Tag: floor plan

In which room is the crime scene at 2825 Saratoga Trail? According to Chris Watts it’s an upstairs room, but which one? Is it a) the kid’s bedroom, b) the loft lounge or c) the parents’ bedroom?

The affidavit places Chris Watts in his bedroom. It’s about as safe a place to be as any, right? This is inferred from him stating he “returned” to his bedroom after discussing a separation with Shan’ann [presumably in the bedroom].

The affidavit implies a single baby monitor, but there were nevertheless two cameras, one for each child, and one for each room, beamed to the same monitor. The children didn’t sleep in the same room.

https://youtu.be/UgX9bBiWFwo

According to the affidavit, Chris Watts goes downstairs “for a moment” [to drink a glass of water, to eat something, whatever he needs to be doing to not to be upstairs], and then returns an undisclosed time later. Does he make it all the way downstairs, or did he make a u-turn on the stairs? He doesn’t say. What he does say is he returns to his bedroom and while there, witnesses a murder taking place in another room on camera, presumably Celeste’s room.

In other words, Chris Watts places himself everywhere but in the rooms where the children are killed.

In his version, Chris Watts firstly places himself in his own bedroom, and secondly downstairs and/or on the stairs when Bella’s murder takes place.  When he returns to his bedroom, that’s when he sees Celeste’s being murdered.

Thirdly, it sounds like Chris Watts confronts Shan’ann in Celeste’s room and kills her there, from his description.

What I find dodgy about this version of events is the going downstairs and coming back the same way. In his description, he places himself in neither-here-nor-there land, while something very specific is happening in another specific location.

There are at least two other crimes where we see a similar running around in circles, a sort of directional much-ado-about-nothing. The one is the Oscar Pistorius case, where Oscar gets up, closes the open balcony door and curtains, advances on the bathroom, then returns to the balcony and opens the doors and curtains. In the Amanda Knox case she also heads around the outside of the house to look into Meredith’s window, then heads out a second time. In both instances she’s racing around only to end up back at Meredith’s door, which she somehow never succeeds in opening [someone else has to do that]. Below is an extract from Waiting to be Heard:

Probably the most absurd version I’ve heard to date is Henri van Breda who basically has himself in the same room as the axe murderer, but he’s basically like an

invisible zombie. He’s there, but he’s not there. And the axe murderer sort of does what he needs to do and doesn’t bother with Henri. Eventually, in a magical moment, the ax

e murderer notices Henri, the two tussle briefly and Henri removes the axe from axe murderer so easily it’s like taking candy from a baby. Then the axe murderer flees, forgetting to step in blood on his way out and leave any traces of himself. Henri someone manages

to step through the crime scene and not leave any footprints in blood too – like the axe murderer.

In Henri’s version, he’s where the axe murders take place when his brother and fa ther are murdered, but he’s somewhere else [standing like statue in his own room] when the women of the house are murdered. Needless to say, Henri was convicted on all charges.

Now, back to the Watts case. When everyone is dead, Chris Watts  returns to his own bedroom and strips the bed sheets, dumping some of the bedding later in the trash.There’s no mention of him trying to perform CPR on anyone.

Does the stripped bed mean the crime happened on the bed? It could. It didn’t in the Oscar Pistorius case. In the Jodi Arias case the bed was also stripped, and bedclothes stuffed into the washing machine, but the crime didn’t take place in the bed or the bedroom.

In the Watts case, we know Detective Baumhover found no blood, and no obvious signs of foul play on the bedding. Chris Watts also chose to bury his wife using a sheet from their bedroom. Presumably this sheet was meant to temporarily cover the corpse and seal in the smells.

If Chris Watts version is to be believed, then all three murders took place upstairs in the children’s bedrooms, and Shan’ann was murdered in Celeste’s room.

But should Chris Watts’ version be believed? If not, what’s the alternative?