At 36, Chris Watts was a man who seemed to have it all: a beautiful, happy family, a nice home in the suburbs of Colorado, and a well-ordered life. In reality, however, he was a psychopath.
Did his 34-year-old wife, Shannon Watts, know about it? We’ll never know. What is certain is that his disorder was the cause of one of the most heinous crimes in U.S. history. This is the Colorado triple murder case which shocked the American public in 2018 and will soon be «revived» in a Netflix documentary titled «American Murder: The Family Next Door.».
The case shares some similarities with the crime in Glyka Nera, and the details were undoubtedly analyzed by the Greek authorities long before the murder of 20-year-old Caroline was solved. In this case as well, there was a man who murdered his wife and tried to use his acting skills to deceive the police. In that case, of course, the horror surpassed even the most twisted imagination. Along with Shannon Watts, her two young daughters, ages 3 and 4, had also disappeared. No one wanted to believe it, but in the end, Chris Watts confessed to everything: he had strangled all three—or rather, all four, since his wife was 15 weeks pregnant. The reason? His twisted obsession with a female coworker.
To make this documentary possible, its creator, Jenny Popplewell, obtained the necessary permission from the parents of the unfortunate mother to release the video footage. Shannon had a habit of recording important moments of her life on video with her cell phone, as well as via Facebook Live.
In the early hours of the 13thof In August 2018, Shannon returned home from a business trip, but she didn't show up for her appointment with her gynecologist that morning.
When her friend, Nicole Atkinson, realized she couldn't reach her and that her cell phone was turned off—something that never happened with Shannon—she called the police.
After searching the family's home and reviewing security camera footage from the neighboring house, the police noted that the only person seen leaving the house that day was Watts, who was loading something into his car.
Shannon and her daughters have been reported missing, while Watts is appealing to the media, asking anyone with information to help locate them.
The authorities« initial suspicions, of course, have fallen on him from the very beginning. During the lengthy interrogation, Watts insists that he has nothing to do with his family’s disappearance, but he doesn’t convince anyone. The reason? From the very beginning, he has made an »unforgivable” mistake. He speaks of his wife and daughters in the past tense, as if they were dead.
At the same time, the investigators soon discovered his extramarital affair with his colleague, Nicole Kessinger. When Watts failed the lie detector test as well, he realized it was pointless to keep using the same tactic. In order to avoid the death penalty, he confessed to the three murders, She revealed the whole truth to the police and pointed out the spot where she had hidden the bodies. The bodies of the two unfortunate girls were found inside oil tanks in the area where Watts worked, while Shannon was buried nearby.
Alongside the investigation into the disappearance, the documentary features flashbacks to moments from the couple’s wedding six years earlier, up to the moment Shannon told her husband she was pregnant with a baby boy, right up to those critical final weeks.
The events are gradually revealed through text messages and Shannon's communications with both Chris and her friends. The last 20 minutes of the documentary leave you stunned by the way the husband and child killer acted, so that, as he confessed, he could live freely with his mistress. According to his confession, sent from prison to the author Cheryl Cradl for her book *Letters from Christopher*, his mistress had told him that he could be with her if he «got rid of» his family and that she would give him a son.
The 36-year-old was so deeply in love that, before the murders, he tried to induce a miscarriage in his wife by giving her a powerful sedative that causes miscarriages. He was, in fact, so mentally unstable that even though he had about an hour to regret the murder of his wife,, he chose to silence both of his daughters forever; he had put them in the car to take them to the area where he worked.
The perpetrator was sentenced to five life sentences, without the possibility of appeal, plus an additional 28 years.
