Less than a week before her husband of nearly six years strangled her in their home in the pre-dawn darkness, 34-year-oldShanann Wattsreportedlyshared her growing concernsabout her spouse with a friend.
The documents include police reports, interview transcripts and other materials related to the investigation ofthe Watts family murdersat Chris’ hand, which left Shanann, then 15 weeks pregnant, and their daughters dead.
“He hasn’t touched me all week, kissed me, talked to me except for when I’m trying to figure out what is wrong,” Shanann explained in a text, according to KDVR, adding, “We’ve never had a problem in our relationship like this. No joke. NEVER. THIS IS TOTAL LEFT FIELD.”
“I just want to cry,” she wrote.
Her friend tried to soothe her, to no avail. Shanann’s worries about her marriage had eaten up her confidence in Chris and their bond together.
Chris, his wife wrote to her friend, “said he’s not sitting on no damn couch saying what he just said to me to no stranger.”
“Only thing I can think of even though I don’t think he has it in him is another girl,” Shanann wrote.
Weeks earlier, while she was in North Carolina visiting her family with daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, she wrote to Chris: “l realized during this trip what’s missing in our relationship! lt’s only one way emotions and feelings. I can’t come back like this. I need you to meet me halfway. You don’t consider others at all, nor think about others feelings”
But Chris was already involved in an affair: He hadbecome intimate with an unwitting co-workerwho believed he was getting a divorce from his wife.
Prosecutors have said it wasthis selfish desire for a “fresh start”that motivated what happened early on Aug. 13, after Shanann returned from a weekend work trip in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The full pictureof that morning altercationmay never be known but, according to prosecutors, Chris told them that he and Shanann had an “emotional conversation.” Soon thereafter he strangled her with his bare hands. Hesmothered Bella and Celesteand hid all three bodies at an oil work site.
Shanann’s disappearancealmost immediately raised the suspicions of her friends, who involved the police shortly after lunch on Aug. 13. Within days,Chris was behind bars.
Though hepleaded guilty earlier this monthin an agreement to avoid the death penalty, instead receiving a life sentence, he hasnever come clean about his crimes— and he may never.
“[Shanann’s family] were of the opinion that he would never be able to give us a full version — just because of who he is — he would never tell us the truth,” Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke previously told PEOPLE.
Rourke told reporters after Chris’ sentencing: “I don’t think that there is ever going to be a satisfactory answer for anyone.”
source: people.com
