Newly released video shows pregnant Colorado woman Shanann Watts entering her home for what may have been the last time on early August 13. Her husband Chris Watts has admitted to killing her, and their young daughters Bella, 4, and Celste, 3.
Footage obtained by HLN shows Watts returning home from a business trip at 1:48 a.m. The police affidavit obtained by Law&Crime said that a friend had dropped her off. The video shows a car in the background.
Watts’ son was to be named Nico.
Chris Watts pleaded guilty last November to killing his family. He was sentenced to life in prison for each of the murders. In total, Watts got five life sentences and will not be eligible for parole. The deal he cut with prosecutors took the death penalty off the table.
The case caught national attention after the family went missing, and he begged on local news for their safe return. Instead, cops arrested him for their murders. The defendant strangled his wife, “slowing taking her life,” and then he smothered his children to death, said Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke in November. Bella fought back.
According to cops, the defendant at first tried to pin the children’s murders on his wife. He claimed he only killed Shanann because she kill the kids after he called for a separation.
Watts ended up taking responsibility for it all, however. Rourke said the defendant put the bodies “calmly and methodically” in his truck, hid the daughters’ bodies in an oil tank and buried Shanann.
The prosecutor suggested that this killer had one motive: to live with a mistress.
“You don’t annihilate your family and throw them away like garbage,” Rourke said. “Get a divorce!”
That “mistress,” Nichol Kessinger, told police in an interview she briefly dated Watts until his family’s disappearance in August. They met at the same workplace. According to her, he claimed he and his wife were divorcing, but she learned that that was a lie. She dumped him because he wouldn’t be honest about what happened to his family, she said.
[Screengrab via Weld County District Attorney’s Office]