At 2:26 in this short clip posted by practicing criminal attorney Scott Reisch, who is also based in Colorado, there is added support for the idea that a plea deal is on the cards. Transcript provided below.
REISCH: …and I can tell you as a practicing attorney, when we add a case on like this, oftentimes it is set for…a…change of plea. Somebody wants to enter a plea. Is this what this is set for? I have no idea. But usually, if you add a case on early, um, if there is gonna be a plea, you wanna do it – strike while everything is hot, so to speak. And your client, and the defendant, wants to plead guilty ultimately. So it will be curious to see if maybe the DAs have told…uh…Mr. Watts and his counsel…uh, you know this is the offer. And maybe he accepted it. Or it can be as simple as [rescheduling].
Did you know Ceecee Watts suffered from a chronic disorder known as Eosinophilic esophagitius [EoE]? Did you know that EoE and asthma have been found to be inherited disorders related to lupus, in other words, Ceecee likely inherited serious health challenges from her mother?
Besides dysphagia [difficulty swallowing], other leading symptoms of EoE include failure to thrive. Yes, you read that right. Here’s further confirmation:
Failure to thrive in terms of the medical diagnosis is associated with toddlers. It involves:
children that seem disconnected from or disinterested in their surroundings [lack of eye contact]
children who struggle to reach developmental milestones
children who are fussy
Ceecee Watts as clearly a different child to Bella, but not just due to temperament, due to something else she inherited from her mother – her health [or lack of].
The Failure to Thrive is a persistent medical diagnosis often associated with children diagnosed with lupus-related conditions and issues. Now we understand why Thrive was such a big deal to Shan’ann Watts. She – more than anyone – was taking the Thrive’s promise to heart, literally.
Speculation is swirling that the irregular moving up of the Watts hearing from November 19th to November 6th involves a plea deal. There’s plenty of reason to believe this speculation is well founded.
Chris Watts’ first court appearance was on August 17th, followed by his last court appearance to date on August 21st. His next court appearance was meant to be approximately three months later. Now it’s been moved up by two weeks, falling on the same day as the mid-term elections in America, and what’s more, the time [at 14:00] means media coverage after midday will swamp all over coverage.
The hearing is also scheduled to be short, just 30 minutes, quick enough to raise and brush the legalities under the carpet without anyone noticing, and without the media being able to do much with any reporting that does happen.
One wonders what will happen to the autopsy reports? Are these also going to remain under seal permanently just like the Ramsey case file 22 years later?
Strangely, the District Attorney’s office has provided no reasons why this status hearing needed to be moved in the first place. But maybe providing no reasons is all part of the plan.
The Chris Watts case is poised to become one of the most high-profile cases in America right now, a scenario certain vested legal and business interests would like to avoid if they possibly can. The links between the Watts case and the Ramsey case aren’t incidental either.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to point out that Frederick, Colorado is just 31 minute’s drive [22 miles] due East of Boulder, and Greeley [where the Weld County Court is located] is also nearby – 53.8 miles north east of Boulder.
Boulder has made a name for itself over the past two decades and counting as a legal dead-end for the JonBenet Ramsey case, arguably one of the most famous and high-profile cases in the world. It never went to trial and the efforts to get legal closure on that case appear to be ongoing [but doomed] to the present day.
About two months after the murders, the Times-Call quoted Boulder’s former District Attorney Stan Garnett at length on the Watts case:
Defense attorneys for a Frederick man accused of killing his wife and daughters have filed a motion asking the government to investigate whether the prosecution has made extrajudicial statements or tried to prevent the spread of prejudicial information.
While the motion itself does not appear on the Weld County District Court’s website, a court order asking the prosecution to respond to the motion was recently posted after being filed on Aug. 29. Stan Garnett, the former district attorney for Boulder County, said it is not unusual for the defense to raise such issues early on, especially in high-profile cases.
The case of Christopher Watts, 33, is certainly high profile, having garnered national headlines for weeks…While it’s standard to point out potential to prejudice a jury , Garnett said the wording of the motion — requiring “the government” to investigate the issue — is unusual. It raises an issue, as the district attorney’s office is part of the executive branch of the state. “If you’re asking them to be investigated, who would do it?” Garnett said.
The prosecution had until Sept. 5 to file a response to the motion, though a response is not yet included on the case’s page online. While the court case is still in its early stages and little information has been released, a number of news outlets have reported new details on the case, citing “sources close to the investigation.”It’s doubtful many more details will be released before Christopher Watts’ next court appearance on Nov. 19.
Krista Henery, community relations director for the Weld County District Attorney’s Office, said staff members in her office are following court orders. Prosecutors are required to follow the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, which forbids them from saying something outside of court that could create prejudice in a legal proceeding. Other than charging documents and press conferences discussing the arrest affidavit, the district attorney hasn’t released any more information.
Frederick police Detective Dave Baumhover said the department also has a policy against making extrajudicial statements. Henery and Baumhover said they can’t speak for other agencies involved in the case, which include the FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI declined to comment on the issue and referred questions to the district attorney and Frederick police. CBI did not return a phone call seeking comment. However, if anyone from the prosecution is making extrajudicial statements, Garnett said the onus would fall on the district attorney, who is tasked with ensuring law enforcement complies with the rules.
The 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case that spurred the creation of such rules — Sheppard v. Maxwell— ended in an overturned murder conviction due to the pervasive publicity and incriminating information not presented at trial. In that case, prosecutors were “just kinda constantly playing to the press on it,” Garnett said, which is why district attorneys are now careful about what they say outside of court. “What the rules are trying to do is strike a balance between protecting the defendant’s right to be tried by an impartial jury and the public’s right to know,” he said.
Why would it be necessary to shut down a high-profile criminal trial in Greeley? Surely it has nothing to with the odds of getting a conviction. In the Watts case, law enforcement have a confession for one of the murders, how much more would they need?
I don’t believe the Ramsey case was shut down because of lack of evidence or lack of confidence, but that that case would be bad for business. I won’t go into detail here about what that meant [in terms of the Ramsey case], but I will say what it means in the Watts case.
Just as the unspoken backstory to the Ramsey case was John Ramsey’s massive billion dollar business empire with links to Lockheed Martin [America and the world’s largest defense contractor], the Watts case involves links to one of the most lucrative shale operations in America and the world. Most important Weld County is the number one producer of oil and gas in Colorado.
Does Colorado want a high-profile case in their midst that’s going to direct massive publicity [and negative publicity] not only onto Weld County, but through CERVI 319 onto the dynamics of the in situ oil industry as a whole?
What’s more, the landowners at and neighboring CERVI 319 are the two largest ranchers in the County, Art Guttersen and the Cervi dynasty. They wouldn’t want adverse publicity either.
A plea deal coming this Tuesday is very definitely on the cards.
If it's a plea deal, I hope it involves locking him up for as long as he is breathing. He should NOT go free. Ever. #ChrisWatts
A plea agreement means settlement of case without main hearing when the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for a lesser charge or for a more lenient sentence and/or for dismissal of certain related charges.
At the time I did this interview TWO FACE III was developing as a natural extension of the first two books. It’s since developed into a monster, and will only be released after the first week of November. It will be a meatier and far more disturbing read than the first two books.
My segment in the interview with Dark & Stormy kicks off at 17:43. Not sure why the Spreaker crams the audio into itself, but this definitely sounds like a speeded up version of what was discussed so listen quick!
If Shan’ann Watts had separated, it’s likely she would have moved here: to the tranquil, small-town home at 135 Forest Drive, Aberdeen. When Shan’ann and the girls disappeared, her younger brother Frankie came here, to this house, to await news in the company of his father Frank [also a carpenter] and mother Sandi [a hairdresser].
On July 5th, a Thursday, Shan’ann posted her final Live video. Well, it was on the porch of this little house in Aberdeen during a rain storm. Shan’ann also took the opportunity to let her fellow Thrivers know [in North Carolina that is] that she had products in her bedroom if anyone wanted any.
Shan’ann’s final profile picture was posted on July 4th, and remains her profile picture today.
The video below, also her last, was posted the following day.
Incredibly, for the next five weeks until her death, Shan’ann didn’t post another Live video after this one.
Below is a map showing the distance between Sandi Rzucek’s home and Hair Jazz, where Sandi worked. All of this is a giant leap from the lavish house on Saratoga Trail, isn’t it?
The area under the thief hatch where Chris Watts dumped his daughters’ bodies into two separate oil tanks measures just 8 inches [20 centimeters] in diameter. Is that wide enough to push through a 3-year-old child and a 4-and-a-half-year-old child?
According to the WHO’s average measurements for girls 3-5, the average width of a girl’s head is around 16-7 centimeters. There’s about 3.5 centimeters to spare, or just over 1 centimeter on either side of the skull. [The calculation from circumference to diameter can be performed using this tool].
In July 2011, the BBCreported on an adult man whose body [but not his head] was dragged through a 5-inch [12.7 centimeter] hole. He survived, but these are the circumstances surrounding what happened to him:
Two companies have been fined a total of £75,000 after a man was dragged through a 5in (13cm) gap in machinery. Matthew Lowe, 25, broke his back in two places during the incident at Compass Engineering in Barnsley in December 2008. As well as suffering from a broken back, Mr Lowe ruptured his stomach and bowel, shattered his pelvis and fractured his right arm and several ribs. Only his head was not dragged through the machinery. He survived, and went on to retrain in a different role.
Lawyers for Mr Lowe said he was left with psychological injuries and still suffered from the effects of injuries to his arm and hips.
To further complicate matters, it’s possible the area under the vent looked like this:
Is that a ladder [doubtful] or a sensor of some sort? Is it used to visually measure volume? Or does it perform some other function like stabilize the liquid inside, or chemically alter it in some way through exposure to the metal?
The video below illustrates how bodies can, perhaps counter-intuitively, penetrate through small, uniform round holes. It also shows there must be an absolute limit to this, both for living creatures and non-living, before internal damage occurs.
That’s the real question this line of inquiry faces. Did the bodies of the children require tampering, crushing force or involve any kind of post mortem injury when they were dumped into the tanks? The autopsy reports will hopefully provide certainty on these questions.
Shan’ann Watts was suffering from an autoimmune disease called lupus. In some ways, lupus corresponds to the very early stages of pregnancy – its symptoms may be difficult to diagnose.
One way to monitor lupus is through blood tests, including via skin prick.
Blood work…can also help monitor [lupus] and show the effects of treatment.Doctors often use the ANA test as a screening tool. Plus, looking at patterns of the antibodies can sometimes help doctors determine the specific disease a person has. That, in turn, helps determine which treatment would be most appropriate.
There are a battery of tests related to lupus, but the one that applies directly to Shan’ann Watts seems to be this one: Antiphospholipid Antibodies (APLs)
APLs are a type of antibody directed against phospholipids. APLs are present in up to 60% of people with lupus. Their presence can help confirm a diagnosis. A positive test is also used to help identify women with lupus that have certain risks that require preventive treatment and monitoring. Those risks include blood clots, miscarriage, or preterm birth…
One 23-year-old lupus-sufferer, Tessa Shoemaker describes going through “a billion finger pricks” en route to her diagnosis. What does this have to do with the sex of Shan’ann’s baby? Actually, a lot.
To begin with, lupus sufferers have an elevated risk of miscarriage, so vigilant monitoring is a given. I’ve maintained from the beginning that Shan’ann knew she was pregnant virtually immediately, probably due to her obsessive compulsive monitoring of her health in general.
Thanks to some of the stars following CrimeRocket we’ve established that besides knowing when she was pregnant, there was also a way for Shan’ann to have known the sex of her child prior to that doctor’s appointment she missed on August 13th.
Parents dying to know the sex of their baby may no longer have to hold their breath until halfway through a pregnancy. A blood test can reveal a baby’s sex as early as seven weeksinto a pregnancy, which is earlier than many doctors will see patients for an initial prenatal visit.
The blood test, called a cell-free DNA test, has been used by European doctors for years and has actually been available to American consumers in drugstore chains and online for a few years… The simple test analyzes fetal DNA in the mother’s blood, looking for traces of the male ‘Y’ chromosome. News of the surprising accuracy of the test (98.8 accuracy for a boy and 94.8 accuracy for a girl) was originally reported yesterday [August 10, 2011] in a meta-analysis of 57 studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Doctors hope the test (which costs a few hundred dollars, including lab fees and shipping costs) will help families with a history of sex-related genetic disorders such as hemophilia (which tends to affect boys) avoid unnecessary invasive procedures, like chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis, that carry a small risk of miscarriage. And, in fact, in England, where the test is already in use, many moms are already skipping invasive tests, thanks to this blood test.
It’s certain that Shan’ann’s lupus treatment involved blood tests as a matter of course. She may even have actively monitored herself. It’s very likely then that she would have monitored the lupus side more closely because of her pregnancy, and vice versa.
The lupus aspect also raises the possibility of numerous medications being in the home – beyond the norm. If Shan’ann was skin pricking herself regularly as part of her own self-monitoring regimen, and if she had some pain medications stocked at home, then this may well have set the path to his murderous psychology. Pain medication in high doses can be used as a sedative, an anesthetic or a murder weapon.
This issue goers to motive. It’s vital to the narrative simply because if Shan’ann knew the sex early on, Chris Watts probably knew too, and the more he knew about the child in her womb the more he felt trapped or pressured by the baby’s relentless development. Given the circumstance of this, that he knew more sooner rather than later makes sense.
On September 15th, 2018, one month after the remains of his wife and children were recovered from CERVI 319, I posted a blog analyzing a question that members of the public were repeatedly asking:
One aspect of the answer [and admittedly the simpler one of the two] was – I thought – easy to answer. The children were dumped into the respective tanks because they were small enough [barely] to fit through the thief hatch. Shan’ann was not.
I “proved” this theory by intuitively [visually] measuring up the size of the hatch against an adult operator standing beside it.
My assessment, without any more factual or scientific data to go on, was that the children would barely fit through these small openings. They had to, how else could he have gotten them in there short of chopping up their bodies or chemically reducing them beforehand?
About two weeks later, on September 28th, HLN covered the same issue.
We dig deeper into the oil tanks Chris Watts allegedly dumped his two daughters in. A petroleum engineering professor explains how he thinks Chris could have placed his kids into these tanks. pic.twitter.com/ovLAjKHTJK
They had an expert on board, and the expert’s was unequivocal on the size of the opening. 8 inches.
The screengrab above doesn’t make it very obvious just how small 8 inches is. It’s 20 centimeters, roughly the width of this paragraph or the length of the average dinner fork when viewed on a desktop monitor.
Needless to say a 4-year-old child’s head and hips can’t fit through such a small opening. This was devastating to my theory, hence I posted a follow-up blog the same day HLN challenged the notion.
The problem was, although HLN had provided more information, they’d actually shot their own theory in the foot. They speculated that Watts had used the clean out manway at the bottom of the tanks to access the tanks. It made sense from a size perspective – yeah, it’s big enough to put a child inside, hell, an adult could step inside as well.
The problem with the manway access point is the fact that the oil tanks were almost full when the cops arrived on the scene. They were so full, they took several hours to drain.
HLN seemed to miss the fact that in order to open up the manway cover, the tank had to be completely empty. So what, one might argue, maybe it was empty to begin with. The problem is if it was empty the tank would have to fill to almost full within hours. These are huge tanks, and they aren’t filled up rapidly. They take months to fill to capacity. The sequestration of gas and liquids also happens over an extended period.
Besides this, any sudden change in the conditions inside the tank would set off monitoring alarms. This would likely attract attention to the CERVI 319 site by Chris Watts’ colleagues, perhaps even his boss – something he’d want to avoid.
I struggled with this impasse over the next few days. I decided, ultimately, that the thief hatch HAD to have been used, but the only way to dump the remains of both children through those small 8-inch orifices was if the bodies had been dismembered or “processed” in some way.
The extensive “processing” theory doesn’t sit well with me for 2 reasons:
1. Chris Watts had very little time to process one cadaver, let alone three.
2. There appears to be no obvious evidence of tissue fragments, blood or body fluids at #2825 Saratoga Trail [the bodies could have been processed at CERVI 319, but doing so outdoors with three bodies seems very likely].
It’s taken six weeks for this enigma stewing in the subconscious to resolve itself, but I believe it has. The solution appears to be that an operator might be able to remove the entire thief hatch with the right tools. That’s the housing and the contoured core section.
This doesn’t get us back to where we started with the manway housing. The thief hatch has about half a dozen bolts to loosen and tighten again whereas the manway housing appears to have hundreds.
In Conclusion:
I believe the thief hatch was used to dump the bodies into mostly full oil tanks from the top of the tanks. I do believe there was some processing or preparing of the bodies irrespective of whether they fit into the hatches or not. If they didn’t fit, this would involve substantial processing including dismemberment. It’s possible to dismember a cadaver without creating a bloodbath if it’s frozen first. If the cadavers did fit through the thief hatch, they were probably prepared in a minimum manner, including cutting off hair and probably removal of clothing that could clog the grates inside the tank.
The arrest affidavit is also unambigous on this point, that all three of the victims’ bodies were tampered with to the extent serious enough to charge Watts with a felony in each and every instance.
62-year-old Ronnie Watts is mentioned twice in the arrest affidavit. Chris Watts’ father was close enough to his son to be there for him [having flown in at short notice from Spring Lake, North Carolina] and to be his confidant at a critical time: immediately before his son confessed to the cops.
We don’t know much about Chris Watts’ father besides that they both share the middle name “Lee” [and Niko was supposed to inherit that middle name too], that they still live in a modest cottage on Vass Road outside Spring Lake, that Watts senior is a mechanic, that they seem to have the same shoulder tattoos and that his son following in his father’s footsteps means something.
We also see that Watts junior’s appearance is similar to his father’s – short head hair, neat goatee.
Ronnie’s current place of work in Fayetteville also bears a striking similarity to Chris Watts’ former workplace at large Ford dealership in Longmont.
The Watts family, as group, seems to have strong family values. Since Chris Watts’ social media is unavailable, there are precious few artifacts to go on. But the few that exist speak of closeness between father and son, and between the Watts-in-laws and the their son’s growing family. They even spent two weeks in the Watts home babysitting while the young couple holidayed in Punto Cana in the Dominican Republic.
However we may feel about Chris Watts and his crimes, he’s still someone’s son, he still has a mother, he even has a sibling we know virtually nothing about. We may not know or care about these dynamics, but in terms of trial optics and public feeling towards the defendant, they’re likely to be important. Will his family continue to support him no matter what? Scott Peterson’s family did. Casey Anthony’s family did [at least during trial]. James Holmes folks stood by him. Jodi Arias’ family…sort of…did.
When family support is unequivocal for an accused, it creates a weird dual universe. The whole Steven Avery spiel is a classic example of two separate contradictory realities playing out in the media and in court. There’s the reality of the trial, and there’s often a competing no-one-understands [fill-in-the-defendant’s-name] like we do reality, and never the twain shall meet.
If the above images are anything to go on, Ronnie is a devoted dad and will dutifully stand by his son in some capacity. Was he in court during the arraignment though? Shan’ann’s father and brother were conspicuously present in the front row. If Ronnie was in the house, no one saw him.
Cross Creek Subaru, Ronnie Watts’ workplace, is a short 13.5 mile drive from their home on Vass Road.
One turn-off after Hooters…
Chris Watts’ parents and Sha’nann’s parents live and work fairly close to one another in North Carolina. Don’t be too quick to judge the parents of a defendant. If you were in their shoes would you support your own flesh and blood, or write them off, or support them surreptitiously and privately? Pray you never find yourself in their position where you’re called on to make that choice.
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.”
In July 2011, the 
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