The 42 minute documentary starts off with a very dark, poignant scene. We see a man with his truck [headlights on] shoveling sand. The voice-over is Shan’ann’s, saying how the man digging her grave is “the best thing that’s ever happened to me…”
It’s powerful. It’s not a bad start, but from a technical perspective, it’s not a great start either.
In the opening montage, a man is digging in a nondescript landfill-type setting. It’s not the well site; it looks nothing like it, and there appears to be a big tree somewhere in the picture. Going into the documentary I was wondering whether Anadarko would be mentioned, and if so, how? This very first scene seems to answer that question. The Anadarko stuff will be blacked out and pushed out of the frame.
Now, I like true crime dramatizations. They remind us to think practically about a particular crime scene, and they force us to consider what’s plausible and what isn’t. In the above image the shirt might be close to the right color [pink…orange], and the jeans and boots are right, but it’s doubtful Watts would have dug a grave with the car lights shining on him. There was enough ambient light right then, just after dawn, to know what he was doing without artificial light.
The Trinastich video footage also confirms just how light it was out when Watts pulled out of his driveway, and remember, it was going to be almost another hour after he left before the head of the shovel in the truck nosed into the sand at CERVI 319.
We see a montage of images from Shan’ann’s social media, and a clip from the Sermon on the Porch where Watts speaks into the camera asking Shan’ann, Bella and Ceecee to “just come home…” An image of Watts with Kessinger appears onscreen within the first minute, then some strange dude appears, and then District Attorney Michael Rourke is the first heavy-hitter to make an appearance. Rourke says Watts was saying all the right things, he just wasn’t saying them right. He was just too cold.
Next the program promises to “explore the transformation” Watts made from family man to monster for the next hour [well, 40 minutes and change].
I like the way Diane Dimond refers to Watts early on as “a dichotomy of personalities”. Another way of saying that is a TWO FACE, right? Next large red text appears above another montage.
DOUBLE LIFE REVEALED
After showing the title [at the 2 minute mark], the scene opens with a pump jack and a well site. It’s August 13th, 2018 according to white text superimposed over a local traffic scene.
And then Dimond begins taking the viewer through the spiel – from Nickole Atkinson’s point of view. We see another strange and rather unattractive interloper [playing the role of Nickole] and then we see Steve Wrenn, fingers folded, baseball on his desk, apparently in his office.
Wrenn provides a scintillating insight. “Things weren’t right.” Think about this for a moment. You have the District Attorney appearing in the first minute to say Watts wasn’t acting right, and that everyone could see that [well yes, they could]. Not his deputy is confirming that things weren’t right [yup, that’s what Nickole thought, and…?]
Next the narrative reverts to Rourke. Rourke provides a little insight now. Nickole worked with Shan’ann, for the same company, and they sold the same product. Which company was that? Which products were those? Rourke doesn’t say. This documentary has promised to show how Watts has transformed into monster, right?
A voiceover [flashing to an aerial shot of Phoenix] mentions a business trip and Le-Vel, but that’s it. Nothing about the kind of company, or that it’s a MLM.
Next the narrative deals with the pregnancy and health issues. Now we have another reporter, this time from the Denver Post, providing more overview. Then it’s back to Rourke. Rourke explains what Nickole was doing. Checking her phone, wasn’t Shan’ann supposed to be at a doctor’s appointment, this and that. There’s a lot more to it than that, but this is just lightly ticking the narrative boxes – and 4 minutes have already blown by.
Where’s Nickole though? Is she not giving interviews?
Then there’s a dramatization of Nickole arriving at the Watts home. The Watts home isn’t used, and Nickole’s son and daughter aren’t in the frame. The make of the car [Hyundai Elantra instead of a Mazda GT] looks wrong, where its parked is wrong, but the color is right.
The clothing the Nickole stand-in is wearing is similar to the camouflage shirt Nickole wore, the white glasses propped on her forehead are a match, and the busy-on-the-phone vibe, but where’s her son Nicolas?
Just before 5 minutes, Wrenn is back to tell us Chris Watts worked in the “oil field industry”. Wow. Nice and vanilla.
“He was a supervisor and typically visited various well sites…throughout the day.” Cue a nondescript pump jack.
So far no mention of Anadarko, or the fact that Watts work involved the maintenance of fracking batteries. So far, we’re still getting the vanilla version, an ultra superficial version simply recapping the basic case, with prosecutors interspersed with reporters doing the job of a narrative run-through. Some of the reporters are not terribly affiliated with this case.
Next Nickole’s actual 911 call is played. It’s not the first time it’s even been on television but kudos for at least having something authentic and not necessarily easy to get hold of onscreen.
Then we dive into bodycam footage, with Nicolas appearing but his face smudged out. At 6 minutes, Rourke is back to provide some insight. Coonrod can’t just kick down the door and walk in, and so on and so forth. So far there has been zero reference to any actual text messages or the times they were sent. That’s 6 minutes, that’s enough. Let’s hear some of your thoughts and observations, and if need be I’ll post a follow-up on the rest of the documentary.
We do know that according to Ronnie, Watts let them know he intended to separate from Shan’ann while he was in North Carolina [during the first week of August, two weeks before the murders].
What’s less clear is whether Watts told his parents about Kessinger. It stands to reason that he did, but is it confirmed anywhere? When Watts told his father during the interrogation in mid-August about the affair, his father didn’t seem surprised. The discovery [page 1076] notes:
Watts told him [Ronnie] he failed the polygraph test and that he admitted [to the cops] to having an affair…
A major area of disagreement between TCRS and the mainstream media version of events [and Chris Watts’ 1st and 2nd version of events] is this idea that there was an argument, or an emotional conversation, that either played out just before or led directly to the murders.
The idea of an argument makes sense. God knows there was a lot to argue about. She was pregnant, he was having an affair, they were losing the house, his parents had been booted out of the family circle and there was that $68 charge he still had to explain…
It also makes sense that something very real had to trigger a triple murder. It seems less likely on the face of it that Watts would out of a silent scenario simply decide to kill his family.
At 4:49 in the clip below Watts is confronted with the idea of an argument. This happens roughly 24 hours after the incident, on the morning of August 14th, a Tuesday.
It’s worth hovering the cursor over 4:49 and playing it back a few times to catch the subtlety in the answer, and all the micro-expressions.
You’ll notice Watts looks up at the ceiling and also sways and smiles while saying they had didn’t argue, they had an emotional conversation “but”, then he smiles openly when he says, “I’ll leave it at that…and I just want them back.”
You either believe him on this score or you don’t. If you believe him, then you’re part of the crowd who believe the crime was a sort of a rage murder, an impulsive crime of passion. Something crazy happened in his head and he just snapped.
If you don’t believe him, then you’re figuring Watts as a coward who didn’t have the balls to confront his wife. Not about an affair, nor about a divorce. He just couldn’t do it.
And if that’s the case, the murder was premeditated. If Shan’ann’s murder was premeditated, so were the children. On this hinge, everything changes.
It’s not science, it’s semantics, and it’s what Rocket Science refers to as “colorful language”. Colorful language is intuitive, so to one person it kicks up a red a flag, to another its meaningless. In OBLIVION I discuss the significance of “walking on eggshells”. But here’s another.
The term “sick to my stomach” occurs four times in the Discovery Documents, and I seem to remember Watts saying something similar during his flaky Sermon on the Porch. It’s a telling aphorism because pregnancy would make a woman sick to her stomach, and so would drowning in oil. If Watts felt sick to his stomach he didn’t look it. So where did the expression come from?
On August 8th, the same day Watts told Shan’ann he didn’t want the baby, Shan’ann tearfully offloaded to Sara Nudd how [understandably] sick she felt. She desperately tried to have sex with Watts in a bid to smooth things over and sort things out. His rejection confirmed her worst fears, hence the sickening feeling [which proved totally justified] in the pit of her stomach.
On the afternoon of August 13th, Watts used the exact same expression to describe how he felt about his missing family.
Even then Watts claimed to be “praying”. It does make one wonder whether Watts picked up the phrase from Shan’ann’s iCloud and adopted it as the “right-sounding” way to express concern, or alarm. We know throughout the aftermath Watts not only failed to shed a single tear, but seemed unable to muster the appropriate emotion. When reminded of this after his failed polygraph, Watts melodramatically sniffed [just once] – his version of showing grief.
Watts also used the term [twice in rapid succession] when FBI agent Coder reminded Watts that what they were doing was looking for his family. In the context of Watts worrying about how things looked, and how he looked, he fielded the terms – as if using the right words was like waving a magic wand [like the Thrive promoters did], and that was enough.
In the preview of Family Man, Family Murder [Murderer?] [the cover is either a misspelling or the tweet is] Diane Dimond can be heard saying off camera that we haven’t heard the truth from Watts “until now”. In other words, the Second Confession is finally the truth of what happened.
Really? It is?
What’s the truth? That the murders weren’t premeditated. And after having sex with Shan’ann, Watts murdered her but she didn’t struggle, she just sort of silently prayed?
That’s how ridiculous these documentaries are.
We're giving you an early look at Family Man, Family Murder: An ID Murder Mystery.
The word “block” appears 19 times in the Discovery Documents, many of these references to suburban address “blocks”, but also to Ceecee’s “blocked” tear duct and Shan’ann’s intention [on the day before her death] to block out family time for Watts to improve her marriage. There’s also the instance where Watts “was attempting to block…Officer Coonrod’s view of Nate’s TV when footage showed Watts walking around his truck.”
Shortly after the disappearance, Watts also tells FBI Agent Coder the house is a “concrete block” and doesn’t want to sleep in it – a symbolic reference to a millstone around his neck.
But what we want to address here are at least half a dozen references to blocking on Facebook.
Simple question:
Did Shan’ann block Watts’ parents, or did they block her?
According to Cassie Chris’ parents blocked Shan’ann.
According to Shan’ann Chris’ parents blocked Shan’ann.
According to the Rzuceks Chris’ family blocked them.
But Shan’ann also communicated the intention and the desire to block Watts’ parents, not only on Facebook but in real life.
Prison officials have “no legal basis for removing the photographs from Christopher Watts,” the Wisconsin Department of Corrections said in a statement obtained by People. Watts was transferred to Wisconsin late last year for safety concerns.
While arguably tasteless, the photos don’t technically break the rules.
There is a bleakness to the reality that many artists are valued more in death than in life; that what they offered the world was not truly cherished until it became preciously finite. It is hard to think of what the man who sold only one painting in his lifetime would thinkof the €40-60,000 predicted price tag on his suicide weapon. While many a person would jump at the chance to be one of Van Gogh’s posthumous patrons, the acquisition of the gun he chose to end his suffering with seems to be an entirely different desire. But perhaps not. Perhaps it’s not dissimilar to the purchasing or beholding of one of his heartfelt works- especially with the understanding of the emotional turmoil that swam through him- where one can sense the will of a troubled man in his journey to find and create beauty despite all his sorrow. Perhaps the prospective buyer wishes nothing more than to feel a closeness and an understanding of that intangible wonder: the will of Van Gogh.
Would a rusty weapon imputed as a suicide tool bring someone closer to knowing the “will of Van Gogh”? Perhaps. Perhaps the rust destroying reality over time is a code, after all, for something useful.
What would Vincent van Gogh think of this business of this gun fetching so much money, given his art when he was alive, could not? My guess is he would be hopping mad. More proof of that is in The Murder of Vincent van Gogh.
…director Julian Schnabel makes us feel what it’s like to live as his Van Gogh. As one might expect, it’s a stressful experience. All the more so since the film is shot on a handheld camera, its jerky motion mirroring the artist’s febrile state. The palette is polarised, either dazzling us with the bright colours of the south, pushed to the extreme, or subduing us with a melancholic blue-grey filter. No even keel for Vincent, or for us. When his ‘frenemy’ Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac) asks ‘What’s the rush?’ during another frenzied painting scene, Vincent’s answer is to reel off a list of masters – Franz Hals, Goya, Velázquez, Veronese, Delacroix – who all ‘paint fast, in one, clear gesture’. Long, continuous takes make the film feel correspondingly immediate and organic, even dizzying.
But the flip side to enduring the stress of being Van Gogh is of course the beauty; of seeing the world through his eyes (which the camera often simulates): the wind through wheat or a line of poplars; craggy rocks in a landscape; the texture of scuffed leather boots and terracotta tiles. We’re down in the dirt with him as he lies in a field, smearing earth over his face with relish. And this is the point of Schnabel’s film – why else the need for another Van Gogh biopic, of which there have been three notable versions already.
At Eternity’s Gate focuses on the tumultuous last two years of the artist’s life, spent mainly in Arles and in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Thirty-one seconds – that’s how long Oscar Pistorius was silent for when asked by Prosecutor Gerrie Nel if he heard Reeva Steenkamp scream after he fired the first of four shots that killed her. Late on the second day of what has been a sustained and brutal cross-examination, Nel said: “Are you sure, Mr Pistorius, that Reeva didn’t scream after you fired the first shot?”
Oscar slumped back in his chair and kept quiet for 31 seconds. Court GD in Pretoria was utterly silent. On the audio recording, all that can be heard is Nel again asking “Are you sure?” after five seconds of silence had passed. Eleven seconds later, a man can be heard taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. Surprisingly, it is Nel who breaks the silence to come to Pistorius’ rescue, saying: “My Lady, I’m giving the witness time to console himself, he is distressed”.
“I wouldn’t have done that,” said an experienced former prosecutor. “I would have kept quiet and counted and then when he finally said something, I would have said: ‘That took you four and a half minutes. What were you thinking about?’’’
I thought that was the moment he was going to crack, the former prosecutor added. This piece of evidence is key. If Pistorius’ ears were ringing and he? couldn’t even have heard himself scream after the shots, as he had testified, then he can’t tell the court that three other witnesses didn’t hear her scream during the shots.
Saving Pistorius from his silence was a rare show of mercy from Nel, who during a turbulent two days of cross-examination compared a photograph of Steenkamp’s bloodied head to an exploding watermelon, called the athlete a liar and laughed openly at one of his responses. Before his 31 seconds of silence, Pistorius twice became emotional as Nel carefully picked apart the improbabilities in his story.
If Nel hadn’t have given Pistorius a break, Oscar would likely have become more emotional, allowing Judge Masipa a chance to call a recess. Nel didn’t want that to happen either. So it was a careful chess game between pushing the accused and getting him emotional, but not so emotional that the Judge intervened on his behalf…
What is the TCRS take on Oscar Pistorius’ Murder Trial? The 5-Part Book Series is available at this link.
April 11th, 2019
1. Give it until 2:30 for this video on Chris Watts to get going. Valid points raised regarding Watts being informed from the outside about what’s being said and vaunted on social media. Interesting that “Nut Gate” was a term first raised on social media as well.
During the Presidential election last year, he published tens of thousands of hacked e-mails written by Democratic operatives, releasing them at pivotal moments in the campaign.They provoked strikingly disparate receptions. “I love WikiLeaks,” Donald Trump declared, in exultant gratitude. After the election, Hillary Clinton argued that the releases had been instrumental in keeping her from the Oval Office.
Shortly after Trump’s Inauguration, I flew to London, to visit Assange—the first of several trips, and many hours of interviews, to better understand how he runs WikiLeaks, how he has been living, how his political views have changed, and what role Russia has had in his operation. Even as a new inquiry opened into possible collusion between Trump-campaign operatives and Russia, “the WikiLeaks connection,” as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, put it last year, remained obscure.
Assange is not an easy man to get on the phone, let alone to see in person. He is protected by a group of loyal staffers and a shroud of organizational secrecy…
Julian Assange will be taken to Westminster Magistrates court this afternoon. He has been arrested under a US extradition warrant for conspiracy with @xychelsea for publishing classified information revealing war crimes in 2010.https://t.co/vvbZBOgCwL
NEWS: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in the UK, and UK authorities have confirmed he's also been arrested by the United States and is facing extradition https://t.co/y76fgnnVtL
As the catalogue for “Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art,” a momentous new show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, puts it: “It was most likely a combination of deep disquiet that Theo might no longer be able to look out for him, a growing sense of loneliness, and fear that his nervous attacks would return that drove van Gogh to shoot himself in the chest on July 27, 1890, with the intention of ending his life. He died of his injuries two days later, with Theo at his bedside.”
The mainstream motive for why Van Gogh committed suicide is that he didn’t want to be a burden to his brother [who had just started a family]. Even the Van Gogh Museum support this idea. It makes sense except – how was committing suicide [and botching it up so he took 30 hours to die] lessening the burden? If Van Gogh didn’t want his brother to be troubled by his existence, then Theo rushing to his brother’s aid during a life-and-death emergency, only to watch his brother die, and have to pay for his funeral [suicide was regarded as disgraceful in 1890’s France] didn’t achieve that goal.
Van Gogh’s funeral and the disgrace around his suicide was a huge burden, financial, societal and emotional, that his brother and family had to bear.
A US private investigator who worked undercover at the holiday resort where Madeleine McCann vanished has made claims that appear to cast doubt on the controversial parental checking system Kate, Gerry and the Tapas 7 told police they were conducting on the night the three-year-old vanished.
In a remarkable interview on the Maddie podcast, Boston-based investigator Joseph Moura claimed a bartender and waitress who served the McCanns and their friends at the now infamous tapas restaurant on May 3 told him “nobody left the table that evening”.
Lauded as the “the most famous weapon in art history,” the corroded, legendary revolver was discovered in 1965 by a farmer in the field where then-37-year-old Van Gogh was struck in the stomach by the bullet that killed him on July 29, 1890, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris.
The seven-millimeter gun, reportedly kept by the family that owned the Auberge Ravoux inn where the artist lived for the final months of his life, was put on public display for the first time during the 2016 exhibition On the Verge Off Insanity at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The farmer who found it presumably gave it to the owners of the inn, whose descendants are now selling it.
“The severely corroded weapon is a Belgian-manufactured Lefaucheux pinfire revolver, which was among the most popular civilian handguns in the second half of the 19th century,” writes the Art Newspaper. “It remained in production until 1893.”
According to the auction house, there are several pieces of evidence to prove it was Van Gogh’s suicide gun. “It was discovered where Van Gogh shot it; its caliber is the same as the bullet retrieved from the artist’s body as described by the doctor at the time; scientific studies demonstrate that the gun had stayed in the ground since the 1890s.”
But is it – forensically speaking – the actual killing/murder weapon?
April 7th, 2019
1. Mitch Summers, an ex-classmate of Chris Watts in high school [now a video producer] released this prom photo of Watts.
Following an investigation by nine.com.au, a formal request from one of the world’s leading DNA scientists has been lodged with London Metropolitan Police for access to 18 complex DNA samples which are potentially loaded with vital clues about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
There is hope that Dr Mark Perlin’s powerful computational DNA testing methods could blow open the cold case by successfully cracking the 18 samples which frustratingly stumped a UK lab in 2007.
In Dr Perlin’s email to Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Wall, who heads up Operation Grange, the UK strike force investigating Madeleine’s disappearance, he confirmed he would conduct analysis of the 18 samples for no cost. Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange, launched in 2011, has cost British taxpayers more than $20 million and it has recently requested further funding from the UK Home Office.
The Sun pretends here to analyse seven different theories about what happened to Madeleine McCann. In the middle of the list of seven theories is the theory of the lead detective. The Sun refers to this theory as a “crackpot” theory, the only one of the seven theories to be singled out in this manner. Why do you think that is? An unlikely theory, or a newspaper pandering to their cash cow?
[Mrs Fenn] refers to the day of the 1st May 2007, when she was at home alone, at approximately 22.30 she heard a child cry, and that due the tone of the crying seemed to be a young child and not a baby of two years of age or younger. Apart from the crying that continued for approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, and which got louder and more expressive, the child shouted “Daddy, Daddy”, the witness had no doubt that the noise came from the floor below. At about 23.45, an hour and fifteen minutes after the crying began, she heard the parents arrive, she did not see them, but she heard the patio doors open, she was quite worried as the crying had gone on for more than an hour and had gradually got worse….That night [Fenn] contacted a friend called EDNA GLYN, who also lives in Praia da Luz, after 23.00, telling her about the situation…
Recently, however, speculation that he was actually killed accidentally by two boys playing with the gun have been fueled by the artist Julian Schnabeland the screenwriter of Schnabel’s Van Gogh biopic At Eternity’s Gate. The pair believe that the number of paintings the artist produced in his final months does not match up to someone who was suicidally depressed, and their film shows this alternative ending to the troubled artist’s storied career.
But the auction house dismisses this suggestion. “The new theory about the killing is based on testimonies given several years after Van Gogh’s death,” the AuctionArt spokesperson says. “It has been deeply criticized by all the Van Gogh specialists, among them the Van Gogh Museum and Alain Rohan, who wrote a book about the gun.”
€40,000–60,000 is on the line if the weapon was used by Van Gogh in a self-inflicted gunshot. And if he was murdered? How much would the gun be worth then? Double? Or zero?
Art experts are squabblingover whether a set of previously unpublished drawings are the work of Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam says the sketches are complete fakes. Welsh-Ovcharov, a Canadian professor of art history and Van Gogh specialist, told reporters she was convinced the sketches were authentic, describing the discovery as an “OMG moment.”
“I started to look through all the drawings and each one had his fingerprint,” she said. But according to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, they are mere imitations and contain no trace of the Dutch master.
The heaviest hitter in the true crime special is deputy district attorney Steve Wrenn. This is him:
Although Wrenn seems to be a relatively unfamiliar figure in the Watts saga, especially given the prominent role of Michael Rourke, he was part and parcel of the prosecution team from the beginning.
We also saw him in court on the few occasions [just three in fact] when the case was actually heard within the protocols and prescriptions of a criminal trial. While Rourke addressed the court at the sentencing trial, and stood by while Frank senior and Frank junior read their statements [Rourke also read Frankie’s statement for him], Wrenn stood beside Sandi Rzucek when she read her statement.
The mini-series features interviews with those familiar with the tragedy and experts who have covered the case extensively. It also highlights body camera footage from the Frederick Police Department, as well as new details from the investigation following Watts’ jailhouse confession. Steve Wrenn, the Deputy District Attorney for Weld County who was interviewed for the special, told Fox News those who handled the case are still attempting to make sense of it.
A year after the family annihilation, almost everyone involved is still asking why. This suggests that the interrogations of FBI agent Grahm Coder and CBI agent Tammy Lee may continue until there is a better handle on Watts – at least from the perspective of the authorities and prosecutors.
Wrenn describes the “ripple effect” of the crime on first responders as being “phenomenal”. While those involved in the recovery of the Watts children from the tanks may be damaged psychologically, perhaps permanently, Watts himself seems to have emerged from his own handiwork relatively unscathed, and even upbeat.
Perhaps there is a world of difference between killing someone who is alive [even one’s own family] and the gruesome task of reaching into the dark to fish out their remains. This may seem a silly statement, but it’s one I’m grappling with as part of the research for OBLIVION, the 8th book in the TWO FACE series. In our rush to judge murderers, we ourselves tend to prefer them to be worse – sometimes – than they really are. And so when given the option of their committing a crime in a harsh and callous manner, that seems to fit better than a more subtle, strategic and painless [planned] taking of lives.
Even Watts – during the First Confession phase – seemed to wince at the prospect of being involved in fishing out the remains of his daughters. He was appalled at the notion of his coworkers being involved in the same operation. Not that this is absolute proof or proof of any kind, but when Coder prodded Watts on whether he shoved the bodies of Bella and Celeste through the thief hatches while they were alive, Watts was similarly aghast.
In the second interview the same issue came up and Watts again denied it.
Wrenn also describes his own feelings while watching Watts during his interrogations.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been more frustrated in my life watching something take place.”
When Watts casually describes doing the unthinkable, there is a sense that there is a serious screw loose with this guy, and only he seems unaware of it. Even so, he seems to be trying awful hard to be everyone’s pal. It’s this aspect that seems to distinguish Watts from other sociopaths. He does the unthinkable, and yet he seems to care very much what people think of him, and tries very hard to appear not as monstrous as he otherwise might. It’s not just that, what’s unnerving is his effort to be pals with law enforcement, when they know who and what he really is. His game seems to be making friends, which is precisely the ruse they use to extract more information from him. It’s done gently, painstakingly and the result is the cops get something for their trouble [maybe not very much] and Watts also gets something [ditto].
Wrenn refers to the post-conviction interview conducted in mid to late February 2019 [the so-called Second Confession] as providing “glimpses” into why what happened happened. It will be interesting to see whether Wrenn will take a firm position, or express himself clearly on Watts’ latest version of events.
Rourke seems to have accepted it, and the media as well, which suggests further towing of the lie line. But this version presents both Shan’ann’s murder and that of the children afterwards as spontaneous [in other words, unplanned].
The TCRS position on this has been clear from the beginning – the murders were all premeditated.
In Wrenn’s view the only possible explanation for the crime is that Watts is a sociopath. As labels go he’s not wrong. A sociopath can’t understand or quite get to grips with the feelings of others, and they don’t feel guilty about harming others. While this explains Watts within the confines of the crime, as well as the aftermath, it doesn’t explain why his wife loved him [and was fighting to stay married to him] until the moment he murdered her, or why a mistress fell in love with him and he with her. Are sociopaths lovable? Are sociopaths good fathers? Are sociopaths assets to families, desirable to singletons and beneficial to societies until they aren’t?
If the sociopath label works, it’s clearly reductionist and way too simplistic. See, it also rubs against the notions the Rzuceks shared of their son-in-law, as well as the community [including the Thrive Facebook community] who regarded the Watts family as the perfect family, and Watts himself as an ideal husband and father. The media and social media have been cooing about this aspect all along – but he [and they] looked so perfect and so perfectly happy! If sociopaths can only be identified by spouses, extended family and the community in the rear view mirror, then we as a society are in real trouble.
Our ongoing failure to understand this case – and Watts specifically – speaks to some kind of systemic failure in modern society, including our inability to see those around us for who they really are, or to simply fathom those around us [and perhaps ourselves].
Wrenn insisted that despite Watts’ tell-all to investigators,we may never truly know whyhe was willing to slaughter his entire family.
Curiously, although the documentary on Watts claims to [feature] interviews with those familiar with the tragedy and experts who have covered the case extensively zero contact was made with TCRS. This is either an indictment of TCRS and the seven books covering the Watts case [as the work of an amateur, and thus bogus and basically bullshit] or it’s an indictment of something else.
On May 23rd, criminal defense lawyer and Chris Watts YouTuber Scott Reisch posted a video about Nichol Kessinger. I was in the Netherlands at the time, and not paying the usual amount of attention to the Watts case [or Crime Rocket for that matter]. But this particular video did blip on my radar, sufficiently so that I passed it along to another Watts case follower via WhatsApp.
The video has since been completely removed from YouTube.
I’m not surprised. In the video, Reisch [I can never remember how to spell his name] records himself in his vehicle doing a little undercover detective work. If I recall correctly Reisch – sporting dark glasses – also flashes briefly to the brand of his vehicle on the steering consol. I won’t repeat the brand here, but it’s not a VW beetle, let’s put it that way.
While driving he suggests he has the address of Kessinger and is simply going to see – firsthand – whether she’s home, whether she answers the door and what she has to say.
Reisch records himself knocking on a door, and soon after, driving away. The apartment complex can be imputed from the rear view behind Reisch as he drives slowly away.
Now it’s possible Reisch himself subsequently removed the video from YouTube. It’s also possible that Kessinger’s legal machinery kicked in because of a perceived violation of her privacy. Whether or not Kessinger is under witness protection, and whether or not she lodged an objection to the video, the video did feel like it crossed an invisible ethical boundary. That was my perception. Irrespective of Kessinger’s role in the Watts case, she has every right to want to protect her privacy.
When I covered the Van Breda case, I praised a tabloid reporter who had snuck into a complex and done the same thing Reisch did, except someone [I won’t say who] opened the door, saw it was a reporter and slammed the door. The reporter then wrote an article not only identifying the complex but providing a glimpse of who and what she saw when the door opened, and even what she smelled – if you can believe that. Someone related to the Van Breda case later contacted me [I won’t say who] and complained about me praising the mischief of the tabloid reporter.
I explained that as a journalist, I have respect for those who go the extra mile as it were. On a recent trip through Europe I jumped off the train platform to take a photo at track level of some poppies while a train was slowly approaching [and while a station policeman was hollering at me].
So that’s really what I’m getting at. When a journalist exercises the courage of his convictions it resonates with me, because I know how much it has cost me.
At the same time, speaking to this person directly, I felt ashamed. I could see how such behavior [the tabloid journo spiel] was a total violation of privacy. In true crime there is a sort of consensus that everyone involved is fair game. While that is true to an extent in terms of investigating the situation, it doesn’t mean there are no boundaries whatsoever. It’s not a case that the innocent have total rights and that the guilty [and those related to them] have no rights.
Personally I was surprised by Reisch’s video before it was taken down. Going to the premises and finding someone not there is hardly content. It’s what journalists and editors call a “non-story”. Although Reisch never gave the details of the address, he did seem to hint that it was in Colorado and near to where someone he knew [I won’t repeat specifically who] was based. This potentially opened the door for others to figure out the address and possibly harass Kessinger.
There have been many lines crossed in the Watts case, none more so than the line crossed by Watts himself. Kessinger also crossed a line, but infidelity is hardly a face melting misdemeanor. It’s not classified as a crime, although certain legal and financial obligations can follow as a result. The point is it’s not behaviour exclusive to or monopolized by Kessinger, in fact it’s disturbingly common. When we talk about rights to privacy, and the way Facebook penetrates into the home, and onto a spouses’ phone for example, we can see how Facebook can ruin marriages. Ironically, Facebook seemed to play little role in the machinery or chicanery of the Watts case, certainly at face value.
What Watts did plunged many into a nightmare, including Watts himself. He soon saw his own privacy literally evaporate, and found himself completely out of his depth in trying to deal with it. But as troubling as Watts is a character [a man doomed by his own weaknesses and failures] what’s even more troubling is the Watts spiel as a whole. When we start to see the whole theater and all the players, something doesn’t sit well with us.
While I was in Europe, Anadarko started sewing up major merger talks with Occidental. The Chris Watts case had simmered down just in time for billion dollar deal-making. Was that accidental? Coincidence? Or is this whole strange, suffocated legal procedure – the hushed, rushed plea deal – part of much larger shenanigans?
The Watts murders, diabolical as they are, is it simply the tip of an enormous glistening black asteroid, invisible and unseen, but nevertheless hurtling towards us?
I find the social-cultural aspect of true crime interesting, because as tempting as it is to believe, Watts didn’t emerge in a vacuum. He also didn’t cross those ethical lines when he committed this crime, in a vacuum.
When we explore these ideas, they invariably reflect back at us, and our approach to ethics, often in areas we know about but don’t particularly care about. Like privacy. Like industry, and the approach of corporates to the protection of information and their casual if not reckless attitudes to society and ethics.
Although we don’t particularly care about these aspects, they seem to care about us as a voting bloc, or a portion of the marketing pie. They affect us. So maybe we should care.
Is it from other individuals that alienation springs, or from society? Who is to blame? Another way of putting the question is:
Who is to blame for crime?
It may seem a ridiculous question. Obviously the individual [the criminal] who commits a crime is responsible for it. While that’s certainly true, what’s underappreciated is the impact, or perhaps influence is a better word, of culture in who individuals ultimately become in our society. Do we simply let the chips fall where they may, and if Chris Wattses are part of that equation, so be it…? Or should we have a hand, some kind of say, some kind of sway, in the kind of society that we’re part of?
At the same time that we raise this question, we can also ask a slightly more targeted inquiry.
What impact does the culture of the workplace have on people, and their attitudes to other people?
In effect, what impact does the attitude of corporates have on society – on people, on us – and how does that trickle down to the workers who work there? Is it mostly harmless? Is it worth caring about or only worth caring about when there’s an annihilation?
What we’re really addressing in this Reisch scenario is the idea of privacy. How much should we care about it? Do we expect our privacy to be respected? Should the privacy of others be respected too?
Privacy laws while necessary can also be used to nefarious ends – to protect those who have something to hide. Just think about the Mueller report and Trump’s financial statements [protected because he was supposedly under audit]. Privacy is a real issue of our time, and social media and true crime provide a fascinating fulcrum, a nexus, in which to examine it.
What does it mean exactly to respect privacy?
When someone is involved in some way in a crime, especially a high-profile crime like this, do the same standards of privacy apply? For my part, I thought Nichol Kessinger was treated very mildly by investigators, given the time-sensitive circumstances and scale and scope of what happened [a triple murder, adultery, the pregnancy etc]. Even when she appeared to be less than completely forthcoming, there didn’t seem to be any threat attached to either withholding critical information, or – arguably – delaying the release of it. So privacy does work both ways.
By the same token, if we look at Shan’ann’s Facebook profile [which is still public], should the victim’s privacy be treated in a special way, perhaps even counter to their own wishes [in terms of social media]?
Are our modern laws – especially those pertaining to the online space – up to date in terms of the rational and reasonable rights citizens ought to have in terms of privacy?
In general, our obsession with cases presupposes a level of access to the information particular to criminal cases, but how much access is in the public interest and how much is intrusion?
2019 is turning out to be another lethal year in the climbing history of of the almost 9 kilometer high Mount Everest. The dead have reached double figures. Given the traffic jams the uptick in fatalities is hardly surprising, but given the sheer numbers climbing this year, it’s remarkable that more people [queuing for four hours in the Death Zone on the way up, and for almost as long on the way down] didn’t lose their lives.
Fortunately, this year the weather was both a boon and a bane. Narrow weather windows caused bottlenecks, but once the windows were there they stayed open long enough for the climbers to ascend and descend without having to worry about storms.
But why is the madness on Everest persisting, and if anything, becoming more popular?
Because it’s there? And if the trend continues, if the numbers aren’t managed in future, isn’t a disaster that will dwarf 1996 inevitable?
To address the possibility of a catastrophe means we have to understand the motivations for going there. Because it’s there is not why people climb mountains, and not an acceptable [or complete] explanation for why people climb Everest.
We all go to the mountain, some by choice [to test ourselves], some unwillingly. However we get there, and however high the mountain, the mountain reveals not only the scale of itself, but the smallness of ourselves in relation to our grand illusions.
And illusions are grand. Close your eyes and listen to the clip below for 90 seconds. This is what illusions feel like:
So what is the deal with Everest? Illusions or not, the world’s highest mountain is a symbol above all others. But is Everest a theater for heroism or a playground for the rich and privileged? Is it an arena for humans to express the best of themselves or a wrestling ring tilted near vertical designed to expose the worst in us? In effect, since people die on the mountain every year [and in increasing numbers] has Mount Everest become a crime scene?
Today marks the anniversary of the first summit of Everest in 1953 [although some claim even the first summit wasn’t the first]. In 1953 man’s ascent of the mountain the locals call Chomolungma felt epic. That achievement was trumped by an even more remote adventure – to the icy wastes of space and the moon in 1969.
But as Earth’s middle class have streamed to this world’s highest summit in droves, smartphones in hand, Instagram accounts and hashtags at the ready, motivations seemed to have plummeted. Why do they do it? For a hero badge? As the mob push for the summit, increasingly they push one another aside, and part of this selfishness involves stepping over dead bodies on the way to the Holy Peak and again on the way back.
One reason summit fever takes hold of so many is the “sunk cost” of climbing the mountain. Some commit their life savings to the trip, and some make several trips, often returning with fewer body parts each times. Besides the money [anywhere between $35 000 and over $100 000] is the effort involved. After weeks of climbing, with a summit so close, how many are capable of turning their back on the a titillating flagpole marking the world’s highest point, even if lives are on the line?
In an article posted today on CNNwe get a topical reply:
“Grinning climbers with frostbite, showing their blackened fingers but refusing to leave the mountain. Climbers who tried to keep going despite hacking coughs that shattered ribs. Those who were about to collapse, but kept going with the voice of their loved one crackling through a radio…”
We see them giving interviews with stubs on their arms that used to be wrists, hands and fingers. They smile below the mountain though their faces are blackened and destroyed as if by death itself.
Those who survive the mountain [like Beck Weathers, pictured above] tend to make speeches [often for money] and publish books. Weathers’ experience on Everest was triumphantly portrayed by the charismatic Josh Brolin, the handsome actor who played the all-powerful Titan Thanos in Avenger’s Endgame. Really? Was Weathers’ misadventure [he never reached the summit, but couldn’t admit to quitting his attempt either] a triumph of the human spirit? Is Beck Weathers a hero, or at the very least, a man with an indomitable spirit [again, he never made it to the summit…]
The poster child for this narcissism is arguably a socialite who was in the thick of the things during the infamous 1996 Everest tragedy. I’ve written three books on the disaster so far. But to get a real feel for the folks climbing Chomolungma today [a name that intuits lungs gasping for breath], read Pitons are served [since removed online].
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
Visit the TCRS Archive of 100 Books dealing with all the world’s most high-profile true crime cases.
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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.”
Wrenn also describes his own feelings while watching Watts during his interrogations.
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