Where is Chris Watts Now: Why Did He Kill His Wife and Two Daughters?
Currently, Chris Watts is incarcerated. The 2018 Colorado murders of his pregnant wife and two girls landed him in prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of release. He is currently serving time at Wisconsin’s Dodge Correctional Institution.
Who is Chris Watts?
Chris Watts rose to fame after the terrible events of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado. He was born on May 16, 1985, in Spring Lake, North Carolina. Tragically, he took the life of his 34-year-old pregnant wife Shanann and her two young girls, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, by suffocating them. An oil field operator named Watts originally denied wrongdoing but ultimately admitted guilt.
He had his daughters’ remains dumped in crude oil tanks and buried Shanann in a shallow grave to cover up his horrific crimes. Watts was sentenced to five consecutive life terms without parole after pleading guilty to numerous first-degree murder charges and additional charges of tampering with evidence. His sentencing was announced on November 6, 2018. Domestic violence is tragically brought to light by this case, which stunned the nation.
Where is Chris Watts Now?
Chris Watts is currently undergoing his sentence at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin for the heinous murder of his pregnant wife Shanann and their two daughters, Celeste and Bella. Frederick, Colorado was the site of the terrible events that transpired in August of 2018. Watts murdered their daughters and Shanann by smothering them before burying their bodies. He was arrested and convicted after confessing to the murders, even though he first denied involvement.
After entering guilty pleas on numerous first-degree murder charges in November 2018, Watts was handed three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of release, plus extra time for other offenses. Domestic abuse and family tragedy became topics of conversation when the story went viral. Chris Watts is still behind bars today, carrying out the punishment he received for the heinous acts he perpetrated against his loved ones.
Chris Watts Murdered His Wife and Two Daughters for What Reason?
Chris and Shanann tied the knot in 2012 after meeting in North Carolina in 2010. Bella was born in 2013 and Celeste in 2015, when they relocated to Colorado. It would appear that the couple was content in their marriage since they frequently shared heartfelt posts about their family and one another on social media. Shanann shared the happy news with Chris in a Facebook video she posted in June 2018. The couple was expecting a boy, and they planned to call him Nico. Chris exclaims, “It’s awesome!” in the video.
Online, everything looked different. The couple’s debt was nearly $450,000 when they filed for bankruptcy in 2015. Despite Shanann’s new work and subsequent improvement in their financial situation, their marriage was reportedly in trouble.
Shanann brought her two girls on a six-week vacation to her parent’s house in North Carolina the month she announced she was pregnant with their third child.
Despite Shanann’s persistent online praises to her husband, Chris revealed that the couple was experiencing relationship problems and were testing the waters of separation to see if it would help. He started an affair with Nichol Kessinger, a coworker, by the month’s end in June. As far as Kessinger is concerned, Chris informed her that he and his wife were divorcing.
As their texts reveal, Shanann started to doubt her husband’s actions by July. Chris assured Shanann that everything was OK, but Shanann insisted that he was acting cold and distant. He continued to ignore his wife’s calls while he went on dates with Kessinger.
To be with them, Chris traveled to North Carolina later that month. However, further texts revealed tension between the pair and Chris’s extended family, in addition to Shanann.
Even though Shanann didn’t want a divorce, by August 8th she was spreading the word to her friends that Chris did. Chris had previously expressed his disapproval of the new baby, saying he was “scared to death” of it. He had “changed” in his attitude toward her, she added, and now he was emotionally and physically aloof.
Shanann departed for Arizona on a business trip on August 9th. She confided in a friend the rough copy of a letter she intended to write to Chris, detailing their love and the agony she felt separated from him. Chris took Kessinger out and hired a babysitter to watch their girls while she was gone.
Atkinson saw Shanann enter the house as she walked back from her excursion in the early hours of August 13th, and he dropped her off. That was her final encounter with Shanann.
The cops quickly started to doubt Chris’ narrative, even though he played the sad husband at first. Two days after Shanann’s disappearance, Kessinger informed the authorities that she had been involved in an affair with Chris. This revelation came after she had seen Chris on television and realized that he had lied about his marital status and Shanann’s pregnancy. His formal accusation of Shanann’s murder followed. He admitted to murdering her after failing a lie detector test.
According to his account to the police, he and Shanann argued shortly after her return. During the argument, he confessed to having an affair and desired a divorce, while she threatened to remove their children from his custody. Before finally confessing to all of the murders, he initially accused Shanann of killing their daughters in retribution, a claim he maintained until his trial in November.
Chris claimed that after killing Shannan, he pretended she was sick and needed to be taken to the hospital to placate his daughters. After loading up his truck, he headed out to a distant job site with all three of them. Before drowning his children and throwing their corpses into oil tanks, he laid Shanann’s remains in a shallow grave. The recovery of their remains occurred on August 16th.
A new chapter in Chris’s story began in 2019. He finally admitted to author Cheryl Cadle in a letter that the murders were planned out in advance, contrary to his previous claims that he had been acting out of anger. In his desperation to be with Kessinger, he went so far as to try to induce a miscarriage in Shanann by giving her oxycodone. He went on to say that he had tried to murder his two children, strangled Shanann (an attack that they managed to survive), and then brought them all out to the construction site, where they all eventually died.
Chris Watts was found guilty on November 19th after submitting a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Three consecutive life sentences plus two more to run concurrently were handed down to him.
How did Chris Watts Avoid the Death Penalty?
For moral reasons, Shanann’s relatives chose not to press charges of capital punishment against Watts. Moreover, they preferred a quick resolution to the prospect of dwelling on the long-awaited execution for years—if not decades. Since then, Colorado has done away with capital punishment.