True Crime Analysis, Breakthroughs, Insights & Discussions Hosted by Bestselling Author Nick van der Leek
There’s a weird admission here that when Watts wasn’t home, it was almost like he “forgot” he was a father. He says since there were no reminders around him [at Kessinger’s house] it was easy to forget who he was.
It reminds me of a scene in the movie The Hours, where a housewife is baking a cake for her husband’s birthday, “to show him that we love him.” Her son, standing in the kitchen, asks her: “Otherwise [without the cake] he wouldn’t know we love him…?”
A regular reader of this blog and my books recently asked if I was aware of the current coverage of the Zahau case. My response was something long the lines of needing to maintain a single-minded focus on the Watts case. Consistent laser focus and concentrated attention is necessary, naturally, in true crime.
Focus is vital to penetrate the many layers of deceit and misdirection, and figuring out who people really are when they’re purposefully hiding who they are, takes time and effort. But we have to be careful. There’s focus and there’s also the danger of becoming one-track minded. When we’re one-track minded we’re in our own echo chamber and nothing new gets in. When that happens we as individuals, and as a group apparently sharing the same ideas, risk taking the bus to Abeline.
This is where Intertextuality comes in. It’s an incredibly valuable tool in true crime, and useful in criminal trials where – come sentencing – lawyers argue how previous cases were decided on, or how previous felons in similar scenarios were dealt with. Intertextuality is a highway to insights. Through other cases we have a better idea of who and what we are dealing with.
The first time I was truly shaken by the insights of Intertextuality occurred in early June 2018, during the Jason Rohde trial. At the time I’d written about the Zahau case, and so the unusual scenario of a murder staged as a suicide was still fresh in my mind. Sitting in court watching Rohde, listening to the autopsy findings, seeing the crime scene pictures projected in court, and listening to him testify, I saw many of the patterns I’d noticed in the Zahau case come rushing back. In fact I was so transported by these insights I was moved to do something I wouldn’t normally do. During a recess I boldly approached the prosecutor, briefly introduced myself and communicated my intuitions. He wasn’t very receptive. Not at first.
I’m not sure how many people like to be approached like that and told how to do their jobs. A prosecutor instinctively shoots holes into people. So I felt a little like that on Day 1, but as the trial wore on we communicated more often and soon, some of my ideas were floated in court. When the judge delivered her judgment in late February 2019, some artifacts of those ideas were still circulating.
Watts + Packham
In the Watts case it’s easy to get stuck on the idea that Watts didn’t have a plan, and hence, didn’t have an explanation for what happened to Shan’ann. Conversely, if he didn’t have a good explanation, he couldn’t have a good plan. This is circular reasoning, and within the confines of the circle, yes it’s fairly compelling. When we look at the larger ecosystem of the Watts case, the mistress, the pregnancy, the finances, the evidence, the notion that Watts randomly and impulsively committed triple murder becomes absurd.
It’s tempting to conflate Watts’ social awkwardness and introversion with stupidity and lack of guile. What’s really going on is the opposite. His social awkwardness makes him more internalized, which makes him a thinker, a plot, a planner. He likes to be under the radar.
Watts himself said he had to think carefully about what he said to Shan’ann. He had to plan his answers.
Over the course of a marriage, where one individual can’t be who they really are, they practice their deceits and soon misdirection becomes second nature. As the deceits become more elaborate, such as an affair, so does the strategy, plotting and planning around it. The affair is the first thing “he gets away with” and this gives him confidence that he’s good at getting away with things. But he has to become more sophisticated and so a plot is hatched. And with enough arrogance and frustration, mendacity graduates into murder.
When we look at Packham, we see a wealthy individual, and an intelligent businessman. Nothing like Chris Watts, right? Actually, besides the money, they’re not so very different.
Packham had been married to his wife for almost thirty one years, but the couple had been having marital problems because of his infidelities, before her disappearance on February 22, last year. She did not arrive for work at the usual time of 7.30am and her body was later found in the boot of her burnt-out BMW near the Diep River train station.
Steyn rejected Packham’s version that she could have been the victim of a random hijacking and instead found that Packham was “a crafty deceiver”, agreeing with the State that his conduct was “incomprehensible” and had been indicative of guilt. – The Citizen
Like the Watts Family Murders, Packham’s wife was made to disappear. But unlike the Watts Family Murders, Gill Packham’s disappearance wasn’t “invisible”. Instead of oil tanks her remains were burnt inside her vehicle near a train station in a derelict suburb far from their lush mansion in Constantia. The incineration of the vehicle was meant to conceal the blunt force injuries to her head, but also to destroy possible DNA evidence linking Packham to his wife’s corpse.
On paper, Packham’s explanation isn’t bad. Packham suggested that his wife had come to grief as a result of a random hijacking. This is fairly common in Cape Town, so why not? Well, one reason is hijackers seldom burn the vehicles they target. In this case it was a BMW, so why would a hijacker burn the vehicle and not just take it? Packham didn’t think it through because he didn’t think he needed to. Who knows the motives of random hijackers…?
We may look at that kind of simplistic thinking as daft, but we’re not seeing the full picture. We don’t know the underlying drivers and dynamics, and we don’t know about Packham’s relationships with others, including his children. [The same applies to Rohde].
Interestingly in both the Rohde trial and the Packham trial, the daughters of the accused immediately forgave their fathers, and despite the convictions for the murders of their mothers [respectively], they didn’t want their fathers to be sentenced too harshly.
In the Watts case we see the same expression of clemency and forgiveness not only from his own parents, but from the Rzuceks as well. It’s as if he did the calculations beforehand and figured if they found out, they’d let him get away with it.
And what about the lack of remorse? Packham and Rohde also showed no remorse, but interestingly Rohde, when confronted with this, indicated that showing remorse would look like admitting guilt.
Guilty murderers don’t seem to realize that even an innocent defendant would be concerned and traumatized by the death of someone so close to them, besides being emotional about being “wrongly implicated” in a crime. Instead the lack of emotion is meant to convey blamelessness. It works only in the mind of the one who is to blame, but it can work in the minds of those close to them as well.
He had not once mentioned that he missed his wife or felt sympathy for his children’s loss, and instead displayed a “dismissive attitude” in court that lacked empathy. Judge Steyn said Packham had not divulged a motive, but it appeared he killed his wife out of “anger and frustration”.
Of course once again we have a case where after all is said and done, the guilty man is convicted, but no one can say why. The crime is ultimately dismissed as a crime executed in anger. He’s angry but he’s a sociopath who shows no remorse. Really? Is he? Was it random frustration on a random day or was it cold, premeditated and merciless?
Which is worse?
Sometimes – especially on social media – I encounter members of the public all saying the same thing at the same time. Sometimes they’ll be saying with absolute confidence that Chris Watts is a monster, then it’s that he’s a narcissist, then a sociopath.
Typically this follows a Dr. Phil Show, a documentary, or when some expert appears on HLN. If everyone is saying the same thing, and thinking the same thing, and repeating the same thing, it’s no wonder the mainstream never figures out so many of these cases.
Can anyone say why this crime happened? Can anyone reconcile the evidence to the psychology to the family dynamics, forwards and backwards, cross-ways, making sure everything lines up?
Because the sociopathic, monster and narcissism labels only fit the crime itself. What about the rest?
While in the clip below Townsend is broadly correct, there are clear sociopathic traits in the aftermath of this crime, were they present before? If Watts was a despicable, heartless narcissist, why did everyone like him up until the moment of the crime? And if he’s a sociopath with no remorse, why did he start acting cold to Shan’ann and the kids. Why did they pick up on him being distant and standoffish?
How can you become cold and distant if you weren’t warm and affectionate to begin with? So a more complete picture is that as Watts became more ensconced in an affair, he began to act less affectionate. But that’s not sociopathy, that’s normal!
Now I want to briefly illustrate why this kind of labeling is simplistic and reductionist, and how it actually prevents us from figuring out cases like this, rather than helping us.
Before we get to that, watch this clip.
So in the clip Townsend plucks the low-hanging fruit and on the face of it it seems pretty straightforward.
Watts just wanted out of his marriage, he wanted to be single, and he just saw his family as things he wanted to get rid of…
But under that face, under the sur-face – which is why we talk of the TWO FACE-dness of Chris Watts – it’s not nearly so simple. He didn’t just want to be single, he wanted to be with Kessinger. He didn’t want to be on his own because he spent every night – when his family was away – with Kessinger.
So the narrative you’re getting from these experts, and these episodes, is derived from the truth, but how much time have these experts really spent studying the case? Is it the only case on their desk, or is it one of many, and is this one of many appearances on one of many shows?
The notion that Watts just saw his family as things he wanted to get rid of is a tempting thought. It makes absolute sense retrospectively, but as soon as we park the wheelbarrow beside the retrospective aspect of true crime, all there is to excavate is the dirt from the crime scene and the aftermath. Believe it or not there is another side – another face – to this story, it’s the long backstory and run up that leads to the crime itself. How long was this phase? Moments? Seconds? Minutes? Months? Or a lifetime in the making?
Chris Watts didn’t treat his wife or his kids, or anyone, as things, prior to the murders. So does the crime make him a sociopath retrospectively, or was he always one, he was simply hiding it?
And it’s because we’re hitching the wagon to a pair of horses named Sociopath and Saw his family as Things, that we’re prevented from seeing how this crime actually played out. Because in reality, Watts didn’t see his family as things, he loved them, and then he didn’t love them, and then yes he did want to get rid of them. The story is that he did so violently and heartlessly. The position of TCRS is that the murders of the children weren’t violent, and even Shan’ann’s murder – though more violent and physical – isn’t the way it’s been portrayed.
I know what you’re thinking. How do you commit a murder without aggression, without violence? But there are ways. We see it in true crime all the time. And if we weren’t focused on labels and making things so simple, we might see how things are more subtle.
Chris Watts always seems like a fish out of water, doesn’t he? He doesn’t seem completely comfortable in many of those Thrive videos. He’s not comfortable in the Sermon on the Porch, although in his shorts and sandals, he’s trying his best to act casual. And in all his interrogations, he seems more focused on trying to appear normal, which of course makes him seem even weirder.
Now that he’s in prison for the rest of his life, he appears – and sounds – more relaxed, and more comfortable than we’ve ever seen him. It’s as if an actual prison is a sort of natural psychological home for him, a place where he can truly be himself, not so much enjoy himself but just be himself.
There’s a stereotype associated with true crime – not in all true crime, but some areas of it – where the quiet, nondescript neighbor that no one noticed before turns out to be the worst monster – a diabolical serial killer, mass shooter or serial rapist of some sort.
This stereotype exists because it’s often true. It’s the invisible introvert who’s capable of a much deeper, and richer inner world than the average person, and so when we translate that capacity to true crime, we get a much darker, and more depraved kind of crime. The Watts Family Murders are a lot like that when you think about it.
On this blog I don’t like to discuss psychology, not because it’s not my thing, but because that’s what the books do. That’s why there are already eight TWO FACE books on this case already [OBLIVION is out tomorrow].
One of the issues I’ve been itching to tackle in more detail is this seemingly unimportant issue of Watts’ personality. He’s an introvert. So what? Well, it’s a major personality type and a major defining trait of this particular murderer – whom no one can understand, and who did something no one can explain. That’s really the final word on this case. No one knows why and no one will ever know.
Rocket Science specializes in these kind of psychological conundrums. In order to prime you for what’s coming in OBLIVION, it’s important that you understand yourself on the introversion/extroversion scale. You may think you do, but this test will make it explicit.
Feel free to share the results of this test, and if you feel the test isn’t an accurate reflection, tell us. If it is, tell us. If you found something out about yourself by taking the test, don’t be shy, don’t be an introvert – tell us!
In the spirit of transparency and full disclosure, I’ll start first. I scored as a:
I’m not sure it’s true that I’m a wallflower at home [perhaps being an author means you automatically are], but I know in certain situations, public and private, I can be.
Personally I think the litmus test for extroversion/introversion has to do with how one deals with being alone. I have mixed feelings about it. I want my space but also feel lonely at times. Can you be an extrovert and an introvert at the same time? Clearly you can be.
Now in the Watts case, being alone does emerge as a kind of test. We see what Watts does when he’s left alone for five weeks. We see what he does when he’s not home. We also see how Shan’ann tolerates not being alone, as well as how she manages people.
And this is the value of spending some time personalizing these concepts. When we do not only do we get a much deeper grasp on these enigmatic true crime characters and personalities, we also see how and where we [hypothetically] fit into these myriad dynamics.
I also think it’s a spectrum. You’re born on one or the other side of the scale, but it’s a sliding scale, and it can change during the various stages and circumstances of your life.
We saw how Chris Watts seemed to become more extroverted in some ways, and Shan’ann as well. But it’s also a sort of default setting. Especially when things aren’t going the way we want them to. Watts’ introversion feeds into his identify, and without exception, we all default to our identities. In true crime this is especially true, which is why identity is absolutely key to why criminals do what they do.
Understanding identity also helps explain why we do the things we do, or why we feel the way we do about what we do and how we do it.
I love the first line of my result, about the horror of leaving others indifferent. I think Shan’ann also felt that a great deal. Ironically, Watts seemed to feel the opposite way during his Sermon on the Porch, and Confession #1 and 2. It’s as if he wanted people to feel indifferent.
Shan’ann and the kids have disappeared. I’m not sure where they went. But maybe it’s not a big deal…?
Now, in conclusion: is the above test accurate? Was it for you? For me? Well, if you’re a full-time author, yes, you are all about changing hearts and influencing minds, especially in a genre as serious and epic as true crime. Leaving others unchanged or indifferent means your efforts have failed. You have failed. What I don’t like is this idea of needing to be validated externally. My work does, I don’t, but it’s easy to get sucked into OBLIVION [see what I did there…]
Now it’s your turn 😉
More: Introverts run the world — quietly
Raising An Introverted Child In An Extroverted World
“Chris Watts is a narcissistic psychopath”- now find out what YOU are
It makes sense, the argument that Chris Watts is a heartless monster, that he’s psychopathic or sociopathic. That he doesn’t feel the way many of us do. To our minds, it doesn’t make any sense if he murdered his family and he acted like he didn’t care, that he did care, and that he does have feelings.
But the temptation is to put Watts in a neat little box and call him a heartless monster. It’s comforting to say that because it separates him from us.
It’s the position of TCRS that this aspect is true, but at the same time, he’s not an empty vessel devoid of emotion.
It’s this aspect of true crime that makes it both fascinating and terrifying – the notion that Watts cared for his wife and children but killed them anyway. The notion that he felt bad about what he did, but tried to act innocent and nonchalant, and wasn’t particularly convincing.
In the final half hour of the Second Confession, Chris Watts speaks frankly about his emotions. Although we have to be careful taking anything he says as gospel, it’s worth reviewing how he sees his emotions, and the words he uses to describe his own inner world.
WATTS: It’s just weird how emotions process for me than for everybody else.
LEE: Hmmhmm.
WATTS: Like you said, like um—you lost your kids at a grocery store for five seconds, you’d be a mess, and then like…you know…for me…I-I-d be panicked, but I wouldn’t cry. I’d be looking around trying to find them. But it’s just like, I just process it differently. I never knew why. Never know why. [Long pause]. I don’t think I’m a cold-hearted person, it’s just a matter of…I just don’t show it…show the emotions as much as other people do.
LEE: Your family doesn’t show emotion like that?
WATTS: Yeah, like you know…my dad couldn’t really speak at the sentencing hearing, because he said was kinda like…he said he was gonna lose it. Like that really hit me. Like, I’d never seen him like that.
LEE: Like, vulnerable?
WATTS: Mmhmm. I don’t think anybody’s seen me that way either.
The emotional aspect is a crucial aspect in true crime, and critical to understand this case. We can’t have it both ways. In the one scenario, Watts impulsively and spontaneously kills his wife and children, Shan’ann in a rage and his children seemingly for no reason at all. In this version Watts loses control over his emotions when he kills wife, and simply isn’t thinking afterwards. It’s not entirely unconvincing, because Watts seems capable of acting rashly and stupidly. His confessions to the cops also reinforce this impression.
In the other scenario, all the murders are premeditated. The premeditation scenario as a whole is an effort to hide not only the crime but the emotions, including the affair and the pregnancy.
One way to resolve the question of premeditation is to look at Watts’ behavior and psychology prior to the crimes and just after. After the crimes he has a checklist of things he needs to do and wastes no time doing it, even though he’s at work. He cancels his kids’ classes at Primrose, he calls the realtor, he even calls his bank.
The way he disposed of all three bodies also doesn’t speak of someone not in control, or not thinking. But the hiding of the bodies and the effort to make them disappear while sickening is also his effort to conceal feelings – like shame. He knows what he’s done is shameful and so he’s driven to dig holes and – taking a substantial risk – force the bodies of his children into the tanks to make them dissolve and disappear. He uses the word vanish immediately after the crime – that’s exactly what he wanted to happen. 
There’s emotion there, in that effort to hide away his disgraceful deeds. There are many crimes out there that are executed with blood and brutality, and the bodies are left in the open.
Counter-intuitively these speak of emotion but are probably more psychopathic than a crime committed in secret and hidden away.
Coming Soon! – Book 8 in the TWO FACE series…
It should be noted that the plea deal includes the legal prescripts AFTER DELIBERATION in three instances, all three relating to three separate counts of first degree murder. The document is explicit in explicating deliberation as not only an intention to commit a crime but:
…the decision to commit the act has been made after the exercise of reflection and judgment concerning the act…[it is] never [an act] committed in a hasty of impulsive manner.
During the sentencing hearing on November 19th, 2018, the district attorney stated clearly and categorically [listen at this link]:
“The evidence tells us this, the defendant coldly and deliberately ended four lives, not in a fit of rage, not by way of accident, but in a calculated and sickening manner…”
But Watts’ Second Confession however, which appears not to have been analyzed, criticized or second-guessed either by law enforcement, or the district attorney, or by Investigation Discovery’s Family Man, Family Murderer, or by the media, contradicts this version.
In the Second Confession Watts says repeatedly he was in a rage and snapped when he killed Shan’ann. [CBI Report, page 8].
He had never been angry before and this was like the epitome of being angry. He had rage and lost his mind. [CBI Report, bottom of page 12].
He was shaking and didn’t know what had happened.[CBI Report, page 8].
He didn’t know what to do and didn’t know what he had done.[CBI Report, page 8].
He wasn’t in the right state of mind and wasn’t in control of his thoughts or actions. [CBI Report, page 8].
The original plea deal document is available at this link.
More: “Chris Watts Just Snapped” [October 4th, 2018]
Chris Watts describes the reason he killed Shan’ann Watts: “I just snapped” [AUDIO Part 1+2]
A Critical Review of FAMILY MAN, FAMILY MURDERER
Why the Second Confession Scenario as Dramatized in FAMILY MAN, FAMILY MURDERER is full of crap
The murder of the Watts children at CERVI 319 as Dramatized in FAMILY MAN, FAMILY MURDERER
Chris Watts was pretty clear that he didn’t want to talk about “this part” – the murders of his daughters, but in the end, he did talk about it. What he said wasn’t much, and it wasn’t convincing, although it seems many are convinced by it and accept it as genuine and true.
In the same way that Shan’ann allowed herself to be killed without a fight, without screaming, without so much as a sound or a scuffle apparently, Ceecee and Bella seemed mute as first the one and then the other was strangled.
It’s possible. Anything is possible. But when one studies these children in the dozens of videos, they seem quite skittish and anxious. Christmas Eve of 2017, for example, illustrates this where Bella is terrified of Santa Claus. A week before her death, Bella was afraid of the water at Myrtle Beach. On the night before her death she was afraid if she went to sleep, Ceecee would die in her sleep.
See, it’s hard to imagine she would sit by while her sister was strangled beside her, and do nothing, and say nothing. So why doesn’t FAMILY MAN, FAMILY MURDERER acknowledge that?
More: There’s a reason Chris Watts can’t remember Bella’s Last Words
Overall it was a poor effort by Investigation Discovery. There was absolutely no attempt to study the dimensions of the thief hatches, or the autopsy reports, and no commentary on the openings of the hatches vis-a-vis the the children’s bodies. There was very little footage of the fracking tanks themselves, and no mention of the company Watts worked for.
In effect, the dramatization of the murder of the children was simply showing Watts saying what he said, and then showing him in his truck. That’s not true crime. While an actual dramatization using real models would have been disturbing, and even distasteful, instead of depicting this aspect it could have been examined, analysed and discussed, rather than simply running through Watts’ version of it superlightly, as if it was all 100% accurate.
TCRS has maintained from the first book and blog post that:
The position of the district attorney, the FBI and law enforcement following the First Confession appeared to be that the crimes were indeed premeditated [committed intentionally “after deliberation”] in spite of Watts’ latest “just snapped” version. In fact the plea deal itself confirms []and affirms] this.
So if the plea deal contradicts Watts version, why the hop-skip to Watts’ version?
In theory, if Watts’ second version [below] is truly as palatable to prosecutors as it seems to be, he has a viable angle in defense, at least to do away with the “premeditated” aspect of the crime. This in turn has implications for mitigation, potentially minimizing the maximum sentence.
TCRS’ position isn’t that Watts’ sentenced should be reduced, but that the prosecutors and media be more forthright about where the facts and analysis of this case take us. And that the garbage below, from the Second Confession, is just that.
According to Watts’ confessions, he told Shan’ann on the morning of the murders that he wanted a divorce separation. This was supposed to trigger the annihilation that followed. But this wasn’t the trigger, it couldn’t be, because Shan’ann already knew about the divorce, and had known for a long time.
Before drilling further into this question, we need to be clear about the difference between divorce and separation. The word divorce comes up 35 times in the Discovery Documents and just once in the CBI Report. Separation comes up 38 times in the discovery, and 8 times [“separate or separating”] in the CBI Report.
It’s clear from a thorough analysis of all the discovery and both “confessions” that Watts was trying to separate from his wife in the weeks and months before the murders, going back as far as a year [close to when Kessinger allegedly made that first Google search for “Shanann Watts”. And this seems to be the word he prefers to use.
However, at the same time he was telling Kessinger a slightly different story. To her he was in the midst of a divorce, and by the time of the murders the divorce was being finalized, and so was the sale of the house. In fact neither was true, divorce proceedings hadn’t even started as far as we know.
So we have two narratives:
And we know when Shan’ann returned from Phoenix that night she was still hoping to woo Watts back into the marriage, hence the planned trip to Aspen the following weekend, the love letter, the self-help book and the imminent gender reveal. Shan’ann thought – or hoped – the marriage was stuttering slightly. Meanwhile Kessinger thought the marriage was over.
It’s no mystery, the Watts marriage was in trouble long before Shan’ann received that critical credit card alert on Saturday night, proving Watts wasn’t at the Rockies Games, and suggesting he wasn’t eating alone.
As early as August 8th, Shan’ann confided in Cassie Rosenberg and Nickole Atkinson that her husband wanted a divorce [she didn’t], but not right away.
Kessinger says something to same effect, that Watts wanted to sell his home, but not right away. There is this notion of delay, postpone, string things out…
But besides the reference above, from page 2106 of the Discovery Discovery documents, we also know that Shan’ann herself was openly discussing the prospect of divorce as early as March or April 2018, at least a month before she fell pregnant.
Watts told Ann Meadows, the realtor, on the morning the disappearance that him and Shan’ann hadn’t gotten on “for over a year”.
This is not necessarily true, but it could be true.
The fact that Shan’ann was talking to a divorce lawyer about custody in April, three-and-a-half months before the murders, suggests there was a protracted period of unhappiness, and acknowledgement from both sides that things were falling apart.
The fact that the self-help book was put in the trash and the wedding ring left on the bedside table aren’t incidental. They were Watts’ way of communicating to Kessinger what he just couldn’t do with Shan’ann.
So why didn’t Watts just get a divorce, like the district attorney said? Well, it may be because Shan’ann didn’t want to, and thought she could sort of control Watts into not going through with it. This narrative isn’t very nice, and not very popular. It paints Watts less a coward than as someone who was bullied into towing a line, until things got desperate.
There is content out there that confirms not only did Shan’ann know a split was on the cards, but her own family did too. When Watts visited the Hair Jazz salon in Aberdeen where Sandi Rzucek worked, it was clear to the hairdressers [Sandi’s co-workers] that Watts wasn’t happy, and Sandi actually told them then [in early August 2018] that the marriage wasn’t working, and that the couple were separating.
The final minute of the video posted at this link [an extended version of the clip above] is very insightful in this regard.
We also know there was a lot of anger and bitterness, especially from Shan’ann’s side, over Nut Gate.
And yet we know while this was happening Shan’ann still wanted to do a gender reveal. We also know that in the weeks prior Shan’ann was setting her husband up in her Thrive spiels as a great father and perfect husband and “the best thing that has ever happened to her“. She was making it very difficult for him to go through with a divorce.
She was making it very difficult to admit to an affair. And by recording him, for example, reacting to news of the third pregnancy and posting it on Facebook, it was becoming almost impossible to get out of it. But what made it so difficult to interrupt the happy family fairy tale? Was it weakness on his part or hers? Shan’ann’s job and income depended on selling the idea of Thriving. They were facing financial ruin and so, to admit they weren’t thriving meant a further lose of income. That’s what was so difficult to get out of.
Shanann Watts Chris Watts family
https://www.facebook.com/ShanannWatts/photos
Credit: Shanann Watts/Facebook
We’ve discussed the porch cushions before, and the pendulum has swung from a supposedly suspicious pattern-interrupting-arrangement on the porch to the realization that the cushions were arranged like that anyway when Shan’ann arrived home.
But we’re still left with what appeared – and sounded like – interest from the cadaver dog when the dog ventured into that area. The interest was such the handler lifted the central cushion.
You can watch that moment here.
Or listen here.
Now, in fairness, nothing is mentioned in the discovery about alerts on the porch. What is mentioned is the odor of cleaning chemicals, and the fact that Watts had placed his daughters’ shoes on the back porch. These were subsequently used to scent off, weren’t they?
It struck me as odd that the shoes were wet and that Watts said he had put them outside to dry. At the same time Watts had done the laundry and seemed to have vacuumed his home overnight too. Although the report claims shoes were used to scent off, it’s not specified which shoes. Were the shoes outside used or shoes from their wardrobe?
Now, we know for a fact that there was at least one cadaver in the truck, and from an investigative perspective, it’s reassuring that the dogs showed interest in this area. This confirms where there is interest [where there’s smoke] there was something suspicious, and probably a cadaver [there’s fire].
It’s for this reason that Rocket Science finds the interest on the porch significant. Just because the arrangement isn’t different doesn’t suddenly make the interest on the porch go away.
In a video posted recently, the cushion scenario was dismissed within a perspective where Shan’ann was killed first, and thus, if the cushions were already outside then, and the pattern unchanged, then why would they be relevant?
But in a scenario where the children were killed first in the home, we can see how and why the cushions might be used. They’re in the basement as it is, they’re weatherproof and waterproof, and easy to clean and wipe down. And we know Watts was cleaning. Since he put wet shoes on the back porch to dry, why wouldn’t he do the same with wet, newly washed cushions on the front porch?
The cadaver traces or bodily fluids in this scenario come from the children.
Something else I noticed simply by paying more attention to the Sermon on the Porch, was what appeared to be a slight, translucent red-brown stain on the middle cushion. When I zoomed in it didn’t appear to be an Armchair Detective-ism.
Do you see it?
Look closer.
Were the cushions ever tested for blood or DNA? Perhaps they should have been.
Is there a place for amateur sleuths in true crime? Absolutely there is. In fact, the Watts case is a prime example of ordinary citizens – like Nickole and Nicolas Atkinson – going the extra mile, using their gut and making breakthroughs. Nickole’s quick assessment that something was wrong and calling 911 in this case was a game-changing moment.
Her son Nicolas entering the crime scene and finding Shan’ann’s phone and iWatch buried in the couch was too, even though technically it was contaminating the scene. But they were both watching Watts like a hawk, and because of that, he got caught. Simple observation is crucial, as long as we’re seeing things as they are and not as we want them to be.
After the hurl-worthy documentary this Sunday, I think it’s time that we be clear on our theories on what happened. Since Family Man, Family Murderer provided a version – do you agree with it? Why not? I’ll do a separate post on the version [Shan’ann’s murder] in Family Man, Family Murderer, which is essential an uncritical repetition of Watts’ version, but in the meantime, have a look at this one.
A few interesting observations from this YouTuber – Jayde – are the observations about the cushions, and the messiness of the office and shoe closet behind it.
It does make sense that the bedding was removed in a quick, single movement – in a rush. This was done after Watts arrived home and wanted to show that Shan’ann had made it to bed when she hadn’t. Even so, Family Man, Family Murderer’s version is that Shan’ann was murdered in her bed. Do you think that’s true?
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