The parents of Shanann Watts say their daughter voiced concern about husband Chris Watts acting distant in the weeks leading up to her murder and the murder of her children.
“She just didn’t understand why he was being so cold,” mother Sandy Rzucek told ABC News’ 20/20. Shanann’s father Ronnie agreed that “something wasn’t there.”
Watts was acting “cold as ice,” Sandy said. “And not responding, and replying. I just said give him space, you know. But little did we know.”
Questions continue to swirl about the Watts case. How could the defendant go onto to murder his pregnant wife, and their two young daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. Friends and family described the marriage as happy, and Chris wasn’t known to be violent. And yet, on Nov. 6, Watts pleaded guilty to all three murders, to disposing of the bodies, and terminating Shanann’s 15-week pregnancy (they were expecting a boy, to be named Nico).
At the sentencing hearing, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke mentioned that the defendant was having an affair with another woman, but he stopped short on presenting this as a motive for murder. During a press conference that same day, he said that he had no reason to believe the woman had any “foreknowledge” about the crime.
That girlfriend, Nichol Kessinger, told police and the media that Watts lied to her, and claimed that he was having a divorce with his wife. She insisted that she broke it off with him after Shanann and the girls went missing, and he continued to feed her lies.
Watts was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
[Image via ABC screengrab]
