We know more about Nicolas Atkinson’s version of the crime scene than we do about his mother Nickole Atkinson, Shan’ann’s closest friend. Although Nickole Atkinson has appeared in the media a few times, and although she was interviewed multiple times and gave multiple statements, none of these statements occur in the 1960 pages of released discovery.
Why?
At the same time Watts was giving his first interview with FBI Special Agent Grahm Coder on Tuesday night, August 14, 2018, CBI agent Tammy Lee contacted Atkinson [who was bothered and angered by the call, and her husband was heard yelling at her in the background]. Atkinson initially agreed to visit the police station on her way to work, but then changed her mind.
Agent Lee despatched CBI Agent Greg Zentner to the Mesa Vista nursing home in Boulder [where Atkinson worked the night shift] to interview her [Discovery Documents, page 556]. The interview itself and any interview notes from it, however, are not part of the discovery file.
Provision is clearly made for Atkinson’s narrative. Page 469 of the Discovery Documents records an interview by Agent Zentner conducted on August 14 in Boulder. The duration of the interview is not recorded.
After page 471 in the Discovery Documents introducing the details of the interview there is no page 472. Instead another interview is listed with Troy McCoy, Watts’ colleague at Anadarko follows on pages 473-474. The narrative of the interview with McCoy then follows on page 475-478.
So where is Nickole’s interview with the cops? Why is arguably the most important witness to the whole case not in the Discovery Documents?
Five months after the Watts Family Murders a strange silence seems to have settled over the case. This was to be expected in the absence of any legal challenge from Watts. But given the amount of information placed in the public domain it’s been surprising, frankly, the silence not only of the media, but also some of the main players in this case.
At the same time Watts himself was secreted away to a distant prison, his mistress Nichol Kessinger disappeared into witness protection. Watts’ parents have – understandably – withdrawn into a self-imposed exile. Shan’ann’s folks did an exclusive with ABC, but have otherwise been relatively media shy of late. Frankie Rzucek, despite being scornful of the media at turns, has made some overtures to some social media pundits like “Molly Golightly”.
But what about all the other witnesses? The co-workers, promoters, neighbors, ex-husbands, ex-girlfriends? Shan’ann’s friends are clearly – very clearly – still an active presence on social media, actively Thrivin’ but apparently less keen to talk in public about their recently deceased friend.
Slowly but surely, a few important friends and witnesses are coming out of the woodwork. It’s important that they do because no one can address the Monster Myth better than the people who were there. The folks who knew the Watts family firsthand, personally and directly. And the Monster Myth does a great disservice to this case.
Dismissing Watts as a narcissist and/or psychopathic monster deprives his family of their humanity, and incidentally, it exposes us for our facile view of true crime, and this crime in particular.
In this respect Nate Trinastich’s interview is both timely and insightful. Some of the low hanging insights from his interview with Dr. Oz include the following:
1. Trinastich says the Watts family didn’t fight any more than a normal couple. The bodycam records Trinastich speculating that the “flat-out screaming” arguments he heard were the reason Shan’ann had left for North Caroline [for 5-6 weeks] in the first place. The Discovery Documents on the other hand contain no record of arguments witnessed by Trinastich.
Although it’s useful to hear that Trinastich feels he may have embellished the intensity of the arguments, and that Watts’ portrayal as a monster isn’t accurate, the fact that Watts murdered his family means this aspect of the dynamic isn’t irrelevant and shouldn’t be minimized either. It shouldn’t be embellished, it shouldn’t be minimized, and it shouldn’t be dismissed. What we need to know is the true dynamic that existed between this couple, and the family.
2. The location of the motion detecting surveillance camera is indirectly shown for the first time.
We can see that the yellow and white pillar of the Trinastich home seems to block the view of the Watts driveway, as well as the protruding garage wall and boundary tree. From the perspective of Watts on the driveway, he may have underestimated the ability of the camera to be triggered by motion, and perhaps also miscalculated the capacity of the various barriers to block out what he was doing .
Even so, what the camera does show isn’t clear. It doesn’t show any bodies directly, or any bodies being loaded. This visual uncertainty is why conspiracies have developed around fragments of apparently disconnected shadows and plays of light in the critical left corner that recorded only intermittent parts of Watts’ activity that morning.
3. There were four witnesses checking the surveillance footage when Officer Coonrod arrived: Coonrod, Nickole Atkinson and her two children. Notice Watts is the only one with his back to the television when Coonrod arrives, as if trying to visually confront his audience.
4. It’s worth noting that during this interlude, Watts has his sunglasses propped onto the top of his head. This certainly invokes CCTV footage from earlier that same day of the Orange-Shirt guy who has his glasses propped on the top of his head, on a cap.
5. It’s regrettable that Dr. Oz, who has pontificated about weight loss supplements, some affiliated to MLMs [and gotten into trouble over it] didn’t use his medical knowledge to analyze the Thrive aspect of the narrative. In his interview he commends Trinastich for trying to protect the integrity of the victims. Dr. Oz’s failure to interrogate the medical aspect of this case [thus far anyway] is puzzling, because there are very many aspects that remain troublingly unclear.
A further aspect that is worth highlighting, but not an insight per se, is Trinastich’s observation to Coonrod that Watts explaining quickly and in detail while the CCTV was rolling, what he was loading was unnecessary, suspicious and didn’t really make sense. If Watts was loading tools why did he load them into the cabin of his truck?
One of the key reasons the Watts case was prosecuted as effectively as it has been had nothing to do with the quality of law enforcement. It had everything to do with the vigilance and intervention of the community and neighborhood, the fabric of society, the friendships, and to some extent the social media surrounding Shan’ann and her children.
Although Nickole Atkinson raised the alarm, her son Nicolas played an integral part in investigating the scene before anyone else did. His connection to the Watts’ was tenuous, based on dog sitting and his mother’s connection to the victim. But he got involved. Trinastich too, went to the trouble right then and there to check what he had, and it wrong-footed the suspect. It exposed him, and caused the momentum to shift significantly against him.
This was a crime solved by ordinary citizens first, before the cops, FBI and District Attorney swooped in.
Keep an eye on the loft railing in the video clip below [move the slider to approximately 22:48]. Watts doesn’t appear to have Shan’ann’s phone in either of his hands.
Coonrod then enters both of the children’s bedrooms. When he turns Shan’ann’s phone is suddenly right there on the railing.
Who put it there? And why not hand it directly to the police officer?
Within the first ten minutes we discover that Chris Watts was a gym rat all his life, until he met Shan’ann. She made him give it up and once he did, he put on a lot of weight.
The ex [whose name I can’t figure out, can you?] says that Watts went to gym religiously for two hours a day, everyday.
Given the colossal amount of data in the Discovery Documents, it’s difficult to imagine information might be missing. It’s difficult to see what’s not there when there’s a mountain of evidence tilting and towering against the sky.
It takes a long, rigorous analysis of the mountain of data before one begins to intuit cracks of information that should be there but simply aren’t. One example of this is the router data.
First a disclaimer. The information below is of a highly technical nature. An expert, especially in regards to the Vivint system, and how [or whether] it piggybacks on a home’s WiFi network will be able to provide more clarity on how the digital system functions as an ecosystem, online and in terms of a smartphone.
The Netgear Router appears to have been located in the basement of the Watts home, right beside the staircase [coming down, on the left side]. You can view Officer Coonrod’s first view of the router from 21:50 onwards at this link. Bear in mind the first area Watts entered after leading Atkinson, her son and Officer Coonrod, was the basement. When he made this trip it was [I believe] to let Deeter out, but he may also have turned the router on if it was off. If so, it would have taken a few minutes to boot up.
If Watts did turn on the router, the phone review did not pick up any connection by Watts phone [or Shan’ann’s phone] to the router that afternoon.
From a cursory glance at the router in the relatively dark basement on August 13, roughly 3 minutes after Coonrod accesses the house for the first time, the router appears to be off. When you leave home, do you turn your router off? Most [I’d hazard a guess] do not.
Whether the router was on or off is relevant because of an apparent gulf of missing data. When Shan’ann arrived home on the morning of her murder, her phone didn’t connect to the router, yet it automatically connected to the Wifi at the airport at 00:51.
The same applies to Watts, when he returned home at 14:07, his phone – apparently – did not automatically connect to the router.
Are these simply errors, oversights or omissions in the phone data review? Unlikely, since the extraction did note some connections to routers, though clearly none from Shan’ann’s phone except the last.
The data extraction did recover sinister activity related to the router at 02:18, exactly half an hour after Shan’ann’s arrival. Even the reviewer couldn’t explain what the “activity” was, but documented the time and described it as “unspecified activity”. It would be good to know what sort of digital activities could constitute this label.
It is possible to log into the Netgear platform, and fiddle with the dashboard, just as it’s possible to go into browser settings and change metadata [including browser history].
It would make sense, if Shan’ann’s phone did automatically connect to the router, to erase that data from the router. He would want to and need to do that in order to conceal the fact that Shan’ann’s phone had [or hadn’t] left the building.
After murdering Shan’ann, Watts probably turned off her phone, and the router back on [temporarily]. This would have theoretically also allowed the Vivint security system to come back online, perhaps in terms of sending alerts to his phone.
It’s also possible that on the night of August 14th, Watts removed a pile of digital breadcrumbs that would have helped trace his and Shan’ann’s movement, including the router data. What the router data points towards is the sheer scale of Watts’ cover-up, as well as his premeditation.
In his first interview with FBI Agent Grahm Coder on the night of August 14, Watts was clearly aware that by turning off the Wifi, the ability to track the iPad was disabled…
The word “delete” or “deleted” appears 65 times in the Discovery Documents. Some of these are multiple references to Chris Watts “deleting” his Facebook page. Interestingly, we have the exact context for when that happened: half an hour after agreeing to go away with Shan’ann for the weekend to Aspen, he deleted his Facebook account.
When Shan’ann found out, she was shocked and asked him why.
There are also many references to Nichol Kessinger deleting all information related to Chris Watts from her phone. Imagine if she hadn’t, and she’d instead come forward to shed maximum light on this case [including bravely shining it on herself], imagine how much more we would know.
On page 575 of the Discovery Documents Kessinger is quoted asking Watts to delete his text messages “to keep their relationship secret from his friends”. She asked her pal Charlotte Nelson to do the same thing. What Kessinger seemingly didn’t know was that Watts was already “on it”, in terms of his Secret Calculator app.
In fact, Watts was probably more effective at covering his digital trail than Kessinger, which is quite something given that he was directly or indirectly on social media [on multiple platforms] while she, for the most part, was not.
We get a clear idea of the scale of deleted data [on Watts’ personal phone] by comparing the storage used on his iPhone 7 and iPhone 5 [his work phone] compared to that used by Shan’ann and Kessinger.
The month of July 2018, arguably the most active month for Kessinger and Watts on their phone respectively, only held three messages in the device’s archive [personal phone], and all from one day – July 29th.
Shan’ann’s iPhone 7 plus had 29 796 SMS messages, and over 153 000 timeline entries. Her call log, however, was relatively sparse, at just 477. By contrast Watts had 304 SMS messages on his personal phone, and 125 messages on his work phone. His call log was 567 and 326 respectively.
Watts had more audio recordings on his work phone [191] compared to his personal phone [141], whereas Shan’ann had more than five times as many [756] and Kessinger almost none [only 12 audio recordings].
Kessinger’s phone had the least recorded number of calls logged out of the four phones, at just 206 entries. But Kessinger also had far more SMS messages than either of Watts’ devices, at 8 152.
In the same way that Watts’ phones show zero communication with Trent Bolte, or even his contact number, Kessinger’s handset is, to quote the Discovery Documents devoid of any calls, messages, photographs [or] videos involving Watts…nor even his number.
Interestingly, zero data extraction is recorded from Kessinger’s work phone, in fact it’s not even mentioned.
Arguably the most significant data removed from Watts’ phone was data I missed during my initial analysis, but was brought up yesterday [January 12, 2019] in the comments at this site. Strangely, when doing a filtered search for the word “delete” or “deleted”, the entry at the bottom of page 1768 doesn’t come up.
The word “Instagram” comes up seven times in the Discovery Documents, but also doesn’t pick up the deleted instance in the search term Watts’ used [Discovery Documents page 1769].
During the course of research along several lines of inquiry, I made multiple searches for various kinds of medication, including and especially Oxycodone.Oxycodone features only three times in the Discovery Documents as a compound referenced [but not found] in the autopsy reports.
I was particularly interested in this drug, because the work I was researching and concentrating on while writing the TREACHERY series [covering the chloroform aspect in the Casey Anthony case] strongly indicated a chemical/sedative as murder weapon. I refer to that work in greater detail lower down in this post.
Oxycodon [misspelled] is part of the Watts’ deleted and undated but retrieved search data. It is assumed that the search for how to delete his Instagram account occurred very close to his deleting/deactivation of his Facebook account. It’s also reasonable to infer, in my opinion, that the search for 80mg Oxycodon took place after the search for how to delete Instagram account. This is based on the chronology of the search data, and the fact that the deleted search history as recovered may have been recovered in chronological order and reproduced as such onto the retrieved and reconstructed timeline.
If both these inferences are accurate, then the search for 80mg Oxycodon took place within 72-48 hours of the children’s deaths. Given the information provided by a 80mg Oxycodon Google search it is highly likely Oxycodone [also known as Oxycontin] was Watts’ preferred murder weapon of choice for his daughters:
Reinforcing Information:
A. Oxycodone is a common medicine used by Lupus sufferers.
B. Shan’ann was a regular user of medication, and so were her children.
The jury in the Casey Anthony trial felt the computer searches for Chloroform a few months before Caylee’s death/disappearance wasn’t necessarily a smoking gun.
Like Chloroform, if there is an intent to murder [without causing excessive suffering], then Oxycodone is a conventional and very powerful [and potentially lethal] sedative that Watts probably had access to.
Was Oxycodone in the Watts home prior to the murders? A complete archive of prescriptions and medical records would easily verify this. It’s also possible that we may see a prescription bottle in some of the bodycam footage eventually, unless Watts got rid of all of them [which one can imagine, he would have tried to get rid of, wouldn’t he?]
But if Oxycodone was used, wouldn’t it have turned up in the autopsy?
You’d think so, wouldn’t you?
Once again it’s revealing how difficult and how hidden this particular item of evidence is in the Discovery Documents, perhaps partly because the perpetrator hid/deleted/destroyed/concealed information. But potentially also because it was part of an agreement not to disclose this information to the public.
Postscript:
A genuine True Crime Rocket Scientist has to know a case, and the characters in them, forwards and backwards, back to front, inside and out. He [or she] has to know all the information, and have played all the inferences and scenarios in his [or her] mind. And it all has to come together into something resembling God-like omniscience.
Omniscience is hard. It takes time and effort, and requires repetition. And an open mind. Even with all these elements in play, applying them logically and intuitively is a challenge.
A sculptor will tell you that the sculpture was always there inside the block of granite. It takes multiple sweeps to carve away the obstructions, and eventually what lies beneath is brought to the surface.
That’s what we’re trying to do here at True Crime Rocket Science. We believe there are answers, and we believe we can find most of them if we look hard enough, and keep looking. Some answers are right in front of us. Some are right there, not exactly hidden, but easy to miss. The more of us that search, the more secrets will eventually come to light.
Thanks again to those who brought these deleted search terms to my attention. You know who you are.
Chris Watts’ work truck has appeared on the online vehicle auction site SalvageNow.com.
Besides the exterior and interior photos, the VIN number 1FT7X2B67FEC57658 corresponds to that in the Discovery Documents page 614.
SalvageNow.com provides some interesting miscellaneous detail on the truck:
– It has 74,472 Miles on the clock
– It’s exterior is described as “Caribou Metallic”
– It’s categorized as a fleet/lease vehicle
Watts’ Ford Lariat happens to be one of the enduring mysteries of the Watts case. The truck was used as an impromptu hearse to transport the bodies of his wife and two dead children. According to Watts, he placed all three bodies in the cabin portion of the truck, behind the front passenger seat. The Trinatich surveillance video appears to corroborate this element of his story – that all three bodies were loaded into the cabin for transport to the tanks near Roggen.
Yet despite the truck playing an integral role in connecting the one crime scene to the other, it appears not to have been made available to the K9 units [in terms of the interior], or if it was, that part of the investigation is off the record.
Far more evidence [or potential evidence] has been recovered from the truck than the SUV. According to the Discovery Documents, 13 separate items in the truck caught the interest of law enforcement.
A few additional points that are worth noting:
The truck was an “alternative fuel truck”, meaning it was powered by compressed natural gas [Discovery Documents page 814]. This raises questions around the red gasoline tank Watts was seen loading, and possibly pouring into the bed of the truck early Monday morning.
Located in the front passenger compartment was a roll of black plastic bags.
The front driver’s seat and front passenger seat were covered with canvas seat covers [These canvas covers appear to be missing from the SalvageNow photos].
A potential DNA swab was taken from the steering wheel.
In the rear seat were two large plastic bins containing various items including maps, paper work, safety equipment and work tools.
Black rubber boots were found in the floor behind the front passenger seat.
The front passenger seat is aligned differently, and with the backrest slightly more downward compared to the driver’s seat [in some images].
The interior cabin and console is covered in a fine yellow dust.
The dashboard console is fitted with an apparatus to hold/stow a work computer/laptop. Watts used [or referred to] this computer at CERVI 319 after digging Shan’ann’s grave.
A disposable green cigarette lighter was seized from the door compartment on the passenger side of the truck. It’s not clear who this belonged to, as neither Watts nor his wife smoked. [Could it be Kessinger’s, Trent Bolte’s, Amanda McMahon’s or a co-worker’s?]
The fuel gauge below appears to be around a quarter to half full.
Everyone expected fireworks in the autopsy results. Remember? We all thought the autopsy results were going to blow the lid off this case. I expected possible chemical processing of the bodies and/or dismemberment. But the only anomalies in the autopsy results were elevated [but apparently normal] alcohol levels in Shan’ann’s cadaver, and a damaged frenulum in Bella’s case.
Later on Dr. Phil made an “error” on his show, when he spoke about broken bones. At 4:47 in the clip below he says:
“He had to break their bones to get ’em in there…”
To demonstrate his argument, Dr. Phil used this graphic:
It seems pretty straightforward right? The width of the hatch is 8 inches, the width of Bella’s shoulder’s was 9.5 inches, ergo to force her body into the hatch Watts had to break her bones.
According to the Discovery Documents, the “smallest width” [presumably of the shoulders or hips] was measured on Ceecee’s body at 9.5 inches.
This is the width of that overlap:
It’s about 38 mm, just under 4 centimeters or less than half the horizontal width of your debit or credit card. It’s basically as wide as two to three average-sized adult fingers side-by-side.
The Discovery Documents and autopsy reports are surprisingly vague about the measurements, and are also unexpectedly vague about the dimensions of the oil tanks and hatches. There are no diagrams. There’s very little detail.
Even so, it doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to see that by slightly elevating a horizontal structure of a particular width [say the hip or shoulder skeletal bones] through a circular hole of fixed width, the total width can be slightly reduced. When people move furniture through doors or manoeuvre them up and down staircases, this lifting or lowering to alter width is routine applied.
This manoeuvre can be described mathematically as follows:
By raising the shoulder or hip on one side by about 33 degrees [or approximately 5.1 inches above horizontal], a small body could theoretically be fitted through a small hole without breaking anything.
The Discovery Documents and autopsy reports are silent on Bella’s minimum skeletal width. Let’s assume it to be inch wider [which is a completely uninformed, and uneducated guess]. The lifting to reduce the additional inch, once again, isn’t impossible.
The fact that both children’s bodies were dumped with their clothes on, suggests as tight as the fit was, it wasn’t so tight to necessitate the removing of the clothes [the fabric remaining in place could cost a quarter of an inch or so].
Dr. Phil’s illustration is also misleading, because the girls did not have their arms stretched out horizontally, but lifted above their heads. In this position it would also be easily to lower one shoulder through the orifice, and then the other, rather than trying to force both through simultaneously.
Although it seems possible to push both bodies through without breaking bones, the only way to verify this would be to use a model skeleton [to scale], and re-enact trying to place the skeletal through the hole. Theoretically easy to do, by practically not quite as straightforward. Another option is a computer animated model using a scaled skeleton and the thief hatch to scale.
The first photos are of Shan’ann as a young child. When Bella saw them she recognized herself. During April and May 2017 Shan’ann punts Thrive events in Dallas and Toronto. Chris Watts writes “love letters” of support to Shan’ann on the sachets of Thrive products using a black magic marker.
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
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Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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