From the article:
- Chris Watts confessed he 'murdered' daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, TWICE, in a letter to author Cheryln Cadle
- The letters and Cadle's one-on-one conversations with Watts in prison form the basis of her upcoming book, Letters From Christopher
- Watts, 34, described smothering the little girls in their beds with a pillow on August 13, 2018, before going back to bed with his pregnant wife Shanann Watts
- But shockingly his daughters 'woke back up' bruised and traumatized after he had strangled Shanann to death in their bed in Frederick, Colorado
- He then describes driving to the oil field where he methodically killed both of his daughters for the second and final time
- The father admitted in his letter that he had been plotting the murders for some time so he could be with his mistress Nichol Kessinger
- He also confessed that he had slipped the potent painkiller Oxycodone to his wife in the hope of inducing a miscarriage and making it easier to leave her
[...]
Watts' letter, below in its entirety, lays out in grim detail how he attempted to smother his daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, before strangling his pregnant wife Shanann at their home in Frederick, Colorado.
In the letter, Watts writes: 'August 13th, morning of, I went to the girls' room first, before Shanann and I had our argument. I went to Bella's room, then Cece's room and used a pillow from their bed (to kill them). That's why the cause of death was smothering. After I left Cece's room, then I climbed back in bed with Shanann and our argument ensued.
'After Shanann had passed, Bella and Cece woke back up. I'm not sure how they woke back up, but they did. Bella's eyes were bruised and both girls looked like they had been through trauma. That made the act that much worse knowing I went to their rooms first and knowing I still took their lives at the location of the batteries.'
[...]
However, he admitted in the letter that he had been plotting the murders for some time.
'August 12th when I finished putting the girls to bed, I walked away and said ''That's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies in.'' I knew what was going to happen the day before and I did nothing to stop it!' he wrote.
He also confessed that he had slipped the potent painkiller Oxycodone to his wife in the hope of inducing a miscarriage. 'I thought it would be easier to be with Nichol if Shanann wasn't pregnant,' he wrote.
[...]
The 65-year-old grandmother from northern Illinois, wrote three times before Watts replied. She subsequently visited him in prison three times, with each meeting lasting around five hours, after he put her on his visitor list.
Since March, she has spoken with him about three times a week on the phone. Their most recent conversation took place last week.
[...]
After meeting in person, Watts decided to allow Cadle to use his letters for her first book,
Letters From Christopher: The Tragic Confessions of the Watts Family Murders.
He agreed to the book in exchange for Cadle's promise that she would publish his 'testimony of coming to God and the forgiveness he received'.
[...]
'Isn't it weird how I look back and what I remember so much is her face getting all black with streaks of mascara?' Watts said.
'All the weeks of me thinking about killing her, and now I was faced with it. When she started to get drowsy, I somehow knew how to squeeze the jugular veins until it cut off the blood flow to her brain, and she passed out...
'I knew if I took my hands off of her, she would still keep me from Nikki. They asked me why she couldn't fight back, it's because she couldn't fight back. Her eyes filled with blood; as she looked at me and she died. I knew she was gone when she relieved herself.'
Watts said that, to his surprise, his daughters came walking into the room while he was wrapping Shanann in a bedsheet and began asking what was wrong with their mom. He told them that she wasn't feeling well.
[...]
Watts told Cadle: 'The girls were just kind of running around the house, and watching me with scared looks on their faces. Bella started to cry and when she did Celeste started whimpering. What a nightmare this was.'
[...]
