THE WATTS FAMILY MURDERS New secrets and unending pain
As Shan’ann Watts and her girls are laid to rest, shocking revelations about the husband and father accused of their murders surface
One by one by one, three caskets were carried down the centre aisle of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Pinehurst, North Carolina, for a final goodbye that the family of Shan’ann Watts and her daughters – Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3 – could hardly bear.
Stoic in the front pew for the Sept. 1 funeral mass, Shan’ann’s parents, Sandra and Frank Rzucek, and her brother Frankie, entrusted Father John Forbes to read their emotional messages to the children who had been murdered in their Frederick, Colorado, home almost three weeks earlier – along with Shan’ann’s unborn son, Nico. “You will always be Daddy’s little girl,” Frank wrote. “Bella and Celeste and Nico, you will always be Pop-pop’s little girls and precious grandson.” Sandra’s letter asked God’s blessing on all who extended love and prayers as the family nightmare that began as a missing persons case on Aug. 13 made international news. Frankie, who surrendered to tears, recalled the big sister with ambitions that lured her from their North Carolina childhood home. “I worried about her and the girls being so far,” Frankie wrote, “because I couldn’t protect them.”
And 2736km away in the Weld County Jail in Greeley, Colorado, Chris Watts, who had appeared the happy husband in Shan’ann’s prolific social-media posts, finally betrayed some recognition of the severity of his situation as secrets and lies steadily come to light. “It’s all beginning to sink in,” says a source who spoke with Chris two days before his wife and children were buried and acknowledges that Chris had no part in planning his family’s funerals. “He’s in the mourning process.”
It is a marked change for Chris, 33, who showed little emotion when a friend first reported his family missing on Aug. 13 and none when he was booked into police custody on Aug. 15. He has yet to enter a plea to three first-degree murder and six other charges in the deaths of Shan’ann, 34, their daughters and unborn son, and is being held without bond until his next court appearance on Nov. 19. According to his arrest affidavit, Chris admitted he strangled Shan’ann but claimed he’d done it “in a rage” after she killed Celeste and Bella.
Since then, he sits alone in an intake cell under protective custody. Already, police poring over evidence have uncovered several secrets damaging to Chris’ credibility, investigative sources tell WHO. In addition to the affair with a co-worker revealed in his arrest affidavit, Chris also had relationships with men and women outside of his nearly six-year marriage. On Aug. 28 an unidentified man on TV show Crime & Justice with Ashleigh Banfield claimed to have been involved in a 10-month relationship with Chris after the two met online in June 2017. While the alleged lover’s claims have not been substantiated, a source close to the investigation confirms he is being questioned by police. If convicted of killing his 15-weekspregnant wife and his daughters, Chris may face the death penalty. Though Shan’ann’s family, who buried the mother and her children in side-by-side graves near their North Carolina home, wrote they “do not desire vengeance and death,” Chris’ fate may ultimately rest with a jury. “Every day we learn more about him,” a source close to the investigation says. “There’s still a long way to go – he had a lot of secrets.”
“We will get to the bottom of this [case]. It’s going to happen” —investigation source