In the Lifetime movie posters for CHRIS WATTS CONFESSIONS OF A KILLER, the signature image is this one [below] of Watts driving in his truck, early in the morning, under cover of dark to the well site.
In this depiction his windscreen his wet [I’m not sure it was], and it’s still dark outside [it wasn’t, sunrise on August 13 was at 06:11]. By the time Watts reached the well site the sun had likely been up for 20 minutes].
Other marketing materials of the Lifetime movie are even more ridiculous, like this one featuring Watts holding a gun.
In the movie itself we see something beyond this impression of only Watts sitting in his truck, driving to the well site. We see the children depicted on the rear seat, but nothing much happens. There’s virtually no dialogue, and the scene lasts a few seconds…
The last two books of the series of 7 [as it stands now] were extremely difficult to research and write. Book 7 was probably the most difficult of all. This is because one is relying entirely on the audio as the primary source for the information.
On the one hand, it’s excellent material because what we are listening to is exactly what the three members of law enforcement heard, plus minus some white noise here and there. There’s also a lot to work with – over four hours’ worth.
If you felt frustrated listening to one of the Rzucek lawyers conveying his impressions to Dr. Phil, you weren’t alone. We wanted to know exactly what Watts said, and also how he said it. The tone. The pitch. The context. Most important, the psychology. Is it believable. Does what he’s saying actually make sense, or does it conform to another pattern…?
On the other hand, not having video and sometimes having the audio muffled or cut out was frustrating. The chronology of Agent Tammy Lee’s 29-page CBI Report and the audio aren’t an absolute match, which is interesting. It shows while the law enforcement trio went to the prison with specific questions, they didn’t necessarily ask all of them in a specific order, nor did they get their answers in a prescribed order either. This makes for a chaotic narrative, and it was my job to unravel it and rearrange it.
Transcribing audio is hard work, but worth it, as I think readers have discovered.
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
LEE: I watched that video of you finding out Shan’ann was pregnant. You don’t sound excited. You seem like…kinda in shock-
WATTS: Scared? …It was insanely fast.
LEE: You just didn’t seem happy, like…
WATTS:…Maybe I felt guilty about…talking to Nikki at work…
It’s interesting how Lee and Coder copy Watts’ simplistic and casual way of talking and expressing herself, with Lee using the word “like” and Coder talking in a casual, disassociated way when referring to details of the murders, and Watts matching that with his own disassociated responses.
According to the Second Confession, Shan’ann was killed in bed, and both children killed one-by-one inside Watts’ work truck, on the back seat, while it was parked at CERVI 319.
When Coder says, “And what was Bella doing…” does he sound like he’s buying any of it?
It’s natural to feel emotional hearing these disclosures, but what’s really missing is Watts’ emotion. We should compare his demeanor and tone of voice here to how he “confessed” to his father in the cubicle at Frederick Police Station in the late afternoon of August 15th. That was a false confession too, but when he gave that confession he had his head in his hands, and he sounded tearful as croaked out a few words at a time, with his father rubbing his back.
A few minutes later when his father left the room, and he was asked to explain how he disposed of the children’s bodies [which ought to have been the most traumatic moment of all], Watts was completely nonchalant about it. When asked if he had difficulty pushing them through the hatches, he answered evenly, with no trace of emotion:
“Not really.”
It’s natural for us to feel emotion listening to this and reading it, but we ought to guard against letting emotion or sentiment cloud our perceptions. If Watts’ isn’t getting emotional about killing his family, if he’s not shedding a tear then there’s no remorse. And where there’s no remorse there’s no honesty. When a person shows genuine contrition, they are humble enough to tell the truth, as humiliating as it may be. We don’t see any of that here.
A few hours after skimming through the transcript and listening to a few pieces of the audio I couldn’t help thinking back to Shan’ann’s Thrive videos. The whole thing was a house of cards held to together with words. His confession, and Watts’ seemingly enjoying selling it, feels a lot like a super long Facebook Live promo, except instead of selling powders and shakes to make a living, Watts is selling a formula for a crime to save his soul.
Is anyone buying?
Although most of what he’s saying isn’t true or credible, not all of it is lies. Probably some of the words, feelings, sights and sounds are true, the trick is knowing which is which.
We should also take note of the capacity of this guy to delude himself. Lying to others on a scale and scope like this begins with lying to oneself. And that’s what a Two Face is. It’s someone whose entire life is a lie.
“What is the Matrix? It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth…”
The Greeley Tribune has thus far released one photo – this photo – of Chris Watts. He doesn’t look as pudgy as the last photo, does he? If anything he looks strangely rested.
According to the Tribune another photo was also released, as well as two audio files totalling 5 hours, and a 37 page CBI report. It should be noted CBI Agent Tammy Lee’s original report, including polygraph, was 34 pages long. Any chance Watts was polygraphed on his answers this time round?
This page will be updated throughout the day.
—FIVE HOUR CONFESSION—
I’ve obtained a 5.5hr audio recording, which contains new confessions from convicted family murderer Chris Watts.
FOX31 and Channel 2 has a team in the newsroom reviewing everything that was released. We will be making careful decisions on what content we report on-air and online. While the interview and documents are now public records, we are working to be thoughtful in our coverage and considerate to all those involved with and touched by this case. This story will be updated with additional information throughout the day.
According to Thomas Grant, one of the four lawyers sitting in on the Dr. Phil exclusive, Sandi Rzucek never heard Watts’ account firsthand, but it was relayed to her by law enforcement. She then relayed it to her lawyers.
According to CBS: …lawyers say Shan’ann was the only one who died in the house. Lambert said Watts killed his wife in their bedroom, after she threatened to take his children away because he wanted a divorce. “In that fight he confessed to having an affair,” Lambert told Dr. Phil. After Shanann was strangled, Lambert said Bella Watts walked in the room, to find her father wrapping Shanann’s body in a blanket.
One thing that gives a certain amount of credibility to the idea of Shan’ann being the only one killed in the house is the minimal cadaver traces picked up by the dogs. So from that perspective, there is not necessarily confirmation but some reinforcement for this story. In my view, however, the Trinastich video footage doesn’t indicate that the children weren’t killed in the house, but the opposite. It tends to suggest they were.
Interestingly, according to the lawyers Watts hasn’t been offered any incentive to confess, but has done so because he is remorseful and has found God. Obviously if this statement isn’t true, it casts doubt on whether the remorse or newfound religion is true.
It’s also difficult to believe no incentive was offered. What does Watts have to gain by putting it all on him, when he felt determined to murder his wife, bury her and lie about it especially over the course of those first three days.
Now he wants to protect her and protect her reputation? Out of the goodness of his heart? It may be that he does want to protect someone – Kessinger. And that this version while taking the blame off Shan’ann, also takes it off his mistress. Tomorrow we will have a clearer picture.
There’s a saying by English journalist Rudyard Kipling, author of Jungle Book, that goes:
“If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs…you’ll be a man, my son.”
Right now a lot of people are losing their heads [some are losing their minds too] on the Chris Watts case. After three months of virtual silence in the media, with the exception of the DA breaking its silence to have no comment on Kessinger’s first search for Shan’ann Watts in 2017 [December 10] and HLN’srecent publication of the doorbell footage [February 20], this “Second Confession” in March is the third major story.
It should be noted that our first peek at this story, and that’s all it really is – a glimpse – comes not from the Rzuceks [who are not terribly articulate] but through their lawyer Steven Lambert.
And it should also be noted that this isn’t a firsthand account, it’s either a second-hand account [meaning, Lambert was potentially in the room], or more likely a third or fourth hand account [via law enforcement, via the Rzuceks and then via Lambert].
We should also note that the media coverage at the moment is intended to sell a particular slot on a particular talk show. It plays like the teaser to a movie. In other words, it’s not exactly True Crime Rocket Science, it’s the tabloid shit that swills around cases like this.
The three screengrabs below are taken from a story published by the Daily Mailon March 5th. I’ve referred to the same story on the title page with some additional fact correction. It will be far more useful to deal with the police reports and analyze the audio, and that will likely be done exhaustively in a narrative [the audio is apparently 5 hours long].
But since we have what we have, let’s see what we can work with, and hopefully for those reading this who are also going to watch the show this evening, you guys can come back with a cogent sense of fact versus fiction still intact. Without further ado let’s unpack the coverage thus far. 1. A Fourth-hand Account
Steven Lambert, apparently, will appear on the show, the Rzuceks family lawyer. A lot of what is going on right now is the lawyer trying to win a civil claim for damages on behalf of the victim’s family, or in common language “get as much money as he can for his clients [not forgetting himself]”. I remember very early on the media reporting that they were lodging a civil claim to prevent Watts from making money from the murders, for example through writing a book or selling his story. Well, that means the Rzuceks have virtually the exclusive rights to do that [make money telling and selling the story].
This strategy came to fruition recently as published on Inside Edition on February 19th.
And here’s the story from November 27th, reporting on what happened 8 days earlier. Notice how the lawyer talks about “making millions”.
The public should ask Dr. Phil how much he paid for this story, and evaluate the payment with the merits of what’s being peddled as “true” crime. Whatever your answer, that will give you some idea of the honesty and integrity of all the folks involved.
Now, back to the fourth-hand account. Let’s drill into the import of these claims:
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.
So if I understand English, the basic scenario here is a family argument? The family argument starts with Shan’ann threatening her husband, presumably to get him back after he confessed to her about the affair. But that’s not how it happened [just in the strict terms of this statement]. It started as Watts telling his wife of the affair, and then Shan’ann threatening to keep their children from them. And then [again this is outside the chronology of the way the paragraph is written] Bella begs for her life and then we’re left in suspense. Did he kill her right there?
So to simplify, this is the claim:
Watts confessed [to an affair].
Shan’ann threatened [to fight custody].
Bella begged [for her life].
Essentially these are three conversations or communications that end in a violence, brutal [to use the word in the article] triple murder. And yet no one hears a sound. When Watts tells his wife about the affair, does he whisper and Shan’ann whispers back? When Shan’ann threatens him, does she whisper? When Bella sees her mother dead, dying or murdered, does she beg for her life quietly?
We’ve also got an interesting flipping around of Watts’ original scenario. Remember how he came up stairs and caught Shan’ann strangling/smothering Ceecee? Now it’s Bella coming into the room and catching him doing it.
I don’t want to go into it into too much detail right here, but even the first contention is fucking preposterous. So…Chris Watts told Shan’ann he was having an affair? He just told her? Because that’s the kind of guy he is right? He’s a truth teller. Why would he tell her this at 02:00 or 04:00 in the morning when she’d had little or no sleep? Shan’ann didn’t want to wake him up and talk to him that night, although there was a lot she needed to talk about. And of the two, who was the more confrontational and talkative? So the idea that Watts told his wife the truth, and that’s what set the cat between the pigeons is patently ridiculous. But if you don’t know the people in this story you might think it makes perfect sense. 2. Not one fight, not one argument but two…
So here we already have an adaptation of the first scenario, except it’s a double conversation. Fuck me, we’re running out of time! So was the first fight, making up and getting on really well in the first ten to fifteen minutes after Shan’ann arrived home? And that was also a quiet fight in which the children weren’t roused and the neighbors didn’t hear anything. What was that fight about?
Later on [an hour later, two hours later?] they get into a second fight and this time Watts confesses to the affair. At the same time he says he wants a divorce. Shan’ann tells him [I guess this is the “threatening”], “Well, you’re not going to see the kids again.” Like that, that’s how she says it. In other words, the conflagration that ends in triple murder starts off with Shan’ann calmly saying the word “well”. She says it.
Lambert then emphasizes that it was because of this “conversation” [he uses the word conversation] Watts strangles Shan’ann to death. That’s strange because they’d been texting for weeks about not being compatible and and possibly getting a divorce, and to him and to her friends Shan’ann didn’t mince words. Shan’ann wasn’t once to mince words. It was “fuck him” and “fuck that” but in spite of it, she was fighting to keep the marriage, and why wouldn’t she, she was pregnant. She couldn’t afford to raise the kids by herself, and he couldn’t afford to move out and live on his own either [and he knew it].
There are more sparks between Watts and his wife in their texts than in this silent night climax that leads to violent death. There are more sparks in a meltdown over nuts, than in an affair, divorce and murder. 3. Bella walked in and asked…
We also get a silent re-examination of Bella’s last words. Now she’s not begging, now she simply asks [presumably in a soft voice that can barely be heard]: “What are you doing to Mommy?”
In the dozens upon dozens of videos, there are some where we can hear the children shouting. Bella was distressed about her sister not waking up, and probably missed her mother that night in particular, seeing as though they’d bonded over two weeks. And so in this scenario, she “asks” her father a question?
A real scenario involving a child witnessing the murder of their mother would sound like this:
And where was Rampage when all this silent ruckus was happening? Where was Deeter?
It’s classic that the Rzuceks decided to accept the plea deal out of mercy for Watts, and to spare themselves the discomfort and the spectacle of a trial, and then three months later, here they are celebrating and endorsing and passing on [essentially] this disclosure worth millions to the highest paying media about how their daughter and grand daughters were murdered. This is closure? Financial closure sure.
Ironically that was Watts’ motive too when he wanted to move on with his life.
There is something particularly troubling and psychopathic [not I word I often use] about this easy peasy, loosey goosey spinning of straw [dead bodies] into tabloid gold. If it was genuine justice, a true confession and actual contrition that would be one thing, but it isn’t. And look how many people are in on this ruse. The family. The lawyers. The media. We are all unthinking, unfeeling, unconscious monsters.
Watch this show, by all means. Listen. Maybe we’ll learn something meaningful, but don’t believe everything you hear.
I will do analysis of course but it’s the position of TCRS that both children were killed several hours before Shan’ann’s arrived and that neither were smothered. It’s also the position of TCRS that Shan’ann was murdered in a surprise attack before she went upstairs.
One aspect to consider when you’re hearing this nonsense is the most obvious question of all. If Shan’ann and Bella were murdered simultaneously, or soon after one another, why did no one hear anyone screaming in the dead of night between 01:48 and 04:00?
I’m also interested in the semantics Dr. Phil is going with; specifically in the use of the word “admission” here. Why not confession? An “admission” is a concession, a claim, an expression, but it’s not quite as strong as a confession [a formal statement admitting that one is guilty of a crime].
More analysis to come.
Part of the mission of TCRS – in fact a very big part – is figuring shit out before anyone else does. This isn’t easy, and it’s a risky business because in time one can just as easily be proved wrong. But if we’re as smart and as informed as we believe we are [and there are quite a few true crime gurus here, as well as the odd true crime Rocket Scientist], then we have to be brave, step forward and take on the challenge. So let’s do that.
What we know so far about this “second confession”?
Three of the key investigators and interrogators in this case flew to Wisconsin to [insert the preferred term here] Chris Watts.
This occurred on February 18th, 2018
Chris Watts has taken a plea deal, and since November 19th his status on that hasn’t changed.
All of that is stating the obvious, with the key riddle what word to put inside those brackets.
The less obvious but nevertheless logical aspect to this is the timing of it. I noticed the chronology of the meeting corresponds very closely to when HLN broke with exclusive doorbell footage of Shan’ann Watts’ final moments when she arrived home. Did it have something to do with that? Had online chatter finally gotten under the skin of Weld County? Possible. Not likely.
Digging deeper into the chronology, into the basic legal status of this case, we’re aware that even though the criminal trial has reached the end of the road, another legal process is currently underway. And on February 13th we heard that Chris Watts wasn’t going to oppose the civil trial against him.
Just as he did during the interrogation and the sentencing trial, Watts has caved on his own story and given his full-co-operation [apparently]. He’s behaving like a “good criminal”, if there is such a thing. One could almost say he’s being a “dutiful son” just as he was a dutiful husband and father right up until the murders, or just dutiful, except it doesn’t appear Watts’ father is too happy about where things are going. He’s expressed “confusion” just as Watts’ mother did ahead of the plea deal.
Remember that?
But there’s a strange mismatch here. Watts’ parents don’t seem to know what’s going on, or approve of what’s going on, while at the same time Ronnie is getting in some positive PR saying his son his reading the bible and everything is over and done with. I’m sure they wish it was, but the case isn’t over and done with. Far from it.
Clearly, Watts denying killing his own children [and their grandchildren] makes them look less bad, and their son too. So it’s in their interest to “believe” in his innocence, and not be interested in further developments even though at the sentencing hearing, the opposite was said:
Read more on this at this link.
Note that Watts’ parents don’t say they accept that Watts had committed the murders [plural], the unnamed representative says this for them, on their behalf. There also seems to be seeding of the mob by letting them know an explanation might come out at an appropriate time and manner.
Well, this is the appropriate time, and we’ll get to the appropriate manner in a moment.
Of course immediately after the sentencing hearing, what happened? The Rzuceks through their attorney filed their civil suit. On the same day.
Note how the Denver Post article above was published on November 27th, eight days after the wrongful suit was filed. By delaying the announcement someone is trying to muddy the processes underway behind the scenes. Obviously announcing the suit on November 19th would gain maximum traction and provide the public and the media with something to “look forward to” as it were, going into Christmas. But that’s not what this case wants. It doesn’t want attention. Justice yes. Public interest no.
Read more on the filing of the civil suit at this link.
District Attorney Michael Rourke gave interviews throughout the afternoon and evening of November 19th, following the sentencing, and either pleaded ignorance of the status of the Rzucek family, or he was ignorant.
Given the closeness between the DA’s office and the Rzuceks, it seems difficult to believe the DA’s office wouldn’t know about the civil suit, giving the high profile nature of the case and the mere fact that as prosecutors they’re pretty familiar with legal protocols and processes. Even so Rourke assured the public then that “he will never tell us the truth about why…”
"I don't think he will ever tell us," DA Michael Rourke says on whether Chris Watts will ever tell the truth about why he killed his wife and daughters.
There is also the mismatch between Frankie’s response to the news of the second confession and Watts’ father’s response. Frankie appears emotional as is often the case with Frankie on social media, but there is a sense of righteous indignation in his post – see, I told you Shan’ann was INNOCENT.
Shan’ann’s innocence isn’t in dispute, certainly not here at TCRS. So coming back to the riddle, what happened on February 18th at DCI?
Watts wasn’t interviewed. He wasn’t interrogated either. And since his legal status hasn’t changed since the sentencing, or since the interview, it is possible he provided information on the crimes he was accused of committing. And I think he did so through a deposition.
Although Coder, Lee and Baumhover are present, probably there were a number of lawyers present as well. It’s interesting, if it was a deposition, then the way it’s being communicated in the media is as a confession, which is kinda misleading wouldn’t you say? [The Greeley Tribune describes the information as “revealed in an interview to law enforcement…”]
The deposition process may allow the lawyers involved in the civil trial to conclude the legal process almost as a formality, with most of the hard work happening behind closed doors.
In the Ramsey case, which also never went to trial, there were also numerous depositions of John Ramsey and his wife Patsy.
https://youtu.be/weWVLsmVG98
We also saw OJ Simpson deposed prior to his civil trial, although he went on to testify at his civil trial, with disastrous results.
The intention here appears to be to shutdown media coverage or public interest by having Watts not appear in court, and stirring up enormous public interest all over again. This way, that scenario is mitigated. Clearly a civil case concluded against Watts in this manner is not enough, but we await the details of Watts’ testimony on March 7 with interest nonetheless.
I want to thank one of the commenters here – William – for his contribution to the ideas expressed in this post.
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