At 41:25 in the clip below Chris Watts tries to imply that Shan’ann was with the kids “last night”. Then he corrects himself, telling Coonrod he was with the kids all weekends. He hastily throws in an alibi, while he’s at it: he took them to a birthday party Sunday.
During my initial research into the case, before information emerged about the birthday party, I thought it was possible the children had been killed on Saturday, or even earlier. This shows the importance not only of the party, but Watts taking photos at the party showing evidence of them being alive and him looking after them and entertaining them.
Also worth watching, at 40:43 Coonrod asks Watts if his kids take any medication. If Watts used 80mg Oxycodone to drug and kill his daughters, this question should have made him nervous. Does he look nervous?
Notice also how he role plays reaching for the neck area while describing the pharmacodynamics of the active ingredients…
Pages 4 and 5 of the CBI Report deal briefly with Watts’ version of his relationship with with Kessinger:
He stayed at Kessinger’s house almost every night his wife and daughters were in North Carolina. He felt like he didn’t have time at home to think about his marriage when Shan’ann and the girls were out of state. He went home after work to work out, eat dinner, and then would go over to Kessinger’s house. He slept over at Kessinger’s house almost the entire month of July. Being away from home allowed him to not think about being a father and husband because he wasn’t surrounded by reminders of his family. “It feels like a roller coaster ride that I just kept punching a ticket on and never could get off.”
if Watts spent an entire month sleeping at Kessinger, wouldn’t his GPS have alerted the office in Platteville that Watts was at another location? Wouldn’t he have been asked about it?
Page 554 in the Discovery Documents alludes to this:
Kessinger wanted to have sex all the time. He never had to worry about saying something stupid around Kessinger and never had to plan what he was going to say when he was with her (Kessinger). He told Kessinger that it felt like she had a leash on him and she was able to tug him away from Shan’ann.
If Watts had been staying with Kessinger solidly for a month, then naturally when Shan’ann arrived back, that scenario would no longer be the case, would it? How could Watts continue to sleep with Kessinger once Shan’ann was home?
Unless he moved out. No wonder Kessinger was actively helping Watts with this part.
Wasn’t this the pressure Watts felt because of her impending return? That his mistress expected to have access to him after Shan’ann’s return, because their divorce was finalized, along with the sale of their home…? Because that’s what he’d told her and now it was important to make reality fit the lie…
While researching ANNIHILATION[published on April 8th, 2019], I stumbled across a few additional insights in the Chris Watts case.
Officer Coonrod and Detective Baumhover were in a unique situation when they arrived at 2825 Saratoga Trail on that fateful Monday in August. They had a witness there who had been with Shan’ann hours before she disappeared. Not Chris Watts, Nickole Atkinson.
Although they turned to Watts as the most reliable source on the whereabouts of his wife and children, they ought to have focused more on Nickole especially when Watts started behaving strangely.
It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but just for the sake of arguments, let’s see what happens when we do.
1. Search the house for Shan’ann’s Clothing
Firstly, the cops could have asked Nickole what clothes Shan’ann was wearing when Nickole dropped her off at 01:48. Nickole could have given them an exact description of Shan’ann’s jeans and shirt.
One of Watts’ earlier versions was that Shan’ann left in the evening. In any event, by locating these items the cops would be able to ascertain if Shan’ann had changed, if she had slept that night and the location and state of the clothing could have told them something about her last movements. They may also have been able to find evidence on the clothing of a struggle. The shirt itself may have been ripped, and may have had traces of sweat, blood and touch DNA on it.
It’s not clear what happened to Shan’ann’s shirt. It appears the jeans she wore were removed, washed and placed into the laundry basket.
When Officer Coonrod did his check early in the afternoon at the Watts home, Watts made no mention of jeans or the laundry basket, even though he walked past that area and into the walk-in closet several times.
The laundry basket or a portion of it appears to be visible at 39:19 in the clip below.
https://youtu.be/HEngqmI7SLc?t=2359
At 2:01 in the clip below, taken on Tuesday morning when the K9 unit was looking for items to scent, Watts of his own accord picked up Shan’ann’s jeans [out of the basket]. This was an interesting move because the K9 handlers had specifically asked Watts which items they could scent off that Watts had not touched. So Watts lifting the jeans out of the basket was almost a way for him to say, “Look, see, I’m touching her jeans. Gee, so I guess you can’t use these…”
The question is, had they been washed earlier, immediately after the murder and prior to Watts heading off to work? It seems unlikely. It seems more likely that he would wash Monday night and then place them in the laundry basket to make it seem as if Shan’ann had changed [slept] and put them there herself.
Interestingly, as Watts is asked by Officer Lines on Tuesday, August 14th, if there are any other items of clothing they can scent off, Watts leads her to the laundry. She asks if he has touched the clothing and he smiles wryly, answering:
I may have.
2. Watts Should Have Been Arrested Based on Trinastich Surveillance Video
Was there probable cause to arrest Watts based on the video of him backing up his driveway and loading unknown objects at 05:18? Everyone who knew Watts said he never backed his truck into the driveway. Trinastich never saw him do it, and the Rzuceks, when they lived with the family for over a year never saw him do it either. So him doing it on that night of all nights was suspicious.
It turns out now there was probable cause, but an argument can be made that even based on what we know now the video was simply not clear enough to establish anything. One might argue there was possible cause, but not probable cause.
We also know the prosecution referred to the video, saying Watts went back three times to collect each body, but the prosecution were sort of bluffing, implying they knew more from the video than they actually did. The prosecution and the cops have to observe strict protocols in terms of evidence, and executing arrests. Often, if these protocols are exceeded or violated, a defense can argue that an arrest was procedural illegal and that there was a “rush to judgement”.
In the Casey Anthony case, Casey was arrested when her explanations didn’t make sense and the nanny stuff didn’t add up. On that occasion the little girl had been gone for a month, and Casey’s car smelled of cadaver odor. Even then, Casey wasn’t arrested and taken into custody until the next morning. It may be that during these additional hours prior to her arrest someone deleted her browser history on the family computer. Interestingly, in the Anthony case she was also seen backing her car into the garage…
Like Casey, Watts would have had time to do similar polishing of the crime scene during his extra night of freedom, especially after the scare of cops trampling through his house, looking for something but of course only Watts would have known what was potentially incriminating. That night he would have ample opportunity to take care of those things.
But what sort of behavior counts as strange, and what qualifies as probable cause? This is a tough one. In hindsight we know Watts’ behavior was odd because he was guilty, but at the time it could simply have been because Watts had argued with his wife [and not necessarily done anything].
At 1:08:52 in the clip below Coonrod asks Watts if he has any idea where Shan’ann is. Watts pulls a face, shakes his head and attempts a convincing answer.
WATTS: All the friends that I know…that I know…if there’s other…
And then Watts gives up answering, pretending to be on his phone.
WATTS: That’s the only ones that I know of….Th-there could be people that I don’t know of…
And then, standing directly opposite Coonrod, Watts does his swaying thing.
But the mosaic of evidence – including the fact that Shan’ann’s phone was phone, her car, and the medication – probably did add up to probable cause. Nickole could have impressed this upon the cops then and there, rather than talking to Sandi the whole time on the phone. Nickole could have let them know Shan’ann would absolutely not have left home without her phone, because it was what she used to do her work and was always on it. Although this was mentioned to Coonrod, it wasn’t emphasized. Watts also interferred with what the cops were thinking and checking by suggesting other possibilities – that Shan’ann may have left through the back entrance, and may have simply gone to a friend. The going to the friend narrative, which he said he told her, took a long time to disprove. And how does one disprove a negative?
It’s also worth mentioning one YouTuber who seems to have identified the second blue nitrile glove, lying under the pillow on the bedroom floor, and possibly a Yankee blanket tossed into the corner.
None of these observations are certain. And in keeping with uncertain observations, here’s mine. Is that Oxycodone on the counter in Shan’ann’s office?
One critical component is missing from the Watts Family Murders. It’s this missing link that makes the crime atypical, and Watts himself such an enigma. Intertextuality provides us with some clues to what fits the criminal psychology, and what doesn’t.
The Manrique Family Tragedy played out in a suburb of Sydney, Australia on Monday, October 17, 2016:
A Sydney father who is suspected of pumping lethal amounts of carbon monoxide into his home as the family slept resulting in the deaths of his wife and two children, made multiple trips to a Bunnings store before the deaths, an inquest has heard.
In the days leading up to family’s deaths, Fernando Manrique, 44, visited the store in Belrose in Sydney’s north shore to buy equipment that police believe was used to set up an elaborate mechanism to channel the deadly gas from a garden shed, through the roof and into the house.
Manrique, his wife Maria Lutz, 43, and their two children, Elisa and Martin, were found dead inside their family home on Monday, October 17, 2016.The inquest into the four deaths, which began today, also heard Manrique had been having an affair with a teenager he met in a bar in the Philippines.
Superficially we see more than a few consistencies:
The murders [and suicide] were carefully planned – that is premeditated – over a few days prior to tragedy.
The premeditation wasn’t simple.
The father was having an affair while married, and in spite of being a father to two small children [aged 11 and 12]
But between the parallels there are a few inconsistencies too:
Maria had not been replying to text messages the weekend before and hadn’t dropped her kids at school on the Monday morning. On the morning of October 17, police conducted a welfare check at the home after Ms Lutz’s friend Nichole Brimble noticed the devoted mother had failed to turn up to her volunteer shift at the school canteen, and learnt the children were not at school. Police attended the single-storey home in the leafy northern beaches suburb of Davidson. While officers initially thought nothing was amiss, they soon made the grim discovery of Maria’s body through an open window.
Her daughter Elisa, 12, was beside her in bed, her husband was slumped in a hall while 11-year-old Martin’s body was found in another bedroom. The family dog, Tequila, was also dead lying on the floor close to Martin.
Asked if there was evidence to suggest Maria had a role in her children’s deaths, he said: “She wasn’t involved at all or had any knowledge. Going through phone records no indication with any person of anything like that.” Counsel assisting Adam Casselden said it was likely the family died sometime between 11am on the Sunday and 11am on the Monday, most likely as the mother and her two children slept in the early hours of Monday morning.
A neighbour said they distinctly remembered the barking of a dog from the house at 2.30am.
The couple were childhood sweethearts from their home in Bogota, Colombia. They emigrated to Australia and gave birth to their daughter in 2005 and son in 2006. Both were diagnosed with autism. “Caring for Martin and Elisa was no doubt challenging,” Mr Casselden said. Despite the challenges the care of the childrenposed, Judge Truscott said there was no indication Maria was involved in her children’s deaths.The inquest heard that, initial speculation that Ms Lutz was aware of Mr Manrique’s fatal plan, would be dispelled by the steps he took to hide it from her, and because of her happiness at securing $50,000 in government funding to help with the care of Elisa and Martin. Ms Truscott said it was clear from the evidence of Ms Lutz’s large network of friends that “Maria loved her life, loved her children and had every intention of continuing a very loving, giving and productive life with her children”.
Indeed, he said the relationship between Maria and Manrique had broken down. “There was very little conversationwith her husband and with conversations with friends she said she has ‘had enough of him’,” Det Sgt Pooley said.
Maria, who used to be a lawyer in Colombia, had given up work to care for her childrenwhile her husband had been made redundant. That had seen his income fall dramatically as he helped set up another company, which led him to frequently visit the Philippines. Detective Sergeant Pooley said the couple had just $6 in a family trust, had credit card debts of $28,000, only a few thousand dollars in a savings account and two mortgages, which Manrique had reduced his repayment amounts on.
“I’d say that he was in dire straits and had massive tax issues,” the detective said. Mr Casselden said the couple had a debt to the Australian Tax Office of about $15,000 in September 2016. Despite this, shortly before the family died Manrique wired several thousand dollars to a lover in the Philippines that he met while travelling for work. Mr Casselden said Manrique had met a 17-year-old called Jamielyn in a bar in the Philippines in 2016.
“He confided in a friend his marriage had become strained and he was seeing other women in the Philippines,” he said. Manrique would “hook up” with other women and had been seeing Jamielyn for at least four months on his trip abroad prior to the family’s deaths. (Manrique) said he would buy her a property but never did so. She recalled that he was particularly stressed on a final trip in September 2016.”
“Manrique told [his business partner] Mr McKenzie that he was struggling to hold everything together and said ‘I just need to slow down’,” Mr Casselden said. In the weeks before the family’s deaths, Manrique had left the Davidson home but had returned in early September for a temporary period, he told his wife, while he found somewhere else to live.
Usually distant, Manrique seemed to be a changed man. Maria confided in a friend that “if he had been like this throughout the marriage, I would never have told him to go”.
“Maria described him as ‘father of the year’ during that week,” Mr Casselden said.
When FBI Agent Grahm Coder asked Watts about his worst moment with Shan’ann, Watts offered a surprising answer. [It’s at about 40 minutes into the clip below].
WATTS: Only once did I ever see that happen [Shan’ann completely losing her temper].
CODER: And was that a time before or on the night that happened?
WATTS: No that was right back in North Carolina. It was just a fiery [laughs]…I just got mad and slammed the door and she was like…that was 2010, 2011. I don’t remember what it was about. I think it was about someone [a woman contacting him] from my past. She was like: ‘Don’t have that happen again.’
CODER: Was she fiery? Does she have that Italian blood that her mom has?
Way back in September 2018, when I published the very first book of the TWO FACE series, I noted the strange alert picked up by media cameras and microphones. It happened on the morning of August 14th. You remember what happened, right? Jayne Zmijewski, the dog handler [also known as the “Bear Lady”], lead her chocolate brown Labrador retriever onto the front porch.
At the time the original post covering this detail gained virtually no traction. In 2018 it was viewed just over 1000 times, and this year [up to the present], about the same. A total of just over 2000 views.
It was always an alert that never seemed to make any sense. Why would a body have been left outside on the cushion? Now it seems to make more sense why the cushion is outside, and why the configuration of the cushions [as noted in the October post] seems to be out of line.
I received this comment from a reader today and I think it reflects what many people are thinking about.
I’ve read the first 2 parts of your book Two Face on my Kindle app. First I want to say that I love the in depth analysis you’ve done concerning the marriage and psychology behind the Watt’s marriage. I’ve read and seen several articles, tv shows, and other media formats and no one gives this case the insight that you do.
When I began following the case and saw Shan’ann’s Facebook videos, the law enforcement body cam footage, and Chris’s interviews with the media and police, I saw the exact same things about the family that you did. Being a mom, I was appalled by Shan’ann’s constant video coverage of her family for the scam that she was peddling. It was painful to watch the shallowness and neglect that she put upon these kids, not to mention how she used and belittled her husband. Shallowness is the only term that would describe this family.
My question to you is now that Chris Watts has come out with this new story about how he killed Shan’ann and then took her and the girls who were still alive, to the oil site and killed the kids there, does that make you believe that perhaps it wasn’t premeditated?
I guess the first thing I should ask is, do you think he’s telling the truth?
In my opinion, the fact that this was a sloppy, boneheaded carryout of a murder, leads me to believe that it wasn’t planned. That he snapped, killed Shan’ann and then had to deal with the kids as an afterthought.
Did he know that his neighbor had a camera that showed his driveway? If so then why did he overlook this if he had a plan to murder them all in the house? If I was going to kill my entire family and try to get away with it, I wouldn’t do it in a place that was equipped with video cameras. I wouldn’t do it on a day when my wife was supposed to be going to a doctors appointment. I wouldn’t use a vehicle that had GPS tracking to dispose the bodies and I would definitely not use my workplace as the site to get rid of the bodies.
Even the way that the bodies were disposed of to me shows hastiness not pre-planning due to the fact that he dug an easily detectable shallow grave, put the girls through an 8 inch in diameter hole in the tanks which would have been very difficult and gruesome, and then left behind the bedsheet that he wrapped Shan’ann’s body in. That shows rushing, hastiness, not pre-planning. That is if we are to believe his story about how he carried out the crimes.
It does seem like it could have been planned because he insisted on working alone at the oil tank site, but again, why try to fit this murder in on a day that you had to go work. If he planned it why would he come up with a story that she went to a friends house but that you don’t know who the friend is?
Why leave her phone and purse in the house? The kids medicine and car seats?
If I planned this I would want all the evidence gone and all loose ends dealt with before I did anything else that day. The suggestion of I’ll commit the crime then come home after work and deal with getting rid of evidence makes no sense to me.
While researching TWO FACE ANNIHILATION it’s become more and more obvious what’s missing from the Second Confession. The word “finances” appears just once, on page 17 of the CBI Report.
Ever since he sold his 4-wheeler for less than what he owed on it, Shan’ann wouldn’t let him do anything with their finances.
The word “debt” appears on the same page which deals with the cops quizzing Watts directly about the business of selling the house. Also a single instance of that word.
Most of the bankruptcy dealt with credit card debt from their wedding.
The word “money” also appears only one time on page 21.
His mother initially believed his father was having an affair because he couldn’t account for missing money.
Many are uncomfortable assigning blame – one way or another – for why these horrific murders took place. Are we less uncomfortable assigning blame for the financial mess they were in?
Although it’s clear Watts didn’t take much if any responsibility for his own finances [and only he is to blame for that], the fact that Shan’ann took control didn’t make matters any better. It also seems having gone bankrupt once before hadn’t been much of a check on whatever was going wrong behind-the-scenes.
Personally I don’t think it’s helpful taking sides in the financial equation either, as regards the Watts. Whether we say it was all Shan’ann’s fault, or all his fault, or that they were both at fault, the fact remains that a financial malaise appeared to hang over them – like a dark cloud – from as early as the beginning of their marriage. Why?
What seems to me to be more helpful is to understand how human psychology, with all its flaws and idiosyncrasies, plays into a pattern that adds up either to financial gain or ruin. It also seems reductionist to simply blame MLM. How is it to blame?
Today on a television show dealing with budgeting advice, I caught a clip by Maya Fisher-French, an award-winning financial journalist, that I thought really resonated with the Watts story.
Fisher-French was making a simple but profound observation about how human psychology plays into our approach to money through our sense of fulfillment, and overall gratification.
Her point was that when we try to save, we tend to focus on denying ourselves small things. We may scrimp on a latte, or hold ourselves back from buying a candy bar. We may – like Shan’ann – elect to choose a cheaper meal at a cheaper restaurant.
Fisher-French’s point is that when we reward ourselves, we do so disproportionately, spending thousands on a holiday, or hundreds on new outfits.
We can see how the Watts household was geared towards making small savings in certain areas [order your free Thrive pack today, at a discount], while splurging in other areas: a really big house, an expensive car, one exotic holiday after another.
The damaging thing about MLM is that it encourages exactly these enormous extravagances, and links them to the idea of “Thriving”, and having a better sense of self.
It even reverses the idea of saving in small doses by overpricing their products, and then simultaneously offering “unbeatable” bargains and discounts.
MLM’s message is you can live in a castle! You can have the luxury car! You can travel to your heart’s content! Don’t let anything [like not being able to afford it] stop you because you deserve it!
Fisher-French’s advice is to make a list of those things we deny ourselves on a daily basis that “hurt”, like that extra spoon of sugar in our coffee, or a dessert at a restaurant, and swap that around with our unworkable and unaffordable reward system.
She recommends saving on the big things rather than scrimping on the little ones as a more effective way of staying financially safe and sound. The idea is to connect our sense-of-self to daily, ordinary things, rather than to attach ourselves to bigger, unrealistic extravagances. In other words, financially we need to occupy and live in the real world.
More echoes of the Watts case. Remember Watts’ “first confession” where he implicated Shan’ann in killing the little girls. We have the same thing here, where Berreth is murdered to “protect” their daughter. Surely there are other ways of protecting children besides murdering their mothers?
Patrick Frazee reported Kelsey Berreth to child services because she was harming their toddler daughter, new documents could show. The alleged killer, 32, is said to have confided in his mistress Krystal Jean Lee Kenney, telling her that his fiancee abused one-year-old Kaylee.
Kenney testified that murder suspect Frazee had told her Kelsey, 29, hurt their daughter, leaving her with a burn on her hand and a bump on her head. Kenney disposed of crucial evidence in the murder case, including a gun, keys and the missing mother’s phone and claims she cleaned up the crime scene at his request.
Kenney then got rid of Berreth’s keys at Makad Gorge State Park, right over the border from Colorado in Idaho, court documents reveal. The nurse also told police that she burned Berreth’s cell phone and threw it in the trash at work, along with the burner phone she used to speak with Frazee. Frazee is said to have told his lover that they needed to ‘get rid of’ Berreth so she couldn’t hurt or even kill Kaylee.
So often the murder of children by their biological parents or other relatives is associated with prolonged periods of abuse or even torture. This is what makes the Watts case idiosyncratic.
A desperate search for missing 8-year-old California boy went from hopeful to tragic on Thursday after officials announced that the child had been murdered, allegedly by his own father. “It is with a heavy heart that the Corona Police Department must let our community know the missing child investigation regarding Noah McIntosh has been escalated to a homicide case,” the police department stated.
Bryce McIntosh, father of missing Noah, has been charged with his murder. Meanwhile, the search for the child’s body continues. “We would like to assure our community members our department has put all our efforts into locating Noah McIntosh while gathering the facts regarding his disappearance,” police stated. “Our search for Noah continues.”
On March 12, Noah’s mother, Jillian Godfrey contacted the police claiming that she had not been able to contact her son for almost two weeks.The next day a search warrant was served at Bryce McIntosh’s apartment.
The painting, Still Life with Fruit and Chestnuts, was donated to the museum by a couple in 1960 and suspected to be by the Dutch master.
But several experts pooh-poohed the claim. However, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam determined that Van Gogh painted the rather dowdy fruit bowl – perhaps on a blue day – in 1886.
The news has been somewhat muted, as the confirmation occurred last year, but wasn’t reported for months. In a further discovery, the experts found there was a portrait of a woman hidden underneath the still life. The often sad artist – whose works are now priceless – often reused his canvases because he was too poor to buy new ones.
…if we had been that little more welcoming in 1876, perhaps the history of art would have taken a different turn. Instead of those astonishing stars over the Rhône at Arles, they might have been shining down on the North Sea at Scarborough.
During the course of several trips in the south of France I visited Arles, where Vincent lived in 1888, and St. Rémy where he was confined in the famous asylum, for the express purpose of identifying the scenes he painted. In fifty years these scenes have changed amazingly littleand today, but for the major fact that the trees have grown taller, they offer virtually the same appearance they did to the painter at the time. A first glance finds them disappointing both in their structure and their unprepossessing color. The views that van Gogh chose often amazed me by their banality, by their total lack of any emotional quality—that quality he makes so urgent in all of his works. But painting the bridge of Trinquetaille, that Mairie of Auvers, the wheatfield under the rain, or the passageway in the asylum, the artist knew how to accentuate the sensations of intensity, of gayety, of desolation or of melancholywhich he discovered in them. By purely pictorial means he has stressed line and color…
Faced with the themes and the canvases of van Gogh, so strangely alike yet so absorbingly different, one realizes that “reality” cannot exist independently, and that the artist paints after all not what is but what he sees. Vincent himself best defined the problem when he asked his brother: “When the thing represented is…absolutely in agreement and one with the manner of representing it, isn’t it just that that gives a work of art its quality?”
Speaking of the history of world art taking a different turn, if even one of the contentions in this true crime interpretation of the life and death of Van Gogh are true, all of art history going back over a century is turned on its head…
March 30th, 2019
1. Interview with OLAYINKA HAMZA, the attorney who met Shan’ann at restaurant
5 and half hours into this Madeleine documentary and a man’s said “we can never question a dog – because they don’t speak our language” £7.99 for this thank you Netflix
watching this Madeleine McCann documentary & 1. Why did they leave the door open?? 2. Why didn’t their friend actually GO into the room to check on the children & 3. Why didn’t their other female friend report she seen a suspicious man carrying a child??? Hmmm…
3. “I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt – and evidence of collusion.” – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), during a House Intelligence Committee open hearing, responded to Trump and Congressional Republican’s calls for his resignation, Thursday, March 28,
“They’re innocent,” Douglas said of both Knox and Echols, whom he also referred to as “heroes.” Both have been convicted of murder and both were sitting on stage beside the former profiler. Douglas’ sentiment prompted Knox to choke up and thank him for believing her.
But Echols said he was able to make it through all these hardships because he started practicing magick, which made conditions bearable and kept him sane.
Comedian Dave Hill, who interviewed Echols Thursday, joked a bit about magick, knowing many aren’t super-familiar with the topic.
“Magic is for nerds,” Hill said. “But magick with a ‘k’ sounds like there are goats involved.”
But … what is it?
Magick, as Echols puts it, “is the western path to enlightenment.” It’s similar to things like the Law of Attraction or The Secret, in that it all has to do with manifesting in some way, according to Echols.
“[We’re] wandering aimlessly, that’s what we do through life. We don’t remember where we come from, where we’re going, or why we’re supposed to be going there. Magick causes you to remember some of these things and gives you a sense of purpose,” he explained.
Practicing magick for Echols consists of a variety of… ceremonies and rituals, all for the purpose of spiritual growth. This kept him balanced and helped him manage the physical and emotional stress and pain of imprisonment. Echols was able to learn so much about magick through all his time reading in prison. He got his hands on whatever he could find to read during those endless days, and started from there. Echols is still committed to magick to this day. After all, it wasn’t easy adjusting to life after prison.
“I didn’t realize I had lost things like facial recognition ability, voice recognition ability, destroyed my eyesight. It takes a very heavy toll on you mentally, physically, emotionally,” he explained. He even claimed that he had barely any memories of his first two years out of prison, as he was just so traumatized.
Get the TCRS take on Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three:
When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night.
Indeed, for van Gogh reading was as compulsive as painting: “I have a more or less irresistible passion for books and the constant need to improve my mind, to study if you like, just as I have a need to eat bread.” He copied down poems by Longfellow, Goethe and Keats; he enjoyed the works of George Eliot as well as Hans Christian Andersen, Thomas a Kempis, Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoevsky, Maupassant, Balzac and Voltaire.
The museum staff decided to send “Vase With Poppies” to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for further inspection. Experts there analyzed the work’s paint, material and style and concluded that it is indeed a van Gogh, one that falls in line with the paintings he made not long after moving from Antwerp to Paris in 1886.
Louis van Tilborgh, senior Researcher and the Van Gogh Museum, notes that the recent investigation into the origins of “Vase With Flowers” suggests that light can be shed on other “floaters”—works that can have been attributed to van Gogh, but whose authenticity remains uncertain. “[O]ne can say that slowly but surely,” Tilborgh adds, “real progress is being made in Van Gogh studies.”
Dr Perlin said it was “possible” Madeleine’s DNA was present in the McCann hire car, potentially opening up a line of the police inquiry that was seemingly shut down by the 2007 “inconclusive” DNA results.
“What was interesting about the report from the FSS 10 years ago is they’re trying to interpret [the McCann DNA] data,” Dr Perlin said.”What this [FSS] report says is there is a possibility that Madeleine McCann’s DNA is present in this mixture,” said Dr Perlin – who Nine.com.au sent a copy of the FSS DNA report which was handed to Portuguese police in September 2007.
“[If] a lab can produce informative data, even if it is complex and mixed, but they can’t interpret it then you can have tremendous injustice; of guilty people not being convicted, of innocent people staying in prison. What is needed is an objective and accurate interpretation that can scientifically resolve the DNA,” he said. Dr John Lowe, the senior scientist at the FSS responsible for solving the McCann DNA samples, stated in his final report that his team could not resolve the evidence because it was too challenging.
In the Maddie podcast, Dr Perlin explained exactly how modern DNA software can reboot the McCann cold case. Madeleine would be 16 years old in May this year. Portuguese police sent dozens of DNA samples to the FSS in 2007.
Forensics teams lifted floor tiles and took DNA swabs from behind a blue two-seat sofa in the lounge area of the McCann holiday apartment. Sections of the boot compartment in the Renault Scenic hire car were also cut out and expressed to the FSS.
Not everyone is supportive of her, though. There are still plenty of people who think that Knox is guilty, and she admitted she spends a lot of time feeling like she needs to explain herself. As a result, her morning routine isn’t just coffee and breakfast. It includes deleting vicious social media comments.
“I kinda have this daily morning routine where I go on my social media profiles and delete all the nasty comments and block all the people that make mean comments to me,” she said. Knox said that while she acknowledges that these kind of comments are now part of her existence, “It’s not nice. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt me but at the same time I know these people hate someone that’s not me.”
By deleting the comments, Knox explained she’s choosing to limit the amount of negativity that she allows to infiltrate her life. While tabloid journalism tore Knox apart…she’s even joined the media world herself. Within weeks of being exonerated, she began writing for a local newspaper in Washington…
…and it was a different story in 2014: Knox's desire to go back to Italy is a reversal from what she has told reporters in the past. She told "Good Morning America" in 2014 that she would never set foot on Italian soil of her own volition.
But no surveillance cameras captured the incidentand one of the men was actually Smollett’s personal trainer, the actor’s attorneys said.
If prosecutors saw holes in their case, they had to do the “best they could do in the interest of justice. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they looked at the evidence and didn’t feel they could prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Sara Azari, a criminal defense attorney.
The secrecy surrounding the details of the sudden dismissalof Smollett’s charges has left some people calling for greater transparency from the prosecutors office and has led to speculation. A judge agreed to seal Smollett’s court file at the request of his attorneys and without the opposition from prosecutors…legal analysts said the decision to keep the records from public disclosure will stop the community from learning what really happened.
Jussie Smollett has hired high-powered criminal defense lawyer Mark Geragos to represent him against the 16 felony charges he is facing in Chicago following his alleged orchestration of a staged homophobic and racist attack.
1. In the video below AD makes a claim about a red vehicle. He neglects to mention or show the angle of the porch camera, and that it isn’t oriented directly toward the neighbor’s wall, but is turned slightly towards the road. Thus the camera seeing the vehicle pull away makes sense. It is interesting that Watts moves his own vehicle forward, perhaps once he realizes the neighbors are stirring.
In 2007, the now-closed British lab, the FSS, was forced to undertake a massive review of up to 2000 cases of violent crime, including rape and murder. There were concerns that the DNA tests relating to these criminal cases had failed to detect minute traces of DNA that could potentially have identified guilty parties.
The search for Shannon was compared to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Matthews served four years in jail for kidnapping her daughter Shannon, nine, in 2008 to generate cash from the publicity.
The mother, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, made several emotional pleas for her child to return during the huge police search despite being aware of where she was.
There are reports that Matthews wants to sell the rights to her autobiography so she can pay for cosmetic surgery in the hope it would help her to go unrecognised. It is believed all seven of Matthews’ children are living under new names and no longer have a relationship with their mother. Last year, Matthews told the Daily Mirror: “I’m not Britain’s worst mum. I didn’t kill anybody.”
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann are still being chased for hefty legal fees nearly a decade after the start of their court battle against the ex-police chief who has attacked them again in a new documentary.
Kate and Gerry McCann are about to be told by a court in Lisbon, Portugal, that they still owe thousands of pounds from their libel fight against Gonçalo Amaral. Amaral, 59, is waiting on a soon-to-come judgement from the European Court of Human Rights over the lengthy legal battle with the McCanns, sparked by his 2008 book The Truth of The Lie, before deciding whether to launch a compensation claim.
The eight-part series called ‘The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann’ was commissioned in 2017 as the true crime genre exploded with TV shows such as Making A Murderer.
The McCanns, who refused to take part in the project and declined to watch a preview, will be infuriated that their tormentor Goncalo Amaral – ‘a thorn in our sides’ – is set to be starring in it. Protection officer Jim Gamble said advances in tech mean she could be found..
The couple, who are still challenging a libel win by the ex Portuguese detective in the highest court in the landthe European Court of Human Rights will be ‘horrified to learn’ that the worldwide streaming service has interviewed the retired officer.
MailOnline first exclusively revealed that Kate and Gerry wanted ‘nothing to do with’ the drama which has cost up to a reported £20 million.
McCanns “didn’t participate or approve of” Netflix documentary.
I used to think for a long time that parents were heavily involved but when Kate was offered a plea for ONLY 2 years in jail for a confession, but never took it, I knew it can’t be it. #MadeleineMccannNetflix
Wasn’t familiar with the story till I saw #MadeleineMccannNetflix. Don’t know the truth, but I know this: 1. You don’t leave a 3-year-old and two 2-year-old alone while having dinner. 2. It’s not a cultural thing whether or not you do point 1. 3. You don’t let the door unlocked.
Sydney Aiello, who survived the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, has died from suicide, people close to the family told CNN. Her mother, Cara, told CNN affiliate WFOR that Aiello suffered from survivor’s guilt after one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history and had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Aiello had been on campus the day of the mass attack but was not in the building where the shootings took place, her mother said, according to WFOR. Aiello, a cheerleader in high school, graduated just months after a troubled teen gunned down 14 students and three teachers there. The family of Parkland school shooting victim Meadow Pollack described Aiello as “someone dear to Meadow.”
The news of the double tragedy comes just as students are out of school this week for spring break. Investigators told the Miami Herald that the male student died in “an apparent suicide” on Saturday night. He was a sophomore and attended Stoneman Douglas last year at the time of the Feb. 14 shooting that claimed 17 lives on campus.
The understanding of these statues changed over time as cultural mores shifted. In the early Christian period in Egypt, between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, the indigenous gods inhabiting the sculptures were feared as pagan demons; to dismantle paganism, its ritual tools — especially statues making offerings — were attacked. After the Muslim invasion in the 7th century, scholars surmise, Egyptians had lost any fear of these ancient ritual objects. During this time, stone statues were regularly trimmed into rectangles and used as building blocks in construction projects.
“Ancient temples were somewhat seen as quarries,” Bleiberg said, noting that “when you walk around medieval Cairo, you can see a much more ancient Egyptian object built into a wall.”
8. From the Archives: John Ramsey interview with Anderson Cooper [2012]
The officers said they would come back in the morning, after 9am. Kate continues: “With that they were gone, leaving us to our own devices. It was incomprehensible. Looking back, it’s inexplicable, of course, that we should ever have been left in what was now a crime scene. We shouldn’t even have been allowed to take things out of the children’s bedroom.”
At the crux of the divide, district attorneys disagree on whether the possibility of the death penalty is necessary to facilitate plea deals on potential capital cases and avoid lengthy, costly murder trials. Without the death penalty, more defendants will be able to plead to second-degree murder, district attorneys who oppose repeal warned, though they clarified that they wouldn’t seek death in a case that didn’t merit it simply to obtain a plea.
“Without this tool that we have at our disposal right now, reserved for the worst of the worst, those pleas simply don’t happen,” said Republican Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke, citing the recent case of a Frederick man who pleaded guilty to murdering his family to avoid the death penalty. “Chris Watts doesn’t have an incentive at that point.”
The vast majority of all criminal cases are resolved by plea deals, including murder cases, said District Attorney Dave Young, a Democrat who represents Adams and Broomfield counties and opposes the repeal. He is pursuing the death penalty against a man charged with killing Adams County sheriff’s Deputy Heath Gumm. “We would not be able to do that without leverage,” he said. “The whole legal system is based on leverage — not just criminal cases.”
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann disputed that analysis and said convictions shouldn’t rely on the prospect of the death penalty, but instead on the strength of the evidence in the case.McCann has said publicly that she will not seek the death penalty in any case because she morally opposes it, and she has said the decision has not affected her ability to convict.
Chris Watts on sex with mistress Nichol Kessinger and wife, Shan’ann Watts
The incomplete DNA information found its way into the press and, before long, unsubstantiated allegations started to circulate.
Tabloids splashed accusations against the McCanns across their front pages and the media frenzy became relentless. One particular newspaper, featured in the documentary, ran a front-page headline with the words: “We have found her blood in the boot of your hire car… Did you kill her by accident?”
There was no evidence to show that Madeleine was the source of the DNA.
There are so many different genres on Netflix is can be difficult to sort through them all. But one thing Netflix does better than just about anyone else? True crime documentaries.
People are obsessed with seeing true crime stories on television. Maybe it’s because the stories are real. Maybe it’s our morbid fascination with violent crimes. No matter the reason, true crime has been popular long before Netflix was even invented. But now they’ve proven how expert they are at taking those stories and bringing them to life.
Journalist Felícia found it odd that in the weeks after Madeleine vanished, the investigating police seemed to be focusing only on the suspected kidnapping and not the family involved. “We know that in most cases, the culprit is someone who is close to the child,” Felícia explains in the documentary. She goes on to tell the story of a visit she made to the restaurant where the McCann group ate on the night of the incident. She sat at the same table as them and found that despite Gerry McCann’s claim that the table had a “line of sight to the apartment” – which they say was a factor in deciding where to eat that evening – there was limited visibility. This was the first contradiction she found in the parents’ statement to police.
“From the position I was in, it was completely impossible to see the apartment or the room where they had left the children to sleep,” Felícia adds. “As an investigative journalist, I have to ask, why? Why would you lie about such a simple thing?”
Her colleague Margarida says that they had a feeling something was off with the timeline and that the McCanns’ version of events doesn’t match that of the employees who served them in the hotel. Further doubt was driven by inconsistencies in Gerry’s statements about which door he entered the apartment through and whether or not it was locked. There’s also her understanding that the McCann group gathered to work out their timeline and then revise it 24 hours later.
Gonçalo Amaral, former Chief Investigating Coordinator with the Portuguese police, says that statements by Jane Tanner, who claimed to have seen a man carrying a child in pajamas away from the resort, seemed to evolve as time went on.
Our prurient attraction to crime, gore and the misery of others is not new: equivalent publications to Crime Monthly (though tamer) can be traced back at least to Victorian times—an era when Jack the Ripper was turned into a species of folk legend. But today’s fixation, and the sheer barrage of content it brings with it, can make us forget standards and neglect others. We lose in the variety and styles of storytelling we watch. And perhaps, just perhaps, we lose something of ourselves when we slow down to gawp at the car crash as we pass.
Peer-reviewed medical journals are peppered with studies that posthumously diagnose the illnesses of artists, using data that ranges from medical records to, in rare cases, the artist’s physical remains. Most commonly, though, such medical connoisseurs turn to the deceased’s body of work for clues.
This might seem like an amusing sport, but Marmor warned that many doctors use flawed measurements and take their conclusions too far. “Artists have license to paint as they wish, so style is mutable and not necessarily an indication of disease,” he said. “Speculation is always fun, but not when it is presented as ‘evidence’ in scientific journals.”
When Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin passed away on the Marquesas Islands in 1903, he left behind four teeth in a glass jar and abundant speculation about whether or not he died from syphilis. An opportunity to address some of the unanswered questions surrounding his legacy arose in 2000, when those teeth were extracted from a sealed well near Gauguin’s former hut. Caroline Boyle-Turner, a Gauguin specialist, wanted to first confirm that the cavity-ridden molars did indeed belong to the Frenchman, and then see what could be learned from the remains.
A chance encounter on a cruise liner treading through the South Pacific put Boyle-Turner in contact with William Mueller, a founding member of the Dental Anthropological Association. The two became investigative partners, and their findings were published in Anthropology in 2018. The DNA extracted from the teeth was compared with DNA taken from the interred remains of the artist’s father (recently identified in Chile), as well as a sample from Gauguin’s living grandson. The results were a match. The molars were also tested for traces of cadmium, mercury and arsenic, which were all common treatments for syphilis during Gauguin’s time. None were found, which doesn’t necessarily conclude that Gauguin wasn’t syphilitic, only that he didn’t receive those treatments (or at least not in a high enough dosage to leave a residue).
“Van Gogh was 20 when he arrived, an impressionable age for anyone, so his period in London had a deep influence on him,” he said. “What was important about London was that he worked in an art gallery, and this helped introduce him to painting. Had he never worked in a gallery, I believe it unlikely that he would ever have become an artist.”
Bailey wrote in the Art Newspaper that Van Gogh is thought to have fallen in love with Loyer’s 19-year-old daughter, Eugénie,during his visit.
Alongside the insurance documents, builders also recovered a tattered 1867 edition of “A Penny Pocket Book of Prayers and Hymns.” The offices of the book’s publisher, Frederick Warne, were in Covent Garden, close to the gallery where Van Gogh worked. Bailey wrote that the book was probably owned by Ursula, but may have been read by Van Gogh, who became a devout Christian while in London.
But what if an artist seeks — nay, demands — obscurity? That’s the premise of Dan Gilroy’s contemporary art world satire-cum-horror, in which the dying wish of a hermit painter is ignored and his works fed into the hungry mouth of the market instead of being destroyed.
Stretching five days, “Death Becomes Us” pieces together the rare opportunities to sit before the wrongly accused (Amanda Knox, Damien Echols, etc.) and the cold-case experts who’ve turned such cases into a Hollywood obsession.
A highly anticipated eight-part docuseries on the disappearance of 3-year-old Madeleine McCann is gripping if you don’t know the storyand a disappointment if you do. Somebody knows exactly what happened to Madeleine McCann, the 3-year-old Briton who disappeared without a trace from her bed in a holiday resort on a family vacation with friends in Praia Da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007. But it clearly isn’t the makers of the new Netflix series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Unfortunately the writer of this piece cops out on his own premise. There are many bogus documentaries out their claiming to represent the premise of true crime, among them Making A Murderer [both seasons], the Paradise Lost trilogy, and virtually all coverage of the McCanns and the Ramseys, especially coverage in which they voluntarily participate.
3. Police detective testifies in Packham murder trial
The culture around The Tortured Genius represents that the more mentally ill the artist, the more brilliant his work. The first person that comes to mind is apparently none other than Vincent Van Gogh. His severed ear is part of popular culture parlance. When the gifted artist wasn’t having psychotic episodes or cutting a part of his ear off, he painted exquisite paintings as he transferred his inner anguish on his canvas. Others like Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, Franz Kafka, etc. had similar fates. Their professional lives flourished as they battled mental illness. But the question remains. Is the idea of the Tortured Genius a myth or a reality?
Made of earthen-color fabric on steel frames up to 32 feet high and 800 feet long, the walls shield industrial machinery from a high school and wetlands greenbelt in Greeley, prairie homes in Windsor, and kids riding bikes and skateboards in Mead.
It is the latest innovation for companies equipped with horizontal drilling technology that are trying to solve a puzzle: how to extract more fossil fuels from under where people are living and minimize impact.
The walls help companies meet Colorado’s noise limits (55-80 decibels during the day and 50-75 at night, and measured 350 feet from the source). Walls also are being considered for wildlife habitat where proposed drilling threatens mating of sage grouse. Previously, oil and gas companies tried to ease impact of industrial operations near people by stacking hay bales and shipping containers around engines. Beyond cutting noiseby 20 to 30 decibels, the fabric walls partially block the glare of floodlights and dust cloudsduring companies’ multimonth period of drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
It was a simple retelling – in what felt almost like real time, so leadenly was it done – of the story of the three-year-old’s disappearance from the holiday resort of Praia da Luz one terrible night in May 2007. It was a blatant cash-in on the vogue for the true-crime series that have become a staple of Netflix’s output since the success of Making a Murderer a few years ago, but without any of the justifications previous works in the genre have provided. It was not the disinterment of a forgotten case, it was not the re-examination of a suspected miscarriage of justice. It offered no new facts, no new insight. It didn’t even have a point of view.
Instead, it was purely a rehashing of everything anyone who was alive at the time, or who has been of an age to understand the periodic appeals on anniversaries, birthdays and other painful dates by the McCanns for more information in the 12 years that have elapsed since, already knew…
3. Michael Jackson’s maid reveals sordid Neverland secrets
It's quite funny that the #McCann have "pretended" to object to the #Netflix film. Look at the copyright tag in the photo. Guess who would have provided permission to use it?> 'never-before-heard testimonies from those at the heart of the story', including the McCanns' friends pic.twitter.com/AvQyQFGPFf
As expected -> Undermining, mocking the Portuguese side of the police investigation. Portuguese cops later identified #McCann as arguidos>>>Maddie cops released sketch of 'egg with side parting' days after disappearance https://t.co/ZIyrRvJe1I#McCannpic.twitter.com/mn10o8Glgy
Aoife Smith described the man she saw carrying the little girl towards the beach on the night of 3rd of May, as wearing beige trousers with buttons, like the ones Gerry McCann is wearing in this photo.#McCannpic.twitter.com/cbJYm9XLMn
1. I’m no hero. 2. I never ‘blasted’ anybody. 3. As I said to the decent Australian journalist from whose podcast this was culled and distorted by someone without his integrity, a reconstruction would have been a great idea if only those involved would have taken part. https://t.co/XaxNB58jKj
I believe the claim the McCanns refused to participate is the opening gambit to get viewers to believe the Netflix documentary is on the up and up. Viewers will come in believing it is going to be objective and get a solid propoganda film exonerating the McCanns. #mccann
Portuguese asked the group to return to the scene to run through their movements on the night of May 3, 2007. But negotiations with the witnesses allegedly stalled because of disagreements over how it would be managed by investigators.
The reconstruction had been planned for May 2008, six months after Kate and Gerry had been declared arguidos, or official suspects. Their friends raised concerns over the arguido status in emails to police.
They were also said to fear a media frenzy if they flew back to the resort, and questioned the purpose of the re-enactment. One member of the group proposed the police use actors instead, but Portuguese detectives refused.
Police were said to be frustrated the reconstruction did not happen. They shelved the investigation in August 2008 and the McCanns’ arguido status was lifted.
“Why do you think he’s telling the truth now?” asked host Phil McGraw.
Rzucek said he believed Watts spoke honestly about the killings because “I think it’s eating him up. I think he was more than glad to talk to somebody for five hours, sitting in a box 24/7,” said Rzucek, who was the children’s godfather. “We loved him like a son and Frankie loved him like a brother,” Sandy Rzucek said. “I just don’t understand.”
Patrick Frazee is pictured checking out baby supplies and formula at a WalMart on Thanksgiving Day in documents from his murder case that were obtained by DailyMail.com. A still from the store’s surveillance system shows Frazee pushing a carriage with a baby seat which is believed to hold his daughter Kaylee just after 1pm.
It was minutes after this that Frazee was seen with a crate in his truck heading back to Berreth’s house, despite telling investigators he went straight home after his fiancee handed over their daughter earlier that afternoon. A neighbor’s surveillance video shows that Frazee was inside the residence for two hours before leaving, during which time authorities now believe he murdered Berreth by bludgeoning her with a bat.
On his way out of the home, Frazee called both his mistress Krystal Jean Kenney and his mother Sheila Frazee, though they were not the only two women the accused killer spoke to over the next few days. Court documents show that Frazee was also in contact with a third woman from Idaho. The relationship between Frazee and that woman is unclear, and she is not a suspect and never been identified as a person of interest in the case.
She was however just a few miles away from where Berreth’s phone pinged in Idaho on November 25, and contacted Frazee at the exact time the missing mother’s cellular was registered by a nearby tower. The woman, 39, has also been employed in the medical field, so there is a chance she may have been a friend of Frazee’s mistress, Kenney.
1. TCRS blows by 2 million page impressions five months after launching in mid-October 2018. Thank you to all the regular visitors, commenters and readers in the TCRS community.
Father Of Murder Victim Shan’ann Watts Reveals What He’d Say To Son-In-Law, Chris, If Given The Chance – Dr. Phil
“Knowing what you now know, what would you say to him?” asks Dr. Phil of the grieving family.
“The same question I’ve had – Why?” responds Frank Sr. adding, “There’s nothing that I can imagine why you would do that to your family. You want another life? Go. Open the door and leave.”
“He could have just gotten a divorce,” says Sandy. Calling her daughter and granddaughters’ deaths “inhumane” she says, “I think the hardest thing for me right now is the way they died.”
“I think the hardest part is knowing our granddaughter watched her sister die and then begged for her life,” says Shan’ann’s mother, Sandy Rzucek, reacting to what the family has been told about her son-in-law’s description of the last words spoken to him by Bella.
“I felt my daughter’s spirit, the moment she died,” says Shan’ann’s mother, Sandy Rzucek, who lives in North Carolina. She describes waking up everyone in her house the morning her daughter and grandchildren were killed to tell family members that she felt something was wrong with Shan’ann.
“We didn’t even know she was missing yet,” says Shan’ann’s brother, Frankie, confirming his mother’s account.
After authorities found her daughter’s body, a few days after her and the girls’ disappearance, Sandy says she felt Shan’ann’s presence in her home. “I felt her, and I heard her say, ‘I love you, Mommy, and I’m sorry.’”
Sandy claims she received another visitation from Shan’ann and her children after Celeste and Bella’s bodies were recovered.
HORRIFIC: Christopher Watts drove the girls along with their dead mother's body on a 45-minute drive to a secluded oil field where he smothered the youngest with her favorite blanket and killed his 4-year-old after she watched her sister die. https://t.co/ul6FgNe8mo
parts of new #ChrisWatts information i think he is still making up. "He said that he killed his wife because they were going to get divorced and she said he'd never see the kids again." I believe premeditated and he cares what people are thinking of him #excuse
“He had no empathy for life,” Curie said about Frazee, in an exclusive interview with NBC’s “Dateline.” Curie said she and Frazee started dating in 2010.
“I was attracted to his sharp wit and he had a very explorative mind. He contemplated everything. And he was excellent at reading people,” Curie told “Dateline” correspondent Andrea Canning. But, four months into their relationship, Curie said Frazee started playing mind games on her.
“He began not calling me for days, and then calling me in the middle of the night telling me he had visions of me in a wedding dress. And we’d talk and argue for hours. And we’d end up winding right back into each other.”
The emotional abuse, as she described it, went on for a year. She said Frazee would put her on a pedestal, then tear her down. But, she said, she continued to be drawn to him. As their relationship continued, Curie said she observed Frazee, a rancher and popular farrier, hit his dogs.
“Dateline” interviewed a man who knew another side of Frazee. Clint Cline said Frazee worked with his donkeys, and describes him as a “nice guy, very conscientious about his work, very concerned about the health and well-being of our animals, very great with his daughter.”
Curie and Frazee’s on-again, off-again relationship ended in 2014, when Curie said she came across the definition of a psychopath online. “He fit the bill to a T. And that’s when I left him.”
In an interview with Dr. Phil that will air on Monday, Sandra and Frank Rzucek were joined by their son to share their grief over the deaths of their daughter, her two children Bella and Cece, and her unborn son.
Chris’ recent chilling “confession” gives us even more insight into his perverted mind. He shared the tale of heartlessly killing Shanann after making love to her, then telling her he didn’t love her and wanted to leave her before finally strangling her to death. He claims she didn’t even struggle and said It was like Shanann was praying, thinking of scripture and forgave him for doing it.
He also described being overtaken by an outside power that got him to compulsively kill his family; he retells the moment as if he was powerless over his impulses to overcome this heinous crime.
Chris Watts may not have been able to find his relevance in the real world, but seems to have found it in prison. In prison, Chris feels like an important man; the man he always thought he should be. He gets fan mail and love letters. His newly revealed confessions, after “finding God” are making him even more of a global star, albeit a notorious one. He is making his mark on history, so he thinks. His egotistical plan and sick need for distinction and recognition are finally being met. Criminality led to his celebrity.
Madeleine McCann’s parents have slammed a new Netflix movie about their daughter’s kidnap fearing it could hinder the painstaking police search for her.
According to The Sun, Kate and Gerry McCann have revealed they had been asked to take part in the documentary but “want nothing to do with it”.
Oscar-winning Netflix boasts the documentary has “riveting” new interviews with key investigators as the 12th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance approaches.
The streaming giant is set to release more details and the launch date of the movie The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the coming weeks.
Throughout their investigation and prosecution of this case, Rourke said they tried to figure out what happened, but he told the Coloradoan that “reality turns out to be much worse than anything any of us surmised from the evidence we had… about the worst you could imagine.”
After Watts was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison, Rourke said he doubted Watts would ever give an honest account of the killings. But on Thursday, Rourke said he believes Watts’ recent confession to investigators is a “truthful, credible account” of the killings.
Mostly.
“I’m assuming what he is telling is truthful,” Rourke said, adding that the skilled investigators who interviewed Watts also believe he was honest in his most recent confession. “I don’t think that everything that came out of his mouth during those interviews was the truth because I honestly don’t believe that this monster has the ability to have remorse at all.”
Rourke said some pieces of evidence match Watts’ most recent confession, including footage from a neighbor’s security camera that shows another shadow aside from Watts’ by his truck when he was loading Shanann’s body into the back seat.
In the video released by the Weld County District Attorney’s Office, Watts is seen standing by his work truck when another shadow appears to be moving toward him, and Watts leans down to pick something up, likely one of the girls.
That video “would be consistent with his statements that the girls were alive when they left the house and walked out to the truck,” Rourke said.
NOTE: I will be doing an analysis of the film At Eternity’s Gate, and explain how my research challenges the popular myth of the great artist.
Jo, the widow of Vincent’s brother Theo, made it her mission to introduce the world to Vincent’s art. She sold some of his works, loaned some out for exhibitions and published the letters that Vincent and Theo wrote to each other. #internationalwomensdaypic.twitter.com/jwJHcNZ88c
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation released this morning records pertaining to Chris Watts’ Feb. 18 confession to law enforcement about how and why he killed his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two daughters, Bella and Celeste.
The records released at 8 a.m. include two audio files documenting Watts’ five-hour long interview with CBI, FBI and Frederick police, two images of Watts, a 37-page CBI report, and a letter from Colorado Department of Public Safety Executive Director Stan Hilkey.
The Tribune has accessed the records and reporters are reviewing them.
Michael Jackson’s estate is engaged in a campaign of adverts, lawsuits and interviews in an attempt to salvage his image after the screening of Channel 4’s documentary Leaving Neverland, which details years of alleged grooming and child abuse.
Jackson’s estate – which has made $2.1bn (£1.6bn) since his death in 2009 and is run by John McClain, a co-executor with Jackson’s former lawyer John Branca – originally tried to block the release of the documentary by contacting Channel 4 and issuing a $100m lawsuit against HBO, which broadcast Dan Reed’s film last weekend in the US.
The estate said the documentary, which premiered at Sundance in January, is “the kind of tabloid character assassination Michael Jackson endured in life, and now in death”, and added that “the film takes uncorroborated allegations that supposedly happened 20 years ago and treats them as fact”.
Eamonn Forde, a music industry expert, said the estate was engaged in an unprecedented containment and damage-limitation exercise to attempt to preserve the most lucrative posthumous fortune in the history of music.
“This is a new era for artist estate management, because this is about containment rather than maximising the profile of a deceased artist,” said Forde. “To an extent, estate management is about building a narrative around an artist; they are the directors of the narrative.”
On Dec. 15, authorities filed a search warrant executed on Frazee’s home, which listed 67 seized items. Police took possession of Frazee’s financial records, five pairs of his wrangler blue jeans, a Verizon tablet, his boots, a tan baseball cap and 50 9 mm bullets and two casings. They also wanted items that could provide DNA samples of the suspect and victim.
They also found “four teeth in a small envelope” and a fifth tooth held separately. One of Berreth’s teeth became a gruesome point of discussion during a recent hearing involving Frazee’s alleged accomplice, Krystal Jean Kenney Lee, an Idaho nurse.
Lee told investigators that Frazee had her clean up “a mess” at Berreth’s townhome after he killed her, the affidavit says. Frazee specifically asked her to look for a tooth that may have fallen down an air vent. Lee found a tooth inside the apartment that included the full root.
Frederick, Colo. – Four-year-old Bella Watts pleaded for her life, just moments after she watched her father kill her younger sister “CeCe,” according to lawyer Steven Lambert. Lambert, of the Grant & Hoffman Law Firm, represents murder victim Shanann Watts‘ parents Frank and Sandy Rzucek, CBS Denver reports. The law firm shared new details about the murder with Dr. Phil in an exclusive interview.
According to lawyer Thomas Grant, Chris Watts confessed new details to investigators after finding faith in prison. Watts spoke for hours with police on Feb. 18 from a prison in Wisconsin.
“He is claiming that he is remorseful, and he has found God,” Grant told Dr. Phil.
Lawyers confirmed Sandy Rzucek was not given access to the audio recording in advance, but was briefed on the discussion by law enforcement. Rzucek wished to share the information with the public, prior to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation releasing the redacted audio recording on Thursday.The Rzuceks hoped sharing the story would help clear their daughter’s name, after some believed Chris Watts’ original story that she killed the children.
Chris Watts had just strangled his wife Shan’ann and was wrapping her in a sheet to dispose of her body when their daughter Bella walked into the room. “What are you doing with mommy?” the 4-year-old asked her father. As Watts began to wrap her body up in a sheet, Bella walked in and asked about her mother, Lambert said.
“She’s four, what we’ve been told she’s quite smart — was quite smart — and knew something likely was up. And what he said was that, ‘Mommy is sick, we need to take her to the hospital to make her better,'” Lambert said.
A spokeswoman from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation [Susan Medina] tells PEOPLE the office plans to release more information on the case Thursday, adding that the office was taken by surprise by the Dr. Phil interview.
Chris Watts murdered his elder daughter after she witnessed him killing her mother according to an interview that will air Tuesday on The Dr Phil Show. Steven Lambert, the lawyer who is representing the family of Shanann Watts in their wrongful death lawsuit, claims that his clients were informed of just how Watts carried out the brutal murders.
It started with Shanann threatening to keep their children from him after she learned of his affair, and ended with the mom and both daughters dead. Bella reportedly spent her final moments begging her father to spare her life.
‘The night in question Shanann came home. She and Chris had got into a fight. They made up. They were getting along really well,’ Lambert tells Dr Phil in a clip obtained by DailyMail.com. ‘Later on, they got into a fight again. In that fight he essentially confessed to having an affair, that he wanted a divorce. That it was pretty much over between them, and she had said something to the effect of, “well you’re not going to see the kids again.”‘
Lambert then adds: ‘As a consequence of that conversation he strangled her to death.’ The clip ends with Lambert revealing: ‘Bella walked in and asked what are you doing to mommy.’ The interview was conducted at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where Watts was transferred back in December. It is unclear however if he is still there, or if he may have leveraged his interview with authorities to be moved to another facility.
Authorities do not believe that Watts ever gave a factual account of what happened the night of the murders. The release last week of doorbell footage that showed Shanann arriving home on the night she was murdered also suggests that the Weld County District Attorney may have come across new video evidence.
[This last sentence is patently incorrect. Law enforcement had the doorbell footage by as early as November 2018, although curiously the exact date when the footage was viewed is not provided].
I’m at the Teller County courthouse where at 8:30 #PatrickFrazee will be back in court for a motions hearing. I’ll be live tweeting from the courtroom. @KKTV11News
3. Michael Jackson – Child Molester or just plain Whacko?
The controversial Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland premiered on @HBO. It chronicled the relationships the singer had with Wade Robson and James Safechuck. Both men claim that Jackson sexually abused them as children. https://t.co/UwIhdFvRdN
Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in California is back on the market for $31m, a steep cut from the $100m asking price four years ago. The dramatic price cut for the iconic property is partly due to years of droughtin the region that affected the real estate market, Kyle Forsyth, one of the listing agents, told US media.Jackson reportedly paid $19.5m for the property in the 1980s but a real estate investment firm bought it in 2008 for $22.5m after the singer defaulted on a loan.
His ranch was raided in 2003 as part of a child molestation case against him and police at the time seized a large collection of pornography and images of nude children.
Once Trump is impeached, we as a community need to impeach the idiots who defended him daily for over two years. After lying on a daily basis on national and international television, and in spite of his lies and deceits receiving national attention and consistent analysis in the media, Trump’s supporters nevertheless continued to actively defend him. This defense is indefensible.
I would like to see the Trump supporters who are active in true crime put up their hands and admit to enabling a serial liar and deceiver, while simultaneously campaigning against injustice. I’d like to see those supporters do the one thing Trump can’t, and won’t. Admit your mistake and apologize.
Say:
“I made a mistake.”
Will they?
Will you?
I won’t hold my breath.
For the rest, this is the TCRS take of Trump [published in July 2017].
According to these numbers, human beings are about 10 times more poisonous than poisonous snakes. https://t.co/jfFMHAsPeN
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
TCRS MERCH available now – just in time for Christmas!
Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
Read the entire 9-Part TWO FACE series, the most definitive book series covering the Chris Watts Case
Visit the TCRS Archive of 100 Books dealing with all the world’s most high-profile true crime cases.
Join the TCRS Community on Patreon for as little as $1 per month. Multiple daily posts, interesting discussions, amazing audiobooks narrated by the author, ongoing series and powerful, informative weekly podcasts.
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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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