The mother of murder victim Shanann Watts says she felt her daughter’s soul at the moment of death. She discussed it in a new interview with Dr. Phil.
“Dr. Phil, I felt my daughter’s spirit the moment she died,” Sandy Rzucek said. “Something woke me up, and I sat up, and a spear went through my forehead, and I heard the Holy Spirit say, ‘Shanann.’ And I said, ‘Holy–Something happened to my daughter.’ I knew. I swear to God I knew.”
She said she woke up the house to say something was wrong with Shanann.
That was last August. Shanann and her daughters Celeste, 3, and Bella, 4, were declared missing at first. Shanann’s husband Christopher Watts pleaded for his family’s return in an infamous interview with local television, but police soon said he was putting up a facade. It turned out that he killed his family, and hid their bodies on property belonging to his employer.
Christopher Watts pleaded guilty in November. Prosecutors said he made a 5-hour confession in which he admitted to fatally strangling Shanann during an argument over his infidelity. She was pregnant with a boy, to be named Nico. Watts then drove his wife’s body, and his still-living daughters, to his employer’s property. He strangled the girls in the truck, then dumped their bodies into separate oil tanks.
He’s going to serve life in prison for this, under the terms of his plea deal. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said after the sentencing in November that he took the death penalty off the table because Shanann’s family had asked him to accept the defense’s suggested bargain. In fact, he said that Sandy Rzucek looked “sternly” at him, and ask why he hadn’t agreed to the offer yet.
“I know God will put the evil people where they need to be,” she said at sentencing.
[Screengrab via Dr. Phil]
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