WHY WOMEN FALL FOR CRIMINALS
WHO DISCOVERS WHY WOMEN ARE INFATUATED WITH MEN BEHIND BARS
He brutally murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters, but while Chris Watts may currently be serving five life sentences in a Wisconsin prison for his crimes, women from near and far have been sending letters to the murderer. “He got a lot of letters at first,” a source, who has spoken with Watts in jail, tells WHO’s sister publication People magazine. “Many of them are from women who thought he was handsome and felt compassion for him. He had nothing better to do, so he wrote back. And he started having penpals. A couple of them stood out, and they’ve kept in contact.”
And insiders say since the release of American Murder: The Family Next Door
– a new Netflix documentary about his infamous case – on September 30, Watts has been receiving even more mail. “A lot of them are from people of faith who want to pray for him,” adds the source. “But then he gets letters from women who want to connect with him, you know, romantically.”
It’s an unsettling thought to many who knew the family of four. On August 13, 2018, Watts strangled his wife Shanann – who was pregnant with the couple’s son, Nico – in their Colorado home before smothering their daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, and dumping their bodies in oil tankers. While the 35-year-old initially insisted they were missing and assisted police with their investigation, he later confessed – with authorities believing Watts committed the crimes because he was having an affair with a co-worker and wanted to leave his wife. Despite Watts’ confession he had premeditated the killings “for weeks” and more details of the grisly murders coming to light in recent months, letters keep pouring in for the quadruple murderer. One letter from a woman called Tatiana included a picture of herself in a bikini. “I found myself thinking a lot about you,” she writes. “I’m here for you. Please know there are strangers out there (like me) who care about you.”
But aren’t the women troubled by Watts’ horrific crimes? “Believe it or not, no,” the source tells. “They have compassion for him, despite what he did.”
It’s not the first time women have been hopelessly beguiled by the most terrifying of human predators. Ted Bundy, a rapist-murderer who confessed to brutally killing over 30 young women in the ’70s, attracted gangs of admiring groupies who sat patiently through his court case. Likewise, Making a Murderer’s Steven Avery has managed to have quite a busy love-life despite the fact he’s currently serving a life sentence in prison. Here in Australia, infamous backpacker serial killer Ivan Milat had plenty of adoring “sheilas” and some of them even sent him marriage proposals.
It’s baffling to many, but striking up a romance with someone in prison is becoming increasingly more common, thanks to websites such as writeaprisoner.com and prisonpenpals.com. In fact, there are currently dozens of websites connecting people to prison inmates all over the world.
So why the fixation? For some women, “bad men are seen to be strong and there’s the idea they can protect you from danger,” explains Dr Lisa Warren, adjunct senior lecturer at the School of Psychiatry at Monash University. Plus, “you’re safe with someone who is in prison as he won’t bother you in your day-to-day life”.
The other theory for women falling for such men is best known as “Florence Nightingale Syndrome”. Jacquelynne Willcox, author of Dream Lovers: Women who Marry Men Behind Bars, has admitted some women wish to be saviours.
“They believe this man was an animal before he met them, but now he has changed because they’ve transformed him. They believe the love of a good woman can change a man. But in all my research, I’ve never seen these relationships end well.”
•
“They have compassion for him”
– SOURCE