
(Part 2/2) When thirty-four-year-old Shanann Watts missed a doctor’s appointment on August 13, 2018, her friends reported her missing to the Frederick, Colorado Police. When officers searched the home, they found Shanann’s car parked in the garage and her belongings—including her wallet, cell phone, and medication—were found in various spots around the house, but there was no sign of Shanann or the couple’s two children anywhere. The next day, the FBI opened an investigation into the disappearance of Shanann, Bella and Celeste and Chris took to local television to give one of the most infamous and suspicious interviews of all time. He asked anyone with information about their whereabouts to come forward. The very next day however, Chris failed a polygraph exam and eventually confessed to murdering his wife, but he initially denied killing their children.
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Ash
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Elena
Hey weirdos. I'm Elena.
Ash
I'm Ash.
Elena
And this. This is morbid
Ash
again.
Elena
We gotta tell you guys. Oh my God, guys. Before we get into this absolute horror. And I know it's hard because I've done this once before.
Ash
So yesterday we recorded a over two and a half hour episode.
Elena
Almost three hours.
Ash
We spent almost three hours recording. I went to export the file and something happened where it was just a. Not even a silent. You can hear me release the record button so it goes. And then the rest is just complete silence.
Elena
We tried for hours last night to get this thing back. We got a micro SD card reader to plug into the computer because we were trying to recover lost files off of it randomly.
Ash
Drew had a micro SD reader. I called him to see if our computer had like a space and he's like, oh, I have one. I'm on my way.
Elena
I was like, thank goodness.
Ash
What?
Elena
But then that didn't work. It was hours. Last night, after three hours of recording, we had. We had like hours of trying to do this because we were just. This is a. I'm. I'm still so stressed about this because I'm like, this episode is brutal. It's a brutal episode.
Ash
This is an awful case.
Elena
In the first one, I cried four times during the recording. In the first one, that's how brutal this episode is. So be. I don't go into graphic detail about anything but just the whole overarching thing of this because we're obviously going to get into what happened, how this ended. His complete nonchalant demeanor about the whole thing.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
And so it was like energy wise, it was very taxing mentally to go
Ash
through it because it's just so heavy.
Elena
And then to have that for three hours, which like I realize like, you
Ash
know, life could be worse.
Elena
Life could be much worse. Just listen to the episode. But it's so shitty when you do something like that for three hours, which I know other people understand. And then to have it just gone
Ash
and you're just gone like. We installed several different programs on the computer last night.
Elena
Today. Cuz yesterday I said I. After we went through the whole thing. I was like, we gotta walk away. We gotta walk away. Cuz one. I can't do this episode again right now. I don't have it in me.
Ash
No.
Elena
Like, I can't just sit here and go through the motions in this episode. It's too important and it's too heavy. And so we were like, okay, we'll do it tomorrow. Let's just come back tomorrow. So today we come back. And then I was like, let's just try one more thing. Just one more thing. Because I'm just not willing to say it was gone. And we. We ended up coding. We learned code coding. We coded in Terminal.
Ash
We don't even know what the.
Elena
That I didn't even know Terminal was part of a computer.
Ash
She was like, type backslash. Backslash.
Elena
Fff.
Ash
I'm going to wake up in the
Elena
middle of the night and we're putting all these command. And then finally, at the end of everything, we get this recovery file on the desktop. All of a sudden, it populates recovered wave. And we. We held hands.
Ash
We don't even, like, we don't hug. We're not. The only time we ever give each other a hug is if one of us is getting on a plane for
Elena
some reason or like, is upset.
Ash
We're not really upset, obviously. I literally go, hold my hand.
Elena
And we just held hands and we opened it and up popped a flat line again. And I fell to the floor. She did.
Ash
I can. I can confirm she fell to the floor.
Elena
We just tried. So it's one of those things where you're just like. Every time you try something, you're like, this is it. This is the one. Oh, God.
Ash
We are now recording on several different.
Elena
Yeah, this one's not going to.
Ash
I am currently monitoring the waveforms as this is going.
Elena
Because also, this also happened when it was just us recording with no producer, anybody in the room. So that there's that. Yep. So now we're staring at that wav file ourselves across the room. We have the monitor.
Ash
Literally, it's Mother's Day weekend. And Elena's like, we'll just do it on Monday. I'm like, but I don't want you to have to worry all day Sunday
Elena
because that after that last recording, I said, I am so glad to have Chris Watts out of my psyche. Like, I need to walk away from this. I need to get this out of my. It's gonna take me a minute to get away from this. Like when I tell you I cried four times during the recording. I literally cried four times during it. Had to stop.
Ash
And, like, just because it's all so
Elena
heavy, it's too much. And so I was like, I can't wait to just put this out. Put the. The information we need to put out, and then just clear it out of my brain because it's really bothering me.
Ash
I am setting a timer right now for an hour, and we're going to pause an hour into this and just make sure everything sounds good. It's looking good, but I just want to make sure. So we're starting timer right now.
Elena
Yeah, so there's. There's that. So that's. That's where we are.
Ash
All right, so you haven't heard part two yet, listener.
Elena
No, you haven't.
Ash
And just know that it's really fucking heavy. And this guy. I said. I said so many things yesterday that maybe there's a reason why we weren't supposed to.
Elena
Maybe we went to.
Ash
Maybe we went too hard at him.
Elena
I don't think we can go too hard at him. I don't think you can. But maybe. I don't know, maybe we said something that the universe was like, I don't know.
Ash
You don't want that out there.
Elena
Like, maybe you just don't want that kind of vibe out there. I don't know. I. I mean, I.
Ash
Things happen for a reason.
Elena
I maintain that he's a useless bag of shit, but I do, too.
Ash
I'll probably say all the same.
Elena
I probably. I was going to say. I'm probably going to say the same thing. I think maybe I was. You know, Trust me, we're going to get into it. Don't worry. I'm just stressed. Maybe it was just like yesterday I was a little, like, I felt a little nudgy.
Ash
Okay.
Elena
You know, sometimes you just feel a little nudgy.
Ash
There's been a lot happening.
Elena
And maybe that's what it was. It was. I was too nudgy. So maybe I was getting a little too.
Ash
Wasn't the right energy.
Elena
Yeah, maybe that's what it. I'm gonna go with it.
Ash
Today. We had a nice little morning together.
Elena
Yep. We had. We had dance class in the morning. Not us. Not our dance children.
Ash
Elena's kids. Dance class. But yeah. So we had new drinks this morning.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Oh, a blue jay just flew by.
Elena
Oh, that's a sign. I love blue jays.
Ash
And that correlates to my fun fact later that I've already found.
Elena
Oh. Because I already used it.
Ash
Oh, that's a beautiful one.
Elena
Yeah. Oh, we also had a Crow fly by, and that's good luck. So there's.
Ash
Crows are like our sign.
Elena
So there's that. And before I begin this whole thing, I. I went back and I watched, like, a lot of the body cam footage from different angles, different officers. There's a lot out there. So I think, like, honestly, one of the reasons, like the. Obviously the subject matter of this case will just shred you into pieces.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
But I think also what really made this, like, so heavy for me is, like, the subject matter and also the fact that we can see so much of the timeline in real time through body cam and all that.
Ash
And not only so much of the timeline, but so much of the nonchalance.
Elena
That's what it is. It's like what he was doing while this was going on, what he was acting like while this was happening.
Ash
Yup.
Elena
Being able to watch a family annihilator before he gets caught, like, in the aftermath, pretending that his family is missing. Yeah. Is something that I. I mean, I don't know if we have ever been able to see before. This is the first one that I know of.
Ash
I think it's one of very few
Elena
or the one that has the most that we can.
Ash
Footage.
Elena
Yeah. Because again, those discovery documents are just rife and horrifying. They really. I'd like to say right now. I think I said in the last one, like, they're out there. You can see them. And they are. But I'd love to caution you. Yeah. That they do include a lot of detail. There's autopsy reports. It's a lot. And it'll, like, really weigh heavily on you. So, like, I care about you guys and I don't want everybody spiraling into, like, a crisis here because, like, looking at those will fuck you up. They just will. So just do that at your own risk.
Ash
I think you're. Honestly, since I've heard this, I think you told us everything that. That people really need to.
Elena
Yeah. I think I'm giving you the. The facts, but there's more detail in there that I just don't think needs to be gone over because it's not. It's too much. It really is. But also when I was watching body cam footage, because, again, all the different officers have them, so you get the different angles. You get to see the other officer's reactions to his. His answers or him just talking, talking, talking and how he's acting. And it's. You can see how they're all looking at each other like they knew. They knew this guy was nefarious. From the get go, which obviously they're trained to do, but he did himself no favors. Well, I was saying it too, when
Ash
we were talking about it, just like amongst ourselves, these officers probably have partners of their own, kids of their own. And they're looking at this guy and they're like, you're not acting, right?
Elena
No, that's.
Ash
They know how they would react in a situation like that. At least they can kind of guess.
Elena
You know what's funny that you say that is there's actually an instance where a. Where an officer, Officer Perez, I believe it is, tries to empathize with him because he connects it to himself and his own situation that he is in charge of. And what he gets out of it shows him everything he needs to know. Yeah. So while I was looking at the body cam footage of, you know, them going in the house right after she was reported missing, I ran across this account and I don't know if they still do videos like this anymore. They did. They have uploaded a couple of. About this case actually recently. It felt kismet. And so I don't know if they're still doing it like full time or whatever, but I wanted to shout them out because their commentary, they go through the body cam footage like frame by frame and just kind of give their thoughts on it. They point out things. And I thought they were really insightful. I thought their. What they were saying, like their feelings about it matched mine so well that you feel very validated while watching it because you're like, yeah, fuck this guy.
Ash
And they have, they have such a good, like banter together. Yeah.
Elena
I think they're like best friends. Their names are Denty and Shaz. So it's De E N T Y and S H A Z. Again, I don't know if they're doing this full time anymore. So I don't know, like, what. But I recommend you go like, take a peek at what they have to say because I think they were just like really great to listen to about this.
Ash
Oh yeah.
Elena
And they have great accents. I love that. They just seem like people you want to hang around with and like talk through these theories and things with. Yeah, so like shout out to Denti and Chaz. Shout out for being a good channel. And I think they're on like Instagram and YouTube and other places. So let's begin. That one thing I found when I went back, because I went back into the discovery documents and like, you know, I think I went through 1500 of the 1900 documents.
Ash
Insanity.
Elena
And the only ones That I didn't go through were like a giant list of like there were things like, you know, evidence lists and stuff that I just like I had already seen.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
Certain pieces of.
Ash
When there's so many pages like that, some of it is just like.
Elena
Yeah, there's a lot of handwritten notes that you can't really decipher a lot. I did see one handwritten thing that I thought was very interesting. And I looked around, I saw this person has never come forward with what. Who they are, which was kind of like a good thing. I think at the time I was like impressed by it. This psychic medium from Massachusetts, from our town wrote, called the police while they were missing. They had not even been like none of this had come out. They didn't know what happened to them, nothing. And told the police the most detailed version of events that they believed happened. And it matches up almost exactly. Really like she. They say that like, you know, they're gonna be found. I think they said like underwater or in liquid. Which is like how. What did you know that like.
Ash
Yeah, you didn't tell me this yesterday.
Elena
Masses of deaths. They knew the time period. They, I mean they just went. They really like. It was really shocking how accurate it was. And it's in the doc, in the discovery document. It's like a yellow piece of paper. It's the one of the only pieces of paper that is handwritten, that is legible to read in the document, shout
Ash
out to whoever transcribed that note.
Elena
Yeah, it definitely was legible. And it's. But it's a psychic medium from Massachusetts who wanted to remain anonymous.
Ash
Interesting.
Elena
Which I thought was interesting because usually
Ash
that's not always the case.
Elena
To me, if they're bullshit, then they want to slap their name on it. But if they're not, then they're just like, I want to give you this information because this is what I with it, what you will. Because they're not getting anything out of that. They're just trashing it along. I had like, I had a notion. I was like, I wonder if it's this person, but I won't say who it is. Cuz obviously they wanted to.
Ash
I.
Elena
But there's only like, you know, it's Massachusetts. I have my own notion too, but that was interesting. And then another thing I saw, which was horrifying because you know things are going to get really horrifying from here on out. While Shanann was in North Carolina on that five week vacation, she ended up getting very ill. Like very ill. Vomiting, like really sick. And it was when Chris had come to visit. So Chris, after the five weeks, or like during the five weeks at some point at the end, had come to stay with them for a few days. Okay. Then come home. It was when he got there that she got very ill. So that's suspect. And remember, he had flipped a switch. He had flipped a switch. Everyone had said that they were all over each other before he left and that it was those five weeks alone without his wife and children that he suddenly decided that that was the life he wanted. And he flipped. He took the mask off. It didn't slip. It didn't fall down. He took it off and he launched it into the ocean. It was gone. Because he was a totally different human. Right. Totally different man. Everyone around him, everyone around Shannan said they had no idea what happened.
Ash
That has to be, like, just such a scary thing to experience that in and of itself. Before you even get to the horrific end of this case, the end of it. That. Imagine that is your friend. And all of a sudden, this man that you've known, her husband for years and years and years, you know him as one thing. And now he's the complete opposite. While she's newly pregnant.
Elena
Yeah. And has two young kids. Like, I would be terrified. Yeah. And I think they were. And then all of a sudden, so fast.
Ash
Well, and then all of a sudden, now she's. He showed up. Well, or not even. I'm saying, like, while she's in North Carolina.
Elena
Oh, yeah.
Ash
He showed up. And she's violently ill suddenly.
Elena
Yeah. And when she's been fine, everyone thought it was strange. And one of the things that is in there that her family said, like, witnesses said she said, was that while she was sick, usually, because everybody did describe him as this. Usually he was pretty doting and pretty. Like he was caring. Yeah.
Ash
His mom said, like.
Elena
Yeah, that kind of bothered her. Oh, yeah. His mom. It was pissed her off.
Ash
He was so. So doting.
Elena
But even, like, her mother was like, yeah, he was normally, like, very attentive and, like, took care of her like a husband. Like, you know, like a partner. That's how he's always been. And, like, that's how her friends saw him, too. Like, and that's how she saw him. And suddenly she's 15 weeks pregnant and violently ill. And he. And she wrote in a text message that he just existed while she was like, that He. He didn't seem to care. And for someone to be. Because John, like, just using this as a personal example, like, John is a very attentive Husband, Like I can tell you he is. If I'm sick, he's going to take care of me. It's not going to be just go upstairs and go lay down. He's going to take care of me. Yeah.
Ash
He's going to order all the lights. He's going to make sure you're taking the toast.
Elena
He's going to like do all the things. Like he's a great.
Ash
He's going to take the girls out of the house so you can get some quiet. He's going to come back with like something for you to eat.
Elena
Exactly. Like he's that kind of husband.
Ash
Right.
Elena
If I got sick one day and he suddenly just didn't give a. Just existed, that would throw me for such a fucking loop. And.
Ash
And it would actually. If you're pregnant, when you're like that's when your husband or your partner is a million times more.
Elena
Yeah. Attentive. Exactly like that.
Ash
They wouldn't just stop all of a sudden.
Elena
Like if I had gotten violently ill while pregnant, which like I was very lucky that I didn't have like any morning sickness while pregnant. I was not violently ill. All the.
Ash
Hopefully that runs in our family.
Elena
I know when my. I feel very lucky that way because I. I'm sure people listening are like, bitch, like, trust me, especially with twins, I should have probably gotten very sick. But I luckily didn't. But if I did and he just didn't care, I would feel so. And this is what bothers me. Like I would feel so alone.
Ash
Well, we were saying that yesterday, like the thing that so much of this case breaks my heart. But one of the biggest things that breaks my heart is like one, they were arguing at the end of their. Of Shanann and the kids lives.
Elena
She's suspecting that he was cheating.
Ash
She's suspecting that he's cheating. So that's a nightmare. They're fighting all the time. And it's not only a nightmare for her, it's a nightmare for the kids because they're hearing their parents, of course fight all the time when it doesn't really seem like they did fight all that often beforehand.
Elena
No. So it's sudden.
Ash
So it's like this weird change up that everybody's in this like turmoil and
Elena
tension at the end of their life. Like that's because I was saying this earlier when we talked about this yesterday, that I was thinking about it earlier yesterday and I was like, you know, we as humans at the end of someone's life, if we're lucky enough to know that someone's at the end of their life are across the board. We try to make that person comfortable. Comfortable and peaceful and happy. And we try to make those last moments the most peaceful, lovely, just special, just special moments ever. Like, we even do that for dogs. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, if we know that this is it, we try to give them a last, like, great memory. We just do that.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
And these people and every victim of a violent crime and I, I think it just never hit me in on this angle, is like Shanann and Bella and Celeste, what horror the end of their moments were. And it's like that is like really churning my stomach. Like, it's like killing me inside, like, to think about it. And it's always bothered me when we talk about, of course, you know, murder cases. Obviously, like, that is not lost on me. Something about this one and seeing him and how he acted made it even more real and even more like, hitting me in, like, this place. I didn't know I existed.
Ash
Well, and I don't think we've covered very many, like, family annihilator case. Like, like, and not like this when, you know, and specifically, like when the husband kills the entire family. Because in our minds, like, that's the person that protects the family. So for that to just be flipped on its head the way that it is in this case and kicked around in the mud and.
Elena
Well, in these, you know, the other thing. And we'll get to it towards the end, I think that's like really weighing on me with this one, is he had 45 minutes. Can I actually talk?
Ash
That was actually just wild that you said that when you did. I looked down at my phone and we have 45 minutes left on the timer before I check the file. That was wild.
Elena
That is very weird.
Ash
That just like, actually just gave me a chill.
Elena
That's weird because he had 45 minutes in the car with Bella and Celeste
Ash
alive to change his mind while driving them.
Elena
And he even said that he knew he had all that time and he said, I, I don't, like, why didn't I do it?
Ash
Did he say, like, what was going. Did, did he ever say what was going through his mind in those 45 minutes?
Elena
No, not that I read. I honestly don't want to read it too far.
Ash
I just, I'm like, I. How do you not change your mind
Elena
if you can sit in a car for 45 minutes with a 3 and a 4 year old little baby that's yours and do what he did to them after 45 minutes. I think that's the part that's like. Because every murder is horrific, every family annihilation is horrific. We've just never. I've never come across one with a person drill for 45 minutes with their babies in the car alive and still decided to do it. No, I think that's the part that's like really getting me about this case is like. I mean, they fell asleep. Yeah. Like the nothing. One thing, the amount of pictures on my camera roll of my kids asleep that I take creepily because when I go in their room to check on them, they look peaceful. The most angelic and sweet that they will ever look is when they're sleeping. Yeah, like, that just like will melt you if you are a human being. And he's not. No, he's a fucking concrete block of shit like he really is. He's nothing. He's nothing. He has nothing.
Ash
What did you say yesterday? You said he's not even worth the molecules that build his body.
Elena
Yeah, he's not worth them. No, he is not worth the molecules that. That make him up there. He's just not. He's a waste of those.
Ash
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Elena
Do you know that feeling when working out finally clicks? When you finally feel like you get in a routine when you can see the results not just physically, also like emotionally, mentally, all of it? I don't know.
Ash
Tell me about it.
Elena
I'm Gonna tell you about it because finally when it clicks for me is when I get that clear headed feeling I can. I actually look forward to my workouts because I feel like they're kind of like a reset for me.
Ash
Oh, heck yeah.
Elena
Heck yeah. It's honestly, it's worth it. You're. It's worth it. It's an investment in yourself, in every way that it can be. So I'm telling you, one way you can do this is with Peloton Pel Peloton helps you unlock all the expansive, joyful feel somebody gets through movement with the Peloton Cross Training Tread plus powered by Peloton iq. Oo Peloton IQ builds a workout road map that's completely yours so you can stop overthinking and just move, which is the hardest part.
Ash
I love that.
Elena
Peloton IQ provides intelligent strength coaching so you can stay in the moment. You can track every single rep, you can read every movement and guiding form in real time. So there's no second guessing because that's always my thing is I'm like, am I doing this right? And they're like, no you're not. This is how you do it.
Ash
Don't second guess yourself, girl.
Elena
Don't do it. So spin the swivel screen too and feel what's possible. Moving from running to strength seamlessly without breaking any flow because we don't want
Ash
to break that flow state.
Elena
Honestly, the clarity that comes when you stop negotiating with yourself. I'll just do it tomorrow. I'll. I'll start it next week. Maybe if I get in this routine, I'll feel better. Don't talk about it. Just do it.
Ash
Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Elena
And take it from me, because I'm the person who will continue negotiating with myself until I'm 80 years old that I've yet to step on any single exercise equipment. So finally when I stopped and I just got on my peloton, I'm telling you it's an investment. It's a worthwhile investment in yourself. So let yourself run, lift, fail, Try and go explore the new peloton cross training tread plus@1peloton.com period.
Ash
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Elena
doesn't care she's sick.
Ash
He later admitted.
Elena
Yes, you were saying? This is the horrifying thing. He later admitted that he was slipping Shanann Oxys in her drinks and things and in her food to try to encourage a miscarriage.
Ash
And she's over three months pregnant. Yeah, she was 15 weeks pregnant.
Elena
He is trying to poison his pregnant wife without her knowledge to try to induce a miscarriage.
Ash
Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Elena
Which also. Miscarriages are horrendous.
Ash
Of course they are.
Elena
And to try to induce that in your wife and that far along is something I cannot comprehend. I'm like, that was the first step of evil.
Ash
Well, that's.
Elena
That I can't even comprehend miscarriage or not.
Ash
Miscarriages are not only horrific, but incredibly dangerous. Like, she could have died.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And he. Maybe that was the intention.
Elena
Maybe it was.
Ash
But it's like I said this so many times yesterday when we were talking. I don't understand why he didn't just. And this would have been shitty too, but I don't understand why he just didn't get in his car and drive away and start his fucking life with Nicole or whoever the fuck you wanted to just leave them. Obviously that's going to be tough for them, but there's tools and they have a community that surrounds them that they'll be okay.
Elena
That's the thing. Shannan and these girls had enough people around them that loved them deeply and had friends around them that loved them deeply. That they would have had a padding. They would have been. It would have been hard, but it
Ash
wouldn't have been the end of their fucking lives.
Elena
They would have better off for it. Yep. They would have been better off for not having this man in their life at all.
Ash
And how do you not sit there? Like, that's. That's where it's like, I don't. And we said this yesterday. Like, we hate to armchair diagnose, but he's a psychopath.
Elena
I don't even think that's armchair diagnosing. It's so. It's sloppy for that. Like, that's your business.
Ash
Like, I don't understand he's a psychopath. Absolutely. Because I don't understand that not occurring to him.
Elena
No.
Ash
Why can't. Why? Like, abandoning your family is, in your mind, worse than murdering them.
Elena
That's what.
Ash
Like, why didn't you just leave?
Elena
But you know why?
Ash
Because he didn't want his life to be interrupted. He didn't want to have to go away.
Elena
Well, and also, if he leaves, he knows there's a possibility they'll track you down. They'll track you down. You're always going to have this tie to this responsibility, no matter what it. Even if you're not taking that responsibility on, it's still there. But he wanted it wiped out.
Ash
There's a million dads that don't pay child support.
Elena
Well, and also, how's that working out for you?
Ash
Right?
Elena
How's that working out for you?
Ash
This work better.
Elena
How is that working out for you in prison where we now know that you are in fear of your life every minute of every day? Yeah. How's that working out?
Ash
Yep.
Elena
You piece of.
Ash
It's unreal.
Elena
So, yeah, so there's that horrible fact. But I have to go back to some of the body cam, because in the interim, I found more and it's just too insane not to talk about. He is diabolically stupid. Diabolically stupid. Anybody who says this man was smart or this man. Because also, I don't think he's autistic. No. A couple of people were trying to. Not everybody who hyper fixates on something and doesn't show a lot of emotion is autistic. He's a psychopath. Yeah, he's an evil psychopath. And that does not correlate to autism. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Nowhere in anything I found said that he was. So we're not going to just label him autistic.
Ash
No.
Elena
And I. That was just something I saw that I was like, okay, we're not doing that. Yeah, you need.
Ash
We need a lot more evidence of
Elena
a lot more different things. And, you know, he's. It's much easier to call him a psychopath because that is clear as day.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
He is. But he's stupid. If you blew in one of his ears and there was a candle at the other one, you blow the candle out. Just a wind tunnel. So the investigators have him call the bank. And the credit card, like this is right after they get to the house, when they're in the house, when. Right now. The girls, Bella and Celeste and Shannan and unborn baby Nico are missing. That's. So they say, hey, you should call the bank. You should call the credit cards. See if she's made any transactions, anything's come out of her account. And he says. So he does. And you can see the wheels turning in his head, like, do I answer this? You know, truthfully or not? And they're like, hey, like, did they say anything on the phone? And he says, the last one was on August 12th, and it was a taxi. Now, it's pre. It's right now when we're talking to him. August 13th. They have been missing since that morning. August 13th. When he saw August 12th the day prior, she was in Arizona and the girls were in bed.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
So that's not relevant. And I'm not saying, like, he didn't. He said it like that. But then the way he says it is. He says it almost like, there it is. She got in a taxi, everybody. And it's like, do you not remember what day it is?
Ash
Because. Right.
Elena
And I don't think he did.
Ash
You saw her at 4am this morning
Elena
because she got home at 1:48am on August 13th today.
Ash
Right.
Elena
And also, like, saw her this morning.
Ash
Her suitcases by the door. Her shoes are by the door.
Elena
She's been.
Ash
Her car's in the garage.
Elena
Here's the thing. I think he forgot what day it was.100. I also think, because he knew he was gonna do this kind of This. I don't know if he knew today was the day he was gonna. Actually, I do think he thought that through, because as we'll get, there was something happening that day that I think he wanted to make sure it didn't go through quite yet. Oh, oh, oh. And you remember it now. I shocked you yesterday with it.
Ash
I know.
Elena
So sad, though. We can't. That I can't.
Ash
There were so many shocking revelations yesterday by.
Elena
But now you know them. Yeah. They'll still just be. Horrifying. Yeah, I was gonna say. But I do think one of the main things that needs to be pointed out again and again is that Shanann's friends, like Nicole and Cassandra and Nate and all the people around her that made a big stink about this to make sure that he. That he got home, that the police were called, that this didn't go throughout the day, that they weren't waiting around to see if she showed up. All those people were the reason that he didn't get to formulate a better cover story, that he didn't get to cover up any of his tracks.
Ash
No, because they were blatantly out there
Elena
and that everyone was immediately suspicious of them. They are the heroes in this story. They Got. They came through for their friend. And everybody needs friends like these people. Yes. Like Nicole Atkinson. Everybody needs one.
Ash
I'm like, 100,000%.
Elena
And it's just. It. He's just. When you. And we're going to go through it, what he did during this day, that none of it makes sense. No, none of it makes sense. So they ask about the charge, and he's like, oh, yeah, August 12th, she got in a taxi. And they're like, does it say where or what time or like, what the taxi service was? Because they're still thinking, like, you know, at this point, maybe they don't know that he's claiming that she was home this morning. Yeah. So you. You would answer in this instance, because you know that that was yesterday. Yeah. You would probably answer, well, she was in Arizona, so that might have been to the airport or something. It's not from today. But he doesn't do that. He says, no, it just says taxi.
Ash
Like, oh.
Elena
Like, he says it. Like, I. I think we've got a lead here, fellas. And even the officer is like, well, that was yesterday. Yeah. So, like, let's move on. Like, he tried to use that. And you see him try to do this a couple of times. Try. Like, he takes something that someone says and he's like, oh, yeah, maybe that was it. And it's like, you're a dumbass because everyone is giving you little tethers to grab because they want to see how you react.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
It is smarter than you. Every single person around you is smarter than you.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
He also said there was a 27 charge at Target on August 13th.
Ash
I said, that's an act of self restraint.
Elena
It really is.27. But obviously by August 13th, we now know that Shannan was no longer alive.
Ash
Was it like a pending charge?
Elena
So it probably just took a bit to show up. But either way, he is so pleased to be able to say this because he makes it seem like, well, she must be out at Target. Like, she ran away with the kids and she bought something at Target.
Ash
It's like, yeah, her. She got her go bag and for 27.
Elena
Yeah. And didn't bring any of their medication. Yeah. With them. Or her purse, their car seats, anything she wore, any of their clothing. Nothing like that. Like her cell phone. Yeah. Her wedding ring. But the investigator calls him out. The investigator's like, yeah, those charges take a couple of days to show up. That probably wasn't from today.
Ash
Said, I'm a frequent flyer.
Elena
You can really see these investigators just going, good try. Yeah. Good try. Now they ask this. This one drives me crazy. And I got John to validate this one for me. He's on my side. I'm sure not everyone's going to feel the same way, but this personally irked me. The investigators ask if the girls had a favorite pair of shoes they like to wear a lot. Yeah. Said just a pair that they loved. Like a go pair of shoes. And he says no.
Ash
What the actual.
Elena
Lies. Lies.
Ash
I know all of those girls downstairs. I know all of their favorite shoes.
Elena
Yeah. Immediately you have two little girls. I know someone is inevitably going to tell me I'm wrong because their kid doesn't have a pair of favorite pair of shoes. And that's fine.
Ash
You're in the minority.
Elena
I think the likelihood of two gals with a fashion loving mama, which was clearly what Shannan was.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
Not having a go to favorite pair of shoes.
Ash
Incorrect.
Elena
That's crazy work to me.
Ash
Incorrect.
Elena
That alone. And it's the way he answers. I will say it a million times and I don't care. My body would not be able to form a smile during my. My family being missing. It just wouldn't. It would forget how to do it. I would just be in a state of absolute terror. I would be like Nicole Atkinson is. Yeah.
Ash
Which when she's seen on the body cam footage.
Elena
If you watch that body cam footage, you can see the moment that she sees that her medication is still there, that shenanigans clicks for her. And you can see that that is a real. That is someone who loves her. That's someone that is missing right now.
Ash
She grabs her heart and she starts kind of just like looking around like, oh, fuck, this is really happening.
Elena
She has the reaction of somebody who loves somebody deeply loved those girls, loved Shanann and now knows something is bad. And you can see it all over her face. And it shook me. Like watching human reaction and watching that one little clip, you feel like you shouldn't see it. I know because it's such, like a real moment. It's so raw of grief and. And it just. It sticks with me. I can see it in my brain. But what happens is when they ask about the shoes, he goes, no. And smiles like this big cheese smile. Like, no. What do you mean? I don't know about my kids. What do you mean? Like. And then he. So he brings them over to a closet and he's like, no. I just tell them to go get their shoes. And I'm like, okay. But they probably usually get the same shoes. That's how Kids work. But he stands in front of the closet and he goes, bellas are on this side. Celeste or in CC's are on this side. And just so sitting there looking down at these little baby girl shoes all over the floor, and there is nothing. There's nothing.
Ash
And we all know what he did to those. We all know what he did to have nothing.
Elena
Nothing.
Ash
Looking at, like, the remnants of their life.
Elena
Nothing.
Ash
How I would be sobbing, you're not a dad.
Elena
And especially even these people, he's trying to make them think that they're just missing. Even if they're just missing. I'm breaking down at the sight of their little shoes. Yeah, I'm breaking down.
Ash
You wouldn't even be able to, like, direct them to the closet. Like.
Elena
Like, I would just.
Ash
You wouldn't be able to walk over with them and look. You just feel like they're in the front closet.
Elena
I'd be like, I can't look. I'm gonna lose my mind. Like, I'm gonna lose my mind. Like, I'd be holding shoes. I'd be like. I'd be a mess. Like, a mess. He doesn't even have a slight. And it's these kind of things that when you watch this body cam footage will fly you up. It's just like. It's not graphic. It's not gruesome. It's not that it's him. It'll you up the psycho. Like, the psychologically damaging part of this is watching him, not. It's how vacant he is. It really is. And when he is lying or when he's getting asked something that's difficult for him to answer, he has a Tell a couple. Where he has a couple. He'll close his eyes, he'll blink a lot. He does this thing with his jaw where he, like, kind of does, like, an underbite. Rigid thing. Yeah. And he does it a lot. He does it a lot during the surveillance video, like, showing when Nate is there. Yep. He does it during the interview, and he does it here when he's trying. I think it's when he's trying to, like, calm his nervous system.
Ash
He's doing it right now, actually.
Elena
Yeah. But, yeah, I hope he is. Yeah. I hope he's in a permanent state of her.
Ash
Lockjaw.
Elena
Yeah, just straight up lockjaw. But it's very interesting. He does it here. They walk into the bedroom, the main bedroom, and they see that he has stripped the bed entirely. Now, remember, I just want everyone to remember at this point, he had not been home. He Left for work at what he said was 5:15, 5:30 in the morning, leaving his wife in bed. In the bed sheets and everything. And then he went to work the first time he got home. Why is the bed stripped? And where is everything?
Ash
And he says it's because she had airport on her.
Elena
Yeah. He said, well, she had gotten home last night straight from the airport, so she would have wanted to do that at 4 in the morning.
Ash
Well, he's trying to say, like, she would have washed them, but in that case, they would have found them in the wash. Everybody say it together in the wash machine.
Elena
Yeah. Instead they found them in the trash.
Ash
And they didn't even find all of them.
Elena
Nope. Find them.
Ash
They found the fitted sheet, Right.
Elena
And it was missing the top sheet. Yeah. And we will find out why later.
Ash
And the girls beds were missing their sheets too, right?
Elena
Yeah, the girls beds were missing certain sheets, and then later they end up being made.
Ash
Oh, really?
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Oh, I didn't know that.
Elena
Yeah, he. He switches that all up. What? Yeah. So he tells them that they had a discussion at 4am when he woke up. So he woke up. He woke her up at 4am after she got home at 1:48am so she had probably slept for less than two hours. Yeah. And he wakes her up at 4am to talk about separating and selling the house. Awesome. And he said. And when they were like, why did. Why'd you choose 4am? Like, what the day? So she got home from a trip less than two hours earlier and was asleep, and you woke her up to tell her, like, hey, you, Essentially. And they were like. And he was like, well, I didn't want to, like, text her or like, you know, that's. Or do it. Why would you have to text her? You live with her, Right? Just wait until you get home from work when you can actually, like, wait until you put the girls to sleep and then have a discussion.
Ash
He cannot put one and one together.
Elena
He is the dumbest I've ever heard. And. And again, kudos. Like, thank you to Shannan's friends for making it so he has to think on his feet. Because one thing Chris stupid ass Watts can't do is think on his goddamn feet. That's one thing that man is. I pick things up and I put them down, and that's as far as he can think.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
He's a true idiot. And it also has nothing to do with the fact that he likes cars or that he's an automotive technician or whatever he was. Because, guys, Drew also works with cars. And we never said that they were stupid.
Ash
No, Nobody ever said that.
Elena
Yeah, if I'm saying somebody is stupid, I mean, the murderer is stupid. Not the job he does. Not the. The industry as a whole.
Ash
I literally just said cars.
Elena
And that is.
Ash
And you guys took that.
Elena
And we're into it, and only a couple people did. But I was like, only a couple. Please just know that we are never personally attacking you when we're talking about a family annihilation.
Ash
No, it's not about you.
Elena
Yeah, don't make a fight. Family annihilation about you or about cars or anything like that.
Ash
About cars.
Elena
It's about this dumbass piece of shit. And what it is about is Shannan unborn baby Nico, Celeste and Bella. That's who it's about, period. But I just had to put that out there that we're not saying. If he works with cars, you're stupid. He is stupid by nature. That. Should he be born stupid. That's what he was tm. So, yeah. So he's an idiot. So they're like. They're like, that's crazy that you did that right before work. But they're like, sure. All right. Okay. People do stupid things, I guess, and they ask about. They're like, oh, you know what? We saw a bed in the basement.
Ash
What's that about?
Elena
And they said, this is kind of fitting. They said that, you know, you're saying that you were talking about separating. Like, I'm assuming she kicked you out into the basement a couple of times and you had to sleep there. And he's like, yeah, we had some marital problems, which, like, they did.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
This wasn't. When I say the. The switch was flipped before she went to North Carolina, they had some marital problems. It just wasn't, like, exploding. Yeah. And it was more, like financial stuff, and it was more, you know, things with his family and, like, that kind of, like, in the end, they always came together, and they always kind of, like, worked through it. The. The switch was flipped when it was like, he just stopped caring about her.
Ash
And he just, like, wouldn't entertain those
Elena
conversations, wouldn't go near her.
Ash
He wasn't even really arguing anymore.
Elena
So that there was some marital problems. But he said sometimes he would sleep down there. And they ask when the last time was he slept down there. Now he says, I sleep down there when we have marital problems. When I can't sleep in my bed with her. Yep. So she has to be in the house when we're talking about that. They say, when's the last Time you had to sleep down there. And he goes, probably two nights ago. Three nights ago.
Ash
Oh, why would you sleep down there when it was just you?
Elena
She was in Arizona during that time.
Ash
He also says, and that this is a whole other part of it. One, she's in Arizona. Two, he's always saying in this body cam footage that he's got to be upstairs when the kids are in bed because that's where the monitor is.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
So the kids are in bed on the third floor and you're in the basement.
Elena
No.
Ash
What?
Elena
Because also you didn't even hear this part. He catches himself.
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
He knows that that's not true. And he also knows that makes no sense.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
Because he just said he had sleeps down there when he's in trouble with his wife who is in bed.
Ash
You just slept there for fun.
Elena
Catches himself, he says, two nights ago, Three nights ago. Well, when she was here. So probably Thursday or Friday. So he catches himself mid lie realizes oops, I just up here. And then he's like, well, it was when she was here obviously, because I did just say that like. And you can see one of the officers, I think it's officer. He covers his mouth and you can tell he's looking at the other officers like this guy is not only a monster, clearly he's a fucking idiot.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
Like they're all like what? How does he.
Ash
Well, they're all looking at each other like, oh wow, we're standing in a family annihilator's house.
Elena
And I do wonder like when you watch it because you again, I'm gonna read some of the reports too where they put their own opinions and what they were feeling in there and saying like I thought it was strange that he acted this way. Like it does make you wonder while the officers are standing there like next to a play kitchen. Yeah. In the living room. Like a little pink play kitchen. If they're just looking at this guy and being like, oh, he might have killed his little girls. Yeah. And we're just sitting here having to listen to his dumb ass come up with every lie under the sun.
Ash
And you have to be like somewhat cordial to get the information out of him. To get like not even the correct information but to catch him in these fuck ups.
Elena
And you have to find proof. So it's like you can't even accuse like outright.
Ash
You have, you have to play a part for a while.
Elena
Yeah. It's like them that, that in this particular case I'm like, damn. But again you can, you can see it on their faces, especially because the next thing they say, which I thought was really cool, like a good idea, they were like, hey, okay, like, your marital problems are your business, like, whatever. And they're like, so maybe she just doesn't want to talk to you. Like, maybe she did leave and she's mad at you and she doesn't want to talk to you. So she, maybe her friends are covering for her and saying that, you know, she's not with them because she just doesn't like telling you your face. So they're like, so why don't you call your friends and tell them if she is with you, I don't need to know. But just please have her call the police so that we can know that she's okay. She does not have to talk to me. She can talk to the police, right? And he's like, got it. And then he's like, have you called all. All of her friends? You've called everyone you know? And he's like, yeah, I've exhausted all the friends I know. And then he goes, but Nicole, her friend, like, her friend, Nicole Atkinson, she probably knows more because she's a woman. What?
Ash
You said this the other.
Elena
And I said what? You know, women literally says Nicole, because, like, woman, like, we just know more people. We. I'm. I'm sorry. We have friends. Like, I, I don't keep track of our community, you know, us women always friend. Friends. Like, I don't. What does that mean? Always knowing people's names? Like, yeah, maybe. What is that? Like, I was like, you.
Ash
You can't.
Elena
What is that? And he says it like, you know, like, women, like, I don't know if that was. That was what you thought it was funny. Probably not in the police officers are even like, like, what was that? Like, are you trying to be like, what was that? Foreign.
Ash
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Elena
So they're like, hey. He's like, there is somebody else I can call. So he call. He makes a call to someone. This shook me to my core, because he says, now, if you are calling someone in this instance, you would say, hey. I'd be like, hey, it's Elena.
Ash
Like, this is urgent.
Elena
This is real. Like, I'm. I just need to tell you this. Like, John and the kids are missing. Have you seen them today? Yeah, I just need to know. Like, that would be. It would be like, hey, this is who I am. This is what's going on. Okay. Call me.
Ash
Right?
Elena
No. He calls and says, hey, it's Chris Watts. Not too bad. Hey, have you seen Shannan today?
Ash
Not too bad.
Elena
I didn't add the not too bad in there. That's exactly how he says it. It's on.
Ash
It's recorded.
Elena
Hey, it's Chris Watts, the person, obviously, that says, hey, Chris, how you doing? Not too bad, not too bad, Too bad, not too bad. Your whole family is missing. Your entire family is missing.
Ash
Not too bad.
Elena
Your entire family is missing. And there is no evidence that they left of their own volition.
Ash
I would love to see him on a good day.
Elena
I'm like, what did you. No human being acts like this. No, if they are innocent or even. Or if they're trying to act innocent.
Ash
Because that's the other thing. You're trying to act innocent. You're standing in your house full of cops, and they're watching you take this phone call and respond to, how are you? With, not too bad, not too bad.
Elena
And then he's like, all right, okay,
Ash
talk to you later.
Elena
Talk to you later.
Ash
And he's smiling. If you pause it, he smiles.
Elena
It is unbelievable. And it's in front of all these officers who are looking at each other like, did he just say not too bad?
Ash
Like, what the.
Elena
Like, what the is that? It's unbelievable. So even. So, again, this is when two. Like, Nicole points out, because she's a good friend, she's like, wait, she has medication. She takes all the time. And her purse is sitting on the counter where it shouldn't be if she left of her own volition. So she's like, let me check in her purse. So she checks in her purse, and she's like. You can see there's like this glimmer of hope. No, there's glimmer of hope in her face where she's like, maybe it's not in there. Maybe it's. If it's not in there, that means maybe she grabbed it, right? And she's looking, and then you can see it drop. And she just says, it's in there. And she's. And you can tell, like, she's like. And that's when she, like, grabs her heart. She's pacing around. Like, the other officers go in another room, and they're looking through things, and they're like, hey. Like, so these two little girls were on, like, nebulizers, and they had asthma and had, like, inhalers, and all of it is here. And these are things they would need with them. Like, you can see them all sitting there going, how is this guy trying to act like he too bad? And that's how, you know, like, he thought he was gonna get home from work that day. He was gonna be able to wipe that place clean. He thought he was gonna get rid of all the medicine. He was gonna get rid of her purse, maybe stash her cell phone somewhere. He was gonna get rid of anything that would have indicated that they couldn't have left on their own. And then his story was going to be that they abandoned him and that he could never find them and he could never see his girls again. That was going to be his story. And her friends said, off. I don't think so. Because not only that, her friends all say. Everyone around her says. And her family says they loved Chris. They did not. This wasn't one of those situations that were, like, we just tolerated Chris because, like.
Ash
Because he was always wearing his mask.
Elena
Mask. They loved him. He had the mask on the whole time. Yeah, but this is one of those unique situations where everyone loved him. And then when that mask was tossed
Ash
away, they said, well, I don't know who the.
Elena
They all said, we. That's too big to deny. Like, none of them could ignore it. So all of them said, I never would have thought this. But, yeah, now I do think he did it. Like, that's how bad he was and how he just let the evil just completely take over. When he did this, when he decided he was going to do this, he just let it leech out, and nobody could deny it, Even people who had loved him like a son. Yep. It's like his. It was. Honestly, his family was the only ones that it fooled. Yeah. But even while talking to officers the next day, because, remember when we were talking about the porch interview. The infamous porch interview that cooked his ass. He said the only memory he could come up with about what he misses about his children.
Ash
Finish your dinner or you don't get a treat.
Elena
Yelling at them about not eating dinner and not getting a dessert and shoving
Ash
them on their own couch to watch their own show.
Elena
Not. I miss snuggling them. I want to grab them and hold them and smell them with them, hear their giggles or lay with them when they sleep. I want to.
Ash
Running around them to wake me up in the morning.
Elena
Like, nothing like that. Just. I want to make. I want to tell. I want to disappoint them and tell them they can't have dessert today. He had a. He had another one. Oh, he said he just misses when they would throw chicken nuggets at him.
Ash
That took me out. That absolutely fried me.
Elena
Like, that's how you know. Like, he hated this. You have to try to human better in this kind of.
Ash
Because he's not safe. For some reason, these are the only memories that he can conjure because all he can think right now is, oh, man, I'm free of all that.
Elena
I don't have to do anything.
Ash
I don't have to tell them to eat their dinner anymore. I don't have to sit there and watch bubble guppies while they're on their couch and I can't watch my show. And I don't have to sit there and get pelleted with chicken nuggets even though it's hilarious.
Elena
Exactly. Exactly. He doesn't want. There's no.
Ash
He can't conjure an actual memory of him caring about them and having a sweet interaction with them because he just doesn't care. Because he's so happy to be free of them, which is so.
Elena
I'm glad he didn't know how to human in this scenario because he sunk his own shit. Because, like, whatever Google search he did to learn how to act like a grieving father, it failed him so spectacularly. I'm so glad it did.
Ash
He was too busy looking up lyrics.
Elena
He couldn't. He could not human in this moment. And he says. And then they're like, hey, what did the girls usually wear to bed? Like, what? Oh, my God. Now he's been a father of girls for four years.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
Fathers of girls out there or. Or just little kids who like to wear nightgowns. You know what a nightgown is? Correct. Because you have kids that wear nightgowns. Even people who don't have kids. I Think could say they know what a nightgown is. They're like, hey, does, like, one of the officers is like, do you know? Do they wear nightgowns? Do they wear, like, PJs usually? Like, what do they love to wear? What were they wearing last night? And he was like, they were like, they have, like, dresses that they go to sleep in.
Ash
A nightgown.
Elena
That's literally what a nightgown. It says it in the name. Night gown. That's what that is. Anonymous address that you sleep in at night. He's so stupid.
Ash
And, you know, like, Shannan was like, oh, can you grab me that nightgown? Or, like, hey, can you toss their knife down in the laundry?
Elena
Like, you know what it is? You know what it is? And then he's like, no, I don't remember what they went to bed in last night. And even one of the officers is like, you put them to bed, though. You said because Shanann wasn't home, you had to get them in the PJs
Ash
and you don't recall.
Elena
I always remember what the fuck they're wearing.
Ash
Yeah, like, you have three to keep track of.
Elena
Like, that you put them in the. In the pajamas. You remember what pajamas they're gonna be.
Ash
Not only that you put them in the pajamas. You also check on them throughout the night. You're sitting there later on, he's sitting there saying, each. He's upstairs because he's checking in on the monitor. I always check on the kids every so many pair. Maybe not 10 years old, but so many parents. I know your kids are at my house. I go in there three times through the night.
Elena
Exactly.
Ash
If I wake up, I'm like, I should go check.
Elena
I should just go check on them.
Ash
And I know what they're wearing.
Elena
You know what they're wearing. Like, you put them in it. Like, it's like, come on. So that's stupid. He just doesn't want to give them anything. And when canine officers come, this is what the report says. Now, the K9 officer came in and says, while speaking with Chris about appropriate items such as shoes and clothing, the K9 officer stated the importance of the items not being touched by anyone else. Each time Deputy Koch asks Chris about specific items, he mentioned that he had in some way touched them. And you can see it in the video. She's like, okay, like, we're gonna need this so we can have, like, their scent on it. And he's like, well, I did touch that. Well, I did throw that in the laundry. Well, I Did rub my body all over that. Well, I did spit on that. Well, I did clutch that. Well, I did walk around with that. You touched every item in this house. Why would you do that after she
Ash
specifically told you not to?
Elena
And it's just physically not possible. You didn't touch everything that they own in the last. Because they're like in the last like however many hours. Like, you know, and he's like, yeah, last night I just touched the guy.
Ash
This house.
Elena
I literally touched everything in this house.
Ash
Tasmanian devil.
Elena
Because he doesn't want them to think that he can get it clear, they can get a clear scent. And he wants them to know my scent will be on everything. And not because I did it, but because I just touch things all the time.
Ash
Just like your scent is probably going to be on there anyway. Motherfucker. You live in the house.
Elena
Yeah. You're their dad. Hello. And husband. But one of the most egregious, and this is what I was mentioning earlier, was when Officer Perez tries to like empathize with him. Yeah. He's like, hey man, like I have a 7 year old nephew and I've. And I took him in and he literally says I'd be going batshit crazy if he was missing. And he says, I can't imagine two daughters. The entire time he is saying this, Chris doesn't look on at him. He's texting on his phone, which he is always texting on his phone. He's texting and not even paying attention. Doesn't say anything, Barely answers him. In the report that he wrote. He wrote Officer Perez commented to Chris that he can't imagine what he is going through while speaking with Chris. He showed no emotion and he did not seem to respond appropriately to the situation. Chris did not ask any questions or offer to help at any time. Chris's facial expressions rarely changed. However, when they did, he seemed to smile slash smirk inappropriately, displaying a lack of empathy, specifically when speaking about his children.
Ash
Why are you smiling?
Elena
His voice remained low and even toned. His non verbal cues were very apparent. Chris had a very erect and almost tense posture and his arms crossed. A majority of the time. Chris lacked eye contact and appeared to be nervous. Looking around constantly. That's them just looking at him. He.
Ash
Well, that's the other thing. Like with them saying he doesn't have any appropriate emotions. He doesn't cry once.
Elena
No.
Ash
In any interview with the media, in any body cam footage, interrogation, looking at
Elena
the security footage, looking at his baby girls, little outfits in their closets, walking into Bella's Purple room with butterflies all over it. Nothing.
Ash
What? Nothing is wrong with you.
Elena
Literally nothing.
Ash
How do you not have a single human emotion?
Elena
And I need you guys to see. And I. Maybe we'll be able to post it. The. The body cam footage of Officer Perez trying to engage with him. He barely looks at him. Barely looks at him. And when he says, like, I'm so sorry, like, I don't know how you feel. He never says, like, thank you, or like, I appreciate it. And I think it was like, our friends that I mentioned there before. Denti and Shaz. Yes, they mentioned. And I was thinking it too, at the end of all this, you see the. The canine unit leave, and they say, like, you know, like, if you need anything, give us a call. We're gonna work on this. We'll let you know. Blah, blah. Not once does he say, I appreciate it. Thank you. He's just like, yep.
Ash
Because he just wants everybody can live his life now.
Elena
These people are supposed to be helping you find your missing family. You'd be like, I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much.
Ash
Thank you. I'll be here.
Elena
I'll be right on. Like, if you need anything from me, I'm right here. Here. Like, you know where to find me. Like, one of them's like, do you have my number? And he's like, I don't know. And he's like, do you want it? Like, do you want. Do you want to have a connection? I can't imagine trying to find your kids.
Ash
I can't imagine being an investigator on the other end.
Elena
It must have been so infuriated.
Ash
It also just must have been the. Like, I don't know how to respond to people when they act strangely. Like, Like, I've never come across anybody quite like this, but just in a way where I'm like, what? Like, why are they having an appropriate respect response?
Elena
But I think that's what happened. I think. I think everyone was thrown. You can tell everyone's like, like, very put on, not even knowing how to react to him.
Ash
That's how I would feel.
Elena
An Officer Coonrod who has, like, a lot of. A lot of the body cam footages from him, his report is very telling. One part of it says, Christopher gave us consent to check Shannan's phone. It had an alert which stated the garage door was opened at 1242 hours. Detective Bombhover took the phone to the Frederick Police Department. Christopher showed me his phone, which shows alarm times when the doors are open. It sent an alarm at about the same Time stating he had left the open. Open the garage door. Christopher told me that at least three times, which felt unusual. Shannan's phone showed an alert at 1242 hours for the garage door, which is the only way someone could leave the residence. Christopher's demeanor was nonchalant. He asked one time if he should go look for his family. I advised him her car was at the residence and I needed him there for now. For now. And that was right when he got there? Yeah. He did not ask again about looking and he did not seem overly concerned. Nicole and Nathaniel said they both felt Christopher was extremely nervous. Nathaniel said he had heard Christopher numerous times in the past, yelling loudly at Shannan. Now, another friend, described as one of Shannon's best friends, spoke with investigators and said she lived with them at one point just for a short period of time, and she helped out with the kids, like that, that stuff. Her name was Christina. Chris, it says. Christina said their marriage began to change when Shanann was in North Carolina. Chris began to get aggravated with the kids around him all of a sudden, really. She said Chris used to put Shannan and the kids first. Chris began to not touch or ask Shannan about the baby. Christina said that they were when they were separated, for the five weeks she was in North Carolina, Chris came back to Shannan a different man. So, see, everyone's like, what the. Christina said Shanann had a routine and was a bit ocd. She advised everything was in order, even what she wore as clothes. Christina described Shanann as very protective of the kids. Christina did believe they struggled a bit financially, but Shanann wanted the marriage to work out, but said she couldn't fight for it without his help. Christina described the girls as being very light sleepers because of where the girls slept above the garage of the house. They wouldn't open the garage in the morning. Christina said Chris would usually go out the front door. She said if there was an argument when she got home, the girls would have woken up. So she's like, that doesn't make sense to me. Right. Christina used an example of when she lived with them. She said she had to leave early one morning. So they had parked the car outside the garage the night before, and Shanann was worried just turning on the car outside would wake the kids.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
So they're really, really. So they would have heard an argument document in the morning.
Ash
Of course they would have.
Elena
Now, this tells me the more time he spent with the mistress as well, without the responsibility of a wife and kids, the more annoyed he was by the responsibility of a wife and kids. He was getting more and more annoyed because he was getting what he wanted and he wanted to just snip it and start this new life. It also tells me that him pulling up to the garage that morning and backing halfway into the garage, Nate and his wife and all those people were correct. And Nicole and her son and everybody who said, no, he never does that. He's also never parks in the driveway with that truck because it will leak oil and he didn't want oil on the garage, on the thing. Not something he would do.
Ash
Well, also think about, like, starting a truck versus starting a car. Trucks are louder.
Elena
So they. He would park it, like, out front.
Ash
Right.
Elena
So him saying, like, yeah, I would just pull it up like, no, everyone knows you don't do that. And there's several reasons why you don't do that.
Ash
And not only that, there's security footage showing that you didn't.
Elena
Exactly. Now, Officer Goodman called Chris several times during the next day to talk about, like, you know, physical traits of Shannan and Celeste and Bell.
Ash
To investigate.
Elena
To investigate. To try to send out to people, like scars they had, you know, like any.
Ash
Be on the lookout for this.
Elena
Yeah. Distinguishing features. He said he called him several times and he didn't answer. So investigators are calling him several times while his family is missing, and he is not answering. He's not at work, by the way.
Ash
And how are you not on standby?
Elena
He then called back and said, sorry, something was wrong with the phone. No, your first thing would be, hey, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. First of all, you shouldn't. That shouldn't even be a thing. But if it did, like, something was wrong with the phone. Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Did you hear from them? Have you found them? Do you know what's going on? Nope. Officer Goodman literally wrote in the report, 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
Ash
found to be on his end of that phone call. Must have been. You must. He must have just been sitting there wide eyed, like, is this being so for real right now? You would have.
Elena
And I wonder if he did. I wonder if he was like, do you want to know if we have anything?
Ash
Yeah, I feel like you wouldn't be able to help yourself.
Elena
I would have to say it. I'd be like, do you want to know what's going on?
Ash
Do you want to or do you want an update?
Elena
No, never asked. That's psychotic.
Ash
It is psychotic.
Elena
So the day they went missing, he also spoke with Shannan's mother, Sandy. Chris did. And this is what it says in the report. Oh, God. So Sandy was upset. And this is like if from the investigator is writing this report.
Ash
Okay.
Elena
So he says Sandy was upset and told me that she and her husband believe that her daughter and granddaughter's disappearance involved foul play and that she honestly believes that her son in law was involved in the disappearance of her daughter and granddaughters.
Ash
I can't imagine.
Elena
That shook me.
Ash
I can't imagine. When we said yesterday, Ma, never for a second if either of us went missing, would never think. John would never think Drew.
Elena
No.
Ash
Not for a minute.
Elena
And it's not because, again, Christopher acted this way all the time. It's because she is seeing the mask on and she's calling it what it is. These are all people that have their fucking eyes wide open. And he is so unlucky that she was surrounded by people that have their fucking eyes wide open and that are also unafraid to take a quick little leap out. Because this is tough.
Ash
Of course it is.
Elena
This is a tough situation for anybody.
Ash
Nobody wants to say, oh, I think,
Elena
my friend, no one wants to accuse this man of killing his whole family. Right. That's not the first thing you want to do, regardless of what you're seeing,
Ash
especially when you've known him for years and years and years.
Elena
So that's. That's how bad it must have been and how bad the switch must have flipped for them all to go. I think he had something to do with it. And so she said that Christopher is acting weird and out of the ordinary. She said that Christopher is telling people he has to go to work. And that just doesn't seem right because why would you not be home if they show up?
Ash
Right?
Elena
She felt that he. And this. Okay, this is the part you should know ahead of time that Sandy and Shanann spoke every day. Yeah, they were very close. Mother, daughter. They were very connected. And this will tell you right now how connected she was to Shannon and how connected she was to Bella and Celeste. Because this gave me a full chill.
Ash
Know what you're gonna say, And I'm getting like pre chills.
Elena
She said she felt that he is going out to pour oil on the bodies, to dispose of them somewhere.
Ash
To be that in touch with the reality of this nightmare is some next level mama shit.
Elena
That is so unbelievably intuitive. But I don't even know. I hate that she even had to be that intuitive. I hate that she felt that. But how?
Ash
Like, she's spot on.
Elena
Spot on. She also said that she felt when Shanann had come home late from the trip and had been exhausted and that she and Christopher had argued, but due to Shanann's lupus, she would not have been able to put up a fight.
Ash
Which also. She didn't have any defensive.
Elena
No. And I didn't even think of that until I read this. I was like, oh, my God, you're right. She's been on a work trip, she's been on a plane traveling. She's pregnant. And lupus fucks you up. Lucas is a hard autoimmune disease to deal with, and it's stress will bring it on. And she's under enormous stress lately with everything.
Ash
And I'm Christopher putting her through it,
Elena
and he's been putting her through hell, up and down. So it's like that puts her in such a flare up. I'm sure. I just. It horrified me. Now, during the time going back to the day she went that they went missing, this loser was Googling song lyrics.
Ash
I cannot with this part. I literally cannot with this part.
Elena
Like, three hours after he had dumped them in an oil field. And what he was Googling was Battery by Metallica. Now, battery, by the way, is what those big oil, like, tanks and that, like, whole thing. It's called an oil battery.
Ash
Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I didn't even know that.
Elena
Yeah. And that's so just to be clear, there's always going to be the person who's like, metallica made him do it. No. For decades, Metallica has had people loving their music and listening to their music. And one guy does this and then googles the lyrics. That does not make it Metallica's fault. No. And we cannot take this away from being Chris's fault and Chris's fault alone. But the. The actual lyrics are scary, considering. Not in this context. Obviously, Metallica did not write them about a family annihilation. But when you put it with him looking up these lyrics, it just also makes him such a loser. Yeah. Because it's like you're looking up lyrics
Ash
like, what, after you massacred your family?
Elena
So part of the lyrics are crushing all that cower. Battery is here to stay Smashing through the boundaries Lunacy has found me Cannot stop the battery Pounding out aggression Turn into obsession Cannot kill the battery Cannot kill the family Battery is found in me Cannot kill the family I was
Ash
gonna say you can't even say that Metallica made him do it because they
Elena
said, cannot kill the family. And he looked that up specifically so he could sit there and be like, yeah, like feel some, like, just rock out. They get me. They don't. They don't. I could. I'm speaking for all of Metallica right now. They don't get you. They don't get you. No. And they do not like you.
Ash
No.
Elena
I know that.
Ash
No one does.
Elena
And fuck you for looking at Metallica lyrics. Like, fuck you. After you kill your whole family, you look up Metallica lyrics.
Ash
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Elena
And when asked about this because obviously it showed up in his search history because he's an idiot, which is weird. He said he looked these up because Nicole Kessinger, his mistress, asked him about the lyrics to this song and wanted to know the meaning, she has Google
Ash
as we're well aware that she couldn't in her two hours of searching up wedding dresses, she couldn't just take a side quest to figure out what the meaning of this Metallica song was.
Elena
Yeah, I mean, look in those discovery documents. We know she had Google. Yeah, yeah, that's. She definitely had Google. She could have looked those up. And also, what are you trying to do?
Ash
Yeah, exactly.
Elena
What are you trying to do here?
Ash
Oh, she heard that song that I've never. What is Metallica?
Elena
He said, yeah, and also, if you look at the. The timeline here and you look at the transcript, like the text messages in going and outgoing and the phone calls during this time, they weren't talking during that little. They were talking during the day, don't get me wrong. But during that little period, she didn't ask him about it. That we saw that you can see. So.
Ash
So what's that?
Elena
Interesting. So they've gone through the house, They've talked to the friends, like the investigators have. They've talked to the friends, the neighbors, and they've watched Chris Watts have zero emotion about his family being supposedly missing. I honestly, again, I have no doubts that every officer who entered that house knew something nefarious that happened involving him. There's no way. Now, during the day, Chris had made several staged phone calls to Shannan as well, to try to. While he was at work, to try to make this trail of concern seem real. Yeah, because once I think he. This. This is how I feel like he. He definitely planned this and he thought it was going to go a different way because he did it. Then he went to work and he said, oh, gotta make a phone call and pretend that I called her. Oh, didn't get her. Okay, gotta send her a text message, say, where are you? Call her again. Lose that. Then the friends start contacting him and saying, we. We can't get it. And then he's like, oh, I didn't think about the fact that her friends talk to her and care about her, which is insane.
Ash
And also.
Elena
And that's when it unraveled.
Ash
Here's how crazy this is. He forgot that she had a doctor's appointment that morning or just.
Elena
Just didn't know. Yeah.
Ash
The man who had the mask on literally kept track of her doctor's appointment.
Elena
Yes. That version of Chris. Of Chris. How ironic existed.
Ash
How ironic.
Elena
How crazy that they both can exist.
Ash
It's next level, truly.
Elena
Now, this one, I hadn't heard this before, and when I read it in the documents, I said, this is what you said.
Ash
He made sure that it was this day. Right.
Elena
Like, because again, he's planning. He's. He thinks he's gonna go home and clear out all the things that make it seem like they couldn't have left on their own volition. And he still did this at 8:26 in the morning. That's two hours after he had just murdered his whole family and disposed of them in heinous ways. Yeah. At 8:26 he called Primrose School, which are the was Bella and Celeste preschool slash daycare. And it was like a really good school that Shannan had worked hard to get them into. Yep. He called that school at 8:26 in the morning to disenroll them, to take them out of school forever. He literally talked to the staff and told them his daughters would not be returning to school there.
Ash
How are like, I'm glad he's this stupid.
Elena
How was he ever going to explain that later?
Ash
How. And he just never thought he didn't account for that coming back up.
Elena
His answer later was just like, well, I thought that, you know, she had taken off with them. No, you had no evidence of that.
Ash
It also had been a couple hours since you'd last seen them.
Elena
Also, at this point, they're not missing. Right. That's where he really went wrong here. He said, I didn't think they were ever going to come back. Oh, no, baby. You didn't know they were gone. Wait a minute. You didn't know they were missing or
Ash
you weren't supposed to anyway.
Elena
You were still calling them, remember? Like, not only is this stupid, even if he had done it in the middle of the day after they were already quote, unquote missing, that would still be stupid because you would never disenroll your children. You would be like, they're coming home today and they're going to school tomorrow. Like, everything's gonna go totally normal and that is all gonna be a weird dream.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
You would never disenroll them, essentially admitting that they're gone missing. And then on top, that would be weird enough to do when you know that they're missing. To do it before they are even missing and then try to make it work is stupid on a level. This is what I'm talking about. This level of stupidity is something I have not seen in a long time.
Ash
No, we really haven't.
Elena
He cooked himself from every which, thank goodness. I will forever be grateful at this lack of neurons. Yep. But holy. And then that was next level.
Ash
I had never heard that before either.
Elena
Yeah, well. And then what's crazy is FBI agent Tammy Lee noted later that the payment for the month for that school was due that day. Wow. So he dis enrolled them so he wouldn't have to pay for them anymore. Because this truly was about eliminating every single tie to those. Those kids and his wife and take every responsibility off the table. He didn't even want to pay for a month of daycare for him just to keep. He wasn't even willing to put up with that. He said, I am disengaging from it all immediately. Talk about a disgusting beast. It's. It just makes beast.
Ash
Absolutely. I don't understand how people like this exist.
Elena
Truly. Such a pathetic waste of skin. Yeah, he's the most pathetic waste of skin and oxygen I've ever come across. He's so disgusting. He's despicable. He really is. Now, the former director of Primrose was interviewed because she was also friends with Shanann at one point. And she confirmed that before leaving for North Carolina, she said the same thing. They all said. Chris and Shanann were all over each other. Wow. Very lovey dovey. Very like pda. Very, like happy. And then suddenly it was gone.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
And this was again, everyone's. That you look through those texts between the friends and her, you look from her, it's all the same story. And she said when he came to. Back when he came to visit North Carolina and when she came home, he wouldn't touch her, wouldn't hug her. In fact, at one point, he said, I don't want to hug you. Wouldn't take photos with the kids. He wouldn't take photos with the kids. Wouldn't take family photos. Anywhere that they went. Like, wouldn't be involved in anything. What the. Yeah, he knows what he's gonna do.
Ash
That's crazy.
Elena
And I truly think that was part of it, was he shut it off because he saw what life could be like with Nicole. Yeah. And no responsibilities. And I think he had already decided what he was gonna do. I don't know if he had the full plan, but he knew what he was going to do. And he was. He was disengaging to make it easier on himself. Just leave. Just leave now. They interviewed Nicole Kessinger, obviously, and she gave a lot of info, including that on August 13th, the night. The day they went missing, at night that day. So he had gone through the whole day thinking his family was, quote, unquote, missing. They spoke, and he claimed Shannan, and he told Nicole that Shannan had just told him she was pregnant that morning.
Ash
There's literally a video that exists of when she told him that she was pregnant.
Elena
Huh.
Ash
There's a video.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
So he didn't account for that.
Elena
Also, she was 15 weeks pregnant. It was pretty clear.
Ash
And she had had two children before she was showing.
Elena
Like, he knew what his wife looked like pregnant. Like, that's. And also, like, she also had a
Ash
doctor's appointment that morning.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Which, like, would have been one of multiple. That she had gone to recently.
Elena
Had ultrasounds, you all.
Ash
They had named the baby. Yeah, the baby was named. They knew that the. The sex of the baby.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
What?
Elena
Yeah. Also, he claimed to Nicole that not only did she tell him that morning, but she said, it's not yours. So now he's trying to paint Shannan as the one. Talk about projection. Truly projection. He projects everything onto Shannan because eventually he will project being a murderer on terror. Everything that he does, he makes it like her. She did it.
Ash
That's such a, like, pathology.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
I feel like. Especially with cheaters.
Elena
Well, and what's even sadder is later, because Nicole found out that she was pregnant through the media. Right. Because at this point, she was like, I didn't believe him. Yeah. Like, I just thought he was being weird. Like, I just kind of was like, oh, okay, like, what? And so she said she found out, confirmed that she was pregnant and that it was his child and that they had known about it and they had named this child. She found all that through the media. And when she brought that to him and said, what the. He was like, yeah, I lied. And then he was like, does this affect our relationship?
Ash
Yes.
Elena
Like, he was genuinely upset when she was like, hey, I just found out that your wife that's missing is pregnant with your child and that you knew this for 15 weeks and that you. And he was like, yeah, okay, I lied about that. Are like, are we okay, though? And that. And she said that was the point where she was like, I think you killed your family. Like, I need to go. Oh, my God. Like, this was days later, but also another conversation. On August 13, the day that they went missing, Chris told Nicole that Shanann had left her wedding ring at the house. Because, remember, he walked out with that wedding ring, saying it was on the nightstand.
Ash
I have a whole feeling about that.
Elena
Chris asked Nicole, how much do you think the ring is worth? Remember, his family has been missing for about 12 hours at this point. And she responded by telling him to pawn it.
Ash
Why would you pawn the ring?
Elena
And he told her he was going to get it appraised.
Ash
Why would you pawn the ring if you were expecting your wife to come home?
Elena
Why would either of you have responded that way? Why would he have said, how much do you think it's worth. And why the fuck did she even dignify that with a response? I would literally say, what the is wrong with you? Your wife is missing. And instead she says, pawn it. What? I got nothing. Like, get it together.
Ash
I got nothing.
Elena
And then his response, so much. But yeah, I got lots. I have so much, but I got
Ash
a whole bit back.
Elena
Yeah. Because you know what? Whatever. But yeah, I think what happened too was she did not leave that wedding ring on the nightstand. She didn't take it.
Ash
No. The room had been searched multiple times over by the time he out and was like, lookie here.
Elena
No, he took it off of her to sell later because also that was going to help him erase a little bit of the death that they were in so that he could move on with his. His new life with Nicole, debt free.
Ash
Well, and not only that thousand dollar ring. Exactly. Not only that too.
Elena
He.
Ash
I think you had. I don't know if you said it in part one, if we had just talked about it, but when investigators first got there, he didn't let them in right away. He was in the garage.
Elena
It took. Not even in the garage. He was in the house.
Ash
In the house.
Elena
He took two full minutes to go from the garage to the front door, like, which was literally a five second walk.
Ash
So what's that about? So I think he found it.
Elena
He went in the garage, he bent down and picked something up. And then he walked into the. The house. And he took two minutes inside the house. Yep. And I think what he was doing was making sure he had that ring. Probably taking a second to say, now I gotta come up with the COVID story quicker.
Ash
Yup.
Elena
And then he opens the door and he's a fucking wreck.
Ash
Yep.
Elena
Now, the next day, August 14, Chris was still completely nonchalant about this whole thing. And he kept. Anytime somebody asked him, like, how you doing? Like, what's going on? He was like, yeah, not too bad. Slept with the lights on, the whole house. I just kept all the lights on. And I was like, oh, slept. Wow, that must mean you're sad.
Ash
How would you.
Elena
I.
Ash
If my entire family was gone, I wouldn't get a wink of sleep unless it just happened to me.
Elena
Sleep would never come to me until my body shut down or I would die. Exactly. Like that would. Because there comes a time where your body's like, hey, buddy, you're gonna die if you don't go to sleep. And it'll just force you into sleep. Yep, that's when my body would sleep.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
And I would be sitting up all Night outside on my porch, just waiting for anything. For anything. By the phone. Yep. Calling people, calling the police. Every.
Ash
I'd have my phone plugged in.
Elena
I'd be the police's worst nightmare in that scenario because I'd be calling every 20 minutes.
Ash
Any update?
Elena
Anything. Any update? Can I do anything? Like heard from it or.
Ash
You'd be driving around looking for them. You wouldn't be sleeping with the light.
Elena
And Nicole, the mistress, even said a couple of times she. It bothered her that he was like, oh, I went to sleep at this time. And she was like, you slept? Like, what? Weird. But that's on August 14th is when he gave the infamous interview on the porch. We talked about last time where he showed no human behavior at all, just
Ash
swallowing, blinking and gritting his teeth.
Elena
Exactly. Now, later that afternoon, he had a press conference. He appeared at a press conference, too.
Ash
That was another mistake.
Elena
And to discuss the whole thing. And he said, I'm hoping right now that she's somewhere safe. It's not something I could ever, ever fathom would happen in my lifetime and I have no inclination of where she is.
Ash
Lie.
Elena
She said she was going to a friend's house with the kids. And that's the last thing I heard. And that was it. It was very vague.
Ash
Also.
Elena
That's another story he's clinging to. Is after he told her he wanted to separate and sell the house, they got into an emotional conversation, is how he described it. I was like an emotion. You haven't met those. And then he says that she told him that she was going to take the kids to a friend's house at 4:00am Yep. Okay. And that. And he loves to say. He says it several times too. Very vague. Like, she wouldn't give me the information.
Ash
If he was going to be leaving for work, she would have just stayed home with the kids.
Elena
Of course, because she's away from him,
Ash
she doesn't have to go anywhere.
Elena
Got up, you're going to work. Got them ready at a normal time, gone through the motions, and then got them out of the house before he got home from work.
Ash
Like, what are you talking about?
Elena
It doesn't make. And also, you know all her friends.
Ash
So weird.
Elena
Like, it's just. No.
Ash
And you didn't press her?
Elena
No.
Ash
He's texting her. Where are you?
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
You just said she told you you're at a friend's house.
Elena
Yeah. So. And also, you disenrolled your kids from school in the morning.
Ash
So you just think they're at her friends.
Elena
Yeah. Like you just Ended their education because they're at a friend's. They had a play date. So you ended their education right there.
Ash
Wild.
Elena
That's crazy. Now, everyone at this point, including myself, at this point in 2018, was it when it popped up on my TV screen and I said, that guy did it.
Ash
The husband did it.
Elena
Everyone was saying, this guy is. Everyone saw it. Everyone. Yep. Everyone was wondering how he was managing to show zero concern or worry for his pregnant wife and two young children. There is something to be said for not judging how people react in certain situations.
Ash
Of course.
Elena
But in this situation, there is not an innocent person on earth who would react even close to how he did or not react. No, there is just. I won't judge in certain situations. I'm judging so hard that my name is Judy, in this situation is not a human. There is no parent who would react this way if they were innocent. No. Just no parent on earth. You have to be guilty to act this way. No.
Ash
No family related to those babies on earth would act that way.
Elena
Nobody. Her best friend showed more emotion than her husband did.
Ash
Not even related to you?
Elena
Yeah. The next day, August 15, Chris agreed to take a polygraph. That was a mistake. Normally we say polygraphs are hot dogs in a trench coat. This one, I'm willing to say, was pretty effective.
Ash
You said yesterday, investigator in a trench coat.
Elena
Investigator in a trench coat, yeah. Once again, he ran through the story that he'd given the detectives the day before, and just before 3pm he sat down for it. Now, the polygraph session was pretty. It wasn't like, super long. It didn't have a lot of questions. And that wasn't because they didn't have a lot of questions for him. Him. He just failed so incredibly that they didn't need to ask anymore.
Ash
They were like, yep, he did it.
Elena
He failed so spectacularly that the needle went off the page.
Ash
And that's not hyperbolic. That's real.
Elena
Literally went off the page. Agent FBI agent Tammy Lee said, for someone who was a truth teller, we would consider them to be a grade two or higher. And we would consider someone to be deceptive if they were negative four or below.
Ash
Chris Watts scored negative 18 is almost five times over. A liar.
Elena
Yeah. What they normally see with someone, that's deceptive. He was so deceptive that he was almost five times off.
Ash
That's wild.
Elena
Like, that's. There's fibbing, crazy.
Ash
There's lion, there's bold face lying, and then there's Chris Watts.
Elena
And then there's Chris Watts. And he and all the questions were things that he simply, biologically could not lie about. Do you know where your wife is? No. Do you know where your kids are? No. Did you hurt them? No.
Ash
Off the page.
Elena
Like, off the page. So after this, they're reviewing the results, and agents Tammy Lee and Graham Koder confront him with the results and with the other evidence that raised a lot of questions about whether he was telling the truth or not. And eventually, Chris admitted to having an affair with Nicole. Not Nicole Atkinson, Nicole Kessinger.
Ash
Like, how'd we get there, bud?
Elena
But he said, I don't have anything to do with Shanann and the girl's disappearance. They didn't ask him about the affair. They also didn't polygraph him about the affair. The affair was literally never mentioned until they were like, hey, where is your family? And he was like, well, I am fucking a co worker. And they were like, why are you telling us this? Like, that has nothing to do with what we're asking. But he was so eager to gush about his side piece. It's actually so cringy. Oh, how this happens. And I think the agents were like, is this real? Like, you can see in the transcript that they're like, please stop talking about your mistress. Like, why. Why are you talking about this now? Chris says. So they're asking. They're like, where's your family? Because they were like, yeah, no, we don't want. We don't want to talk about your mistress, Chris. Where's your family? And he says, she. She was wonderful. Meaning Nicole, not his wife. What? He said she was a wonderful person. Who knew he was married. Oops.
Ash
That's contradictory.
Elena
And he was having issues in his marriage. Chris said he told her he was going to get separated from Shanann. Not that he was separated. He was going to. Yeah, planning on it, but he didn't know what that was going to look like. Chris said she took his breath away. And he never thought in a million years something like that could happen. Chris said he never felt the same way about anyone in his lifetime as he did about her.
Ash
So. Not the mother of his three children unborn.
Elena
So Agent Coder says, hey, we don't think your girlfriend hurt anyone. And then he says, could we leave her out of this and get back to talking about your wife and daughters?
Ash
Can we talk about maybe where your
Elena
kids are editorializing this? That is a transcript that I'm reading you. Oh, my God. Chris says, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, we can get back to talking about that. And he says, cool. And he says, where are your wife and children located? And Chris said, I don't know. The affair was the only thing that I was holding back on, by the way. He can't stop talking about it. And Agent Coder, it literally says, reminded Chris that he was not questioned about the infidelity on the polygraph.
Ash
He's like, hey, bro, you don't actually even have to tell us about that right now. We haven't even got there yet. So we're still on the. Where's your wife and kids?
Elena
So that. This is literally how this happened. They said, hey, where are your wife and kids? And he was like, I did have an affair. And they were like, whoa, that's crazy. We are the FBI, though, so, like, we know that. And then he said, let's not talk about this. Let's talk about your wife. She's just. You know, my mistress is a wonderful person. She's great. Takes my breath away. She took my breath away. Never in a million years thought this could happen. I. I could never feel this, you know, in a lifetime about how she looks. And they're. They're like, oh, okay, can we not. I. We don't think she killed your family, so can we just talk about your wife and family? And he's like, absolutely. And they're like, where are they? And you're like, yeah, I don't know. I did have an affair, though, just so you guys know. And she is great. And I've never felt anything like I felt with her. And then at the end of it, Agent Coder says, chris, we know about your girlfriend. Here's her date of birth and where she lives. Oh, my God.
Ash
Because you don't have to tell us
Elena
anymore, because do you know everything that. We're the FBI.
Ash
Do you know what that stands for, Chris?
Elena
We're the FBI. Did you think we. One, didn't know you were having an affair. We have all of your records. We've been following you. And two, do you think I can. I. I know what Nicole is doing right now on the FBI.
Ash
He's like, we got a tail on her right now.
Elena
He's like, she was looking up wedding dresses a couple of days ago. Did you know that? I know that. I'm the FBI getting married. I know that. Like, you idiots. You're sitting there being, like, a fair affair affair. And they're like, your family's missing. Can we talk about that?
Ash
Affair, affair.
Elena
And. And they have to tell you, babe, we know.
Ash
And you still can't stop yourself.
Elena
And he's like, oh, like it's the cringiest interaction.
Ash
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Elena
And it further shows you how much he doesn't care about his family. All he cares about is wiping that out and starting some new life with Nicole Kessinger.
Ash
Well, it's so interesting too, and sad.
Elena
We.
Ash
I don't know if we mentioned this in part one, but I saw something that said, like one of his former cellmates said he gets.
Elena
Oh yeah, this is disgusting.
Ash
Gets letters from women all the time.
Elena
And like, oh yeah, they're in the discovery documents.
Ash
They send him like bikini pics and
Elena
shit like that fucking freak. If you do that, like something's wrong with you.
Ash
You shouldn't have access. You shouldn't have access to the tools.
Elena
That letter writes he smothered his two babies and killed his pregnant wife and dumped them in an oil tank. If you do that shit, something is fucking wrong with you.
Ash
You're probably not fixable. Yeah, no, but sorry, you're just not. So that, that cellmate though said like he becomes so obsessed with one particular woman and he will like write her a 15 page letter back, talk non stop about her. And like literally it's like compulsive. So I feel like that was Shanann, because remember in part one, like, exactly. He pursued her. He was like, please give me another chance. La dee da do. He played the doting husband he had. I don't think he probably, who knows if he wanted to have kids, but Shannan did, so he did because that's what like he will just bend to be whoever they want. And then when he doesn't want to do that anymore and the next quote unquote in his eyes, best thing comes along, he.
Elena
That's why the mask dropped so quickly. Yeah, because he was like, he was conforming to what he needed to conform to. Which now he's cheating on his wife and his whole family. So he's like this Bad guy. So he's like, I'm gonna be a bad guy.
Ash
Let me play this role now.
Elena
I'm gonna play this role now.
Ash
But it's like, that's why the mask just, like, falls to the floor and shatters. Because he just attaches immediately to this next person.
Elena
Because he did. At one point, Nicole said in one of the interviews she did state that she always believed he was more into her than he. She was to him. I don't know about that because I
Ash
got Googling wedding dresses for two hours.
Elena
You were Googling, like, marrying your mistress and like, all that.
Ash
So, like, it sounds like you were pretty into him.
Elena
So I don't know about that. I'm not in the relationship, so I can't say it's. I'm just looking at context clues here, but I'm sure he probably was because there was like, he would give her cards where he would write these long, like, love letter things in there. And he always had lyrics in them. He's like a lyric guy.
Ash
Okay.
Elena
And that's not a bad thing.
Ash
Like, for nice people, it's a gross thing.
Elena
For Chris Watts, everything is gross. I just want to say that when it comes to Chris Watts, it's not necessarily gross for other people. It's just he makes it gross.
Ash
And that's the thing is I'm like, don't do that, because I don't want
Elena
that to be a gross. I know, because I'm like, I love lyrics.
Ash
I like lyrics.
Elena
But he would. He, like, gushed to her and like, spilled, like, so he was like. He was obsessed with her.
Ash
It's also just in like a railway. Like, like juvenile coded.
Elena
Yeah, he's very stunted. He is very, very stunted. And I. I wonder why. So I don't know why. So who knows? I have no idea. There's no evidence. None. So the agents continue to pepper him with questions for hours, but he maintained his innocence throughout the whole thing. Then as a last ditch attempt to get any truth from him, they start saying. They start doing this thing that I think is very, very smart.
Ash
But you have to explain, like you
Elena
did when you first watch it. You go, why the fuck did you do that? You just gave him an idea.
Ash
Because that was my response. But I'm glad that you explained this the way that you did.
Elena
These agents were really smart the way they did this. So they. They were telling him, you know, I can see it on your face, Chris. You know, I can tell that there's something you want to get off your chest. I Can see it in your eyes. I know it's hard to hold on to these things. People make mistakes. We're not going to judge you. We're here to help you through it. Like, things happen. Things can be tough, blah, blah, blah.
Ash
And that part I all got, like, I've seen that done.
Elena
But then they say, did she. Did Shannan do something to those girls?
Ash
And that's when I was like, why the. Would you even put that.
Elena
Now, the reason they did that, because he immediately. You can tell. It's like. He's like, no, no. But you can tell.
Ash
It's like, it's not emphatically.
Elena
He's like, just rolling it around in his head. And they keep kind of asking, like, did that happen? Like, you got to tell us. What they're doing is they're presenting an option that is more acceptable that if she did something to those kids, of course you were gonna kill her.
Ash
And he's the hero.
Elena
You're a father. You protect your kids. Of course you were gonna defend them. So they're presenting him with this. You can be the hero, Chris, while also admitting to murdering your wife. So just tell us that you did it, and we'll help you through it. And no one will call you a bad guy. In fact, people will probably love you because you protected your children from a monster.
Ash
Meanwhile, it's not occurring to Chris that another one of his children was in his wife's belly at this time.
Elena
Oh, yeah, that doesn't ever occur. I don't think he gave a shit about that in any way, shape or form. But the big thing here is that now that they get. If once they get him to say, yes, I killed her because she killed the kids, now they've pinned him with murder regardless of what was going on, they know that he's not going to be able to prove that. There is zero evidence to show that. And that once they got him there, then they can start pushing him down the. The alley of, okay, well, you already
Ash
admitted to killing her and just pulling little threads.
Elena
And we can start saying, well, we do have this evidence that says you did it, and we do have that. And it's much easier to push him down that alley once you've got him over the hump of, yes, I did murder someone.
Ash
Right, because then you can keep him.
Elena
It was smart. It could. It's a risk, and it can backfire. But I think it worked really well in this instance because he starts kind of cracking a little bit. He doesn't say it, and then they can See that? And again, another smart move is they go, do you want to talk to your dad?
Ash
Because they remember his dad is like, he felt the one person that truly understood him. And they're super close.
Elena
Yep. So they bring him into the interrogation room and they say, we're going to leave you two alone so you can talk. Shock.
Ash
Which like. And you're never alone in an entire being filmed.
Elena
So Chris talks to his dad and his dad is genuine in the beginning, like trying to be like, what happened? Like, just tell me what happened. And he tells his father that he had seen Shannan that morning before he left for work. And his dad is like, you know, because his dad has heard this, so he's like, did she do something like, what happened? Did you do something like, what's going on? Just tell me what's happening? And he claimed they had another argument about their marriage. And when he came downstairs, he found Shannan had smothered the girls to death because she was. He was. She was so mad that he wanted to separate that she murdered her children. And he tells his father and I freaked out and hurt her. Now, according to Chris, after he strangled Shannan and wrapped her in the top sheet that was missing, and then took her body and the bodies of Bella and Celeste out to the truck, that's when he drove out to one of the oil tanks his company owned in the middle of a remote area. And after burying Shanann in a shallow grave, he placed the girls bodies into each tank, then sealed them up and drove to work like nothing happened.
Ash
Why would that be your response in any precisely world.
Elena
Precisely why would that be what you did? Well, and so now he's confessed to the murder of Shanann, but he's swearing he had nothing to do with the murder of the children. But there are about a billion things in this confession that everyone said no. At one point he even looks at his dad and he says, why does that. Why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to those two little girls? Why did it happen to you?
Ash
Nice that you asked it about yourself first.
Elena
Not even the kids first. Just why did this happen to me? I mean, why did this happen to those two little girls? Like, you can't even. Human, you don't know how to human,
Ash
you don't know how to father.
Elena
He can't even kind. He doesn't even stumble into humaning at any point, which is crazy. Which is even crazier because I feel like a robot. Watt even stumbles into humaning. Everyone's honestly, like, honestly, AI can Human more than Chris Watts can. Human. Yep. Like, truly. And several times the interrogators tried to get him to admit what he did to Celeste and Bella after this. And they noted. They. And I. This was another thing. I was glad they did. They looked right at him and they said, listen, we're not going to feel right if Shanann, a murder victim who cannot defend herself, takes the rap for murdering her own children. If she didn't do it.
Ash
Because we know she didn't.
Elena
And they. Because they know it. And they're trying to appeal to him now by being like, listen, you can't pin this on a mother who didn't do it. She'll. She's dead. Like, her legacy is going to be murdering her own baby girls, and you're gonna let that happen? And he says, I'm fine with it.
Ash
Of course he is. He doesn't give a. About her anymore.
Elena
Totally fine.
Ash
Which is it diabolically up.
Elena
He was fine with Shanann being known as a mother who smothered her children to death because she was mad at the husband for wanting to say he was fine with her going down like that.
Ash
And because he said that. There are people that believe that.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Like, they're insane. And they're like, they're not educated on this case.
Elena
Anybody who thinks Chris Watts is innocent in any way, shape or form. I don't want to hear anything from you. No, I don't want to hear anything from you.
Ash
But how fucked up is that?
Elena
Willfully ignorance that he was okay doing
Ash
that and did it.
Elena
Yeah, he was.
Ash
Even when. Even when warned about the consequences.
Elena
Exactly. He did not care. And he said, that's fine. But they also pointed out something that was interesting and really good, too. And they were playing on the fact that he is not a parent. Like, he's not a human. He's not a father.
Ash
Because he let go.
Elena
Because they said, you know, here's the thing. And they said, so when you came downstairs, what did you see? And he said, said. He said, shanann was on top of Cece. Now, again, this is him. He lied. Yeah. And they said, okay. And he said, so I grabbed her and I strangled her. I was just so angry. Like, I could. I saw those girls and blah, blah. And they're like, yeah, yeah, totally. And then they're like, no parent is ever going to accept that their children are dead. They're just not. And they said, certainly not enough to dump them in tanks of oil. Like, they're just not. And so they said, it's strange to Me. They said, did you try cpr? Did you try life saving, reviving them? Like, anything on them, which you would. And he said, no. And they were like, that's weird to me. Like, Agent Coder was like, I'm sorry. I can't understand why I would do everything I could to bring my child back to life. And they said, you didn't call an ambulance to try to revive them? Nope. And they were like, that's weird. That's weird. And he was like, I was scared. And they were like, yeah, parents don't get scared over their love for their children. Like, you don't pick scared over love for child. And they were like, especially. It just doesn't make sense to me. And he's like, I don't know. I was scared. Okay. Like, yeah, you're right.
Ash
It makes absolutely no sense now.
Elena
Meanwhile, as this is happening, police had discovered the body of Shannan. She was buried the top of, like, where she. Her body was eight inches under the dirt.
Ash
That's a shallow.
Elena
Shallow.
Ash
Calling that a shallow grave is actually generous.
Elena
Yeah, it's a divot. And she was found about 100ft from the large oil tanks at the Anadarko oil well site near Roggen, Colorado.
Ash
Where he just worked all day.
Elena
Yep.
Ash
Or almost would have worked all day.
Elena
He was around employees that day at that site, feet away from where his children were laying in an oil tank. And he was joking with them. They. Everyone at that site said he didn't act even slightly off.
Ash
That's unreal to me.
Elena
Nothing was different. Now they found them because he had gone to that site that morning and worked there, and he had. His truck was a work truck. It had GPS on it. Right? Right. So they followed the gps. He didn't think through any of this.
Ash
No. And that's why it's wild that, like, this was planned.
Elena
Yeah. Like, he thought.
Ash
He really thought he was going to be. All he had was that he was gonna murder them.
Elena
Yeah. And he thought he could go home and just get rid of anything that said.
Ash
But it wasn't meticulous because, remember one
Elena
thing about this that I will give, like, for this to be part of the plan. He was going to that site anyways.
Ash
Right.
Elena
So his GPS showing that he went there isn't the thing that tipped them off.
Ash
Exactly.
Elena
It's just because he would have been there anyway. They're going backwards and they're following his trail because they are now just investigating different things. So this wouldn't have tipped them off. So this could be he. This Is part of the plan of while I'm going there anyway.
Ash
So stupid.
Elena
Now, they did an aerial search from the air. They spotted a piece of sheet that Shannan was wrapped in and buried in. It was sticking up from the dirt. And they said, hey, there's some fabric. They were able to determine that the sheet was from the missing set that they found in the trash. And during that search, Chris confessed it like that he had killed Shanann. It was happening like at the same time. So they're finding the sheet and then he immediately confessed and he said he disposed of their bodies at this site. So he. They took a picture of this site from the air and sent it to the police station. And he wrote their initials on where they were.
Ash
Oh my God.
Elena
One on each tank. Because something that like really upset both of us yesterday. I think Ash didn't know. No. Was that he dumped Celeste and Bella in separate tanks.
Ash
I never knew that.
Elena
And for some reason, I mean everything about that just shatters him dropping them
Ash
in an oil tank alone. But to separate them, to separate them from their. Not only from their mother, but from
Elena
each other, each other is like they were just alone in those oil tanks. A four year old and a three
Ash
year old and why did you throw them in oil? I shouldn't even say throw them. Why did you shove them in oil tanks?
Elena
But we'll get there. Now, on August 16, they went back and completely drained the tanks of crude oil. And this is going to get rough again. I'm not going to be super graphic about it.
Ash
It.
Elena
The discovery documents are very graphic about this search and I warn you that ahead of time when you. If you are reading them and you get to this point, I suggest you skip over it. It's horrific and I wish I had never seen it. That's when they found Celeste and Bella in each tank and they were able to get them out. Autopsies concluded that the death of Shannan was manual strangulation. Although her hyoid bone was not broken, he just knew what to press on to stop breathing. And the deaths of Bella and Celeste were violent and horrific. Asphyxiation due to smothering.
Ash
And he smothered them with their favorite blankets.
Elena
And Bella fought back really hard because Bella was the last one killed. Bella's the four year old, so she had seen what happened. So Bella's last. I'm gonna cry again.
Ash
No, of course you are.
Elena
Bella's last moments months were seeing this nightmare and that like ruins me. Like, I just, like, I don't. I don't get how somebody does this. I don't get it. She. They're all.
Ash
That's like, that's half of you. You created those beings.
Elena
That's the thing. How would you not die for those babies?
Ash
And how do you kill them?
Elena
Oh, how do you do that? I can't even raise my voice at my children without apologizing after.
Ash
I don't.
Elena
I don't know. I just don't get it. And there were injuries as well from being shoved through an 8 inch hole that neither of them could fit through comfortably. So he had to further hurt them.
Ash
And he just didn't care.
Elena
He just didn't care.
Ash
And then he worked by those tanks.
Elena
He's a monster. He's a disgusting, irredeemable, monstrous piece of. Yeah. And if there is a hell, he will see it.
Ash
He's in it.
Elena
And honestly, if there is a hell, I hope he sees it every day.
Ash
He does.
Elena
Yeah. And you.
Ash
He has said that he does.
Elena
Oh, he said he's haunted. And I hope he says she is.
Ash
I hope he's not.
Elena
Just. He sees the visions every day. And I hope it gets worse and worse. I hope those visions never fade. And I hope they get clearer and clearer.
Ash
I hope they drive him to complete another madness.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
And then he loses his mind.
Elena
I hope it's the same thing like Brian Kohlberger in the Idaho 4, where he's losing his mind at night because none of the inmates will let him sleep.
Ash
That's what you get when you murder.
Elena
I hope that he's getting that now. There was a report that I saw that was on August 18th. Just going through the timeline, and that just gives you another. After you've just heard, that gives you another indication of how little he cared and how much he knew that he was probably going to get caught. There was a friend, a mutual friend of both of them, a guy named Christopher Rusk, and he found out that the family was missing and he hadn't heard anything yet. And he had reached out to Chris, this was a few days prior, and was saying like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry, if there's anything I can do. And he said the only thing that Chris said to him was, quote, I shouldn't have talked to the media. What the fuck? And he actually went to the police with that and said this was weird. Yeah. So everyone around him was like, this is weird.
Ash
I shouldn't have talked to the media. He basically just said, well, I'm.
Elena
Yeah. On August 19th, the police department got an email from someone and this is. This is just a strange thing that I found that I had. There was no verif. Like, nothing came after this. Yeah. Nobody found this person, but it's still in the documents. And I thought it was a strange thing to see. I was like, huh?
Ash
Yeah.
Elena
So the Police Department on August 19, got an email from someone@familyheatingol.com and it was saying that Chris was having an affair with a woman, not Nicole Kessinger, whose ex husband he worked with at this oil company. And they spoke and interacted through a secret calculator app, which is. This is interesting because that information had not been revealed.
Ash
Right.
Elena
That he talked to Nicole Kessinger through a secret calculator app.
Ash
That's.
Elena
I don't know about anyone else, but in 2018, I wasn't hearing about a secret calculator app that was flying around for people to cheat on their spouses. I wasn't. So it's weird that she said this, and I'm like, this is weird. Like, as. Was he having multiple affairs and this person just didn't come forward or what?
Ash
Maybe.
Elena
Like, it's very strange.
Ash
It's weird.
Elena
But on August 19, the same day, Nicole Kessinger, like we were saying, she knew. She knew. You Google. Yeah. Does everybody remember Amber Fry?
Ash
Of course.
Elena
You don't know Affair. Amber Fry was unknowingly having an affair with Scott Peterson, who murdered his wife, Lacey Peterson, and their unborn child. And their unborn child, Connor. Amber, by all accounts and by all the things that they researched and saw, did not know that he had this whole other life. Didn't know he was married. Did not know he was married. And.
Ash
And actually aided in the investigation.
Elena
And she wore a wire. She did. Like, she really tried to get him caught. So she had a different vibe. Yeah. So everybody just kind of rallied around her because. Damn, that's traumatic. Yeah. Now, Kessinger, on August 19th, Google, did people hate Amber Fry? Things about Amber Fry's net worth and things about her book deal.
Ash
If this lady woman thought that she was getting a book deal, that's. I'm like, what are you gonna write?
Elena
Well, and all. You thought you were gonna write about this, like you had any insight and that.
Ash
I'm sorry. That you deserve. That's the money that comes from that.
Elena
What the.
Ash
You knew that he was married with children, whether or not he was separated,
Elena
having an affair with him.
Ash
You knew he had children, and you were having an affair.
Elena
You knew you had to interact in private. You knew that this wasn't okay. Like that's, that's the thing.
Ash
That's a completely different scenario.
Elena
So that was interesting to me. That's in the Discovery. Yeah.
Ash
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Elena
And this was another thing that I saw in the discovery that I never saw mentioned somewhere was on August 20th. So the day after the police got in touch with somebody named Addie who was friends with them, with friends with Shannan. And she said on August 14, which is the day after they went missing,
Ash
the day after he murdered them.
Elena
There was an email that Chris responded to on that day and it was concerning to her because she said his family was missing. At this point, Chris received an email about fantasy football and on the day after his family was missing, he responded with I'm in. I'm in. He got an email about a fantasy football league and he said, I'm in. The day after his family is missing,
Ash
he's ready to start this new chapter of his life.
Elena
He's gonna, he's gonna fantasy football. He's gonna.
Ash
Yeah, he can spend his money on whatever he wants now. He already un enrolled his children in daycare after killing them.
Elena
I'm in. I'm in the day while your family's missing.
Ash
I've already started looking at my, my people that I want to.
Elena
You wouldn't catch me answering email else.
Ash
No.
Elena
If I was not, not joining fantasy
Ash
football leagues, you wouldn't see the Gmail app open on my phone.
Elena
Now this is the kind of that you need to see because you need to know how diabolically awful this piece of is.
Ash
I'm in.
Elena
Now, a few days later, Chris Watts was arraigned on account of first degree murder and the death of Shanann and one count of causing the death of an unborn child. At his arraignment, Chris's attorney, James Merson, argued that that he had killed his wife in a fit of rage after witnessing her kill their two daughters. Merson also petitioned the judge to require the district attorney to require DNA testing on the necks of the two girls. But that was rejected on the grounds that the judge does not have the authority to tell the prosecution how to conduct their investigation.
Ash
And it probably wouldn't have worked anyway because he shoved his two children in an oil tank. So that would have disturbed some DNA.
Elena
It absolutely did. Now, from the moment he offered up this story about Shanann killing Bella and Celeste, nobody believed that. Nobody believed that.
Ash
It doesn't make any sense.
Elena
There was no one that believed that. And there was also no evidence to support that story.
Ash
Well, also, this is something that we said yesterday that we forgot to mention today. That security camera footage that Nate has shows two little shadows going on.
Elena
It does. I don't think it shows too little shadows, but it shows more than just his shadow. So, like, there's movement that you can see, okay, that clearly they're alive. Like, there's something more than just Chris
Ash
getting into the car.
Elena
It's not just Chris moving about. Like, it just doesn't. There's no evidence to show that. And despite this, the District Attorney, Michael Roark, decided to take a chance on getting a further confession from Chris. At a meeting in early October, Chris was informed that the prosecutor intended to pursue the death penalty, as they should. But he was willing to take that off the table if Chris was willing to tell them what really happened that night, which I think was brilliant, smart. Finally, under threat of execution, Chris confessed that Shanann had nothing to do with their daughter's murders and he was just gonna let her take the fall for it. And it was the, in fact, Chris who had killed them.
Ash
How nice that he had a choice in not getting executed.
Elena
Exactly. Now, what had happened that night? Like I said earlier, he drove them 45 minutes alive. He told them that mommy's sick and needs to go to the hospital, put them in the car and drove them 45 minutes.
Ash
And could have changed his mind.
Elena
Once he dumped Shanann's body into the dirt, he smothered CeCe with her favorite blanket in front of Bella. Bella again fought him. I'm not gonna go into any more detail than that. I'm not gonna say any of, like, last words or anything, because it's pure horror. If you read it and you hear about it and you hear this fucker, too. This fucker who later confessed every detail of this. When you hear him say it, it'll turn your stomach in a way that is hard to recover from. So I don't suggest listening to it.
Ash
Does he have any emotion when he says it?
Elena
He doesn't give a shit. It. And it's just the. The details of that moment are so horrifying.
Ash
Well, that's not what anybody needs to
Elena
remember about those kids. No, it's not. And that's the. It's the worst kind of horror. And I'm just so sorry to their family. Like, I'm so sorry. Every. The whole time I was reading these things, I was just like, I'm so sorry. Yeah. Like, I'm so sorry that this man who you thought was protecting your family and was a part of your family was the monster that your kids feared. Yeah. And didn't even know it. Like, I'm so, so sorry. It just. Oh, like, yeah. Now, on November 19, 2018, Chris appeared before a judge for sentencing. By then, the charges against him were now three counts of first degree murder, two counts of causing the death of a child under 12, as well as one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body. Body.
Ash
Wow.
Elena
Now, at sentencing, Michael Rourke urged that maximum penalty of life in prison be imposed. And he said he told the jury, what must the part that always. Yeah, this is a lot. What must Bella, age 4, or Celeste, age 3, have thought when their father, the one man on Earth supposed to nurture and protect them, smothered them to death? And it's true. Yeah, like, you don't even want to think about that. You're like, I. But I keep thinking about it. Like, how can you not stop thinking
Ash
about it, knowing that that's what happened?
Elena
How do you not think about it? I got it. After we record this one for the second time. I have to get far away from this case. I need to get far away from this case. It's horrific. And what kills me is that the family and the friends can't get away from it. No.
Ash
It's their reality.
Elena
Like I'm saying, I need to get away from this. I need to go, like, read something. I need to just, like. Like, get it out of my brain.
Ash
But this is what he did to them.
Elena
But they live with this every day.
Ash
And Pete, that people who loved him and trusted him to take care of those children and take care of Shannan,
Elena
and they be a husband and a father. They live with their absence every day, so it's a reminder every single day to them of what happened. And he's still here like that. He's still here in protective custody like the little that he is truly just. But you know what? He's scared every second. He's pissing his pants every second.
Ash
I just feel like. Don't protect him. He didn't protect anyone.
Elena
No, nobody protected those little girls.
Ash
His duty. And nobody protected her. And his duty as a husband was to protect his wife and his children at all costs, and he didn't. So why are taxpayer dollars.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Protecting him.
Elena
Exactly.
Ash
Why?
Elena
Why? Why?
Ash
I don't want to. I mean, I'm not in Colorado, but
Elena
I don't want to pay for that.
Ash
Yeah, nobody should pay for that.
Elena
No.
Ash
Give him one. Give him one day out. It'll be fine.
Elena
Give him a day he deserves, you know, that's all.
Ash
Let karma serve its purpose.
Elena
Yeah. Just let the. Let the chips fall where they may, you know, that's all I have to say. Judge Marcelo Copcow shared everybody's outrage and disgust with Chris Watts. He said, this is perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of the thousands of cases I've seen. Can't even imagine nothing less than a maximum sentence would be appropriate. And with that, he sentenced Chris Watts to three life terms for the murders and an additional 84 years for the other crimes. So this fucker is spending three life sentences plus 84 years.
Ash
I honestly, like. Part of me hopes that he lives such a long life.
Elena
Yeah. And I hope he thinks about it every day.
Ash
Absolutely terrorized. Because he doesn't get to. He doesn't deserve to get to move on to the afterlife anytime soon and
Elena
be rid of this. No. And before Chris was removed to begin serving his sentence, the families of both Chris and Shannan were given the opportunity to speak. These ones are rough, but I feel like they're important.
Ash
They're heavy, but, yeah, their words should be said.
Elena
So Frankie Shannan's brother said, honestly, this one really gets me. We beg the district attorney to spare your life because we believe no one has the right to take the life of another, even someone like you. Why? Why would you do this? You don't deserve to be called a man. What part of it. What kind of person slaughters the people who love him the most? Did you really think you'd get away with this? Did you really think that this was your best option? To throw away your family like they were garbage? They deserve better, and you know it. I hope you spend the rest of your life staring at the ceiling every night, being haunted by what you've done. You took away my family from this earth, but you can never take them from my heart. This is the part that really kills me. You took away my privilege of being an uncle to the most precious little girls I had ever known. That always gets me.
Ash
Yeah, of course. It's like, I'm so glad that. That they got to say exactly what they wanted to him, though. And who knows how it impacted him, because I don't know if he's even impactable.
Elena
But I hope it him up.
Ash
I hope it did.
Elena
Her father, Frank Jun Sr. Said, I trusted you to take care of them, not kill them. And they also trusted you, you heartless monster. You have to live with this vision every day of your life. And I hope you see it every time you close your eyes at night. Night. Now. In her statement, Cindy Watts, Chris's mother, barely worth reading. Sorrow for Everything. And she said, as your mother, I have always loved you, and I still do. I hate what has happened, but we will remain faithful as your family. We love you and forgive you, son.
Ash
It's so bad that you have to say what has happened?
Elena
You didn't even say what you've done. Use. Use a. More like. Not passive terms. Don't make it passive, like he didn't have something to do with it. What has happened? Nothing happened, babe. Nothing happened.
Ash
I hate that you have done this
Elena
to our family, murdered his family. Also you want to say, I will always love you because I'm your mother. Yeah, I get it. I will always love my kids. I don't care. Like, no matter what.
Ash
Of course.
Elena
But to sit there and say what happened, like, he didn't do it, and also to say, I forgive you. No one gives a shit that you stand in front of her family and say that you forgive the guy who
Ash
murdered their daughter, who you didn't like, and continue to disparage and continue to
Elena
say you don't like.
Ash
We can't get too far into that. Because I'll get heated.
Elena
Yeah. I'll get, like, super pissed. But there's. She's done plenty of interviews that say how she felt about Shannan since Shanann has been murdered. Yeah.
Ash
One thing I have to say is I don't understand how she didn't get up there Like, I don't have children, so I don't know how I feel, how I will feel, like.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Or how I would feel in this situation, but I feel like you could have gotten up there and said, I will. I'm your mother. I still love you, but I'm ashamed of you.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
Because I think you can still love somebody. Like, of course that doesn't go away, but you can be ashamed. And that one thing I believe is that that woman should be ashamed of her son.
Elena
Well, then here's what I think should have happened. Don't say anything. Yeah. Sit down. Yeah. And, hey, continue to not say anything. That's my advice.
Ash
Stop calling the media.
Elena
Stop speaking about it. Yeah. Because no one wants to hear his family's side of it. Nope, don't talk about it like that.
Ash
It'd be different. It would be different if their reactions were different.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
But we need to move on.
Elena
Yeah, I know. I don't want to get too far into it, but I do want to end those statements with Sandy, who is shenanigans mother, she said. And this proves that the mask dropped. We loved you like a son. We trusted you. Your faithful wife trusted you. Your children adored you. And they also trusted you. Your daughter, Bella Marie, sang a song proudly. I don't know if you got to see it, but it was, daddy, you're my hero. I have no idea who gave you the right to take their lives, but I know God and his mighty angels were there at that moment to bring them home to Paradise Place. After everyone had been given the opportunity to speak, the judge instructed the deputies to take Chris out of that courtroom, get him and deliver him into the custody of the Colorado State Prison system, where he was going to begin serving
Ash
a sentence, where he was going to begin rotting.
Elena
But a few months later, Chris was transferred to Dodge Correctional Facility in Wisconsin after prison officials in Colorado became concerned for his safety. Safety?
Ash
He wasn't concerned with anybody else's safety, so why waste the money?
Elena
He should be concerned for his safety every second of every day. Yeah. For no one majority of his life. He remains there to this day and is unlikely to be released. And like I said, just to remind you, he's scared shitless for his life every second of every day. He barely sees sunlight. He's in isolation. His life is miserable.
Ash
And that's how it should be.
Elena
He also recently, as recent as last year, 2025, he wrote a letter to God. He's found religion.
Ash
Honey, if God's around, he's not listening to your dumbass he does not like
Elena
your ass, I can tell you that much. He wrote a letter to God where he blamed women and mainly his mistress Nicole for what happened.
Ash
Nice.
Elena
He said that she tempted him. Oh. Because he's a little sniveling Shipburg with no self control. Yeah, yeah.
Ash
Awesome.
Elena
Yeah, yeah, totally. I. He wrote, I was misled. I was tempted by a harlot. I was weak and I allowed myself to be fooled by an evil woman. She led me from the path of righteousness. I know that you will deal with her someday. She will be judged. You know my heart, Lord. I am a man after your heart. I seek your face. I allowed her to sway me. He also completely blamed just women for everything. He called women harlots, Jezebels, whores. Okay. It's all their fault.
Ash
It seems like he's really adjusting.
Elena
He was cheating on his pregnant wife and then murdered them all in cold blood. But like, yeah, it's women's.
Ash
Yeah, totally.
Elena
That's nice. Should have known it when he looked at that police officer and said, because women. Yeah. Honestly, when it made no sense. There is also a paranormal aspect to this case which I'm not going to get super into. There's only a couple that I just wanted to point out because they are the only ones that I was not able to immediately be like, well, maybe it's this, you know? So there's there's like two things. So there's one. Sandy Shannan's mom received a text message after all this from an unknown number saying that the back door of your deceased daughter's house is open. And she responded, who is this? And they never responded.
Ash
Like, that's up.
Elena
So the police were called to go check. The door was closed, but the screen door was open, which is weird. And the garage light was on. And there's no. It's not motion, nothing like that. It's like it was on.
Ash
Like you have to be in the garage.
Elena
So they were confused by all this, but seemed like no one had broken in. Nothing else they could figure out at least. And then later in the same day, Nate, the neighbor who like saved us all with the surveillance video, right. He said that he got so other neighbors had told him that they were seeing lights going on in that house. And so he said he looked at the surveillance video and he saw a dark haired woman walk up to the front door. Oh.
Ash
And not walk out so many times. And it chills me to record every time.
Elena
And she never walked out. So the police showed up again. They couldn't find anybody, but there were lights on. And when they went in there, they said, like, a cabinet was opened, but that's it. And, like, they couldn't figure out anything else. It didn't look like anything was, like, ransacked or taken.
Ash
And there's no footage of the woman leaving.
Elena
Yeah. And that footage isn't released. They won't release it.
Ash
It's like, maybe she went out the back.
Elena
You would. I think you would see, though, you.
Ash
Oh, okay.
Elena
Because the door. And the door was locked. Oh, yeah. I don't know. So, like, chilling and then, like, I think the garage. The alarm was set. And when they talked to Shannan's father, he was like, I didn't set the alarm when I left last because there's
Ash
nobody in the house.
Elena
Like they do. Why? He literally. He's like, there's nothing worth protecting in that house anymore. So why is the alarm set and who said it? Yeah, like, it's very strange. And why it's very strange. Yeah. I don't know. And then there's two other things. There's. There's body cam footage from afterwards with the canine unit.
Ash
This is the part that messes me up.
Elena
And when they're walking into Shanann's closet, you hear a very distinct giggle. Like a child's giggle. Loud. Very loud. Very distinctive. It actually startles the officers. They all hear it. They all discuss it.
Ash
They try to recreate it.
Elena
They try to recreate it. They're all very frazzled by it. They can't recreate it. They don't know where it came from. It's very spooky.
Ash
One of them won't even go back in the closet.
Elena
Yeah. It's, like, clearly freaked out by it. And then the second one is the one that really chills my bones, because,
Ash
honestly, with that first one, I hope that's because I. Yeah, exactly. I hope it's residual energy because I really hope that, like, whatever their family believed in, like, Sandy said she hopes they're in paradise. I hope that's exactly where they are.
Elena
Yeah. To not like.
Ash
Like, I don't want to believe. And I honestly don't believe that they're stuck in that house.
Elena
No, I don't believe that either. I think, if anything, this was residual. I think this stuff, too, was as they were missing. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. So it was right after. And I wonder if it's just a burst of residual stuff. But they go into the main bedroom at one point, and you can hear this breathy whispering voice say, this is our home.
Ash
And it sounds like it's in, like, despair.
Elena
Yeah, it sounds like a very sad. Like, this is our home, like, and it says it, like, so sad. And it's. And it's so clear. It is. And it's just like. I don't know what it is, but regardless of what it is, it's spooky. And it's. I don't know if it's just energy that, like, was. Because I was gnarly energy in that house right then, so. But it's very spooky. A lot of people talk about it. It's worth noting. Yeah. But, yeah, that. That is the story of Chris Watts. And it's even more horrifying than I initially thought it would be somehow. Yeah.
Ash
Honestly.
Elena
And again, I just feel so sorry for anybody who knew them who has to live this every day. I know. But I also want to make sure that his version of the story is dispelled as often as humanly possible.
Ash
Seriously. Because he's a monster. And I am happy to never think
Elena
of him again because also, he likes to, like, spin the story of, like, Shanann being domineering and almost tries to pin it on that, like, well, she was just a hard woman to live with. And it's like, first of all, none of her friends say that. Everyone who knows her says that she was great. And it's like. And two, even if she was domineering, get divorced first. That still doesn't mean you kill her. Like, that's so, like, I. I hate that too, because it's like, it just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with anything.
Ash
There's just no excuse.
Elena
Yeah. There's no excuse for it. But, yeah, it's a horrifying story, and I never want to talk about it again.
Ash
Let's, as a palette cleanser, get to the fun fact part of the show.
Elena
Yeah.
Ash
To end this, I feel like we all need this fun fact.
Elena
I desperately need it.
Ash
Birds get drunk on fermented berries, particularly in the late winter and early spring, because thawing and freezing causes the berries to ferment.
Elena
I. You had used this one yesterday, and it was so welcome. Yeah, I love that.
Ash
It's very prevalent in the spring.
Elena
In fact, I love that a lot. Yeah. Because good for them.
Ash
We might have seen a drunk bird today, actually.
Elena
They're just out there popping bottles.
Ash
You never know.
Elena
Yeah. I saw a bird that. That. That flew. I was in the drive thru and it flew onto a branch, but the branch wasn't like heavy enough to support it. So it had like a weird stumble moment and then jumped on a regular branch and I was like, oh, man, I bet he's so embarrassed, and I hope he's not.
Ash
She's like, I hope nobody saw.
Elena
I was like, I'm not judging you. We've all been there. But yeah, that was a good, fun fact. Yeah. I love birds. Yeah.
Ash
All right.
Elena
We hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird.
Ash
And that's it.
Elena
Not that weird, man. Sam.
Ash
Out on the road, it's nice to
Elena
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Ash
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Elena
Then you can spend those points at Love's just like cash. So every stop is even more rewarding. Download the app today and watch the
Ash
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Elena
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Hosts: Ash Kelley & Alaina Urquhart
Date: May 11, 2026
SUMMARY BY SEGMENT
This emotionally grueling episode dives into the aftermath of the Watts Family Murders, focusing on the investigation, Chris Watts’ chilling demeanor, and the reactions of investigators, friends, and family. Ash and Alaina combine methodical research with empathetic commentary and occasional dark humor to process a truly horrific case of family annihilation.
[02:40-07:36]
[07:36-10:48]
[09:09-11:45]
[13:04-14:57]
[15:05-18:30]
“He took the mask off. It didn’t slip. It didn’t fall down. He took it off and he launched it into the ocean. It was gone.” – Alaina [16:11]
[35:40-40:56]
“My body would not be able to form a smile during my family being missing. It just wouldn’t.” – Alaina [37:32]
[43:02-47:52]
[29:35-36:32 & Throughout]
“He’s not even worth the molecules that build his body.” – Alaina [23:36]
[86:11-91:36]
[81:44-85:43, 105:00-110:12]
[91:36-100:38]
[130:17-136:11]
[136:36-139:14]
[140:02-142:36]
[142:42-147:11]
“He had 45 minutes in the car with Bella and Celeste alive to change his mind while driving them.” – Elena [21:58]
“He is diabolically stupid. Anybody who says this man was smart... If you blew in one of his ears and there was a candle at the other one, you’d blow the candle out.” – Alaina [31:29]
“My body would not be able to form a smile during my family being missing. It just wouldn’t.” – Alaina [37:32]
“He can’t even kind—he doesn’t even stumble into humaning at any point...” – Alaina [112:21]
“He’s a monster. He’s a disgusting, irredeemable, monstrous piece of shit. And if there is a hell, he will see it.” – Alaina [120:18]
[148:14-149:11]
End of Summary.