Nearly eight years after Chris Watts strangled his pregnant wife and smothered his two young daughters in their Colorado home, case file evidence he fought to suppress continues to surface, autopsy findings, crime-scene photographs, and discovery materials that document, in clinical detail, what he did to the people closest to him.
Watts, now 41 and serving life without parole in a Wisconsin prison, pleaded guilty in August 2018 to killing his wife Shanann, their four-year-old daughter Bella, and their three-year-old daughter Celeste. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant. He admitted he destroyed his family so he could start over with his co-worker and mistress, Nichol Kessinger.
What he did not want anyone to see, and what he asked his lawyers to keep sealed, was the physical record of how he did it. The Daily Mail has revisited those case files, including autopsy reports and investigative photographs, drawing on interviews with a woman who spent years in close contact with Watts behind bars and with Dylan Tallman, a former cellmate.
The autopsy findings for Bella and Celeste Watts are difficult to read. They should be.
Bella was recovered wearing a pink pajama-style top decorated with hearts and butterflies, drenched in thick black crude oil, with only oil-soaked underwear beneath. Pathologists found green-black oily fluid and debris inside her stomach. The coroner documented injuries inside her mouth, trauma to her jaw, and bite marks on her tongue. Her official cause of death: smothering.
Celeste was found in a pink-and-black t-shirt, a diaper, and underwear, all saturated in oil and debris. Her cause of death was the same. Both girls' autopsies described bloating, discoloration, skin slippage, and damage to internal organs.
Watts had forced both children's bodies through the narrow hatches of oil tanks at an Anadarko Petroleum work site. An unnamed woman who corresponded with and visited Watts in prison described the hatches to the Daily Mail in stark terms.
"Think of a dinner plate; he was stuffing the girls through a hole smaller than that. Just really awful."
Shanann's body was buried in a shallow grave roughly 100 yards from those tanks. Photographs from the discovery files show the clothing she wore when she was killed: a heavily soiled shirt, blue underwear, and a black bra, all recovered from the burial site.
From prison, Watts worked to keep those details out of public view. The unnamed female source told the Daily Mail that after his confession, Watts privately asked his lawyers whether there were ways to prevent the records from becoming public.
"He didn't want it to get out. If you read the reports, they're horrifying. He didn't want that to be out there, because that makes him look like even more of a monster."
That effort failed. Under Colorado law, autopsy reports are generally considered public records once an investigation is complete, unless a judge determines their release would substantially harm the public interest. Prosecutors had attempted to temporarily seal the autopsy reports and related graphic materials before trial, citing potential jury prejudice. But Watts' guilty plea in August 2018 eliminated the need for a trial, and with it, the strongest legal basis for keeping the files sealed.
The female source offered her own read on Watts' motives.
"I think once he realized what he had done, the idea was just too gruesome."
Watts' pattern of deception ran in both directions, before the murders and long after.
When police first made contact, he told them Shanann and the girls had simply vanished. When that story collapsed, he offered a second one: Shanann had killed the children, and he had killed her in a rage. That was also a lie. In a February 2019 prison interview reported by the Associated Press, Watts admitted he was solely responsible. He strangled Shanann in their bed after telling her the marriage was over. He then smothered Celeste and Bella with a blanket at the Anadarko oil site, approximately 40 miles from their home in Frederick, Colorado.
Watts told investigators his earlier claim that Shanann killed the children was a fabrication, that detectives had first suggested the scenario and he "just went with it."
His daughters were awake for part of it. Watts told investigators that Bella and Celeste asked him, "What are you doing to Mommy?", words that appear in the AP's account of his confession.
From prison, Watts continued to reshape the narrative. His former cellmate Dylan Tallman told the Daily Mail that Watts described his affair with Kessinger as the catalyst, but framed himself as a man overtaken rather than a man who chose.
"I was having an affair with this girl, and I ended up in love with two women at the same time. It's what led up to what happened. She is of evil spirits, like Jezebel."
Watts also claimed he "lost control and was possessed by evil" on the night of the killings, language that shifts blame from his own decisions to forces beyond his control.
The case files and text messages paint a picture of a woman who sensed something was wrong but could not have imagined what was coming.
Text messages obtained by the New York Post show Shanann writing to a friend in the days before her death: "My eyes burn from crying so much" and "I haven't slept most the week." She and Chris had been planning a gender-reveal party for the unborn baby, scheduled for August 19 with roughly 50 guests and $860 in supplies. On August 8, Shanann canceled it after Chris admitted he did not want the third child. She asked for a divorce.
In another text, Shanann wrote: "This baby in my belly deserves his full love. Either way."
Shanann's mother, Sandra Rzucek, suspected Chris almost immediately. Fox News reported that Rzucek contacted law enforcement just one day after the family was reported missing, describing Chris's behavior as bizarre. A Frederick Police Department supplemental report quoted Rzucek saying she believed Chris "is going out to pour oil on the bodies to dispose of them somewhere." She was right.
A nearly 2,000-page case file released by the Weld County District Attorney's Office documented the deteriorating marriage through text messages. In one, Shanann told a friend that Chris had said he was "scared to death about this third baby" and was "happy with just Bella and Celeste and doesn't want another baby."
Among the more disturbing items recovered from discovery files is a photograph Watts sent Shanann by text in the days before the murders. It showed a large plastic doll wrapped in sheet-like fabric. Watts told Shanann the girls had done it while playing.
The Daily Mail described the image as bearing "a chilling resemblance to the way Shanann's body was discovered", an editorial characterization, but one grounded in the physical details of how Shanann was found buried at the oil site.
Discovery files also captured internet searches recovered from Nichol Kessinger's phone. Those searches included pornographic content, searches for "interracial sex" and "threesome with double penetration", on days she met up with Watts. The correlation between the search dates and the meeting dates was documented in the investigative files.
Kessinger's role in the case has remained a subject of public interest, though she was never charged. Watts, from behind bars, described his affair with her as the force that destroyed his life, even as he cast her as a corrupting influence rather than acknowledging his own agency.
Chris Watts wanted control, over the narrative, over the evidence, over how the public understood what he did on August 13, 2018. He lied to police. He lied about who killed his children. He asked his lawyers to seal the records. He told a cellmate he was "possessed by evil," as if the murders were something that happened to him rather than something he did.
The autopsy reports, the discovery photographs, the text messages, and the confession transcripts tell a different story. They document a man who strangled his pregnant wife, smothered a four-year-old and a three-year-old, and forced their small bodies through openings smaller than a dinner plate, then spent years trying to manage how much of that truth the public would see.
From prison, Watts told a correspondent that he has confessed his sins and considers himself forgiven. "I know that God does not see me as a sinner who killed his family; he sees me as His child," he wrote.
Bella and Celeste never got the chance to speak for themselves. The case files do it for them, and no amount of prison-cell image management can make those records say anything other than what they say.
