On the night of August 14, CBI agent Greg Zentner was dispatched to Boulder to interview the most crucial witness in the Watts case. The transcript below is an excerpt from a 72 page document spanning 3223 lines of text.
CrimeRocket is the first to reproduce and analyze this critical transcript in-depth. The entire transcript has been broken down into 15 sections.
The fourth part includes:
Nickole’s concerns and suspicions when Watts arrives and immediately ducks into the garage
Watts strange entry into the house
The audio for the above transcript is available here.
The fifth part deals with Nickole’s impressions inside the house/crime scene in more detail.
The media reporting and the Discovery Documents are a little slippery when it comes to specificity about when exactly Kessinger contacted the cops [or who contacted whom first], and the precise time this happened.
It appears the first time Kessinger spoke to law enforcement was on August 15, the same day Watts confessed. It’s possible that Kessinger was contacted by phone first [prior to the discussion below on August 15], or that Kessinger herself contacted the cops by phone.
Although this interview was recorded, and despite many YouTube clips claiming to the be the “first interview” with Kessinger, her meeting with the FBI’s Mark Lehrer was her first one-on-one interview with law enforcement. Below is the audio of that first interview. Give it until 3:28 before the static “settles down”.
On the night of August 14, CBI agent Greg Zentner was dispatched to Boulder to interview the most crucial witness in the Watts case. The transcript below is an excerpt from a 72 page document spanning 3223 lines of text.
CrimeRocket is the first to reproduce and analyze this critical transcript in-depth. The entire transcript has been broken down into 15 sections.
The second part includes:
Confirmation that their flight was supposed to land at 23:25. It arrived instead at 12:45.
Shan’ann’s neck was really bothering her [this may have been why she felt out of sorts].
According to Nickole the doctor’s appointment was at 09:00.
Shan’ann expected get three hours sleep on Monday, from 02:00 until 05:00 [05:00 was the time Ceecee woke up].
Chris Watts first version of how the girls and Shan’ann had left the house was to Nickole, telling her “a friend must have picked them up or something…”
Nickole called Watts three times before he answered at approximately 12:27.
According to Nickole, Deeter had been “caged”, something they usually did when everyone left the house.
The audio for the above transcript is available here.
The third part includes Nickole’s explanation for why she called the cops when she did.
18 minutes before Nick Thayer’s text – sent from the parking lot of the Frederick Police Department – Watts handed over his phone to the FBI. Watch that moment here.
This means Thayer’s text came through when Watts no longer had his handset with him. It was the best advice he ever got, from anyone. Approximately an hour after giving up his phone, and half an hour after Thayer’s text, Watts had already consented to give a polygraph.
Keep an eye on the loft railing in the video clip below [move the slider to approximately 22:48]. Watts doesn’t appear to have Shan’ann’s phone in either of his hands.
Coonrod then enters both of the children’s bedrooms. When he turns Shan’ann’s phone is suddenly right there on the railing.
Who put it there? And why not hand it directly to the police officer?
The first photos are of Shan’ann as a young child. When Bella saw them she recognized herself. During April and May 2017 Shan’ann punts Thrive events in Dallas and Toronto. Chris Watts writes “love letters” of support to Shan’ann on the sachets of Thrive products using a black magic marker.
Sometimes what we don’t know isn’t Rocket Science. It’s obvious. Sometimes it’s so obvious we miss it. There are two big contextual clues [besides the premeditated psychology of this crime] that strongly suggest Watts murdered his children before his wife returned home that night.
The second clue involves a throwaway remark from Nichol Kessinger, the last person Watts spoke to before killing his wife [a much under-appreciated, under-estimated and under-reported fact].
Kessinger told CBI Agent Koback that she heard a television blaring loudly in the background during her 111 minute call with him on Sunday night. Since there was no television in the basement, the television was likely the loft lounge or in the main bedroom [although he could also have been the television in the downstairs lounge].
This was very odd behavior for Watts, particularly because his children were such light sleepers. Even pulling the car out from the garage in the morning was liable to wake them up.
This suggests prior to the 21:00 call with Kessinger, the children were already dead which is also – perhaps – what allowed him to make such a long call without any threat of interruption or distraction from their waking up and needing him for any reason.
There is another even stronger indicator that the children were murdered on the 12th, and it shifts the timeline even earlier. Do you know what it is?
When Goodman calls Chris Watts [several times] at around 02:00 in the morning, Watts is there, and initially it sounds like he’s talking to someone else in the background.
We know at around this time Watts and Kessinger were talking, and possibly communicating on FaceTime during Goodman’s call.
When Watts calls Goodman back it doesn’t sound like he’s been sleeping, or that he’d just woken up. He’s also very matter-of-fact as he runs through the weight, height etc of his three murder victims. He’s sufficiently awake to know these numbers off the top of his head.
Goodman notes the following in his report [Discovery Documents page 67]:
It should be mentioned that once I had made contact with Christopher, he did not ask me if I had been calling because I had any information concerning his missing wife and daughters, or if I was calling because they had been found.
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.
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
TCRS MERCH available now – just in time for Christmas!
Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
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Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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