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True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
Tag: Chris Watts (Page 16 of 47)
A lot of mystery and intrigue surrounds the Watts family finances, particularly on Shan’ann’s side. Although we don’t know the numbers, Shan’ann’s Facebook provides an almost infinite portrait of Shan’ann’s work ethic, lifestyle choices and product choices.
Without knowing the numbers exactly, we can be pretty clear what was going on behind the scenes in the Watts family.
I expect this to be a controversial post, with many dismissing whatever is written here with the “Victim Blaming” label, simply because as far as the finances were concerned, Watts was clearly the true breadwinner of the couple.
There’s a caveat to this, but before dealing with that aspect, let’s examine a few undisputed facts, all of which are anchored in the legal realities of the Discovery Documents:
- In August 2018, whatever the circumstances were prior, the loan on 2825 Saratoga Trail was in the name of Chris Watts. We know this because Shan’ann herself said so in a text on August 8th. This suggests Shan’ann’s credit was curtailed in some significant way.
- The credit cards of the entire household were also curtailed. When a transaction went off on the morning of the murder, irrespective of who authorized it, it bounced.
- Watts seemed to function largely without credit cards, certainly in terms of his affair with Kessinger. Although one reason was likely to keep the relationship secret, another may have been that they simply didn’t have any credit, or if they did, they had very little. He mostly used prepaid gift cards to pay for Kessinger but on Saturday night, August 11, Watts broke his own rule regarding this and used Shan’ann’s Baby Blue Credit card, which alerted Shan’ann to the expense. This may have been because by then Watts had burned through his last gift card.
- Neither Chris Watts nor Shan’ann actually owned a vehicle. The truck was a work vehicle [which Watts wasn’t allowed to drive on personal errands] and the Lexus was a lease.
- There is no doubt that Shan’ann wore the pants in the household, and this included maintaining absolute control over the finances.
These are the facts, but the bottom line is the Watts couple were in serious financial difficulty by August 2018, and for the second time in three years. This time, the difficulties were compounded by a third pregnancy, an affair, and the imminent threat of the family losing their home because of a debt spiral they would not acknowledge, and this time, could not escape.
So how did this financial disaster double act actually happen?
Because of a kind of “tunnel vision” regarding the Watts case, many are disinclined to acknowledge any flaw or failure on Shan’ann’s part. It’s disrespectful to criticize her in any shape or form [so the argument goes] because she’d dead, didn’t deserve to die no matter what, and can’t defend herself from beyond the grave.
But the question here is what was the true state of the finances? There is none better than Shan’ann to tell us about this, and she does. She can; even from beyond the grave.
We have her own texts and behaviors to work from in the final days.
When Watts spent $62 at a restaurant on Saturday night, August 11, Shan’ann’s phone alerted to the purchase and Shan’ann freaked out. She went into emergency mode, battening down the hatches, Googling menus, checking prices, and giving her husband instructions to keep the receipt for the meal. 
Although this was a symptom of Shan’ann checking on her husband’s fidelity [and her suspicions were valid] we shouldn’t miss the mechanism that this takes – the finances. Shan’ann’s surveillance of her husband is done via financial vigilance. And if this meticulous financial oversight of a restaurant bill [while she was on a trip in Arizona, also eating at restaurants and Thrivin’] wasn’t a sign to her friends and companions that the Watts family were stressed financially, what would be?
Nickole Atkinson was aware that Shan’ann was careful about expenditures, choosing cheaper restaurants, while at the same time, sending her children to a school Nickole herself considered unaffordable for Shan’ann.
We know that at the same time the girls were going to be back at $500-a-week Primrose school, Watts [not his wife, not him and Shan’ann, just him] was facing a mortgage payment of $1700 that he simply could not meet, and he was already three months behind.
Someone else’s debts are easily dismissed. It’s easy to treat someone else’s mortgage and credit card impairment as passé. When it’s yours, it’s less easy to be that laissez faire about it, isn’t it?
Now imagine you do care about your debt, and you do care about losing your house, and losing everything, but someone else is in control of your money [your salary, the bank account, even the actual state of your financial situation]. And no matter how much you try to address it, nothing changes. Someone else remains in control and the situation simply continues to unravel. Well, that was the situation in the Watts family.
In any scenario where a couple have no money and there is a pregnancy, there is an automatic crisis. We see it with teenagers and unplanned pregnancies all the time. The difference was that the financial side of Watts fairy tale appeared to be there when in reality, in 2018, it was little more than a facade. Now why might this be?
Shan’ann’s approach to the finances seemed to be not 100% grounded in reality, just as Thrive and MLMs in general are not 100% grounded in reality [to put it mildly].
Perhaps Shan’ann’s attachment to MLM had a lot to do with a delusion about the true state of her marriage and their finances. People who sell for a living, and marketers, are incentivized to make believers out of their buyers. To sell they must be confident and convincing, and the best way to do that is to believe their own bullshit. When it comes to MLM, this stereotype of brain addled huns drunk on the same Kool-Aid is so common it’s cliche.
But making the sale is one thing, believing you’re sitting on a pot of gold when it’s actually a pile of shit is another situation altogether. In the Watts household, it didn’t just happen. It took two-and-a-half years for the debt bubble to balloon into a debt mountain of steaming dung. Sometimes debt can be like a nightmare. Sometimes one’s own debts can just feel like someone else’s, or simply hypothetical, especially when one’s escaped or wriggled out of a tight financial impasse before.
Typically, phantom money exists around fake people.
In this fakery, both Watts and his wife appeared to be complicit. Neither really told their friends about their financial problems, and yet their friends and colleagues seemed to know there were financial problems regardless.
What their friends said:
In all the text messages during the weeks prior to the murders, the issue of financial strain seems to be the one thing Watts and his wife never brought up, and never argued about. Unless this aspect has been selectively excised from both their phones.
More likely though, neither were particularly focused on the finances until it was too late. Watts may or may not have been misled or kept in the dark about their money, something that may have been an error, a weakness, a misrepresentation or a manipulation [or a combination of all of these] from his wife.
There appears to be some evidence not only of financial mismanagement in Shan’ann’s past, but possible dishonesty and criminality.
The same can also be said about Watts, who, if Trent Bolte’s accusations are true, Watts was spending money on male hookers and buying him botox treatments. Even if Bolte’s allegations aren’t true, we know Watts was conducting an affair when – financially if not otherwise – he could least afford it.
Probably the best insight we get into the Watts finances is from a source almost everyone dismisses as either unreliable or just plain evil. Nichol Kessinger. By judging her in this manner, an entire line of evidence is simply lost. In terms of finances, and narcissism, Kessinger is one of very few characters in this true crime story that had no debt and wasn’t pitching herself across the suburbs and rooftops of social media.
From Kessinger we find:
In sum we can see that both Chris and Shan’ann Watts hid the true nature of their finances from the rest of the world. They both seemed to be actively hiding other things too, for various reasons [for him the affair, for her the Thriving fakery and the true nature of her marriage].
Isn’t it ironic that both were arguing about when to “reveal” the gender of the third baby at the time of the murders? Forget about the fact that it was about the baby, or the baby’s gender, it was a conflict about when to make known something…
If Shan’ann’s side of the income equation was shaky, and I believe it was, that doesn’t make her completely and utterly responsible for the financial mess they were in, but it sure did aggravate it. Unfortunately, because the Watts case never made it to trial, we’ll never know just how much “aggravation” Shan’ann’s MLM addiction caused the marriage, and sadly, millions of Americans caught up in MLM will have to learn their lessons firsthand – the hard way.
Ultimately, whether he was pushed, misinformed, stupid, or simply not paying attention, Watts was responsible for allowing things to get as out of hand – financially – as they got. Lest we forget, Watts was a participant in the Thrive thing as well, albeit a rather lackluster extra in his own Thrive spiel.
He ought to have taken control of the MLM train wreck sooner. He would have had he been more hands-on and informed about the practical financial realities they faced. Had he been more hands on he would have learned from the first financial disaster and not pursued a third pregnancy.
The purchase of the big house was the main millstone around their necks. Simultaneously, thanks to the health of the housing market, disposing of the house was their potential salvation. Watts may have felt justified in only saving himself financially, since Shan’ann couldn’t be saved [in his mind], but he conflated financial ruin and resurrection with murder and death.
While all of this is true, it should be noted that things spun out of control [financially] in the final few months before the murders. While Shan’ann was in North Carolina, Watts was falling in love. It’s possible the debt monster when it hit seemed to come out of left field.
An aspect almost everyone seems to have missed is that Kessinger likely made Watts not only aware of the true state of his deleterious financial situation, but pushed him to be responsive to it.
Neither saw it coming when the financial tsunami hit, but when it did, Watts panicked. He didn’t panic in a vacuum – probably he blamed Shan’ann [and possible the children too] for “ruining” his life. Financially, that is.
This book was just so incredibly well done! To anyone that is interested in this case, this is vital reading. It walks you through the interrogation from many different perspectives. I found myself, as I tend to do with Nick’s books, reflecting on this case and gaining incredible new insight into what, when, where, how, and most importantly, why. If there are questions as to why this book isn’t released in hardcopy form, it really isn’t meant to be. The links provided by the author, (peppered through the book) when clicked on, invoke stronger understanding. Nick has such a brilliant mind and was born to do this! I’m ready to go back and start reading the other books in the series for the second time. I just can’t get enough! I’m hooked!
Each day we’re getting to know the labyrinth that is the Watts crime scene more clearly, and in more detail. Each day we’re increasing our knowledge of known knowns, and known unknowns. It takes longer for the unknown unknowns to make themselves known. Sometimes we stumble upon these by sheer happenstance.
There is a place for intuition in true crime. There’s always a grey area where we can see something, or feel something, but we’re not sure what we’re seeing. True crime is filled with smoke and mirrors, but it’s important not to look for smoke where there is none. Rather, we want to try to make sure what we are seeing is actually there.
In the video below we see a collection of “omens”, from weather phenomena, to sinister dolls to injuries. The weather isn’t irrelevant in true crime. The fact that this crime took place at the height of summer, towards the end of summer, late at night/early morning means something. It feels premeditated but it looks last-minute in a sense too, doesn’t it?
The doll in pink clothing wrapped in a white plastic bag with an orange ribbon is perhaps easier to glimpse by watching the video. Dolls and toys also feature prominently in the JonBenet Ramsey and Madeleine McCann cases. What is the significance of this one – in the trash?
Beside the bin with the doll in the trash bag is something else that’s plain to see. It’s an orange container. It’s close to the door to the garage.
Permatex Fast Orange is a typical hand cleaner used by mechanics. Although not odorless, it is colorless, waterless and biodegradable. It doesn’t contain ammonia, which destroys DNA, but it does contain glycerin. Glycerin is a type of humectant – a substance that reduces a loss of water. So in terms of crime scene maintenance, this substance would likely not have been used inside the house, but may have been used to wash hands. Even then, ordinary soap and water would be more effective in destroying DNA.
https://youtu.be/bi_YxtLEgVw
One possible explanation for the doll in the trash, like the sheets in the other trash bin, was the removal of reference evidence from the crime. Reference evidence isn’t direct evidence as much as it’s evidence that might cause one to ask relevant questions.
If one of the children typically slept with a doll, then where that doll was found [if not removed from the scene] may be where the child died. If so, removal of the doll from the scene would be insufficient because if it appeared somewhere else, then that might cause problems too. So the doll needs to be discarded entirely so that that line of inquiry isn’t triggered.
As mentioned above, the same psychology appears to be in operation in terms of the sheets and pillow cases. The sheets and pillow cases aren’t removed because they contain evidence, but because they may trigger questions that may lead to other evidence. In sum then, the removal of certain reference evidence is to create smoke and mirrors. You’re seeing something, but you don’t know what you’re not seeing [the unknown unknowns]. Once you see, for example, the doll or the sheets in the trash, you have the beginnings of a known unknown.
Okay there is something here, but what does it mean?
In the kitchen trash, the bag itself is approximately the same color as the sheets that were placed in them, presumably under a layer of trash that concealed them from a cursory inspection. Was that intentional?
The color of the bag seems to be coincidental [based on the screengrab below from one of Shan’ann’s Live videos].
The debris scattered on top of the sheets was obviously deliberate. But was it meant to conceal just the sheets, or something else too?
There are two Thrive sachets at the bottom of the trash bag, suggesting the girls may have had something to eat or drink before they went to bed. If so, what does that mean…?
On the night of August 14, CBI agent Greg Zentner was dispatched to Boulder to interview the most crucial witness in the Watts case. The transcript below is an excerpt from a 72 page document spanning 3223 lines of text.
CrimeRocket is the first to reproduce and analyze this critical transcript in-depth. The entire transcript has been broken down into 15 sections.
The fifteenth part involves the winding down of the interview. Nickole refers to her friends pressuring her for information, and her feelings of reluctance.
The audio for the above transcript is available here.
Bella and Ceecee: Murdered in their Beds?
At 1:04 in the clip below, CNN’s breezy narrator describes Watts murdering Bella in her bedroom. Really? Is that where Bella was murdered?
Let’s be clear, it’s been the contention of TCRS from the start that no one was murdered in their beds. Not Shan’ann, not Bella and not Ceecee. We’ve gone to some trouble thus far to discuss the ground zero of Shan’ann’s murder. Unlike the kids, Shan’ann’s shoes by the front door, the suitcase by the stairs, the Vivint alert and the doorbell camera footage, all provide a fairly clear glimpse of the final location of the 34-year-old saleswoman on Monday night.
Whether we postulate that Shan’ann was murdered immediately upon entering the home [at 01:48] or hours later [no later than 05:18], we still have a window of a handful of hours in which to definitively say Shan’ann was killed.
We don’t have anywhere near the same certainty about the children. The last time they were seen alive was Sunday afternoon/early evening. We’re not even clear about exactly when they were last seen, which is bizarre in itself.
The window of the children’s murders is anywhere from approximately 17:00 [depending on exactly when Bella FaceTimed with her grandfather] to roughly 05:00 the next morning. That’s roughly twelve hours of uncertainty about when. It’s also a very long period to be uncertain about where.
Did they have dinner? It appears Bella was snacking while she FaceTimed. It also appeared [again, strangely] that the kids swapped their snacks. Did they have dinner or snacks?
Were they bathed? [Watts claimed he gave his girls a shower and then put them in bed, Discovery Documents, page 584].
Did they watch tv before bed? Did they ever go to bed?
I recently discussed this aspect with a fellow true crime addict, and a new thought surfaced that I hadn’t considered before. While many of you may disagree with the details and the fineprint, try to take this in as a global hypothesis. It’s simply an idea or theory that came up during a discussion. The idea is to test, evaluate and explore some of the thoughts and ideas in it, and see where that might take us.
Ready?
The broad pattern of the murder and disposal was that it was a carefully premeditated attempt to blend a triple murder within Watts’ normal, everyday schedule. So when the rest of the suburb is asleep, he’s not, but if he’s up earlier or goes to bed later than usual [or the kids meet their death at bedtime] who is to know?
He wakes up pretty much on schedule, and leaves to work pretty much on schedule, and goes to work roughly corresponding to where work needs him. From an outsider’s perspective there is minimal deviation. It’s just Mr Watts heading out on a Monday morning as usual.
What impression is Watts working at here? Watts is trying to achieve plausible deniability. When his family disappears where was he?
I was just going to work…
I was at work…
I was out near Roggen all day…
I was busy…
Watts also used his work, indirectly, as a cover for where he was during the Rockies game [when he had dinner with Kessinger]. He said he was at a work function with colleagues.
Clearly the neighbor picked up that it wasn’t normal for Watts to back his truck into the garage, and his coworkers at Anadarko said it was odd for Watts to be calling on a Sunday, or to be heading out to a well site straight from home on a Monday.
But Watts was probably counting on folks being less savvy about silly little details like that. Besides, who would really notice his truck at that time of the morning, and if they did, who would care? And if they did care, he was just loading tools, so what? What other choice did he have? Load up the Lexus? And drive where? For what? And how did he explain that?
If the cops did suspect him the GPS data wouldn’t be of much use because he’d visited a number of wells that day, and the next. What, were they gonna search every well? And if he played it cool, they wouldn’t suspect him to begin with.
Whatever the details of his plan, it seems Watts felt he could bury the crime inside plausible deniability. Getting up, going to work, and acting nonchalant.
If we take this psychology and apply it to the crime scene, and the question about where the children were murdered, a new scenario unfolds.
And the scenario is this:
When Shan’ann arrives home the children are – plausibly enough – in their beds. They’re not asleep though, they’re dead, but Shan’ann won’t know that. She’ll simply quietly look in, see them lying there and presto – Watts has plausible deniability in plain sight with them.
I realize this scenario is at odds with the idea of Shan’ann not going upstairs at all, but let’s just explore it a little further, for argument’s sake. If the children were murdered early in the evening, and placed in their beds, by 02:00, roughly six hours after death, their bodies would likely be stiff and pungent. If Shan’ann entered the room, and approached them, or kissed them, there was a good chance she might notice their palor, or smell something. So perhaps Watts murders the children late at night, shortly after finding out Shan’ann’s flight would be delayed.
In this scenario when Shan’ann arrives the children are in bed, and less blue, stiff and smelly. Alternatively, Watts could commit the crimes within half an hour, or minutes before Shan’ann arrives home. In this scenario the children are asleep in bed when they are killed, and then left where they are. Once again, it’s plausible deniability. At face value, they appear to be asleep but actually they’re not.
In this scenario, Shan’ann arrives home and possibly enters their bedrooms. She somehow realizes something is wrong. They’re not breathing, and their skin is cool or cold to the touch. Perhaps Shan’ann notices they’re blue. Instead of strangling her own children, Shan’ann tries to resuscitate them. Thus distracted, Watts then attacks her from behind and murders her. Perhaps his original plan was to kill her in her sleep as well, but her finding the kids dead prematurely forces him to abandon his plan.
Taking the scenario further, Nichol Kessinger noted that Watts felt the children’s blankets were smelly in their conversation Monday night. This suggests the children were dead in their beds, which left a lingering odor. By Monday night Watts felt a sense of urgency to wash these blankets.
Watts also disposed on blankets, apparently, somewhere between CERVI 319 and the house on Saratoga Trail. So the blankets appear to be virtually the only items missing in this case. This suggests that the blankets have something to do with the crime. Either they were wrapped in them for transportation, or they died in them, and the blankets were removed as part of the cover up.
There also appears to be some reinforcement to this from the dog handler, who picked up some interest in an area below Bella’s bed.
Watts also indirectly references this psychology of death in the bed by referring to Shan’ann wanting to wash the airport out of her sheets, and off herself.
Although the above scenario is credible in some ways, it’s not the position of TCRS, which remains that none of the murders were committed in any of the bedrooms upstairs.
Because of the settings of Shan’ann’s Facebook profile, her last publicly accessible post is dated June 28th, 2018. The crucial final six weeks of Shan’ann’s life are missing from her profile.
This is why the post below is quite exceptional. Not only does it provide a peek into that crucial window, this video is the very last Shan’ann took – a simple, intimate portrait of a little girl with butterfly wings playing with a little dog that’s doing his best to jump up and lick her face.
https://youtu.be/uAKEPGA27LY
The doll wrapped like a dead body in the twister mat feels like a message, doesn’t it? Given how close to the murders the doll was staged, and the ominous visual of the life-size doll, the wrapped doll is a material factor in this case.
In fact right at the time Watts confessed, his father Ronnie told FBI Special Agent Grahm Coder about the doll. He said it wasn’t the natural thing for a child to do, implying that Shan’ann had done it, perhaps as a taunt or a warning to her husband.
Ronnie’s theory to the FBI was that:
- The murder of the children was planned [premeditated] by Shan’ann.
- Shan’ann posed the image and purposefully chose the words “I don’t know what to think about this…” as a warning and a threat.
- Shan’ann had lied that Bella had covered the doll in the sheet.
- He felt Bella would never do such a thing based on his experience of her behavior.
Ronnie’s theory made some sense, but it shouldn’t be missed that it conveniently provided a theory for his son’s innocence precisely when he needed it most. Like many folks currently shrieking about shadows and shapes, a single image posted on social media isn’t proof of anything. It isn’t forensic evidence. At most it’s a piece of a larger mosaic. If the piece means something, it will help reveal the rest of the mosaic, rather than stand alone blinking a singular, disconnected message within the mosaic.
Often an outrageous conspiracy theory pokes through the surface of the water like a shark fin. It appears to be an incredible distinct possibility, except, beneath the surface of the water the fin doesn’t connect to anything. In other words, there’s a fin but no shark. Most conspiracy theories work like this – they talk a big game but end up being toothless.
The doll image isn’t quite as irrelevant as the shadow and shape-shifting stuff. The doll image involves everyone in this story, and is part of the dialogue of the most important people in this story: the murderer, the victims and the murderer’s #1 confidante.
Watts’ response to his father’s theory is important to note as well:
- Watts doesn’t provide much information, except to say he was aware of the incident and recalled that Shan’ann made fun of the image, and thought it was funny. Watts doesn’t disclose what he thought, and as far as we can see, he made no comment on the image himself, or if he did, removed it when he deleted his Facebook account. We also know at some point close to when Shan’ann posted this image, Watts Googled how to delete his Instagram account.
- When Coder asks Watts if Bella “did it” Watts answered he doesn’t know, because he “can’t recall”.
In effect, Watts – either by design or by default – is reinforcing the idea that Shan’ann was responsible for the picture. He doesn’t say he thinks Bella would’ve or could’ve or might have done it. There is a slight undercurrent to his reference of Shan’ann laughing in the face of the picture. It seems a subtle jab at her, undermining her as an undermining and sometimes mocking personality. If Watts murdered her to get revenge for her killing the children, then his lack of anger and mild response – his nonchalance – to Shan’ann’s supposed jeering isn’t appropriate.
They key to solving this mystery lies in Ronnie’s remark:
“I was around Bella and she would…never cover a doll’s head like it was a body…”
Due to the very special circumstances of this case, we’re able to be around Bella too and thus we can see how she behaves around dolls and toys. This is how we try to connect the shark fine to a jangle of possible dots below the surface. We don’t take the fin as evidence and run with it. Instead, we try to connect it to something bigger. Not one other image but a body of evidence that adds up to something.
Now, to begin with, the scene for the staging of the doll is the downstairs lounge. It’s on the couch against’s the wall, rather than the main living room couch. In other words, it’s not the couch in this picture.
It’s also not the couch in this picture.
It’s not the couch in this picture.
It’s the two-seater couch peeking out of the left edge of this picture.
This is a view of the television and of Bella from that two-seater couch.
This is a view of the couch from the main couch. Note the small table on the one side of the two-seater couch.
Here’s a view of the same couch from the floor. Notice the small table beside the couch.
Now that we know where the couch is, we can see it’s an area where Bella and Ceecee not only were likely to play, but also sit. And we can see that life-size doll was also located near this particular couch in several photos and videos.
Sometimes the doll is upstairs.
Other times the doll is downstairs closer to the front door lounge and dining room.
“I was around Bella and she would…never cover a doll’s head like it was a body…”
What was your knee-jerk, gut response when you first saw the doll wrapped in the twister mat?
Mine was that Watts had been intently watching a lot of true crime in the lounge on television while Bella played. Bella, taking her cue from what her daddy was watching, imitated something on television to get her father’s attention and approval.
Obviously this initial response was based on knowing [at that time] virtually nothing about Bella, knowing nothing about the ongoing nut anxiety, and knowing little about Bella’s habits and the family’s sense of humor. Does any of this really matter though? It does. These dynamics are important, but it takes a long time to figure them out.
When we take the time to try to understand the dynamics, a few things become apparent that begin to play into that mysterious image.
We see several instances of Bella imitating one or both of her parents.
It’s also debatable whether Bella wouldn’t cover the head of doll or toy.
In many of Shan’ann’s posts, she has pictures of her children in weird sleep poses, many from the baby monitor showing Ceecee in particular climbing under her blankets or sleeping face down.
As for the idea of covering up the face with anything, the children were often seen wearing masks, and at one point Deeter was also recorded crawling into the long sleeve of a sweater. During that recording Shan’ann says: “Bella would get a kick out of this…”
Since Chris Watts sent the image to Shan’ann, it’s likely he did so because Bella asked him to. Perhaps Bella wanted her mom to see it because she thought Shan’ann “would get a kick out of it” [and if that was the plan it worked].
It’s not likely Watts sent the image to Shan’ann either to implicate her, or himself. This is sort of the main thrust of the conspiracy shark fin – that either Shan’ann or Chris Watts deliberately staged an image as warning that they might commit murder unless X, Y or Z, and then went through with it despite the fact that it had been posted in the public domain, onto social media.
Was Watts wasn’t aware of Shan’ann posting this image to Facebook? It was posted at 11:46 local time. Less than two hours later on August 9th, Watts scrubbed his Facebook account.
An interesting question is whether he knew about the image and continued with his plan regardless [similar to the hitch of the flight delay], or whether he didn’t know. Another possibility is that he did know, and didn’t like the aftermath of the nut incident, where Shan’ann’s family started talking about a dead body and the kids having one another’s backs. We know shortly after deleting his Facebook his father asked him about it, to which Watts responded:
“Yes sir, liberated myself!”
This indicates the degree to which Watts felt exasperated with and perhaps imperilled by Shan’ann’s social media.
We also see many signs of Bella staging with toys, blankets and dolls, many of these instances are on the same couch as the life-size doll, and in the same room.
If Bella did stage the doll, what was she trying to do? One possibility is she was playing a game of imaginary hide and go seek with the toy and perhaps with Ceecee.
Another possibility is she was trying to communicate some message to her mother, either to amuse her as mentioned earlier or, possibly, to send some sort of urgent but unconscious message.
If it is the former, Bella may have learned that her mother got a kick out of seeing children, adults or dolls sleeping with or without blankets over their heads, and Bella simply wanted to share the joke with her mother.
The elder daughter had spent several weeks back-to-back with her mom, which was plenty of time for mom and daughter to develop a rapport, particularly around a particular subject.
Perhaps Bella had gotten in the habit of covering her own head with a blanket when the sun rose in the early summer mornings, or, if Shan’ann had cried herself to sleep over the past week, perhaps Shan’ann herself had covered her face in the mornings.
If it is the latter, and Bella wanted to share a more serious message, we know in the last days of her life, Bella was concerned that Ceecee might go to sleep and never wake up. That was an artifact of the nut debacle, which had clearly traumatized the older child.
We know Bella had confided in McKenna as late as the last night of her life that she was worried about Ceecee eating coconut and never waking up. Bella was so worried about this she couldn’t sleep when Ceecee went to sleep.
When Agent Kevin Koback spoke to McKenna he asked her if Bella had any concerns when she babysat her on Saturday night [August 11].
KOBACK: Was there anything that was concerning, that you heard?
MCKENNA: Um…Bella just…she sat by me and she was really concerned that…her little sister fell asleep before her, so she sat on the couch with me for a while. And she actually told me something. She said, ‘Can I ask you something?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘My little sister has, like…’ She told me if she eats coconut she’ll never be able to see her again. So I’m guessing that the littlest one has a severe allergy. And that’s what they told her, that if she eats that she’ll never be able to see her again. She was really upset by that.
KOBACK: Bella was?
MCKEANNA: Yeah.
https://youtu.be/aVyIhosbNzI?t=769
We also know from Watts’ evidence that although Bella went to bed much later than her sister, she would up first and went to wake Ceecee up.
We also know that far from Watts sending images to Shan’ann, he was far more likely not to send images to her, and also less likely to post images to Facebook. In fact the final request made by Shan’ann to send images of the sleeping children wasn’t honored by Watts – instead he simply resent images he’d sent of the girls eating and playing from earlier in the day.
So the likelihood that Watts staged the doll and took the photo is slim. It’s more likely Bella demanded that he send the image to Shan’ann, perhaps as a message to her mother that she was worried about her sister and needed to confide in her, and be comforted [just as she needed that from McKenna].
We also know that Watts was cold and standoffish to his children, so Bella “reading” something unsettling in the ether was based to some extent on real and mythical undercurrents,. The nut emergency was [arguably] overblown, just a case of the older sister picking up on her mother’s paranoia. But the other aspect that was unsettling was she wasn’t getting the soothing she needed from her father when he mother was away.
Perhaps in a sense the doll covered up was a kind of self-portrait, a sculpture of suffocation and agony that Bella couldn’t explain or give voice to, but nevertheless felt. It’s difficult to imagine her father, given his murderous premeditations right then, didn’t see any symbolism in the doll turned into a mummy. Perhaps he sent it on because he knew what it meant: that Shan’ann had unnecessarily traumatized both his children, turning them against his parents, and ultimately declaring them unfit parents while expecting him to babysit.
Bella’s concerns about Ceecee would also have made her difficult to babysit, and difficult to put her to bed, something that would have irritated the adulterer when he wished to have long conversations with his mistress.
Conclusion
When the FBI asked Watts if he thought Bella staged the doll, Watts answered that he couldn’t recall. Since he sent the image to Shan’ann at 11:44 on August 9th, and since Shan’ann’s response was that Bella did it and she couldn’t explain it, it means Shan’ann didn’t do it. And since Watts was home, and the doll was staged in the most communal room in the house, how could he not know who did it? If he didn’t do it, and Shan’ann didn’t do it, who’s left?
In the same way that Watts “implicates” Shan’ann in the staging of the doll, he also implicates her in the staging of crime, and murder of his children. It’s the coward’s way out – to accuse or manipulate by not providing evidence to the contrary, evidence only he had.
More: Bella and Celeste Watts: how were they murdered?
How Happy were Celeste and Bella?
Shan’ann’s OTHER response to the doll wrapped in the Twister Mat
Bella and Celeste Watts: What if the cause of death WASN’T strangulation?
Bella and Celeste’s Last Supper
“She wants more marshmallows.” “Okay.” – More Insight into the Watts Family Dynamic
Discovery Documents Interview with McKenna Lindstrom + Audio [5th Tranche]
https://youtu.be/i0oYgD4-MNw
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
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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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