Shanann had also asked Chris over text if he was having an affair, and he shot that accusation down as well, telling her that should be the last thing on her mind. Chris told Tammy whenever Shanann would call him while they were apart over the summer, he would be on a run or working out, and she could tell he didn’t want to talk to her.
Chris said he was open to Shanann’s idea of marriage counseling, but he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t think they needed to do it. He said the disconnection was there, and he didn’t think counseling was going to help. In other words, Chris’s mind was made up about his wife, and he was unwilling to do anything that would help repair what he viewed as irreparably broken.
Tammy eventually got to the important part of the polygraph where she would ask Chris about what happened between the time Shanann got home from Arizona and the last time Chris saw her that morning. This was the make-or-break moment because if Chris had anything to do with this, he would have to constantly lie, and the polygraph would expose all his falsehoods. Chris was the only suspect they had, and if he failed the polygraph, investigators would hopefully be able to wrangle him into a confession. They needed to act quickly because if Shanann and the girls were dead, they needed to get to the bodies as quickly as possible to perform autopsies to have the significant evidence they would need to convict Chris in court.
Tammy asked Chris what he did Friday, the day Shanann left for her trip to Arizona. He said they knew what the sex of the baby was, but they weren’t going to tell anyone until Shanann got back.
He told Tammy that, on Friday morning, he waited for the kids to wake up, and Shanann left early with Nicki to go to the airport. They hugged goodbye and exchanged pleasantries when she left. He hung out at the house with the kids, went to the grocery store, went to fix his glasses, went to Target. It was a teacher workday that day, so the girls didn’t have school, and that’s why Chris took the day off. They got home from running errands at 4:30, had dinner, and did the normal bedtime routine. Chris talked to Shanann that evening, but Shanann didn’t Facetime with the girls because they would usually get too upset seeing their mother. Because they would get so worked up with reminders that she was not physically present with them, Chris and Shanann decided that while she traveled, it was probably best not to Facetime with the girls until they were older and could handle their mother’s absence better. Whenever Shanann would travel, Bella would constantly ask about her, and this trip was no exception. Friday night after Chris put the girls to bed, he said he “chilled out.”
Saturday morning, Bella came into bed with Chris, and they waited for CeCe to wake up. Chris and the girls hung out at the house and played outside until it got too hot. Jeremy Lindstrom’s daughter, Mary,3 came over to babysit that night so Chris could go to the Colorado Rockies baseball game with co-workers. He left the house at five o’clock and came home around eleven o’clock that night. He also had dinner at the Lazy Dog Restaurant with his co-workers. The girls were in bed asleep when he got home.
On Sunday morning, the girls watched the cartoon “Bubble Guppies” on television before starting the day. He put them down for a nap and had cold pizza from the previous evening before heading to Jeremy’s house for his son’s fourth birthday party, which was about 1:15-4:30 p.m. Jeremy and his wife had water balloons and inflatable pools set up for the kids, and the girls had a blast at the party. When they got back, Chris put the girls in the shower, dried them, and put their lotion on, dressed them in their pajamas, and gave them cold pizza again.
Chris described to Tammy the nightgowns he put the girls in. CeCe’s was pink, and Bella’s had a unicorn on it. They Facetimed with Shanann’s parents and then had some snacks on their mini couches on the second-floor common area. Chris brushed their teeth, had them use the potty, and put them to bed.
Bella came out twice because she knew Shanann was coming home that night, and Chris said he reassured her that she would see her mother in the morning when she woke up. Chris told Tammy that whenever Shanann would get home late from a trip, because the girls were light sleepers, she would never wake them up.
Around two o’clock that morning, Chris felt Shanann get into bed. She was in a T-shirt and underwear, her normal attire to bed. She always wore her wedding rings, even to bed, and would only take them off when coloring her hair. Shanann’s wedding rings had been found on her nightstand, and Chris told Tammy that was very unusual.
Shanann had supposedly asked Chris to wake her up when he woke up for work so she could shower and “get the airport off” her. When Chris woke up, he showered and got dressed before he woke Shanann. He sat on the bed on top of the covers and gently nudged her awake. According to Chris, their dialogue went as follows:
“Are you going to shower?” he asked her.
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” she said groggily.
“Can we talk a little bit?” Chris asked her.
“Let’s talk,” Shanann said.
This was the supposed “emotional conversation” in which Chris, in his words, said they needed to sell the house and downsize. He told Shanann he didn’t feel the connection anymore, it wasn’t working, and he didn’t feel the love they had in the beginning anymore. Shanann was crying and emotional hearing all of this. Chris said he was crying as well.
Shanann accused him of cheating.
“No. This isn’t like someone came in my life and took me from you. There’s no outside influence coming from this,” Chris remembered saying to Shanann.
Chris hoped they could sell the house, separate, and live near each other because Shanann had told him recently that she wouldn’t be able to afford to live in Colorado on her own with three kids. He said when she disappeared, initially he thought she was with somebody, but now he believed that something happened, and that she and the girls were not safe.
With a straight face, Tammy continued to the part of the polygraph where she would ask Chris directly if he had anything to do with Shanann’s disappearance.
“So, if I asked you on the polygraph test if you physically caused Shanann’s disappearance, can you pass that question?” Tammy said, staring at him.
“Yeah,” Chris said nonchalantly.
“What do you think I mean by that? When I’m asking you if you physically caused Shanann’s disappearance? What does that mean to you?” Tammy asked.
“If you asked me that, I feel like you’re asking me, did I have anything to do with it myself, or did I help somebody do it, and I had no part in any of that,” Chris stated emphatically.
“And I know it’s totally awful to think about… but what are ways that you could make someone disappear?” Tammy asked Chris.
“I mean, if you’re talking about what I’ve seen on the movies or if you read about other people, you hire somebody,” he answered.
“Like a hit man?” Tammy prompted.
“I’m just being honest,” Chris said
“That’s what I want,” Tammy told him.
“You would hire somebody, or you would have somebody you know that would do it. It’s a hard question to answer,” Chris said, laughing. “Because I had nothing to do with the disappearance. If you’re asking how I would do it.”
“No. Anyone. How would anyone cause someone else’s disappearance? By murdering them... what different physical ways you could cause someone’s disappearance through murder?” Tammy asked.
“Stab someone. Shoot someone. Hit ‘em with a blunt object. I mean, use a weapon a gun, or a knife. You could ….” Chris paused.
“Smother someone,” Tammy filled in.
“Smother someone,” Chris echoed.
“Strangle someone,” Tammy trailed off
“Strangle someone,” Chris repeated.
Tammy pressed Chris to continue further by offering him more ideas of how one might murder someone else. Chris told Tammy that you could “lure someone into a trap.”
&nb
sp; Tammy asked him to explain further. Chris said you could have someone waiting around the corner, and an accident could happen, such as getting hit by a car. Tammy mentioned you could kidnap someone, and Chris added that you could take someone somewhere and torture them by leaving them without food or water. Chris continued by saying that you could beat someone to death or poison them.
“Chris, I just want to know if you’re the one who caused Shanann’s physical disappearance,” Tammy said. “Sometimes people can feel guilty for causing someone to leave such as, telling your spouse you want a separation.”
“That’s why I feel like a jackass right now,” Chris said with a sigh.
“Are you lying about the last time you saw Shanann?” Tammy asked.
“No.”
“Describe to me the last time you saw Shanann.”
“The last time I saw her was in bed after I talked to her. She said she was going to a friend’s house and would be back later, and she was lying on her side with mascara running down her face from crying.”
“Chris. If you are, in fact, lying and you did murder Shanann, then the image you just described would not be the last time you saw her. Do you know where Shanann is now?”
“I don’t,” Chris said.
* * *
3. Name has been changed to protect a minor
Chapter 7
“I fell in love with her.”
After the polygraph, Tammy excused herself from the room to speak with Special Agent Grahm Coder. She left Chris alone while he watched videos of his daughters on his cell phone. Coder and Tammy came back into the room, bringing with them a large printed photograph of Bella and CeCe.
“I brought Grahm back in to discuss the results,” Tammy said in a serious tone.
Chris nodded.
“It was completely clear that you were not honest during the testing, and I think you already know that,” Tammy said, cutting straight to the chase. “You did not pass the polygraph test. So now we need to talk about what actually happened, and I think you’re ready to do that.”
Coder leaned back in his seat as Tammy looked Chris directly in the eye.
“I didn’t lie to you on that polygraph, I promise,” Chris said, still refusing to give in to them.
“Chris. Take a deep breath,” Coder said calmly. “I want you to take a deep breath right now.”
“There’s a reason you feel sick to your stomach and when you hold stuff inside,” Tammy said. “It makes you physically ill. I can tell from your face that you want to come clean and be done with this, and I appreciate that. We’re not here to play games. We just want to know what happened.”
Chris continued to insist he wasn’t lying, which made Tammy increasingly frustrated.
“I just want them to come home,” Chris said.
“But you know they’re not coming back home,” Tammy insisted. “You know that.”
“I hope they come back home,” Chris said.
“But you know they’re not.”
“I hope they come back home,” Chris repeated stubbornly. “I don’t know that they’re not coming back home.”
Still leaning back in his chair, incredibly calm and poised, Coder told Chris that he and Tammy were confused. That they had been doing a lot of work overnight and had found some leads. They knew a lot more than Chris realized.
“You’re a great guy,” Coder told him. “And I know this because everyone tells us that, okay? We can’t find anyone to say anything bad about you. Chris is a great guy. He’s a good father. He’s a good man. We’re confused as to why you’re not taking care of your beautiful children.”
“I’m not taking care of them right now?” Chris gasped.
“Where are they?” Coder demanded.
“I don’t know. I do not know where they are at,” he insisted. “If I could have my babies back home now, I would. I want them back. I want everybody back. That’s the God honest truth.”
Tammy and Coder stared at him in silence. The only sound that could be heard was the steady tick of the clock in the interrogation room.
Coder told Chris he couldn’t reconcile the two Chris’s that they were witnessing. He said it warmed his heart that he was the type of dad who could pack a bag in the morning for his daughters. He went on to say he knew Chris loved his daughters, and that he wasn’t faking it. Then he pleaded with Chris to tell him about the other parts he was lying about.
Chris, now knowing he was backed into a corner, admitted there was something he was lying about.
“I’m not proud of it, and I feel horrible about it,” he said. “I’ve been cheating on her while she was pregnant. But I hurt her emotionally, not physically.” Then he continued, trying to distract Coder and Tammy. “I didn’t go to the Rockies game. I went to dinner with her. The five weeks I was alone, I was with her most of the time.”
“This is the Chris who I knew would come out today,” Coder said. “This is Chris the truth teller.” Coder spoke almost as if he were encouraging a small child.
“I fell in love with her,” Chris said.
“Absolutely,” Coder said.
“Who is her?” Tammy asked.
“I don’t want to get her involved in this. I don’t want to ruin her life,” Chris said. “I don’t want her involved in this. She’s a wonderful person. She knew I was married, yes. At the end, I told her I was going to get separated. When I saw her, she took my breath away, and never in a million years, did I think that was gonna happen. I never felt this way about anyone in my lifetime.”
It was very strange that Chris was gushing about his mistress and showing more concern about protecting her than the whereabouts of his own family.
“I know you want to take care of her, because you’re the type of guy that takes care of women,” Coder said, continuing to stroke Chris’s ego. “You took care of your wife. You took care of your daughters. You were very good at taking care.”
As Coder moved the conversation back to the missing family members, Chris continued to deny having any knowledge about what happened to them. Coder, again, trying to appeal to the “good” and “helpful” Chris everyone loved, reminded him that his father was waiting in the lobby, and that Chris was lying to everyone. They needed him to tell everyone what happened to his family. Coder told Chris they already knew about his girlfriend, Nikki, and that they had the Watts family’s “Alexa” device that was trained to record distress. If Chris did kill them in the house, Coder wanted to scare Chris into thinking they had audio evidence, which could potentially force him into a confession.
In another attempt to try to get him to talk, Coder said he thought Shanann may have been a controlling person who did whatever she wanted. This wasn’t necessarily what Coder thought, but perhaps he could get Chris to admit to something if he painted Shanann in a negative light. Coder pleaded with Chris again and again to find his babies.
“I promise you. I have nothing on my hands that’s…I did nothing to those kids or her to make them vanish,” Chris said again, unwilling to take the bait.
Coder tried a different tactic, trying to get Chris to confess to a lesser crime. He asked Chris if there had been an accident. Maybe something that happened that wasn’t supposed to happen. Perhaps a fight that went horribly wrong by mistake.
Chris denied he had done anything to Shanann and the girls on purpose or by mistake. He also continued to emphasize that Shanann, although suspicious about his affair, did not know for a fact that it had happened, and that he had always denied it.
Coder told Chris that he found it odd that he described an “emotional’ conversation with his wife in which they were both crying, but he hadn’t shed one tear since his family vanished without a trace. He didn’t appear to be upset at all.
Chris stated that he loved his girls and his lack of tears didn’t mean he wasn’t upset. He then
forced a sniffle, trying to muster up some type of human emotion that he knew the investigators were looking for from him.
“I love those girls to death,” Chris said.
Seeing that they were still getting nowhere, Coder tried another tactic, offering Chris another possible scenario that might seem more “socially acceptable” while still shifting blame away from him. The risk with this technique was that it could elicit a false confession, but it would at least get Chris to admit partial guilt. The hope was that the bodies would be recovered as soon as possible, and that the forensic evidence would be enough to paint the picture of what really happened, regardless of a false confession from Chris.
“Did Shanann do something to the girls?” Coder asked.
“No. I don’t know. I have no clue.”
“Did Shanann do something to them, and then did you feel that you had to do something to her?” Coder said, knowing he was getting closer to squeezing something out of Chris.
“No. No,” he said, sighing. “They were at the house when I left. They were there.”
Bringing up the video footage from neighbor Nate Trinastich, Coder reminded Chris that the only way his family could have left the house was in his truck. Shanann was seen entering the home by the doorbell camera and then never leaving the house again. Coder reminded him that the truck had a GPS that would ping every ten minutes. They would know every single movement Chris made that morning. There was nowhere left to hide.
Coder continued to further push the idea that Shanann may have done something that would give Chris a “reason” to hurt her. He told Chris he knew that sometimes mistakes happen and offered stories of cases he had personally worked on—specifically stories of parents who had murdered their own children. One story was about a mother who had smothered her children because she didn’t want her husband to take them away from her. This mother believed she was doing right by her children, because in her mind, she was saving them from pain.
My Daddy Is a Hero Page 7
