The Family Next Door, a Netflix documentary, looks at the murder of Shannan Watts and her two daughters, Celeste and Bella. This was one of the most shocking real-life crimes of 2018.
Watts and her children were killed by her husband, Chris Watts, which was a shock. Chris, on the other hand, said he wasn’t guilty until a key point in the investigation when he changed his story.
Oxygen says that Chris’s dad, Ronnie, went to the police station and told his son to tell the truth.
Murderer Chris Watts Parents: Are Cindy Watts And Ronnie Watts Still Alive?
Cindy and Ronnie Watts, Chris Watts’s parents, are said to still be alive. They’ve talked to the media more than once about their son and what they think about the terrible thing he did.
In a November 2018 interview with Denver 7, Ronnie and Cindy Watts talked about Chris’s guilty plea to killing his pregnant wife and their two children.
Even though they said they were sad, they also said they didn’t think the rest of the world knew Chris’s whole story.
People says that in November 2018, Chris Watt’s parents told him in court that they forgive him.
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How old are Cindy Watts and Ronnie Watts in 2022?
Cindy Watts and Ronnie Watts, Chris Watts’s parents, might both be in their late 60s. In the same way, Ronnie Watts might be a few years older than Cindy Watts, his wife.
But the age given above is just a guess, since their exact age and other details have not been made public yet.
Information about Cindy and Ronnie Watts’s kids and family
Chris is the only child of Ronnie Watts and his wife Cindy Watts. They also had three grandchildren, and their own son killed three of them.
After the movies “Chris Watts: Confession of a Killer” and “American Murder: The Family Next Door” came out, the case and the family were all over the news.
In the same way, Netflix’s documentary dug deep into the case to find out why Chris killed his own two kids, Bella and Celeste, and his wife, Shanann Watts.
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Background
Christopher Watts and Shanann Cathryn Rzucek (born Watts; died August 13, 2018) were both from North Carolina. Christopher was from Spring Lake and Shanann was from Aberdeen. Online records show that they met in 2010 and got married in Mecklenburg County on November 3, 2012. They had two daughters: Bella Marie Watts, who died on August 13, 2018, and Celeste Cathryn “CeCe” Watts, who died on December 17, 2013. (July 17, 2015 – August 13, 2018). Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant with a son she was going to name Nico when she died.
The Watts family bought a five-bedroom home in Frederick, Colorado, in 2013.[4, 5] In 2015, they filed for bankruptcy. Christopher worked for Anadarko Petroleum, and Shanann sold Thrive for the multi-level marketing company Le-Vel from her home.
Disappearance
Shanann was driven home by her friend and coworker Nickole Utoft Atkinson at 1:48 a.m. on Monday, August 13, 2018. She had just come back from a business trip to Arizona. Christopher was home with their daughters that weekend. Atkinson reported Shanann and the girls missing later that day. He was worried when Shanann didn’t show up for her obstetrics and gynecology appointment and didn’t answer her texts. Shanann missed a business meeting, so Atkinson went to the Watts’ house at about 12:10 p.m. Atkinson called Christopher, who was at work, and told him that no one was answering the doorbell or knocks. He also called the Frederick Police Department.
At about 1:40 p.m., a police officer from Frederick came to do a well-being check. During the welfare check, Christopher gave the police officer permission to search the house. The family dog was found unharmed, but neither Shanann nor the girls were there. Shanann’s purse with her keys and the girls’ medicine was found. Later, her phone was found in the family home between the couch cushions. The girls’ car seats were still in her car, which was in the garage. Shanann’s wedding band was on the table next to her bed.
The next day, the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) joined the probe. Christopher told police at first that he didn’t know where his family was and that he hadn’t seen his wife since he left for work at 5:15 a.m. the day before. Outside the house, he talked to Denver TV stations KMGH-TV and KUSA-TV and begged for his wife and daughters to come back. During the interview, people with search dogs were heard on the property.
Cases go to court
On August 15, 2018, Christopher was put in jail. The arrest affidavit and security camera footage from the interview room say that he failed a polygraph test and then admitted to killing Shanann. Before he told, he asked to talk to his father. The affidavit says that Christopher was having an affair and that he asked Shanann for a breakup. During the investigation, he said that Shanann had strangled the girls in response to his request for separation, and that he had then strangled her in a fit of anger and taken the bodies to a remote oil storage site leased by his employer, Anadarko Petroleum.
Christopher lost his job on August 15, the same day he was arrested. On August 16, the bodies of the Watts family were found on the Anadarko Petroleum site. The bodies of the girls were found in storage tanks for crude oil, and Shanann was found nearby in a shallow grave.
Christopher was charged with three counts of first-degree murder on August 21, as well as an extra one count per child for “death of a child who had not yet reached 12 years of age and the defendant was in a position of trust.” He was also charged with unlawfully ending a pregnancy and three counts of tampering with a dead body. At his first court hearing, bail was not given to him. At a later hearing, bail was set at $5 million, and he had to pay 15% of that to get out of jail.
In the news, this case has been linked to the crime of “family annihilation” (familicide). A lot of these crimes happen in August, before school starts, which can make it harder to find them and figure out what happened. Candice DeLong, a former FBI profiler, said that cases like the Watts’ are rare because “family annihilators usually commit suicide after the murders.” Christopher said he had thought about suicide because he felt guilty about what he had done.
Christopher’s lawyer said in an interview with Dr. Phil that Christopher admitted to killing Shanann after an argument about divorce. Bella walked in on the couple as they were killing someone. Then Christopher told her that Shanann wasn’t feeling well. Shanann’s body and the girls, who were not in their car seats, were put in the back seat of his work truck. He then killed the girls one by one by smothering them.
Plea deal and sentencing
On November 6, Christopher admitted to killing the two people. Shanann’s family asked the district attorney not to seek the death penalty because they didn’t want any more people to die. They thought it was a good idea for him to take the deal. On November 19, he was given five life sentences, three after the other and two at the same time, with no chance of parole. He got an extra 48 years for ending Shanann’s pregnancy without her consent and 36 years for three counts of tampering with a dead body. The start of his sentence was right away.
Christopher was moved to a place outside of his home state on December 3, 2018, because of “security concerns.” On December 5, he went to a maximum-security prison in Waupun, Wisconsin, called Dodge Correctional Institution, where he would continue to serve his life sentences.
What the media say
Shanann’s parents were talked to for the first time since the murders on a December 2018 episode of the ABC News show 20/20. In the same month, HLN aired a special called “Family Massacre: Chris Watts Exposed,” which showed footage of Christopher from police body cameras and security cameras in the interview room of the police station. In an interview with Christopher’s mistress, Nichol Kessinger, that was recorded and released by the CBI, she said that he changed in the days before the murders.
On a December 2018 episode of the American talk show Dr. Phil, host Phil McGraw talked to four crime experts: former prosecutor and TV journalist Nancy Grace, former FBI profiler Candice DeLong, law enforcement consultant Steve Kardian, and body language expert Susan Constantine. The experts looked at Christopher’s goals, his secret life, and his profile. On an episode of The Dr. Oz Show from January 2019, the neighbor who helped build the case against him is interviewed in-studio and gives his thoughts on the case.
In June 2021, Inside Edition said that Chris Watts had said more things to a pen pal. Watts said in several letters that he had planned the murder for a few weeks and that he gave Shanann the oxycodone that was found in her system to try to end her pregnancy. He said, “I thought it would be easier to be with Nichol if Shanann wasn’t pregnant.” He also said that he tried to suffocate his daughters in their beds at home but failed.
Adaptations
On December 7, 2019, Oxygen aired the first episode of season three of their TV show Criminal Confessions, which was a one-hour documentary about the case.
As part of its “Ripped from the Headlines” series, Lifetime showed a movie called “Chris Watts: Confessions of a Killer” on January 26, 2020. Chris is played by Sean Kleier, and Shanann is played by Ashley Williams. Shanann’s family spoke out against the movie, saying that they weren’t asked what they thought about it and didn’t know it was being made until it was already in the works. They have also said that they are not making any money from it and that they are afraid it will make the online harassment they were already getting worse.
A documentary called American Murder: The Family Next Door came out on Netflix on September 30, 2020. Archival footage like home videos, social media posts, text messages, and police recordings are used in the documentary.
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