“What Car did Nickole Atkinson Drive?” This was one of the unexpected questions I was confronted with when trying to visualize the final moments of Shan’ann’s life, when Nickole drove her home from Denver International airport in the early hours of August 13th, 2018.
It was an agonizingly difficult to answer in early September, when I was writing THE MAN UNDERNEATH CHRISTOPHER WATTS. I knew how I wanted to open the narrative – which became a series of 9 books – and I needed Nickole’s car to do that. What car did she drive? At that stage there was no bodycam footage. It wasn’t even certain what color or what type of vehicle Niockole’s car was.
It took a thorough search of Nickole’s Facebook timeline to come across a small handful of references to her car. Like this one.
And this.
In the screengrab of a video [below] it’s almost possible to see the brand of the vehicle on the steering column.
When I posted an audio excerpt of the book onto YouTube recently, some listeners were quick to point out [obviously with the benefit of the bodycam footage] that Nickole’s car isn’t a “battered Mitsubishi”.
Some said it was a Chevy Malibu, which isn’t a bad stab at it except the rear lights don’t line up and the logo is very prominent.
It does look like it could be a Mitsubishi [see below], but it’s not. When I reviewed the data I wondered what made me think it was a Mitsubishi to begin with?
Well, it was this image.
The first time I saw this image, I looked closely and saw the Mitsubishi name and logo, and GT on the right hand side. But I should have looked even closer. Above Mitsubishi was the word DART although the font made it hard to make out. Was the D an O or a 0? Was it 0art? The letter “E” was also peeking out beside Nicolas’ star-spangled shirt. That ought to have been a clue too.
As one YouTube commenter rightly pointed out, Nickole’s car is a DODGE DART, a vehicle that was discontinued in 2016. The image below is missing the GT but the one below it has the GT on the right, just as Nickole’s car does.
Although there are a couple of permutations of the Dodge logo, and often in either red or black, the Mitsubishi logo is still pretty distinct.
This [below] was the original post.
In the scheme of things, the make and color of Nickole Atkinson’s vehicle wasn’t relevant to the facts of the Watts case, but it’s still important that True Crime Rocket Science gets the details [even the unimportant ones] right.
The chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s book TALKING TO STRANGERS dealing with Amanda Knox is Chapter 7 of 12 chapters, in Part 4 of 5 parts. As the chapter itself admits, it’s a “short” explanation of the Amanda Knox case. And that’s the problem. In a case spanning four years and four separate hearings [between November 2007 and October 2011], five pages hardly does the Amanda Knox case justice.
I’ve written six books on the case, with two to go. That’s two trilogies. This blog post on it’s own [and it will be one of several on the same subject] is likely as long if not longer than Gladwell’s chapter on Knox. It’s impossible to give this case a fair airing in a single “short” chapter. Even in that chapter Gladwell provides other cases, including Bernie Madoff and someone he refers to as “Nervous Nelly”.
And Gladwell* admits at one point:
I could give you a point-by-point analysis of what was wrong with the investigation of Kercher’s murder. It could easily be the length of this book…But instead, let me give you the simplest and shortest of all possible Amanda Knox theories. Her case is about transparency.
Gladwell is an expert at thin-slicing, and arguably a craftsman at keeping things short, sweet and succinct. For my part I’ve bought, read and enjoyed several of Gladwell’s books.
The problem here, dealing with this particular subject matter, is that brevity becomes reductionist. Short becomes not only simplistic, but grossly oversimplified. What Gladwell’s done here is basically taken the veneer of the mainstream media version of Knox’s story, the generic Wikipedia version, and adopted it seemingly at face value. He may have Googled a few other sources, and did some background reading, but then figured, he’s figured it out, let’s stick to the basics and not confuse the audience.
True Crime sets a high bar for truth-telling, and though Gladwell means well, it’s questionable whether he succeeds in clarifying the Knox case or contaminating it even more than it already is.
Bear in mind, his book isn’t a book on the Amanda Knox case, it’s a book about something else, and the Amanda Knox case is just one short chapter on the way to making his points about effective discourse with strangers.
In this series True Crime Rocket Science will evaluate Gladwell’s assertions on Knox. In itself, Gladwell’s “thin-slicing” of the Knox case is fortuitous – it’s an excellent summary of the mainstream narrative and what’s wrong with it. It also shows how in our haste to make our “expert” opinions known, we are tempted to cherry pick the low hanging fruit that suits our own confirmation bias. True crime can’t be rushed, and complex criminal cases shouldn’t be treated like a convenience store for civil intertextuality.
You get intertextuality within crimes, and that’s one thing, but there be dragons when you start to assume murder suspects are innocent and they are then recruited as part of a PR effort to promote some sort of cerebral agenda. It would be like conflating Stephen Avery with the plight of the poor – just don’t do it. Leave true crime out of it. It’s a separate discipline.
If Gladwell is a cognitive specialist, the Amanda Knox case is the epitome of a case, and a character, that is anything but cerebral.
Cerebral people use their brains instead of their hearts.
I don’t mean that the case itself isn’t challenging, I mean the personality and the character of Amanda Knox, as it relates to the Murder of Meredith Kercher, is anything but cerebral. Knox’s book Waiting to be Heard is exhibit A in confirming someone who was trying to live it up, as most students do.
Chocolate festivals, sex, Halloween parties [and not being invited to them], boyfriends [and being passed over by someone you fancy living downstairs in favor of her housemate], smoking marijuana and then stepping the recreational drugs up a gear.
The most cerebral aspect of Knox’s existence in 2007 was Harry Potter. She read it in English, German and at the time of the murder, was trying to read The Deathly Hallows in Italian. Even in her choice of boyfriend, Knox selected Raffaele Sollecito because he resembled her hero Harry Potter.
Instead of carrying a wand and being interested in magic, Sollecito was a knife freak, who was into violent manga and cocaine. In today’s parlance we’d think of the young Italian as an incel. He was closer to an Elliot Rodger than Harry Potter, and Knox herself – loud, boisterous and promiscuous – was no Hermione.
This is what I mean by “the personality and the character of Amanda Knox, as it relates to the Murder of Meredith Kercher, is anything but cerebral.”
But let’s deal with the cool intelligence of Gladwell as he writes about the case. We’ll assume, as a thought leader, he became a scholar of the case, and we’ll test his application of his research through the prism of True Crime Rocket Science.
It seems ridiculously obvious doesn’t it? The black guy did it, so what’s the fuss about Amanda Knox anyway?
This is what’s known as being reductionist in true crime. Similar arguments have been made against the West Memphis Three, the three youths accused of brutalizing, torturing and murdering three eight-year-old boys. Why did three youths have to be guilty? Why couldn’t it be just one, or for that matter, anyone? Curiously, one of those youths found guilty and then acquitted in the West Memphis Three case appeared on the same stage to proclaim his innocence as Amanda Knox.
It should be noted, in the trials of Amanda Knox, as well as those of the West Memphis Three, Knox and Damien Echols both were charged with two sidekicks, and both received the harshest sentences. Both were implicated as ringleaders within a trio of suspects.
So Gladwell’s very first sentence in his chapter implies that because some person was caught and charged, Knox is off the hook. In theory, he could have stopped at that sentence and gone on to the next chapter.
There are many cases involving accessories to murder, one of the most famous – but never proved, nor tested in a court of law – was JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet’s parents were found by the Grand Jury to be accessories after the fact to the a third party.
So even that case involves a potential trio – of accessories and a perpetrator. I could go on, but let’s get back to Gladwell. Nowhere that I can see, does Gladwell provide the most obvious thin-slicing. What’s the first thing one does when establishing the possible involvement of a potential suspect? What’s the first and best way to exclude a potential suspect of a crime? You find out whether they have an alibi. It’s not rocket science. And so you need two pieces of information. When did the victim die, and where was the suspect at this estimated time of death?
2. True Crime 101: Be Precise About Time of Death
I love the way Gladwell uses the most indirect language to skirt around this issue. He doesn’t write: “At 22:11 Rudy Guede murdered Meredith Kercher. At that time, Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to were – WHERE EXACTLY?”
Instead Gladwell uses pretty clumsy English – for him.
“On the night of…Meredith Kercher was murdered by…”
Murdered by? I’m not sure when last I’ve heard those words. X murdered Y. It’s never a case of X was murdered BY Y.
By being this vague about the timing, Gladwell’s also vague about the date. November 1 was a holiday in Italy. It meant, on that day, most of the students in Perugia where Knox was attending college were away, visiting their parents over a long weekend. This meant it was only Knox and Kercher in the house, no one else. They were the only expats. And what do university students – especially expats – tend to do over long weekends?
In his next sentence, Gladwell juxtaposes mountains of speculation [what’s argumentation?] and controversy with the certainty of Guede’s guilt. Yes, Guede’s guilt is certain. He left his feces in the toilet bowel, and a bloody handprint on the wall above Meredith Kercher’s bed. He also left a series of shoeprints when he bolted from Meredith’s room down the hall and out the front door.
And this is where the rubber of True Crime Rocket Science hits the road. Look at the image of Guede’s shoe trail. What do you see? You don’t see anything. If you’d entered the house, as Knox claimed she did, at face value you wouldn’t see any blood. That’s a problem.
3. Where’s the blood, and why is so much of it a washed-out pink?
The original crime scene in Meredith’s bedroom was a bloodbath. Meredith throat was gashed deeply in two places, and she was also cut or stabbed seven times and had sixteen bruises on her body.
As Knox herself said: “She fucking bled to death…” When that happens, there’s a lot of blood. And there was. Arterial blood sprayed everywhere, and yet the crime scene had a weird combination of thick pools of blood, and pinkish transparent streams of diluted blood.
There was also a weird combination of the grotesqueness of the crime itself, and the fact that Meredith’s murderer had thoughtfully placed a duvet over her body, then closed the door behind him [or her], and locked it.
Somewhere in Gladwell’s “mountains of controversy” there are a few good reasons. Thin-slicing the evidence around Guede, we see if he was the only murderer, and if he beat a hasty retreat, then why did he fail to leave clear shoeprints in Meredith’s blood? He’d left a finger smear on the wall, and clearly more blood had to have sprayed onto his trousers and pooled onto the floor, so it was more likely he’d leave a trail of shoeprints. So why aren’t they there? Why, instead, are there various other footprints and shoeprints laid into the blue bathroom mat and in a shoe Guede didn’t even own?
So we have a situation here where it appears someone spent time cleaning up the crime scene – not only inside Kercher’s room, but in the hallway. Guede’s shoeprints left in Meredith’s blood were mostly wiped away, but not completely. Why weren’t they clearly visible, bright, and solid? After all, blood in a situation like this, where someone’s neck is cut open, is thick and scarlet. Think about Nicole Brown. So much blood flowed out of her it traveled down the garden path and dripped onto the sidewalk.
We won’t go into detail here about the blood evidence, or the mixed DNA traces, but it’s extensive. There’s an orgy of evidence.
4. “I wasn’t there” vs “Of course my DNA was there, I lived there”
Knox often refers to this aspect dismissively, saying there’s no evidence of her in the crime scene. She seems to be referring to Meredith’s room when she says that. As if the crime scene begins and ends inside Meredith’s room.
Knox’s lack of DNA in Kercher’s room was no fault of her own. According to Knox, cleaning DNA is not one of her specialties. “That’s impossible. It’s impossible to see DNA, much less identify whose DNA it is.”
It’s not impossible to see DNA. If blood is lying on the ground, DNA is in that blood lying on the ground. If you clean up the blood, you clean up the DNA.
When asked about her DNA in Meredith’s blood elsewhere in the house, Knox is equally dismissive.
“Of course my DNA was there. I lived there! We lived together for months…”
5. Shady Character/s
Now let’s deal with Guede. Gladwell accuses Guede of being a “shady character” but doesn’t explain why. He mentions Guede having a “criminal history”, but doesn’t say what for.
So let’s answer that. Guede was drug dealer. He was said to be involved in several break-ins, but these were so petty, even when he was caught, the police didn’t press charges. More pertinently, Guede was a fairly frequent visitor to the house where Meredith, Knox, and the Italian boys downstairs lived. He played basketball with the guys, and sometimes smokes joints with the girls. On at least one occasion Guede got so high he fell asleep in the bathroom of the villa.
Gladwell is right to observe that Guede had been hanging around the house, but he should be more explicit that he also hung around inside it. On one occasion he went out clubbing with them. In this scenario, where Guede is a fairly frequent companion to the residents of the villa, it suddenly becomes less preposterous that there might be a crime involving more than one person.
We’ve also got to link Guede to Knox’s Italian boyfriend. How do we do that? Actually, it’s pretty simple. How did one link Guede to any university student?
In July 2014 the Telegraph reported on a cocaine dealer who Knox met on a train and had sex with, while her younger sister was traveling with her through Italy [and just prior to her commencing her studies in Perugia]. Guess what? This cocaine dealer wasn’t Rudy Guede, it was someone else.
Amanda Knox was reportedly having sexual relations with a cocaine dealer…Reports of Ms Knox’s drug dealing connections were not mentioned at her murder trials in Italy, but the Italian crime magazine Giallo has reported that in January 2008, police investigators wrote that she had had a relationship of a “supposedly sexual nature” with a man they refer to as ‘F’, who had sold drugs to the US student.
Giallo wrote that ‘F’ was a psychology student from Rome who met Ms Knox on a train from Milan to Florence and shared a joint with her. His number was later found on Ms Knox’s cell phone and Giallo said he had been in contact with her frequently, before and after the slaying of Ms Kercher.
What we have here is a precedent for Knox and Sollecito to require the drug peddling services of Guede. And if he was a shady character, and they were actively using his services, what does that say about their characters?
When Gladwell refers to Guede hanging around the house Knox stayed in, why was he hanging around? Well, what about to do his trade with them, as he was doing with the student population in general?
Gladwell portrays Guede as a stranger to Knox, but that’s a mistake. It’s even possible Knox was either sleeping with Guede, or infatuated with him.
Gladwell finishes off his opening gambit linking the discovery of Kercher’s body to Guede fleeing to Germany [where, as it happens, Knox’s aunt also lived].
Now, to be clear, all of Meredith’s British friends fled Perugia. They cut short their studies and decamped back to Britain. But Knox wanted to stay. Everyone in the villa had to move out following Meredith’s murder, but Knox wanted to continue staying there. In fact, Knox was bummed out that she’d just paid the rent and now wasn’t going to get anything for it. Knox wanted her life to go on business as usual, even though someone in the room next door to her had been brutally murdered.
Gladwell might dismiss this as simply quirky, but most right-thinking people would realize something more was amiss. This isn’t just goofy behavior, although the goofy behavior is relevant. It’s more goofy than everyone else, why is that? And what might this goofiness have to do with her street cred, and her attitude to…say…alcohol use [as a 21-year-old American] and her proclivity to recreational drug use, and sex?
When Guede went to Germany, a friend of his got hold of him on Skype and had a conversation. This is an extract of that conversation.
GUEDE: I’m afraid. But I don’t want to stay in Germany, I’m black and if the police catch me I don’t know what they might do to me. I prefer Italian jails. In the newspaper they’re writing that I was drunk and slept on the toilet. That’s crap. In that house we were smoking joints, we smoked and so did those girls, everyone did.After that I said to the guys, who are men of their word, “Listen, guys, I’m tired, I can’t walk now, can I sleep over here?” So I slept on their sofa. I was only ever at their place twice. After that, after that I met Amanda, but I didn’t talk to her any more, I just saw her one other time, at that pub, at Lumamba’s pub, whatever his name is.
GUEDE:Listen to this [Guede is reading from a newspaper], “Meredith’s clothes were put in the washing machine. When the police came to the house it was still full, the girl’s clothes were wet”, so if that really did happen, Amanda or Raffaele did it. Do you understand? That must have been them, if it really happened.
GIACOMO: Why would they have done that?
GUEDE: Because when I left she was dressed, see?
GIACOMO: Meredith? The girl who died?
GUEDE: But Meredith was dressed.
GIACOMO:So they killed her dressed?
GUEDE:Yes, but it says here that they were washed in the washing machine, but it’s not true, she was dressed, she had a pair of jeans on and a white shirt and a woolen thing. She was dressed.
GIACOMO:All right, and that…
GUEDE:This means that they washed them, Giacomo. I left [the house], and that guy [quello] must have left that house and…
GIACOMO:But what the hell did Amanda go wash the clothes for?
There’s also something else that’s interesting. When Knox was arrested, she implicated another black man as being at her apartment. Her boss. According to that confession she was with this black man while he was in the room with Kercher. What are the chances Knox would know that Meredith’s killer was black person before anyone, before the rest of the world did?
And further, if Guede was at the villa, and Knox knew about him, why wouldn’t she tell the police about him, rather than her boss, was a married father who had never been to her home to begin with?
In Episode #2 TCRS will deal with Gladwell’s version of the police investigation into Knox and Sollecito, including his version of the forensic evidence.
*Malcolm Gladwell. Talking to Strangers (Kindle Locations 1975-1983). Little, Brown and Company.
To understand the Watts case, and to further understand why, we have to understand the Emotional Narrative surrounding this case. Not our emotions – theirs. Although this is an important conversation, it’s also important to have this conversation in an intelligent and reasonable way.
Whether we admit it or not, everyone interested in the Watts case is extremely interested in Nichol Kessinger. If there are those who hate Chris Watts, there seem to be legions more who despise the mistress, many putting all the blame on her for what happened.
On CrimeRocket, the stats speak for themselves. Stories or analysis featuring Kessinger are far more popular than the other stories, and those simply featuring footage or photos of Chris’ mistress are the most popular of all. Why? People want to see what she looks like. People want to get to know her, and try to understand what Watts saw in her.
Many have looked scornfully at the footage, comparing Shan’ann favorably to Kessinger, or Kessinger unfavorably to Shan’ann. In this episode, we want to provide some intelligent analysis to a debate that I believe is important, but it’s important we conduct it intelligently, which is to say, using objective facts, using logic, using intuition and sensitivity – in sum True Crime Rocket Science.
Now please understand this. We still do need to be mindful that Shan’ann is no longer with us. And we do want to be mindful that no matter what the problems were in her marriage, no one deserves to be murdered for whatever reason. That’s not what we’re talking about here. So when we’re having this conversation, we’re not even thinking about that. We’re thinking about the relationship dynamics when Shan’ann was still alive, going back several years into their marriage. What made Chris Watts fall out of love? What attracted Watts to Kessinger, and Kessinger to him? And who, ultimately was the more attractive partner?
In the video posted recently about motive, we looked at the short, thin-slicing answer to this question. And then we looked at the longer version. We’re going to do the same here, but in a lot less detail on both counts. Let’s start with the longer, more general version of why couples break up and marriages don’t last, examine the stressors on the Watts family and then move on to Kessinger versus Shan’ann.
1. American Couples – Blumstein and Schwartz
Money, work and sex. This the trifecta that couples need to get right in order to have a longer marriage. In the Watts case, speaking in general terms, both seemed to have screwed up their money situation, and neither had stellar careers. If they had, the money situation wouldn’t have been as bad as it was. They’d gone bankrupt in 2015, but somehow they hadn’t learned the lesson from that catastrophe.
There are seven references to bankruptcy in the discovery documents. Most of them come from Nichol Kessinger.
In the CBI Report the word bankruptcy comes up twice.
At 5:45 Chris Watts quotes Blumstein and Schwartz:
“When a relationship breaks up, it’s normally the more attractive one that leaves…”
Watts then shrugs, saying he’s not sure whether that’s true. What do you think?
This also raises another prickly question – between Shan’ann and Watts, who was the more attractive part of the couple?
The three ”sexiest” areas when it comes to couples: money, work and sex.
the couples who are happiest are those most equal in power, in the freedom to initiate sex, in decision-making…
”Husbands and wives who do not believe that marriage should be forever are less willing to pool (their money).” ”Married couples who disagree about the wife’s right to work have less stable relationships.” ”When heterosexual women are attractive, they have more varied sex lives.” ”For all types of couples, possessiveness escalates when one partner fears the other might have a meaningful affair.” ”A fixation on beauty makes it difficult to create a stable relationship.”
(So important is a balance of power to lesbians that they are the group whose members are most likely to have split up, to resent being put in a more powerful role. Indeed, they are the group that has sex least often, since a common lament among them was dislike for being the one to ”always initiate sex.”) Men, homosexual or straight, want to preserve their power and dominance; they care about the partner’s looks; they are still less ”relationship-centered” than women.
Philip Blumstein and Dr. Pepper Schwartz were sociologists at the University of Washington in the late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s. Blumstein and Schwartz had begun studying sexual behavior in 1972. Eleven years later the researchers collaborated on a book simply titled American Couples.
On October 23rd, the New York Timespublished the following review of the book.
[Blumstein was a] social psychologist skilled at analyzing everyday encounters, friendships, and business relationships, Philip was hired as a sociology professor at the University of Washington in 1969 and became renowned for his research in human sexuality and relationships. He had a reputation for fastidious methodology and a talent for interpreting data.
Dr. Pepper Schwartz is an Americansociologist and sexologist teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, magazines, website columns, and a television personality on the subject of sexuality. Schwartz is notable for her work in the 1970s and early 1980s that culminated in the book, with Philip Blumstein, American Couples: Money-Work-Sex which surveyed lesbian couples, gay male couples and heterosexual couples. Schwartz also… writes the column The Naked Truth.
“When a relationship breaks up, it’s normally the more attractive one that leaves…”
Is that what happened in the Chris Watts case? Was Chris Watts becoming “the more attractive one”…?
“…A few days later, he confessed to murdering all three, though the reason why he did so is not clear to this day…”
At 8:58 in the clip below, the Weld District Attorney tries to answer the question.
What does True Crime Rocket Science say about the “why”? Well, there’s a short version and a longer version. It’s important to look at both. We can say the same about why people have affairs or why a marriage ends in divorce. There’s a short version, such as one partner finding out the other is having an affair, and a longer version, the reason the one partner fell out of love and was attracted to someone else. Both of these versions alone aren’t the full answer. It’s only when we put them together that we get the full story.
In his video about relationships, at 4:02 Watts refers to two types of deterioration in a relationship.
“You have sudden and gradual. Sudden would be an example of infidelity.”
At 4:19 Watts refers to a relationship “gradually” deteriorating.
“Gradual would be…if you met somebody at work, or a new friendship as occurred…and as it goes on you see that, well maybe this relationship has more potential…”
A short answer is necessary, but it’s not the whole answer. A long answer is necessary too, but even with the details of a long narrative, we still need to be able to break it down into its building blocks, and then find our way to the biggest block of all. And that block, in this case, is the pregnancy.
Initially it seemed like it was a mistake, didn’t it? Or even that Shan’ann had gotten pregnant to trap her husband in the marriage. Then it seemed like it was a mutual idea. Then it appears it was his idea, and then he changed his mind.
Probably what happened is the marriage hit the rocks, and Shan’ann confronted him about it and pushed him in the direction of another child. And probably he wasn’t opposed to the idea, after all he’d mentioned it before [at 3:26] in the speech he made about how to heal relationships.
He also mentioned [at 5:02 in the clip below] going to a place where one had first met, to heal a broken relationship, which is precisely what he and Shan’ann did. Was this also like pregnancy, her idea based on his idea, and he simply went along with it?
So he probably went along with it, as he tended to do his whole life. Go with the flow. And then when Shan’ann announced she was pregnant, Watts realized he was scared, and confused. Probably at this time he had already developed feelings for Nichol Kessinger.
Thin-slicing the Psychological Building Blocks, from Biggest to Smallest
1. Late abortion
2. Kill the baby, kill Shan’ann
3. Kill the children, they were also an expense. Watts didn’t enjoy his time in North Carolina, and didn’t like that his children were being sequestrated from his family by Shan’ann.
4. The expenses associated with the baby, Shan’ann and the children.
5. If he had gotten divorced he would have lost everything, except, perhaps his job. But with no money, his only recourse would have been to move in with Nicole. She said she didn’t want that. Odd because he had spent the night almost every night at her place while Shan’ann was away.
Overarching Psychology and Identity
A. He’s an introvert
B. He’s a mechanic. He wants to fix things.
C. Oil worker, oil industry is also about bullshitting. Clean energy and safety.
D. He was emerging as more confident but he was still an introvert. Physically fitter and better looking, and Kessinger was someone who took an interest in him, edified him.
E. Shan’ann’s Temperament and Nutgate. Nutgate in a sense provided the psychological apparatus, to kill his children and his wife. In his mind, Shan’ann had already killed his children, she’d taken them away, and put a “dagger” into his relationship with his parents, especially his father.
Late abortion
Kill the baby kill Shan’ann
Kill the children, they were also an expense. Didn’t enjoy his time in North Carolina.
Context and Perspective
None of that would have been an issue if he hadn’t met Nichol Kessinger.
If he was a rich man, divorce would have been easier too. It might have been why Nichol was attracted to him in the first place, because he appeared to have the perfect life, as many rich people, and rich men do.
She was attracted to him because he represented a better life, which was a fairy tale and a fiction. He was attracted to her because she represented a better person, and a nicer person [in his mind], than Shan’ann, and he thought with her he could also have a better life. But this fairy tale was built on the delusional fiction that his wife needed to vanish and that his girlfriend would accept the fairy tale that she and the kids had simply gone somewhere else and carried on with their lives somewhere else.
Even this notion was a mirror of Shan’ann and the kids spending 5 weeks in North Carolina. If she’d done that, why wouldn’t she simply walk out of her own marriage. If was believable, but it wasn’t reality. If we think that’s stupid, consider our knowledge – and that includes law enforcement, the District Attorney, the media, and everyone talking about this case. How many have really been able to explain why? The true answer to that question tells you how delusional we as a society have become, and why individuals need to develop their own discernment, their own Rocket Science to burn away their delusions.
Postscript
In the next episode I will debunk the “Narcissism Narrative” as communicated in these videos:
…pulling the single suitcase along a narrow cement apron, then hoisting it over two grey steps and finally onto the porch outside the front door. The pregnant 34-year old opens it, takes a breath and steps inside…
Unknown to anyone right then, a neighbor’s dashboard camera also silently records the scene.its lights swing away…
Today’s episode deals with three huge breakthroughs in the 6th hour of the 7 hour interrogation. We’re going to play Devil’s Advocate. What happens when we do that? We do we see when we look at the interrogation from the perspective of a defense case? Had this ultra high-profile case ever gone to trial, we will see there’s a moment, a precise moment where Watts still had the upper hand against law enforcement. If he had called a timeout then, he would have kept the upper hand. But he didn’t. Instead he voluntarily gave that advantage away. He threw in the towel on his own story, on his own elaborate effort to get away with murder.
Now, although we’ll be looking at this mostly out of context, we need to review a skeletal framework as a bare minimum for how things got to where they did. We’ll start by simply acknowledging that by Wednesday afternoon, following the polygraph, law enforcement had the goods on Watts affair. They knew he had a girlfriend, they knew she was a co-worker of his at Anadarko, they knew it was a recent affair, they knew the pair had been intimate, and they knew he’d been lying to her as well.
Nichol Kessinger deserves credit for this. She sat down for her first interview with two FBI agents at around midday on Wednesday, August 15th. It was as a result of this interview that the Feds were able to pass their intel on to Coder and Lee, and they had the confidence to exert some real pressure on Watts. They’d been buttering him up for hours, letting him waste time and have their say. They gradually nudged him here and there, but they had no idea how much Watts was hiding. Kessinger’s statement provided them with a least a little certainty in this regard.
1st Breakthrough
The first breakthrough happens at around the 7-minute mark, in the 6th hour on the interrogation. We’re going to spend some time dealing with the first ten minutes leading up to the breakthrough, and the three minutes following.
Now, in order to get to the finish line, in order to get Watts to willingly volunteer information, rather than recoil, withdraw and lawyer up, they had to play nice, but also get him to admit to the affair. If they told him they knew, some trust that had developed would be lost. By Watts admitting, he was able to save face and in a weird way, as law enforcement they could seem almost graceful in their beneficence. They could also extend clemency for the affair, which would make Watts wander if they’d be okay with him having done worse stuff.
The first breakthrough comes immediately after the polygraph, when Coder and Lee return to the cubicle together. Unbeknownst to Watts, while he has been stuck in the room – at that stage for around 5 hours – both agents have been appraised with more information, and have been able to refresh themselves with a change of scenery, and also consult with each other, and others, on the way to approach Watts during the next phase, bearing in mind what they know now about Kessinger.
Probably, they agree to be firmer, but not too firm. They decide to step it up a gear, while being prepared to back off if Watts gets too riled up.
Let’s start at 16:00 sharp, and listen in to the first 105 seconds when the agents start off for their next session, immediately leading up to the breakthrough.
INTERROGATION AUDIO 1
It takes another five minutes of softening Watts up to get him to admit to the affair after this point. Let’s take a look at some of the dialogue in that conversation before listening to it directly.
LEE: But you know they’re not coming back home…
WATTS: I know in the back of my head, I hope they come back home.
LEE: But you know they’re not.
WATTS: I hope they come back home.
LEE: Mmm.
WATTS: I don’t know they’re not coming back home.
CODER: Chris, Tammy and I are confused, and this is what we’re confused about. We’ve told you that we’ve done some work overnight, we’ve got a lot of leads, okay. We know a lot more than you think we do. And here’s where we’re confused. You’re this great guy. I’m not just telling you that, okay. I’m telling you that because everyone tells us that. We can’t find anyone to say anything bad about you. “Chris is a great guy. He’s a good father. He’s a good man.”
LEE: Mmmm.
CODER: We’re confused as to why you’re not taking care of your beautiful children…
WATTS: How I’m not taking care of them right now…?
Here, Coder is seeding the thought in Watts’ mind. He know it’s triggering Watts, and he knows it’s triggering Watts in terms of guilt – about the affair. But he needs Watts to acknowledge it. Watts does want to acknowledge it, he just doesn’t want to get into trouble. The agents must soothe him, appear as therapists temporarily rather than cops trying to nail his ass to post.
CODER: Where are they?
WATTS: I don’t know where they’re at. I honest – I do not know where they are at. If I could have my babies back home right now, I would. I want them back. I want everybody back. [With emphasis] And that’s the God’s-honest truth.
Then, incredibly, 55 long seconds tick by. These have to be seen, and felt to believed. This is ratcheting up the pressure. Two agents staring at Watts, Watts rebuffing them, and then the clock ticking out the time as the standoff continues. In a sense, this moment speaks volumes for the interrogation. Watts isn’t giving them anything, so it’s pointless even talking if he’s going to continue pontificating. This protracted silence not only indicates his resolve, but theirs. And we know ultimately who would win the standoff.
The amazing thing is Watts wanted to take them on; he thought he could outwit them just as he had outwitted his wife, her friends, Kessinger to an extent, and even his colleagues. If Watts wasn’t so pigheaded, he could have looked at the situation differently, and simply registered that they were onto him, and called the whole thing off.
There’s a reason, a few reasons actually, that Watts didn’t lawyer up.There’s also a reason Watts thought he could bullshit his way out of a sticky situation. Maybe one at a time, Watts was an agile liar. But not like this. Not one against two, for hours, and with the disadvantage of others providing crucial intel on him there and then.
At 6:42, after Coder hits Watts with the Two Chris’ speech, he finally confronts Watts as on the chin as he dares, about Watts “lying about something else”. But instead of denying it, Watts admits it.
Watts couldn’t admit to the cops he was having an affair. He couldn’t face Shan’ann on the same issue either.
2nd Breakthrough
The second breakthrough starts happening at about 16:34, about 24 minutes after the first. It involves Watts talking to his father, but it’s not just that. First of all, Watts was so worn down by the interrogation he was close to saying, “Please stop”. Instead, the interrogators skillfully offered Watts the opportunity to talk to his father as an exit.
Even after this idea was mentioned, the cops spoke to Watts for a further ten minutes, holding the offer of talking to his dad – a friendly face – as a psychological carrot.
Even so, this strategy was an enormous risk. They’d been piling on the pressure, and so, if they stepped out of the room, they ran the real risk of Watts catching a breather, getting a second wind, and worse, shutting down or putting a stop to the interrogation. There was also an arguably even bigger risk that Ronnie might talk some sense into his son, and as we’re about to see, that’s exactly what happened.
AUDIO WITH CODER AND LEE PRIOR TO RONNIE ENTERING THE ROOM
The second breakthrough has two layers, the first is Watts talking to his father, and the second, the real breakthrough, is that Watts elects to confess to his father right out the gate. Coder and Lee did such a great mindjob on Wwatts, that they framed Watts talking to his dad as a conversation about what happened. And then, that’s precisely what he did. He didn’t have to.
At about 16:38 the agents leave the room, and as they do, Watts removes his glaves and digs his face into the left shoulder of his shirt, wiping away tears. These are real tears. This is real emotion. Watts doesn’t want his father to see it.
Five long minutes tick by. Watts’ father doesn’t enter the room immediately. Watts is given five long minutes to stew under the intense ticking of the clock, still stuck inside the claustrophobic cubicle. Clearly, during this 5 minute interval Watts’ father is also being given instructions. Ronnie is also being told what to talk about, and expressly that his son is ready to tell him, wants to tell him what happened.
They may also tell Ronnie that he can only talk to his son on condition that they talk about what happened. It’s late in the day, it’s urgent, it’s important they find out what happened to the girls, to Shan’ann, and so Watts needs to tell him.
It’s not surprising then that Ronnie’s first words to his son are:
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on…or?”
AUDIO OF FATHER AND SON
The style of the “interrogation” between father and son is quite different. Both speak in low tones, almost conspirationally, perhaps hoping what they say won’t be recorded. Ronnie is quite much of the time, making short, simple, leading type statements and often simply repeating what his son says. What the agents hadn’t been able to achieve in over five hours, Watts’ father achieved in five minutes.
Curiously, and this has been overlooked by many speculating over the case, when Watts tells his father – volunteers – about the affair, his father isn’t surprised. It’s as if Ronnie already knew about it. Watts also tells his father:
“I told her about the separating…and everything about that…”
He’s implying he told Shan’ann about the affair, and that this is why Shan’ann freaked out. And then when she freaked out, he freaked out.
What’s incredible about this moment, this second breakthrough, besides the contents of it, is that, in effect Watts defaulted from the enterprising Romeo to a zombie simpleton who did as he was told. He was used to taking orders, and in this instance, he did just that. He confessed to his father that all three of them – Shan’ann, Bella and Ceecee were dead, and what’s more, all three had been murdered.
Breakdown/3rd Breakthrough – The Critical Moment
The first breakthrough – Watts voluntarily admitting to the affair – took place at about 16:07. The second – Watts admitting to his father that he killed Shan’ann, and that his children were both dead – took place 36 minutes later, from 16:43 onwards. But the real breakthrough was the third, when, after confessing over a span of eleven minutes, the agents worst fears were realized, and Ronnie started advising his son to get a lawyer.
“Well, you gotta get a lawyer…see…what we can do…I could arrange [garbled]…”
-the agents were back in the room. In fact as Ronnie uttered the word “arrange”, Watts lifted his head slightly and made eye contact with his father.
Lee barged in first, but was also careful to ask permission. Ronnie reluctantly accepted the intrusion, saying, “Come on in. ” This was a fatal mistake made by Watts father. He could have said, “Give us a minute.” Instead, Lee advanced, and reached out to Watts. At this time Ronnie had his hand on Watts left arm, or shoulder, while Lee placed her hand on his right shoulder.
By doing this, Lee immediately broke the connection between father and son. For the first time during the entire interrogation, she leaned over Watts and rubbed his back just as she’d seen his father doing.
This may not seem a big deal, but consider the facts. Watts has just admitted murdering his wife. Lee then enters, and comforts a man she is likely repulsed by, and perhaps even afraid of. But she can’t show it. She has to hold her nerve, and keep Watts in the game, and on their side.
The part that’s easy to miss is this.:
If Watts had called it; if the interrogation had stopped at this point, his confession would likely not be admissible in court, simply because most of it is barely audible. Also, since no law enforcement officer was in the room, even if the audio was admitted as evidence, Watts and his father could agree between themselves that certain words captured on audio weren’t what they had actually said to one another.
In short, Watts’ confession was a giant leap forward in terms of the investigation, because he’d just admitted firsthand knowledge that three members of his family were dead. But the confession itself, at this point, was legally worthless. What Lee and Coder needed to do was get Watts on the record. They needed him to forget about getting a lawyer, and get back to talking to him, while playing the delicate game with Watts’ father still in the room. So they had to reassure him as well.
When Lee sits down, she sits directly beside Watts, her elbow almost touching his. Coder sneaks in and sits down silently in the corner. And then immediately, Lee asks Watts the vital question:
“Will you tell us what you told your dad?”
This is the critical moment.If they’d asked Ronnie to step out of the room, perhaps Watts would have had a moment to regain his composure. Perhaps without his father in the room he may have felt the wall return, and balked. But with his father’s hand on his shoulder, and Lee staring in, and Coder in the room, Watts probably felt like he had no choice.
He did have a choice. Had he said no, at this point, the defense could have had a field day with this case. Incredibly, just because Lee asked him nicely, and treated him – now a self-confessed murderer, with warmth – he did what he thought was reasonable. He lied about Shan’ann killing the children, but admitted the “lesser” evil in his mind – killing Shan’ann. What he was describing was a kind of involuntary, justifiable homicide. If, in his story, he’d claimed he’d tried to rescue the children, tried to perform CPR, this too could have saved him. It certainly helped Oscar Pistorius when he claimed the same thing.
In a recent episode of Homicide Hunter, a guilty suspect sitting in a lounge, while the cops searched his home, explained his reluctance to ask for a lawyer. He said he preferred to let the cops search, because the other options was worse:
If you hire a lawyer you look guilty.
Appearances can be deceiving.
Of course, in a situation like this, if you don’t hire a lawyer – and you’re guilty – you can get yourself into a world of trouble, and end up looking even worse.
We know now that Watts had also lied to his father here, telling him he’d “only” killed Shan’ann. So at this stage he thought he had the upper hand, and when agent Lee soothed him, it reinforced this notion. He decided to stick to his game plan, because pinning the crime on Shan’ann seemed like a better idea than getting a lawyer. Watts’ brain was so scrambled by now, he forgot that whatever the details, he’d just admitted to committing murder, to his father, and now he was about to do the same with the two agents, on the record. He may have figured admitting to Shan’ann’s murder wasn’t a big deal, after all, when he admitted it, everyone understood, and hell, he understood why he’d done it.
But he’d made a very crucial error. If he could fool them with appearances, they could do the same to him, and they did.
Watts couldn’t admit to the cops he was having an affair.
He couldn’t face Shan’ann on the same issue either.
Just as he couldn’t face the truth in this moment about what he’d done [killing the children], he couldn’t face Shan’ann with the truth either. And so, in the same way he sneakily blamed the deaths of the children on Shan’ann, when he confronted Shan’ann after she arrived home from the airport, he did it in the same sneaky, underhanded manner.
For most people, their first introduction to 33-year-old Chris Watts was on Tuesday, August 14th, 2018, during his seven-minute Sermon on the Porch. We watched as a well-groomed man, a Silver Fox, stood in charcoal shorts and a t-shirt, and spoke casually about his missing family.
Where were they? He wasn’t sure – he was concerned – but he also seemed unperturbed. Maybe they were safe, maybe they weren’t. The game of psychological cat and mouse was underway.
Over the course of these first few minutes we saw Watts for the first time, but most of us missed the first wave of telltale micro expressions. It didn’t really matter, because overall, what we did see was loud and clear. We could all see that his affect just wasn’t right. While many of us didn’t know what it meant, we suspected something bad had happened, and most of us were right about that.
Since then, dozens of experts have analyzed the footage recorded by media, media that incidentally Detective Baumhover made sure were there when Shan’ann and the children didn’t turn up over night, nor early the next morning. At around 07:00 in the morning the media were contacted, and by around 10:00 they were gathered around Watts’ porch – on 2825 Saratoga Trail, in Frederick Colorado.
From Dr. Phil to the District Attorney, from YouTubers to the millions around the world who started following this case , we all saw the same thing. We saw – before any forensic evidence was located, before any bodies were found – that Watts simply didn’t appear as we expected him to appear. As strangers, and even the reporters only met the Anadarko field worker for the first time that day, we knew something was off, we just didn’t know how off.
But someone did. The neighbor knew. And Shan’ann’s best friend knew. The detective and police knew. And then, once Watts was interrogated, and his interrogators got to know him, they realized just how oddly he was behaving, and the alarm bells started clanging.
This getting to know a suspect takes time. And we never really finish the job of assembling an identity that the perpetrator is doing his damnedest to conceal from us.
In this episode, True Crime Rocket Science will take you through the audio of these actual conversations, and deal with his affect in a new way. Firstly, we have to bear in mind what we don’t know, and what True Crime Rocket Science says about that. Secondly, we have to take our cues from those on the ground who knew Watts, but bearing in mind their context is limited too. Thirdly, we have to break into Watts’ mind and see why he was playing his cards the way he was playing them.
Finally, we want to take all of this, and apply it where it hasn’t been before, which is to ask whether – after a year and countless hours studying this particular killer – whether we’ve become effective not just at lie spotting, but putting together a personal profile. In other words, do we know who Watts is one year later?
Let’s begin at the beginning, with the Sermon on the Porch.
The Sermon on the Porch
What we didn’t know when we saw Watts was how he really felt about Shan’ann. This really lay at the cruz of it. How did he really feel about his family? We know now that Watts would have wanted to conceal this, and also to minimize it when he dealt with it. Why? Because his enmity with his wife went directly to motive. The state of his finances, went directly to motive. The pregnancy, went directly to motive. The new love of his life, went directly to motive. So, if you were Watts, you wouldn’t want to draw attention to any of those things.
Meanwhile, you’d want the media and everyone watching, including and especially Nichol Kessinger, to think Watts cared about his family, but [given his schema], not that much.
SERMON ON THE PORCH AUDIO CLIP
He couldn’t be too traumatized, you see, or that might put his mistress off. After all, she needed to believe most of all that Shan’ann had just had enough of everything, taken the children, and left, and as it happened, initially at least she did believe this.
KESSINGER AUDIO CLIP
If we were encountering Watts for the first time during the Sermon on the Porch, we may have already seen photos of Shan’ann, and of the children, including on Facebook. That sketched a picture of harmony, even perfect harmony, but we couldn’t be sure how they were really getting along.
It was only when I researched the first book on the case, when I studied the transcript of the Sermon on the Porch in detail, that I realized what had been left out. Watts never mentions that Shan’ann was pregnant. He never mentioned the word divorce or a mistress. He never mentioned Shan’ann’s doctor’s important. He doesn’t mention Shan’ann’s plans for a gender reveal and why her disappearing then, given that context, was weird. Instead he spoke lightheartedly about his children throwing him with chicken nuggets, and how he missed them not getting their dessert after dinner.
When he was asked about the emotional conversation he had with Shan’ann Monday morning, he said it wasn’t very emotional. When he spoke to Coder and Lee about it, he said it was, and that they were both crying. Why the different statements in front of the camera and in the interrogation cubicle? Because when he was on camera Kessinger could listen in, when in the cubicle, she was essentially out of the game.
While the symbolism of many of his statements, and other colorful language was [and still is] a minefield of information, Watts’ affect was what stood out loud and clear. This raised the question – didn’t he know to act more concerned than he was? Didn’t he know that by acting more concerned Watts would be more convincing as someone who was innocent? Was Watts stupid? Because he didn’t show emotion and seemed to be enjoying being interviewed, was he a psychopath, or a narcissist?
But despite what the pundits said, Watts wasn’t a psychopath, or a narcissist, and neither was he being as stupid as he seemed to be. The critical thing was he wasn’t being himself, his affect showed a man portraying an appearance – a lie – and this clearly indicated he was hiding something.
This was an open question, and members of the public had their ideas, some on track, and some way off. Like these:
it was very obvious that this man committed this horrific crime from viewing this interview the first time I saw it.How anybody can do this to their own family, is beyond my comprehension.
I think you have completely misread what I have written. It is beyond my emotional and moral comprehension as to why someone could commit a heinous crime against their own family.
His affect is flat, he keeps grinning where a distressed person’s mouth would be downturned — if you didn’t know the subject matter and turned off the sound he would look like a guy talking about his preferred yard service.
HE is gay,he does not have another woman.I told my friend the first time I saw him”he is queer as a two dollar bill
2. Am I my Neighbor’s Keeper?
TRINASTICH AUDIO CLIP
It probably bears repeating that Nate Trinastich is very aware that Watts isn’t acting right. He tells the police, with Nickole Atkinson and her son Nicolas present, and both appear to be in consensus with the neighbor’s take on Watts. Trinastich role plays Watts rocking back and forth, something we noticed but perhaps not immediately. Trinastich pertinently says:
“He doesn’t look worried…He looks like he’s trying to cover his tracks.”
This is an excellent, and effective assessment for so early on. Then he provides reinforcing information.
“He’s normally quiet, more subdued.”
So for those of us who didn’t know Watts at this point, we couldn’t tell if he was being more talkative or less reserved than usual, but his neighbor could. Nickole Atkinson could. And giving out extraneous information, just being a lot more talkative than usual, is a classic symptom of lying.
Coming from a guy who didn’t talk much, this was difficult to see. When he was being interrogated by the FBI, and during his polygraph, Watts was trying very hard to appear like a regular guy. Open, talkative, transparent, not himself. He was doing this to hide the fact that there was an awful lot he was hiding. And it took a while for his interrogators to latch on this.
Let’s move on to the cubicle.
3. Interrogation Room
This is the late afternoon of August 15th, at around 16:15.
INTERROGATION AUDIO CLIP
Is affect important? How important is affect? Right here, we hear how forcefully Watts was confronted by both agents here, on his affect. And then, what happened after this? This confrontation took place about a minute before he asked to see his father. When that happened [20 minutes later] the game was over; that’s when Watts admitted to him for the first time, in a very low tone, that all three of his family members were dead. The ruse that he was hoping they were still alive was finally over.
We can see how, in an interrogation scenario, telling a suspect how his affect is raising suspicion, is a clear way of riling him up, but also potentially shutting him down. We know shortly after the agents told Watts his emotions weren’t right, he wanted to shut down the questioning and talk to his father. He knew he’d failed in his game, and needed an exit. He felt panic and wanted to fix his situation.
But coming back to this notion of hoping his family are safe, he’s not hoping. He knows they’re dead. What he’s doing is pretending to hope, pretending to not know what happened, pretending to be unaware of his own actions. And through this lack of caring, what he’s trying to do is fool them into believing he’s innocent. Ironically there is some truth in his ability to pretend not to care – he didn’t care, that’s why he killed them.
I hope it’s clear from this that by acting unemotional, Watts wasn’t stupid. It did initially lead many to think maybe Shan’ann had run off, and maybe she’d be back the next morning. Let’s face it, even Shan’ann’s mother gave him the benefit of the doubt until the next morning. So did Kessinger, and Nickole Atkinson [who went to work], as well as law enforcement. While law enforcement bided their time on Monday night, Watts cleaned and vacuumed the crime scene. Why, because he had succeeded in infecting them with false hope.
4. True Crime Rocket Science Assessment
If Watts’s affect was unemotional, that isn’t to say actually committing the murder wasn’t emotional for him, or traumatic, or difficult. He likely felt a range of emotions, from reluctance, to resistance to relief, and even joy when it was over. Perhaps, as the knowledge flushed through his veins that his family were “taken care of”, perhaps he felt exhilaration…because now nothing – hopefully – stood between him and his happily ever after with his mistress.
So, what’s the takeout from all this?
It’s very difficult for any person to be objective about their own subjectivity. So when Watts is confronted about his affect, he instinctively and immediately ratchets his affect up a notch. He sniffles. They want to see it [otherwise they’re suspicious], and he quickly obliges.
When he talks to his father his demeanor and his voice changes. When he lies about Shan’ann killing the kids, Watts also makes his voice sound strained and anguished, but this is all an act too. What this shows is the scale and scope of not only Watts’ deceit, but his capacity towards sadism. It’s one thing to lie, it’s another to implicate on something he did, while pretending to care.
Affect is a primary giveaway in true crime, but it’s difficult to interpret. One might say it’s the best tool of True Crime Rocket Science, but it’s also the one that we can almost never use because it’s so difficult to use correctly. This is why it’s seldom used in court, and when it is, the flip side of the coin can just as easily be used to argue innocence.
In the Madeleine McCann case, the insistence from Madeleine’s parents has also been that they remain hopeful. Why? In the alternative, if it turns out Madeleine didn’t disappear, but died, then suspicion turns to someone. This is why pretending to hope is a red flag. In the McCann case, as in the Watts case [early on] the question was always: is the pretense to hide what he did, or is it simply human weakness?
A year later, many people feel they are experts on Watts, but I’m not so sure we are. A year later, many people feel they are experts on Kessinger, but I’m not so sure we are. A good True Crime Rocket Scientist never knows all there is to know – instead he always suspects that there is more, perhaps a lot more, he doesn’t know.
A year after we studied his body language, counted his tells, figured out his psychology, and became experts at lie spotting, the followers of this case are split into two camps.
1. Children murdered first, at home; premeditated murder. There are those who believe Watts killed his children at home before Shan’ann arrived home in a cold, callous, calculated fashion – a premeditated crime and an introverted criminal who defaults to premeditation.
2. Children murdered last, at the well site; Watts “just snapped”. And those who believe Watts. Who believe him when he said he didn’t know what to do, he snapped, and he killed one or both of his children at the well site.
If Watts fully intended to get away with murder, and he did, he would never have taken the enormous risk to take his children – alive – to the well site and murder them there. True Crime Rocket Science allows us to use the psychology and identity of a person to see what they won’t allow us to see, and to see their shadowy intentions for what they really are, rather than what they want us to believe. The shadows on the driveway that some see as a child brought back to life, is the same hopefulness blinding us to the truth.
When we get to know Watts inside out, we can see he tried to leave nothing to chance, and in the next episode, we’ll see just how close he actually may have gotten, to getting away with triple murder.
The Reelz documentary claims to include “more than 200 hours of never-before-seenfootage…” Maybe not on television, but likely it has been on YouTube by followers of this case.
Also, no way a single TV movie of no more than two hours is going to do credit to “200 hours of never-before-seen” footage. What the Watts case really needs – deserves – is a documentaries series.
What new insights will REELZ one-off movie bring to the table?
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
TCRS MERCH available now – just in time for Christmas!
Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
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Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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