The Watts family looked like the perfect picture: a charming home in Frederick, Colorado, two adorable young daughters, and a baby on the way. But behind the smiling facade, a horrifying nightmare was quietly unraveling—one that would shock the world to its core.
In August 2018, Chris Watts, 35, appeared before news cameras, his voice raw with desperation as he pleaded for help to find his missing pregnant wife Shanann and their daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3.
What began as a desperate call for help soon twisted into a nightmare: Watts had brutally murdered the very family he vowed to protect.
Warning: This story contains disturbing details.
To friends and neighbors, the Watts family seemed happy and complete. Yet behind closed doors, darkness reigned. Watts strangled Shanann in their own home before smothering Bella and Celeste—tiny children who pleaded desperately for their lives.
It later emerged Watts had been having an affair with a co-worker, Nichol Kessinger, who reportedly cut ties and fled Colorado after discovering the horrifying truth. Despite this, the world remained fixated on the grisly reality: Watts had ended the lives of his wife and daughters.
The brutality of the crime sent shockwaves across the globe. Authorities found Shanann’s body buried in a shallow grave nearby, while Bella and Celeste’s bodies were concealed in an oil tank at Watts’ workplace.
When Shanann’s parents confronted Watts in court, they begged prosecutors to spare him the death penalty. Instead, he was sentenced to five life terms, three to be served consecutively.
According to Mirror US, Watts confessed to strangling Shanann and suffocating his daughters, who begged for mercy. Years later, Watts revealed in letters that he had attempted to give Shanann OxyContin to induce a miscarriage and admitted to planning the murders for weeks.
Using Celeste’s cherished Yankees blanket, Watts strangled the little girl while Bella remained eerily silent. But before Bella’s life was cruelly taken, she whispered a heartbreaking question: “Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?” Her final words, trembling and desperate, were: “Daddy, no!” Watts confessed that those two haunting words torment him every time he closes his eyes.
In a chilling attempt to cover his tracks, Watts admitted to leaving Shanann’s wedding ring on the kitchen counter—carefully staged to suggest she had chosen to leave him. Investigators later uncovered that Watts had scattered other belongings throughout the home, crafting a false narrative that Shanann had abandoned the marriage and walked away.
Watts even lied to his mistress, telling her that Shanann had left with the children. In response, she urged him to erase all traces of her from his phone and warned him not to contact her “until this is done.”
But the carefully woven web of lies began to unravel.
Watts later admitted to deceiving the public during his emotional media appearances in August 2018, insisting,
“When I came home and then walked in the house, nothing. Vanished. Nothing was here. My kids are my life.”
Yet, after days of desperate searching, the grim truth came crashing down. The discovery of the bodies led to Watts’ arrest and the horrifying reality behind the facade.
In interviews, Watts revealed that he couldn’t even bring himself to admit the horrifying truth—not to himself, nor to law enforcement. Shockingly, he claimed the idea of blaming Shanann for the children’s deaths only crossed his mind after someone else suggested it to him.
Ultimately, Watts pleaded guilty to all charges. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
The Watts family murders stand as one of the most chilling and tragic family crimes in recent history—a haunting reminder that beneath the surface of a seemingly perfect life, unimaginable darkness can hide.
