front door, TRUE CRIME ROCKET SCIENCE

Shan’ann’s father Frank believes when his 34-year-old daughter arrived home that fateful night on August 13, one of the last things she did was latch the front door. It was, according to Frank, something she usually did, and Frank noticed this because he was the one who put it there in the first place.

My initial reaction to the door latch scenario was that Watts put it in place to secure the house [and the crime scene]. In other words, the latch was a secondary measure deliberately used to prevent nosy parkers from accessing the house while he was away [including Nickole Atkinson, who had the front door code].

But what if Watts didn’t even think the about the latch?

Does that change things?

There are a few scenarios to consider here, but I’m only going to be exploring one, and in limited detail.

In one scenario where the latch is left off, when Nickole Atkinson arrives she lets herself in. She enters, hesitates, calls for Shan’ann and the kids, and so does her son. Moving halfway through the lounge, but getting no response [and without going upstairs], she shrugs, exits the home soon after and decides to wait for news from Shan’ann herself.

In this scenario Nickole feels she has done her due diligence and does not summon the cops. She also leaves the home without confirming whether the car is in the garage. She assumes Shan’ann and the kids aren’t there [and she’s correct] but without going through the entire house to make sure [why should she?].

Meanwhile Watts receives an alert indicating that his home security perimeter has been breached by Nickole Atkinson and her son. The Vivint security system tracks miscellaneous moving through the main area of the house. Now [and later to law enforcement] it remains unclear whether Atkinson took his family during this period, whether they were already gone shortly before they arrived, or if they left some unknown time afterwards…

In this scenario, a great barn door of Reasonable Doubt is allowed to open. All because of a little latch that wasn’t left in place.

During the ongoing process of researching the third TWO FACE narrative, I reviewed some of the photos and videos on Shan’ann’s Facebook timeline. It’s all still public. It’s amazing how much we miss even though we have the information. It takes several flybys to see what we’re not seeing, to see the world but through different eyes.

In the seven-minute video, nothing much seems to be going on. It’s just a hailstorm in a Colorado neighborhood, right? In fact it was the second hail storm two-days in a row, and the import of these storms was actually quite significant [I’ll share that with you in a separate post].

I want to encourage you to watch the full seven minutes on your own, make your own observations and take your own notes. That way you might see even more of what we’re not seeing.

In Shan’ann’s seven-minute recording from June 19th [a Tuesday, two hours before a doctor’s appointment] she talks at some length about her third pregnancy, and her concerns that she might have twins. The storm is part of a tornado that struck Frederick, and later the same day, Shan’ann said Chris Watts was hiding in a field and so wouldn’t be attending the ultrasound. So she took Bella instead.

There’s also an ironic moment where Shan’ann acknowledges Deeter, the Watts’ little dachshund, who is clearly fearful because of the storm. She doesn’t comfort the dog, and a few minutes later when she opens the front door she tells him to stay back. He was obviously never allowed to run around on the front lawn.

In the video Shan’ann mentions how seldom it rains in Colorado. She says she wished it rained more, but preferably at night when they were sleeping so it wouldn’t disrupt them. She wills the storm to stop so she can make it to her doctor’s appointment.

Most of the real Easter eggs have nothing to do with what Shan’ann says in the clip:

Chris Watts work truck parked in the road in the front and left side of the house. Now, to be fair, this screengrab is actually from the storm the day before, Monday June 18th, so if you missed it in the clip, that’s why. The hailstorm of June 18th was worse than June 19th, and had meaningful consequences going forward. As mentioned, I’ll deal with those in a separate post. What’s important to note here is where Chris Watts normally parked his car. Not in the driveway, but in the road. What this suggests is on the night of the murders he would have gone outside and reversed the truck from the road to the garage door. The position of the truck also suggests that Chris Watts usually left the house through the front door and not the garage. This means the latching of the door and the exit through the garage on Monday August 13th was unusual. A further question to consider, just as far as it extends to the personality of Watts, is would he walk directly from the front door to the car door, or would he stay off the carefully manicured lawn, and sort of walk in a U-shape along the walkway. Note the car is parked right where the triangular strip of lawn ends, and the car doors open.
Shan’ann usually left her shoes at the front door. In the arrest affidavit Detective Baumhover notes that he saw a pair of women’s shoes near the front door. If the crime scene was staged, altered or covered up, then the way the scene was found isn’t necessarily the way it was when Shan’ann died. The shoes are important, because it paints a picture of Shan’ann arriving home late, and having the time and inclination to casually kick off her shoes once inside the front door. It also suggests she was relaxed. Although it’s possible the shoes had been left there since before she left for her trip, this feels unlikely. It would be useful to get confirmation from Nickole Atkinson what shoes Shan’ann wore when she flew with her from Arizona back to Colorado.
The front door appears to be unlatched. This appears to confirm Nickole’s comment that the front door wasn’t usually latched in her experience, and so when she arrived at the house on that fateful Monday she was surprised that it was. It will be interesting to see if Chris Watts’ fingerprints are found on the front door latch.
“Deeter stay in the house.” In the final minute of the clip, when Shan’ann opens the front door a second time, she tells the dog almost automatically to stay back.One of the questions people are asking is where was Deeter when the crimes were committed? We can probably exclude the front garden.
The clip provides one of the best bird’s-eye-views of the front door’s side windows. This is important because it establishes line-of-sight into the Watts home. Those tall vertical rectangular windows don’t have blinds, which means they’re permanently providing a view inside the house, especially when the lights are on at night. While this tends to suggest the attack on Shan’ann didn’t happen downstairs, there are virtually no houses looking in directly across the road because the Watts home is positioned opposite a t-junction. The houses opposite are oriented sideways to the Watts house. In other words, unless a car is coming down the road, it’s unlikely residents on the road would be able to see inside those vertical windows unless they were standing on the sidewalk at 2 in the morning.
Chris Watts did not attend the ultrasound on June 19th.
Shan’ann joking on Facebook about having 2 or 5 babies in her belly may have been alarming for Chris Watts to hear, whether at the time or subsequently.