Who broke the news of Shan’ann Watts’ disappearance? When did the first post appear on social media? These are the key questions to gauging the veracity of Kessinger’s statement. It’s a question about when: when did the media know versus when does Kessinger says she found out.

Kessinger’s statement to the Denver Post on November 15th appears to provide a timeline. Watts’ mistress provides information in her statement about August 13th in a systematic and seemingly chronological fashion.

  1. Kessinger says Watts texted her [presumably in the morning] to say he’d been busy.
  2. At 15:35 he told Kessinger his family was “gone”. Shan’ann had taken the girls to a play date and not returned, he said. Since he was fairly casual about it, Kessinger said she didn’t make a big deal about it either.
  3. Then, her statements continues, news reporters “showed up” at his house. Although the time isn’t given, we know this was on Tuesday morning, August 14th. by 07:00, when Shan’ann and the kids hadn’t turned up overnight, Detective Braumhover contacted the media. That’s how they ended up finding out about the crime.
  4. She was “very confused”.
  5. Later that night [presumably August 14th, the day of the interviews, Kessinger said she learned of the “full situation”. This makes sense, in terms of her story, because if she’d found out earlier in the day, why did she wait until the next morning to contact the cops?
  6. “When I read the news…I found out he was still married and his wife…pregnant.”

But according to Watts, he started the interviews at 12:31 and by 13:36 he said he had completed them. We don’t know who he told, but it seems a stretch that Kessinger didn’t know her beau was about to take a phalanx of media gathered on his porch into his confidence, especially given she was – at that point – still in an affair with him and would have a vested interest in what he said [or didn’t say] to the curious press.

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When the first news reports appeared online on August 14th, they were timestamped. The Denver Channel article appeared at 11:26, and the Denver Post at 11:41. Both articles used “Pregnant Woman” as the first words in their titles, and both mentioned “Shanann Watts” in the script.

But the social media alerts on Facebook occurred even sooner. These were also explicit about Shan’ann being 15 weeks pregnant.

Although Watts never once mentioned in his Sermon on the Porch that Shan’ann was pregnant, early reports did use that word. If Kessinger was actively searching online, it’s unlikely she only learned Watts’ wife was pregnant once those video interviews Watts gave on his porch appeared either on television or online.

According to the Discovery Documents [page 2128] at 12:08 on August 14, Kessinger spent nearly four hours online, Googling for news on Shan’ann’s disappearance.

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Kessinger also Googled “Shanann Watts” at two minutes past midnight – in the early morning – of August 14th.

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We also know from page 2101 from the Discovery Documents that as early as August 4th, 2018, while Watts was away with his wife and children in North Carolina, his mistress Googled both their Facebook profiles at 14:10.

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So, is Kessinger being entirely accurate when she says she only found out Shan’ann was pregnant when she read the news “later that night” – on August 14th?