble than most to dispose of his victims. Arguably, Scott Peterson went to even more trouble by buying a boat and hiding the boat in order to pull off his criminal scheme against Laci.
Watts reflexivity and agency in terms of the pregnancy is another area worth exploring. It makes sense that Watts was very reflexive in terms of the third pregnancy. The cause and effect of the pregnancy on most people is huge, whether positive or negative. The whole delay of the gender reveal was in effect about hiding Watts’ teetering agency – in terms of his fatherhood. So we have this strange contradiction, where the denial of the child illustrates a lack of agency, whereas the affair does the opposite [though not in a particularly flattering way]. The murder becomes a final effort to legitimize his agency, that’s how he rationalizes it, but one cannot have a legitimate claim to anything by cheating [in other words, through illegitimate means]. And during the interrogation with the Feds, Watts seems to realize this [not in these terms, but in how he feels], and throws in the towel.
And subsequent to that he’s thrown in the towel – it seems – on his life. He’s admitted he has no agency, so much so he hasn’t even appointed “an agent” [a lawyer] to represent him. His agency is so poor, the idea of representing himself simply isn’t there!
Chris Watts’ Agency – high, low or changing?
What cannot be disputed is that Watts’ agency – as a man – was low. His capacity to represent himself was low. He lacked capacity in terms of his wife, later even towards his own children and unborn child, to the media, and he folded spectacularly when faced with proper interrogation techniques [as discussed in DRILLING THROUGH DISCOVERY] imposed on him by the FBI and CBI.
His failure to pass the polygraph also shows something else. It’s not so much that he took the test and failed, but that he took the test in the first place. This suggests Watts was in a period of transition, where he was developing agency, or trying to. Taking the polygraph was part of that. Talking to the media was part of that. Talking to the FBI without a lawyer was part of that. His affair was part of him trying to develop his game in the real world.
What the FBI and this whole, horrible crime exposed was that in his clumsy efforts to achieve agency in his life, Watts lost what little he had gained [with Kessinger, with his new look and potential job prospects etc]. The act of murder was both the confirmation of Watts’ agency and the destruction of it.
The inevitable conclusion to this line of thinking is what impact did Shan’ann have on Watts’ agency, and strictly within those narrow terms, whose fault was it if his capacity to act was undermined and/or destroyed?
Ever since his confession on the night of August 15th, Watts seems to have rolled over and…well not died exactly…but pretty much given up on mounting any kind of defense.
https://youtu.be/CzwNJ18kN5c
OJ Simpson mounted a huge battle during his civil trial, but the difference was, Simpson was wealthy and had been acquitted of the original charge. Watts cannot claim either of these privileges.
There are a few items worth mentioning that add to the Watts narrative. Let’s go through them briefly:
This story on Watts is the first media story in February on Watts. In January there was some brief bleating in national and international media about Watts selling his house.
Steven Lambert, an attorney with Greeley’s Grant & Hoffman Law Firm is representing Shanann’s parents. Presumably Lambert is being paid for his services based on a commission for whatever sums he wins on the Rzucek’s behalf.
According to Lambert’s direct conversations with Watts “he’s not fighting this…”
The lawsuit against Watts prevents Watts from making money from a book or selling the rights to his story. Presumably there are some folks out there that would prefer Watts didn’t write a book.
Watts has no legal representation.
We might “hear” from Watts in a hearing where a jury will decide how much to allocate to the Rzuceks. If other court appearances are anything to go by, we shouldn’t expect to hear much from The Introvert.
According to the Daily Camera: Colorado law allows a multiplier to be applied if the defendant acted intentionally and with malice.
It’s likely any new information from this case won’t come from Watts himself, but might come from those close to the murdered Watts family. Don’t hold your breath, though.
For the first 20 minutes of the two hour plus discussion on Thursday, August 16th, Kessinger speaks in vanilla generalizations. Even after Koback reminds Kessinger that they’re talking because a woman is dead [Shan’ann’s body was exhumed hours prior to the discussion], and it’s become a homicide investigation, Kessinger still pushes back telling him she’s can’t give him specific information. She tells Koback, who is grovelling for details at one point:
It’s not gonna happen!
But then there’s a turning point. Kessinger begins to reveal slightly more and then more still. Below is Koback’s summary following the turning point in his interrogation of Watts’ mistress.
The Phone Data Review starting on page 2081 is a mostly dry and colorless logging of dates, call durations, names and places. The few grainy selfies provide a vague sense that something was going on between two people. It’s when we visit those places, orientate ourselves and familiarize ourselves with them that we start to get a sense of what that last summer in July must have felt like to Kessinger and Watts.
Right at the end of this whirlwind romance, just before Watts flew to North Carolina, he told his mistress he loved her, and she began considering what the future might be like if he left his wife for her.
1. Rusty Bucket, Westminster – 15 minutes by car due south of Saratoga Trail/12 minutes north of Claude Court, Northglenn.
2. Shelby Museum, Boulder + 24 Carrot Bistro. Erie – the museum is eighteen minutes drive due west of Saratoga trial, the Bistro is five miles drive southwest of Saratoga Trail.
A. Museum
B: Bistro
3. Brandimere Speedway, Morrison – The Speedway in Morrison is about 42 minutes drive southwest of Saratoga Trail.
4. Great Sand Dunes and Zapata Falls – The Great Sand Dunes Park is about four hours drive south of Frederick
Thus far the 6th book DRILLING IN DISCOVERY is the best reviewed book in the series. Thank you to one and all for your support and feedback! Each positive/constructive review is a huge shot in the arm while I continue to work on the next narrative.
I enjoy statement analysis, and the Discovery Documents are a treasure trove to pick through in search of rough diamonds. The fact that we also have bodycam footage in this case, and so much of it, means we can cross reference so much and find our way to brand new information.
It was fascinating while working on the interrogation aspect, figuring out not only how Chris Watts thinks, but how – via Coder – to talk to him.
Now, on to the latest reviews.
My readers often provide feedback like the reviewer – Rebecca – above that they read a book that took hundreds of hours and several weeks to research and write in one sitting, or in one or two hours. While that’s a compliment perhaps in terms of the compulsive readability of the work, it also means the reader didn’t spend much time referring to the dozens [if not hundreds] of links painstakingly inserted in the narrative. These are an optional extra, of course. They aren’t essential to the narrative but many links, especially in the interrogation, are important to refer to in order to get a really three-dimensional audio-visual-psychological feel for what’s being described.
After reading the book in two hours, and perhaps scrolling liberally through the more congested areas [understandably, if very familiar with the discovery some paragraphs might feel superfluous], the reader then impatiently waits for 2-3 weeks for the next installment.
I do want to encourage readers like Rebecca to pace yourselves, and to spend at least a week reading these books. If you’re reading vast tracts of narrative in one go, a good place to stop and take a breather is at the end of a section.
The more time you spend on each narrative, the more seamlessly the next one will integrate and follow-on, and the information and insights will still be fresh in your mind. Overall it will make the series a more flowing and fulfilling read.
In true crime we spend so much time trying to figure out what’s missing, or what’s misconstrued, we often miss what is right in front of us. It takes insight and familiarity to get to the stage where what we see in plain sight begins to mean something.
This certainly applies to the Phone Narrative. We can spend countless hours analyzing thousands of messages across several devices, and trawl through Shan’ann’s seemingly infinite social media posts, but there is an aspect to the phones that is so obvious it’s almost laughable, and yet many have missed it.
Even when the information is provided out of context in the Discovery Documents, on page 569, we don’t necessarily see what it means.
In the above screengrab Nichol Kessinger’s August 16th interview with CBI Agent Kevin Koback is summarized in a third person narrative. The yellow highlighted text reveals a minor, throwaway discrepancy. Do you see what it is?
We get a clearer picture of this discrepancy by looking at his and her email signatures. When all the phones were analyzed, four handsets were chosen. Kessinger’s phone [highlighted in pink below – 720 656 9605], Watts’ phones [highlighted in yellow – 910 309 1702 and 720 390 9424] and Shan’ann’s phone [highlighted in blue – 910 3286].
Watts is the only one of the three with two phones.
The 910 number circled above is Watts’ personal phone, with the 910 prefix referring to North Carolina, just as Shan’ann’s phone is a 910 North Carolina number. Watts, however, also has a local 720 number, his work phone.
Kessinger also has a 720 number. And this is the crucial difference.
On Kessinger’s email signature, two numbers are listed. The 970 office number is in fact a landline.
In other words, unlike Watts, Kessinger was using her phone for personal and business use. The Discovery Documents, quoting Kessinger, say as much.
Once their relationship developed, Kessinger said Watts moved their communication from his work phone to his personal phone [and the Secret Calculator app]. But Kessinger didn’t.She couldn’t, because she only had the one phone.
When shit hit the fan, Watts deleted information off his personal phone. In his case, he did this in a premeditated fashion before the shit hit the fan, whereas Kessinger did so reactively off her work/personal phone after the shit hit the fan.
This means that when Anadarko, who paid for her phone, did a GPS and phone data review at the request of the FBI and CBI on Tuesday [August 14, 2018], they likely knew about the affair based on Kessinger’s phone activity with Watts as well.
Although this is not explicitly mentioned in the phone data review, it’s difficult to imagine if the company had the capacity to investigate computer network traffic, emails and Watts’ work phone logs, that they wouldn’t do the same with Kessinger’s.
It should also be noted that to date, many have tarbrushed Kessinger for deceitfully deleting Watts from her phone. They see this as an effort to defeat justice and to undermine law enforcement efforts. While this is possible, it’s also possible Kessinger was trying to clean up her “work phone”. She may have feared that sending risque images to a coworker could be seen as a fire-able offence, and perhaps that’s how it was seen. Do you see what I’m driving at? It’s possible she was far more fearful of getting into trouble at work than with the cops, and ultimately, her fears were well founded.
This clearly places Kessinger in a somewhat different light, doesn’t it? If you had one phone, and you were cheating, and your boss finding out would mean losing your job and income, wouldn’t you delete evidence of being in flagrante delicto?
As part of ongoing research for the 6th book in the series, I spent a fair amount of time studying the image below. It’s one of the view truly authentic crime scene photos in the entire Watts case.
When this photo was taken by Crime Scene Analyst Dave Yocum [using his cell phone], he was trying to see inside the tanks. They knew the children had been dumped in the tanks, and yet when he shone a special torches inside the tank, the view was obstructed by venting mist.
No smoke or gas fumes are evident in this image, but the tape measure unfortunately obstructs and reflects a lot of the light that would otherwise penetrate the orifice beneath the thief hatch.
I was also looking very carefully at many of these surfaces for traces of blood, hair fragments, fibers or skin tissue. There is a strange flap of something at about two ‘o clock on the image below. It could be a fragment of pajamas, or it could be part of the thief hatch apparatus.
In a comment left on TCRS today by Sylvester, I went to look at Melissa Parrish’s comments about Watts releasing the pressure value on the tanks at CERVI 319 [on Monday morning] causing oil to spray out. Parrish was surprised not only by this, but by Watts not bothering to clean up the mess he’d made.
It’s often missed that Watts was also OCD in his own way, just as Shan’ann was. He was meticulous about cleanliness, which is possibly why Shan’ann used this to her own advantage and put him on permanent laundry duty for the whole family.
Watts’ emphasis on appearance is also perhaps why he appeared to like wearing matching outfits, and why his well-groomed appearance played so well into the “fairy tale” aspect of this case in particular. His meticulous attention to detail [in certain areas] also explains why so little crime scene evidence was found in totem.
Watts’ OCD may be why they got along in a certain sense, and perhaps why Watts [quite uniquely] understood and loved Shan’ann, and she him, certainly during the initial phase of their marriage. And so, because of this clear behavior pattern, Parrish thought it was weird that on this day of all days, Watts was being something of a piggy on the site.
Curiously Troy McCoy made a similar observation in terms of Watts appearance that same morning.
Clearly this manoeuvre to vent the tanks was intended to contaminate, and indeed eviscerate all traces of his daughters and himself in, on and around the hatch. In some footage of venting that I’ve come across, it sounds like a jet engine when high pressure hot gas escapes out of these eight inch holes.
The image below, photographed Tuesday night, also appears to indicate some of the residues of this spray that Watts deliberately discharged over his crime scene the previous day. It was the equivalent of dumping bleach over a kill scene, just quicker and more effective.
Kudos to Sylvester for bringing my attention to this. In true crime we try to be omniscient, and when many eyes and heads apply themselves to the same thing, we can come close. If we keep paying attention, what is buried or simply obscure is eventually brought to light.
I try to be balanced when blowing my own trumpet with book reviews, by also providing a poor review, and dealing with the criticisms. This time I’m not going to do that. I do find it strange how the reviews differ in that some [a minority] accuse the writing of being “badly researched”, while others refer to it as “superb journalism”. So which is it?
It is important to note that, as “Liverbird” points out, one should read the books in the order they are written. The theories presented in the later books are “built” in the first narrative, and tested, developed and improved upon as more and more information is analyzed, integrated and the overall case understood.
More reviews from British readers for the first four books in the series, provided here in reverse order. RAPE OF CASSANDRAis the 4th book in the series.
Below is a review, also from “Liverbird”, on TWO POLLYANNAS, the 3rd book in the series.
I sincerely appreciate the reviewer “madbmad” for pointing out how accurate the first book was [published in mid-September] even though the book was only read in February. It’s easy to forget what we didn’t know prior to the discovery document dump in November. THE MAN UNDERNEATH CHRISTOPHER WATTS referred to the “other Chris” and a “second Chris” two full months before FBI agent Grahm Coder’s interrogation was made public, where he put it to the suspect that there were “two Chrises”.
The address given by the FBI for the first interview with Kessinger is a public park in Arvada. According to the Discovery Documents, this is where the Feds recorded their first meeting with Chris Watts’ mistress.
Arvada is 16 miles southwest of Kessinger’s home in ClaudeCourt Road, Northglenn, and about 31 miles from 2825 Saratoga Trail in Frederick. It’s also 40 miles from the offices of Anadarko in Platteville.
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
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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.”
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