Shanann Watts, 34, tried to save her marriage to Chris Watts by ordering him the relationship book "Hold Me Tight." He never opened it. Police later found the book still sealed in an Amazon box, thrown away in the garage, after Shanann was already dead for three days.
Chris Watts murdered Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant, and their daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, in the early morning of August 13, 2018. He then drove to a remote oil site in northern Colorado, buried Shanann in a shallow grave, and hid the girls in oil tanks. In the first days after the killings, he acted like a worried husband, pleading on television for help finding them and claiming Shanann disappeared after an emotional argument.
The case later exposed how he had been living a double life. His relationship with co-worker Nicole Kessinger became widely known, but investigators reviewing the case again found claims about another woman, Amanda McMahon, who said she met him on Tinder in February or March 2018. She told police he met her at a Chick-fil-A parking lot, said he had separated from the mother of his children, and then behaved in a sexually aggressive way at her home. Watts denied ever meeting her.
On August 19, 2018, police also received four anonymous emails describing a woman named Heidi Frieri and a hidden app that looked like a calculator but opened into private messaging. That detail proved accurate, and investigators found such an app on Watts’s phone, along with intimate photos and videos. It also revealed months of messages and outings with Kessinger, including museums, drag races, camping, and sexual photo exchanges while Shanann was trying to reach him. Shanann texted him, "How many times do I have to ask you to hug me? Do you hate me that much?" He replied, "I don’t hate you. I’ll fix this, it’ll be better."
As the disappearance unfolded, Shanann’s car remained in the driveway with the girls’ car seats inside, while her wallet, medication, and phone were left at home. Her friends and mother quickly suspected Watts. He tried to create an alibi, texted Shanann asking where the girls were, and called Bella and Celeste’s school saying the family was moving. After failing a polygraph, he first blamed Shanann, then confessed. In November 2018 he pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and other charges, and is serving five life sentences, three consecutively. Kessinger was never charged.
