Two Face- the Man Underneath Christopher Watts

by Nick van der Leek

  Thursday, August 16

  “You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.”― Captain Beefheart

  At 23:30 Chris Watts is taken to jail. At four minutes after midnight, Nickole Utoft Atkinson changes her profile picture to a picture of Shan’ann, Bella, Celeste and a reference to “unborn Kino” with the words “Rest in Peace” superimposed in black.

  At #2825 Saratoga a flatbed tow truck with a yellow cab pulls up just about 02:00. The operator, chewing gum, gets to work loading Chris’s truck in order to tow it to the police impound yard. Through the graveyard shift investigators stream in and out of the house carrying items in garbage bags.

  Newsweek reports early the next morning about the murder charges filed against Chris Watt, that he’s being held at Weld County Jail while adding that Frankie had known all along it had to be him:

  Rzucek believed it was obvious his brother-in-law was responsible. “He was the only one with them and backed his truck into the garage. Doesn’t take a genius to know who was suspect. My blood is boiling and the pain and anger and sadness I have in my heart.”

  At 10:30 on Thursday morning, the cops give another press conference. They say they have the body of a woman but are still trying to locate the remains of the two little girls. The police believe they have an idea where their remains are, but don’t actually have them. This suggests further alerts from the cadaver dogs, but no more than that, perhaps because the oil has succeeded in interrupting their following of the scent. It’s also likely that knowing where the remains are in the drums is one thing, opening the drums and recovering what’s inside is another. It requires technical knowhow and thus permission from Anadarko.

  Curiously, the company seems to wash its hand quickly of its “former employee”, at least according to NBC:

  Chris Watts worked for Anadarko in the past but is no longer with the company, Anadarko said in a statement Thursday. The statement did not say when he started with the company, when he left or the circumstances of the departure.

  “We are heart-broken by this, and our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones and friends of the Watts family. We will continue to support law enforcement in its investigation,” Anadarko said.

  At 14:30, as the greasy, dirty, smelly search for Bella and Celeste’s little bodies continues, their father appears at the Weld County court dressed in bright orange prison garb. Watts is wearing a pair of black rimmed glasses and ignores the phalanx of reporters as he makes his way into court.

  During a brief twenty minute hearing, it’s alleged by the district attorney that all the killings took place inside the Watts family home. District Judge Marcelo Kopcow denies bond to Chris Watts. The Judge says once he’s formally charged, bond can be reconsidered.

  The deadline to file charges [this is in reference to the still missing children] is set for Monday at 15:30. The next court appearance is scheduled for the day after, Tuesday at 10:00. And with that, court is adjourned and Chris Watts remanded into custody at Weld County jail.

  At 15:37 Nickole Utoft Atkinson posts another announcement:

  PLEASE friends, do not speak to the media. We need to fiercely protect the integrity of this investigation…Please share.

  Later that evening, the two children are salvaged from two separate oil tanks a few feet from the shallow earth grave of their mother. By then 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste have floated in crude oil for four days.

  Friday, August 17

  “Dog is God spelled backward.” ―Duane Chapman

  On Thursday afternoon, the Watts case hits CNN, and the issue of motive begins to enter the true crime ether.

  Authorities have not revealed a possible motive or other details in the case. A judge sealed the arrest affidavit, which might have provided that information.

  On Friday morning, autopsies are conducted on all three victims. While Chris Watts hoped the oil would hide the smell of his dead and decomposing family, it may have preserved critical fragments of DNA left behind when he committed the crime, such as under fingernails. The results of the autopsies are not released by the Weld County Coroner’s Office either.

  Nick and Amanda Thayer, meanwhile, feel they have to take stock to the media for inviting a murderer into the safety of their home. Their interview appears to be aimed at apologising to the public, and putting it on the record that they no longer support Chris Watts.

  Even so, Amanda Thayer sitting on a park bench with her husband next to her tearfully tells the reporter, “They-they had the perfect family. They were a family…they spent Thanksgivings with us.”

  Nick and Amanda were seen standing beside the porch on the day Chris gave his interview. Did they not notice the police running around? Did they not pay attention to what Chris was saying, or rather, what he wasn’t saying? In the early days they defended their friend and lodger on social media.

  As a sign of how close the Thayer’s are – or were – to Shan’ann and her children, Nick tearfully tells the reporter that Shan’ann’s mom called him that morning and made him promise to collect Deeter.

  “She wanted our word that we’d take good care of him, because Deeter’s the last thing they have – and they-they wanna…they wanna take him home.”

  While on the phone to Shan’ann’s mom, they apologised to her, admitting: “We didn’t know. We thought we were doing the right thing…We really had no idea that he was capable of…[inaudible]…I hate it. I hate all of this.”

  For the first time there is a sense from someone in the community that perhaps someone ought to have thought about Chris, and thought things through. But what about thinking about their friends while Shan’ann and their children were still alive. Had they noticed anything then? If they’d failed to look for anything in the emergency following their disappearance, what are the chances they’d seen any signs or symptoms in the long emergency leading to the catastrophe on August 13th?

  Nick is troubled by how he’s going to tell his daughter about Bella and Celeste. According to Café Mom he said:

  “I just looked at, while I was giving [Emily] a bath this morning and taking her to school, I just kept looking at her like, how do I tell you that your best friend’s gone?”

  Amanda Thayer admits that Shan’ann told her she thought Chris was having an affair, but then walks it back and says Shan’ann was just joking, and she didn’t pay attention to it. Not to be unkind, but shouldn’t she have paid attention? The young couple are possibly in shock, unable to see the wood for the trees.

  At 20:30 a candlelight vigil is held on the front lawn in front of the Watts’ now empty home in Frederick. Hundreds attend, adding to a growing pile of balloons, stuffed toys and crucifixes. Over the next few day more people will arrive, pay their respects and leave behind a symbol of their sympathy for the victims on the bright green grass in front of the vacant house.

  Monday, August 20

  “Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.” ―Adam Smith

  Over the weekend, social media erupts with comments, criticism and coverage of the Watts case. Those in Shan’ann’s circle who have photos of her, eagerly excavate their archives and post them for all to see. Cover photos are altered. Profile photos too. The message is the same.

  I knew her!

  Monica Jean Kutchinsky makes her cover page an image from the previous weekend of a dozen women dining together in Phoenix. Emblazoned on the image are the words in blue:

  This is how I thrive.

  Many in the background hold up three fingers, including Shan’ann. It seems to be a cult code: 3 = thrive. The fact that Shan’ann is no longer thriving but dead, and her children also no longer thriving but dumped into oil drums, doesn’t seem to register.

  This is how I thrive.

  At about 16:00, pretty much the last moment, but before the prescribed deadline, the Weld County District Attorney’s Office announces nine official charges against Christopher Watts. Bes
ides first-degree murder charges an additional count has been added for “unlawful termination of pregnancy”.

  Half an hour later the court finally releases the arrest affidavit to the media. Although we’ll analyse the merits of the affidavit in detail in the next section, it would be remiss not to mention at this point Watts’ claim that his wife killed their children. According to CBS’s summary of the report:

  Watts told police that after discussing the separation he walked downstairs. When he returned, he told them he spotted a baby monitor on his wife’s nightstand [which showed Shan’ann] “actively strangling” 3-year-old Celeste. He said the video feed also showed 4-year-old Bella “sprawled out on her bed and blue.”

  This caused Chris to go into a rage, and strangle Shan’ann. Then he loaded all three bodies into the truck and dumped them at the oil tank battery. According to the affidavit, Chris later identified three separate locations to the cops by referring to an aerial photo they provided. Shan’ann’s body was found first at 16:15.

  But the most startling information in the affidavit is a small sliver of text near the bottom of the second page. Four lines have been redacted, but a few words that remain clearly state that Chris was “actively involved in an affair with a co-worker, something he’d denied in previous interviews.

  August 21-September 1

  “Hypocrisy walks on two legs, and calls himself human.” ― Anthony T. Hincks

  At 10:00, on Tuesday, on schedule, Chris Watts makes his second court appearance. He arrives at court shackled at his wrists and ankles. Despite not needing to read any statements, he wears the same black rimmed glasses he wore during his first hearing. He appears unemotional and stoic, in stark contrast to Shan’ann’s father Frank, whose face burns red as the charges are read, and the terrible reality of what has happened to them is absorbed once more.

  When Judge Kopcow addresses Watts directly, telling him anything he says in court could be used against him – and does he understand this – Watts responds with a “yes sir” and then sucks in his lip and bites it, as if to stop himself from smiling.

  Then Kopcow reads the charges. There are many to go through, and as he reads out the names, reality sinks in. Shan’ann’s father begins sobbing into his hands. Next to him Shan’ann’s brother Frankie rubs his father’s shoulders while glaring at Chris, who blinks mutely from a table a few feet away.

  Judge Kopcow pencils in November 19th for the commencement of criminal proceedings against Chris Watts.

  The next ten days pass in a blur. Frederick is festooned with purple ribbons, Shan’ann’s favorite color. A second vigil is held. And finally on September 1, after a one hour service, the four lost lives are interred in the soil of Pinehurst North Carolina.

  But can their souls rest in peace so soon after such catastrophe has taken their lives so suddenly, and so severely. How could they? How can we until we know why this happened?

  PLUMBING THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK

  “It’s when I put on my best face that I end up lying to the world.” ― Anthony T. Hincks.

  A Home of our Own?

  “Their life, apparently, wasn’t perfect.” ― Washington Post, August 17, 2018

  Everything in the preceding section is fairly well-known. What follows is less clear, recondite, though not nearly as alien or unfamiliar as we may expect. As we navigate our way through the monster’s murky psychology, pushing through his dark impulses and penetrating his despicable motivations, will we find ourselves far from familiar places, or troublingly closer to them?

  We begin our journey into the psychological ether where we started: at #2825 Saratoga Trail. Home. Take a good long look, because we’ll be revisiting not only the impressions and dimensions of this house from the outside, from the inside, from the perspective of money, but also through the prism of its symbolism. We’ll come back again and again throughout this section to look at the Watts house to see what it tells us about that family. To determine to what extent this house was really a home, or not. More importantly, we’ll return to this address to search out and find out what it’s hiding.

  A house is a simple thing, but it’s not an easy thing to buy, keep and maintain. A home is even harder. Even if you manage to pay for the plaster, the nails, the window sills, it’s another business altogether living in it, and finding one’s way to an authentic happiness [whatever that may be].

  For Shan’ann the idea of a house was symbolic. It is for most of us. If she had a house she could make a home for herself. The two go hand in hand, don’t they? If you have the one you get the other, almost like a buy-one-get-one-free deal, right? But does a home really come with the house? Automatically? What if it doesn’t? And what’s going on when there’s a house but no home? What does that look like, feel like, sound like?

  What is authentic happiness? What is a happy home these days?

  Perhaps it’s easier to answer those questions by addressing what’s not a happy home; by examining happiness that’s inauthentic.

  The valuable 31 minute 12 second Facebook Live video posted by Shan’ann on Saturday May 5th, 2018 provides a continuous, unfiltered view of the Watts family dynamic. Four months before the murder we’re provided with an extended peek into the inside of the home. They’re all there, four different identities, four different personalities, four lives washing with and against each other. Three lives, and a fourth on the way, agitating – for some reason – against Chris Watts.

  We may look at this video and see Shan’ann and the kids on the one hand, and Chris Watts – the murderer-in-waiting – as separate entities, but that’s a mistake. Four months earlier, Chris Watts wasn’t a murderer, but probably he’d already begun to entertain murderous fantasies. Since he killed not one of his family members, but the entire family, we need to examine this footage first and foremost for what it says about the Watts family, not the individuals themselves. We need to do that and we’ll get to that, but we must begin this process of fathoming the family dynamic by feeling out the spirit of the Watts family.

  Zooming in from a distance, the first thing we notice in the half hour clip is that Shan’ann and Chris never interact. In fact Chris has his back to Shan’ann throughout. She glances towards him constantly, while talking. Later, Shan’ann gets up, crosses the hall and sits outside the house to finish her story.

  One might say a single clip can hardly be held up as a symbol for the entire marriage, and perhaps it can’t. But let’s test this idea, this symbolism, and see how far it takes us.

  On a personal note, I was struck by how fragile Shan’ann sounded. The timbre of her voice was a lot softer and to be honest, weaker, than the many vivid and colorful pictures of her suggested. I don’t mean to be mean – I’ve had the same thing said to me. That I don’t sound like my writing when I speak, and don’t sound like I look. So making this observation about Shan’ann – it’s done with compassion.

  I was also struck by the genuineness of what she was saying, whilst being oddly put off by the context of it. Looking at Shan’ann’s caption for the clip, we see why her personal story suddenly seems less personal:

  Saturday’s with Le-Vel #MyLVLife

  Given that Shan’ann’s spiel on Facebook was just that, a spiel, is it so surprising that Chris has his back turned and has nothing to contribute? To be clear a spiel is, according to the dictionary definition at Vocabulary.com:

  a lengthy, often glib talk that’s intended to persuade or make excuses. Infomercials feature salespeople giving a 30-minute spiel about some product…

  The word derives from German, and means “to play”.

  Zooming in further, we see Shan’ann is wearing pajamas with the words: Thrive With Me emblazoned in a purple box frame. All of this casts what she’s saying into a particular context, and of course that’s the point. Her audience [potential customers] are supposed to listen to her story and then be inspired to buy a Thrive product or get involved in the Thrive “lifestyle”. That’s the point.

  In
the next chapters we’ll spend some time looking at how many posts are spontaneous that don’t attempt to sell something, and what that implies, but before we get there let’s be clear: pretty much none of the family stuff is without some spiel, some angle to hawk Thrive to her Facebook friends.

  It’s astonishing that we get all of this information simply by spending some time on the “long view”. We haven’t paid any attention to a word that’s said in the half hour clip, and in a sense, we don’t have to. Hard as it may be to hear, the entire clip is bullshit. Thrive bullshit. It’s subsumed by not only selling yourself, but your soul too, and worse, your family’s soul.

  That doesn’t mean the sentiments Shan’ann’s expressing aren’t valid, or that what she’s saying isn’t true, or doesn’t matter. Of course they do. But the fact that these sentiments that mean something have been harnessed to sell something does counterfeit their meaning.

  Part of this narrative is to interrogate not whether the meaning the Watts home portrayed to the world was counterfeit, but how much it was. It’s important then to see that even though this clip was recorded four months before the catastrophic killings, the fabric was in place for what was wrong with the home.

  We’ll revisit the fabric and examine it, but now let’s drill down into the content of Shan’ann’s half hour spiel.

  An Initial Analysis of Shan’ann’s 30 Minute Video + Six Unintended Thrive-With-Me Insights

  “I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.” ―Aldous Huxley

  Shan’ann’s spiel starts off about how great it is not to work on weekends, as she did in her previous job, because there’s so much going on and she can now do all those things. Of course the video itself, first thing on Saturday morning, is work.