A true crime of recent concern. Not long after the Netflix documentary was launched, I listened to the three episodes of the voice of the victim podcast with great interest after watching it. Both works are well made, recommend ?.
In Colorado, USA in 2018, Chris Watts' family of 5 (his pregnant wife Shanann Watts, 15-week-old boy Nico Watts, and two daughters Bella and Celeste, about three or four years old) lived in a small town. Their husband and wife have been married for 8 years. After marriage, his wife Shanann often shares the family's happy daily life on IG and FB. Over time, she can be regarded as a small Internet celebrity. In addition to working at home, online careers are getting better and better. Husband Chris works as a clerk at an oil company in the town. One morning, the pregnant wife and two daughters were gone. His wife's best friend Nicole ran to their house to knock on the door because she couldn't contact her friends, and then called the police. Chris usually wakes up after 5am and drives to work, and rushes home after receiving the news. The police, Nicole and Chris went to the house to find someone, and found Shannan's phone still at home, there was no sign of a fight, but the person was gone.
Chris said Shanann ended a business trip out of town last night and got home about 1 or 2 in the morning because of a late flight. When he got up for work in the morning, he and Shanann mentioned their breakup, and the two had an emotional argument. Therefore, he believes that his wife left the house with her daughter in a fit of anger. In the following days, he was interviewed by the media, and he has been very cooperative, hoping that his wife and daughters will come back soon.
In fact, the police have grasped the fact that Chris had an extramarital affair, although Chris has always denied it. In fact, two months ago, Shanann took her two daughters back to their family home in North Carolina to play. During these two months, Chris stayed in town to work alone. He started dating a woman he met at work named Nicole (just the same name as his best friend). Gradually, he began to distance himself from Shanann, neither answering the phone nor chatting. On the other hand, he tells Nicole that he and his wife are separating and never wears a wedding ring in front of Nicole. Shanann, who was out of town, noticed her husband's sudden indifference, but didn't know why. She wrote to her husband, looking for the reasons for her character, and asking if her husband was cheating, but Chris denied that his wife had proposed a way to save the marriage, claiming that he still loved her very much and everything was normal.
The FBI gave Chris a very skillful questioning (worth learning). Instead of accusing him directly, say he had an extramarital affair, saying he was too quiet, saying he was suspected of murdering his wife and daughter, they pretended to be in line with him and asked him what he thought happened and what kind of person might have taken it away His wife and daughter, he felt that he had caught this person and how to deal with it, so as to find suspicion and loopholes in his description, so that he could not argue with his own words. For example, when asked what to do, Chris even asked the police if the death penalty would be imposed. When trying to get rid of his suspicion, Chris actually said I would never do this to my baby girls. At that time, neither the police nor Chris should know what "this" is, because what happened to Shanann and the children? Everyone knows (except prisoners).
Chris was then asked to take a polygraph test, which he agreed to in order to continue playing the role of a cooperating husband. Four hours before the test, the staff operating the polygraph and Chris had a four-hour pre-talk. Before the official test, the staff member said to Chris you know, you are a bad liar. The final test result showed that Chris was lying, so he became nervous, and two FBI agents entered the room to interrogate (also very interesting, the podcast tells the story) very good).
Chris seemed to collapse, crying and explaining: After he broke up with Shanann in the morning, Shanann strangled his two daughters with his hands in a fit of rage. He was furious when he saw it and did the same to Shanann. However, the matter does not end here, because the logic does not make sense. A pregnant mother strangled her two daughters? And according to Chris, he saw Shanann on top of one of his daughters and "they were blue." Both still killing and just being killed, the body discolored?
After being incarcerated, Chris finally admitted that he murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters after repeated questioning by the police. Early that morning, he and Shanann broke up, and Shanann was very saddened to tell him that he would never see his daughter and leave. He suffocated his wife on the bed in anger. At this time, the 4-year-old daughter came in and asked his mother what was wrong, and he said nothing. Chris then wrapped his dead wife in a blanket into the back seat of the car and carried his two daughters into the car. He drove 1-2 hours to work, buried Shanann in the soil, then put his hand over the mouth and nose of 3-year-old Cece in front of 4-year-old Bella. Bella said no, Daddy. to him and asked are you going to do the same to me? Chris said he didn't remember if he answered his daughter and then killed Bella as well. He threw the bodies of his two daughters into the oil tank and drove off.
Chris, 38, was sentenced to multiple life sentences without parole for life, but was spared the death penalty. Subsequent investigations revealed that after killing his wife and daughter, he called the nursery to cancel his daughter’s school status, put the house up for sale with an intermediary, and sent a message to his lover Nicole to start planning their future lives. This is a murder that makes everyone unbelievable. If it is said that the murder of his wife was a spur of the moment, can he still not be able to calm down after driving for an hour, and he continues to brutally kill his own children. Is just two months of extramarital affairs enough for him to kill his wife who has been together for 8 years and is still pregnant with a young child? The particularity of this case also lies in Shanann's frequent life records on social networks, which made the whole case a very complete and detailed documentary, and shocked everyone who knew about their family on the Internet. Whether or not the real story is what Chris said is unknown, because he's such a liar.
Unconsciously, I wrote more. In fact, there are many things that can be discussed in this case. For example, at first everyone believed Chris's lies, that Shanann killed his daughter, and some of them were even Chris's fans. A large number of people on the Internet carried out very vicious victim blaming, and also went to attack Shanann's elderly parents and younger brother, saying that Shanann is a complete bitch. Another example is the reflection on the relationship between men and women and marriage. Women are very brave. Because of their love, they resolutely choose to live in the same room with a man who is very different in physical strength from them. In such an emotional and vulnerable time of pregnancy, she reaps betrayal and death. The documentary's final credits read: "In the United States, three women are killed every day by their current or former ex."
View more about American Murder: The Family Next Door reviews
