The Megyn Kelly Show - Horrific Chris Watts Family Murders： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.940 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and to the first day of our

00:00:16.560 Hot Crimes Summer Week. Yes, our Hot Crimes Summer Series was so popular last year, we are bringing

00:00:23.140 it back by popular demand. And we kick off this week with a case that has haunted me and so many

00:00:29.720 for years. I just, I cannot get over it. I need to understand it. And that is the case of Christopher

00:00:38.200 Watts. In August of 2018, Chris Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann, along with their two

00:00:45.300 little girls. The murders were gruesome and seemingly out of the blue. The disturbing details of this

00:00:52.720 murder and the lack of red flags leading up to it has haunted me. It makes it so hard to

00:00:59.500 understand, but I feel like we must. We have to try. Here to help us dig into the details and to

00:01:06.520 answer my questions is retired FBI profiler, Mary Ellen O'Toole. Throughout her career, she has

00:01:12.940 helped capture, interview, and understand some of the world's most infamous criminals. Ted Kaczynski,

00:01:19.580 the Unabomber, the Green River Killer, the Zodiac Killer, and many more. She also worked the Elizabeth

00:01:25.840 Smart and the Natalie Holloway disappearances, the Columbine shootings, and many, many other very high

00:01:32.020 profile cases. She's the perfect person to help us break down this case. Mary Ellen, great to see you

00:01:38.980 again. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you. I'm so glad to have you

00:01:45.360 here. This case has been haunting me as of late. I got onto the Chris Watts story because of the Alec

00:01:54.720 Murdoch case and the use of the term family annihilators. And then we did a whole show on

00:02:00.700 family annihilators and we mentioned Chris Watts, but I just can't get past it. And I needed to spend

00:02:06.840 more time on it. And I'm so glad to have someone with your expertise here to help walk us through it.

00:02:12.360 It's just one of the most disturbing crime cases I've ever seen. And I'm into crime. I follow crime.

00:02:20.560 And, but this one is just unforgettable in its awfulness. You, you've lived your life fighting

00:02:26.560 crime and trying to figure out criminals professionally. Is it, is it as bad as I say,

00:02:33.020 you know, as somebody who's seen a lot more crime than I have, is it a standout?

00:02:37.000 Well, I think it's definitely a standout and I'll tell you why. When you have a case like this,

00:02:43.840 where the parent, especially the biological parent goes after their own children, it really

00:02:51.020 causes the case to stand apart from other crimes. I can understand domestic violence, which is a

00:02:57.920 partner kills another partner. That's actually fortunately very, very common. But when you see

00:03:03.920 someone going after their biological children purposely, um, that makes it extremely egregious.

00:03:12.060 And then the manner in which the children were killed here and the manner in which their bodies

00:03:18.140 were disposed of in such a callous and cold-blooded way, it's really disturbing.

00:03:22.460 Mm-hmm. So let's go through the story. Uh, when these two met, they seemed very much in love.

00:03:29.520 Shannon was larger than life, very strong personality, uh, but had been going through

00:03:34.700 a difficult time. She'd been diagnosed with lupus and this woman documented her whole life

00:03:40.180 on Facebook. So we have a lot of videotape of her. It makes you feel like you kind of knew her.

00:03:44.440 Here's a little bit of Shannon sharing the story of how she and Chris Watts met.

00:03:48.980 My friend sent me a friend suggestion for him. It was actually his cousin's wife and, um, I deleted

00:03:56.660 it. I was like, I'm not interested. I don't want to meet a guy. Uh, bye-bye. So I deleted her friend

00:04:02.220 suggestion for him. I was diagnosed, uh, two months later and I went through a, one of the, I would say

00:04:09.240 darkest times of my life because things just got scarier. Got a friend suggestion, friend request

00:04:14.760 from Chris. I was in a really, really, really bad place. And I got a friend to friend request from

00:04:21.640 Chris on Facebook. And I was like, Oh, what the heck? I'm never going to meet him. Except one thing

00:04:27.480 led to another. And eight years later, we have two kids. We live in Colorado and he's the best thing

00:04:35.280 that has ever happened to me. Do you think there's any connection between the fact that

00:04:41.900 she was in a dark place physically and mentally when, when she met this guy and the ultimate fate

00:04:47.820 that she met? It could have been, um, sometimes our judgment is colored or flawed by our own emotional

00:04:57.200 experiences like poor health. So certainly could have been their personality seem diametrically

00:05:03.140 opposite. And, um, when you go back and you look at how people pair up, you wonder how much somebody

00:05:10.880 really is aware of the other person's personality and how much they're really aware of how that person

00:05:17.400 is going to handle life and the stressors of life and all the things that, that, um, life brings in

00:05:23.260 terms of challenges and so forth. And my experience over the years is that we really don't read people

00:05:28.700 very well. We oftentimes read what we want to see and that may have been impacting the relationship

00:05:35.680 here. And again, it's, it's really very common. They met in 2010, they got married in 2012 and she was

00:05:43.460 killed in 2013. I mean, it all happened so fast. And look, I, I met my husband in July of, um, was it,

00:05:51.420 oh, sorry. Okay. So it was 2018 that she was killed. Sorry. But I met my husband in July of 06 and we

00:05:56.520 were married by March of 08. So I'm not saying it can't happen quickly and work out wonderfully,

00:06:02.100 but I do think there's just a little bit of a warning here where if you meet your partner in a

00:06:08.280 very low time in your life, take the time to make sure you're not for emotional or other reasons

00:06:15.500 overlooking potential warning signs of a problem.

00:06:20.920 I agree with you. Um, and that's certainly one of the things I cover with my students in class when

00:06:27.000 we study violent crime is what are all of those characteristics that, um, confuse us that, um,

00:06:36.480 impact our ability to read people, especially at a time in our life when it really becomes important.

00:06:42.160 What do we look at that really don't tell us the potential for dangerousness and what should we

00:06:48.140 be looking at in terms of personality traits? And again, I think it's really very common,

00:06:52.720 but we're not raised and we're not trained to know what to look for.

00:06:57.100 They had a baby pretty soon into the marriage, uh, again, married on November 3rd, 2012,

00:07:03.820 December 17th, 2013, first child Bella was born. Uh, and then they suffered a bankruptcy

00:07:10.420 and 2015. So two years later, their second daughter, CC, uh, her name was Celeste was born.

00:07:18.100 So two babies in a couple of years flash forward to three years after that. And she's pregnant with

00:07:24.740 their third child, a little boy. Now, anybody who's had two babies in two years and the marriage,

00:07:30.840 it's stressful. And then they have a bankruptcy in the middle of it.

00:07:33.860 That doesn't make you kill anybody. That doesn't turn anybody into a murderer. So as you look back

00:07:39.780 at this situation, knowing what Chris Watts would ultimately do, you know, do you have any thoughts

00:07:44.380 on those years, any red flags, anything jump out at you? Well, I started to look when the case even

00:07:52.040 happened, started to go back and look at when did the stressors really start? These are not cases where

00:07:59.240 someone just snaps and they decide one morning, this is what they're going to do. They're going

00:08:03.360 to annihilate their whole family. There's, there's thinking about it beforehand. There's planning about

00:08:08.620 it beforehand, even if they don't admit to it. So when did the stress really begin? And it probably

00:08:15.780 really started to compound about the time that, um, they filed for bankruptcy. And then when they

00:08:23.220 started to have the children, we know that those are very stressful times in relationships, especially

00:08:28.600 depending on the person's personality, if they have a very, if they have a difficult time dealing with

00:08:34.420 the idea that we have one more baby, we have one more pressure in my life, especially with those

00:08:40.560 kinds of thought processes that can be very stressful. So now you've got a second child and then you have

00:08:48.300 surprisingly, now you have a third child. And so I think the stress and, and possibly the resentment

00:08:54.800 had been building actually for years. It didn't just happen, um, days before, um, Chris committed

00:09:00.860 the murders. They, in June of 2018 is when everything started to take a turn for the worse. Um, that is

00:09:10.820 when he met the woman who would become his affair partner. And it is when Shanon told him that she was

00:09:18.260 expecting a third child, which he very clearly did not want. She of course put the clip on Facebook

00:09:24.100 where she told him the news and any outsider could see the guy was not thrilled, notwithstanding

00:09:31.560 what his words were. Here's a bit of that. She's wearing a shirt that reads, oops, we did it again.

00:09:41.460 And he walks in.

00:09:42.580 We did it again. I like that shirt. Really? Really. That's awesome.

00:09:54.680 So pink means. That's just the test. I know. It's just the pink is going to be girls. I don't

00:10:06.080 know. Just the test. That's awesome.

00:10:09.540 That bit at the end there, right? That bit at the end. Wow. As he's looking at the pregnancy test and

00:10:28.240 not to mention, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's something you say when your kid is like,

00:10:33.480 you know, I, I got on first base, you know, you find out you're having a child. It's,

00:10:37.700 it tends to be in a very emotional, very moving moment. None of which was present there.

00:10:45.540 No, but you know, I looked at that again. I remember seeing that years ago, but I also

00:10:50.460 looked at his confessions and he is one of the most subdued low key people, um, in those confessions.

00:10:59.040 So I think that's his personality. He's not going to be extremely expressive. It's just

00:11:05.300 not part of who he is. And so that reaction to the news that, uh, Shanann is going to have

00:11:11.260 a third baby is, you know, is pretty much in keeping with his, um, very low key, um, almost

00:11:18.900 at times depressive, um, personality. It's the, it's the common at the end when he says words

00:11:25.580 to the effect, something about when you want something, meaning when she wants it,

00:11:30.700 he did not make a comment about what he wanted. So I thought the affect was keeping with how he is,

00:11:37.040 but it was the final comment that was telling to me.

00:11:41.520 Hmm. Is there any reason to be concerned if you partner up with somebody who has that

00:11:47.320 flat affect as a default, like they have difficulty feeling emotion, they have difficulty feeling emotion,

00:11:54.800 whether it's great love or great hesitancy in committing a murder. You know, they're not

00:12:01.200 built in a way that is necessarily safe.

00:12:06.080 Well, that's a good point, but I think with, um, with the whole idea of being able to understand

00:12:11.680 your partner, um, or your family members, you know, you have to really look at them and, and,

00:12:18.720 and be a, uh, a pretty good judge of character on a daily basis and, and not, you know, just every

00:12:25.080 couple of months or something like that. So you, I think it's important to look at whether or not

00:12:30.960 they're becoming more depressed. Are they talking about suicide? Are they talking about leaving the

00:12:36.720 family? Are they talking about not wanting to be a part of the family again? So for me, there are a lot

00:12:42.840 of puzzle pieces that are likely missing from this family that were never posted on Facebook

00:12:48.120 that would give us more indications that he had started to check out, but with that checking out,

00:12:55.100 was there any indication that, that with, with that decision to no longer be really an emotional part of

00:13:01.840 the family, could that have meant that that anger towards Shanann was building and building and building?

00:13:08.240 Because looking at Chris, you don't see an angry man, but that means he's internalized it. But what

00:13:14.400 did she see on a daily basis? What did she see that, um, many of us would have just looked at and said,

00:13:20.940 I, he's just having a bad day. And, and sometimes that's the case, but sometimes it's not the case.

00:13:26.560 And, and those are the kinds of indicators that you want to look for.

00:13:30.800 Hmm. He, to me, everything seems to go downhill as soon as he meets this other woman,

00:13:37.420 like his B to me, based on her Facebook, based on the Netflix documentary, which is

00:13:42.720 very worth your time, um, on this whole show, it's called American murder, the family next door.

00:13:47.980 Um, he was kind of the beta in the relationship. I mean, she was the alpha and in control about most

00:13:57.020 of the decisions they were making. And then he met this other woman and really started distancing

00:14:01.440 himself and started, it seemed to me like a hatred started to brew for Shanon. The other,

00:14:07.580 the other woman's name is a Nicole Kessinger. She worked like he did at, um, this petroleum company

00:14:14.840 that we're showing a picture of her on the board now. And I mean, they met in June of 2018.

00:14:19.480 It was August 13th, 2018, that he committed a triple murder, quadruple murder of his entire family.

00:14:27.740 I mean, two months, Marielena. How, how do we even start to understand that?

00:14:33.640 Well, his girlfriend, the woman that he met and started to have the affair with,

00:14:37.940 um, she was the kind of the conduit. He was already in that emotional state. My sense is that

00:14:44.000 he was already feeling incredible animosity towards Shanon and she didn't realize it.

00:14:49.740 Then she meet, he meets this woman and it could have been Susie Smith. It could have been,

00:14:54.820 you know, Anne Jones, but he meets her and, and she, she responds to him and they begin to have

00:15:02.620 that relationship. I don't think it was specifically her, but I think he was ready at that point. So I

00:15:08.620 think it had been building up. That's interesting. So it could have been anyway, because we'll talk about

00:15:13.180 her, but she's been very demonized by most people looking at this case. And there are questions

00:15:18.660 about whether she did something intentionally to encourage this. Well, I think I would be really

00:15:25.760 careful as, as a profiler to credit her with any involvement in this case. Um, until I had the

00:15:34.660 opportunity to sit down and talk to her and look at her background, look at her personality, look at the

00:15:40.340 kinds of things that, you know, that kind of really made her tick on a daily basis to see whether or

00:15:46.760 not her personality lends itself to being co-opted like this. Because if it did, we have to look at

00:15:53.660 it and say, they just met, they just met. Um, she starts to have this relationship, which she's probably

00:16:00.640 very excited about. She's even looking at wedding dresses. And then to jump to the conclusion that

00:16:07.740 now she morphs into this co-conspirator to help him, you know, annihilate his whole family

00:16:14.120 is, is a little bit too much for me at this point. I think she got caught up in this, in the

00:16:18.880 excitement of having this relationship. And it really is hard when something like this happens,

00:16:25.580 um, um, just like Scott Peterson, not to say, oh, she had to know, or she had to encourage him.

00:16:32.660 That is a big step to say that the partner encouraged, um, Chris in something like this.

00:16:39.640 I'm not sure that that's there. And we know that in Scott Peterson, Amber Fry did not know anything

00:16:44.380 about Lacey Peterson. She, she was truly caught off guard that he was married at all, had no idea.

00:16:49.120 And as soon as she found out, she went to cops work with them. And as part of the reason he is

00:16:52.180 now in prison, um, she was a good guy in the whole thing. This woman, I don't know. She definitely

00:16:57.800 misled the cops. She, she tried to tell them, oh, I didn't know he was married. And then they

00:17:02.120 found Google searches by her. Um, you know, like, does the mistress ever get the man? I mean,

00:17:07.300 she knew, she knew that he was married and downplayed her knowledge with the police. It

00:17:11.940 doesn't mean she encouraged a murder, a triple quadruple murder. Uh, but it's one of the reasons

00:17:17.020 why this woman has now had to change her name. She's effectively in witness protection because

00:17:21.340 people blamed her. Um, so at the same time we see that lackluster, I'm having the third baby

00:17:28.760 reaction. Uh, Shanon posted one of many videos of the daughters talking about their dad, Chris,

00:17:36.680 uh, on Facebook. And I mean, you could find any number of these, but every video between him and

00:17:42.720 the children showed a loving interaction. What looked like a loving interaction. This is one that,

00:17:48.500 you know, really pulls on the heartstrings because you know what's going to happen to this young

00:17:52.620 girl. But here's Bella, um, on June 14th, 2018, four years old at the time, singing a song about how

00:17:58.360 much she loved him. My daddy is a hero. He helps me grow up strong. He helps me, um, snuggle too. He

00:18:13.260 reads me books. He ties my shoes. If you're a hero, blue and blue, my daddy, daddy, I love you.

00:18:29.260 Oh my God. I don't, this is why I'm so obsessed with this case. How does someone who we have to

00:18:37.080 acknowledge is a human being who has seen that video and has created and loved that child for four

00:18:44.960 years within two months of that, kill her, murder her and dump her in an oil tank. How, how?

00:18:52.780 Well, a couple of things I think probably are going on. Um, I think he likely didn't respond the way

00:19:02.480 most people would have to that video. Um, the video probably added more pressure to him to feel that he

00:19:09.980 needed to stay with the family when in fact he did not want to stay with the family. He may have even

00:19:14.860 resented that bit, that video seeing that because he was ready to go. He was ready to start life over

00:19:21.540 again. He had new plans. And so he was emotionally separating himself from his family at a certain

00:19:27.920 point. And when you do that to be pulled back into the family, once you've decided I'm done, it's over.

00:19:34.420 I'm, I'm, I'm just going to wrap it up. Um, that can also contribute to the anger.

00:19:40.000 And with, with somebody like with, uh, Chris who internalizes that anger, it's really hard

00:19:47.320 to measure it because usually people express their anger. They yell, they scream, their face gets red.

00:19:53.680 That doesn't seem to be the case with him, but I'm also not sure that he wasn't looking at those

00:19:58.660 videos thinking I'm separating enough with this. I'm moving on with my life. I'm starting over again.

00:20:04.940 So looking at your kids may be, may have been certainly a part of that.

00:20:10.680 This is interesting because this is a no way to blame Shanon for anything that happened to her,

00:20:15.580 but there is a chance it was an emotional manipulation by her. I mean, the affair started

00:20:21.740 in June of 18. That's when this video was made and posted. And there was another video posted by

00:20:27.080 Shanon right around the same time talking about, you know, how you're like, you're our rock. You're the

00:20:32.700 great. And I, I did wonder, is it any accident? She's trying to build him up in this way. Um,

00:20:38.220 right around this time. Hold on a second. We have it here. It's a father's day message. Okay. And in

00:20:44.000 it, she's saying, Chris, we're so incredibly blessed to have you. You do so much every day for us. You

00:20:49.800 take such great care of us. You're the reason I was brave enough to agree to number three from laundry

00:20:55.760 to kids showers. You're incredible. And we are so lucky to have you in our life. Happy father's day.

00:21:02.080 Now to me, Mary Ellen, this suggests this is over the top. You know, I, this is just over the day.

00:21:08.360 It makes it sound like she's trying to prove something or maybe manipulate a bit.

00:21:13.780 Or maybe in her way, appeal to him. So for example, if you're in a relationship with someone

00:21:21.420 and you try to have a conversation with them, let's fix things. Let's, let's make this better.

00:21:27.520 And your partner shuts down on you. They, they won't talk or they'll just answer in one or two

00:21:34.020 words. So you can't have a conversation about it. They just emotionally turn off. When that happens,

00:21:40.780 you have to have an, uh, an outlet. You have to have a way you feel to be able to express to them

00:21:47.160 how you feel. So you can do something. And Shanann was probably feeling at that point,

00:21:51.880 she was losing Chris and he wasn't talking to her about it. So I could see where she would naturally,

00:21:57.900 um, put something up on Facebook and try to appeal to him that way. But you're right. It does seem over

00:22:04.900 the top, but she may have been kind of at feeling it at, uh, her last resort was to get his attention

00:22:10.640 and Hey, please listen to how, how we're feeling about you. We don't want to lose you.

00:22:15.060 For the next two months, she would ramp that up as any spouse might. You could tell that Shanann felt

00:22:22.680 him distancing himself from her. She wound up taking a six week trip to North Carolina where

00:22:27.720 they were from and brought the girls home to the grandparents and was getting frustrated that he

00:22:33.400 wasn't even texting or calling to check in on his wife and two daughters. And she was pregnant,

00:22:39.340 you know, weeks were going by without him seeming to give a damn about how they were doing or trying

00:22:44.660 to reach out. And, you know, she would do what any spouse would do, which is like, thanks for all the

00:22:48.800 calls. What's going on. Right. In retrospect, how do you think, like, would he have received that

00:22:55.980 in the same way you're saying he might've received the, my daddy is my hero video, you know, like,

00:23:01.920 I don't need this pressure. I I'm trying to get out of this thing.

00:23:07.080 I think that's more than likely how he responded. I'm done internally, mentally. When you have a case

00:23:14.140 like this, at least in the cases that I've worked or, or, uh, been aware of, there is a mental break

00:23:20.720 where the person says I'm done. They don't necessarily tell their partner I'm done, but

00:23:27.180 they're done. And they make the decision to move on. Um, and again, they don't have to tell anybody

00:23:32.660 they just do. So any efforts to reel them back in will just upset them and make them angry,

00:23:39.880 but their partner doesn't know it. So that failure to communicate is a huge problem when you're

00:23:46.860 dealing with someone that throws up these emotional walls and internalizes how they feel

00:23:52.580 and how they feel is they're getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And Shanann may not have seen

00:23:59.500 that. She may not have been aware of that. That's his personality. That's not something that he just

00:24:04.360 started. Uh, once he married her, that's how he was, he just internalized his feelings. Um, he has

00:24:11.480 very flat affect. I think he's his ability to empathize with her. It's really very low. And even

00:24:19.540 his ability to empathize with his kids, it's really pretty low. And when you compound that with he's

00:24:25.620 made the decision now to move on with this new girlfriend. Um, that's a serious issue. Again,

00:24:30.960 if he keeps getting angrier and angrier and angrier. So we know that was happening. We know that because

00:24:37.000 we'll get to this, but the letters he wrote, some woman from prison where he talked in great detail

00:24:42.860 about the night of the murders are absolutely horrifying. His coldness, his lack of empathy,

00:24:49.600 his, the, the, how he described, especially the murder of his wife and how little he felt for her.

00:24:55.660 All of that is building over this two month period for sure. And you're saying it would have been

00:25:00.880 longer than that, but here's how he was responding to her. It's such a juxtaposition. The Netflix

00:25:06.580 documentary does a great job of laying out her texts to him and then his responses. And she is

00:25:12.740 an understandably getting a little bit more aggravated, but she's not forgive the term getting

00:25:17.580 like bitchy. She's just like, Hey, you know what's going on? And instead of being like, I've got

00:25:24.520 something I need to discuss with you when you get back or like, I'm not in a good place right now,

00:25:28.760 which would be what an honest person might say. Here are some full screen quotes showing how he

00:25:34.380 was responding to her. He writes, I didn't see these FaceTimes and I'm sorry. I missed those calls.

00:25:39.540 I'm very, very, very sorry. The FaceTime went through on my work phone. And then here's another

00:25:45.320 one where he's trying to appease her saying, I know, and I will FaceTime Bella and CC. As soon as I

00:25:50.560 wake up from now on, I'm extremely sorry. I feel like a jackass. Please be okay.

00:25:56.140 So Mary Ellen, when you hear him talking like that, again, he seems like whipped. He seems like,

00:26:03.040 I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so, so, so, so sorry. I don't, I feel like

00:26:06.480 most of us wouldn't look at that and be like, that guy's about to murder his family.

00:26:10.300 No, I don't think most people would look at it like that. But I think what he's doing there,

00:26:13.920 I think he's buying time. I think he's buying time. So he doesn't raise her suspicions any higher.

00:26:19.620 And her suspicions are being raised. She starts to doubt what he's saying to her. She's starting

00:26:27.080 to doubt whether or not he's being loyal to her. She's starting to doubt whether or not he has a

00:26:33.180 girlfriend. And he's trying to delay that. But what we don't know is at what point in their relationship

00:26:39.920 in the past, and this becomes important because past behavior can predict future behavior.

00:26:46.200 At what point in the past had Chris become really angry with Shanann based on her responding to him

00:26:56.120 this way? And what did he do? How did he retaliate against her? What, what had he done in the past

00:27:02.680 to demonstrate his, his anger? We know it at a certain point, he started to spike her drinks

00:27:08.500 with oxycodone. So had he done that in the past? And was she aware of that? So that behavior seems to

00:27:16.680 will probably be lost with time. We won't know that. But again, this probably wasn't the first

00:27:22.440 time that he behaved like this. But it was the first time he acted out in such a lethal way.

00:27:27.900 Is the inability to express anger, a warning sign? In combination with other things, it could be a

00:27:37.820 warning sign, especially if the, the retaliation in those circumstances is really excessive. That's

00:27:47.220 what you have to look for. It's one thing to be shy. It's the one thing to be quiet. It's one thing to

00:27:52.840 be more introverted, but when you're angry and somebody is making you angry, um, how do you act

00:27:59.520 out? What do you do? Do you go into their room and take all their clothes and throw them out the

00:28:03.980 window? Um, do you destroy something and then leave it for them to clean up? What do you do when you're

00:28:10.800 really angry, but you're a person that internalizes thing and have little empathy for your partner with

00:28:17.080 all, he has a cluster of traits that I think were very important, but that in resistance,

00:28:22.840 to sitting down, having a conversation, expressing himself, showing his anger, expressing his anger

00:28:29.420 in a, you know, in, um, in a way that is, um, um, you know, proper and acceptable. What had he done

00:28:37.520 in the past? And again, that's what we're missing here. We don't know what, um, how he did that in the

00:28:42.780 past. Another thing I can't help but feel, and I realize people have affairs all the time. They don't

00:28:51.560 wind up killing their spouse, but the affair was so dangerous here. It really was the spark,

00:28:57.780 you know, that lit the fuse on this keg of dynamite. And as you see him starting to pull away

00:29:05.880 from Shanann and the girls, you see fire between Chris Watts and his affair partner, Nicole.

00:29:13.080 You see, she's texting him nude photos of herself. He's, he seems to be becoming, you know,

00:29:19.380 near obsessed with her. Like he's got to see her more and more. As soon as Shanann goes out of town,

00:29:24.040 he he's going out with Nicole. He's trying at first to cover up, um, you know, the bills because

00:29:31.320 they don't have any money on the bank statement, but then eventually he stops doing that. And

00:29:36.380 Shanann is indeed watching the bank statement and seeing, you know, he said he went to this

00:29:41.440 restaurant, but I can see the bill is double what it should be for one guy. And so she's getting on it.

00:29:47.280 But like, to me, I can't help feeling like you are playing with fire when you have an affair

00:29:53.220 outside of your marriage. You don't know what you are starting inside of yourself or someone else or

00:29:59.360 your spouse. Yeah, certainly can be. Um, it certainly can be dangerous. And I'm, my sense at this point

00:30:08.240 is that Chris is not happy with his life and he's not really blaming himself. He's blaming Shanann.

00:30:15.420 He may be feeling very trapped, very backed up in the corner, may feel like he has no control. So

00:30:22.100 there are other, other feelings that he's that are going on. It's just not his inability to express

00:30:27.500 himself. So he's now engaged in this behavior where it's almost escalating to the point where

00:30:34.260 he's rubbing it in her face. He's not responding to, uh, her communications when she's, um, back here

00:30:42.460 on the East coast, trying to communicate with him. He is taking his girlfriend out. He's spending time.

00:30:47.660 He's probably extremely distant from her when he is home. He's probably very short tempered with her.

00:30:54.980 So, you know, again, those are things that become kind of that, that slow evolving snowball that is

00:31:02.060 rolling forward. But a lot of it has to do with him thinking that the only way out of this relationship,

00:31:09.640 the only way to move on with his life is to, um, annihilate his family. But that means you have to

00:31:17.500 get to the point where you develop hate for them. And hate is not anger. Hate is a very cold-blooded

00:31:24.300 emotion. And it takes out, it takes a while to develop that, but to be able to carry out something

00:31:30.380 so cold-blooded and so heartless, you have to blame people for what they've done to you, right or wrong.

00:31:37.200 You have to blame them. And then your only way out of your life is to, um, destroy them.

00:31:46.740 Whose mind goes to murder? You know, there's, there's good old fashioned divorce.

00:31:54.660 Yeah, there's good old fashioned divorce. Um, and we see it in so many cases where people

00:32:02.080 will not take that logical step to file for divorce, um, get custody of the children, do it in a very

00:32:11.180 pro-social way. And why people choose to behave like this is just, um, astounding to think that this would

00:32:21.360 be a way out. And to, and to think like that also makes me think that, you know, your sense of, you

00:32:29.940 know, what is pro-social versus what's anti-social has to be a little flawed as well. You can't get

00:32:37.580 away with something like this. Who's the first person you look at when a partner is murdered? Who's the

00:32:43.040 first person you look at when young children are murdered? You look at the partner, the surviving

00:32:49.380 partner. So there's, there's no even good sense in committing a crime like this. So it really has

00:32:55.620 to do with poor judgment. Pardon? He's so dumb. We now know, thanks to, again, these letters that he

00:33:01.820 wrote, he was planning this crime. He, it was not spur of the moment. And at least so he would later

00:33:06.900 claim. So who he's not a complete moron. Maybe he is, maybe I'm overestimating his intelligence,

00:33:13.340 but who that's planning to annihilate their family doesn't come up with a sound plan

00:33:19.300 to explain where they went. You know, who leaves like the wife's purse sitting there and the keys

00:33:26.180 sitting there and her shoes sitting there and her car sitting there and just wants people to believe

00:33:30.360 she just walked away with their two young daughters while she was pregnant, shoeless,

00:33:36.200 purseless, keyless, phoneless. Like it was so dumb. It was so predictable that he would get caught.

00:33:42.940 Well, the other thing that I thought he did, in addition to everything that you've said to leave

00:33:49.640 those things behind and knowing that his wife would never leave the house without, without her cell

00:33:55.540 phone, that seemed to be, you know, tied to her side. When he gave that TV interview where he stood

00:34:02.160 there with the emotion that he did have, and he had a smirk on his face and he talked about

00:34:07.600 wanting to see his children again. And I looked at that when I watched it the first time, it was

00:34:13.460 pretty clear, at least to me, this man is responsible for having murdered his entire family.

00:34:19.200 The moment I saw that again, I thought of Peterson and when he gave his interview right after his wife

00:34:25.520 went missing. But Chris talked about wanting to see his kids and his wife again. He didn't say he

00:34:32.340 wanted them back. He said, I want to see them. So he was very guarded in what he said,

00:34:37.160 but that was one of the stupidest things that he could have done was to attempt to do that TV

00:34:42.300 interview and expect to have people believe him. So I don't think this person was very sophisticated

00:34:48.120 when it came to criminal behavior. And I think that accounts for it. Was there also some narcissism

00:34:53.760 there where he's smarter than everybody else? Yeah, that could have been there too. But I think

00:34:58.200 that there is just a naivete about thinking that he could get away with this.

00:35:02.100 I mean, I'm going to ask you the same when we get to the polygraph, like who that knows he's done

00:35:07.340 this sits willingly for a polygraph and an interview with police. Hello. You can always say

00:35:13.360 I'm going to have a lawyer. I don't feel comfortable. He didn't. And it's what led to

00:35:17.180 his confession. Here is a bit of that television interview to which you just referred.

00:35:22.060 I left work for work early that morning, like 515, 530. So like she barely, I mean, she barely

00:35:30.380 got barely gotten into bed pretty much.

00:35:32.060 It wasn't like an argument. We had an emotional conversation, but I'll leave it at that. But

00:35:43.220 it's, I just want them back. I just want them to come back. And if they're not safe right

00:35:52.880 now, that's what's tearing me apart. Because if they are safe, they're coming back. But if

00:35:57.780 they're not, this, this, this has got to stop. Like somebody has to come forward. Shanann,

00:36:03.060 Bella, Celeste, if you're out there, just, just come back. Like if somebody has her, just

00:36:09.120 please bring her back. I need to see everybody. I need to see everybody again. This house is

00:36:14.480 not complete with, without anybody here. Oh my God. And like, it's all about himself.

00:36:23.860 First of all, like if you were actually missing your spouse and your children, I think you'd

00:36:28.840 say, I am so terribly worried. Please, where are you? You know, I'll do anything to find

00:36:33.820 you. This is how you can reach me. This is how, this is where we are. Whatever you'd plead

00:36:38.000 to the kidnapper. He's like, if they're not okay, this needs to end. I mean, this is, it's

00:36:42.660 been a lot for me, you know, crazy.

00:36:45.860 Yeah. And I, and I think with, with a number of these family annihilators, it really is very

00:36:51.460 selfish. Their approach to what happened, their description of what happened, um, their,

00:36:58.400 their amount of commitment, their investment of emotion and explaining what happened. Um,

00:37:03.860 and you see that in his, his interviews with the detectives doesn't make a strong emotional

00:37:09.460 investment in the interviews. And I've done hundreds of interviews with people, some guilty,

00:37:13.900 some not guilty, but you see generally a tremendous amount of emotion with him. It's just very flat.

00:37:20.320 You don't see it again. And I, I think he's just, it's all about him. And again, I think that's

00:37:25.860 very consistent with someone who does annihilate their entire family.

00:37:30.100 Hmm. It's the meanwhile, the, the neighbors knew enough and, and Shanann's friends knew enough about

00:37:37.960 him to suspect him immediately that God bless her friend, Shanann's friend, another Nicole,

00:37:45.640 this one was Nicole Atkinson, who was all over her disappearance, like white on rice. I mean,

00:37:52.260 she was like, she's pregnant. She has a doctor's appointment today. We were just on a business

00:37:56.260 trip. I dropped her off here at 2 AM. She should be here. She was going to the doctor. She's not

00:38:00.720 answering her phone. That's not like her. And she's the one who called 911. Just here's a flavor

00:38:05.060 of that. It's Nicole calling 911 soft four. Okay. Communications. This is Stacy.

00:38:13.400 Hi, Stacy. My name's Nicole and I'm calling because I'm concerned about a friend of mine.

00:38:19.500 I dropped her off at her house at two in the morning last night because we were out of town

00:38:22.920 together and we were on the way back from the airport and she's pregnant and I haven't been

00:38:30.060 able to get ahold of her this morning and I've gone to her house and her car is there and stuff

00:38:35.320 like that, but she won't answer the door. She won't answer phone calls. She won't answer text

00:38:39.040 messages. And I'm just really, really concerned. And she had a doctor's appointment this morning

00:38:43.640 and she didn't go to it. And I'm just, I don't know what to do. I've called him and talked to him

00:38:48.560 and he said that she went on a play date with her other two daughters, but like if she went on a

00:38:53.540 play date, they're both in car seats. Why would she not take her car?

00:38:55.660 So good. As somebody who's devoted her life to law enforcement, Mary Lynn, just what's the

00:39:02.400 lesson there for concerned friends, concerned family members? Because this woman did not wait

00:39:06.780 two seconds. Oh, absolutely. When you suspect that there's something going on or that you're

00:39:13.840 really worried because there's not that typical pattern that you expected. Somebody doesn't show

00:39:20.120 up. Somebody doesn't go into an appointment. Don't worry about embarrassing yourself or

00:39:25.100 bothering the police. Call. Report it. Make sure people know about it. Check with others. Find

00:39:32.800 out. Don't just let it go and say, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure that she'll show up somehow,

00:39:37.920 someplace. Don't do that. Be very proactive, which is what happened here. And I think that

00:39:42.940 made an incredible difference in how this case was ultimately resolved and how quickly it was resolved.

00:39:49.640 And it was good too, I have to say, for Shanon to have shared her concerns about her marriage with

00:39:55.100 a couple of close friends because they then knew when she went missing, we think we know what's

00:40:02.460 going on here. I mean, I recognize out of respect for your marriage, you're not running around to

00:40:06.720 everybody saying, we have this argument, we have that argument. But this was getting to a point where

00:40:10.820 Shanon was getting really worried. And I mean, there's a lesson there too. Do confide in at least a

00:40:16.800 friend or two. I think that was very impressive here that a friend realized pretty much right away

00:40:25.900 something was wrong. That suggests to me that the friends did not see Chris the same way that Shanon

00:40:33.360 did. And it would have been interesting if this did go to trial, what would this friend have testified

00:40:38.940 to? What had she seen? What were her instincts? What had she overheard? Were there examples of

00:40:46.980 domestic violence in the household? And I suspect that there were. They may have been a little bit

00:40:51.740 subdued, but I suspect that there was domestic violence. And so these friends may have been telling

00:40:57.000 Shanon, leave him. There's something wrong with this guy. You need to get away from him. But to make a phone

00:41:02.680 call that quickly and to be that concern, that suggests that they knew more than what it would

00:41:09.840 appear by just kind of living across the street. They were more aware of the dynamics of that

00:41:15.140 relationship. Definitely. And we'll talk about the actual murder in a second. But the other neighbor,

00:41:21.820 while we're on the subject of the neighbors and the friends, the other neighbor was great.

00:41:25.700 He had a camera out in front of his house for security purposes, and he pulled up the footage

00:41:32.040 and this is all from the police body cam. We can see he's like, he had his truck in front of his

00:41:37.980 house this morning at 5 a.m. And then, and Chris is, Chris Watts is in there. He's in the guy's house.

00:41:43.900 And then as soon as Chris Watts walks out, the neighbor's like, that's not normal. He's not a

00:41:47.960 talker. What's happening? We have a little bit of that again from Netflix. Here it is, SOT 6.

00:41:53.480 So unless they pulled right here, but I would have caught her walking out.

00:42:02.040 He said he's not acting right. He's rocking back and forth. He's not acting right.

00:42:32.020 And, and that guy, as he's describing what his cameras may or may not have picked up on there,

00:42:38.540 he's not talking about Chris Watts' truck pulling out. You can see Chris Watts, like the hands around

00:42:43.160 the head mirror. Like you can tell he's stressed out. I don't think he realized the neighbor has

00:42:48.020 cameras. Well, he probably wasn't aware of that, but you know what it also tells me is that these

00:42:55.040 neighbors were suspicious of Chris before that morning. They, uh, when they saw that behavior,

00:43:01.180 they interpreted it correctly, but they were suspicious of him before. So my question would

00:43:06.100 be, if I were interviewing them, why were you suspicious of him? Why were you so able to zero

00:43:11.740 in on that behavior and interpret it correctly? What did you know beforehand that would be helpful

00:43:16.980 to understand how this relationship, um, unraveled?

00:43:20.580 Good point. Cause you know, in a lot of these cases, you see the neighbors saying, no, I could

00:43:26.360 never have seen him doing this. These neighbors and friends were like, it's the husband. This isn't

00:43:31.020 normal. They did right away. Right. Yeah. So let's talk about the crime. It's the reason why this case

00:43:39.520 became such a national story and haunts us still. She comes home from the business trip two in the

00:43:46.460 morning, two plus between two and three. She had told her friends that she was on the business trip

00:43:52.740 with. I'm going to talk to him about what I saw on the receipts for the credit card and my fear that

00:44:00.500 he's having an affair. She had already been texting about how he wouldn't touch her. He knew she wanted

00:44:06.200 sex and he didn't give it to her and it's not normal. And, um, she felt him distancing from her.

00:44:11.680 So she shows up and she said, uh, according to that friend who had called 9-1-1, Nicole Atkinson,

00:44:19.500 she, she had given Shanann a ride to her home and she said that, that Shanann had planned on, um,

00:44:28.140 giving a speech. I guess one of the friends said Shanann had read me or sent me a draft of a speech

00:44:32.820 she planned to give to Chris when she arrived saying some to this effect, I try to fix things and make

00:44:38.900 them better. This is making me crazy. I need you to give just a little bit of what I did or didn't

00:44:45.000 do. So I'm not going crazy in my head to figure it out. I know I can't fix this by myself. We are

00:44:50.980 going to have to work together. Chris would later tell investigators that she got home around 148 in

00:44:57.420 the morning and that she Shanann initiated sex and that then they went to bed. Um, he claimed that

00:45:06.440 then he murdered her. He claimed that initially that, um, he killed her and then killed the

00:45:15.800 daughters. And then he would shift the story as time went on. Um, no, I'm sorry. Let me correct

00:45:22.000 that. He initially claimed that he killed her because she killed the daughters. That was his first

00:45:27.940 confession. We have it on tape. The police were interrogating him. And, um, before,

00:45:33.920 let me set it up like this before they got him to confess, they sat down with a polygraph and the

00:45:39.780 polygraph operator, Mary Ellen, she was, I thought she was amazing. She's super cash, you know, like

00:45:45.740 we're just going to ask you a few questions. You know, everybody does these polygraphs and like,

00:45:49.680 you know, whatever. And he doesn't actually confess here, but this sets the table for the confession.

00:45:54.820 Here's a bit of that.

00:45:55.560 And honestly, I mean, I hope that, you know, if you did have something to do with their

00:46:02.620 disappearance, um, it would be really stupid for you to come in and take a polygraph today.

00:46:07.260 Right? Like it would be really dumb. Like you should not be here right now sitting in this chair

00:46:12.340 if you had anything to do with Shanann and the little girl's disappearance. Okay. Okay.

00:46:17.640 So he sits for the polygraph. They ask him all the questions. He denies having anything to do with

00:46:24.400 it. And then they come back to him, she and a male colleague, and they start really pressing him. Like

00:46:30.920 he didn't tell the truth. We know the truth. And then they bring in his dad. His dad is the one

00:46:37.120 who gets the confession out of him. And here is a bit of that.

00:46:42.340 She smothered him, he asks. He choked them?

00:46:49.580 I didn't hear anything.

00:46:51.440 Chris, I didn't. I didn't hear anything.

00:46:52.920 They came back up and they were gone.

00:47:01.680 I don't know, like, in the top 10, I'm talking to her about that.

00:47:07.980 I'm talking to her about separation and everything about image and loss.

00:47:12.340 I don't know, like, what else to say, but I freaked out and had to do the same blanking

00:47:22.960 thing to her.

00:47:23.440 Those are my kids.

00:47:24.800 Those are my kids. So what do you make of how the police handled the interrogation,

00:47:29.980 the polygraph, and then bringing the dad in?

00:47:32.280 I thought it was impressive. And just to start off with the woman interrogator,

00:47:37.480 she says something very effective. She said, if you had anything to do with this,

00:47:41.560 you shouldn't be sitting here talking to me. In other words, only sit here and talk to me if

00:47:46.080 you're innocent. Giving him an out. And she did that purposely. So I think the way that she did that

00:47:53.920 and also did it in a kind of a really pretty low-key, easygoing way, I thought that was really

00:47:59.060 very effective. And during the polygraph, again, I think, you know, you get more out of trying to

00:48:05.780 build rapport with people and not yelling and screaming at them. So I thought that they did

00:48:10.380 really a good job, an excellent job, as a matter of fact. And I was amazed when I saw them bring in

00:48:17.760 the father. This shows me that they were very flexible to try whatever they had to try to get

00:48:25.180 to the truth. You typically would not bring in a parent or a spouse into an interview. Just wouldn't

00:48:31.420 do that unless you felt it was completely necessary. So they probably briefed the father.

00:48:38.180 They probably explained what they had in terms of evidence, explained what they have in terms of the

00:48:43.580 facts of the case. And they brought him in after they went through the briefing of the father. And that

00:48:49.200 worked extremely well. And the father did an extraordinary job of, you know, showing his son

00:48:56.560 love and care, putting his arm around him and getting him to explain what happened, even though

00:49:01.900 it wasn't the truth the first time around. But still, it got the ball rolling. So that says a lot

00:49:07.400 about the investigators and how they operated that interview. I can't help but look at that and say,

00:49:14.440 that seems like a loving dad. Seems like a responsible man who would go in there and do that.

00:49:19.340 How does a man like that have a son like that?

00:49:25.080 I know he seemed very, he seemed very kind and very loving. But from some of the information that

00:49:31.580 I read, I don't know that he had that kind of relationship with his daughter-in-law. But

00:49:37.320 nonetheless, you can not like your in-laws, but you still don't kill them. But I think the father

00:49:43.180 fulfilled the fatherly role. He wanted to emphasize with his son how important it was

00:49:50.220 that he tell the truth. You could see the father knew just what the repercussions were going to be.

00:49:58.360 And he played the role of the father extremely well. He didn't play the role of an attorney. He

00:50:04.580 didn't play the role of a negotiator. He went in there because he cared about his son. It doesn't mean

00:50:11.100 that his son is the exact likeness of him. It just means that he did his job really well.

00:50:22.100 Parents that have kids that act in a very violent way, in a very brutal way,

00:50:27.080 they have a difficult time seeing it. They have a difficult time understanding

00:50:30.980 how the heck did you get to be like that?

00:50:34.040 Can any of us raise a killer? Do you know if you're raising a killer?

00:50:38.140 Well, number one, I think it's possible for families and parents to raise someone that can

00:50:46.800 ultimately act out in a way that ends in somebody else being murdered. But you have to look at what

00:50:53.100 were the circumstances of the murder. And in this case, very cold-blooded. In this case,

00:50:59.100 it was planned. In this case, it involved the biological children. In this case,

00:51:04.200 it involved a triple murder. And the spouse, Shanann, Celeste, Bella, were treated like

00:51:12.380 objects. That's very different than someone that murders in a really impulsive way or someone that

00:51:19.500 murders because they've had too much to drink. So in this case, I'm sure the family is really

00:51:24.340 struggling with what the heck happened here. How did this happen?

00:51:27.860 How did this happen? Do you think there'd be signs, Marilyn, doing what you do? Do you think

00:51:32.020 if we got that dad on camera and he was really honest about raising Chris Watts, he'd have stories

00:51:38.420 of whether it's animal torture or lack of empathy? Are there usually?

00:51:47.260 There are red flags along the way, but I'll tell you this, and I've seen it over the last,

00:51:51.540 I don't know, 40 years, whatever. But it's so difficult for family members to look at a loved

00:51:58.160 one and say, there's a problem. You have a problem how you get along with people, how you interact

00:52:05.860 with people, the rage that you show or that you don't show, but it's there. We know it's there.

00:52:11.460 It's so difficult for family members to see that. And really, that's part of the reason that we have

00:52:17.840 problems when we put out the warning behaviors for these mass shooters. The warning behaviors are

00:52:24.180 really designed for the family to see. And then once you analyze one of these cases, the family

00:52:29.900 said, well, I didn't see anything. So I've just seen this and heard this over and over again. When

00:52:35.220 you love someone, you just don't see what's there. Oftentimes that can be dangerous.

00:52:41.120 As you pointed out, even if you're the wife versus the neighbor versus the friend,

00:52:45.640 you know, it could be go beyond that sort of blindness, the parents, you know, and this person

00:52:50.620 who's a family annihilator benefits from that blindness from the people who love him most.

00:52:58.480 He confessed there. He tried to blame the murder of the children on Shanann. That wasn't true.

00:53:04.940 He later told the truth that he killed all three of them, including his unborn son, which makes it four.

00:53:10.500 And later he would write in a handwritten letter from prison to a pen pal, Sherilyn Cato, and he would

00:53:19.720 detail how he claimed he first attempted to kill the daughters before he killed Shanann. Now, I don't

00:53:27.320 know what to believe. I don't know whether this is true, the order in which he did the murders, but

00:53:31.380 this is what he wrote. I went to Bella's room, then Cece's room. Bella was the older. Cece was younger

00:53:38.060 and used a pillow from their bed. That's why the cause of death was smothering. After I left Cece's

00:53:44.980 room, then I climbed back in bed with Shanann and our argument ensued. He goes on. He said he told

00:53:52.580 Shanann about his affair with that woman, Nicole, and said that their marriage wouldn't last. That Shanann

00:53:58.940 replied, Chris would not see the kids again. And then he strangled her to death. Um, he then wrote

00:54:06.360 after Shanann had passed, Bella and Cece woke back up, woke back up. I'm not sure how they woke back up,

00:54:16.440 but they did. Bella, who was four, came in and asked what was wrong with mom. And Chris said he then

00:54:23.420 wrapped Shanann in a blanket, carried her to the truck, put the two daughters in the back seat

00:54:28.140 and drove to the oil site where he worked, where the oil tanks were. Before we get to that stage,

00:54:36.700 there's so much in here. Um, the, the, you won't see the kids again. Chris Watts wouldn't have cared

00:54:43.460 about that. Like he, he didn't want to see the kids again. I'm not sure why he's even offering that

00:54:49.360 detail, but why is he saying he tried to smother the girls before he killed Shanann? And then later

00:54:56.880 he will change the story. I think I actually, I'm not sure later. The story is simply I smothered them

00:55:05.720 at the oil site. Right. Well, if we're to assume that what he wrote in, in the letter to, um, uh,

00:55:16.940 a female pen pal is true, then he had to have a motive for wanting his two baby girls

00:55:25.980 killed first. And that may have been, so they didn't interrupt him when he was killing Shanann.

00:55:33.520 If we are to assume then, however, on the other hand, that he said that for other reasons that,

00:55:40.800 and they weren't true, but he wanted to impress this pen pal, then that would be very telling about,

00:55:46.680 um, some serious issues with his, his personality. My sense is that may have been true, um, that he

00:55:56.840 went in and attempted to murder the two girls first. Um, that was the first time he attempted murder.

00:56:03.140 He was not successful. And that the reason may have been because he knew it was going to be more

00:56:09.060 difficult to kill his wife. She could make noise. She could scream. Um, she could fight him. And he

00:56:16.780 did not want the baby girls to come in and interrupt him because then it would be difficult to carry out

00:56:21.960 the murder of, of Shanann. My sense is that's probably, if that's true, that's probably the

00:56:27.640 sequence of events and the reason that he would have done that. He didn't do it successfully. And so

00:56:33.360 when he gets to the site where he, uh, has already buried his wife, now he's got to look into the eyes

00:56:39.440 of his daughters and kill them as they sit in the truck, which is almost worse than killing them while

00:56:44.340 they're semi-asleep. Yeah, it is worse. I mean, if you can get worse, it is worse. He, this is a viewer

00:56:53.400 warning. I mean, this is genuinely disturbing. So I want to let the viewers know this is dark, dark,

00:56:59.300 dark stuff I'm about to read. Um, in more letters to this Cato, he reverses his claim to the police

00:57:07.700 earlier that the murders were spontaneous. He writes August 12th. When I finished putting the

00:57:14.540 girls to bed, I walked away and said, that's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies in.

00:57:20.280 I knew what was going to happen the day before. And I did nothing to stop it. I mean, what a strange

00:57:25.080 phrasing. I did nothing to stop it as though he knew it was somebody else who was going to do it.

00:57:30.260 Later, he said of Shanann, isn't it weird how I look back? And what I remember so much is her face

00:57:35.660 getting all black with streaks of mascara, all the weeks of me thinking about killing her. And now I

00:57:41.780 was faced with it. I knew if I took my hands off of her, she would still keep me from Nikki.

00:57:47.640 They asked me why she couldn't fight back. It's because she couldn't fight back. Her eyes filled with

00:57:52.980 blood as she looked at me and she died. I knew she was gone when she relieved herself.

00:57:59.140 And then he goes on to talk about the daughters, which we can talk about in a second, but

00:58:02.060 that this poor woman, completely helpless, several months pregnant, dying on her bed

00:58:10.200 at the hands of the man she loved and was building a family with. And he can talk about all I,

00:58:16.780 all I really, isn't it so weird? All I remember is the streaks of mascara,

00:58:19.900 the coldness, the inhumanity. Yeah, that's what I mean. There's just a cold-blooded aspect

00:58:27.940 from beginning to end about all of this and what he remembers about what her face looked like,

00:58:34.740 what he remembers about the blood in her eyes. That's not somebody that truly empathized with her,

00:58:43.360 that loved her. That's really someone that had great hatred and disdain for her. So the hatred,

00:58:50.240 and again, when you see hatred in a case, it takes you down a different path because there's only two

00:58:56.480 things you can do when you hate another human being. And hatred takes time to develop. The only two things

00:59:02.120 that you can do is you can destroy them or you can remove yourself completely from them. Hatred gives

00:59:08.820 you very few options if, if that's how you feel about another human being. And what he's describing

00:59:15.280 is almost, he's describing someone that's not human, but what it's his wife, it's the mother of

00:59:21.860 his children. And yet he's describing her as someone that's almost a monster. Yes. Cause he goes on in

00:59:29.560 this letter, he dumped his wife's body in a shallow grave that he dug at the oil site. Um, and he

00:59:38.780 writes, I, I, he says, when I dug the hole, it seemed a lot deeper than it was. As I pulled on the sheet,

00:59:45.620 she rolled out and into the hole. I think she had given birth. She landed face down. I remember being

00:59:52.600 so angry with her that I was not going to change how she landed. This is the same guy who wrote those

00:59:59.420 texts a few weeks earlier. I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry. You know, the sweet, compliant, docile

01:00:07.960 Chris, this is that guy who loathed her so much. He murdered her. He couldn't be bothered to flip her

01:00:17.200 right side up and talked about his dead baby as if it was a absolute nothing, a piece of trash.

01:00:26.980 And, and basically his words, uh, really defy him. That's exactly what it was. And he hated her

01:00:33.960 meaning Shanann so much that he wouldn't, um, lean over into the grave. He dug for her and turn her over.

01:00:41.940 And he comments that he thinks that she gave birth. This is, he's speaking about somebody that's a

01:00:48.800 non-human object. He's not, and that non-human perception of somebody is consistent with hatred.

01:00:56.000 So again, we see the same very cold-blooded features as he's reliving, having, putting her in the grave and,

01:01:04.980 and seeing, you know, the fact that she's rolled over and she's probably given birth already. And then he covers

01:01:10.720 her up and walks away. It really doesn't get any more hateful than that. And that really goes to

01:01:16.700 that lack of feeling and emotion and that ability to, to empathize. It's just not there. It's just

01:01:22.520 not there at all. How is this person walking amongst us in society and not, and people aren't

01:01:28.720 knowing he's this man. How, how does this person go to the CVS and collect his prescription from the

01:01:33.820 pharmacist or interact with the mailman or have any friendly relations in, in life? You know,

01:01:40.840 how is it not that like, we have a sea of people coming forward to say he's a psychopath. And we all

01:01:46.260 knew that, like, we all said, this guy's going to snap. He's a bad guy. That's not what happened.

01:01:53.380 No, it's not what happened. He did not snap. And I don't think that this man, um, meets the features

01:01:58.560 of psychopathy. They're not there. I didn't think that they were there at the time because that,

01:02:03.200 but it doesn't mean that he can't have this cold blooded side to him where he's made the decision

01:02:09.620 that this woman is ruining his life. And the only way to regain control is to kill her and to kill

01:02:17.100 the, the two babies. So he's able to reconcile that this is what he has to do. But I think walking

01:02:24.740 around in life and going to the store and interacting with people, he's just not putting

01:02:30.120 out a lot of emotion. People that will describe him will say, yeah, he was a nice guy. Didn't know

01:02:35.360 him very well. He kept him himself. He was kind of quiet. And that's by design. That's by purpose.

01:02:40.680 But when you're in a really intimate relationship with someone like that, it becomes really important.

01:02:46.800 No, no matter who they are to realize how do they handle what's going on in everyday life?

01:02:52.160 Do they engage in domestic violence? Do they engage in acting out in violent ways or really

01:02:59.360 passive aggressive ways? It really becomes important to try to, to, you know, understand that and to

01:03:05.500 measure that. The murder of the daughters is almost unspeakable. I don't, I don't know that we can ever

01:03:16.160 understand it. That's what I'm trying to do. That's my futile mission to understand. He, he says in the

01:03:21.840 letter that his daughters walked in on him as he was wrapping Shanann in a bed sheet, that he drove

01:03:26.920 to the oil site where he buried Shanann. And it was there that he smothered Cece first, the little

01:03:32.620 girl. And then he went for Bella, the four-year-old. Forgive me, this is so dark. Again, an audience

01:03:39.340 warning. He writes, little quiet Bella had a will to live. Out of all three, Bella is the only one that

01:03:46.860 put up a fight. I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life saying, daddy, no. She knew

01:03:53.240 what I was doing to her. She may not have understood death, but she knew I was killing her. I can't,

01:04:00.720 I can't reconcile the fact that there are people like this on this earth sharing space with me,

01:04:07.900 my family, my audience, you. I can't reconcile it. I, I can't, I can understand Charles Manson.

01:04:15.240 I can understand Jeffrey Dahmer. I see them. I say, lunatic. Got it. I would notice to your clear.

01:04:20.980 This guy was kind of a good looking guy. He had a decent job. He had a beautiful family. He didn't

01:04:26.920 have some history that we knew of, of hurting people or animals. How can this monster, monster,

01:04:34.400 how can I spot the next one? I guess is what I'm asking you, Mary Ellen. Like what good can come

01:04:41.340 from this that can prevent this? I can't live without an answer. Let me say it this way. We

01:04:52.080 cannot look at somebody and just tell that they are going to be dangerous. We just can't do it.

01:05:00.740 You can see people on the street that are scary looking, but unwashed hair or frumpy clothes living

01:05:09.300 on a homeless lifestyle does not correlate to, to being violent. It just doesn't. But we grow up

01:05:15.740 thinking that we can look at someone and we can just tell they're going to be dangerous. If someone

01:05:21.360 has a good job, if they go to church, if they like animals, if they have children, those are all

01:05:28.520 features that we believe make them safe, make them harmless. That couldn't be further from the truth.

01:05:37.880 The whole idea of the potential for dangerousness comes from within their personalities. And if they

01:05:44.560 get trapped or feel they get trapped or feel angry and begin to develop hatred, that's all done

01:05:51.500 internally. But, and it depends on the right set of circumstances. So let's go back with Chris Watts.

01:05:58.260 If Chris Watts's life was based on a different set of circumstances, he may never have murdered anybody.

01:06:08.920 He's not a serial killer. The right set of circumstances came together and he decided that

01:06:15.460 this was the only way that he could deal with it. And the only way was to, in my opinion, he was blaming

01:06:21.620 Shanann for a life that, in which he was miserable. But if those circumstances didn't exist, if he had

01:06:28.960 never gotten married and lived alone somewhere, I don't think he would go on to commit murder.

01:06:35.880 The question about the daughters is of course,

01:06:37.820 why? You know, we understand sort of why the wife, you know, yes, divorce, but spouses kill their other

01:06:47.420 spouse sometimes. Why, why the daughters? The only one that's really going to know that is Chris. And

01:06:57.020 wouldn't you love to have the opportunity to ask him and with the hope that he would be candid and

01:07:02.900 truthful with you. So the only thing that we say in cases like this is we have to look at the

01:07:08.840 behavior. These little girls were not a threat to him. These little girls were not going to be

01:07:14.540 dangerous, but he killed them anyway. And he killed them by looking in their eyes and smothering them.

01:07:20.700 And then that's not even enough. Then he takes them into the, these oil containers and then drops

01:07:26.840 them in. He basically wants to destroy them as though they never existed. So think about

01:07:32.900 that. He wanted them as though they never existed. He, that tells me by, we're talking to him,

01:07:41.140 Chris, you didn't never want, you never wanted to be a dad. You never wanted those responsibilities.

01:07:46.300 You didn't want a life like the one that you had. And is it true that you felt once you could get rid

01:07:54.500 of every memory of those girls and who they were, you could get back some control of a life that you

01:08:00.940 wanted. That may be the approach I would take with them because he was trying to destroy them

01:08:05.860 physically, take their life away. And that's the way to do it. That's what he did.

01:08:11.600 Yeah. That's interesting. So the discarding, the way in which he discarded the daughter's bodies,

01:08:15.760 which is one of the most gruesome parts of the story, dropping them in these neighboring oil tanks,

01:08:22.680 talking about how he could, he could hear the splash when the bodies hit. And that, that told

01:08:28.800 him how, how much oil was in each tank, not even together and not even in the same tank,

01:08:35.040 shoved them through this little hole. I mean, she's shoving his dead daughters. It's just,

01:08:40.600 it just shows you the level of callousness. This is not, this is not, I snapped. Um, you know,

01:08:46.420 I found out my wife was having an affair and I shot her not excusing that. Obviously this is

01:08:51.720 something, this is just a whole nother level of evil and anger. And you're saying same as we,

01:08:58.160 we interviewed another great, great expert who is also saying he does, he, he doesn't look like a

01:09:03.560 psychopath and that's, that's, what's most terrifying. So it's hatred. It's loathing of the

01:09:10.000 life that you're in. And we may not have a bunch of red flags other than maybe he doesn't express

01:09:16.680 his anger. Um, maybe he's got controlling behaviors, possibly domestic violence that you

01:09:22.540 may or may not know about. God, that's not much to go on. No, not as observers from the inside,

01:09:30.000 outside looking in, but if Shanann were here with us today, uh, we'd certainly want to ask her

01:09:37.900 questions about that. Some of that behavior that kind of evolved over the years that they were

01:09:44.940 married. It seems pretty clear to me that he saw Shanann as the enemy. She was the cause for his

01:09:52.720 being miserable. She was the cause for his feeling trapped. He, she was the cause for, um, how he viewed

01:09:59.860 life. Is it true? Of course not. I mean, he's an adult male, but the way he viewed it is, is I think

01:10:06.000 that that component, you know, had to be there. And those children were anchors around his neck

01:10:11.980 in order to move forward. He had to start over again. I remember you, I had cases where, um, the,

01:10:19.120 the spouse would take the other spouse up to, um, uh, like to, um, uh, a mountainside and, and then they

01:10:26.520 would push the spouse over. And those were really hard cases to, to really investigate. But as you begin

01:10:32.600 to unravel that, and it was different from this, but still some of the components are the same as

01:10:37.440 you begin to unravel it, you see the same kind of emotional changing. They started to live their life

01:10:44.320 over again. They started a new life. They no longer were married to this person. They no longer were in

01:10:50.220 a relationship. So mentally they checked out months before they murdered their spouse. And so the murder

01:10:56.940 was almost anticlimactic because they needed to get rid of the person that made their life miserable.

01:11:02.200 They needed to be gone completely, absolutely gone, not divorced, not live in another city.

01:11:08.120 They needed to be gone. Erased. Right. So he, um, winds up pleading guilty. They, I mean, of course

01:11:18.000 they had him and that spared his life. He was given, um, five life sentences. And even the judge,

01:11:25.060 uh, Marcelo Kopkow was absolutely horrified by the circumstances of this case. I mean, I know a lot

01:11:32.740 of judges been in front of a lot of judges over the course of my life. It's very rare that they offer

01:11:37.500 this strong, a personal opinion on a case, but here's just a little bit of the judge during the

01:11:43.080 sentencing hearing, November 19th, 2018. I've been a judicial officer now for starting my 17th year

01:11:51.040 and I, um, could objectively say that this is perhaps the most, uh, inhumane and vicious crime

01:12:05.760 that I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen and nothing less than a maximum

01:12:15.040 sentence, um, would be appropriate. And anything less than the maximum sentence would depreciate the

01:12:24.000 seriousness of this offense. You know, usually we have the death penalty in part because we want

01:12:31.240 to deter, you know, we want to punish, but we also want to deter other criminals. Does, does this

01:12:38.600 sentence fit the crime? And do you think it effectively deters the next Chris Watts?

01:12:45.820 Um, in my opinion, it fits the crime. Do I think it will deter someone else from doing this again? No,

01:12:51.740 I don't. Um, I don't see that happening, but in a case like this, I always think about that when a

01:12:58.280 person gets a sentence like this, sitting in prison, you're a young man still, you are in prison for the

01:13:05.520 rest of your life. You're never going anywhere. I mean, that is a profoundly, um, negative, uh,

01:13:13.260 profoundly impactful sentence. And, um, and the, certainly the judge thought it was consistent with,

01:13:19.140 um, the incredible damage that he did, but, um, will it, will somebody else stop and think about Chris

01:13:27.620 Watts if the right set of circumstances exists for them tomorrow? Will they think about Chris Watts

01:13:34.540 and say to themselves, I better not do this. And I would say to you, I don't think so.

01:13:41.960 That's not how the criminal mind works. The, the line in his letter to the pen pal, uh, that I just

01:13:48.920 read saying, I knew if I took my hands off of her, she would still keep me from Nikki. She would keep me

01:13:55.320 from Nikki. He needed to be with the affair partner. He felt it on some sort of primal level

01:14:01.080 reminded me of the last line of the movie presumed innocent spoiler alert. If you haven't seen presumed

01:14:08.920 innocent or read the Scott Turow book tune out now, because it's a great, great, great, powerful last

01:14:14.600 line there. The circumstances of whom were murdered, whom were different, but he, he's, he said the

01:14:20.720 following. This is, this is a husband writing about his affair with all deliberation and intent.

01:14:27.340 I reached for Carolyn. I cannot pretend it was an accident. I reached for Carolyn and set off that

01:14:33.900 insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another set off that insane mix of rage

01:14:43.960 and lunacy that led one human being to kill another. I'm not saying you have an affair and

01:14:51.180 you're going to be able to become a murderer. But as I said earlier, you are playing with

01:14:57.180 radioactive materials. So many cases where one of the spousal partners has an affair

01:15:04.660 ultimately lead to some sort of marital violence, including murder. I mean, I'm how many times have

01:15:11.500 you seen it, Mary Ellen? A lot, a lot. And then you, you include in that, just the emotion that exists

01:15:21.660 in a relationship, emotion that if, if you compound it with the person has weapons in the house, the

01:15:28.440 person has children in the house. Now you've got an incredibly explosive situation, incredibly explosive.

01:15:36.160 And, you know, depending on the personalities of the people involved, it can become exponentially

01:15:42.380 explosive. What happens to the people who were friends with Shanann? I mean, I feel like we know

01:15:49.460 what happens to her family members. They try to move on with their lives. I don't know how you do it as

01:15:53.060 the mother, as the brother, you know, the dad was at the sentencing hearing with heartfelt remarks as

01:15:58.620 well. You're so angry, called Chris Watts a monster. But what about the other victims, you know, like

01:16:05.560 the best friend, Nicole, who called 911? How did, what happens to them?

01:16:11.400 I would say this, they'll never have closure. The C word does not work in a crime of violence. You just

01:16:17.280 never have closure. I would say there's going to be a certain level, certain level of guilt that exists

01:16:25.500 for the rest of their life. They would go through the stages of death and dying. And that's pointed

01:16:31.140 out beautifully by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross years ago, who wrote about the stages of death and dying.

01:16:36.900 And I think they wake up some mornings feeling very guilty. Why didn't I do more? Then the next

01:16:42.640 morning, it's sadness. And then the next morning, it's anger. Eventually, if you can get to the level

01:16:48.140 of acceptance, that's where you want to be. But I find most people don't get there. Most people struggle

01:16:53.220 with, should they have done more? Could they have done more? Could they have stopped it? And

01:16:57.620 family members go through similar feelings of just being on that roller coaster where

01:17:02.660 every day it's different. And Dr. Ross says, we need to get to the level of acceptance. But I can tell

01:17:09.020 you in a case like this, there's no one that will get to the level of acceptance of what happened.

01:17:15.720 You are someone who has worked on so many of these big murder cases from the Zodiac killer,

01:17:22.860 Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, were involved in the Elizabeth Smart, the Natalie Holloway

01:17:29.040 disappearances. I mean, you've dealt with evil professionally your entire life. So how do you

01:17:35.500 walk the streets? How do you laugh at silly jokes? How, you know, how are we as humans to

01:17:43.380 compartmentalize this into the right box so that we can go have dinner with our families tonight and

01:17:48.240 laugh and be joyful and understand how to categorize evil?

01:17:55.840 The way that I was really trained to do it, I'm actually a mental health counselor by training.

01:18:03.780 But going through the FBI, we learned to become, we had to become desensitized because of what we saw.

01:18:10.840 You just couldn't do your job. And I hear people talk about doctors and nurses that work in

01:18:15.880 emergency rooms. And I think to myself, oh my God, how do they do that? They see people come in,

01:18:21.360 they have to sew limbs back on. And I don't know that how they do that. I found the perfect job

01:18:27.360 because it lets me get into the criminal mind and explore and understand behavior. I find it not

01:18:33.700 upsetting, but very challenging. And I think that perspective has really helped tremendously.

01:18:39.380 If this bothered me, if this was something that hung on to me seven days a week, 24 hours a day,

01:18:46.560 I can tell you that I could not do it. I just couldn't. And I also think the way that I was

01:18:51.040 raised has been really helpful. We were raised in a family that having a really solid, good sense of

01:19:00.500 humor and pulling away from things, knowing when the time was right to pull away from things has been

01:19:05.360 really helpful. But I'm just really challenged. I'll think tonight about Chris Watts. I'll think

01:19:11.360 about why I would love to talk to him someday. I'll think about more reasons that this happened

01:19:17.760 because I'm always in searching for why people behave the way that they do, especially in a case

01:19:25.780 like this. You're not walking around thinking potential killer. He's there's another like, you know,

01:19:33.060 I think I'm going to get eaten by a shark every time I go in the ocean because I'm in news.

01:19:36.740 And so this is just, we, you know, we covered these stories. You're not thinking that way when

01:19:40.800 you're just walking down the street. No, I'm not. And I'll tell you why, because when you look at

01:19:46.220 somebody, I just know you could be wearing a beautiful suit and leather shoes and a leather

01:19:51.900 briefcase. And the thoughts that are going in your head on in somebody's head could be as frightening as

01:19:57.300 anything in the world. We cannot tell just by looking at someone that they're not going to hurt us.

01:20:02.360 So I watch behavior. I can sit for hours and just watch human behavior in a restaurant or in a train

01:20:08.780 station. That's what gets me interested. It's not how they look. It's how they behave.

01:20:14.800 Do you think if I gave you 10 people and I let you watch them each for two hours in a train station,

01:20:19.300 in a restaurant, whatever the setting were, do you think you'd be able to say these are the top two

01:20:24.320 candidates for crime, for murder?

01:20:26.880 No, I don't think I could do that. I would probably be able to tell you more about their

01:20:32.040 personality, but I think I would need more opportunities to see them in different contexts

01:20:37.940 and see how they interact with people they didn't know, strangers, and then people that they were in

01:20:44.680 their close circle. Profilers get the kind of the the rap that we can look at people know what's going

01:20:50.820 on in their head, but we have to study their patterns of behavior over a lifetime. So two hours

01:20:55.620 wouldn't be enough time.

01:20:57.760 Do you have any kids? Do you marry? I don't know if you reveal that publicly, but I'm just wondering,

01:21:03.240 what do you tell your kids or your nieces or your friends' kids to protect themselves?

01:21:11.180 It's really funny because I have nieces and nephews and they don't really want to know a lot about what

01:21:17.960 I know. And so they don't ask me questions and I don't force my information on them. My students ask

01:21:25.920 me a lot of questions. So I'm very sensitive about letting people know as much as they want to know.

01:21:33.100 Every once in a while, it gets the better of me. And if somebody I know is about to engage in behavior

01:21:41.220 that I think is really risky, I'll tell them. But I understand, too, that they probably won't

01:21:46.840 listen and they'll go forward and have to see for themselves what will happen.

01:21:52.120 I'm like only extroverts in my life from now on. If you're not a talker, if you can't express anger,

01:21:58.280 you're out. You're out of here. You got to laugh, right? Because it's just this stuff is so dark.

01:22:03.120 But I'm always looking for the lessons, you know, just whatever lessons we can find to make

01:22:08.300 our society a little safer, our kids a little safer. And just to wrestle with the basic question

01:22:15.160 of good versus evil and when evil's in front of you, how do you spot it?

01:22:21.060 And you don't just see it the first time. And extroverts tend to be probably, extroversion is a

01:22:26.700 trait of psychopathy. So that's not good either. So you really do have to look at people's behavior

01:22:37.380 and see how they treat other people, see how they happen to react when they're angry, when they're

01:22:44.280 stressed out. What do they do? You really have to understand the behavior. And that's just not

01:22:50.200 one sit down session. That's just not one time where you go out to dinner. If you're going to let

01:22:55.160 somebody into your home, if you're going to let somebody into your comfort zone, you really have

01:22:59.320 to do an analysis of their behavior over time and place and distance and with different people.

01:23:06.100 And you know what else? I will say this rounding back to the affair. If you think your partner's

01:23:09.520 having an affair, I'm sorry, but especially if you're the wife and it's a man cheating on you,

01:23:16.020 be careful. Be careful about the confrontation. Be careful in general. The odds are he's not feeling

01:23:22.180 all warm and fuzzy toward you. There could be hatred. As Mary Ellen points out, there could be

01:23:26.540 hatred for you growing. It might not just be an innocent dalliance. You're in a danger zone there.

01:23:35.620 Well, I think the research is certainly going to back you up on that because

01:23:39.560 the time for a spouse to be really at highest risk is oftentimes when they say to a cheating spouse,

01:23:49.920 I'm leaving you, you're not going to see the kids again, that can really ignite an already

01:23:55.900 incendiary situation. So understand domestic violence. That is really critical. Be aware that

01:24:02.720 you could unknowingly incite a worse situation. So you're absolutely correct.

01:24:09.820 Take precautions. You can deliver news like that in the presence of a loved one, someone who could

01:24:15.260 protect you, can have your exit plan and should have your exit plan all laid out. There are these

01:24:20.960 small but meaningful things that we can do to just, just in case, just in case. Mary Ellen O'Toole,

01:24:27.160 it's always fascinating talking to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being one of the good guys

01:24:30.920 and helping put guys like this behind bars and helping us figure out what makes them tick so we

01:24:36.080 can hopefully prevent the next one. So good to talk to you again. Thank you for having me very much.

01:24:41.180 All the best to you. Thanks for joining us today. Our Hot Crime Summer Week continues tomorrow

01:24:46.800 with an in-depth look into the Jody Arias case with my pal, Mark Eiglarsh. We'll talk to you then.

01:24:56.520 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 12, 2023

Horrific Chris Watts Family Murders： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 570

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