Chris Watts: Truth or Lies?
As I approached the car I gestured for the driver to join me on the pavement. In the UK, the police don’t normally speak to you through the window, it’s much safer to both be standing. That way you can see their hands, and they’re not able to suddenly speed away in the car. This was early in my career, when I was still in uniform. The man was on his own, and so was I. I hadn’t stopped him for anything he’d done wrong. It was just what we call a routine check. I can’t even remember now what brought him to my attention. So, here we were. I introduced myself, with the usual smile I always gave to people. It’s far better talking to a relaxed person than an agitated one. He smiled back, but there was something not quite right about him. He gave me his name, date of birth and address, all of which seemed to come naturally to him. But my gut was telling me there was something off. Do you have ID on you? A driver’s licence, credit card? No No problem, I’ll check the car. It wasn’t registered to anybody. No worries. If you give me the phone number of someone you know, I’ll get my control room to give them a call so they can confirm what you’re telling me. He couldn’t remember one (and this was before the days of mobile phones). The more I pressed, the more his smile faded. I was starting to get a bad feeling. I was on my own and looking at the size of him, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out if things went south, so I discreetly asked for back up. Then I brought out my trusted curve ball question. So, what star sign are you? He just looked at me. Then I saw his eyes flicker over my shoulder. I knew what was coming. He suddenly turned and was about to run, when I jumped on him, both of us going to the floor. I’m glad I wasn’t in the position of today’s police, with people filming arrests and plastering them all over the internet, because I’m not sure how dignified I’d have looked rolling around on the floor with him. Thankfully, my back-up didn’t take long to join me, and we soon had him detained. Why had he tried to get away? The name, date of birth and address he’d given me were all false. He was wanted for stabbing someone a few days earlier. I had no idea when I stopped him. But that’s not the point of this story. It was nothing special. In fact, I could’ve chosen any number of similar incidents. The point is, I was using something a mentor told me when I first joined. Don’t try to prove a person is lying, try and prove they’re telling the truth. Because that’s the best way to unmask a liar. And it was something I carried with me throughout my career. Monday 13th August 2018 At around 1.40pm on this day, Officer Scott Coonrod was sent to 2825 Saratoga Trail in Frederick, Colorado, to carry out a welfare check. It was the home of Chris and Shanann Watts, and their two daughters, Bella aged 4 and Celeste aged 3. A friend of Shanann, Nickole Atkinson, had called the police out of concern. When the officer arrived, Nickole was there and told him she had dropped Shanann home at around 1.48am after a business trip to Arizona. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant, had not been feeling well, had failed to attend a 10am doctor’s appointment and was not responding to calls or messages. Nickole had gone to the house with her adult son, Nicolas. They had seen Shanann’s Lexus in the garage, with the children’s car seats still inside. She had already contacted Chris Watts who had agreed to make his way home. When Watts arrived, he gave Officer Coonrod permission to enter and search for Shanann, Bella and Celeste. They were not there. Other items belonging to Shanann were found in the house. Her purse was there. Her wallet contained her driving licence, cash and bank cards. Her mobile phone was found between cushions of a sofa in the upstairs loft area. Watts gave police permission to examine it, and Officer Coonrod recorded that there had been no outgoing calls from the phone that morning. Nickole told him that it was extremely unusual for Shanann to leave without her phone because she used it for work and normally took it everywhere. Watts’ account was that Shanann had arrived home from her trip at around 2am. He had been asleep and woke at around 5am to get ready for work. He and Shanann then began talking about separating. According to Watts, the conversation was civil. They weren’t arguing, although both were emotional. He said they had been talking about separating for several weeks. He said that at around 5.27am he backed his work truck towards the garage to load tools. Shanann was still in bed at that point and had told him she was going to take the girls to a friend’s house. He said he hadn’t asked which friend. He then drove to an Anadarko oil-well site beyond Hudson, where he was alone for a period of time. Later, Detective Dave Baumhover asked Watts to walk him through the period when he had last seen Shanann. Watts gave a broadly similar account, but the detective recorded the separation conversation as taking place at approximately 4am, with both of them upset and crying. Watts again said Shanann had told him she was going to a friend’s house, and that he backed his truck into the driveway at approximately 5.27am before leaving for work. Detective Baumhover noted that the master bed had been stripped of its bedding, which was lying on the floor. The bedding was checked for signs of foul play, but nothing was found. The officers reported seeing nothing inside the house, vehicles or garage that gave the appearance of an altercation. Officer Coonrod began checking with neighbours to establish whether anyone had seen somebody coming or going. A neighbour showed him footage from his home CCTV system that showed Nickole’s car leaving at 1.48am. At 5.27am, it showed Watts’ work truck backing into the driveway and leaving a short time later. The rear of Watts’ truck was obscured by the garage from the camera’s view. It also showed no other vehicles coming or going from the house. Officer Coonrod also recorded some observations about Watts. He described his demeanour as nonchalant. He said Watts asked whether he should go and look for his family. Officer Coonrod told him to remain there for the time being. He noted that Watts didn’t ask again and didn’t appear overly concerned. He also said Watts mentioned the garage door being left open at least three times, which the officer found unusual. Nickole gave a different assessment. She told the officer she thought Watts appeared extremely nervous. Shanann’s mother called while Officer Coonrod was at the house. She was adamant Watts had done something and told him to check the GPS on Watts’ work truck. The officer was able to establish that the work truck did indeed have GPS. Officer Coonrod also canvassed the neighbourhood. Nobody he spoke to reported seeing vehicles coming or going or anything unusual. At the same time, he asked residents to provide footage from any CCTV cameras they may have had. He also circulated a welfare-check BOLO for Shanann and the children, meaning other officers in the area knew to be on the lookout for them. Shanann’s phone was transported to Frederick Police Department for examination. By the end of Monday, police hadn’t located Shanann, Bella or Celeste. Tuesday 14th August 2018 By Tuesday morning, Shanann and the girls still hadn’t been found, and the investigation was beginning to grow. Frederick Police requested assistance from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI. Officers continued searching the house and surrounding area, including using search dogs and a drone. Nothing was found that explained where Shanann and the girls were. But there were other things they could check. The previous day, police had established that Watts’ work truck was fitted with GPS. So, CBI Agent Tammy Lee contacted Watts’ workplace and requested the GPS information from the truck. Police were also continuing to investigate information coming in from the public. There was a reported sighting of Shanann and the girls, but when investigators viewed the CCTV footage they were satisfied it wasn’t them. That Tuesday evening, Watts voluntarily attended Frederick Police Department, where he was interviewed by FBI Special Agent Coder. This time, Watts was questioned in much greater detail. Watts said he and Shanann had not been getting along for around six weeks. He described the conversation they’d had after she returned from Arizona. Shanann had wanted to know what was wrong with him. He told her they were no longer compatible, and he wasn’t sure their marriage could continue. He said they were both crying. When asked by investigators if either of them had been having an affair, Watts said no. The agent then went back over Monday morning. Watts said he had left the house at around 5.30am. He described loading his work truck before leaving. He said he had driven directly to an Anadarko oil site known as Cervi 319. He hadn’t stopped anywhere along the way. When he arrived, he said he was alone for a period of time. Watts continued to maintain that when he left for work, Shanann and the girls were at home. He said Shanann had planned to take the girls to a friend’s house, although he didn’t know which friend. And he continued to say he had no idea where they were. The interview lasted several hours. Before the interview ended, Agent Coder asked Watts whether he would be willing to take a polygraph test. He agreed. It was arranged for the following day. During the evening, police took possession of Watts’ mobile phone so it could be examined. Watts also agreed to stay somewhere else that night so investigators could continue searching and examining the family home. By the end of Tuesday, Shanann, Bella and Celeste were still missing. Wednesday 15th August 2018 Early on Wednesday morning, police received some important information. CBI Agent Tammy Lee was contacted by the regional security manager at Anadarko, Watts’ employer. He told her he had found emails between Watts and a woman called Nichol Kessinger, who worked as a contractor for the company. The security manager said the emails suggested the two had been in a relationship since June. Later that morning, Watts returned to Frederick Police Department for the polygraph examination he had agreed to take. Before the test, Agent Lee went through his account again, and he maintained not knowing where Shanann and the girls were. Agent Lee then conducted the polygraph. She asked Watts whether he had physically caused Shanann’s disappearance, whether he was lying about the last time he had seen her and whether he knew where she was. Watts answered no to all three questions. Agent Lee assessed the results as showing deception. The questioning continued, during which Watts admitted to the affair. The investigators then told him they were already aware of this. They raised the possibility that Shanann may have done something to the children, but Watts rejected that suggestion. Later, Watts asked to speak to his father. Afterwards, he gave investigators a very different account. Watts now said he had told Shanann he wanted to separate and admitted he had been having an affair. He claimed he then saw Shanann strangling one of their daughters on a baby monitor. When he went into the room, he said both girls were blue and apparently dead. Watts said he then strangled Shanann to death. He told investigators he had put her body in his work truck, along with Bella and Celeste, and driven them to Cervi 319. Watts said he buried Shanann near the oil tanks and put Bella and Celeste inside separate tanks. Investigators showed him an aerial photograph of Cervi 319, and he marked the locations where the bodies could be found. Whilst the interview was taking place, police were already searching the Cervi 319 site. Using a drone they had found a bed sheet that matched other bedding recovered from the home. An area of disturbed earth was also identified. With the new information from Watts, the search became more focussed. The following day, the bodies were recovered. Shanann was found buried in the spot he’d identified. Bella and Celeste were recovered from separate oil tanks close by. That advice when I was a young, fresh-faced officer of don’t try to prove a person is lying, try and prove they’re telling the truth, was one of the most important nuggets of wisdom I ever received. The reason it was so valuable is simple. I can’t think of many professions where you’re lied to as often as the police. For virtually my whole career, no matter what role I was performing, somebody was trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Which must mean I can look at someone and know they’re lying, right? Nope. Not one bit. Now, this is just my own opinion, but I don’t believe anybody can know a person is lying simply from their body language, or whatever observational skills they use. And that’s because I don’t believe there are any foolproof tells that mean someone isn’t telling the truth. For this article I ran a quick internet search for signs a person is lying and this is a sample of what I found. Changes in speech pattern Saying too little Saying too much Avoiding eye contact Making too much eye contact Touching the face Fidgeting Standing unnaturally still Apart from the obvious contradictions in that list, there’s a fundamentally bigger problem. All those signs, that may or may not be because a person is lying, can also be signs of stress. So, if as a police officer, I’m questioning a person about something, where there could be significant consequences for that person depending on their answer, are they going to feel stress regardless of whether they’re telling the truth? Absolutely they will. I see the same when famous people are being interviewed on TV and there’s a topic they know everyone is tuning in to see what they have to say about it. When the interviewer gets to that topic, that person is naturally going to feel pressure, which can translate into any number of stress indicators. Then body language experts pick up on those signs to conclude they’re lying. Ignoring the amount of stress they must have been under when giving that answer. Don’t get me wrong, in my career I was absolutely looking out for those signs, but not as proof a person was lying to me, but as an indication I should be digging a little deeper. Because there’s a big difference between spotting something that makes you think a person might be lying and actually catching them in that lie. It’s not spotting a tic on someone’s face that will reveal them as a liar. It’s what comes next. Now you have to test what they’re saying. And for me there were three ways of doing that. Facts. Changes. Detail. Facts When a person lies, one thing they are in complete control of is the story. They don’t control everything else. A clever liar may try and align their story with the known facts, but there are things that are out of their control. For instance, questioning a murderer who is trying to talk their way out of the situation. To persuade you of their innocence. By the time you speak to them, they’ve probably had time to think about what they’re going to say. They will also have thought about what detectives can prove. So, rather than coming out with something a million miles from the truth, they will try and weave their lies into what happened. They will know about DNA and fingerprints, so may come up with an explanation that factors that in. They may know we can track the movement of mobile phones, so their story could include places they have been to. Any aspect of evidence that may later come up, a proficient liar may weave into their story in the hope of explaining it away. And this is what my mentor had meant all those years earlier. Don’t try to prove they’re lying. Try and prove they’re telling the truth. If they said they were at a particular location, is there CCTV to corroborate it? Are there witnesses? Does their car or phone track there? What about their explanations of physical interactions with the victim? What does the forensic evidence say? Does their account align with the post-mortem examination? Any aspect of a story I could attempt to verify, I would. And if I couldn’t? Well, that didn’t mean it was a definite lie, but I could start building that picture. I would bank it. I wasn’t necessarily going to challenge them there and then. I’d just put it away for later. Changes If you lie enough, you forget what you lied about. Or so the saying goes. It’s not absolutely correct, because there are people who could lie for their country. But there is an element of truth to it. Because if you’re going to lie to me, you have to remember what you’ve told me. Not just now. But tomorrow. Next week. Or whenever I ask you about it again. And that’s why I would always pay attention to changes in a person’s account. If you tell me one thing today, and something different tomorrow, I want to know why. That doesn’t mean you’re lying. People make mistakes. They remember things they’d forgotten. Sometimes they realise they got something wrong the first time. One way I would test this was by moving around in their story. If someone had given me an account in chronological order, I didn’t necessarily ask them to tell me exactly the same story in exactly the same way the next time. I might start somewhere in the middle. Ask what happened immediately before something they’d already told me about. Or work backwards through parts of their account. Sometimes I’d even pretend I hadn’t quite understood something, just to get them to tell me that part again. All the time, I was listening for changes. Because if their story changed, there was a reason for it. My job was to find out what that reason was. And if their account changed in a way that mattered, I’d bank that too. Detail With many of the liars I tripped up, it wasn’t because of the big things they’d made up. It was the little things they hadn’t considered. Because if you’re going to make up a story, you’re probably going to think about the obvious questions you might be asked. Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? You might even rehearse the answers in your head before you speak to me. But you can’t prepare for every question I might ask. And that’s where I would start drilling down into what we called the fine-grain detail. Say someone claims they were in a pub when the murder happened. You don’t just accept “I was in the pub.” You start drilling down: What time did you arrive? How did you get there? Who was working? What did you order? How did you pay? Where were you sitting? Who did you speak to? What time did you leave? How did you get home? All those little details that someone might not think about when they’re making up a story. And the more detail they gave me, the more I had to work with. Because now I had more things I could test. More things that had to remain consistent with what they’d already told me. And more things that had to fit with the facts. Again, not being able to remember something didn’t mean they were lying. Very few of us have photographic memories. But if something didn’t add up, that was another thing I could bank. And eventually it was time to use what I’d banked. If someone is absolutely committed to a lie, it can be difficult to get them to admit the truth, especially when there may be serious consequences. If I point out the odd fact that didn’t fit with their account or a couple of inconsistencies in their story, or some detail that was wrong, each of those may be brushed off. But by waiting to challenge them. Saving them all up and then presenting them all at the same time, you have a much better chance of making them reconsider their position. Of making them realise how flimsy their account now looks. I would take them back through what they had told me. The facts I couldn’t verify. The things that didn’t fit. The changes in their account. The detail that didn’t stand up. Then give them the opportunity to explain it. And this isn’t just theory. It was a technique I used time and time again. And it worked. But I wasn’t doing this as some kind of mind game, or ego trip to prove I could catch them out. It was done because unchecked lies can have serious consequences. If a witness lies, an innocent person could be wrongfully convicted. If an alibi witness lies, a guilty person may get away with their crime. And if I could get a suspect to move away from a false account, what they told me next could lead to important evidence being found. In the case of a murder, that can even include the recovery of a victim’s body. The post-mortem examinations provided investigators with another opportunity to test what Watts had told them. Shanann had died from manual strangulation. Bella and Celeste had died from smothering. Watts’ story would change again. He later admitted he had killed all three. His account was that he strangled Shanann at their home before taking her body to Cervi 319 in his work truck, with Bella and Celeste still alive. At the oil site, he buried Shanann and killed the two girls, before placing their bodies inside separate oil tanks. That was Watts’ account of what happened. On 6th November 2018, he pleaded guilty to murdering Shanann, Bella and Celeste, along with the unlawful termination of Shanann’s pregnancy. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. He was subsequently given five life sentences without the possibility of parole. In the UK, as is the case in the US, suspects have the right to remain silent. Many choose to exercise that right. But some don’t. Among those who went on to be found guilty, I saw a regular pattern. When they spoke, it was nearly always self-serving. It was to try and talk their way out of the situation. To try and explain something away. To minimise their actions. To provide a defence. Any number of reasons, but rarely to be completely open and honest about their crimes. Even after I’d exposed one lie, I never assumed what came next was the truth. And that’s why I have a problem with the various accounts Chris Watts has given of what happened inside that house. Some of what he says may be true. Some of it may not be. But as Chris Watts is the only person left who knows the answer, I’m not sure we will ever know which is which. Thanks for reading or listening to Murder Unpacked. Until next time. Take care. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.murderunpacked.com
