Chris Watts, the Colorado man who murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters, claims in a chilling jailhouse letter to his mother that he’s a changed man who has a newfound relationship with God.
His mother, Cindy Watts, is interviewed in a new HLN special: Killer Dad: Chris Watts Speaks. During the show, she reads the letter she received from her son.
“I’m still a Dad! I’m still a son! No matter what,” Watts wrote. “Now, I can add servant of God to that mix! He has shown me peace, peace, love and forgiveness, and that’s how I live every day.”
It’s a stunning declaration for Watts, 33, who is is serving multiple life sentences for an unspeakable crime. In November, he pleaded guilty to the August 13, 2018, murders of his pregnant wife, Shanann, 34, and the couple’s two young daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, the latter of whom would have turned four next Wednesday.
He later buried Shanann in at a remote oil field where he put his two daughters in large oil tanks. Their bodies were found three days later.
The murders came after Watts began an affair with coworker Nichol Kessinger, who told police that he had told her that he was separated from his wife.
The HLN special details how Watts and Kessinger traded photos, which Watts hid from his family using an app on his phone that looks like a calculator until a secret passcode is entered. Those photos included ones from a secret trip the pair took to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
In a Feb. 18 interview from inside prison, Watts gave chilling details of the murders to authorities from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
He said his wife Shanann “may have been” praying as he strangled her to death inside their bedroom. He said he then drove his wife’s body to his job site, where he buried it in a shallow grave as his daughters waited in the car. Then he smothered both girls.
During the confession, he said that whenever he closes his eyes, he hears his oldest daughter’s final words begging him not to kill her.
“Daddy, no!,” Bella Watts, 4, screamed as her father moved in to smother her with the same blanket he’d used to kill her sister Celeste, 3, moments before.
“I hear it every day, when Bella was talking to me,” Watts told police. “When she said, ‘Daddy, no!'”