According to the affidavit, [Nickole Utoft Atkinson] went to Shan’ann’s residence and discovered her car in the garage with car seats positioned inside of it. [Then] she attempted to enter the front door, but a latch prevented it from opening more than three inches.

Nickole said this way of locking the front door was unusual. It’s not clear whether Nickole had a key to the front door, and that the latch was an additional security measure to make sure she never got in. Had she entered, Chris Watts could theoretically have accused her of tampering or contaminating with the crime scene, and even fingered her as a suspect.

Fullscreen capture 20181010 090911-001

If the door was latched though, it suggests the last person who left the house did so via the garage. It also raises another interesting question. If the latching of the front door was unusual, and to be honest I’m not sure that it was, did Chris Watts place it there, or was it the last thing Shan’ann did when she arrived home? Probably the latch was Chris Watts’ doing, right?

But let’s be clear what we’re talking about. In very early images of the front door, going back to May 2015, there is no latch and no front door camera either.

Fullscreen capture 20181019 232733

But then the latch appears.

Fullscreen capture 20181019 232951

Now let’s focus in…

Fullscreen capture 20181019 233126

That’s better, but this image above was photographed in selfie mode, so the actual image is in reverse.

Let’s see if we can find a better one.

Fullscreen capture 20181019 233323

Does the latch appear to be in place when this video was taken on a Saturday morning?

Where Chris Watts is dressed up as Santa, standing at the open door, we get yet another angle.

Fullscreen capture 20181019 233528

There’s also a keypad on the front door above the lock.

Fullscreen capture 20181019 235712

Now, about the garage keypad, was it inside the house or somewhere on the exterior? If the keypad is on the outside, this could be it:

Fullscreen capture 20181019 233730

The Watts home seems to have plenty of sensors, not only outside, but inside too:

The crucial insight we get from this is that when Chris Watts left his home on the morning of August 13th, it wasn’t through the front door. The front door can only be latched from the inside. That may seem obvious except it effectively rules out the crazy possibility of Chris Watts transporting bodies through the front door.

Since Chris Watts had to back his truck into the driveway, if he was truly loading tools he could theoretically have done so via the front door. If his truck was outside anyway, surely it was a shorter and more direct walk from the bedroom, to the stairway, to the front door and out?

One could argue the tools would likely be in the garage, so that’s why he took the less direct route to his vehicle. But we know he wasn’t loading tools from the depths of the garage on that fateful Monday morning.

Fullscreen capture 20181012 084249