TWO FACE RAPE OF CASSANDRA is available on Amazon at this link.
True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
Month: December 2018 (Page 4 of 11)
“Notice is hereby given that I will at public auction on Wednesday April 17, 2019, sell [your property at 2825 Saratoga Trail] to the highest and best bidder for cash.”
When someone else loses their home it’s no biggie, because it’s theirs. When it’s you losing your home, it’s a completely different story. If there was a lot of trauma behind having and losing homes in the past, then the trauma is so much greater.
There is no doubt that the mountain riding like an obese woolly mammoth on Watts’ shoulders at the time of the murders was the burden of the house. We know Shan’ann was in love with her home, and didn’t want to sell it. But the home didn’t belong to her.
Since Shan’ann was bossy, called the shots, and often told Watts what to do or how things were going to be, we can see how she would have opposed Watts on selling the house. Shan’ann was also very invested in the home, in terms of putting the names of her children on the walls, decorating rooms to color-coded specifications, and also using the house as a showpiece to brag on social media about how much she, and her husband and the family were Thriving ever after. It was easy to sell that spiel in a big, spacious, immaculate mansion, with a shiny new car in the garage, than in a grubby apartment with a battered 2006 Mustang.
Kessinger said Watts dragged his feet about selling the house, but it’s likely Shan’ann was the reason for this feet dragging. That seemed to end though when the Watts family were summoned by the Wyndham Hill Homeowner’s Association. Watts was also keenly aware of an oil battery that was about to spring up across the road from their big, new home, and cause its equity to hemorrhage.
For someone as OCD and fussy as Shan’ann, her laissez faire attitude to a fracking battery with all its health implications [she and the children had asthma] popping up nearby, says a lot about her level of attachment to the big home, and her determination to maintain the optics at least, of a lavish, successful lifestyle.
As soon as Shan’ann and the children were dead and disposed of, Watts went into high gear to get his house on the market, and to find a new one. He didn’t waste any time, did he? He was urgent, took charge, and got the ball rolling. This seems clear evidence that if he was dragging his feet, it was because of Shan’ann.
Perhaps this was the source of the furious screaming matches the neighbor overheard, and the reason why Watts was the one going crazy in them. He wanted to sell the house! Listen to 1:14 in the clip below:
https://youtu.be/hiHXZJM2f4Q?t=74
So a major reason for disagreement and dissension would have been the house. Watts would felt he HAD to sell it, but Shan’ann didn’t want to. Perhaps she convinced him that she’d have a good month selling Thrive and that would lift them out of their debt so they could breathe for a while. Maybe he believed her. Maybe he was betting that could work. Maybe he went along with it. Perhaps that’s what the trip to North Carolina was all about – a last ditch effort to drum up new business.
But did it?
The words “house” and “home” pop up 525 and 472 times in the 1960 pages of discovery, respectively, or at an average rate of once every two pages. The 4 177-square-foot home that is 2825 Saratoga Trail is by far the largest and most expensive of the Watts family assets. The owner is none other than Chris Watts himself. The house was purchased for $392 709 in May 2013, the same year their first child, Bella, was born.
The outstanding principal on Watts’ home as per the recent foreclosure filing served on the new inmate at Dodge Prison in Waupun, Wisconsin, is $349 938.09.
This means over five-and-a-half years, Watts had only paid $42 770,91 on his mortgage. That’s significantly less than $10 000 a year, and significantly less than $1000 per month.
In the 67 months that have passed since the house was purchased, an average of $638,37 has been paid off each month. That amount was supposed to be almost five times that, at $2700-$2800. Watts has acknowledged that insurance payments on the house alone comprised $500 of the total mortgage. Using that calculation, arguably the Watts family were still averaging less than a third of the mortgage payments that were due each month.
Many who remain mystified by the Watts family murders don’t think much of the finances, or the living-beyond-their-means spiel. District Attorney Michael Rourke also mentioned the Watts’ finances dismissively in court.
According to CBS Denver:
“I think it became pretty obvious that he found a new love interest and for whatever reason in his mind, divorce wasn’t an option.I can’t speak as to why anyone would take the steps that he did but during the course of our investigation, other than the normal stressers of financial stress that I think most of us have, the occasional marital stress, we couldn’t find anything else that was a significant enough motive to annihilate your family, in the manner that he did.”
This is poor form from the prosecutor. Couldn’t find? Don’t have a motive? Look harder!
Ironically, the very area the District Attorney is minimizing as “normal stressors” was the area that wasn’t. One reason is that unlike the District Attorney who is used to living in middle class America, and probably grew up in middle class America, both Chris Watts and Shana’nn were not from middle class America. They’d risen from another social class and by the summer of 2018 were desperately trying to hang on to an upper-middle class fairy tale picture.
It’s true that many couples go through financial hardship without literally killing each other, but it’s also fair to say financial issues tend to weigh heaviest on a marriage or relationship. And here’s the rub. The worse the finances are, the worse the fighting that happens inside families.
Chronic financial disaster is going to weigh a lot more heavily than run-of-the-mill bad debt.
In the Watts family, what made this second disaster so fraught was that it was a nightmare they’d previously eluded, only to be caught up in the crocodile-infested quagmire a second time. But the second time there were three children to fjord through the swamp, two of them often sickly. There was also Shan’ann’s $100 000 surgery in August 2017, that the Watts’ family were till trying service many months later.
Probably the biggest obstacle both Watts and his wife faced if they wanted to get out of the debt black hole they were stuck in, was themselves. Both Watts and Shan’ann came from relevatively poor backgrounds, so a lot of personal pride and status was invested in the house on Saratoga Trail. It was a symbol of their great rags to riches success story. It was something they had built together into a home, and an impressive one, the biggest on the block.
The problem with such symbols, especially when they’re not real, the symbol can make you, but it can also drag you down and destroy you. Most fairy tales when they encounter the real world, and real world limits, end in tears.
A case can therefore be made, that if the house was taken out of the equations of this crime [keep the unwanted pregnancy, keep the mistress, keep the so-so finances] – but take away the real monster, take away the unaffordable castle, then everyone is free. Poor, not living so large, but alive and free.
Watts clearly wanted the best of both worlds. To keep his lifestyle and start a new life. He got his second wish.
Nichol Kessinger has also lost her life – just desserts or a symptom of a cruel, vindictive society?
It’s been repeated ad nauseum by now: why didn’t Chris Watts just get divorced? Are we a society that permits divorce? Of course, I hear you say. Divorce is as common as muck [as they say in Australia].
How about divorcing your pregnant wife, taking responsibility and going bankrupt in the process? How does society – and the opposite sex – look on a potential partner who does the right thing, but is exposed as a worthless, no-good scoundrel in the process?
Is such a person allowed to go on with their lives, allowed to pursue some happily ever after, or is society wired to mire them in scandal, crushing obligation and reputational ruin? Shan’ann’s Facebook hovered like a giant guillotine over the Watts marriage [in the event of it unravelling]. The nuts meltdown on July 9th, where Watts’ mother was lambasted in public, was proof enough of this.
Many of us know of divorced couples who air their dirty laundry in public. It’s ugly, it’s damaging, everybody loses and it happens all the time.
Watts stood to lose a lot if he was honest – his home, his mistress, possibly even his job. In his mind, the risks of full disclosure outweighed the risks of triple homicide. That may be a damning indictment of him, but whether we accept it or not, and whether we like it or not, it’s also his damning indictment of the world we live in.
Who cares what Chris Watts thinks of society, right?
But it’s the same society that is now condemning an innocent bystander to the murders. Kessinger is innocent [yes, some people can’t abide those words side by side] in the strict sense that she didn’t directly destroy Watts’ family. It feels like heresy to say that, but to address the point more fully – in the history of cheaters and adulterers, how many have gotten away with adultery with zero repercussions?
In the history of human beings cheating on their partners, how many have cheated during a pregnancy, or during financial stress, or when the brood becomes too much to handle, with no blood being shed?
And how many of those encounters have led to triple murder? The answer is, almost none, but it did for Kessinger.
The court of public opinion can be just as effective, if not more so, at pronouncing judgment, and executing a sentence against perceived lawbreakers. Again, Kessinger hasn’t been put on trial, and at least in the eyes of the law, she’s not been found to be guilty of anything, not even obstruction of justice.
While Kessinger is clearly not blameless in this debacle, neither is it true that she was entirely to blame either.
If there is an argument that Kessinger losing her life [her home, her job, her married lover] is a kind of just desserts, there is, at the same time, a demonstration here for how society can destroy you if and when the tide turns. Just as it can destroy anything, including a song or anyone else when it makes up its mind.
So how about a thought experiment. Let’s imagine you [or I] are Nichol Kessinger. We’re her. We’re in her shoes. We’re the most hated woman in America. What do you do?
The first answer that comes to mind is that she [you/me] should have gone to the cops the moment she [you/me] learned Shan’ann and the kids were missing, and that the cops had been summoned. Let’s leave out the debate about whether or not she [you/me] knew about the pregnancy, or when she [you/me] might have known.
Our argument is that Kessinger [you/me] should have gone to the cops, and done so with full disclosure. No deleted messages. Just tell them what happened. Is that what you/me would do in similar circumstances? Wouldn’t that have made the public lynching even worse?
Whatever we may say in response to that, Kessinger thought it would, hence she stayed out of the spotlight and went underground for several months. When she did come out, she gave a carefully contrived interview with a defamation lawyer present, to a reputable media agency. She had to come out from the cold, because her part in the Watts case was days away from being confirmed for the first time at the sentencing hearing.
Kessinger’s story didn’t do much good. Her public lynching went ahead regardless.
So what would you have done, if you were her?
It’s a valid question, and one Kessinger is doubtlessly tormented with each day as she tries to begin a new life, with a new name, in some unknown place, while she considers her former life lost.
What can she do now?
Full disclosure now is no longer an option, because it runs counter to witness protection. So there probably aren’t any books in the pipeline like there was with Amber Frey.
So how about this. It may be that the cruel, vindictive society we are is no accident. A proper execution of justice, and disclosure, in this case, would have been in court, not in the media and social media. The reason that didn’t happen is sinister, and part of the way our lack of clarity on this case manifests, is through knee-jerk demonizing of Watts and Kessinger. But neither Watts nor Kessinger arose in a vacuum. They were once thought of fondly by their family, friends, colleagues and society, just as you are now.
Who cares what Chris Watts or Nichol Kessinger think of society. Who cares if they were both too scared – and remain too terrified – to take society into its confidence. Who cares! But it’s that fear of society that caused Watts and Kessinger to engage in a secret liaison, and when things went bad, to keep those secrets secret. We may wag our fingers at him and her, we may call them cowards, but we can only do that while we’re on the higher ground. What happens when we’re in their shoes?
This societal status quo reminds me of a famous scene in Kill Bill Volume Two that addresses the critique of a comic book hero on society. On us. Have a listen.
The operative part of Bill’s monologue is when he talks about heroes wearing costumes, and then Superman arriving on Earth already a hero, but donning a costume of human society as he sees it [as he sees us] to blend in as Clark Kent.
BILL: And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak. He’s unsure of himself. He’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.
Many of us, perhaps most, intuitively knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark when we first saw Watts’ seven-minute Sermon on the Porch. We didn’t know why, it wasn’t necessarily anything specific, yet there was a suspicion [if not certainty] that things just weren’t adding up.
By studying and analyzing the Sermon again and again, we became more familiar with Watts, with the content and context, and as we became experts in this piece of dialogue it was more and more difficult for microexpressions to remain hidden. The more we looked and listened, the more sure we were that he was hiding something. It turned out he was trying to conceal a triple murder.
His main ploy was to act normal, but what counted against him was:
- He acted too normal
- His version of normal didn’t meet our expectations of “appropriate” emotion. He didn’t appear concerned or overwhelmed as most people would have been had they been in a genuine missing person’s scenario
We can see that by his acting normal, he was trying to communicate that there was nothing to worry about, and that everything was probably okay. But this was an early miscalculation from him, and an early sign Watts’ ability to recognize when his chips were down was very poor.
Once the bodycam footage emerged, we quickly recognized telltale patterns in his deceits – lip licking, swaying, folding his arms.
Some of us also picked up a few others – stuttering, Watts curling his lower lip under his upper lip [a sign of stress or nervousness], looking at the sky for inspiration, throwing out his hands, shaking his head at the wrong time, appearing to smile at the wrong time, and blinking at the wrong moment. But many of these were assumptions, and subjective assumptions at that.
Now, with the benefit of the Discovery Documents, we’re able to test them.
A VISUAL POLYGRAPH
We can use what’s in the Discovery Documents to cross-reference what we know as absolute certainties of fact against the bullshit parts of his Sermon. So let’s do a bullshit check with only one piece of information, and watch for the microexpressions that leaks out.
We’ll apply our visual polygraph test to the moment when Watts explains Bella’s kindergarten attendance. The fact is the four-year-old was supposed to return to Primrose school that morning [August 13] if she hadn’t died.
Now, there are numerous texts in support of this fact [scroll to the bottom of this post to review them]. Prior to the weekend, on August 9, Shan’ann pertinently asked her husband to drive with her and Bella to be with them to share Bella’s first day of the new school year at Primrose.
At 2:42 in the clip below, during his Sermon on the Porch, Watts lies not by his denial that Bella was going to school, but the opposite. He volunteers that Bella was going to go to school, but then realizes this disclosure could be bad for him, so he tailors the end of that message by changing the timing of her return [and that’s the lie].
WATTS: Bella [long blink] was gonna start kindergarten…[pauses as he realizes he’s just said this in the past tense]…[stutters] n-next Monday…and they-they’re just getting ready to start.
So his basic tells are:
- Extended blinking while talking.
2. Looking into the sky for inspiration + stuttering
3. A lip curl at the end of the lie, as if signing it off and getting on to the next one
In terms of the semantics, can you see how this statement makes no sense?
Bella was gonna start kindergarten…n-next Monday…and they-they’re just getting ready to start…
But why would they be getting ready on Tuesday if they were going to school next Monday? If Bella and Ceecee were [are, actually] going to start kindergarten the following week, then as he was standing there, that was still true [within his spiel]. And that would mean present tense:
Bella’s starting kindergarten soon…[Bella is…]
So Bella was going to start kindergarten was a big booboo, and the stuttering, blinking, looking at the sky, and pausing, were all telltale clues that he was dissembling and trying to clean up his verbal diarrhea.
We now know Watts knew they were dead, and so he knew he’d already pulled them out of kindergarten, and he was probably nervous as hell the staff at Primrose were watching this. What about other parents, like Jeremy Lindstrom, and Shan’ann’s mother, who knew their kids had gone back to school that day [and Sandi knew the same].
It’s clear from this one lie that the kids going back to that expensive school weighed heavily on him, otherwise there would be no need for nervousness around this subject, and no need to lie about it.
So just as it’s valid to ask “Why didn’t he just get divorced”, in terms of the murders of those poor little girls, it’s just as valid to ask, “Why didn’t he just take them out of kindergarten?”
Perhaps the answer to the one question relates and interrelates to the answer of the other.
Dr. Phil is an expert when it comes to psychology, right? At 53 seconds into the clip below, Dr. Phil drops the “N” word [Narcissism] for the first time. Let’s listen in.
Dr. Phil describes Watts making “very dumb mistakes which narcissistic people often do, because they only see things from their points of view…”
This must mean narcissists are stupid, because they just can’t see past themselves.
So, like, celebrities…Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Lady Gagga, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen – how many of these celebrities are dumb because of their narcissism, or just plain narcissistic or just plain dumb?
The “N” word has become one of the most popular words in true crime today. It’s taken over from psychopath, in that regard, as a sort of of catch-all catchphrase label which basically explains who the criminal is and why he committed the crime.
Except it doesn’t.
In reality, our social media-infused society is more narcissistic, conceited and vain than ever – we as consumers are so self-absorbed in our own customized color-coded wants and desires for convenience we’re more narcissistic than ever – so to point the finger at a criminal and blame his narcissism for the crime is not only hypocrisy of the last resort, it’s blindingly disingenuous on our part.
IS THERE A PSYCHOPATH IN YOUR SOUP?
In the same way that the word psychopath was sticky and popular for a while, because a lot of the traits of psychopathy do translate directly into criminality [heartlessness, lack of empathy and pathological lying], narcissism also has a feel-good stickiness to it. Both terms are sticky because they resonate to some degree. It is invariably somewhat true that a crime is going to be, and appear to be, cruel, heartless and selfish. But the fact is, many people in ordinary society are selfish and cruel. Many others are high-functioning psychopaths and pathological liars – certain professions attract these psychopathic personalities: chefs, lawyers, CEO’s, salespeople, television reporters, surgeons, cops, journalists and members of the clergy.
So to call a criminal a psychopath is really to associate a criminal with a vast swathe of society. You’re not really narrowing it down by using the term, instead by using a cliche, you’re invoking a stereotype, and probably incorrectly.
More: Professor believes Christopher Watts could be a psychopath
IS YOUR NEIGHBOR A NARCISSIST – OR ARE YOU?
Narcissism is similar. To brand a despicable criminal a narcissist feels pretty gratifying, doesn’t it? The word has a powerful zing to it, like atheist or pedophile. A narcissist is characterized by extreme selfishness, he craves admiration, he has a grandiose or exaggerated view of his own abilities, and his self-centeredness may be so extreme that he struggles to differentiate himself from external objects [say, a large house, trophy wife or mistress, bank balance or pot of gold].
And like the psychopath, an extreme narcissist is a pathological liar. Thus, the real criminal character-trait we want to look out for is habitual lying.
And so, this is where the “N” word breaks down in the Chris Watts case. If you’re going to accuse Watts of being grandiose, never wrong, wanting to be the center of attention, addicted to something [or someone], arrogant, lacking in sympathy, controlling and/or manipulative, two-faced etc, to be fair you’ve got to apply those traits to Shan’ann as well. I know, I know, that’s victim blaming. But I’m not going to let those attached to the “N” word wriggle out of it that easily.
Blame Chris Watts all you like for being a narcissist, apply those traits to Shan’ann – or don’t – but before you’re done, apply them to yourself as well. That’s the real litmus test.
If we’re being honest, if the Narcissistic label describes Watts best then it also describes plenty of us too, and many people we know, doesn’t it? I’m not at all sure, for the majority of Watts’ life prior to the crime, whether he can be genuinely associated with grandiosity, arrogance, provoking others, putting others down, blaming others, or wanting to be the center of attention.
Some aspects do ring true, like his being potentially irresponsible with money, as well as with his wife’s pregnancy, and with the lives of his loved ones. But how many among us are loyal to a fault, have never cheated, and have solid bank balances right now?
How are your finances? How often do you lie? How do you [or I] respond to criticism?
None of this is intended to defend or justify Watts, it’s an effort to make the case for the applicability and appropriateness of the “N” word. I hope that much is clear. By now it should be obvious that the Narcissism label is about as apt as the Psychopath label, which is to say not apt at all. It’s a generalization. If we want to explain who Watts is, and why he did what he did, narcissism isn’t the diagnosis.
WHO ARE THE TRUE NARCISSISTS IN TRUE CRIME?
The poster boy for a narcissistic murderer is Oscar Pistorius. There is a huge amount of arrogance, conceit, self-centeredness etc, and much of it is based on massive attention and adulation in the face of massive inadequacy and insecurity. OJ Simpson is arguably also a classic case of a narcissistic criminal. Both these men are – or were – celebrities. That’s the level or dose of narcissism we’re talking about when it’s relevant to true crime, and guess what – our own narcissism and voyeurism played directly into the hero worship that created these celebrity personas.
In reality, every psychologically healthy human being is a narcissist. We all have to maintain a healthy level of narcissism. It’s a minimum level of self-love we have that causes us to take care of things like personal hygiene, and basic socially acceptable behavior.
When a sibling sees another get a slightly bigger piece of cake, or a few more drops of soda, or a slightly more expensive toy come Christmas, they go crazy, demanding equal treatment. This is actually healthy narcissism; it protects them from being trampled on and taken advantage of. It reminds the parents not to favor the one over the other, or there will be hell to pay, and there should be when there is unfair favoritism.
So when it comes to true crime, who decides how much narcissism is excessive, and when it plays into criminal psychology when we’re all narcissists to some extent, and we’re a more narcissistic [selfish, vain, materialistic] society than we have ever been!
Who’s going to do it? Who’s going to decide this or that criminal is too narcissistic. Relative to who, or what?
IDENTITY IS THE KEY TO THE AUTHENTIC NATURE OF CRIMINALS
In order to fathom who a criminal is or why they do what they do, we have to do the much harder job of figuring out who they are. We have to get to know them. We have to construct a narrative. We have to find out about their history, life story, love life, backstory, family, friends, enemies, personality, attachments, failures – all of it. That takes time and effort. It’s through their identities that we figure out the who and why. It’s through spending a lot of time deciphering their language, behavior, body language, semantics, preferences, likes and dislikes etc. that we start getting into their heads. We listen to their music, examine their tastes [in clothes, food, sex], all of this tells us far more about a person than the “N” word.
If you’re a true crime fanatic and you’ve been banding the “N” word around a lot lately, please stop doing it. If everyone calls every murderer a narcissist, all we’re doing is agreeing that we have no fucking clue who or what we are dealing with. The “N” word, as far as I’m concerned, is almost as bad as the “he just snapped” explanation.
But that’s a rant for another day.
More: “Chris Watts Just Snapped”
Dr. Phil On Confessed Killer Chris Watts: ‘He Started Making Really Dumb Mistakes Really Early’
Was An Extra-Marital Affair The Motive For Colorado Killer Chris Watts To Murder His Family?
‘Chris Watts Is What We Call A Family Annihilator,’ Says Former FBI Criminal Profiler
https://youtu.be/5ETF0t_vlzI
In the early hours of August 13, a Ring doorbell camera records 34-year-old Shan’ann Watts arriving home in Frederick, Colorado from a business trip at 01:48. The pregnant mother enters her home on Saratoga Trail and is never seen alive again.
Where is this this footage of Shan’ann’s arrival, and why hasn’t it been released?
Also, did the cadaver dogs search the inside of Watts’ vehicle [where he said the bodies were stowed en route to CERVI 319]?
Why is there no footage of the interior of Chris Watts’ truck?
Shan’ann’s 33-year-old husband Chris Watts is seen on his neighbor’s doorbell camera from 05:27 onward. The camera records Watts backing his truck into the driveway, then heading back into the house and out to the truck several times. Although no bodies can be seen on the camera, during one of the trips to his truck he appears to be walking backwards, dragging something.
Exactly what happened in the 3 hours 39 minutes between the two camera recordings remains unclear and uncertain.
During the sentencing hearing on November 19, 2018, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said investigators don’t know the exact sequence of events. Because of the gruesome manner the bodies of his two children, Bella [4] and Celeste [3] were disposed of, investigators haven’t been able to establish time of death either. Were the children killed before or after their mother?
The Discovery Documents reveal how Watts’ story of the crime comes about. Eventually Watts is prompted: “Did Shan’ann do something?” But even Watts’ confession isn’t reliable.
In the moment that Chris Watts steps forward out of his quiet, introverted self and rises as the hero in his “confession”, Shan’ann falls as the villain, a convenient, symbolic and of course cowardly distortion of the truth.
So what is the truth?
TWO FACE RAPE OF CASSANDRA, published on December 17, 2018, investigates the exact sequence of events, from the time of the first death in the Watts home, to the disposal at the Cervi site, to how and why a “normal” family man wreaked a holocaust against his own family, and ultimately, himself.
Watts was undoubtedly devoted but weak during his marriage, inspired but duplicitous during his affair, and the murders themselves were the ultimate manifestation of his quintessential cowardice. But his resolve to murder didn’t arise in a vacuum. It germinated in a troubled paradise; that aspect has to be acknowledged as well. That aspect is RAPE OF CASSANDRA’s terrifying terra firma.
Immediately following the release of the autopsy reports on November 19th, I contacted Thomas Mollett, a forensic investigator, fellow true crime author and friend, and asked him his opinion on Shan’anns Blood Alcohol Levels. They were found to be three times the legal limit for driving. How likely was it, I asked, that these apparently high levels were from “normal” decomposition?
SUPPLEMENTAL
Autopsy reports show Shanann Watts, daughters were asphyxiated – TimesCall
Pathology is an extremely complex science, and many factors play into the biological processes that occur after death.
The three basic pillars one uses to calculate whether the BAC is “normal” or not are related to:
- the time the body is exposed to the elements [here time of death is a factor, unknown in this case, but with a relatively short window either way]
- the ambient conditions of the body [temperature, humidity etc.]
- circumstantial evidence is also a vital tool to gauge alcohol content, including eye witnesses, Shan’ann’s drinking habits, and her appearance in the Ring camera footage when she arrived home [described but not released thus far]
During our first communication I miscommunicated to Mollett that Shan’ann’s corpse was recovered after only 48 hours, which I guessed wasn’t enough time to reflect the high alcohol levels found. This was an initial error on my part; it took closer to 70 hours for Shan’ann’s corpse to be discovered and exhumed.
Based on this initial miscommunication, Mollett also believed the BAC level was likely higher than a natural rate [which as I say, was also what I suspected].
I asked Mollett to investigate the BAC levels and I’m grateful to him for doing so in detail. Obviously part of his thorough investigation corrected the original 48 hour error.
Below is Mollet’s unabridged report on the BAC levels.
First, watch the clip from 17:55 – 18:18 in real time. Everything happens, from start to finish, in a little less than 30 seconds.
https://youtu.be/HEngqmI7SLc
A few things that we pick up when we freeze it down into individual frames:
1. Watts parks his truck in peculiar position relative to the front door and where everyone is. He drives all the way past his driveway. Why? He seems to be hiding his truck either from Coonrod and Nickole Atkinson’s line-of-sight, or from the Trisnatich’s camera view [blocked by the tree]. Remember, Watts has since changed his clothes from earlier in the morning – from a black shirt with short sleeves to a long sleeve, grey shirt.
In order for Coonrod to see Watts exit his vehicle, he has so move from right beside the front door, right out onto the cement slab of driveway, and even then, the rear of Atkinson’s car is still almost in the way.
2. The first thing Watts does isn’t rush up to the house and speak to the cop. Instead he scurries round to fidget inside the back seat of his truck [where we now know all three bodies were transported].
At -27:24 Watts sneaks a quick look back, sees Coonrod, then turns even further [-27:23] and sees Nickole and Nicolas.
Nickole and Nicolas are blocked off by her car, but because Coonrod has stepped forward and to the left, he has line-of-sight to Watts.
Next Watts appears to hold up the garage remote to his audience as if to say: “This is what I was looking for, and I got it.” But why would the garage remote be behind the front passenger seat?
It could also be that in this moment Watts activates the garage door to open. Nickole shepherds her daughter out of harm way as the door begins to open [the line of square windows turn slightly as they curl inwards and reflect the light].
Watts seems to open the garage door from afar to allow him an “escape route” on his approach, so that he doesn’t have to stand for more than a few seconds and be confronted. And so by the time approaches Coonrod the door is virtually half open, and Watts is able to seamlessly shake, move away and duck under it.
3. Watts tucks something under his arm. It looks like it could be Shan’ann’s phone.
Or does he press the remote at this point, to have the door opening – as a distraction – while he’s approaching them.
4. Watts quickly, perfunctorily shakes Coonrod’s hand and without so much as a word, dashes off again. From the angle Watts approaches him, the bodycam can’t see the side of Watts’ body clutching the object under his arm. Watts keeps his left arm folded and tucked in the whole time, as he enters the garage, then almost absently steps back and opens the car door. [ He looks at the floor or the door compartment for some reason].
In his left hand he appears to have his own cell phone, his keys and the remote for the garage.
5. Officer Coonrod and Nickole Atkinson first assume Watts is going to be in the garage checking the car, and so they’ll be able to speak to him in a few moments, but then he does the same thing he did on his approach. He’s moving one way, so the next thing he’s gone inside the house, once again, without a word.
Sneaky. All his movements seem calculated to deceive.
It’s possible – and even likely – Watts’ first stop after entering the house alone was to hightail it upstairs and stuff Shan’ann’s phone under cushions on the couch in the loft lounge. This probably explains why Shan’ann’s phone was off. Taking it out the house meant it had to be off otherwise it would ping and track her/his movements. Perhaps he meant to dispose of the phone somewhere, or leave a message impersonating Shan’ann on his way back from work, implying she was alive and somewhere else, when she wasn’t.
If he had her iWatch in his jeans pocket, a valuable item he might want to pawn if he could, he could have stuffed that in there too, at the same time.
The reasoning behind bringing the phone back into the home if he’d taken it out, may have had something to do with them knowing her car was there. If her car was there and her phone wasn’t that would cause suspicion, and Watts was here to alay suspicion. She’s not here but it’s no big deal. In terms of the car, Watts may have forgotten about the little windows allowing Atkinson to see into the garage, and thanks to Nicolas, someone did. In his wildest dreams he probably couldn’t have imagined Nickole [via Nicolas] jumping on the hood of her car to see inside, but that’s what happened, and that’s what made Nickole CERTAIN something was wrong.
Her handbag, more than likely was inside the home but out of sight, either in the basement, or packed in one of the many cupboards in the house. Once the phone was discovered, he probably figured the handbag needed to be found as well. Between all the maxed out credit cards there was perhaps a card or two with someone money, and thus, his name written all over them. But then he had to give those up too.
Special shout out to Kelly Treybig on the True Crime Rocket Science Facebook group for highlighting this manoeuvre! Nice going Kelly.
With the wealth of around-the-clock video footage we have of the Watts’ crime scene, as well as the sheer number of officers casing the joint and writing their respective reports, it’s inevitable that more signs of Watts’ cover-up will become apparent. This is a useful exercise not so much to prove his guilt, but to track his deception, and also as a way of challenging our own true crime perceptual skills.
Worth playing for?
By meticulously cross-checking the bodycam footage with the Discovery Documents, we can also find areas where law enforcement missed something, or were bamboozled.
For one thing, we know the Rzuceks unwittingly frustrated the investigation by taking Shan’ann’s purple make-up bag. It was requested that it be returned, and ultimately it was, but this was a serious error the cops made; a top defense lawyer would have made a meal out of that in a trial.
For another, Deeter’s movements are an obvious example of law enforcement leaving open a few seemingly insignificant loose ends. Law enforcement didn’t seem to think where the little dachshund was in the house when Watts arrived, was necessary for their reports.
One aspect that was highlighted was the movement of the black suitcase from the foot of the stairs on Monday to the bedroom on Tuesday. Why would Watts want to do that? Isn’t it obvious? Because of an unanticipated event – the cops being summoned so early by Nickole Atkinson -Watts needed to change his story. He needed to put Shan’ann in the bedroom before she supposedly left. Who knows, perhaps his original story [if her flight wasn’t delayed] was that she came home, they argued, and she said she was going back to North Carolina, back home to her folks, but she never made it to the airport…
By cross-referencing the footage with the reports, do we see anything else overlooked by law enforcement? Is there any mention of a sleeping mask in the Discovery Documents?
What you’ll notice is as soon as we venture down the rabbit hole around the idea of a sleeping mask, other issues, ideas and evidence crops up. Like this:
So there is a mention of the word “mask” but it’s volunteered by Watts himself in a rather sinister context. I believe this seemingly throwaway statement is very significant. You don’t want to be the people parading around with like a mask on when their kids are around…But wasn’t that exactly what Watts was doing in terms of his unborn child, and Kessinger?
And probably that’s precisely how Watts felt – he didn’t want to be “parading” around with her, wearing a mask. When they secretly went to the Lazy Dog restaurant in Erie – instead of the Rockies game on Saturday night, August 11th – they took Kessinger’s car. The white Lexus belonged to a married woman. Too much of a risk for the Lexus and her better half to be spotted in public, but also a real drag for the better half.
I’ve also suggested in the TWO FACE narratives that Watts may have donned a mask when he attacked Shan’ann. This wasn’t necessarily to scare her or to trick her, but to keep evidence of himself from being scratched and transferred onto her. This may be why the only scratch Watts suffered was on the lower side of his neck, the area a mask might not necessarily cover.
When Watts was asked what the significance was of the mark on his neck, he said it was a mosquito bite.
I’ve already stressed in the first TWO FACE trilogy that Shan’ann never made it upstairs or to bed. A few of the obvious reasons include the fact that Watts’ described Shan’ann still wearing mascara to bed [something she would never otherwise do], and because her body was also found wearing a bra. would she have gone to sleep still wearing her bra?
The murdered in bed theory also has to address the mystery of the mobile sleeping mask, assuming the fuzzy thing on the floor is the sleep mask. Shan’ann’s friends would probably be able to shed light on whether Shan’ann often slept with a mask on, and if she did, what it looked like and where she usually kept it. Kessinger might be able to shed the same light on Watts’ sleeping habits. That black garbage bag hanging over the window probably didn’t do much good blocking out the light after dawn. On the other hand, if he had to be up at 04:00, why would he need the basement to be dark enough so he could sleep…?
Did Chris Watts move a purple night mask from his bed in the basement, to the bedroom upstairs, or the other way round?
If he moved it upstairs, why would he do that?
If he moved it downstairs, what would be the reason for that?
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
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Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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