Killer father Chris Watts has been secretly offering a vile excuse to murder his pregnant wife and two daughters, aged three and four, more than six years later.
Watts, 36, strangled his partner Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant with his son, inside their five-bedroom family home in Frederick, Colorado, on August 13, 2018, after she returned from a business trip to Arizona.
The killer, who is serving more than five life sentences for his sick crimes, drove the woman’s body away in his pickup truck along with her two daughters, Bella, four, and Celeste, three, before suffocating them both with a blanket. Watts buried his wife in a shallow grave and dumped his daughters’ bodies in oil storage tanks.
In newly revealed letters, seen by the The New York PostHe said he sought refuge with his mistress Nichol Kessinger because she was “everything my wife was not,” adding that pregnant Shanann was a “control freak.”
In handwritten notes to Dylan Tallman, a fellow inmate at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, Watts said his marriage was unsatisfactory because “she was so busy with her job and everything that it required,” adding that he was often the primary caregiver for their daughters.
Watts said he was tempted to leave his marriage after meeting Nichol following his weight loss in 2017.
Chris Watts, 36 (pictured, top left) strangled his partner Shanann (pictured, bottom right), who was 15 weeks pregnant with his child, and suffocated their daughters Bella, 4 (pictured, top right) and Celeste, 3 (pictured, bottom left).
Watts is serving more than five life sentences for his sick crimes.
She was having an affair with Nichol Kessinger, with whom she was working at the time.
“She was everything my wife wasn’t with me. She was personable and not a control freak. We could make decisions together.”
“We had known each other for a while, but we didn’t start dating until six weeks before,” he continued. “I wasn’t thinking. We were working together, we had chemistry, and I fell for it. She was the forbidden fruit.”
But he has also blamed Nichol herself for being “the death of me.”
In a letter dated March 2020, he wrote: “The words of a harlot have sunk me. Her flattering speech was like drops of honey piercing my heart and soul. I did not know that all her guests were in the death chamber.”
Watts apparently has a habit of refusing to acknowledge his horrific crimes.
In the two days after he massacred his family, he claimed he had nothing to do with his family’s disappearance and even appeared on television to ask them to return home.
In 2018, shortly after the murders, visitors would arrive at the home and leave gifts and tributes for the slain mother and daughters.
Watts is pictured standing near the front door of his former home.
Police body camera footage shows the interior of Watts’ home in 2018
In text messages to his mistress just hours after killing his pregnant wife and children, Watts denied having anything to do with her disappearance, according to previously unreleased footage of the woman’s interview with police.
“I was still in my thoughts. I was stressed out,” Kessinger told authorities, according to footage posted March 2 by Frankie Rzucek, Jr., Shannan’s brother.
‘So I sent one last message to Chris and said, “If you did something wrong, you’re going to ruin your life and you’re going to ruin mine. I promise you that.”
And he replied, ‘I didn’t hurt my family, Nicky.’ And that was the last message. I never said another word to him after that,” she said.
After his arrest, he initially claimed Shanann had murdered the girls after telling him she wanted a separation, and then strangled her in a rage.
At his trial, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, which has since been abolished in Colorado.
He is serving five life sentences plus 48 years in prison without the possibility of parole at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin.