Episode 373 - Chris Watts Case | Tragedy & Haunting Aftermath

Summary

Two Girls One Ghost – Episode 373: Chris Watts Case | Tragedy & Haunting Aftermath Released: May 17, 2026 | Hosts: Corinne Vien & Sabrina Deana-Roga

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Episode Overview

This especially heavy and emotionally charged episode of Two Girls One Ghost centers on the infamous 2018 Chris Watts family murders in Frederick, Colorado. Hosts Corinne and Sabrina first discuss light, uplifting topics—mainly a travel recap—before pivoting sharply into an in-depth recounting of the Watts family tragedy, highlighting not only the shocking, heartbreaking details but also the haunting paranormal events reported after the murders. True to the podcast’s style, they conclude with a moving listener story of a protective spirit to balance the emotional weight.

Content warnings: Domestic violence, child murder, graphic details of violence, discussion of real trauma.

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Key Discussion Points & Episode Structure

I. Iceland Travel Recap (00:01–10:25)

• Corinne recounts her recent Iceland trip: Seeing Northern Lights, experiencing extreme cold, and sampling Icelandic food (“Nutella waffle was the best part” – Corinne, 03:22).
• Tips for travelers: Always pack more layers than you expect, regardless of season.
• Funny anecdotes: Passing famous sites like the Reykjavik Penis Museum and tomato farm stops.
• Both hosts discuss the beauty and challenges of Iceland, from heated sidewalks to high prices.

II. Emotional Tone Shift & Content Warning (10:28–11:00)

• Sabrina signals a pivot to a very dark case, warning listeners: “There will be a lot of anger from us” (10:47).
• Corinne adds: “Please listen with care” (10:40).

III. The Watts Family: Background & Timeline (11:01–28:03)

Setting the Stage

• Shanann Watts: Outgoing, warm, vibrant, openly shared her life and motherhood struggles on social media, lived with lupus. (18:54–19:24)
• Chris Watts: Reserved, described by his family as gentle and nonviolent, but found to be passive/unmotivated in marriage. (22:55–23:05)
• Financial strains: Bankruptcy in 2015 after Cece’s birth increased household tension.

Relationship Breakdown

• Chris complains about feeling “controlled”; Chris and Shanann’s roles felt unbalanced, but friends viewed them as compatible.
• Shanann’s intuitive sense that Chris is pulling away; she documents concerns in texts to friends.

IV. 2018: The Affair, Shanann’s Growing Fears (28:04–40:29)

• Shanann leaves for six weeks in North Carolina with daughters Bella & Cece.
• Chris meets coworker Nicole Kessinger and begins an affair. They use a secret calculator app to hide communication.
• Shanann, sensing something is wrong, cuts her trip short.
  • Notable text (35:55): Shanann to Chris: “I don’t know how you fell out of love with me in five and a half weeks… You don’t plan to have another baby if you’re not in love.”
• Chris rebuffs couples counseling and discards a relationship book unseen.
• Warning signs and final acts: Shanann writes a heartbreaking letter (40:30).

V. The Murders – Timeline and Details (41:13–58:51)

The Night of the Crime

• Shanann returns home at 2 a.m., visibly tired and pregnant. Last seen alive by her friend Nicole (41:15, 41:45).
• Confession: Chris strangles Shanann after admitting to the affair; he claims “there was already something in my mind that was implanted, that I was gonna do it… I had no control over it.” (43:06)
• Chilling revelation (43:56): Chris had secretly been giving Shanann Oxycontin for weeks to end her pregnancy.
• Horrific aftermath:
  • Bella, age 4, discovers her mother’s body (“What’s wrong with Mommy?”).
  • Chris smothers both daughters, disposing of their bodies in oil tanks and burying Shanann, still in her bedsheets, in a shallow grave. Cece’s body is forced through an 8-inch opening (46:55–47:55).
  • Bella’s last words, fighting for her life: “Daddy, no.” (47:58)
• Sabrina: “He looks into his children’s eyes...” (49:13)

VI. Investigation, Arrest, and Trial (50:01–65:10)

• Blunders and evidence: Chris is caught on neighbor’s camera loading the truck in the early morning with a dark shape (53:10).
• Interviewed by media, Chris begs for his family’s return.
• Polygraph and false confession to police; ultimately arrested for Shanann and the girls’ murders.
• The recovery of bodies: Details of the gravesite and tanks (56:12–58:17), and powerful quote from sentencing: “Perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of thousands of cases...” (58:02)
• Nicole Kessinger’s role: She comes forward to investigators when Chris acts disturbingly unconcerned; her Google searches become subject to speculation (“Can cops trace text messages?”, “Do people hate Amber Frey?”, “Wedding dresses...”) (61:25–61:46).

VII. Aftermath and Sentencing (65:10–80:10)

• Chris pleads guilty; avoids the death penalty at Shanann’s family’s request (64:24).
• Sentenced to three life sentences without parole, plus decades of additional time (65:10).
• The house stands vacant, unsold for years due to its notoriety (78:24).
• Shanann’s family asks the public not to grieve passively, but to support domestic violence prevention and believe women who sense danger (79:30).

VIII. Paranormal Activity: Hauntings and Afterlife Communication (67:35–77:07)

• Body cam footage captured multiple oddities during the investigation, leading to public speculation about paranormal events.
  • A childlike figure appears in the girls’ corridor, debunked as Nicole Atkinson’s daughter (68:47).
  • Unexplained shadow descends stairs (69:11)
  • Giggle caught on tape: Officers stop and acknowledge it live (“Did you hear that? What was that?” – 70:48)
  • EVPs captured: “Get out. Alive,” moaning, and sounds echoing voices familiar to the house (73:11).
• Chris reportedly tells pen pals in prison that his daughters’ ghosts visit and torment him (74:28).
• Neighbors later report lights and sightings in the empty home.

IX. Reflections on Violence, Crime, and Humanity (77:13–80:10)

• Hosts discuss the chilling reality that humans can be more horrifically evil than imagined monsters or demons (49:30).
• Broader discussion on the lack of effective interventions in domestic violence cases (“...until something happens, we can’t do something. But when that thing happen[s], it’s already too late.” – 80:52).

X. Heartwarming Listener Story: “Grandpa Heron” (82:33–88:27)

Listener Amy recounts supernatural protection and love:

• Living in an old Maine farmhouse with dangerous stairs, Amy’s daughter is miraculously kept from falling as a baby.
• Years later, the daughter inexplicably learns to tie her shoes and says, “Grandpa Heron with the dark wrinkly skin showed me.”
• Amy realizes this matches the description of her husband’s late grandfather Harrison, unknown to her daughter.
• Corinne: “He’s like, ‘I’m not here for them. I’m here for the baby. I’m here for the wee child.’” (86:37)
• Amy retells the story: “He kept me from falling down the stairs when I was a baby.” (85:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I’ve never bawled like I’ve bawled while researching and writing this, and I could not get a grip.” – Corinne (10:50)
• “It’s mind boggling anyone could get away with a crime these days.” – Sabrina (16:04)
• “Anyone who can hurt a child—gone.” – Corinne (26:55)
• “I hate him so much.” – Sabrina on Chris Watts (41:04)
• “Daddy, no.” – Bella (47:58)
• “People are a million times worse than demons.” – Sabrina (49:34)
• “You are nothing but pure love. Always caring for everyone. You will always be daddy’s little girl.” – Shanann’s father Frank at the funeral (58:52)
• “Please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline: [phone].” – Corinne (81:01)
• “The ghost of my great grandpa taught me to tie my shoes.” – Sabrina, riffing off Amy’s listener story (87:44)

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Key Timestamps

• Iceland trip recap: 01:22–10:25
• Content warning & case intro: 10:28–11:01
• Watts family background: 18:54–23:05
• Chris meets Nicole Kessinger: 31:02–33:20
• Shanann’s final days & texts: 35:41–40:30
• Description of murders: 41:15–47:58
• Discovery and recovery of bodies: 56:12–58:17
• Sentencing: 64:24–65:10
• Paranormal activity/Evidence: 67:35–77:07
• Amy’s listener story: 82:33–88:27

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Tone & Style

• Deeply empathetic, shocked, and openly emotional, with both hosts expressing anger, grief, and confusion over the monstrous nature of the crime. (“I know that I shouldn’t wish death on people, but for him, 100%.” – Corinne, 25:53)
• The episode maintains the duo’s casual, conversational style, using humor and gentle banter for levity where possible, but never at the expense of victims.
• A strong focus on believing victims, the importance of support, and honoring the memory of those lost.

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Resources Mentioned

• Netflix Documentary: “American Murder: The Family Next Door”
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: [phone] / thehotline.org

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For full context on the crime, paranormal aftermath, and a moving closing story, this episode offers both the hard truths and humanity at the heart of tragedy—see section headings for where to skip to topics if you wish to avoid graphic content.

Transcript

[A]

Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories. And the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the love hypothesis, Sterling point and more slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Very spooky.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Hi, everyone.

[B]

This is two girls, one ghost. Two girls, one ghost.

[A]

We are your ghostesses. That's Corinne. Hello, I'm Sabrina. And I realized I never talked about Iceland.

[B]

Oh, yeah, you didn't.

[A]

We just kind of just.

[B]

You and I talked into the recording.

[A]

Yeah. Because I really. Because people were asking about it on my Instagram when I had posted a couple of things and I was like, oh, I'll talk about on the podcast.

[B]

You asked for recommendations too originally, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You saw the northern lights.

[A]

That was the coolest thing in the world. We can put a video in the beginning here. Oh, my God. I was in such shock watching, like, we watched the northern lights dance.

[B]

Yeah. What's better, honestly, than the northern lights in the video is your reaction to it. Like, you're like, oh, my God. You're like laughing. Like you can just tell how.

[A]

Yeah, it's me, my mom, my sister.

[B]

Blown. You guys are.

[A]

Oh. Cause it was. It was wild.

[B]

Yeah. And.

[A]

Cause prior to that moment one, it was freezing, like, so goddamn cold that I was like, I don't know how long I can stay out here. Because you go out really late at night too. Like, we were out until like 2am and the first couple of times, like, yes, it was really, really pretty. But you could really only kind of see the colors in the sky. But you could see it better on your phone.

[B]

Right?

[A]

But then this moment when it was dancing, it literally felt like aliens were coming down. I. The first thing I thought was, wow, it's like Disney Fantasia.

[B]

Sometimes I look at northern lights cameras because I have an app to track the northern lights on my phone. So that when they come here every once in a while, I can see. But it's not like there's no dancing when they're here. I've never seen that. So cool.

[A]

So we'll put the little video into this episode. It was a really cool trip. Physically, very cool.

[B]

Cold. Did you get ice cream?

[A]

We got one. But I will say the Nutella waffle was the best part. The food in Iceland. I am not a foodie. I like what I like. I. I like hyper fixate on certain meals and I eat that until I literally get nauseous thinking about it. But the food in Iceland was so good.

[B]

Yeah, it is so good.

[A]

There was not a single thing. And we're vegetarians. There's not a single thing that we had that we were not happy with. Except for grilled cheese at like a random little like tourist site that we got.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But otherwise everything was so good.

[B]

Oh my gosh. And it's like kind of trendy. Like the places are very aesthet. Aesthetically beautiful. The restaurants.

[A]

Yeah. Reykjavik was very cool. There was a lot of like bad weather. So there were a couple of days that we had things planned like snowmobiling that everything got canceled because the roads, like, I don't know how. I don't think they plow like. Like, how do you get around?

[B]

Yeah. I don't know. In Reykjavik at least they have heated sidewalks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So everything smell like ice. Yeah. On the sidewalks.

[A]

But it was really, really cool. And we went and saw like glaciers and ice caves. It was really cool.

[B]

Did you walk by the Penis Museum in Reykjavik?

[A]

We walked past it, so I stayed

[B]

at the hostel across from it. So that was like my very first impression. Good morning, Iceland. When I got there, I like checked in and looked outside and I was like, oh, that's the neighborhood. Rise and shine. Rise and shine.

[A]

Grab your coffee and stare at the penis Museum. One thing that I really wish that we had done and we didn't get the time to do. And also my mom wanted to do it with me, but my sister had absolutely no interest. Was Snorkel the Continental Divide. Oh, yeah.

[B]

I would have no interest too, because it's scary and people have died there. Diving. Yeah.

[A]

Scuba diving. But like snorkeling. And apparently the water is like so beautiful and clear.

[B]

Yeah. But right now you're literally freaking freezing.

[A]

Well, you get like, like all the like heavy duty gear.

[B]

Enough to do it right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The dead of winter. Damn.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

See, we were cold and I went in August.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or whatever. So I can't even imagine going in.

[A]

Yeah. Anyone is going. No matter what time of year you're going, pack extra layers. More layers than you think you need. Like, you layer up when you're skiing. You need more layers than that.

[B]

Yeah. I wore a winter coat and hat when I went. Yeah. In the dead of summer, so.

[A]

Yeah, it's a very, very cold place.

[B]

Did you go to see the Continental Divide?

[A]

So the day that everything got canceled was the day we were supposed to see it.

[B]

Mm. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. And then we. Cause we drove to this area called Yokelsarlin, which is a five hour drive, and we were supposed to spend two nights there. And we got there, and we were spending one night there. And as we were there, they were like, tomorrow night there's supposed to be, like, a massive snowstorm. So, like, Thursday morning was supposed to be a massive snowstorm. And our flight was on Friday. We were supposed to drive back to Reykjavik on Thursday, and we were like, we have the drive back on Wednesday. So there were like, just so many things that you had. You're at the whims of nature when you're in Iceland. Yeah, it was a very cool, very cool experience.

[B]

Amazing. Yeah. I do remember when. Because the Continental Divide was like a stop on one of the tours that Marissa and I did when we went years ago. But there were so many, like, Game of Thrones tours going on there because that was one of the filming locations. So it's just like all these Game of Thrones super fans.

[A]

Yep. There's a beach that we went to on our drive to Yokelsarland. It's like, right next to Vik. Vik, that town with the church where you're like, oh, my friends, I think got married there.

[B]

You took a picture of a church, and I was like, I swear to God, I've seen that church in wedding photos before. Because I know someone who got married in Iceland in this, like, cute little church.

[A]

Probably looks like that. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Also maybe every church looks like that. I don't know. Could have not.

[A]

Where I took that picture from was called, like, Black sand beach where Game of Thrones was filmed.

[B]

Oh, cool.

[A]

Yeah. And then the tomato farm. It was the coolest thing. There's this little tomato farm. It's kind of in the Golden Circle area. And because the day we were supposed to do the whole Golden Circle, see the Continental Divide, that tour got canceled. The day we were driving to Yokelsarland, we kind of stopped. We drove a little bit out of the way to go see the Geysers. My mom really wanted to see the geysers. Underwhelming, but cool in concept.

[B]

Also just scary to be, like, near.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But also crazy geyser water because you could die.

[A]

Well, and it's the fact that all of Iceland's like a volcano or a glacier, and the geysers are literally hot lava, like, releasing the gases.

[B]

Did you go to the geothermal, like, museum or. It's not really a museum. It's like the plant.

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, it's like, not for. I swear. It's only like 20 minutes outside of Reykjavik or something.

[A]

Probably Marissa and I went.

[B]

Did a little nerdy tour. Oh, my God. It was like, I can't even repeat anything that I learned from there. But it was unreal how they harness all of the energy to, like, power basically everything. Everything.

[A]

Literally everything.

[B]

And you're learning this and you're like, number one, how the did we learn to do this? And number two, why is this knowledge not applied everywhere that this exists? Like in. In the earth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it just makes you realize how shady some other countries can be, to be fair.

[A]

Also, they have to do that because there's nothing else to rely on. In Iceland, like, you are isolated, you are alone.

[B]

But it was. It was. I was mind blown. Yeah. And the person giving me the tour, I was like, you are 100 times smarter than me and you're just giving a tour. Right. Like, this is insane. Yeah.

[A]

No, it was a very cool place. It is so expensive. So know that before you go. And then. Yeah, the tomato.

[B]

If you want to go to a gastro pub, make sure to read the

[A]

menu first because often it just means strange food.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, wait. The tomato farm, did it have tomatoes?

[A]

It was a whole tomato farm.

[B]

Like, I'm so confused because you were there in the dead of winter.

[A]

So it's a bunch of greenhouses.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And they grow tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries. I think a couple of other things. They supply all of the. I think it's in Greenland. Has never been able to, like, grow. I think it's strawberries or blueberries, one of the two. So they supply all of it to Greenland.

[B]

Oh, to their neighbor's Greenland.

[A]

Yeah. But it's like all these greenhouses and they have a restaurant in one and then they have this, like, bistro in another. So cool. You walk in, it smells like tomatoes. Their menus are very tomato themed, like the tomato soup.

[B]

Did you find all of this stuff on your own or were these, like.

[A]

These are recommendations. People recommended these to us or to me. Yeah.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This makes me want to go back.

[A]

I know. I don't think I'll ever go back. Like, it is one of those, like, I feel like I saw most of the things. Like I'm bummed I didn't get to do the Continental Divide, but it was so cold and I'm glad I went. But I feel like there's also so many other places in the world that I would want to go see before going back there.

[B]

True. I also feel like seasonally you might have a different experience too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because I feel like there's things that you got to do that like, were not an option for me when I went and probably vice versa.

[A]

Vice versa.

[B]

Yeah. Damn.

[A]

It was.

[B]

What a cool experience.

[A]

Loved it.

[B]

Well, that was our upper for this episode.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Because we're about to take a downer Content WARNING this episode contains detailed descriptions of abuse, domestic violence, murder of children, just general violence. So please listen with care and will

[A]

be a lot of anger from us.

[B]

Yeah, and I told you that I. I've never bawled like I've bald while researching. Researching and writing and I could not like get a grip. I think I have no tears left to cry. We'll see. I might be able to bring mess again by the end, but we're going to talk about a case that many of us might be familiar with. It's a little more close to home. And it really started on the morning of August 13, 2018. A Monday morning in Frederick, Colorado. The sun is coming up over the Colorado plains, hitting the quiet suburb of beige houses and wide streets. A neighborhood where you know your neighbors. The kids are outside, they're riding their bikes. Everyone is hanging out, dropping off casseroles when someone has a baby, that sort of thing. The dream A perfect place to have a family. At 2825 Saratoga Trail, there's a five bedroom house. It's a very nice house. A baby swing in the backyard, a dog named Dieter, drawings on the fridge, tiny shoes by the door. Everything looks as it's supposed to. Everything looks perfect. But just a few hours before, at 1:48am a car pulled up to the house. Shanann Watts climbed out, exhausted. Fifteen weeks pregnant, she'd been on a business trip in Arizona and she was finally home. Her friend Nicole, who picked her up from the airport, hugs her, has her get out of the car and watches Shanann walk up to the door. A good friend, right? Like she's dropping her off in the middle of the night.

[A]

Make sure that she to picture her from the airport. Like, yeah, yeah, great Friends.

[B]

Great friend. They are best friends. And Nicole will play a larger part later too.

[A]

Can I say one thing about you that I admire so much?

[B]

What Is.

[A]

Anytime I came to visit you prior to living here, you always, except for when I arrived at like 6am, you always picked me up from the airport.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Like that's friendship now that I don't live very close. You don't, but.

[B]

Well, no, it's not. It's not proximity wise now. It's that I have a child.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because one time, it was during COVID Marissa came to visit and we had already pre planned when she was coming, but it was like a few months into Covid, but I was up in Vermont and she had tickets in and out of Boston and I was like, don't worry, I have nothing to do. I just drove three and a half hours.

[A]

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah.

[B]

Oh man. I can't say when you're a kid, it changes things.

[A]

Well, I can't say I am that person, I say. And I get that from my family because my family is not a drive you to the airport, pick you up from the airport.

[B]

Anyway, Nicole is the friend who goes and gets her pregnant friend in the middle of the night. So we're happy. Happy about that.

[A]

We like her.

[B]

She watches her friend Shanann walk through the door safely. Is home. A few hours later, when the sun is rising, Nicole is getting ready. She's supposed to accompany Shanann again to an OB appointment. She's been to a few before because she's a great friend. So she calls Shanann, but there's no answer. She texts Shannan, but there's no answer. Okay. She just came back from a business trip. She's back with her family. Like, she might be super tired, but this is so unlike her. She's never missed an OB appointment. She doesn't not respond. She's very active on like social media, on her phone, communicating with friends. So even though there can be all of these excuses as to why she's not responding, it's still concerning. Right. By 9:00am, Nicole knows that there has to be something wrong. And so she drives over to her friend's house, she rings the doorbell and there's nothing. She peers through the windows and she can see Shanann's favorite shoes sitting by the door. She sees her friend Shanann's car in the garage. She calls, she calls, she calls. Nothing. No answer. Every single time. So now she's like, I'm not hesitating, I'm calling the police. We're Having like a welfare check. Something is wrong. She's literally kid just seen her hours before.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Officers show up. And then minutes after the officers show up, Shanann's husband, Chris Watts, pulls up in his work truck, fresh from a shift at the oil field. He seems calm, very measured. And when questioned about his wife's whereabouts, he says that earlier in the wee hours of the morning, they had this, like, emotional conversation, like bordering on a fight. It was basically like a disagreement and that she was like, I'm taking the kids and leaving the house. So Chris said basically that he didn't know exactly where she went. He presumed to a friend's house, but that she wasn't there and the kids weren't there either, and that it was due to their fight in the morning. But her car's still in the driveway or in the garage.

[A]

And she hasn't told her best friend.

[B]

Yeah, it seems like all of her belongings, like, just like the basics you would need to leave the house are all right there. So it doesn't make total sense. And then the neighbor across the street seeing this sort of commotion, seeing what's going on, he. He's like, hey, I have a security camera outside of my house. And it picks up their house, the Watts house. I can put the. Roll the footage back for the police and we can look for anything that might have happened between when Nicole dropped off Shanann and her being missing right now. The footage rolls, and the only person who ever left that house after Shanann had walked into the door was Chris Watts.

[A]

And it was like, thank God for neighborhood footage like, or security systems in general. It is healthy cases.

[B]

Yeah, no, totally. It's. It's like, it almost is mind boggling that anyone could get away with a crime these days.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Just because of how much evidence there is. Like, that's why I feel like some disappearances of people where it's like last seen on this video camera, like running off in this direction into a field. You're like, how. Right? How is that the last time there's so much footage? There's.

[A]

You're thinking of Lars Metanophysis or just

[B]

like even the background of like, people. Like, there's gotta be something. There's evidence of something.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it doesn't always get pieced together. In this case, it wasn't just neighbors and friends providing evidence to help Shanann and her two kids be found. Police body cam footage would later reveal numerous messages from Shanann and her daughters, Bella and Cece. Messages sent from beyond the grave. I already have chills again.

[A]

See, this is a part of the case I had no idea about.

[B]

Yeah. That's the only reason I'm covering it. I never would have touched something that happened so soon and is so tragic.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And like, I, like, still feel kind of icky about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But there's a lot of paranormal activity that came out after everything happened.

[A]

Body cam footage.

[B]

This is the case of the Watts family.

[A]

And if. What's the Netflix documentary like? America.

[B]

Hold on. I wrote it down at the very end because there's multiple documentaries. The Netflix one is American the Family Next Door. Yeah. And that's actually where a lot of the paranormal evidence was first seen.

[A]

Oh, interesting.

[B]

They didn't cover the paranormal evidence. Right.

[A]

It's just in it. And they didn't.

[B]

People watching were like, what was that?

[A]

Oh, this case is really heartbreaking.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

Grab your stuffed animal.

[B]

Grab, like whatever comfort item you can.

[A]

Weighted blanket or like.

[B]

I understand if you don't want to listen to this one because it really is tragic and it's a little different from what we normally do.

[A]

I did pick an uplifting, heartwarming listener story to wrap us up at the end of this.

[B]

Yeah. We start with tomato farms and we end with uplifting ghostly tales. All right, so before meeting Chris, Shanann grew up in Aberdeen, North Carolina, in a very close knit family. Her two loving parents and her brother Frankie. And pretty much from day one, her personality was very loud. She was very loving. She was very enthusiastic about, like, absolutely everything. So she had that energy that pulled you in. So she had a lot of friends. And also, I didn't include this in my research, but she was really big on Facebook, like posting videos. I think she was totally like the person that now would be like, on Facebook live. Oh, yeah, I'm at so and so's birthday party and, like narrating it. So people felt very invested in her life, even if they weren't close friends, because she just shared so much about, like, her children and her life and things that would come. So she was always this very personable, very easy to connect with. Very kind and loving friend.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So this is who she was. But that doesn't mean that her life didn't come without some struggles. Shanann was diagnosed with lupus at a very young age, which is an autoimmune disease that can be very debilitating.

[A]

Isn't that what Selena Gomez has?

[B]

Selena Gomez has. Yep. And she had to be very careful about what she ate, careful about stress, careful in ways that a lot of People her age were not thinking about at such a young age. And also as a young, young adult, she was kind of having moments of financial struggle, which is as many people do. Yeah.

[A]

Especially in this day and age.

[B]

Guilty of spending my last $30 on a sound bath one time and then not eating for a couple days. Yeah. Priorities. When Shanann was just about 30, she met Christopher Watts. Wow. I said that. Weird. Cause I was gonna say Chris Watts, and then I was like, I'll say his full name.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And two years later, they married, they packed up their life, and they moved to Colorado. They moved to Colorado because Chris had taken a job with Anadarko Petroleum, which was one of the biggest oil and gas companies operating in the state. And it was very good, stable work. And they were like, sure. Big skies, wide roads, Colorado, living, clean air.

[A]

Colorado has the most sun, like, days of sunlight in the US which is

[B]

so wild because you would like, I would have guessed Florida or something like that. Colorado, Colorado. Sunny, beautiful, clean air, Colorado. They bought a five bedroom home in Frederick for just under $400,000. And they started to build their life. On December 17, 2013, their first daughter, Bella Marie Watts, was born. And then on July 17, 2015, Celeste, Catherine, who they called Cece, came along too. So they were basically like a year and a half apart in age. So these girls were gonna be best

[A]

friends, like my nieces.

[B]

Yes, exactly. You're gonna cry in this episode. It's terrible. Oh, for sure.

[A]

Like I. Yeah, I FaceTime with my nieces literally two seconds before coming in here.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So something about having these kids and having these girls, Shanann just. It like completely lit her up. She was always a positive person and always a kind person. But, like, this was everything. Like, she was mom. And giving these girls the best possible life ever was just. That was like her purpose. She posted on social media constantly. She posted about them going to gymnastics and doing silly little dances and making funny faces and all of this stuff, which I didn't look it up, but apparently the Facebook is still up, I think. And people have said it does feel like they're still here because you get to see them live their life.

[A]

That's the wildest thing about social media is even after someone's gone, their presence exists online as if they're still here.

[B]

I know it's almost like uncomfortable. I know in a way, like sometimes I'm like, it feels wrong to be able to just like for you to not have control anymore over your profile. Like you can't go back and Take a photo down or post an update if you want. Like, it's just. It's just there.

[A]

It's just there. Yeah.

[B]

So what a lot of people felt connected to in Shanann's posts were not just like this perfect family pictured on Facebook, but she really wasn't embarrassed or ashamed to show all of it. It was like the chaos, the laundry, the mess. It was like truly like she was like mom blogging, like a day in our life sort of thing. Sometimes the kids would be crying in the background. Days didn't go perfectly, but that just made people feel more connected to her. And this was sort of the thing that she brought to her close friendships, too, where she was just so completely open and blatantly honest about what was going on. Yeah, she talked a lot about Chris in her videos and how amazing he was, how much he meant to her, how in love they were. So, Christopher Lee Watts, he grew up in North Carolina as well, not far from where Shanann had grown up. And his life was a little bit different. He was pretty quiet. He kept to himself. His parents, Ronnie and Cindy Watts, would later describe their son as a gentleman, sweet and not capable of violence type of guy. And he lived this kind of mild life. So he wasn't particularly ambitious, he wasn't particularly dramatic, he wasn't super loud. You didn't really notice him as the focal point of a party.

[A]

Average.

[B]

Average. Yeah. He was the guy who went to work, came home, watched TV like the Colorado Rockies, liked cars. Just like, honestly, it's. It's a life a lot of people dream of having. Like a normal life, quiet, drama, free life.

[A]

I feel like I'm just making the same face this whole episode.

[B]

Well, because you know what's gonna happen. And I think a lot of people who are listening to this know this is a very popular. It's not the, like, it feels.

[A]

It's very mainstream face.

[B]

Yeah. Friends of Shanann described the early years of their marriage as genuinely very sweet. Chris seemed very devoted. He played with the girls on the floor. He helped with bath time. He was very present. And people who knew both of them thought that they were actually really good match for each other. Shanann had this fire and drive. Chris was very easygoing. It seemed to like, pair. Well, there weren't many conflicts, but behind the scenes, things weren't going as smoothly as they appeared. The couple declared bankruptcy in 2015, which was the same year Cece was born. Their second. And obviously, a financial strain is terrible for anyone to go through, but especially for a young family who, like, just moved to this area more recently. There's so much pressure on them, and it's like, it's not just your. It's your children that you're having to take care of.

[A]

So that's when their second kid was born.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. They filed for bankruptcy.

[A]

That's very stressful.

[B]

Shanann's friends would later tell investigators that there was something about the dynamic between them that actually seemed a little imbalanced for many years. So Shanann was the decision maker. She was the planner. She was the one who managed the house, managed the kids, managed the schedule, managed to. And Chris just, like, basically went along with any. With everything. He didn't really take the lead on anything. And on the surface, it looked like, okay, that works for them. Right. He doesn't have a very strong opinion. She gets to make the decisions, and he's just like, sure and goes along and helps, but isn't contributing ideas.

[A]

Can I just say, there's literally nothing more unattractive than someone who's unmotivated.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, he appeared to be unmotivated, but what he said he felt was that he didn't have a say in anything, that he couldn't hang a picture without her giving input, that he felt very controlled, that he wasn't happy for a really long time, that he didn't know how unhappy he was until someone came along to show him which.

[A]

All of these things are real experiences that so many people feel and experience throughout their lives. I felt it in my marriage. I felt alone in a relationship where I should have been partner. But the way you deal with that is your responsibility. And this is an asshole.

[B]

Look beyond an asshole.

[A]

This is a horrible, monstrous person.

[B]

This is, like, disgusting. I know that I shouldn't wish death on people, but, like, I do feel

[A]

like sometimes for him, a 100%.

[B]

Unfortunately, Darwinism and evolution, I know, doesn't weed out the evil.

[A]

I wish it did.

[B]

Is it bonobos, those monkeys that will do?

[A]

They.

[B]

There was a big story. I think it was bonobos. It's a matriarchy. And recently there was a story about how they found a male bonobo. Like the. The colony, the trip. I don't know what they're called, the group of monkeys. They found a male bonobo abusing a young bonobo, like a youth, a child bonobo. And they beat and tore him to death immediately.

[A]

The female bonobos?

[B]

Yes. And they're like. In all the history of bonobos and all the studies of bonobos, like, there has really been very little evidence of Them having any sort of aggression. They're a very, like, peaceful group. But if you mess with the peace and if you do something evil, you're immediately eliminated.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And I feel like that energy should be brought to human beings.

[A]

Yeah. Anyone who can hurt a child, Gone. Yeah.

[B]

Sorry. Yeah. Better luck in your next life. Okay, so this is what he said. These are, like, parts of his excuses as to, like, what went on. But first, let's talk about May 29, 2018. On May 29, Shanann set up a camera in their kitchen. She walked in wearing a shirt that said, oops, we did it again. She waited for Chris to come home, and when he walked in, she stepped in front of the camera. He saw the shirt. He grabbed the pregnancy test. He's grinning. He seems very excited. He kisses her, seems genuinely happy. I can't remember, like, what the comment was. I think they had, like, what he had actually said, but he appears happy, appears very happy that they are pregnant with their third child. Later, they would find out that they were pregnant with a boy and they were planning on naming him Nico. But 76 days later, Shanann Nico Bella, and Celeste Cece were no longer alive. Anyone who takes care of a small child knows that things change. As soon as you think you gotta figure it out, it's different again. And I feel like feeding children is one of those departments where sometimes it can be a little challenging.

[A]

Enter Little Spoon, which is amazing and has food and meals for different stages of your child's life, like the baby stage and the toddler stage, and they even have the big kid stage, too.

[B]

And all baby and toddler recipes are tested for over 500 contaminants, including heavy metals. Oftentimes, parents are asked to compromise on ingredients or nutrition and transparency, even safety. And that is not the case at all with Little Spoon.

[A]

Noah's in the toddler stage now he

[B]

is at the toddler stage. Sometimes I want to pick off his plate some of those cheesy pastas. They do look so good. Feeding the kids doesn't have to be complicated. Little Spoon makes it easy with real nutritionally balanced meals and snacks designed for every stage. It shows up ready to go, takes the pressure off, and somehow it still gets devoured, veggies and all. No artificial dyes, flavors, or sweeteners either. And you know what? That is such a win. And a win I will take every time. Get 30% off your first online order at littlespoon.com TGOG with code TGoG. That's L-I T T L-E-S-P-O-O-N.com TGOG with code TGOG for 30% off your first order.

[A]

If you're not feeling the spring energy yet, don't worry, you're not behind. With Grow Therapy, you can start small, like talking to someone who gets it and it's covered by insurance. Built for real progress.

[B]

And if you got insurance, you might already have therapy coverage and not even know it. And GROW makes it easy to check, book and start feeling better.

[A]

So Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, like us, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you. And they connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions, night and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. And Grow helps you find therapy on your time.

[B]

Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com TGOG to get started. That's growththerapy.com TGOG growtherapy.com TGOG availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. In June of 2018, Shannan took the girls to North Carolina for an extended summer visit with family. So she and her girls were going to be gone for six weeks. And they. And they were gone for six weeks without Chris. Yep. So six weeks she has the girls six weeks where the house is quiet, his family isn't there, there's no schedule to adhere to, and his wife is not present at work. Chris Watts needed to drop off a dysfunctional gas meter to the environmental department, which I guess is like an. It was a normal.

[A]

Is it his brain?

[B]

Oh, yeah, it's his whole being. But this is where everything changed. So he goes to drop it off and he, in this moment, meets a colleague that he has never met before. Her name is Nicole Kessinger. So there's two Nicoles in this story. One is Shanann's friend Nicole. Nicole Kessinger is not friends with Shanann. She gets different.

[A]

Nicole's.

[B]

Yeah, different. So I'll just say Nicole Kessinger every single time. I'm referencing the woman who ends up having an affair with Chris. She's 30 years old. She has dark hair. She's very outdoorsy. She's very confident in a way that is new for him, which I'm like. I feel like Shanann is pretty damn confident.

[A]

But for sure, if anything, it's. He feels like someone's giving him attention, making him feel a way that he himself can't make himself feel.

[B]

Yep, There we go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He needs therapy. Or for Sabrina to just tell him exactly what is going on with his little messed up brain. According to Chris, they kept running into each other in the office. And the fourth time they crossed paths, she asked what we meant when he said that we moved from North Carolina in conversation. So that's when he shows pictures of Bella and Cece, his daughter's on his phone. So she knew he had kids. His lock screen was also Shanann, his wife, on his phone.

[A]

But does he purposefully leave out Shanann when he shows the pictures of the kids?

[B]

No, I think she knew that he was married, but I think he was like, we're at the end of our marriage. I think he lied about where they were in their relationship. Most people just get a divorce.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And move out. So basically that's what he said. He said that they were separating, that they'd filed for divorce, it was almost final, and that he was currently looking for an apartment.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That is what Nicole Kessinger told investigators. He told her. Chris told investigators that she actually knew that he was married with a family and that she was just saying that to save face. So there's conflicting stories between the two of them as well.

[A]

Listen, I don't trust a thing that Chris has to say, so.

[B]

No, what we do know for certain is that by late June, Nicole Kessinger and Chris Watts were meeting up outside of work. By early July, they were in a physical relationship and Chris was seeing Nicole four to five times a week while Shanann and the girls were gone. They were only gone for six weeks. So this is like the whirlwind romance is happening in this six week span.

[A]

Damn.

[B]

He took her to the car museum in Boulder. They went on an overnight camping trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park. They were using a secret app, something called Secret Calculator, to send private messages and photos to each other on an app that their partners couldn't discover. Or I guess she didn't have a partner, but Shanann couldn't discover. And in early August, he told Nicole Kessinger that he was in love with her.

[A]

So within this six week period that his wife, his pregnant wife and Two daughters are visiting family. He just built a full blown relationship.

[B]

Yep. Yeah. He falls in love with someone else. Full relationship, they're going on vacation. All of this. Nicole Kessinger will say later that she had been told about Shanann. She'd been told about his kids. She had not been told that Shanann was pregnant. So she says she did not know that Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant.

[A]

And I'm not trying to excuse Nicole in any way because it takes two people for a relationship.

[B]

Well, and also, I'll say some things later where, yeah, you might feel like she's lying. I agree.

[A]

But the fact that Shanann is out of town, like, it would make you believe. Oh, they're not in a relationship.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because she's not.

[B]

They're like, separated. Yeah. Yeah. It's not his weekend. It's not his six weeks. Full six weeks. I understand that totally. Apparently, when Nicole found out about the pregnancy, after everything went down and she's talking to police and working with investigators, she said, quote, I thought, if he was able to lie to me and hide something that big, what else is he lying about? So she's kind of trying to plant the seed of doubt as well. And maybe, like Chris was saying, save face a little bit because, like, we're not really sure how much she truly knew or not.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Meanwhile, Chris and Nicole had begun this whirlwind affair. And back in North Carolina, Shanann was picking up on something. She and Chris video called each other. And she started to notice that he was seeming different over these six weeks. He was a lot more distant. And like I said before, Shannan is a very open book. She confides a lot in her friends. She's very blatantly honest about what she's going through. Yeah. She gets a lot of emotional support. And so she texts her friends, like, something is off, Like, I don't know what it is. But he seems really distracted when he's on the phone with me. And I just feel like there's something weird going on.

[A]

Women's intuition.

[B]

So because of this, she decides to end the trip a little bit early. They're supposed to be gone for six weeks early, as in, I think they came back at like five and a half weeks. Sure. So it was like just enough where she was like, okay, I like, can't do this anymore. I can't wait.

[A]

Because anxiety she must have felt.

[B]

Totally. On Aug. 5, Shanann texted her husband, Chris, I don't know how you fell out of love with me in five and a half weeks. Or if this has been going on for a long time, but you don't plan to have another baby if you're not in love. He texted back the next morning, oh, my God. That he didn't want to erase the eight years together. He just wasn't sure what he wanted and what was going on in his head. So not really some real reassurance there. Like, that's not really the text you want to get back, but it's also not him walking away from his family. It's a very, like, non committal response. So she's like, okay, there's a chance that we might be able to figure things out. And for the next couple weeks, Shanann is trying so, so hard to fix their family. She confided in friends, several of them, that her marriage was in trouble. She suspected Chris was having an affair, but she couldn't fully bring herself to believe it because she. She, like, literally texted a friend saying that the only thing she could think of to make this happen would be that there was another girl. But she didn't think Chris had it in him to do that to her and their family. She told another friend that he hadn't touched her in weeks, hadn't kissed her, barely spoke to her unless she pushed. She texted, quote, he has changed. I don't know who he is. She ordered a relationship book on Amazon called Hold Me Tight and wanted Chris to read it. And he threw it in the garbage without opening it. She wanted to go to couples counseling. He refused. On August 8, she texted her friend Taylor, quote, chris said, we are not compatible anymore.

[A]

Ew.

[B]

He refused to hug me. Said he thought another baby would fix his feelings, Said he refused couples counseling. Taylor, who had just landed in Chicago, saw the messages and typed back, oh, my God, What? And Shannon replied, I've cried myself to sleep over a week now, and she's pregnant. Yeah. And there are, like, I just pulled a few of the texts. There are. This case was investigated so heavily, there are multiple documentaries, multiple spotlights on what happened. And because she was so open, yes, there are lots and lots of screenshots as to what she was telling her friends and whole threads that people can read on the Internet. It just makes it more and more devastating. She told another friend that she no longer felt safe, that she felt scared, but she was gonna keep trying.

[A]

She talked to one, which is such a distinction. Like a lot of people going through that are just feeling the sadness and the pain of it to feel scared.

[B]

Right. Like there's something really cold.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where you're like, who is this?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Did they have a mental break? Like, what's going on? Am I okay?

[A]

That breaks my heart.

[B]

Yeah. She talked to a lawyer about custody. She thought about moving with kids back to North Carolina. She thought about fighting for her marriage, but she just couldn't decide. And in the middle of all this, she's 15 weeks pregnant. She's running a business. She's managing two toddlers. She's trying to figure out how the man that she built her entire adult life around had just stopped loving her in five and a half weeks. And mind you, this is. This is all happening. The trip she went on was five and a half weeks. Then she fought to get their marriage back on track for a couple weeks. Like, this is two months.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That all of this is happening in, like, just a few weeks span. Before she left for her final business trip to Arizona, she wrote a letter to Chris, a handwritten letter, and she left it for him on the counter. And at first, you can find it on the Internet. At first, I, like, put screenshots for, like, the YouTube video of her handwritten letter. And then I felt so, yeah, icky, because, like, this is her. It's her little bubbly handwriting on, like, a piece of, like, lined notebook paper, just pouring her heart out. It's so intimate. So if you want to read the whole note, if you want to look it up, it's there. I'm just going to read a couple sentences. Basically, she essentially said, I can't even explain how much this pain hurts. The last five weeks have been so hard. I missed everything about you. I missed your morning breath, your touch, your lips against mine. I miss holding you. I miss smelling you in the sheets. I miss talking to you in person. I miss watching you laugh and play with the kids. Yeah. And then at the very end, she signed it, I love you, baby. With all my heart. With love, Shanann. And she also wrote, like, happy anniversary. So I'm not sure if it was on their anniversary or not. Chris Watts did not respond to the letter. On August 11, Chris met Nicole Kessinger for dinner in Denver. And this was the last time that Nicole Kessinger and Chris would see each other in person.

[A]

Wait, so, like, literally, Shanann goes on a work trip. Chris is responsible, taking care of the kids, and goes on a date with him the second she leaves.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. On Aug. 12, Shanann texted Chris from her business trip asking, what kind of vegetables do you want with dinner tonight?

[A]

Literally, she's preparing the meal when she gets home.

[B]

Yep. She's just trying to. Yes, she's still normal. Life, opera. And that. He doesn't respond to any of this other stuff, but he responds to this. Broccoli works. Green beans work too. You. I hate him.

[A]

Hate him so much. I was really craving green beans last night, though, and now this makes me want green beans more.

[B]

Sorry. Should have warned you.

[A]

God damn it. Green beans.

[B]

Mention of green beans in this episode.

[A]

Warning.

[B]

Green beans. Apparently this is the last text message that Shanann Watts would ever send to Chris. Shanann got home just before 2am, dropped off by her friend Nicole. On Monday, August 13, the security camera across the street caught the moment that her friend Nicole's car pulled up. Shanann climbed out, walked up the driveway. She's tired, she's pregnant. She's carrying her bags. She's finally home with her family, with her daughters.

[A]

Oh, and also, like, probably so excited to go see her daughters.

[B]

Oh, my God, yes.

[A]

But they're sleeping and she's probably like, I don't wake them up.

[B]

Right. The house is quiet, the girls are asleep. Chris is in bed. And according to Chris's later confession, he woke up around 4 or 5am to get ready for work. And at some point, Shanann woke up, too. And this is when they began to talk. She said she knew he was cheating. She'd been putting it together for weeks. So she confronted him, and he did not deny it. He told her he didn't love her anymore and that their marriage was over. Shanann, who had been fighting for weeks to save their marriage, who had cried herself to sleep almost every night, who had written him a love letter, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their third child, was now just told by the love of her life that he did not love her anymore and that their marriage was over, which could have been

[A]

the end of this story. And it could have just been a heartbreaking end to a marriage.

[B]

She felt so broken in that moment, so she didn't know what else to say. And she just said, well, I don't think you're ever going to see your children again.

[A]

Also very valid and fair.

[B]

Chris then put both of his hands around his wife's neck and strangled her to death. I'm already going to start crying because now we're going to get to the kids. I know I'm going to cry probably for like 10 minutes straight. I brought this in my pajamas. Like, have not even brushed my teeth. And I was like, just a mess. Okay.

[A]

I mean, you're pregnant, too. Like, it's just like all of these things. Yeah. I am shocked you chose to cover this case.

[B]

Yeah. It does feel more like close to home because I'm living every day with, like, a child who's the same age. Yeah. In his confession to investigators months later, he said, every time I think about it, I'm just like, did I know I was going to do that before I got on top of her? It just felt like there was already something in my mind that was implanted, that I was gonna do it. And when I woke up that morning, it was gonna happen, and I had no control over it. So basically he was admitting that, like.

[A]

But also kind of premeditated, but still taking no accountability. Being like, I had no control.

[B]

I had no control. My mind just made me do it. I've been thinking about it forever. Is that not premeditated murder? Basically. He later admitted to investigators that he'd also been giving Shanann OxyContin for weeks.

[A]

What the.

[B]

Trying to end her pregnancy.

[A]

I did not know that part.

[B]

Yep. I know there's been a lot, like, since.

[A]

He was poisoning her.

[B]

He was poisoning her? Yeah. He thought if there was no way that leaving her for weeks, Bella and CeCe would be easier. For weeks? Yeah. Letters he wrote from prison later confirmed this. He had been planning this for a long time. I don't. He might have been planning this before Nicole Kessinger was even in the picture. But basically it all indicated that this wasn't this, like, heat of the moment crime. This was premeditated. He wrapped Shanann's body in their bed sheets and attempted to carry her downstairs. He lost his grip, so he ended up dragging her down the staircase. We're getting to the bad part. Worst part.

[A]

It's really bad.

[B]

I don't know how I'm going to do it.

[A]

Do you want me to read that part?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, no, I didn't know it was.

[B]

I don't. It's so bad. There's bad parts after that that I'm gonna.

[A]

Literally two sentence.

[B]

Why did I choose this?

[A]

Also, why'd you write it like this?

[B]

I don't know. I'm sorry. Oh, God.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. If you don't want to hear this

[B]

part because it is episode. Because it doesn't get better.

[A]

But like, specifically this detail. Like. Yeah, maybe like fast forward a couple minutes. Okay. So that is when a small voice came from the hallway. It was four year old Bella. She had a pink blanket in her hands. She was standing in the doorway and asked, what's wrong with mommy? Chris told his 4 year old daughter, she doesn't Feel good. Chris backed his truck into the driveway, loaded Shanann's body into the back. He came back inside, and by then, cece had woken up too. He put both girls in the backseat without car seats, just the girls with their blankets. And CeCe had her stuffed animal with her. And then he drove in the dark down the Colorado plains toward the Anadarko oil field where Chris worked. And on the drive, the girls dozed on and off in the backseat, laying against one another. Bella asked again, is Mommy okay? And he told them she was going to be okay. Corinne wrote another content warning here, because these are the last moments of CeCe and Bella's lives. A three and four year old who were truly just babies. Ugh. Who loved Minnie Mouse and reading and spending time with Mommy. God damn it.

[B]

That's the thing, is, like, Shanann has shared so much of their lives that, like, you can really know that kids are.

[A]

Chris Watts took Shanann's body out of the truck when they arrived, and he turned back to his girls and he smothered Cece in the backseat with her own blanket. The opening at the top of the oil tanks at this work site measured 8 inches in diameter. 8 inches. That's less than a foot.

[B]

Babies are basically that size. Like, it's so small.

[A]

Chris Watts forced his three year old daughter's body through an eight inch opening. He then walked back to the truck where Bella was still there. This four year old who had seen things that she never should have seen and couldn't even comprehend. She looked at her father and asked, is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece? And then he smothered Bella with the same blanket. Bella fought and her last words were, daddy, no. And then Chris Watts placed her in the tank as well. The medical examiner later found evidence, which Corinne said, I won't share every graphic detail, but it showed where her body had been forced through the 8 inch opening.

[B]

Thank you for your help.

[A]

Sorry, my eye is twitching again.

[B]

Some of the worst of it, my

[A]

eye twitch has been going on for like four months, but now recently changed to when things are like, triggering or I don't, like, agree with it morally. My eye twitches. Yeah, that's the only time my eye twitches.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, it's like your little.

[A]

It's my. That's so Raven.

[B]

Something's off with this. I don't think we need to know this.

[A]

No, no, my twitch. Yeah, my twitch is like Karen from Mean Girls, where it's like, there's a 30% chance it's already raining. No, it's like, this is obvious information and my eye is twitching. Ugh.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Sorry to everyone.

[B]

Chris Watts then dug a shallow grave nearby and buried his pregnant wife, Shanann. He then drove back home. He removed Shanann's wedding ring, left it on the counter so that it would look like she had taken it off herself. I think he also. I didn't write this down, but it was in a bunch of the articles and stuff. I think he, like, did something with the book that she had given him about, like, marriage help or whatever.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like relationship counseling book, and displayed it in some sort of way to make it look like she had, like, given up, that she was leaving. Be like, I'm done with the relationship. My ring is off.

[A]

Calculated and evil.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And also the manner in which he killed all of them is the most.

[B]

He looks into his children's eyes.

[A]

There's no situation in which killing your children, your wife and your children, your pregnant wife and your children is okay. But the manner in which he chose to do it is so intimate and violent.

[B]

We talk about like demons and poltergeists, and this is like the most evil case ever.

[A]

People are a million times worse than demons.

[B]

Yeah. This is not why we're not a weekly true crime podcast. Yeah. I literally could not handle it. Yeah. Chris made himself breakfast. He went on about his day, and that same morning, when it got a little bit later and more appropriate to make a phone call, he called Bella and Cece's preschool, said that they wouldn't be coming back. He then called a realtor, asked about listing the house.

[A]

What a disgusting human being.

[B]

It like zero time to even accept what happened. Just fully moving on with his next life.

[A]

There's no shock. There's no, like, going through motions. He's literally. Yeah, a monster.

[B]

Yep. He's like, perfect, it's done. I can move on with my life. Life. He texted Nicole Kessinger that he was moving on. By mid morning on August 13, Nicole Atkinson, Shanann's best friend, arrived at the house. She had already called the police. The officers had already arrived, and Nicole, Chris and the officers were inside of the house looking around. Chris went around the house, checked on the girls room. Nothing was out of place. He came back downstairs. He smiled for the camera.

[A]

Is this the like body cam footage that they show in the Netflix documentary? It is so, so chilling. He is cool as a goddamn cucumber. And I'm so sad that cucumbers are brought into this, but like truly green beans, cucumbers.

[B]

Justice for the Leave my vegetables alone. No, the body cam footage. There's so much that you can. Because the Netflix documentary has a good amount of it, and there are some others that, like, you can see. But I think that there's a good amount that's just available online, like full length clips.

[A]

Because this is in, like, shown in court. It's evidence.

[B]

Yeah. It's very disturbing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He told officers he wasn't concerned. This was Shanann's choice. She'd taken the kids and left. Nicole, Shanann's friend, who had known her for years, told investigators, no, there is something deeply wrong here. She pointed out Shanann's shoes by the door, her car in the garage. Shanann doesn't leave without shoes, she said. Then the neighbor across the street, Nathan Trnastic, offered up his security cam footage. They stand in front of the tv, the police, Chris, the neighbor. And on the TV is an intro to American Horror Story. Chris is getting visibly more uncomfortable as they're about to pull up the security camera footage.

[A]

Well, also, did Shanann text Nicole about the marital issues?

[B]

Probably.

[A]

So, like, Nicole is already.

[B]

There was something going on. Yeah, she knew. He's visibly more and more. The cool as a cucumber facade is starting to drop. He's getting nervous. He's, like, standing right by the tv, almost like as if he's going to step in front of it and block it. And as they're getting ready to fast forward with the remote or whatever, like, change the settings to go to the security camera footage, the American Horror Story promo plays next to Chris, showing a fetus, then an explosion, then a skull floating in dark liquid. And people believe that this is a message from Shannan.

[A]

I mean, that is so chilling.

[B]

Yeah, we're gonna play that clip. She's pregnant as well. How far along?

[A]

No, but the chances of that being the first thing prior to watching the video, that's.

[B]

Yep. I mean, this is where the paranormal starts coming in.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Then the footage plays. It shows Chris loading something into the back of his truck in the wee hours of the morning. Something long, something wrapped. The truck backs out of the garage and drives away.

[A]

Wait, like that part. Shocking. I didn't realize. So he loads the car carrying Shanann's body. And that is caught on camera.

[B]

Yep. I'm pretty sure you can see, like,

[A]

not only is a goddamn monster, he's a idiot.

[B]

Such an idiot. Well, he didn't know. He clearly did not know or didn't think at all about. Yeah, didn't think. He's an idiot. He's an idiot. And even this wasn't in the part that I watched. But I remember this from, like, the original case. I believe even the neighbor was like, he's acting weird. So everyone was like, there's something off. Like, everyone who was around, like, even before, they.

[A]

It's not like, oh, after the fact. They were like, oh, I thought he was acting weird. No, it's in the moment. They're like, he's weird.

[B]

There's something weird going on. This guy's acting weird. Like, pulling the police aside, being like, there's something not right about the way he's acting. By the next morning, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had issued an Endangered Missing alert. FBI joined the search. The story was going national, and everyone was looking for Shanann, Bella and cece. Chris Watts walked outside of his house to give an interview to the Denver's local ABC affiliate and said, shanann, Bella, Celeste, if you're out there, just come back. If somebody has her, just please bring her back.

[A]

What a monster.

[B]

It's just like this whole thing about, like, oh, the house is incomplete without you. It's so. It feels like Gone Girl.

[A]

I'm just thinking about that. But Gone Girl. He's actually innocent.

[B]

He's actually innocent, but, like, it's that where, like, people watching. You're like. Some people were very convinced by it.

[A]

Yeah, he's a psychopath.

[B]

That's.

[A]

That's psychotic.

[B]

It is. Those close to Shanann did not buy Chris's bullshit for a single second. By August 15, the investigation had honed in. Police were watching Chris. They found inconsistencies. They had the security footage. They talked to Shanann's friends. And on the morning of August 15th, Chris Watts walked into the Frederick Police Department with his father, Ronnie, who had flown in that morning from North Carolina. He sat down across from investigators. He agreed to take a polygraph. He failed still, which doesn't really mean anything, but, like.

[A]

So he's still proclaiming to know nothing at that moment.

[B]

But then he asks if he can speak with his father alone. And this is not something that, like, the police would normally say yes to. But they're like, okay, like, let's just see what he says. Cause he's mic'd up. Hot mic, whatever.

[A]

Oh, so it's like they can listen in on this conversation.

[B]

So Ronnie Watts is sitting with his son, Chris Watts. The investigators leave the room. I don't know if they knew that they were being watched through the glass again. I feel like that's kind of idiotic, if you. Right.

[A]

Because only if you were with a lawyer, right, that conversation couldn't be.

[B]

Yes, but he's just talking to his dad. Chris cries to his father and said that he'd walked in on Shanann strangling the girls, and he snapped and killed her.

[A]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[B]

So he. This is a planned false admission. At 11:40pm on Aug. 15, Christopher Lee Watts was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first degree murder and three counts of tampering with a deceased bar body.

[A]

Which I'm, like, so glad the police are. Are like, we see through this. Even the story he's trying to spin. No, he is 100%.

[B]

He's already lied. Yeah. He's handcuffed. He's taken into custody. On August 16, investigators were already looking at the Anadarko Petroleum work site near Ragan Rajan, Colorado. It was about 40 miles northeast of Frederick. And this is where Chris worked. They had gotten there because Chris's cell phone data and GPS tracking put him in that area the morning of August 13th. Around this site, investigators had spotted something from a distance. There was a patch of white sheet and some disturbed earth. So they brought in some excavators. At a distance of about 100ft from the cluster of oil storage tanks, there was, like, two big tanks. They found Shanann's body in a shallow grave. She had been buried face down, still wrapped in part of her bed sheets that she had shared with her husband, Chris, 15 weeks pregnant with her now deceased son, Nico.

[A]

Four lives.

[B]

Mm. Then they looked into the tanks. The tanks at his work site were crude oil storage containers. They were not transparent, so you could not see inside from the outside. So they opened the top of each tank, and the only way in or out was a diameter of about 8 inches. And to put that into perspective, a standard dinner plate is ten and a half inches. 10.5 inches, I think. So smaller than your dinner plate. The tanks were drained. Investigators waited as the crude oil pumped out. Then they looked inside. In tank one, there was Cece. In the other tank, there was Bella. This is what Christopher Watts did with his children. This is how he disposed of his beloved family. These are the details that Judge Marcelo Kopkow would later call at sentencing. Perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of thousands of cases that I have seen. Shanann, Bella, Cece, and Nika were buried together in September of 2018 at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

[A]

To find one silver lining here, like there are so many cases where bodies were never discovered, at least they were Found and given this burial together like that they can rest together.

[B]

Well, I'll say in the beginning of this episode, too, I have pictures of the whole family together. And the second that we get to the part where he murders, all the photos, I chose all the ones where it's just Shanann and her daughters. He's not in the room.

[A]

He's disgusting.

[B]

A 90 minute service was held for the family, and Chris Watts was not mentioned once.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Shanann's father, Frank, read a statement that said, you are nothing but pure love. Always caring for everyone. You will always be daddy's little girl. Investigators knew about Nicole Kessinger before Chris admitted to the affair. They found evidence on his phone, in emails, in the cards that he'd sent her photos of the two of them together on their overnight trips, their camping trip, whatever, the secret calculator app, all of that. When police informed Chris during the investigation that they had already known about the affair, something visibly shifted in him. It was like the wall came down again. He knew he was caught.

[A]

Fucking idiot. Like, I'm sorry, what do you think's gonna happen?

[B]

Also, like, how evil, too? Like, the shift of being like, oh, fuck.

[A]

Like, I've been caught.

[B]

The evil guy. Yeah. The villain gets caught and they're finally like, okay, I'll take my mask off.

[A]

I mean, the level of delusion, totally.

[B]

Nicole Kessinger, for her part, had already gone to investigators herself. She called them because there was something about Chris behavior in the few days after Shanann had disappeared that felt deeply wrong to her.

[A]

So before he ever confessed. Yeah, she went to police.

[B]

Yes. He had texted her the day that Shanann went missing. He asked to FaceTime her. And she told investigators that the call made her really uncomfortable because she saw that there were sheets missing from his bed. He seemed disturbingly fixated on Nicole, like nothing else existed. And literally, he had a missing pregnant wife and his two daughters were missing. And it was like all he wanted to do came up. It didn't matter.

[A]

Like, it's you and I, baby.

[B]

Yes. So she was like. That seemed disturbing. So that's what drew her to go to police. And this is where she kind of becomes a complicated figure in the story. And there's a lot more about her, but I didn't want to focus on her in this case. She did cooperate with investigators, and her information was described by the Weld County District Attorney Michael Roark as bombshell. So she really did help build the case. She had a lot of evidence and a lot of stuff that indicated that this was, like, premeditated, and that what he did was planned. Yeah, she seemed genuinely to not know at that time that Shanann was pregnant. But then this is where it gets a little complicated. They did look into her own phone searches, and before the bodies were found, in the days when Shanann and the girls were technically still missing, Nicole Kessinger was Googling Shanann's name, which I feel like that part is normal.

[A]

So normal.

[B]

But then she searched. Can cops trace text messages? Do people hate Amber Frey? Which was a mistress of Scott Peterson, who murdered his pregnant wife, Lacey Peterson, in 2004. And then she Googled Frey's net worth and book deal.

[A]

Oh, Jesus.

[B]

She searched for wedding dresses.

[A]

No, that part's crazy.

[B]

Oh, yeah. And just like, some other things that kind of made it a little more gray area where it was like, did she actually know what happened?

[A]

Okay, well, here's my question, and you might not even have the answer, but we would probably have text messages or some type of evidence. If he had told her he was going to do this prior, and she clearly was suspicious, I would be looking up that information, too. And did she specifically search Amber Frey's net worth and book deal, or did it, like, naturally come? Like, was it like she searched Amber Fray.

[B]

Click the next hyperlink or whatever? That's a good question. I don't have the answer to it.

[A]

Not to excuse her involvement with Chris,

[B]

but, like, I mean, also, like, he could have told her on that phone call.

[A]

Sure. True.

[B]

Right. And then she has a few days to, like, think about things and kind of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Question where she wants to be in this story? I don't know. All I know is that she wasn't charged of any crime. She cooperated with the investigation, and after the Netflix documentary dropped, she basically realized how much scrutiny was brought onto her in this case. And so she petitioned the Colorado court for a legal name change. She then moved out of state. And as of 2026, she has successfully disappeared from public view and is living under a new identity, which I think

[A]

is the best, because regardless of her

[B]

involvement, we truly know what her involvement was. So there's too much speculation. She could be totally innocent.

[A]

And also, that's what I'm saying. Like, she. She's not the monster who committed the Haynes murders.

[B]

There's so much more information on her role here. But I was like, again, like, this isn't about her.

[A]

Let's talk about the monster.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The case against Chris was pretty airtight. The neighbors had footage showing him backing a truck out of the Garage in the early morning hours with a dark shape of a body being brought into the car. They traced his cell phone and GPS to the work site where the bodies were found. His call log, his texts, calling the preschool to have his kids removed.

[A]

And then later that Shanann took the kids and left. Like, it's just there's so many things that don't add up. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. He literally was trying to start a new life while his daughter's bodies were still warm. It's so deeply disgusting. On November 6, 2018, Christopher Watts pleaded guilty to all nine charges. Five counts of first degree murder, one count for unlawful termination of a pregnancy, three counts for tampering with a deceased human body. And in exchange, the Weld county da, at a specific request of Shanann's family, who did not want another life taken, took the death penalty off the table

[A]

for crests like Shannan's family, which, like, in a way, they're such good people.

[B]

Yeah, they're being good people. But I'm like. Like, what's worse?

[A]

Force this person to live in prison and have what I'm thinking, Face what he's dealt, like, what he's done. Yeah. I do feel like that is more of a fair punishment. Like you have to live with the consequences of your actions.

[B]

Yeah. On November 19, 2018, Judge Marcelo Kopkow sentenced Christopher Watts to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 48 years for the unlawful termination of Shanann's pregnancy with their son Nico, and 36 years for tampering with the bodies. So Chris Watts literally will, no possibility, will never leave prison.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Raise your hand if you've ever asked Sabrina where she got what she's wearing.

[A]

It's Revolve. I love Revolve. Any event, occasion, even just like lounging at home, Revolve has clothing that I need and want. The other day, actually, on a rare occasion when I went out for drinks and I walked through the city of Boston, I was wearing these snake jean pants that I got from Revolve.

[B]

Ooh, that.

[A]

But I got so many compliments, and I've never felt so good. I was like, wow, I need to go out more.

[B]

Well, you're an expert shopper, but I definitely am not. And what I appreciate about the Revolve site is that it feels very curated. It's not chaotic if you order multiple options. Shipping and returns is also very, very easy.

[A]

They have styles that feel elevated but effortless, expensive without trying. And all the brands that I actually wear. So whether it's a Big night out, a wedding, a trip. Or you just need something last minute that actually works. Revolve always has it. Go to Revolve.com TGOG to shop our faves and use code TGOG for 15% off your first order. Fast shipping, easy returns. It just makes everything easier. That's Revolve.com forward/tgog. You can shop our faves and get 15% off your first order. Offer ends May 31, so don't miss out.

[B]

Recently, Brian and I were discussing just how much trash we produce as.

[A]

As humans.

[B]

Yeah. And we realized how much of it is food waste. And then we started talking about, like, okay, what are our options? Because it feels like we need to start composting and be more responsible here. And we got mail.

[A]

Mill is the odorless, effortless, fully automated food recycler. Potato peels, avocado pits, chicken bones, even dairy. MIL takes almost anything.

[B]

There's no mess, there's no smell. There's no fruit flies. And what I love about it is on the Mill app, you can program when it actually starts. And so I have mine overnight, because then we can use it during the day, and overnight it just, like, works and starts churning everything into compost. Like it breaks it down.

[A]

Yeah. And you can actually use the ground in your garden, add them to curbside compost, or MIL can even pick them up and get them to a small farm for you. You can try mill risk free for 90 days and get 75 [e-mail] tgog and use code tgog. That's 75 [e-mail] TGOG and use code tgog.

[B]

Okay, so now we'll talk about the body cam footage, because this is the only reason why this is on two girls, one go speed is because there's paranormal evidence involved.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When Police arrive on August 13 and enter the home with Chris and Shanann's friend Nicole, the officers were wearing body cams, which is standard procedure. Right. The footage is rolling the entire time that they move through the house. Through the living room, upstairs, down the halls, into the girls room, into the master bedroom, where Shanann's phone was still sitting on the nightstand. And a lot of this footage later became part of the Netflix documentary American the Family Next Door, which was released in 2020. Millions of people watched it. And that is when people started saying, hey, we're noticing something in the body cam footage. In an early scene while the officer was speaking with Chris on the second floor of the house, in the hallway, in the Girls, corridor. Something appears in a room behind them, just for a second, a small figure low to the ground. People paused it, screenshotted it, posted it, and was like, oh, my God, this is a little girl. It has to be Bella or Cece. Now, I will debunk this very first one, but everything I tell you after is not debunked.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Nicole Atkinson did bring her young daughter into the house that day.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

So at the time, she very much could match the height of these other small children, Bella and Cece. And so that specific scene where people are thinking that they're seeing a little girl playing and, like, walking through the door frame, that is Nicole's daughter, because

[A]

they are seeing a little girl playing.

[B]

They are seeing a little girl. It's not a ghost, but there's another video. A shadowy apparition about the height of a child descending the stairs.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

That is definitely not a living child. So we're gonna watch that. Oh, right now. Slowed down again. Do you see that?

[A]

Oh, it's not even, like, shadowy. It, like, fully looks.

[B]

It looks like a. Like a person starting. It, like, only becomes kind of shadowy. Like, it almost, like, disintegrates as it goes.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Right. Then later in the body cam footage, there's a dog that's brought from the canine unit, and the canine, the dog and the handler are going into Shanann's closet, and another officer is. The body cam footage is, like, picking this up because there's another officer, female officer, that's, like, right behind, kind of like in the bedroom, watching them go in. And you hear a giggle, and the officers both stop, and they're like, did you hear that? What was that? So it wasn't just later caught on, Right. Like, body cam footage.

[A]

React to it in the moment.

[B]

They react in the moment, and I

[A]

get so many chills.

[B]

Me, too. And they even say, like, okay, well, there's this thing on the floor. Like, maybe it's that. And they're, like, stepping on it to try to. They're trying to recreate the noise because they're like, what the fuck was that? Okay, we're gonna listen to that. There's plenty of cursed end in here. Yes. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. What in the world was that? Wow.

[A]

My eye twitched again.

[B]

Yeah. So what's creepy about this, too, is at first, people were like, oh, it's like a little girl's laugh. But in the evidence that came out with Nicole Kessinger and her relationship with Chris Watts, there are voicemails left and messages and whatnot. And you actually. There's a recording of Nicole Kessinger's laugh and it sounds exactly like this. So that kind of fueled some more theories that, like, she was working with dark magic and, like, all this other stuff, because they were like, why is her laugh just, like, existing in here? Unless it was.

[A]

It could also just be people trying to connect things. That.

[B]

Right. But it literally is that you hear on the video.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

And they recognize it live.

[A]

That is wild.

[B]

Some people who've watched the original uncut body cam footage, not the documentary cut, but the raw footage have seen a lot of other stuff. There's lights turning on and off behind officers when no one else is in the room behind them. There's shadows, there's numerous EVPs. And there have even been people of the public who have gone to the house with their cell phones, with thermal cameras with just different evidence, which does make me sad.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Cause now it's like this spectacle, basically. But they have captured things. They've captured what looks to be a shadowy figure, like, walking at the top of the stairs. They've captured in thermal body cameras what looks to be a person moving through the house. And so there are a lot of pieces of. Tons of pieces of evidence. We're barely going to even, like, scratch the surface of how much paranormally is here. But I did grab a clip from TikTok. I did edit it a little bit so that it's shorter, but this was from the user. This can't be real. With Kayla, who had a compilation of some of the EVPs, just a few of the EVPs. It's like every compilation that you can look up on TikTok, it's like different EVPs presented. There's a lot of moaning that was caught on camera. And there's EVP saying, like, get out alive. And like, just different. Different things. You can look them up and. And see a lot of them. But we're just going to watch a compilation of just a few.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Oh, yeah. There's a lot.

[A]

Whoa. That breaks my heart. And it. It is really sad. I mean, I have so many thoughts. I mean, one, if we believe these are all EVPs from Shanann or the children, it does sound like they're active and they're trying to share messages with the police to help solve the crime. And it gives me hope that they're all together in spirit form and it's less confusion.

[B]

That's what people said. It's clearly, they went back home together and that they're in their home and that they're providing clues to investigators. But they are together in their family home where there was a lot of love until this sudden, because it was very sudden. There wasn't much of a buildup to their father slash husband just absolutely losing it and doing this. Yeah. So it is said that they are together. One more thing later. Chris Watts was transferred to Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin to serve his life sentence. And he has a bunch of pen pals and I think, like, relationships or whatever. But he did reportedly tell a pen pal that the ghosts of his daughters keep coming to visit him in prison. It's almost like tormenting him where it's like he has to keep seeing them and be reminded of what he did.

[A]

Oh, it also breaks my heart because I'm thinking of these, like, little children who don't realize, like, they think of me.

[B]

They just want to go see Daddy. Yeah. Because he was a really good dad before. After the case broke and the documentary aired, reports of strange activity at 2825 Saratoga Trail did not stop. Neighbors reported seeing lights turned on in the house at night that had been vacated. One neighbor called police In August of 2018, after Chris was already in custody to report that the garage lights were being turned on and that there appeared to be a dark haired female intruder moving about the property.

[A]

Shanann had very dark hair.

[B]

Shanann had very dark hair. Investigators checked it out and there was no evidence of anyone on the property or any signs of forced entry.

[A]

Because unfortunately, when there are big cases like this that do become mainstream, I'm sure there are some questionably thought, I don't know what's going on in their minds, but people who are like, ooh, I'm gonna go break into that house.

[B]

Totally. Yes. Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of houses that even. Remember when I covered American Horror Story and like, the American Horror Story house, which was the set, was like being bombarded with people coming just to see it. And it's like, this is just. This was like the Breaking Bad house. There's so many things that aren't even in crime that people just can't stop going to go see.

[A]

Well, there's like a.

[B]

And then when there is a horrible crime for a long time, there's a lot of.

[A]

Well, there's like a gross community of people who, like, sell serial killer memorabilia. Like, stealing. Was it Ed Kemper's grave? Like, people were stealing pieces of his gravestone. Like, it's just.

[B]

It is icky.

[A]

Get a better hobby.

[B]

Like, I do feel like, if I was, like, in a thrift store or something and saw something like that and knew what it was, then I might purchase it to make sure no one else does. But I don't think I'd go on, like, ebay and actively grab things. Then you're just like. You're actually, like, paying the people.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You're encouraging it. In a way. Yeah. When we went to Zach Bacon's museum in Vegas, that was a lot of.

[A]

It was so disturbing.

[B]

We were very disturbed by it.

[A]

Very disturbing.

[B]

This is the hard thing about paranormal. It's like it borders so much on true crime, but we usually get away with, like, skirting past the really horrific things because we're either like a century apart from this horrific crime, or there's enough paranormally that we don't have to overly focus on the terrors before. But there is such a mashup sometimes. And it's hard. Cause it's like I find one piece very interesting, and then the rest very disturbing.

[A]

Right. Cause how come we can talk about. I think about Tower of London and Anne Boleyn and all the King Henry. I think it's the 8th's wives who were brutally murdered. But because it took place so long ago, it doesn't feel as raw emotionally.

[B]

It's like you can distance yourself from it. You're like, oh, well, those are people of another time. They don't even think like me. I'm not connected to that.

[A]

Meanwhile.

[B]

But it's all the same all the time. Like, humans have always been horrible. Yeah. There's actually a standup comedian that made a joke about that, about how, like, humans have always been terrible. And that was it. Like the fourth person that ever existed in the Bible then, like, killed the. His brother or something. Like Abel.

[A]

Cain and Abel.

[B]

Yeah, Cain and Abel. And he's like, so from the start of humanity, 25% of humans have been murderers.

[A]

One of my favorite books is east of Eden from. It's written by John Steinbeck. It's an older book. It's tangentially related to, like, biblical stories, but it is kind of a human experience story about how kind of monstrous we are.

[B]

Yeah. I hate this forest. And I think we should channel bonobo energy.

[A]

Let's go to Iceland and sleep beneath the northern lights and ask the aliens to come take us away.

[B]

Iceland has very low crime rate.

[A]

See? Do you understand now why I so badly want to be abducted by aliens?

[B]

Yeah, but I just don't know what the aliens are bringing. I'm sure not.

[A]

It can't be worse than what we do.

[B]

Yeah, that's true.

[A]

There are enough stories that sound better than humans that I'm willing to take the risk.

[B]

All right. So the house itself went into foreclosure. The lender tried to auction it off in 2018, but there were no takers. You can look at when they were trying to list it. And they constantly are changing the price, attempting to get anyone to buy it.

[A]

There should be some type of law. I don't know. Or something that goes into motion where those houses can't be sold. Again, people can't live in them, but a community center or something is built in place of it. That is more of a place of peace. I'm thinking about a playground.

[B]

Just think about how many places it's so.

[A]

I know. I know.

[B]

Unfortunately, there's like, luckily there's not a familiacide situation as. As often.

[A]

Yeah. But, like, I know even you can't

[B]

do it to everything people are renting. Like, there's horrible things happening to people everywhere. It's really.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Terrible. But I love that idea and the

[A]

energy that you're bringing towards this.

[B]

But that's unfortunately not what happened. Yeah. The house that cost them nearly 400, 000 in a neighborhood where houses were selling and, like, hot on the market. Nobody would come near it because of what happened.

[A]

Fair.

[B]

It did finally sell four years later in 2022 and then again in 2024. Shanann's family asked that people honor the girls and their mother not with grief, but with action. By supporting domestic violence prevention. By looking out for people in your life who might be in a dangerous situation. By believing women when they say something feels wrong. And because Shanann said something was wrong, she texted her friends that she didn't feel safe, that she didn't know who Chris was anymore. That the only thing she could think of was that there had to be another girl she knew on some level, and her friends came to support her. Yeah. She couldn't have known how far this would go.

[A]

Well, this is, like, the most horrible thing. And we recorded an encounter that comes out in June, so after this episode. But we were talking about this in that episode where it's so upsetting. In specifically domestic violence cases where there are so many reports, there are so many things that lead up to what ultimately sometimes does end in, like, death.

[B]

Yeah. We were talking specifically about stalking.

[A]

Yeah. And it's just, like, there's just not a system set up to intervene or, like, help. There's not enough protection efficiently because it's like the mentality of, like, well, until something happens, we can't do something. But when that thing happened, it's already too late.

[B]

Yeah, it's like the aura of a crime just, like, circling around someone isn't enough. But in those cases, when it is enough, it's too much, it's gone, it's done.

[A]

I don't. And I don't know the specific statistic, so don't quote me on this, but I think the statistic is most violent crimes related to domestic violence actually happens when someone tries to leave or after a. What's it called?

[B]

Like, separation or a.

[A]

What's the warrant? The legal thing. Why am I blanking? Where you can't be around that person.

[B]

Oh, my God. Why can't I remember either? Restraining order.

[A]

Restraining order.

[B]

Before even Google that finally came back to me.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

Just have to start typing in the process of, like, describing what you're doing. Restraining order. Okay, to end this episode, we can remember that Shanann and her children, Bella, Cece, and Nico are together at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Close to home, close to family, in a town that loved them. Together forever. And also, if someone in your life is showing warning signs of domestic danger, please reach out to the National Domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Also in the show Notes. It's free, confidential, and available 24 7. You can also [e-mail].

[A]

okay.

[B]

Aren't you glad I didn't make this a two parter? Yeah, originally I was gonna do two parts because there's so much to the crime piece. And I was like, I can't. I'm a blubbering mess. Instead, you go over a lot of this.

[A]

Instead you got a two parter about a haunted doll, which was gonna be a one part episode. And then I was like, actually, I can make this. Really?

[B]

Okay, that's perfect.

[A]

Okay. This is from our listener, Amy. And like I said, it is heartwarming. We'll end on something heartwarming. Hi. I would love to share a story that still gives me chills. It is about how my daughter's great grandfather saved her life when she was a baby, and then a couple of years later, taught her how to tie her shoes.

[B]

Aww. Thank you for choosing this. This is so much better.

[A]

I was like, I don't know what to pick for this. And then I was like, I have to do, like, something where a spirit, like, saves a child. Okay. So my husband and I live in a Farmhouse that was built in the 1700s in Maine. The house has a lot of original features. Wood pine floorboards nearly 2ft across, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps, hand carved etchings and wood paneled walls. And staircases that are narrow, steep, and frankly, unforgiving. But one staircase in particular curves sharply from our first floor hallway right by our laundry room up to the entrance of our daughter's bedroom on the second floor. It's dangerous enough that when we first moved in, my grandmother actually broke a bone in her back falling down that staircase.

[B]

Oh, damn.

[A]

So, yeah, dangerous. Anyway, one morning when our daughter was about a year old, I left her upstairs with my husband and went downstairs to switch the laundry. I had been gone for maybe 60 seconds. When I went back to the staircase, my heart stopped. There was my daughter, completely alone, sitting perfectly still on the very top step. And her legs were dangling over the edge. She was calmly sucking on her pacifier, not moving at all. Any parent knows that moment of pure terror when a crawling baby gets anywhere near stairs. And this isn't just any staircase. It is the one with the history. I had just told you. If she leaned forward less than an inch, she would have fallen an entire flight of wooden steps straight into a wooden wall. And I was panicking in that moment. I screamed for my husband. Obvious, obviously angry, panicked, shaking. But it was an honest mistake. He thought I had her with me, and I thought he had her. And this had never happened before and has never happened since. Somehow, though, she did not fall. Hold on to that. We'll come back to it. So fast forward two years. My daughter is now three years old at this point, and she woke up one morning and casually starts tying her shoes, like, perfectly.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

No instruction, no practice. I had never, ever taught her how to do this, shown her how to do it. There's never been. That's kind of incredible.

[B]

You don't have to go through that frustrating process. Yeah.

[A]

This is a three year old who never knew how to tie her shoes, all of a sudden, knowing how to tie shoes perfectly out of the blue. So I asked, where did you learn how to do that? Without hesitation, in a little sing song toddler voice, she said, from Grandpa Heron. I asked who Grandpa Heron was. She said, you know, Grandpa Heron with the dark wrinkly skin. He showed me. Now, here's the thing. My husband's middle name is Harrison, named after his grandfather Harrison, who passed away in his 70s, long before my husband and I even met.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

We don't mention him. Not because of any reason, but just because he passed away so long ago, we don't have photos of him in the house. My daughter had never heard stories about him or seen pictures, but from everything my husband told me, that was the exact description of Harrison. He lived in Florida.

[B]

How cool.

[A]

Loved being outside. And because of this, had very tanned, weathered, wrinkled skin. I was caught off guard by her answer, so I asked one more question. Have you seen him before? She didn't pause. She didn't think about it. She just said, yeah, Mama. He kept me from falling down the stairs when I was a baby.

[B]

I love this because they have not called out to him. They don't talk about him. They don't. They're not even really thinking about him. But he's like my great grandchild, and I will protect her and teach her

[A]

how to tie her shoes.

[B]

Yeah, I honestly feel like this brings the most grandparent energy I've ever heard. Because, like, just thinking about my parents, when they come to see Noah, they very frequently forget to say hi to me and Brian. And it'll take them, like, a good eight minutes, and then they go, oh, hi, Bri. And we'll go, like, give him a hug. Or like, oh, just about.

[A]

Noah.

[B]

I get, like, a pat on the shoulder, like, barely any recognition. And that is exactly what this great grandpa is bringing. He's like, I'm not here for them. I'm here for the baby. I'm here for the wee child.

[A]

But this is, like, two years after the stairs accident that Amy is figuring this all out. In that moment, everything snapped into place. And my best guess is that she was trying to say Harrison, but she's three and said heron. And somehow, someway, this man she had never met not only stopped her from falling down those stairs as a baby, but later came back to teach her how to tie her shoes. So, yeah, she's a very helpful guardian angel. We've had other unexplained experiences, like the time my husband once saw a full body apparition in our old 1800s Portland apartment. But this one is truly so special. So I'll see you on the other side, but hopefully not just yet. Amy.

[B]

Wow. I love that. That's so special.

[A]

And Amy did say after that experience with the stairs, they ripped them out and redid those stairs.

[B]

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Because it's not a normal flight of stairs. That's like, you pick up speed going down those ones. Your daughter's gonna have the coolest Two truths and a lie.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The ghost of my Great grandpa taught me to tie my shoes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This is making me realize I need to come up with some more creative. I'm gonna start using people's other real experiences as my life because, like, that's so cool.

[A]

That is very cool and amazing. And also just like, she may not have ever known that stare experience.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And for her to, like, she was three and that happened two years earlier. Yeah.

[B]

She. I mean, there's no way for her to know grandpa until her daughter started talking.

[A]

The one with the dark, wrinkly skin because he tanned a lot in Florida.

[B]

The floor. The Floridian. That's so good. Wow. Oh, my God. Thank you for picking that.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Please email us any paranormal experiences you have. Email us@two girls, one ghost podcastmail.com. and you can join us on Patreon for episodes that are ad early. Whoa. Ad early. One week early and ad free.

[B]

Sounded right to me.

[A]

And we also have a bunch of other bonus content on Patreon. Bonus episodes, Witch classes, book club, all the good stuff over there.

[B]

Thank you to Jamie Ryan, who edits and produces is our podcast.

[A]

And sorry for making you cry. This is a really tough case.

[B]

Yeah. But we very rarely, almost never do stuff like this. So you know what? It actually reminds me of next week?

[A]

Actually, next week is vampires.

[B]

Lovely.

[A]

We do know what we're doing. It's vampire and a collab with crimes of true crime. But vampire.

[B]

So, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Not tragic. I meant to say earlier, this reminds me of the case that recently has been in the news about the man in Hawaii who tried to kill his wife on a hike.

[B]

Oh, my God. Yes.

[A]

And thank goodness she was able to get away and these, like, bystanders were able to help her.

[B]

And he, like, smashed her face with a rock or something and he had, like, a syringe. Over the edge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wasn't he a doctor?

[A]

He is a monster. I know that for a fact.

[B]

Yeah. Thank God, like, seeing the pictures of her. It wasn't pictures. I was watching, like, videos of her just, like, bleeding, bloodied and, like, panicked and, like, breathing and all these other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Hikers just going and trying to, like, help her and wrap her up. And thank God. I don't trust men. I don't trust. There's. Did you see the thing? There's like some sort of, like, quote. Who knows where it came from? But it was like when people say, oh, like, without men in the world, who would protect you? And then.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Protect me from what?

[A]

The thing we need protection from is men. Like, like, if you're saying, oh, you're such a man header, look at statistics. Yeah, it speaks for the for itself.

[B]

There are plenty of lovely men in our lives, but we're talking about the

[A]

general, the number, the statistics and shady

[B]

men as women are men.

[A]

Yes. Yeah.

[B]

So you can't get mad at someone who lives in bear country for constantly talking about the threat of a bear attack.

[A]

We live in man country.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anywho, we love you all and we

[B]

will see you on the other side.

[A]

Very spooky.

[B]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone.

[A]

Paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good

[B]

in this world, stop with Mint.

[A]

You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.

[B]

But that's weird.

[A]

Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail].