When David stepped in the house, he noticed Chris had been doing housework. The carpet appeared as it had just been vacuumed, and Chris was in the middle of making himself a protein shake. Jeremy Lindstrom, a mutual friend, showed up shortly after. Chris had just been at Jeremy’s house with his daughters the day before, on Sunday, for Jeremy’s son’s birthday party.
Chris told his friends that he and Shanann were having marital difficulties and that the reason for Shanann’s trip to North Carolina was a trial separation to see how they would be when they were apart. This morning, he had told her that he wanted an official separation. Colon asked Chris about the potential of foul play, but Chris confided that he thought Shanann had taken the girls and was hiding out somewhere. He also mentioned that he was worried that the girls didn’t have any of their medications with them.
Colon thought Chris seemed emotionally blank considering everything that was happening, but it wasn’t like him to show emotion anyway. He seemed stunned, almost in disbelief this was happening to him. Colon thought of Chris as the most low-key guy he had ever met and firmly believed he had nothing to do with their disappearance. In fact, he believed that if there was anything like infidelity going on in the relationship, Shanann would be the one to cheat, not Chris.
• • •
Back at the Frederick Police Station, Officer James was making calls to Shanann’s and Chris’s friends to see if they had any information pertaining to the whereabouts of Shanann, Bella, and CeCe.
He picked up the phone and called Addy, one of Shanann’s closest friends. Even though Addy lived in Maryland, she was in constant contact with Shanann. On the same Thrive sales team, they spoke frequently about work, and their friendship had also become extremely close to the point that they confided in each other about personal matters.
When Officer James reached Addy on the phone, she was very worried about Shanann. She had just been in Arizona with her, Nicki, Cassie, and some other friends for the Le-Vel business trip. She told Officer James that on Sunday evening, right before Shanann boarded her flight home to Colorado, she had expressed concern to Addy that she thought Chris might be having an affair. His change in behavior and wanting a separation had been so sudden that the thought had crossed Shanann’s mind that he could have met someone else. Still, she had brushed that thought aside, mentioning that Chris had “no game.”
Besides, that also would have been completely out of character for him. Addy and the other girls had reassured her there was no way Chris would do that. They all knew him and the way he looked at Shanann. He was not one of “those guys,” and in fact, he was the opposite of a smooth-talking adulterer.
However, that Saturday night Shanann was in Arizona, she noticed a strange charge come through on her credit card alert. Shanann handled the Watts family finances, and every charge made on their card came directly to her phone. Chris had asked Jeremy Lindstrom’s daughter to babysit that evening so he could go to the Colorado Rockies baseball game with co-workers. Later that evening, a charge had come through on the credit card for $62 from the Lazy Dog Restaurant. That was quite hefty for the Lazy Dog, let alone for one person. When Shanann quizzed him on the charge over a text, Chris said he had only had a beer and salmon. Shanann went online, looked at the menu, and saw that $62 was double the cost of a beer and salmon.
Shanann had also been in communication over text with the babysitter Chris had hired, so she knew he had been out until 10:30, which was well past the time the Rockies game had ended.
Addy told Officer James that it was a “huge, huge shock” when she heard Chris and Shanann were having problems. She also mentioned that Shanann had been trying to save the marriage for the past couple of weeks, and there had been several “red flags.”
Chris didn’t want the baby anymore and had been deleting messages from his phone. Shanann even saw Chris deleting text messages from his father, which she thought was incredibly bizarre. He had changed the wallpaper on his phone from a photo of Shanann and the girls to a landscape of the Sand Dunes National Park. It was as if his family, once the center of his world, now meant nothing to him.
Chris had told Shanann that it was nothing she did wrong, and it was all him. Shanann didn’t want to go to Arizona, especially because he seemed to be coming around, but Chris told her they would talk when she got back. They were supposed to go to Aspen upon her return to try to salvage the marriage, and she was looking forward to the upcoming weekend getaway with him. Addy was feeling hopeful that Shanann and Chris would work things out.
Around two o’clock in the morning, Officer Goodman, who was also working on the case, tried calling Chris numerous times with no answer. When Chris called back five minutes later, Goodman immediately thought to himself that it was peculiar Chris did not ask if there was any new information on the whereabouts of his family. His voice and demeanor were totally calm and disaffected. Officer Goodman was calling to get specific information about Shanann and the girls so he could file them as missing persons. After he filed the missing person’s report, he received a call from Sandi, Shanann’s mother.
“My husband and I believe Chris is involved, and this is a matter of foul play,” she said, her raspy voice distraught. “Chris is acting weird. He’s telling people he has to go to work and isn’t right. I think he’s going to pour oil on their bodies and dispose of them somewhere.”
Sandi had always viewed Chris as the perfect husband and father. Although she was somewhat aware of the marital troubles and knew that Chris had recently been agitated and annoyed with Shanann and the girls, she never would have suspected anything like this.
“If Chris did something to her after the emotional conversation he said they had, she wouldn’t be able to fight because of her lupus,” Sandi told Officer Goodman.
After they got off the phone, Sandi called back one more time. “Officer, I just got off the phone with Chris and didn’t feel any genuine emotion or concern from him. He’s not shedding any tears. He also called a neighbor to tell them he thinks the police are watching him.”
“Thank you. We are looking into all of it and will keep you posted,” Officer Goodman assured her.
The next day, everything would blow up into a media circus.
Chapter 4
“I’d do anything for those girls.”
On the morning of Tuesday August 14, a search and rescue team with K9s was deployed to look for Shanann and the girls. The more time passed, the more concerning the situation became.
Officer Katherine Lines showed up at the house first thing in the morning, noting the strong odor of cleaning chemicals. The house was spotless, and fresh lines on the carpet suggested someone had just been vacuuming. Chris had done the laundry and made the girls’ beds. He explained to the officers that he had a hard time sleeping because he was used to the girls throwing chicken nuggets at him, and he missed that.
Officer Lines also made sure to note Chris’s behavior, which she considered incredibly bizarre. Lines overheard Officer Perez, another officer at the Watts home, commenting to Chris that he couldn’t imagine what he was going through. Later, when Officer Lines documented her visit to the house, she wrote: “While speaking with Chris, he showed no emotion and did not seem to respond appropriately to the situation. Chris did not ask any questions or offer to help at any time. Chris’s facial expressions rarely changed. However, when they did, he seemed to smile/smirk inappropriately, displaying a lack of empathy, specifically when speaking about his children; his voice remained low and even toned. His nonverbal cues were very apparent. Chris had very erect and almost tense posture, and his arms crossed most of the time. Chris lacked eye contact and appeared to be nervous, looking around constantly.”
Reporters and media had started to gather at the Watts home. The story was exactly the type of compelling content the media loved. The local news channel, Denver 7, had asked Chris to do an interview with them, and to every
one’s surprise, he agreed.2 Chris was known to be socially awkward and quiet, so doing a televised interview was out of character for him. Sandi advised Chris not to do any media interviews because he was the last person to see Shanann and the girls alive, and he would look suspicious. He didn’t listen.
Standing outside on the porch of his large suburban home, wearing a North Carolina Tar Heels shirt, he folded his arms tightly across his chest, his eyes looking vacant and far off, and explained his version of the events to the interviewer and the camera man. Shanann had arrived home in the early hours of the morning, he had left for work around 5:15am, and the call from Nicki prompted him to become concerned and return home. As the camera zoomed in on his face, the interviewer, Tomas Hoppough, asked him the names of his daughters, and he gulped, looking nervous. He said their names slowly. Hoppough asked him to spell Celeste’s name. He gulped again and, in a soft tone, spelled her name.
“Do you think she just took off? Hoppough asked him.
“Right now, I don’t want to like, throw anything out there. Like I hope she’s somewhere safe right now and with the kids. But I mean, could she have just taken off? I don’t know. But if somebody has her, and they’re not safe, I want them back. Now. Like, that’s what’s in my head. If they’re safe right now, they’re going to come back. But if they’re not safe right now…that’s the not knowing part…Like if they’re not safe…Last night I had every light on in the house on. I was hoping I would get just ran over by the kids running in the door, like barrel rushing me, but it didn’t happen, and it was a traumatic night trying to be here.” His voice was a complete monotone, and the corners of his mouth turned up in the slightest smile.
Hoppough asked Chris about his relationship with his kids.
“The kids are my life. Those smiles light up my life. Last night when they usually eat dinner, I miss them, I miss telling them, ‘Hey if you’re not going to eat that, you’re not going to get your dessert. You’re not going to get your snack after.” Chris laughed and continued, “You know, I miss that. I miss them cuddling up on their couches. They have a Minnie Mouse couch and a Sofia couch that they cuddle up on and watch Bubble Guppies or something.”
He smiled again. “It was tearing me apart last night. I needed that. I needed that last night, and for nobody to be here last night and to go into their rooms and know that I wasn’t going to turn their rain machines on. To know I wasn’t going to turn their monitor on. To know that I wasn’t going to kiss them to bed….it was…that’s why last night was horrible. I couldn’t do it. I just want everybody to come home. Wherever they’re at, come home. That’s what I want.” His voice remained monotone, mixed with smiles, little laughs, and suppressed smirks.
There was a moment of silence, and all that could be heard was the sound of barking K9 dogs around the empty house.
When Hoppough asked about Shanann and the night she came home, Chris held his arms tighter across his chest, continuously smacking his lips. He swayed back and forth, ever so slightly.
“I know this must be a tough question, but did you guys get into an argument before?” Hoppough asked.
“It wasn’t like an argument. It was an emotional conversation. I’ll leave it at that. I just want them back.” He laughed again. “I just want them back, and if they’re not safe right now, that’s what’s tearing me apart. If they are safe, they’re coming back, but if they’re not, this has got to stop. Like, somebody has to come forward.” Again, he smirked.
Hoppough was shocked Chris answered the question candidly, admitting they had a marital spat before his wife disappeared into thin air. It didn’t make him look good; that was for sure. Hoppough followed up with another question.
“My last question. If your wife can see this, if your wife is watching, what would you like to tell your wife and kids?”
Chris gulped again. His eyes seemed blank, almost soulless. He shifted his gaze away and back toward the camera. “Shanann, Bella, Celeste. If you’re out there, just come back. If somebody has her, please bring her back. I need to see everybody again. This house is not complete without anybody here. Please bring them back.”
The camera turned off.
Later that evening, around eight o’clock, Chris went to the police department to do an in-person interview with Special Agent Grahm Coder of the FBI. Around forty years old, Coder was a skilled interviewer and was ready to get Chris to crack. He knew that if Shanann and the girls were dead, they needed to find out what happened to them and where they were right away in order to have forensic evidence to prosecute Chris.
Coder told Chris his suspicions about him and pointed out that it looked odd that the day he and his wife had a fight was the same day she went missing.
“Uh, I - makes me sick to my stomach, honestly. Like I know I talked to a few of my friends like, you know, this does not look good on you, I’m like, I know.” If people knew that we were having marital issues, they’re gonna look at me. Especially with the way everything looks. And it honestly just makes me sick to my stomach because this is something that I would never do. Ever. And I know you have to look at every vantage point. This is something I would never do to my kids or my wife. At all. I’m not sure what I could do to make people believe that. Just because they knew we were having marital discord, they automatically look at me. But there’s no way I would harm anybody in my family. At all. I know we were having marital discord, and we had that conversation that morning, and we have no idea where she is. Or the kids. I promise you, I had nothing to do with any of that,” Chris said.
“Are you telling me the truth?” Coder responded.
“I am telling you the absolute truth.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m a very trustworthy person, and people that do know me, they know how I am a calm person. I am not an argumentative person. I am a person who is - that’s never gonna be abusive or physical in any kind of relationship. I would never harm my kids. I would never harm my wife. And you can talk to any of my friends. Any of her friends. They know me. They know I’m a low-key guy that’s quiet, I’m - I’m not about confrontation. I’m not about anything that elevates to that level. Like, if someone yells at me, screams at me, I just take it, and I just try to get by the wayside and get it back to where it’s cool and just a cool conversation to where like none of that - nothing that gets to that height. Because I am not that person. I’ve never been that person.”
“Okay. You can imagine my job, okay?” Coder said. “And I told you that tonight we talk about things that might offend you. You know that we have to get to the bottom of this. Would you take a polygraph?”
“Sure,” Chris said.
Coder needed to keep Chris talking and say something that he could use to get him to confess.
“So, we have your daughters going missing, we have your wife who’s missing, okay? And that’s the most important thing right now. Okay? Do you agree with that?” Coder asked.
“Yes” Chris said.
“Okay. So, you’ve done very good in talking to me about this really hard conversation you guys had. Very good. That’s sometimes hard. And I understand why sometimes someone in your position doesn’t want to tell me about that because ‘please go and help me find my kids and you don’t need to know about my marriage argument,’ okay? I gotta say, you’ve done very good at that, and I need you to keep doing that. So, I need to ask you about your marriage and infidelity,” Coder said, wanting to see if Chris would take his bait.
“I have never cheated on my wife. And I fully suspect she has never done that to me. Like, she has always been a trustworthy person, I’ve always been a trustworthy person. I fully expect if we ever thought about straying another way... that we would tell each other before it happened,” Chris said.
“I think that sounds ridiculous!” Coder retorted.
“Okay.”
“Becaus
e in the history of the earth, nobody ever does that,” Coder said bluntly.
“Okay. That’s what I would like to think. I know mistakes happen. But that’s what I would think in my head, I would hope would happen.”
“Now, even though I think that sounds ridiculous, if I was in your shoes, I’d say the exact same thing and - and I believe that. Okay? But I kind of don’t, and you can imagine, in my job, I meet all kinds of people. And you can imagine that there are people who have Saturdays with their girlfriends and Sundays with their wives, right? And they consider themselves to be very virtuous people, okay? So, with that in mind, I don’t care if there’s been anything in your relationship. I just don’t. And I’m not going to tell the news. I’m not going to tell anyone. But I do need to know. So, is there anyone that you think that maybe your wife got close with?” Coder said intently. He knew that it was highly unlikely Shanann was cheating on Chris, but he used this tactic to ease his way into asking Chris about his own infidelity.
“If she did, it was very like secret then, if that was the case. Because I had no inkling,” Chris said.
Coder asked Chris some more questions about Shanann and possible infidelity on her end and then went after what it seemed he really wanted to know.
Okay. On your end. I gotta ask,” Coder said. “What’s her name?”
“I don’t have another one,” Chris stated flatly.
“Okay. So again, highly trained investigator over here, right? I see pictures of you from a few years ago. And I see you standing before me now. You’ve gotten pretty fit,” Coder said, referencing the changes in Chris’ physical appearance over the years.
When Chris and Shanann had started dating, Chris was overweight, pale, and socially awkward. When he started doing Thrive, per Shanann’s suggestion, he began to lose weight rapidly. He also started working out religiously and watching his calories. The transformation had been remarkable. As Chris sat before Coder, he was an objectively lean, muscular, tan, and handsome man.
My Daddy Is a Hero Page 4
