True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
New Orleans was where Shan’ann was celebrated for her “time for a reset” article, published in Thrive’s Strive magazine. Nick Thayer had taken the photos for the article.
This is them on the way to or back from that shoot:
The first few seconds of the video below, Shan’ann repeatedly pronounces her name to the guy holding the microphone.
Below: Nickole Atkinson test-drives a Tesla Model-X worth about $80 000.
Vegas here we come! Our 5th earned Le-Vel Lifestyle Getaway!!! So excited for this 4 day vacay! Much needed! Thank you so much to my awesome parents who help us when we travel! Nonna came to take care of girls while PopPop holds down the house in NC! We are blessed! #WattsVegas#ThriveVegas
Is Herbalife awesome, or what?
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.
It’s hard to believe – Shan’ann hinted at least three times in early to mid-May that she was pregnant. On June 11th she said knew she was six weeks pregnant and that her due date was February 1st. This means conception was approximately April 30th.
I’ve speculated previously that the pregnancy videos were actually recorded on May 7th, the day Shan’ann snapped her husband dutifully mowing the lawn which is coincidentally immediately prior to the blitz of hints.
And yet, as is clear in the comments below, some of her friends felt Shan’ann had “fibbed” to them earlier, pretending she didn’t know she was pregnant [until early June] when she may well have known.
So, did she know?
It’s vital that we know the truth about this, because if Shan’ann misled her friends [and there was no reason to, was there?] then she may well have misled her husband too. If she did, why?
I have a theory, but before we get to that, let’s look at the three hints she dropped in May.
#1: May 8
#2 May 9
See it?
#3 May 15
These hints unleashed a torrent of comments and responses. By the time Shan’ann announced she was pregnant in her two videos posted on June 11 there was an avalanche of interest – literally hundreds of promoters – almost all her key Thrive target market, mothers – congratulating her.
Just two weeks after the announcement [and there were actually several announcements besides Shan’ann changing her profile picture to also make the announcement stick], there was the Thrive event in San Diego.
Where Chris Watts would have gone to that or not before everyone knew Shan’ann was pregnant is an open question.
Within the frenzied interactions were some mysterious responses from Shan’ann.
What did she mean by being nervous about being outnumbered?
She inferred a leopard [leopard print clothing?] had something to do with falling pregnant.
She was also concerned whether the third child would be as much of a handful as Ceecee was at the time.
It also appears the pregnancy was either a change of plan or unintended, given that Shan’ann had given away her maternity wear.
Within this bizarre period Shan’ann also posted an image of house in Mooresville North Carolina, and then posted it a second time.
The timeline between May and June is also busy with Chris Watts’ birthday and several odes from Shan’ann to her husband about what a great man, husband and father he is. During this period it’s also Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, ironic giving what was soon to devastate this family a few short weeks later.
Shan’ann also noted in one of the comments that she intended to have a Thrive pregnancy, meaning, using the patches, pills and formulas to control her mood and appetite until she gave birth. She also said she got pregnant as quickly as she did thanks to Thrive, almost without trying.
Of course, she could use the pregnancy to promote the patches in a way that would make her stand out compared to all the other female promoters jostling for social media support. And what do mothers like more than to talk about babies, baby clothes and the whole maternal narrative associated with the child birth fairy tale.
But how would Chris Watts have felt about that?
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.
What’s the definition of a Perfect Murder? Simple – it’s where there’s no evidence there was a murder committed in the first place.
Within hours of the Watts Family murders, Chris Watts was the subject of intense public scrutiny, then suspicion. He had little choice when he was arrested just three days after the murders to confess.
Due to [what appears to be] a quick conclusion to an “open and shut” case, followers of true crime have since been banging the same drum. Chris Watts is a dumb criminal, they say, and his crime – though monstrous – was daft. Because he was caught so soon, his crime was badly executed. Also, because he was caught so “easily” it probably wasn’t a premeditated murder [or murders], it was a spur of the moment.
Intertexuality Defined
We use Intertextuality to test these “obvious” assumptions. Intertextuality is the narrative consistency between crimes and criminals, and is a TCRS-ism straight from the Rocket Science Toolbox.
To test the assumptions of the Watts Case we need to travel 15 hours by air, 6,126 miles West to East, drawing our smiley face across the globe en route to Istanbul, Turkey
What does the triple murder in a quiet subdivision of Wyndham Hill, Frederick, Colorado have to do with the mysterious disappearance of a Saudi national called Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul Turkey, halfway around the world? More than you might think.
If there’s a contemporary poster child for the perfect murder, it’s the ongoing, and still unsolved Khashoggi Case. Officially, at the time of writing, Khashoggi remains a missing person. He vanished.
That’s rule number 1 for a perfect murder: It’s not murder, the person is simply missing.
According to USA Today the Saudi position, as told to the media [the equivalent of Watts’ Sermon on the Porch in other words] is that:
[they/the Saudis]…have denied any wrongdoing in Khashoggi’s disappearance and claim that he left the consulate [through a back door], where he had gone to obtain official documents before his upcoming wedding, shortly after his arrival.
A critic of the Saudi regime living in self-imposed exile in the U.S., Khashoggi has not been seen since that day.
Turkish media on Wednesday published the names of 15 Saudi nationals who traveled to Istanbul the day Khashoggi disappeared. One of them is the head of a forensic department in Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services. Others appear to be Saudi agents of one kind or another, according to Turkey’s Sabah newspaper.
If what you want is to pull off the perfect murder, you’d probably send along the head of forensics in your intelligence services to let your team of hit men know what to do, when, and how, and how to clean up all the forensic evidence.
So what does the perfect murder look like:
I’ve maintained all along that the Watts murders were not only premeditated, they were carefully calculated and scheduled. They also check all seven of the above points. So why wasn’t the Watts case a perfect murder? For the same reason the Khashoggi Case isn’t. Unbeknownst to the Saudi’s, the Turkish government had bugged the embassy and placed CCTV cameras inside and outside the building. It wasn’t so much that the Saudi’s executed poorly, they failed to take into account they were being watched – just like Chris Watts.
So the same thing that busted Chris Watts essentially busted the Saudi’s. And here it is:
Khashoggi enters the embassy at exactly 13:14:37 on October 2nd.
When Khashoggi enters, a black Mercedes Vito with tinted windows is visible over his shoulder, parked on the sidewalk opposite the entrance. Khashoggi has no way of knowing it, but in a short time he will be dead and his dismembered body transported in that black van along with his killers.
Interestingly, at 12:12 the Mercedes Tito backs up to the entrance of the embassy, possibly in a “test-run” to see how close they can get the van to the door.
It’s unknown whether the body was loaded here or at the back entrance. If the back entrance was available, they likely would have used it especially since Kharshoggi’s fiance was waiting outside/probably had line-of-sight of the front entrance.
By 15:08 the crime is complete and the vehicles leave. It’s taken just under two hours to murder, dismember, ready his remains for transport and clean-up the crime scene.
In the Watts case, Shan’ann arrived at 01:48 and Chris Watts left the residence shortly after 05:27. Chris Watts didn’t have a 15-man assassin team helping him, and he had three bodies to process and transport not just one, which is why he took almost twice as long as this hit squad to get ready.
Why is the black Mercedes parked at the entrance when Khashoggi arrives. Plausible deniability. It’s in plain sight, moving to the consul’s home in plain sight. It was just the consul doing what he always did, going from work to home. Nothing to do with the murders…
Three minutes later the convoy of six cars [all with diplomatic license plates] bot only one containing Khashoggi’s remains [in the black van] arrive at the consul’s house.
It’s a secure location, just like CERVI 319, where the murderer can maintain control and security over the remains.
The black van pulls into the rear entrance, so that the transfer of remains can take place without anyone watching.
Here’s the same timeline with narration and video. It also shows the arrival of the hit squad at the air part, checking in, and which hotels they stayed at. Just as in the Watts case, there was also a schedule flight and transfer from the airport that had to be factored in.
Like the Watts Case, the Khashoggi Case also has its version of Nickole Utoft Atkinson, the concerned witness waiting at the door, looking at her phone but getting no answer, and ultimately calling the police. Hatice Cengiz waited 4 hours to call the cops, Nickole Utoft Atkinson waited approximately the same time period [Shan’ann missed her appoointment at 10:00. A check well-being call [CWB] was disptatched at 13:40 – 3 hours 40 minutes after Shan’ann went missing.
The only differences at this stage between the Khashoggi Case and the Watts Case, is a) the cadaver dogs confirming that there were dead bodies involved [and thus it was a murder investigation, not a missing person’s case] and b) the bodies in the Watts case were recovered because Watts told investigators where they were.
In the Khashoggi Case the 15 man hit squad are probably scrambling to get themselves to safety, and also to remove the evidence from the consul’s house, before the Saudi’s “confess” to a crime having taken place.
Once again, it will be adapted from a missing person’s case to a “confession”, except that the confession is a “botched interrogation”. If you think about it, that’s the same confession Chris Watts used; that he was talking to his wife about separating and thus, arguably, the murders were also a “botched interrogation”.
See, that wasn’t such a long walk half way round the world after all. That’s Intertextuality for you.
POSTSCRIPT:
Below is a brief timeline of what transpired in the Khashoggi Case. For those who have read TWO FACE, bear in mind the timeline presented there and in context, to this one.
According to ABC:
May 2018: Khashoggi meets Hatice Cengiz, a 36-year-old Turkish Ph.D. student, at a conference in Istanbul and she soon becomes his fiancée.
[Also involves a mistress/3rd party]
Sept. 28: Khashoggi visits the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul for the first time to pick up a permission document to marry Cengiz. He’s told come back later.
[Also involves the changing of marital status]
Oct. 1: He returns to Istanbul from a trip to London.
[Also involves return flight at a predetermined time]
Oct. 2: He goes back to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Cengiz waits for him outside for four hours, but he never comes out and is told by consulate staff that he left out a back door. Cengiz contacts the Turkish police.
[Cnegiz performs the same role as Nickole Utoft Atkinson. She’s told beforehand that things aren’t 100% kosher, she has a vested interest, she alerts the police]
Oct. 7: Saudi government officials deny involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance after reports that he was killed.
[Watts initially denied involvement in his families disappearance]
Oct. 8: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warns the Saudis of consequences if the government is found complicit in Khashoggi’s disappearance.
[Watts was likely warned of “consequences” is he didn’t confess and give up the remains. He was likely also shown inculpatory evidence just as the Saudi’s have been]
Oct. 9: Cengiz writes an op-ed in Washington Post, saying her husband-to-be had applied for U.S. citizenship and that his reason for visiting Turkey was to take care of all necessary paperwork for them to marry before he returned to Washington. She urges President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to “help shed light on Jamal’s disappearance.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said of Khashoggi’s disappearance, “We’re not going to make any judgments about what happened to him. We don’t know what has happened to him. We don’t have any information on that.
[Behind-the-scenes in the Watts case also involves paperwork, admin and debt issues]
Oct. 10: Trump makes his first comments on Khashoggi’s disappearance, saying he contacted the Saudis and invited Cengiz to the White House. “We’re demanding everything,” he said. “We want to see what’s going on here. That’s a bad situation. And frankly the fact that it’s a reporter you could say in many respects it … brings it to a level. It’s a very serious situation for us and this White House. We do not like seeing what’s going on.”
[The Weld County DA’s office have also been treating this crime with such seriousness, the autopsy reports have been withheld]
In Sum:
Both cases involve the “vanishing” of the murder victims,
Both cases involve the transfer by car to another location where the remains are secretly buried/concealed.
Although it hasn’t been proved yet, and the reason I believe the autopsy reports have been withheld, I believe the children were also dismembered and/or processed in some way. If so, then both cases have the dismembering of the remains as part of the premeditation, postmeditation and cover-up.
Finally, in both cases unexpected CCTV monitoring caused the best laid-plans to go awry.
Ergo, the Watts Family Murders aren’t nearly as amateurish as many believe, and the prosecution isn’t going to be the slam dunk many assume it will be either.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…
It’s extraordinary isn’t it? Weld County District Court Judge Marcelo Kopcow denied Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke’s motion to seal autopsy reports in the Christopher Watts triple murder case. In plain language, the Weld County District Court is arguing with the Weld County District Attorney.
Irrespective, it’s all up to the Weld County Coroner – Carl Blesch – to decide what happens to those reports. If Blesch decides not to intervene, theoretically the reports could be released as-is by as early as Monday, October 15th, just over two months after the murders. But that’s unlikely. More likely Blesch will file a response to the request based on the processes prescribed by Colorado Open Records Act [CORA]. According to the Greeley Tribune:
Blesch basically has two options: take legal action or release the reports. Roberts said CORA allows a three-work-day period for a response to a request.
If Blesch files a response through the courts, this will almost certainly be either to refuse to release the reports, or to release a limited/redacted version. But we already know what Blesch plans to do.
In an email to The Tribune after Rourke’s motion, Blesch said he agreed with the motion to seal the reports in an effort to ensure the integrity of the ongoing investigation and a fair trial for the defendant.
Blesch’s basically saying the autopsy reports are being withheld to protect Chris Watts. Really?
Whatever is really going on here, the contents of those reports and findings as they relate to the Watts case are likely to be extremely shocking.
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