Just one month ago – literally one month ago – on July 16th, Oxygen reported on Watts’ attitude to critics. This is what he said:
You may recall six months ago, when Coder, Lee and Baumhover went down to Dodge Prison in Wisconsin, Watts had already forgiven himself. Thanks to God. This is what he said:
It doesn’t sound like a guy that’s tormented by anything does it? In fact, Watts was so casual talking about what he did to his family, that has tormented the lead Detective into quitting. On his first morning back from that interview, Baumhover broke down sobbing, at his kitchen table. This was the first time Baumhover’s wife had ever seen him cry. If anyone’s torment in this case is real, it’s Baumhover’s.
He’s quit his job becuase of the Watts case. He’s isolated himself. Watts is entertaining flocks of female fans and apparently working on a book.
Compare that to Watts who minutes after murdering and burying the bodies of his family, managed to work side-by-side with his colleagues, none of them suspecting anything. His Sermon on the Porch is Exhibit A in how nonchalant Watts was. Of all the people involved, including Nichol Kessinger, it’s fair to say Watts appeared to care the least about what had actually happened.
True remorse is when you shed a tear. When the emotion isn’t just visible, but visibly overwhelming. That’s the first part of it. True grief is when you’re honest about what you’ve done. The honesty exposes the grief, the true, real, raw emotions. You can’t have one without the other. We’ve never seen Watts truly break down. Although some will argue this point, we’ve never seen Watts be completely honest either. Probably, he doesn’t know how.
Watts is a liar and a murderer x three. He will always be. He lied to everyone. Please don’t be so naive to ever believe a murderer’s lies. Not all liars are murderers, but mark my works, all murderers are liars, through and through.
Going by the numbers, there’s a mass shooting on average each day, every day, in America. And each time one happens, the story is the same. Why? No one knows why.
Following the worst mass shooting in US history in Las Vegas in 2017, the FBI, the media and experts simply couldn’t explain what had possessed Stephen Paddock to do what he did. He didn’t leave behind a suicide note, or a manifesto, so authorities and the public were left completely in the dark about WHY. If he didn’t tell them why then there was no way of knowing.
This is crazy thinking. Just as a single crime scene speaks encyclopedic volumes about a single criminal and his psychology [criminal and otherwise], each mass shooting is an enormous canvas open which the shooter screams his message to the world. So given the expressionism that is the mass shooting, it’s a tragic and unfathomable irony that the world seems to respond by going: “Why…?”
It’s not clear whether the heartache or deluge of information following these massacres addles the minds of pundits, experts, parents and friends. I suspect it’s a combination of this and something else, something more selfish, akin to self-preservation. Those connected to these killers don’t acknowledge what they know, instead what they do amounts to handwringing.
After the Las Vegas shooting I noticed the same thing happening again and again. Another slaughter, followed by nobody having a clue how or why this could happen. Some would say the perpetrator was bullied followed swiftly by others saying they’d been bullied. Invariably it was simultaneously no one’s fault and everyone’s fault. Finally the muddle would subside into a general sense of the shooter as a monster, invariably suffering from some undiagnosed mental illness, until going on to the next one. The next one was Nikolas Cruz.
The Parkland school massacre happened on Valentine’s Day 2018. By August of the same year, cops and lawyers still couldn’t say why it had happened.
Those close to him, schoolmates and such, claimed [either falsely or because of ignorance] there were no signs of aggression.
When the media couldn’t fathom a motive they switched to mental illness.
One wonders why Cruz’s girlfriend didn’t simply come forward and inform the authorities openly and candidly about what he’d told her.
In early 2018 I wrote SLAUGHTER, a 522-page book profiling the worst mass killers in America and the world [most of them happened in America]. Included in these profiles were Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz and Adam Lanza [Sandy Hook]. It was really through Adam Lanza, who received a lot of psychological care and assessments, that I was able to unlock the deceptively simple dysfunctional psychology at work.
I still consider this to be my best research, and my greatest contribution to the true crime genre. It turns out that a basic profile fits every shooter.
I’ve used the expertise and insight gathered in SLAUGHTER to thin-slice the Connor Betts shooting. As more and more information comes to light, there’s more confirmation of the motive published on August 4th in this $0.99 22-page treatise.
I wanted to get this information out there ASAP to rubbish this notion in the media, by the cops, by experts, and by others, that we don’t know what the motive is, or that the motive is couched in mental illness [as his girlfriend recently claimed].
I also wanted to illustrate that we don’t need hundreds of files and affidavits to work with before we start speculating on why. More than six months after Nikolas Cruz released a hail of gunfire on Valentine’s Day, people still couldn’t say what his motive was. And yet it was clear from the beginning, the vital clue in the day he chose to execute his rampage – Valentine’s Day. The crime itself speaks volumes in that department – in terms of when, where, how it happened, how the perpetrator is dressed, and important, the victimology. In this case, his own sister.
Something else that needs to be addressed, which I’ve already alluded to above, is the degree of honesty of the parents and friends of these characters. Typically we’ll see family members and those closest to them hand-wringing, painting a portrait of their own ignorance or benign innocence. This is understandable; they feel exposed and vulnerable and guilty to be closely associated with someone who has done something so heinous. But to cover this up is to be an accessory – of sorts – after the fact.
For as long as those close to these killers keep their secrets, and hide who they truly were, we as a society will remain in denial about the motives behind these massacres. Isn’t it time for society and the individuals involved in these tragedies to get back to old-fashioned values – honesty above appearances?
A former girlfriend of the Dayton shooter exclusively speaks to @gabegutierrez, saying there were red flags and that he showed her video of a mass shooting on their first date and later took her to a gun range. pic.twitter.com/JuYfHH4Rj1
The 9 dead are identified as: ■ Lois L. Oglesby, 27 ■ Megan K. Betts, 22 ■ Saeed Saleh, 38 ■ Derrick R. Fudge, 57 ■ Logan M. Turner, 30 ■ Nicholas P. Cumer, 25 ■ Thomas J. McNichols, 25 ■ Beatrice N. Warren-Curtis, 36 ■ Monica E. Brickhouse, 39 https://t.co/mdfMPMfyLd
Cumer was a graduate student in the master of cancer care program at Saint Francis University in Loretto. "Nicholas was dedicated to caring for others."Cumer had been completing an internship program with the Maple Tree Cancer Alliance. #RememberTheVictims
It’s very early to be speculating, but with that being said, there are superficially a few signs and symptoms that Connor Betts was an INCEL and/or identified with the INCEL cause.
Below left is a screengrab from his Twitter feed. As can be seen on the right, the “normie” term is associated with INCEL jargon and subculture, although it should be emphasized it’s not only associated with the INCEL groupology.
A cursory glance at Betts’ social media seems to confirm a sad sack single dude who is only with a girl when his mother photographs him with his sister.
Although the INCEL aspect may be part of Betts’ social psychology, perhaps even a significant part, he also demonstrated group affiliations with socialists, atheists, satanists and some Democratic Party politicians.
His Twitter feed [which has recently been scrubbed] overall is so all over the place as to be virtually incoherent. The TCRS assessment at this point is that the INCEL aspect is a significant part of the pathopsychology. The nature of the shooting, specifically the location [the outside of a bar on Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday morning] and the targeting of his own younger sister and her boyfriend, also fits the profile.
Over at CrimeRocket II I’ve been doing a day-by-day recap of this case [follow #1yearagotodayCW or on Twitter at #yearagotodayCW]. The time machine is a useful, and powerful methodology to analyze these cases, in particular the hard-to-see family dynamics.
Journalism is great when it’s providing reports at the time, especially in the hours and first few days after a crime. But then the media gets afflicted with its typical ADD and it becomes lazier and less effective over the long term. Over the even longer term, this laziness can lead to a lack of accuracy, and eventually can start to distort or impinge on the facts as they happened. Here’s a case in point.
Going by the headline alone, this looks like a topical update, doesn’t it? Some new news on the Chris Watts case, right? The article is dated July 31st, 2019. In fact the article is recycled from an interview conducted more than six months earlier. CrimeRocket blogged about it at the time.
So what, you might say. An article was resuscitated and recycled six months later, what’s the big deal?
Just this:
In the interview, Trinastich explains that the Watts family seemed like a “normal, everyday” family.
“Shanann was always really friendly. She came over, welcomed us to the neighborhood. The girls were always running around laughing, having a great time,” Trinastich said on the show. Watts, on the other hand, had a different demeanor than Shanann, Trinastich explained. He said, Watts was “real quiet” and sometimes was somewhat “standoffish.”
“There were times where he just didn’t want to wave or didn’t want to say anything, but usually he was nice.” Trinastich told Dr. Oz that Watts and Shanann “didn’t fight any more than any other couple,” but because his home was close to theirs, he could often overhear their arguments.
“They had a couple confrontations that I happened to see, but it was never him being a big, huge monster,” he said. On the day that Shanann and her daughters were murdered, Trinastich can be heard telling police on bodycam footage, according to KCNC-TV, a CBS affiliate in Denver, that he “heard them full out screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.” Trinastich tells the police that Watts “gets crazy.” The couple reportedly was fighting over Watts’ wanting a divorce so he could be with his mistress.
Going by this article, apparently the neighbor thought it was normal for Watts to be standoffish. But it wasn’t normal. He was introverted, yes, but he only became standoffish towards his wife in the first week of August, a week before the murders, while he was in North Carolina [when the neighbor wasn’t present].
It’s also a misappropriation of the facts to say the couple “was reportedly” arguing because he wanted a divorce to be with his mistress. Shan’ann never knew about Kessinger. That was why she murdered – to prevent her from knowing.
In terms of the neighbor’s appropriation of the term, what’s more likely is that by January Trinastich had read some of the discovery, and perhaps heard some of the media reports himself, and so adopted this term standoffish.
The term first enters the media narrative around August 21st, 2018 when Michelle Greer – who saw the couple in Myrtle Beach – thought Watts appeared standoffish.
There’s also Nickole Atkinson who, though she never uses the term standoffish, refers to the general theme of Watts not acting in a loving manner towards Shan’ann. The way ABC frames it [1:30 in this video], Shan’ann either told her this [which she did, and we know when she did] or Atkinson observed it firsthand [which she likely didn’t]. It’s unfortunate ABC aren’t more clear on the circumstances surrounding Nickole getting this insight.
But there’s also another fairly obscure reference to standoffish. Guess where it comes from?
The date of this article from WRAL.com is August 16th, just three days after the murder and a few hours after Watts’ arrest. It precedes all the media references mentioned above by at least 5 days. It’s even possible Michele Greer, who lives in North Carolina, read or saw the local content and adopted the term herself. Other media rebroadcast this term, some swapping the word standoffish for aloof.
In criminal psychology semantics matter, and there is a world of difference between standoffish [which is distancing] and aloof [which can mean arrogant, which Watts was not, certainly not in an obvious way].
Taken together, what does this all mean? It means the standoffishness took root in North Carolina. This also suggests the premeditation began to germinate there. By quoting, misquoting or appropriating these words, the media collaborate in muddying the timeline, and making it harder to see when things happened. Eventually the narrative becomes so polluted by this mixing process, it requires a True Crime Rocket Scientist to unravel it.
So the Italian justice system is being interrogated again, when an Italian cop is stabbed to death by two American drug addicts? Makes total sense. #AmandaKnoxhttps://t.co/EO4IiPJlIr
1. The special CapturingChris Watts is an inside look at the disturbing case of a father who killed his own family for the sake of an affair.
REELZ Announces New Programming for Summer and Fall 2019 … https://t.co/LlZZ2E8vgf via Capturing Chris Watts (new special) – Sunday, September 15 at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT #ChrisWatts
Interesting that one of the witnesses says that the shooter was wearing glasses, so she couldn't tell if he made eye contact. Another claimed the shooter looked right at her. The randomness is a big giveaway as to the motive here. https://t.co/6zHeTDaLMW
It's interesting that the Van Gogh Museum's official stance is still that Van Gogh committed suicide. In this tweet they link his "illness" to his death. Really? Was he depressed?Mentally ill? Then how come he was painting a picture a day at the end of his life? https://t.co/HNDhnOAT8i
I watched this race just now on TV. It was her 30th victory in a row, and even though this was a record [she broke her own record], she didn't celebrate, and no one on the track congratulated her. Odd that. https://t.co/tiJoFp0vJH
2. Scott Nelson takes the stand AGAIN and declares “I am a homicidal maniac”.
BREAKING: #ScottNelson takes the stand AGAIN and declares "I am a homicidal maniac," and tells the state that he wants to be sentenced to death. — Tune in to #CourtTV NOW for LIVE coverage of FL v. Nelson. pic.twitter.com/IgxvQ7jEez
At a news conference Monday, prosecutor Berman and FBI Assistant Director in Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. cited the Miami Herald’s reporting last November in helping to make the case.
“I will say that we were assisted by some excellent investigative journalism,” Berman said. “When the facts presented themselves — as Mr. Berman hinted at — through investigative journalist work, we moved on it,” Sweeney said.
The telephone conversations between Watts and his wife are one of the few areas we know virtually nothing about.
2. What Casey Anthony Is Up To 10 Years After Daughter Caylee’s Disappearance.
THIS WEEK IN COURT TV HISTORY: Eight years ago, July 5, 2011, #CaseyAnthony is found NOT GUILTY of murdering her daughter, Caylee. pic.twitter.com/UM3KxEpKRM
For the next 5 weeks, CrimeRocket II will be doing a recap of the Chris Watts case timeline during the summer of 2018 based on references in the Discovery Documents and the CBI Report.
Icahn, one of industry’s most powerful activist investors, cast himself as one of the deal’s most fervent critics by charging that Occidental’s $38 billion bid for Anadarko was too expensive and could endanger Occidental’s future if oil prices sink.
The deal has been approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and is expected to close in the second half of the year.
“It is important to add new directors to Occidental’s Board of Directors to oversee future extraordinary transactions like the Anadarko transaction and to ensure that they are not consummated without stockholder approval when appropriate,” Icahn said in a statement to shareholders on Wednesday.
Icahn owned a $1.6 billion stake in Occidental as of May 30. “The recent Occidental Petroleum fiasco is a great example of how CEOs and boards will go to great lengths, including ‘betting the company’ to serve their own agendas,”Icahn said in a statement about the Caesars-Eldorado merger. “If their bet is successful, they and possibly their shareholders win, but if it is unsuccessful, only the shareholders lose.”
While Icahn has said publicly that the Occidental-Anadarko deal likely would not be derailed, his filing illustrates how he wants to make sure that nothing similar happens again. He said Occidental lacks effective corporate governance and that its directors made mistakes in how and at what cost they pursued the acquisition of Anadarko, according to the filing.
Occidental Petroleum, ranked 167 in Fortune 500, recently snatched victory from Chevron with a winning bid of $38 billion for one of the largest U.S. Independent oil and gas companies; Anadarko ranked just 237, making this the largest American oil and gas merger in more than a decade and the 11th biggest ever, for an energy and power company, according to business data provider Refinitiv.
Occidental plans to sell assets in the U.S. and Africa. Proposed disposals include Anadarko’s pipeline business in the U.S. worth an estimated $7.5 billion, as well as its wells in the Gulf of Mexico said to be worth around US$6 billion. Potential buyers could include BP, Exxon or Shell. The sale of Anadarko’s assets in Africa, worth perhaps $8.8bn to French oil major Total has been agreed, according to recent media reports. However, this deal needs the full approval of Algeria’s government before it can be completed.
Challenges
Having outbid Chevron and perhaps before any asset sales take place, Occidental must reduce its debt and pay an 8 percent dividend on the $10 billion of preference shares it sold to Berkshire Hathaway. The Anadarko purchase doubles the size of Occidental and will saddle the company with debts of around $50bn, in return for a business that has been failing to cover its capital spending from its operating cash flows.
Another oil price crash bringing oil below $40 a barrel could jeopardize Occidental’s financial position. In addition, there is growing public concern, backed up by recent studies by the Universities of Texas and Dallas, that the re-injection of waste water into the ground produced from fracking, could be triggering increased seismic activity in previously dormant areas. Unless the industry can reassure the public by finding a solution to prevent such “earthquakes,” public opinion could constrict further growth in fracking activity.
The real prize
Vicki Hollub has made it clear that Occidental’s real interest lies in Anadarko’s 10,000 drilling sites in the Permian Basin, which is currently one of the world’s most productive, producing 3.8 million barrels a day at the end of 2018, according to reasearch firm Rystad Energy. In addition, the Permian is one of the cheapest places for oil drilling in the world. Some Permian drillers can make money at $40 per barrel.
Before the takeover, Occidental was already the largest owner of drilling rights in the Permian and has developed an in-depth knowledge of the Permian plays, especially the Delaware Basin. On average, Occidental’s shale wells in the region have produced 74 percent more oil in their first six months than Anadarko’s. Also Occidental expects that, with economies of scale and its scientific and logistical capabilities, to boost recovery rates of 6 percent today to at least 14 percent by employing the “huff-and-puff” method: pumping carbon dioxide into a well, waiting for a while, and then allowing the oil to start flowing out mixed with the gas.
Hopefully, things will go well for Occidental following its successful bid. Nevertheless, some investors remain skeptical of the promised productivity gains and are concerned by the possibility that policies to mitigate the effect of climate change could leave Occidental with stranded assets sooner rather than later.
The documents recount the whirlwind bidding war that followed as Occidental executives jetted from Houston to Paris to Omaha, Neb. to make the deals that would allow Oxy to up its cash offer to nearly 80 percent of the purchase price and gain the consent of Anadarko’s board. As Oxy CEO Vicki Hollub said the company’s annual meeting last month, “We were not going to let it be taken away.”
The filing also disclosed that Anadarko CEO Al Walker, who has led the company since 2012, will walk away with severance package of $98 million when the merger is completed, part of $300 million to be shared among Anadarko’s six senior executives. Here is how it all unfolded:
The summer of ’17
Hollub first contacted Walker about a potential sale in July 2017. They met in August and continued the talks into September 2017, when Oxy offered close to $31 billion in an all-stock deal. In October, Walker told Hollub he questioned the logic of a deal. Hollub responded by offering a mix of cash and stock.
The Anadarko board met in mid-November 2017 to discuss the deal and unanimously rejected it, concluding that it wouldn’t boost shareholder value and the financial risks that Oxy would take on could make it difficult for Oxy to increase or even maintain dividends to investors.
Undeterred, Oxy made another cash-and-stock offer in January 2018, upping its bid to about $38 billion with up to half of the funds in cash. That valued Anadarko at about $76 per share. At the time, Anadarko stock was selling for more than $58 per share with a stock market value of almost $30 billion.
But with oil prices rising and confident in Anadarko’s future as as a standalone company, the board again rejected the offer in February 2018. Walker, however, let Hollub know all was not lost: an all-cash offer might still win over the board.
Throughout the rest of 2018, Hollub conveyed Oxy’s ongoing interest to Walker, but formal negotiations went dormant. All stayed quiet — until February.
Thwarting the Chevron way
Disappointed but undeterred, Oxy quietly let it be known that it had offered more than Chevron, preparing the ground for a bidding war. Oxy plotted behind the scenes, waiting until April 24 to go public with a new $38 billion offer, half cash and half stock.
Knox purchased a 3,650 square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom home on March 13th, 2019 for $718 000. The request for public donations immediately followed her “Innocence Project” trip to Italy, in July 2019, three-and-a-half months later.
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
Read the entire 9-Part TWO FACE series, the most definitive book series covering the Chris Watts Case
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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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