Chris Watts confesses killing daughters at oil site after strangling wife at home
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Watts, while straddling Shanann as she laid on her back, said he asked whether they could cancel an upcoming trip to Aspen, Colorado, and if they could move to get away from their house.
Watts said Shanann then told him she knew he was having an affair with someone and started to cry, but Watts denied having an affair.
“I just felt guilty … more guilty than ever before,” Watts told investigators, according to documents released Thursday.
Watts told Shanann he didn’t think their marriage was going to work and that he didn’t love her, and Shanann responded, “You’re never gonna see the kids again … you’re never gonna see them again … get off me … don’t hurt the baby.”
Watts immediately put both hands around his wife's neck and strangled her.
“Every time I think about it, I’m just like, did I know I was going to do that before I got on top of her?” he told investigators.
“Everything that happened that morning I just don’t — I don’t know, … like, I try to go back in my head … I didn’t want to do this, but I did it … it just felt like there was already something in my mind that was implanted that I was gonna do it and when I woke up that morning, it was gonna happen and I had no control over it.”
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“What’s wrong with Mommy?” he recalled Bella asking again as she began to cry.
He said Bella was smart and knew what was going on. Bella watched as he backed his truck into the garage and put Shanann's body in the back seat on the floorboards.
The noises from dragging his wife's body down the stairs woke their 3-year-old daughter, Celeste, who was starting to get out of bed when Watts came back inside.
Watts said he felt like someone else was in control of him as he put Bella and Celeste in the back of his truck on the bench seat.
Bella again asked if her mother was OK, and Watts told his daughters their mother would be fine.
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Watts said when they arrived at the oil site 45 minutes from their Frederick, Colorado, home, he pulled Shanann's body out of the car with his daughters sitting on the back seat. They asked him what he was doing to their mother, and he said he doesn't recall what he told them.
Watts said he returned to the truck and “Cece was first.”
He put his daughter’s Yankees blanket over her head and strangled her in the back seat with Bella sitting beside her, Watts told investigators. Bella didn’t say anything while watching her father kill her sister.
“I wasn’t (thinking) … if I was thinking, this wouldn’t have happened … or any partial hint of what I feel for those girls and what I feel for my wife, then none of this would have happened … so I wasn’t thinking,” Watts said.
He carried Celeste from the truck to the oil tank and dropped her inside, then returned to his truck where Bella remained in the back seat.
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“What happened to Cece?” Watts said Bella asked him. “Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?”
He said he is not sure how he replied.
He “did the same thing” to Bella, and placed the Yankees blanket over her head, Watts told investigators.
“Daddy, no!” were Bella’s last words, Watts said, and he hears them every time he closes his eyes.
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Watts said he killed his daughters out of anger with Shanann “that he took out on everyone in front of him that morning,” according to investigators.
“Right now I’d have a 5-year-old … a 3-year-old … and more than likely, a one-month-old son … and a beautiful wife … and right now it’s just me,” Watts told investigators.
