CHILLING CONFESSION
Little more than one year on from the tragic death of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, a grieving father is still fighting to come to terms with the immeasurable loss. He still speaks to photographs of the children morning and night, even reading their favourite storybook at bedtime. He mourns his partner daily.
If only he hadn’t murdered them all in cold blood.
On August 13, 2018, Chris Watts killed his wife Shanann, their 4-year-old daughter Bella and 3-year-old Celeste so he could be with his unwitting mistress, Nichol Kessinger. Shanann was also pregnant with their third child, a son they planned to name Nico.
Currently serving life without parole, the convicted murderer has been exchanging letters and taking visits from author Cheryln Cadle, who has published his most shocking confessions in a new book, Letters From Christopher.
“I have been visiting him in prison, and he writes me letters with many things he has never told the authorities,” Cheryln shared on Linkedin ahead of the book’s October release.
In his correspondence with Cheryln, Watts admits the murders were planned, and not the snap decision he had previously claimed.
“August 12th when I finished putting the girls to bed, I walked away and said ‘That’s the last time I’m going to be tucking my babies in’,” Watts told her.
It’s just one of many chilling admissions the cold-hearted killer shared with the writer
– who does not condone his actions and hopes the book can do some good.
“A per cent of the profits is going to domestic violence charities. [I] also want to give to crimes against children … What was done is despicable,” Cheryln wrote.
Watts then describes killing his pregnant wife in truly gruesome detail.
“Isn’t it weird how I look back and what I remember so much is her face getting all black with streaks of mascara,” he tells Cheryln in one of the letters published in her book.
“Her eyes filled with blood; as she looked at me and she died.”
Watts also provides sickening details of his daughters’ deaths, revealing that he smothered them twice after failing to kill them on his first attempt.
“I went to Bella’s room, then Cece’s room and used a pillow from their bed [to kill them]… After I left Cece’s room, then I climbed back in bed with Shanann and our argument ensued,” he divulges.
“After Shanann had passed,
Bella and Cece woke back up. I’m not sure how they woke back up, but they did. Bella’s eyes were bruised and both girls looked like they had been through trauma.”
Loading his daughters and his wife’s lifeless body into his truck, Watts drove to a remote oil work site owned by his then-employer,
Anadarko. “I dumped Shanann on the ground, then I walked back to the truck and with the blanket that Celeste was holding, I put it over her head and smothered her.”
He dropped Cece’s body into an oil tanker, describing the splash as her tiny lifeless body hit the dense liquid inside, and returned to Bella.
According to News.com, Watts told investigators that she asked: “What happened to Cece? Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?”
He was surprised when she
“I WILL HEAR HER SOFT LITTLE VOICE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, SAYING: ‘DADDY, NO!’”
put up a fight, he later shared with Cheryln. “Little quiet Bella had a will to live … I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life, saying, ‘Daddy, NO!!!’ She knew what I was doing to her. She may not have understood death, but she knew I was killing her,” the nowapparently repentant Watts wrote from his jail cell.
He then dumped Bella’s body into a different tanker, and went to work digging a shallow grave for Shanann, who was discovered curled in the foetal position two days later on August 15.
Watts was arrested the next day, and though he initially denied any wrongdoing, he later pleaded guilty, taking a deal to avoid the death sentence.
The cold-blooded killer dad will spend the rest of his days behind bars in a maximumsecurity prison – but it hardly seems enough for the truly reprehensible crimes he has committed.