QUESTION: I have a question that has been addressed before on your blog, but only briefly, and (not that I can ascertain) not very clearly: It is widely reported that Shan’ann had Lupus. You subscribe to this belief, also, it appears. However, in the autopsy report, the coroner states….NO OTHER EVIDENCE OF DISEASE was found. Is it possible Shan’ann did not have Lupus? I don’t know that she actually did? Wouldn’t SOMETHING of the effects of Lupus be present in an autopsy report? I am 40 and have survived 2 cancers. I am healthy now, but I promise you, if I was murdered, systemic signs of problems just from cancer treatments (osteoporosis, damaged salivary glands from chemo, bad thyroid hormone levels, hormones out of whack, scars, etc) would be reported. Could you re-visit this, or is it your absolute opinion that Shan’ann did, indeed, truly have Lupus? I would love your to read more insight on this issue from you. Thanks!
TCRS: Thanks for your question. You raise an excellent point on the Lupus issue. There does seem to be a possibility that Shan’ann was a hypochondriac, but on the other hand, Lupus probably causes folks to react with a lot of anxiety due to its very nature, and may not appear to show symptoms even when there may be inflammation etc. It seems unlikely Shan’ann didn’t have Lupus if so many people close to her “knew” she did – not only her immediate family [the Rzuceks] but also her husband.
Shan’ann seemed to me to have a lot of issues, and didn’t want to work away from home. The Lupus seemed to be a big part of that, unless it was a con. It also seems significant to me that she had a childless marriage with her first husband.
I’m no expert, but I suspect her Lupus was completely in remission in 2018. When you ask about “something of the effects of Lupus be present” in the autopsy, I would think so, but I’m not sure if Lupus leaves the sort of trail cancer might. I guess it depends on the Lupus. Shan’ann seemed to have a fairly mild case. It doesn’t appear that the autopsy did a very thorough check. I’m not sure whether the restrictions on health related information had a bearing on this aspect, or the Thrive aspect, or both.
The autopsy also made no references to elevated levels of any Thrive-related chemicals. This also seems odd, but since she was pregnant, perhaps she wasn’t using the patches. All of this would doubtless have come out in a trial. So what we’re left with is conjecture, unfortunately. In May I think, Shan’ann was sort of talking about being cured of Lupus [thanks to Thrive] which may nor may not be part of the answer.
Christopher Lee Watts, 33, born Spring Lake, North Carolina [Former mechanic, Rover/Field coordinator at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Platteville, Colorado at the time of the murders. Convicted of triple homicide and felony tampering with deceased human remains].
Shan’ann Watts, 34, born in Passaic, New Jersey [Former call center nurse, computer assistant at Longmont Ford. Sales promoter at Le-Vel from January 2016 to August 2018. Accused of murdering her two children by Chris Watts].
Ronnie Watts, 62 [Father of Chris Watts, present during the CBI/FBI interrogation and confession on August 15th, 2018 at Frederick Police Station. Mentioned the life-size doll to law enforcement when his son implicated his wife in the murders of his children].
Cindy McLeod Watts, 63 [Mother of Chris Watts. Campaigned in the media prior against the plea deal, arguing that it was coerced. Spoke emotionally at the sentencing hearing on November 19th, 2018. When she turned to Watts, telling him she loved and forgave him, he did not acknowledge her].
Jamie Lyn Williams, 37, born Spring Lake, North Carolina. [Active on Websleuths under the profile “Trinket78”]
“Maw Maw” [Chris Watts’ paternal grandmother. He visited her on August 5th, without Shan’ann while in North Carolina].
Nichol Lee Kessinger, 29 years old. [Geologist, HSE Representative, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation].
Dwayne Kessinger, 59 years old. [Engineering Group Lead. Sat in on first two interrogations with his daughter on August 15th and 16th, 2018].
Ex-husband, ex-boyfriend and ex-employers
Leonard King [Lawyer, Shan’ann’s first husband between 2002 and 2008. No children. Took out life insurance policies on themselves during their marriage. After divorce Leonard King changed the beneficiary on his own life insurance].
“Sean” [Ex-boyfriend of Nichol Kessinger mentioned in texts to Charlotte Nelson on Sunday August 12th, 2018].
Hisham Bedwan [Owner of Dirty South, a car accessory company based in Fayetteville, North Carolina].
Morrisville Ford and Longmont Ford [Watts worked at these dealerships between 2001-2012 and 2012-2014 respectively. Shan’ann Watts also worked at Longmont Ford].
Jeff Hiebert/Dax [Boulder County Open Space officer].
Alan Duffy [Greenfield, Colorado – Offered but not used].
Dogs
Deeter [Dachshund, family pet. Spelled “Dieter” on family’s social media. Spelled Deeter in Discovery Documents, page 461. Animal was left at the crime scene on August 13th, presumably in the basement. Transferred from Watts home, to Thayer’s home, to victim’s brother Frankie Rzucek].
Amanda McMahon [Claimed to have hooked up with Watts in March, 2018, and watched the movie Shutter Island together, a psychological thriller about a man who murders his wife because she kills his children].
True Crime is a whole lot easier to figure out when we change our perspective. When we see these crimes through the individuals in their world, suddenly all the dynamics become explicitly clear. Like a cartoon.
Seeing the world vividly from a toy’s perspective, in hyper-real, sensitive detail as we do in Toy Story [arguably the most successful modern franchise in cinema history], means we’re not only gifted with a NEW PERSPECTIVE per se, we also get to see glimpses of ourselves through the filter of this new perspective.
Seeing the world in a new way is always a huge creative achievement – Vincent van Gogh did this, Tolkien made us see that even the smallest person can make a big difference, Harry Potter showed us magic is real, Star Wars that there are galaxies far, far away. But Toy Story specifically is a brilliant analogy for using a change in perspective to understand True Crime, and what criminals reveal to us about the human condition, society, and – yes – ourselves.
In the Toy Story world, there’s a fine line between being a toy and trash. In Toy Story 4 we see just how fickle that world can be. One minute you’re a favorite toy enjoying pride of place, center stage in a little person’s life, the next you’re nothing. You can be displaced, replaced, tossed aside, by something that is none of the things you are. And if the thing that supersedes you is something out of the trash, what does that say about you, or about the kid, or about the whole notion of being a kid’s favorite toy?
One of the disquieting aspects of Toy Story – but one that also resonates – are those moments when the toys themselves willingly give up their life force whenever the godlike gaze of humans passes over them. Suddenly they turn limp, like dead bodies on a bedroom floor. In this spiel toys are precisely that – empty objects to be used [or abused] at the pleasure of their gigantic hosts.
And in this vulnerable state, anything can happen – including terrible things. Their limp forms – sentient but paralyzed – can be stomped on, or turned into fairground fare, or experimented on via brute force, animals or fire.
One of the worst fates for a toy – and a child, and people incidentally – is becoming lost. The terror in Toy Story 4 is how one can do everything right, live the perfect toy’s life as Woody has, give up everything, sacrifice everything, be completely loyal, and still end up in the closet, end up unwanted, end up making sacrifices that no one wants and no one cares about.
Finding out you’re lost is terrifying, but it’s even more horrible to be lost and not know it, tumbling down the rabbit hole of life getting more and more lost simply because you’re doing what you’ve always done.
Every character in the movie struggles with a longing for a status quo that no longer exists. – Vulture
Things pick up when Bonnie makes a new friend – literally. Fashioned from a disposable food utensil and some pipe cleaners, Forky raises existential questions about the toys’ consciousness that I had previously brushed aside under the umbrella of “imagination”. Made from bits and bobs (rather than fashioned in a factory), Forky thinks he’s “trash”, and wants nothing more than to escape to the safe oblivion of the waste bin. – The Guardian
“As we wrote the film, for a while we thought of it as a twin protagonist story. Most kids relate to Buzz, which is funny because Buzz is basically deluded.I’m not sure what that says about kids. But in the end, the film is really Woody’s journey, dealing with his own jealousy and how that gets in the way of truly being there for his child. Woody became a very deep, multifaceted character, who has continued to surprise us by bringing emotional depth to four films. Most characters — having been created for just one film — tend to run out of steam at some point. I think Woody continued to be a rich mine of emotion because he’s basically echoing our own lives. The ‘Toy Story’ films are about toys, but they’re really about us. Woody’s this well-intended good guy who’s often his own worst enemy.” – Writing Studio
Getting lost sucks. All toys, all children, and people tend to agree on that score. Being left out and then slowly withered to dust by the wear and tear, the wuthering winds of insignificance. It’s a fate to fear, almost worse than death. Almost.
Even if toys make it through a child’s childhood in one piece, even if they perform their duties to distinction, even when they serve their purpose, they invariably end up in a box, and in the trash.
There’s a scene in Toy Story 4 that reminded me of Shan’ann and Chris Watts. A dysfunctional brunette doll asks Woody to make a sacrifice no toy should be asked to make for another toy. But Woody, being the toy he is, dutifully gives up his voicebox to Gabby…and it doesn’t really make any difference.
Gabby, like Shan’ann, sees Woody as a prop, as a piece of merchandise that she can use to find her own voice. He’s just a prop to her, his purpose reduced no more and no less than a means for her to enjoy her own fairy tale.
The part that seemed something of a stretch, was even after Gabby takes his voicebox, literally cutting it out of his back, Woody decides to do Gabby another favor by trying to find her a kid. I wouldn’t do that, would you? Someone’s betrayed you, cut your heart out, and you’re going to stick around and do more good deeds for them?
But Woody does. Woody does his damnedest to give Gabby the fairy tale she feels she deserves. Because he’s loyal. He’s just that kind of cowboy. he’s a cowboy with a holster but no gun. That’s how he rolls. Even though Gabby’s companions are creepy, controlling, slave-like Ventriloquist dummies [like Shan’ann’s Thrive promoters], Woody persists in doing a good deed even though he’s already been punished.
But then something happens. While all this is going on, Woody’s old flame Bo Peep makes an entrance. Bo Peep is a “lost toy” who – since she was taken away in a box – has made the most of her life. She’s taken herself off the shelf, dusted herself off and is making the most of her toy life. Bo Peep’s living her life on another level to Woody and Gabby.
Now, Bo Peep is way too wholesome a character for Nichol Kessinger, but what she does is she offers Woody a sort of alternative world, alternative life, alternative perspective. Ultimately she shows Woody 1) he’s lost, 2) just how lost he is and the way he’s going 3) he’s getting more lost.
What Woody needs to do is find his balls and do something else with his toy life. Bo Peep’s appearance creates an existential tension – Woody has to decide who he’s going to be, and who he’s going to go with.
And even this is a transaction. If getting lost as a toy means finding oneself without a kid that loves you, or simply being thrown away like garbage, then getting unlost also seems to be a matter of hitching your wagon to someone. Someone else that is. Which is a toy’s way of turning the tables on being turned into garbage.
At 3:08 into his address to the court on November 19th, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke noted the following:
“The only injuries that were on Shan’ann’s body were one set of finger…er…or bruising…what appeared to be fingernail or fingermark…bruising…to the right side of her neck….It takes 2-4 minutes to strangle someone to death – manually.”
Although Rourke doesn’t mention the Hyoid Bone here by name, we know from the Discovery Documents that this isthe area of Shan’ann’s neck he was referring to, where bruising was found.
Chris Watts claimed in his Second Confession that he manually strangled Celeste and Bella. If that were true, we’d expect to see some sort of bruising in the same area as Shan’ann’s neck. And since the Hyoid Bone structures are much smaller and more fragile in toddlers, and Watts’ hands relatively much larger and stronger, we’d expect far more damage to these structures in the little girl’s necks.
But we don’t.
What this suggests is:
Shan’ann may have been strangled by hand, or by using a rag soaked in ethanol pulled over her nose and mouth, or a plastic bag, which she desperately tried to remove. This might have resulted in tiny fingernail incisions from her own fingernails. [This is difficult to confirm without seeing the autopsy images firsthand, but this was a feature in the Rohde case].
Both Bella and Celeste were almost certainly NOT manually strangled, and both children would have been primed to panic and resist had they been aware of their mother’s precarious situation. They may have been drowned, or killed or smothered in another way so as to prevent bruising/injury [either to them =- to their necks – or to Watts].
If the children were killed first, then Watts had already “learned” how to execute a quiet murder without leaving evidence of his own actions on his victims, or being wounded in the process. If he succeeded in the initial double homicide, he would have tried for the same result with Shan’ann. He almost succeeded. It’s likely she winged him on the neck with her fingernails while she was facedown, with her attacker on top of her, and behind her, exerting force on her throat from behind.
To be a True Crime Rocket Scientist means to understand the nuances of the Hyoid Bone. The Hyoid Bone is basically a litmus test for manual strangulation. It’s a tremendously important artifact in True Crime pathology, perhaps even more significant and condemning than cadaver traces. It’s also one of those areas murderers typically don’t know about, and criminal courts should know more about.
To be clear, the Hyoid Bone is also an important feature in the Rebecca Zahau case, the Amanda Knox case, even JonBenet Ramsey. It can be a tricky piece of evidence because, especially if it’s engineering is not understood, it can be argued both ways by expert witnesses and often is.
Let’s quickly breeze through reference to the Hyoid Bone in the three aforementioned reference cases:
REBECCA ZAHAU:
Source for this reference from the autopsy report: Oxygen.
AMANDA KNOX:
Source for this reference from the autopsy report: The Telegraph.
The three references above may be familiar to True Crime afficionados, so let’s add a fourth that might not be. It’s from the recently concluded Roderick Covlin case.
Covlin assumed he could get away with murder simply because Orthodox Jews are generally against the practise of performing autopsies. This could have guaranteed him to collect an inheritance of over $5 million from his ex-wife, just hours after she communicated that she intended to disavow him.
How it works is due to the unique structure of the Hyoid Bone, if its damaged it tends to indicate manual strangulation. When ligatures are used [for example in the JonBenet case, and in murders staged to look like suicides [Rebecca Zahau and Susan Rohde] what we expect to see is no damage to the Hyoid Bone. To understand how this works, and why the mechanism of ligature strangulation tends not to harm the structures [the horns] of the Hyoid Bone, we need to look at where the structure fits into the throat.
It’s relatively high up and close to the jaw, and ligatures are often lower and cut into the throat below and perhaps above the Hyoid Bone. It’s a unique structure because, like the cartilage of the nose, knees and ears, it’s relatively loose. So when extreme force is applied, the cartilage tends to slip out of the way.
With manual strangulation, the hands and fingers prevent the Hyoid Bone from slipping, and this structure is often crushed or fractured.
I learned about the remarkable idiosyncrasies of the Hyoid Bone while researching the Zahua and Rohde cases simultaneously. In both cases, the murder suspects claimed the victim wasn’t strangled, but that she [Rebecca and Susan respectively] had hung herself. One way of proving the case, one way or another, was to look at the Hyoid Bone in both instances. If the Hyoid Bone was undamaged, it would suggest hanging. If it was bruised or fractured, or there was bruising or hemorrhage immediately adjacent to it, this would indicate ligature strangulation [hanging]. One has to be careful being too reductionist about it, because manual strangulation can involve a ligature. It’s very likely Susan Rohde was strangled with the belt of her nightgown.
A differentiating factor in terms of a ligature from manual asphyxiation and hanging is that a person hanging will tend to have a ligature rising at the back of the neck. A manual ligature will tend to be horizontal.
A mannequin was used in the Rohde case to demonstrate the ligature. To make it even more complicated, one must add to the equation the possibility of post mortem ligatures [as part of the staging process]. Can ligatures form on a dead body, and can the Hyoid Bone be damaged as part of post mortem staging?
In the Rohde case it became quite confusing, with two experts for the state arguing convincingly about damage to the Hyoid Bone, and two experts for the defense basically jumbling everything into a big mess, making a confused muddle in which many possibilities were entertained. They also argued that since Susan was half standing while she hung herself, the ligature wouldn’t necessarily be “more vertical”.
In the end the Judge went with the state, and accepted the well-worn wisdom that a damaged Hyoid Bone, which besides being slippery, is a tough and elastic structure, tends to indicate manual strangulation and therefore murder.
Every one of the four Toy Story flicks [to date] has been about the same thing: finding your purpose. The fourth installment seems to convey this message more powerfully, at least I thought so, through the metaphor of theinner voice.
Without giving the film away, that voicebox inside some toys becomes very important in this film. What if yours is broken?What if you don’t have an inner voice ? Does that mean you have no conscience?
As it happens, this tends to be our default response when we’re faced with unfathomable crimes like the Watts Family Murders, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann and Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? We can’t understand the people involved so we immediately imagine THEY don’t have a conscience. How could they?
But what if they do, and what if committing these crimes is precisely because this inner voice, this inner purpose, made it impossible not to.
There’s a wonderful scene in Toy Story 4 where Buzz is trying to reason with Woody, trying to show Woody that his efforts to rescue someone are…well…probably not worth it. Woody answers by saying he’s just listening to his inner voice. This prompts Buzz to look for and listen to his. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have an inner voice, not in the way Woody does anyway.
And it’s true, Buzz doesn’t. None of us have the same inner voice. Each of us has a unique purpose. So, when faced with a delicate choice, Buzz presses his own buttons, hoping for a programmed response from his inner voice that sits well with him. But each time his programmed answers tell him not to do what he wishes he did want to do. And finally, he obeys his programming and heads off.
This is a fantastic analogy to similar situations in True Crime. We can’t understand why criminals would do some of the things we would never do. Because of that, we put them in a box, call them MONSTER or NARCISSIST or SOCIOPATH, put the box on a shelf and shrug our shoulders with a huff.
The fact is, we’re only going to figure out the why of these crimes if we take the time to figure out their programming [the dynamics, the psychological wiring, the inner dialogue]. Instead of projecting our inner voices onto them, and into their situations, we have to spend some time figuring out who they are. What’s actually going on inside the toy crime and the criminal? And to do that we must examine their voice box inner voice.
The TWO FACE series endeavors to do that – to figure out why Chris Watts discovered that getting a divorce really wasn’t an option for him. Like Woody in Toy Story 4, Watts was also a cowboy who finally figured out he’d gotten himself lost, but this crisis also prompted him to try to find his true purpose. In fact, for Watts, being who he was in the situation he was in, divorce didn’t feel like the best option, it felt like the worst option.
Why? How did that happen? And is that happening to us?
By peeling back the layers and getting into the stuffing, we find the humanity hidden under the veneer of a perfect toy. In the same way, when we peer under the veneer of a picture-perfect family, and a picture-postcard marriage, we see real people, with real flaws, and flawed approaches to dealing with serious problems. And perhaps, just perhaps, by looking at what went wrong in their fairy tales, we can avoid making the same mistakes as we head into the sunset in search of our own Happily Ever Afters.
After reading the Watts series, for much deeper insight into the operative criminal psychology and functional family dynamics, you should probably read the trilogy on Scott Peterson starting with Blood & Seawater, then Night Before Christmas, then Night Eternal.
The Treachery series covering Casey Anthony also gives insight into the family dynamics of child murder.
And then the Van Breda axe murders [5 books] gives a lot more background into why family annihilations happen.
If you’re interested in the ideas of narcissism, MLM and vanity associated with the Watts case, then you should look into the 6 part Jodi Arias series, starting with AUDACITY. If you think Chris Watts was living in a dream world when he committed premeditated triple murder, Jodi Was too. Jodi Arias is another classic example of how love can warp peoples minds, hearts and motives.
For those interested in the background to how Rocket Science evolved, read on:
When I started writing True Crime I had to make a decision whether I was going to isolate analysis to one particular case, or whether to use Intertextuality – linking criminal psychology across different True Crime narratives.
The reason it happened [and keeps happening] is due to the unusually rapid pace of research and writing. And as a result of intensely researching one case, and writing a series, and then a few weeks later digging deep into another case, and another series, one invariably finds huge areas where the criminal psychology is aligned. It matches. Not only is the thinking similar, some of the statements and semantics are too. This includes not only the statements, excuses and identities of the perpetrators, but their victims too. It’s fascinating. It’s also very, very disturbing.
The first time this happened was between the Oscar Pistorius and Jodi Arias narratives. Then between the Ramseys and the McCanns. Soon I discovered the basic webs of psychology and symbolism that link all criminal cases to one another, and are embedded programs – effectively – in society, and in all individuals.
This led me to encounter and develop pretty sophisticated psychological concepts already present in psychoanalysis, but somewhat extemporaneous. These sophisticated concepts attempting to explain the human dilemma still needed a little fine-tuning. Principle among these dilemma is the classic one overarching them all: the Problem of Evil.
And eventually I started rubbing shoulders with strange new words. Cosmodicy, Theodicy, Anthropodicy. If you haven’t heard these words before – well, I hadn’t either. They’re all to do with the science of man [who are we, how are we designed, how can we be fixed?]. I was interested in that not only as a true crime writer, but as me, as someone wanting to know how broken people – and broken families, and societies – can be fixed. And to figure that out we have to know how we are put together. Do these designs work? Do we need new More Intelligent Design?
Let em explain a little more about the basic design constructs people came up with when they tried to approach man’s basic dilemma in the world.
If Theodicy is an attempt to describe via religious constructs how God deals with evil, then an Anthropodicy attempts to justify [or simply interrogate] the “fundamental goodness” of human nature in the face of the evils [that is True Crime] produced by humans. If there’s a lot of literature dealing with God as a sort of Deus-ex-machina, there’s not much literature dealing with man as not only the problem, but also the source of [and thus the solution to] his problems, and principly, the problem of evil.
True Crime is a handy turf where those problems can be “safely” but also effectively examined and understood. And so through True Crime, so can we. We also understand and fix ourselves, so long as we’re not simply caught up in fruitless transference, projection and voyeurism. And so Rocket Science really found its feet in the genre by attempting to interrogate True Crime authentically. In this way, I believe the contributions of Rocket Science are real and fundamental to an Anthropodicy that we’re struggling with, but until now haven’t even been sure how to define, let alone approach it.
Because an even higher tier to this psychological clockwork feels like it might be a Cosmodicy, the attempt to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe in the face of evil. In modern entertainment we sees these efforts through the slew of out-of-this world blockbusters: the Marvel Comic Universe, Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy and even our own world gone Magic and Mythical: Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games.
But even the theologians and philosophers acknowledge that Cosmodicy is little more than a wave to the problem as it really exists, for us.
In classical terms, this is to broach the problem of theodicy: how to think about God in the face of the presence of suffering in God’s creation. After God’s dethronement as the subject of history, the question rebounds to the new subject of history: the human being. As a consequence, theodicy becomes anthropodicy – justifications of our faith in humanity as the subject of history, in the face of the suffering that is so inextricably woven into the historythat humanity makes.
And so within this schema, the Watts case emerges as a classical modern True Crime Anthropodicy. These are fancy words to say through the inverted fairy tale of the Watts Family Murders, we can at last understand how our various man-made constructs [nations, cultures, corporations, societies, families, marriages, individuals, children, even the unborn] fail us, and why we as children, adults, individuals, communities, collectives, need to be better to do better. We can, but it starts with an authentic acknowledgement of what’s not working, and why.
Many regular readers of this blog have followed the Watts case from the very beginning. If the murders themselves aren’t still shocking almost a year later, what is almost as astonishing is the investigation into it. It’s not that the investigation lacked resources, quite the opposite, it’s this mismatch between the crime and investigation, and the prosecution.
Each successive book in the TWO FACE series is harder to write, but perhaps easier and more interesting to read. The reviews reflect this, but let’s face it – the first two narratives were written without the benefit of 2000 pages of discovery, with no interrogations and very little evidence.
It’s been a challenge in the last few books trying to transcribe hours and hours of often indistinct audio into a cogent narrative. It doesn’t help that Watts and Kessinger are both mumblers, especially Watts. One hopes law enforcement will get their act together in this regard. If you’re going to record an interrogation, make sure you can hear it, and use it. But that’s part of the real meat and potatoes work of the true true crime writer. Who’s going to do it if not TCRS?
Over time, true crime evolves. We’ve seen in the Watts case how the story has evolved. It’s already split into those who believe the Second Confession and those who don’t, into a group who believe Watts is a monstrous simpleton who just snapped, and another group [a smaller group I think] who see the case as more complex, and the crimes as premeditated.
As we become familiar with the facts, evidence and nuances, we have to decide what to do with it. That takes discernment. We have to decide which path we’re going to take, and who to trust.
In terms of the interrogations, it’s worth noting that while we hear the voices of the FBI, CBI and lead detective questioning Watts, and although we get to read the synopsis of the interview, we don’t get their interpretation afterwards. We don’t get to see what they actually believe, and what they don’t.
It’s tempting to imagine what-you-see-is-what-you-get in these interviews, but it’s really a game. It’s the true crime game, isn’t it? It’s a game from the side of the Silver Fox, but it’s also a game played by law enforcement. Are we able to decipher the rules of that game yet, and the criminal psychology that governs it? Are we becoming better lie detectors, or liars?
All of this is reflected to some extent in the Watts marriage. It’s also a game. It also has unwritten rules and invisible threads running through it, pulling strings, drawing it in this direction or that. The affair is really a reality check for all three players in this game. The affair is going to validate some and invalidate others. It’s going to reveal the true state of the relationships, commitments, cash and secret resentments.
Our incredible access in this case to the Watts family allows us not only to fathom how fairy tales are born, but how and why they die. The Watts case is a vital and valuable cautionary tale, and though the American public were denied the opportunity to learn from this tragedy in court, through a criminal trial, the TWO FACE book series provides another alternative.
On the afternoon of August 5th, 018, a Sunday, Shan’ann encouraged her husband to go see his grandmother, but without her and without the kids. In an uncharacteristically stern tone, Shan’ann told Chris Watts:
“I’m not kidding Christopher. I’m having a bad experience these last few days with my pregnancy and I’m spotting. I’m not dealing with it…” What did she mean?
In OBLIVIONI make the case that Shan’ann was suffering classic symptoms of lupus – skin rashes, inflammation etc. brought on by stress. She started feeling unwell the day Watts arrived in North Carolina. We also know she wasn’t feeling well during her trip to Phoenix, and that she was due to see the doctor first thing Monday morning.
But a Seattle-based reader recently contacted me to to stress that spotting is also a well-known symptom in the first trimester of pregnancy. According to Healthline.com:
Spotting is considered a light or trace amount of pink, red, or dark brown (rust-colored) blood. You may notice spotting when you use the restroom or see a few drops of blood on your underwear. It will be lighter than your menstrual period. There won’t be enough blood to cover a panty liner.
During pregnancy, spotting can be caused by a number of factors. Spotting is different from heavier bleeding, where you’d need a pad or tampon to stop blood from getting on your clothing. Seek emergency care if you experience heavy bleeding during pregnancy.
Given Shan’ann’s health issues with lupus, spotting would be a real concern, a real possibility of miscarriage. Was that why she had her doctor’s appointment Monday morning?
Nancy Grace is right. In order to study a case, to really get to grips with it, you have to spend a lot of time reading, listening and thinking.
When asked her opinion on the Watts case Nancy answered:
“He had it all,” she said. “He had this gorgeous wife, Shanann. He’s got the children, Bella and Celeste, beautiful. They always wanted a boy. They’re having baby Nico. He’s on the way. Beautiful home.”
She noted from the outside it looked perfect.
“It looked like a postcard,” she said. “It was perfect. When you look at somebody like Chris Watts in court, this picture perfect setting, it’s hard. It’s like the mind is tricking the eye. You’re seeing one thing but the evidence tells you something different, that he in fact is a cold-blooded killer who killed his own children, so I think that’s the fascination. It’s like trying to put together a Rubik’s Cube. You can’t sort it out in your head.”
All of that may be true, but all of that is the surface layer stuff, the optics,the artifice, the superficial.
I get what she’s saying that one can’t put the dichotomy, the duality together, but given enough analysis and thought, we can figure it out, and arguably TCRS already has. In the first Rocket Science book, published in September 2018, only weeks after the crime, we were already looking at a different portrait of the Watts family.
To understand these crimes and these case we have to get away from projection and transference. We have to stop imposing ourselves onto these cases. We have to let the cases and criminals speak for themselves.
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.
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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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