Chris Watts told investigators he had an argument with his wife before killing her. Makes sense, right? And if he said he had an argument, that part must be true. If he also killed the children, did he have an argument with each of them too? Okay so maybe he did. So why did his argument/s then matter and not the hundreds of arguments they’d had on any other day?
The question of argument basically addresses the issue of whether this was premeditated murder or not. 7/10 people say it wasn’t premeditated murder, that Chris Watts simply got into an argument and became emotional. He’s that kind of guy. In other words, 7/10 people believe Chris Watts’ version of events. If the Colorado jury that’s going to decide on this case is anything like the majority of people, the prosecution may have a difficult case on their hands.
The issue isn’t whether their were arguments, but when they happened. We know there were arguments.
But we should be cautious taking Chris Watts’ word – for anything. Here’s why.
In excerpts from the affidavit below, reading between the lines, Chris Watts is careful to describe a “quiet” argument. In other words, they’re confronting one another about separating and about his affair with his work colleague, but neither him nor Shan’ann are raising their voices at 02:00 or 04:00 or whenever this emotional conversation was supposed to have happened.
If it happened, did anyone hear it? The neighbor who heard how the tone of the dog’s bark changed in the day, could they not hear raised voices in the dead of a summer night?
When, in the history of confrontations between couples about cheating has the aggrieved party not raised their voice? And yet the affidavit uses words like “began talking” and “civil conversation”. It was “not an argument” because he “told” Shan’ann this and went to “speak” to her about that.
What about Shan’ann? Did she respond to being told and his speaking by telling him things in return, and speaking in a civil tone in her response? There’s nothing here about how she’s speaking or respondingto being told – in the wee hours of the morning after her business trip – sorry honey, I’ve been cheating on you, I’m done.
His first story in his Sermon on the Porch was that they had this quiet conversation and Shan’ann simply said, ‘Okay then, I think I’ll go visit a friend today.’ The affidavit is an adaptation of that ruse, and not a good one.
Knowing what we know about Shan’ann, that she was pregnant, that she was an extrovert, that she was the dominant factor in the relationship, that she was the more emotional of the couple, and what happened during her first marriage [see below] does this quiet, civil conversation nonsense ring true? It shouldn’t.
https://youtu.be/yIl3RLSgMMo
What Chris Watts is playing for in his affidavit is a credible excuse for why no neighbors heard arguing that night. Either they argued quietly, the first couple in history to do so, and the first family murder to take place after a polite conversation in history, or it was a premeditated murder and it was silent for that reason.
The screengrabs from Google Maps below are in chronological order taken along the 39.3 mile 47 minute commute between Saratoga Trail and Cervi 319. This was the route Chris Watts rose to drive to each morning, five days a week. These are the sights he would have gotten used to seeing twice each day every day, on the way out and back.
It also provides some idea, when the cops called at noon on August 13th, how long it would take to get home, even if he was driving as fast as he could.
There’s an easy way to read someone’s mind. It’s so easy, a kindergarten kid could do it. In a few moments, if you’re patient, you’re going to be doing it too. No degree in psychology needed. There is one requirement though. If it’s so easy that we can look on with the mind of a child, we nevertheless have to listen intently to what the suspect is listening to. Agreed?
Before we get to Chris Watts’ favorite song, let’s be explicit in what we’re getting at. Does a criminal’s favorite song say much about him, or the crime he committed? Does it say anything? Does a tattoo say much about someone, or their criminal capacity?
The easy way to answer this question is off-the-top of one’s head. Does your favorite song – current or in the past – say much about you, the you you are now or the you you once were? It has to, it resonates with you for a reason.The ethos of the song matches your interiority at a particular time. The song, for all intents of purposes, is the slippery thing that’s someone else’s interiority.
My favorite song at the moment – don’t judge me – is this one.
But of course we do judge. We can’t help it. What we like when it comes to music says plenty about not only who we are and the kind of person we are, but what we’re feeling.
The other aspect to interiority is how these sights and sounds allow us to read the criminal mind. Just as writing is telepathy, my words are talking inside your mind right now, music is the same. They’re also words and ideas talking to and about who we are.
To the extent that we’re caught up in it, those words are our interior monologue. It allows us not only to read the mind of the murderer, but to look at his heart and soul too.
Before we get to the tattoo, let me clear. In every true crime case I’ve researched it takes time for the character of the suspect to emerge. That time lag isn’t because the suspect has no character, quite the contrary, but because like all strangers, it takes time to get to know them, especially when they’re doing their damnedest to hide who they really are from us.
One of the questions we ask people we don’t know is “what’s your favorite music”? We do this to gauge their vibe, who they are, how they see themselves and to we see how relatable they are to us, and we to them.
What’s your favorite music?
Doesn’t it make sense, then, to ask Chris Watts this question?
Down the Alley of Criminal Intertexuality
[To skip this section, scroll down to What Does Chris Watts Tattoo Say About him?]
To understand why music may be important, and just how deeply it allows us to penetrate into the psychology of a case, let’s examine this issue through another case first.
Many people don’t know, for example, that in the Amanda Knox case, someone was listening to music at about 05:44 on the day Meredith Kercher’s body turned up with her throat slit.
The music was played on Knox’s boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito’s MacBook computer, but he was an Italian who could barely speak English. So who was listening to American music [see timestamped playlist below] that morning? Who could it be besides Knox?
What the above playlist seems to show is that 1) Knox was awake and listening to music four hours earlier than she said she was on the morning after the murder and 2) through the music we begin to intuit the type of person Knox is.
The type of person is really the question the criminal trial – and all of us, the media, the public – are trying to fathom. Is this type of person capable of murder? What type of person is this person? Did this type of person really get along with the type of person the victim was?
And what about Meredith Kercher, the murder victim – did her music tastes matter? Why would they? What did a university student’s music preferences have to do with murder? Well, more than you might think.
On the night of the murder the MTV Eurovision awards were broadcast, at approximately 21:00. One of the reasons the British girls departed when they did was so one of them, Sophie Purton, could catch the awards. Well, didn’t Amanda Knox – Amanda Knox who was strumming Beatles songs in her room and always singing – also want to watch them?
Music, especially for young impressionable university students, is one of the important ways they identify themselves to each other. Meredith Kercher, a few weeks before arriving in Italy, appeared in a music video, thus giving her massive social credit as a happening young woman.
Could this, and Meredith’s popularity with the girls and boys, have been a source of burning envy for the younger and not-so-popular American living in the same house?
Another example, this time looking at cinema choices, in the Van Breda case, the axe murderer was a fan [like Raffaele Sollecito – Knox’s boyfriend] of violent anime. In both cases they claimed to be watching anime on the night of the murders.
In the Henri Van Breda case it transpired after the trial that he was also into gratuitous violence porn in movies like Hardcore Henri. See trailer below:
Often television or a movie is given as an alibi for what the suspect was doing at the time of the murder. That’s the case with Knox and Van Breda. What we tend to miss while trying to disprove the “alibi” is the person these movies and music points to and describes. By their own admission, the suspects in these crimes identify the sights and sounds that were filling their heads at the time terrible crimes were committed. Almost no one actually tests this media to see what it was actually saying to and about these criminal characters.
What Does Chris Watts Tattoo Say About him?
I can’t take any credit for joining the dots regarding Chris Watts’ tattoo. Credit goes to Paula Neal Mooney, who put a lot of it together in this thread.
Chris Watts was such a Metallica fiend. Shanann Watts surprised him with tickets, he wore their shirts, covered a Metallica back tattoo. I want more about his mother, father, childhood. “This bitter man he is/This fight he cannot win/The old man then prepares/To die regretfully” pic.twitter.com/vaIKG6nJbP
And Mooney is right, that tattoo on his back is the Metallica logo:
For Chris Watts’ 32nd birthday, Shan’ann gave him a Metallica shirt. Doesn’t he seem more delighted here about a shirt and concert tickets than he was about finding out his wife his pregnant?
https://youtu.be/eIlO0OIpWTQ
The joy is written all over his face, isn’t it?
https://youtu.be/9kXmkz7mDvM?t=92
Metallica was clearly a very big deal to Chris Watts. He more than identified with the band, he branded himself with it. He identified himself with them. The words in Metallica’s biggest hit The Unforgiven are – as Mooney mentioned in her tweet – very, very haunting.
This whipping boy done wrong, Deprived of all his thoughts…
Think of just those words in the context of what was going on in the Watts home. Him, an introvert, her an extrovert having him perform in her Thrive-inspired spiels. And then the pregnancy itself, did that really happen the way her words contrived it – something he wanted?
What I’ve felt What I’ve known Never shined through in what I’ve shown Never be Never see Won’t see what might have been What I’ve felt What I’ve known Never shined through in what I’ve shown Never free Never me So I dub thee unforgiven
Besides the words of this song, the iconography of Metallica is also worth noting. Given the gruesome body count in this particular crime, the skulls and death symbolism suggests a man who may not have been as uncomfortable with corpses and skulls [and dismemberment] as we first imagined.
Postscript:
In 2011, while Amanda Knox was in prison, she co-wrote a script for a music video. According to UPI.com:
U.S. student Amanda Knox, convicted in Italy for the murder of her British roommate, has written a music video script for a band based near her prison.
Amanda Knox has “always had a passion for music and poetry” said the band, Hands of Time, ANSA reported Friday.
Knox reportedly sent the script in English and Italian to the band via mail. Hands of Time said the script showed “considerable artistic quality” and decided to use it for their song “The Mistral Blows.”
Knox, 24, is currently in the process of appealing her case in Perugia.
When the music video was released, it bore weird similarities not only to Knox’s personal story, but also to the original music video in which Meredith Kercher appeared.
Settling of scores?
Kercher’s video has remained a lot more popular based on YouTube views. The Mistral Blows has been viewed only 313 times. Some Say has been viewed over 230 000 times. The music business is like the murder business in one vital aspect – it is at its core a popularity contest.
MLM has been compared to a cult. The cliche fits because both involve prescriptive beliefs, members only and members only rules, non-disclosure agreements, scams to make money and ultimately, ruin and doom for those who drink the Kool-Aid and sign their lives away to these schemes.
In the two years Shan’ann Watts was involved, she went completely over to the dark side. She wore the t-shirts, it took over her social media, it took over her family, it took over her mind. Even her phone was branded with the Le-Vel logo.
Below are a few screengrabs from one of Shan’ann’s Live videos. They reveal the particular flavor of Kool-Aid the Le-Vel cult was drinking.
At the very bottom is Shan’ann’s prayer flag, sticky-taped onto a makeshift shrine to Le-Vel.
Because of Le-Vel Shan’ann Watts was able to retire at 33-years-old. That’s quite a boast. Is it true?
And then there’s this:
Because of Le-Vel I have my life back.
But did it give her her life, or cost her her life?
Very little is known about the basement at #2825 Saratoga Trail. It doesn’t feature in any Facebook Live videos. Apparently it was still a “work in progress”.
In photos of other model homes and in the descriptions for model MLS®# 1846125 provision is clearly made for a “Man Cave”.
…head to the basement for an incredible Man Cave entertainment area, complete with a pool table, wet bar with bar stools, home theater room with 120 HD screen, stadium seating and dimmer lighting!…
The fully kitted out Man Cave is supposed to look like this:
In the Scott Peterson case, Laci’s body was likely “processed” in Peterson’s Man Cave – his warehouse located a few minute’s drive from the Peterson’s home on Covena Avenue.
At this point, we have no way of knowing exactly what was in the basement at #2825, but there’s some evidence it was a play area for the children and a storage area for toys, and perhaps other things too. A Mickey Mouse curtain or window cover supports this notion as does a remark made by Shan’ann in one of her Live videos [see below].
https://youtu.be/ENTPDOw0TQ8?t=117
At 1:57 in the clip Shan’ann’s boasting about her daily spring cleaning efforts, and how the children’s clothes are sequestrated and given to others, or packed “in the basement.”
Bella’s clothes, according to Shan’ann, are packed in a container in the basement.
If the Watts basement was still unfinished – like in the Ramsey home – then besides toys, containers and clothes, it may have been used to store sports equipment, Christmas decorations, items of furniture, Chris Watts’ work tools and perhaps chemicals and engine parks too.
A windowless sanctum intended as a home cinema would be an ideal soundproof area to make noise without being heard or seen at night. It could also be used to leave Deeter temporarily, for the same reason.
Le-Vel wasn’t the only MLM company Shan’ann Watts was hawking products for from home, there were others too including Lula Roe clothing and Younique cosmetics. Rocket Science has covered this in a recent post listing these MLM brands in the top 15 most hated in America.
It’s one thing to name and shame these companies, it’s another to go behind-the-scenes and get what this looks and feels like.
In Shan’ann’s Facebook Live video below all the usual suspects are there – Chris Watts, the Thayers, Nickole Atkinson and her daughter Madison. Far from being just a regular stay-at-home, Shan’ann was working hard to turn her home into a MLM shopping mall.
If there was a fair amount of time spent on Facebook Live promoting Thrive patches, that wasn’t all. There was also Younique, to be promoted while Shan’ann was going through her morning ritual. She apologizes halfway through for her daughter Bella watching Mickey Mouse on television. This is her attempt at monetizing every marketable moment she can from home.
In the last four minutes of the 31 minute interview with the Thayers, a female reporter off-camera asks whether baby Niko was planned? At 26:06 Amanda answers.
AMANDA: He was [planned], actually [laughs]. Nick and I had been talking about having a second child. Uh…for quite some time. You know, Shan’ann was…she was always…I mean, on our side…you know, pressuring Nick [both Amanda and Nick laugh]. Um…and just really supportive of it. And then Shan’ann and I were…I dunno…going to get our nails done or something one day, and she told me that Chris, that night before, told her he wanted another child.Um…and she was…she was all on-board and…we talked about being pregnant together [smiles]….and [voices quavers] going through all the ups and downs of pregnancy…having our babies be best friends. So…yes, her pregnancy was planned. [Nick nods besides her].
REPORTER: Was the baby his?
AMANDA: Yes, 100%. There’s no doubt about it.
https://youtu.be/J84bidDRE4E?t=1629
But if Chris Watts planned the pregnancy, if it was his idea, if he was so excited, if he really wanted a third as Shan’ann claims, why would he kill his pregnant wife effectively putting an end to it, and her?
Shan’ann Watts’ parents are blue collar folks. Frank is a carpenter. Sandi a hairdresser. Does it matter who Shan’ann’s parents were, where they work and where they’re from, what their financial circumstances were [and are], or is it unkind and irrelevant even to ask?
If we’re to determine the journey to rise beyond one’s raisin’ [and if that even applies], doesn’t it matter that we know where the accused and the victim’s family arose from?
A simple way to answer this question, especially if you’re married, is to ask whether it matters who your partner’s parents are, where they’re from and their circumstances. Does it? And does it matter who your parents are to them?
Could it have any relevance to a family murder?
In the Scott Peterson case, the night before Laci’s murder, Scott Peterson and Laci made a final stop at Salon in Modesto, where Laci and her husband got a haircut. Laci’s sister Amy Rocha worked there.
In the image below left, Amy can be seen cutting Scott Peterson’s father’s hair.
The entire Peterson case, arguably, turned on a hair. A single hair found in the yellow needlenose pliers in the boat was the only evidence found of Laci. This puts the haircut in perspective, especially when we intuit a premeditated murder.
CCTV footage of the haircut inside Salon also confirmed what Laci was wearing the last time she was seen alive.
In the Watts case, Nickole Atkinson helped her cut and color her hair.
In Aberdeen, Shan’ann’s mother cut her killer’s hair a few days before her daughter’s death.
While Hair Jazz doesn’t play as prominent a role in the Watts case as Salon does in the Peterson case, it’s through the hairdressers at Hair Jazz that we’ve discovered that Shan’ann and Chris Watts planned to separate. They knew this because Sandi had told them, and Sandi knew, apparently, because that’s what she’d been told – presumably by her daughter sometime during her 6 week stay in North Carolina.
We also know that Shan’ann posted a picture of a house she was looking at in North Carolina, which suggests she was thinking about moving home, back to her family. Her Thrive business, which she took with her on her trip, could theoretically be operated from anywhere with an internet connection.
Now let’s take a closer look at Hair Jazz and where and how it fits into Aberdeen and the fabric of North Carolina.
During my first run-through on Google Earth, Aberdeen looked and felt a lot like Vass Road, outside Spring Lake, where Chris Watts grew up.
While floating through the street view, however, I couldn’t seem to find Hair Jazz. Google took me to the street corner but couldn’t do any better than that. I had the street and address, and yet I couldn’t seem to locate it between a number of nondescript buildings. It is in one of the images above [besides the top image], if you look carefully.
So I looked at the building as it’s presented on its Facebook page, and during a television interview.
It still wasn’t easy to find, but eventually I did.
This is it.
And this is it from directly opposite.
One has to consider this place and juxtapose it with Shan’ann’s bold statement in February 2018 that she wanted to by a Tesla ModelX for $80 000.
In the collage below we see Shan’ann and her friend [and part-time hairdresser] posing next to luxury cars. Both Shan’ann and Nickole spoke on camera about their intentions to by Teslas. In the collage on the left is Chris Collins’ daughter posing beside two of his Lamborghini’s.
According to the gurus behind Thrive, if you want a nice car, put a picture of the Lamborghini – or Tesla – on a vision board, and if you wish very hard and say the right words, it can be yours. Simple as that.
In the first two image on the left are Chris Collins’ daughter and his vision board. Notice the picture of the car in the vision board corresponds to the color of the Lamborghini in the collage above [which is from his garage]. The message is clear: you can get whatever you want, all you have to do is ask, and then believe in yourself [and sign up to be a promoter with Le-Vel].
The impression that Aberdeen feels like Vass Road turns out to be not such a long walk in the park after all. Where Sandi works today and where Chris Watts parents live is separated by less than 30 miles by car.
Saratoga Trail probably felt like another world to the Watts family, where the laws of finance and the universe didn’t apply. Until they did.
It’s been viewed over 12 million times, and yet when she posted her pregnancy announcement video on June 11th, Shan’ann received just five comments. Two were from family – her father Frank and brother Frankie. That leaves three comments from friends. Three comments from three friends.
Since her death more than 300 comments have been left and the video shared over 1200 times. Where was the interest from her family, her mother, her community, her fellow promoters when Shan’ann posted this video for the first time? Weren’t all those Thrive friendships real friendships?
We don’t know if certain friends like the Thayers and Nickole Atkinson went back and and scrubbed their social media pages to disassociate themselves after Chris Watts’ arrest, but if they did, that’s pretty lousy.
On Nick Thayer’s photography page he still has Shanann’s endorsement of his photography business, and what’s more, has probably made a packet selling his Watts family photos to the media. So association appears to be okay, as long as the terms are right.
In terms of the video itself, many of us watched it a few months ago, formed our respective conclusions, and went on.
As part of ongoing research I took another close look at and listened to the video today. My analysis has definitely shifted from those first impressions. Here’s what I picked up in those 65 seconds this time round:
1. The video – in my opinion – is definitely staged in the sense that it’s not spontaneous. This has to be appreciated in context. Shan’ann made videos daily and none of them were spontaneous. It was her job to rig each day’s spiel so that it involved product placement and promotion. The whole point was to pretend that it wasn’t promotional, and to insinuate that it wasn’t rehearsed either. Of course, in each case she has all the tools she needs on hand [patches, numbers to call, dates to memorize, freebies to claim]. In the pregnancy reveal she the shirt and the stick ready, not so much for his benefit, but for her viewers.
Just like the Christmas spiel, it’s made out to be spontaneous but it isn’t. It’s engineered to be a happy moment, but it falls flat. And then she posts this less-than-great moment anyway, to limited reinforcement from her limited flock.
At about 20 seconds into the clip, when he rounds the corner, he knows just where to stop and look and sort of overdramatizes the moment of being “taken aback” by what’s on her shirt. Chris Watts is a terrible actor. Even though there was perhaps a little preparation going into the video, it’s still executed poorly. There’s very little that’s warm and fuzzy about it. The video clip itself isn’t a crime, so the staging isn’t proof of anything except that when it comes to this family, we shouldn’t take anything at face value, especially the stuff that’s posted by them on Facebook. This applies in general to Facebook, but it’s doubly true of this supposedly Thrivin’ couple.
2. After Shan’ann directs the camera to her shirt and smiles for the camera, Deeter skitters off and around the corner. We can hear him bark presumably when he runs into Chris Watts. So he’s not shy when it comes to barking. During the rest of the video, simply because Shan’ann and Chris Watts are both ambulatory and talking, Deeter can still be heard skittering around them. He’s an excitable animal even when very little is happening.
3. During the actual interaction, very little is said between husband and wife. For such a momentous, life-changing milestone, 65 seconds of mostly silent footage speaks volumes about both of them. He reads her shirt, makes a show of laughing and appearing pleased, and tells Shan’ann he likes her shirt. Pretty much the only moment of intimacy and exchange is when he asks: “Really?” and Shan’ann responds with a mute-sounding “Really.”
It’s difficult to say who is weirder in the interaction, him or her. During the whole thing, though she smiles at the camera, she seems standoffish towards him, doing little more than putting him on the spot. If she knew about the affair, then her being standoffish, especially under these circumstances, would be appropriate, wouldn’t it? Then it would be all about putting him on the spot, wouldn’t it? Time to make your move pal, are you with me or her? That’s the actual question being asked here. When he asks what “pink means” Shan’ann’s a little curt with him. One has the impression Shan’ann feels she’s able to keep him on a leash, and this is about getting him back onto a tighter one.
4. The biggest moment in the clip is right at the end when he stutters about “it happens” when you want it, and then sniffs as he gazes up at it. I’ve commented previously about the darkness in his face here. He seems down, perhaps sick or brooding, but there’s little genuine joy from either of them. If the clip is rehearsed, then the heavy atmosphere from him is because he’s acting through some sort of psychological malaise around the knowledge of this third pregnancy. We see it, she sees it [I believe], and he’s trying not to show it. He failed.
5. Compare the thick heaviness of this clip to the bright sunny fairy tale stuff that’s everywhere else in the Watts social media. There is a heavy psychological load weighing on these 65 seconds. Why?
When Chris Watts walked away, after finishing the spiel, perhaps to continue mowing the lawn, did he feel enthusiasm in his belly, or was something else – bitterness perhaps – burning him? Well, we know how this story ends.
What the video seems to communicate best is if the couple were this bad at pretending to be happy, how unhappy were they behind closed doors when the cameras weren’t rolling? How unhappy was he – really?
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SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
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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.”
On the night of the murder the 
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