Slain Colorado mom painted happy picture of married life
Husband now jailed on suspicion of killing her, two daughters
FREDERICK, Colo. – Shanann Watts’ Facebook page painted a portrait of a happy married life – of a woman dedicated to her husband and their two young children. She called her husband “my ROCK!” and said he was “the best dad us girls could ask for.”
That idyllic image was shattered Wednesday when her husband, 33year-old Christopher Watts, was arrested on suspicion of killing his family in Colorado.
Police said the mother, who was pregnant, was found dead on property owned by Anadarko Petroleum, where Christopher Watts worked.
Investigators found what they believe are the bodies of 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste nearby on Thursday. They have not released information about a motive or how the three were killed.
“As horrible as this outcome is, our role now is to do everything we can to determine exactly what occurred,” John Camper, director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference in Frederick.
The deaths also left family and friends searching for answers.
Shanann Watts, 34, was one of the first customers to visit Ashley Bell’s tanning salon in nearby Dacono two years ago.
The two women quickly became friends, and before long they were texting or calling each other almost daily. Their daughters played together during salon visits.
Bell said she never detected that anything was amiss with the Watts family.
Shanann Watts was from North Carolina, and her parents’ next-door neighbor, Joe Beach, said he saw her recently when she visited the neighborhood of modest homes in Aberdeen.
“We were talking about general things, about how her two girls were doing and how life was out in Colorado. She didn’t give me an indication that there was anything wrong. She seemed pretty happy.”
But a June 2015 bankruptcy filing depicts a family caught between a promising future and financial strain.
Christopher Watts had gotten a job six months earlier as an operator for Anadarko, and pay stubs indicate his annual salary was about $61,500. Shanann Watts was working in a call center at a children’s hospital at the time, earning about $18 an hour – more for evenings, weekends or extra shifts she sometimes worked.
The couple had a combined income of $90,000 in 2014.
But they also had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, along with some student loans and medical bills – for a total of $70,000 in unsecured claims on top of a sizable mortgage.