Man says he killed wife for murdering daughters

DENVER — A Colorado man told police that he killed his pregnant wife in “a rage” when he discovered she had strangled their two daughters after he sought a separation, according to an arrest affidavit released Monday.

Colorado prosecutors, though, filed formal charges earlier in the day, accusing the former oil and gas worker of murdering his entire family days before he was interviewed by local television stations and pleaded for his missing family’s safe return home.

Christopher Watts, who is being held without bail, is due back in court Tuesday morning to be advised of the charges filed against him.

District Attorney Michael Rourke declined to answer most questions about the case Monday but Christopher Watts is due back in court today in Colorado in the case involving the deaths of his pregnant wife and their two daughters. said his office has three prosecutors assigned to it. Rourke also said it was too early to discuss whether he will seek the death penalty.

Under state law, the top punishment for homicide is the death penalty or life in prison.

The arrest affidavit was sealed at prosecutors’ request until Monday, a frequent request in Colorado as prosecutors determine what charges to file after someone has been arrested.

After filing charges, prosecutors asked a judge Monday to unseal

it — revealing Watts’ confession that he had killed his wife and his accusation that she was responsible for the deaths of 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste. The document also says police confirmed that Christopher Watts was having an affair with a co-worker, something he denied in earlier conversations with investigators.

According to the affidavit, early on the morning of Aug. 13, Christopher Watts told his wife that he wanted to separate. She had returned from a business trip a few hours before their conversation.

Watts told police that he walked downstairs, leaving his wife in their bedroom. When he returned, Watts said he checked a baby monitor on Shanann Watts’ nightstand and saw his wife strangling their youngest daughter. He said the monitor also showed their oldest daughter sprawled on her bed, looking blue.

Watts, 33, said he then “went into a rage” and strangled his wife.

He told police that he loaded all three bodies into his work truck, then he buried his wife at an oil work site and dumped the bodies of Bella and Celeste inside oil tanks.

Autopsies have been completed but not released. A judge Friday denied a request by defense lawyer James Merson to require the coroner to collect DNA from the necks of the children.

Watts faces three first-degree murder charges, two counts of murdering a child, one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body.

The charges come a week after a friend reported Shanann Watts, 34, and the girls missing.

Before his arrest last week, Christopher Watts lamented in interviews with local television stations about missing his wife and daughters. He spoke in front of their home in Frederick, a small town on the grassy plains north of Denver where fastgrowing subdivisions intermingle with drilling rigs and oil wells.