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Speaker 3: You are now listening to true Murder, The most shocking
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Speaker 6: Good evening. A husband, a father, a killer. Chris Watts
Speaker 6: was a family man. Everybody, including his family, believed that.
Speaker 6: Yet on August thirteenth, two thousand and eighteen, he murdered Shannan,
Speaker 6: his pregnant wife and two young daughters, bearing Sheanan and
Speaker 6: their unborn son in a shallow grave and dumping their
Speaker 6: daughter's bodies in separal, separate oil tanks. As terrible as
Speaker 6: his story is, it is also a warning because to
Speaker 6: this day, living behind bars, Watts is still acting out
Speaker 6: the character traits that made him kill in the first place.
Speaker 6: In this the first and only psychological exploration of the
Speaker 6: Watts family murders, psychotherapist Lena Derhally has pieced together the crime,
Speaker 6: the events leading to it, and most of all her
Speaker 6: beliefs about the why, including the fact that Chris Watts,
Speaker 6: now a self described man of God, is not in
Speaker 6: the least remorseible about killing his family. Using police discovery
Speaker 6: and other sources, der Holley recreates the night of the
Speaker 6: murders and the investigation that followed. She explores the childhoods,
Speaker 6: families of origin, meeting, and early relationships of Shannan and
Speaker 6: Chris Watts. She also examines Watt's double life and duplicity
Speaker 6: regarding his well publicized affair with a co worker who,
Speaker 6: although she claimed their affair was casual, was searching online
Speaker 6: for wedding dresses at the time of the murders. The
Speaker 6: book includes an in depth look at community psychopaths, the
Speaker 6: different subtypes of narcissism, how to prevent this type of violence,
Speaker 6: and interviews with a neuroscientist, a criminal psychologist, and a
Speaker 6: journalist in order to determine what in Watt's twisted makeup
Speaker 6: allowed him to hide who he really is for so long.
Speaker 6: Using her knowledge of attachment theory, immigo relationship theory, and
Speaker 6: psycho pathology, Dear Holly draws a profile of the real
Speaker 6: Chris Watts, and just as important, she warns readers that
Speaker 6: he is still a danger today. The book we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is My Daddy Is a Hero. How Chris
Speaker 6: Watts went from family Man to Family Killer with my
Speaker 6: special guest, psychotherapist and author Lena Dearhlly. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 6: and thank you so much for this interview, Lina dear Holly.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Dan.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to be with you today.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I know myself and so many
Speaker 6: other people are are We're looking forward to this interview
Speaker 6: with you today. This is an incredible book. Let's start
Speaker 6: right away with what was the objective for writing this book?
Speaker 4: In the oh gosh, yeah, there were so many objectives actually,
Speaker 4: especially now as I look back. You know, when you
Speaker 4: write something like this, you completely submerge yourself in it,
Speaker 4: and I don't think you can really speak clearly until
Speaker 4: you have the hindsight. And I actually released the book
Speaker 4: exactly a year ago now, so I've had a year
Speaker 4: to kind of look back and really reflect on the
Speaker 4: several objectives. I think one was I hear sometimes that
Speaker 4: people say motive doesn't matter and things like this, and
Speaker 4: I work with a lot of people and especially women
Speaker 4: that have suffered this type of narcissistic abuse, and not
Speaker 4: a lot of people know how to label it or
Speaker 4: know what to look for, and so one, you know,
Speaker 4: I wanted this book to be an education I didn't
Speaker 4: want to write some sensationalized crime story because you know,
Speaker 4: the people I'm talking about, they're real people, and so
Speaker 4: many people in this case have been so deeply affected,
Speaker 4: including law enforcement. One of the head detectives on the
Speaker 4: case actually retired because of his PTSD from the case,
Speaker 4: and so, you know, we really want to think that
Speaker 4: these are real people, and so many people's lives were
Speaker 4: destroyed because of Chris Watts's actions, and I think it's
Speaker 4: really important that people sort of know, you know, what
Speaker 4: type of patterns there are to look for, and arguably,
Speaker 4: you know, we'll probably talk about this at some point.
Speaker 4: I don't really think Chris Wats displayed any warning signs,
Speaker 4: which was sort of the second objective of the book,
Speaker 4: because as someone you know who, I'm a psychotherapist, I
Speaker 4: have worked with a lot of couples, I see a
Speaker 4: lot of couple dynamics. I worked with personality disorders before,
Speaker 4: and Chris Watts just really didn't fit this typical picture
Speaker 4: of you know what we see when we see a
Speaker 4: family annihilator of some of his features do, but mostly
Speaker 4: he was this really passive, cive, deferential, low key guy
Speaker 4: who was so easy going and go with the flow,
Speaker 4: and he showed no signs of being controlling or anything
Speaker 4: like that, and I think that was one of the
Speaker 4: reasons people were so drawn to this case. Everybody was
Speaker 4: just scratching their heads and puzzled about, well, how does
Speaker 4: somebody who has the opposite signs of somebody who normally
Speaker 4: would kill his wife or family, how did this happen?
Speaker 4: And so those were sort of the main objectives of
Speaker 4: helping people understand. And I learned so much writing this
Speaker 4: book as well, so it helps me understand more, and
Speaker 4: you know, to also give people an education and sort
Speaker 4: of look at again the neuroscience. I really liked talking
Speaker 4: to the neuroscientist I interviewed for this book. I interviewed
Speaker 4: a great criminal psychologist for this book. So I really
Speaker 4: wanted to help people understand and I really wanted people
Speaker 4: to learn. And then I think the third objective was
Speaker 4: I wanted to go on the record as a mental
Speaker 4: health professional to defend shenand Watts. People watched the Netflix
Speaker 4: documentary about this case, which is called American Murder. They
Speaker 4: go into this aspect of the case that there was
Speaker 4: a lot of victims blaming going on about Shenan sort
Speaker 4: of you know, being the person. You know, there's some
Speaker 4: narrative that she somehow pushed Chris to do this, and
Speaker 4: I could not disagree with that more. And so I
Speaker 4: wanted to go on the record as a professional defending
Speaker 4: her because she can't defend herself, and so it was
Speaker 4: really important for me to do that for her. And
Speaker 4: so those were my main objectives.
Speaker 6: Now, what is it that you observe that drew you
Speaker 6: into this case immediately and, as you say, obsessed you afterwards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, the first time I saw anything about
Speaker 4: this case was this Chris Watts interview on his porch.
Speaker 4: So after his wife and children are reported missing, he
Speaker 4: agrees to do an interview television interview at the news
Speaker 4: on his front porch, and the way he's talking about
Speaker 4: his family and children is just so removed and so detached.
Speaker 4: His eyes look really soulless. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: you see this, you know, handsome, canned, muscular guy in
Speaker 4: front of this large suburban home, and it just there's
Speaker 4: just this real incongruency about it, this you know, picture
Speaker 4: of perfect idyllic life and then this man who on
Speaker 4: the surface seems great, but you can tell that there's something,
Speaker 4: you know, not right. And then as the story unfolded,
Speaker 4: you know, nearly days after he did that interview, he
Speaker 4: failed a polygraph test and ended up confessing his first confession.
Speaker 4: He blamed his wife and said, you know, she killed
Speaker 4: the kids, and then he killed her in a fit
Speaker 4: of rage. But as forensic evidence came out and eventually
Speaker 4: he signed off on a confession that he had killed
Speaker 4: all three of them. But just the of you know,
Speaker 4: burying his pregnant wife in the shallow grave face down,
Speaker 4: which he in certain confessions has confessed that he did
Speaker 4: it on purpose, the way he just kind of threw
Speaker 4: her callously into that grave, and then putting his children
Speaker 4: in oil tanks. I mean, this aspect just blows the
Speaker 4: mind of everyone. How could a father put his baby
Speaker 4: girl three and four years old in oil tanks? I mean,
Speaker 4: just that horrific aspect. And again of this person who
Speaker 4: had no warning signs, no criminal record, no history of abuse,
Speaker 4: no history of being controlling anything of that. For everybody
Speaker 4: loved him is that, you know, I researched the book.
Speaker 4: You could not find one person who had anything bad
Speaker 4: to say about this man, and so I was, you know,
Speaker 4: obsessed with the same reason everybody else was. How does
Speaker 4: this happen? How does somebody so seemingly normal and like
Speaker 4: a nice guy do something that is the epitome of evil.
Speaker 6: Certainly it's worth mentioning, obviously about August thirteenth, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 6: and you write that Nicky Atkinson is a hero in
Speaker 6: this story and does incredible pressures put on Chris Watts.
Speaker 6: But as if we discuss this case further, I think
Speaker 6: the audience will see and realize that without her, without
Speaker 6: her actions, initially, there might have been more for Chris
Speaker 6: watch Chris Watts to be able to do, to be
Speaker 6: able to cover his tracks. We'll talk about more about
Speaker 6: that and a motivation for that, but let's talk about again.
Speaker 6: You talk about the senselessness of this, and especially it's
Speaker 6: profound in terms of his everybody saying what a great
Speaker 6: guy was, and all of his actions and behavior, and
Speaker 6: his wife's respect and love for him, and her posts
Speaker 6: about their love and their and everybody's idea that this
Speaker 6: was an idyllic relationship in the first place. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about the relationship where he works at this petroleum company
Speaker 6: and as an impetus for and a reason for these
Speaker 6: murders to occur in the first place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, you know, Shenan and Chris were together for
Speaker 4: about eight years before he murdered the family, and they
Speaker 4: were married for six and you know, up until she
Speaker 4: had traveled to North Carolina. So she took her daughters,
Speaker 4: Bella and CC to North Carolina for the summer. They
Speaker 4: spent about five weeks there visiting Chris's family and Shenan's family,
Speaker 4: and Chris joined them for the last week of the
Speaker 4: trip that he was by himself in North in Colorado
Speaker 4: where they lived for five weeks, and he was working.
Speaker 4: And you know, right before Sanan and the girls left
Speaker 4: for North Carolina, Chris had struck up a flirtation with
Speaker 4: a coworker named Nicole Kessinger, so he met her. You know,
Speaker 4: they had He was out in the field a lot,
Speaker 4: but there were times once or twice a week where
Speaker 4: they would have to go into the office and so
Speaker 4: he would see her there kind of like a water
Speaker 4: cooler thing. And I think they found each other attractive.
Speaker 4: But what ended up happening was he was already texting
Speaker 4: and flirting with Nicole Kessinger. Even he was on a
Speaker 4: business trip with Chanan for the supplements she promoted called
Speaker 4: Thrive in San Diego right before she took the girls
Speaker 4: to North Carolina, And even on that trip where he
Speaker 4: was with Shanan on a weekend just the two of them,
Speaker 4: he was already flirting with Nicole Kessinger. But when the
Speaker 4: family left for five weeks, all of a sudden, he
Speaker 4: had this opportunity to have this bachelor life, and he
Speaker 4: was you know, he went full force into this affair
Speaker 4: with Nicole Kessinger and basically spent you know, five days
Speaker 4: a week with her for pretty much the entirety of
Speaker 4: the time his family was gone. So if you look
Speaker 4: at one of the you know, I always like to
Speaker 4: say about this case, I call it the perfect storm
Speaker 4: of multiple factors that came together. So, you know, this
Speaker 4: affair seemed to be one of the driving forces behind
Speaker 4: what he did. But you know, as we'll go into later,
Speaker 4: what I like to tell people is that lots of
Speaker 4: people have affairs. I deal with infidelity in my practice
Speaker 4: all the time. Most people who have affairs do not
Speaker 4: kill their family, So we know that the affair was
Speaker 4: not the reason why he killed his family. There had
Speaker 4: to be something much deeper, much more wrong than just
Speaker 4: an affair, but that was one of the catalysts that
Speaker 4: put this idea in motion for him to premeditate the
Speaker 4: killings of his family.
Speaker 6: Now, unlike many times where there seems to be a
Speaker 6: pressure from this new affair or a denigration of say
Speaker 6: the wife in sort of a competition between them, it
Speaker 6: almost seems at least that there was almost the opposite
Speaker 6: going on in terms of her speaking to Chris about
Speaker 6: his family and his desire to leave that family.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, about Nicole's how she approached it. I don't
Speaker 4: think we'll ever really know the full story about what
Speaker 4: Chris told Nicole Kssinger about his family. You know, he says,
Speaker 4: you know that maybe he told her that he was
Speaker 4: leaving them, but then he said that he knew that
Speaker 4: she was married when he met her. You know, he
Speaker 4: was wearing his wedding ring. And she says, you know
Speaker 4: that on the record that she told him, like, go
Speaker 4: fix things with your wife. I don't want to be
Speaker 4: I don't want to be the second fiddle. Like, you
Speaker 4: need to figure that out first. But you know, there's
Speaker 4: also times where Nicole Kassinger would say things to him
Speaker 4: like she wanted to give him his first son, and
Speaker 4: Shannann was pregnant with the third child, and she was
Speaker 4: actually pregnant with a boy. And so, you know, Chris
Speaker 4: said in one of his confessions, and I looked at
Speaker 4: multiple confessions that he's given, and he has changed the story.
Speaker 4: He has said that when Nicole said that she wanted
Speaker 4: to give him his first son, that was when the
Speaker 4: idea of plotting these murders came into his head. So
Speaker 4: you know, there, I'm not sure exactly what was said
Speaker 4: behind the scenes, because there seems to be some conflicting,
Speaker 4: contradictory things that both of them say about you know,
Speaker 4: how much she knew about his marriage and whatnot.
Speaker 6: For this seemingly perfect marriage and relationship. What was it?
Speaker 6: What were the reasons he gave later for what was
Speaker 6: it about Nikki that was different than his wife? What
Speaker 6: was different about this potential relationship that was different than
Speaker 6: this ideal one that he had?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, when he I think it's important to
Speaker 4: understand the dynamic of when he and Shnan first got
Speaker 4: together because he in order to understand what was different
Speaker 4: for him about Nicki. So when he met Shanan, she
Speaker 4: wanted nothing to do with him. They were introduced over
Speaker 4: Facebook by a mutual friend, and he kind of pursued
Speaker 4: her on Facebook, and she was in a really dark
Speaker 4: place in her life. She was ill, she was coming
Speaker 4: off of a divorce, and so she kind of turned
Speaker 4: him down and said, you know, I'm not really ready
Speaker 4: to meet anyone, but he kind of kept pushing, and
Speaker 4: then she agreed to meet him, and they went on
Speaker 4: a first date, and she still was kind of aloof
Speaker 4: with him and not really thinking he was her type.
Speaker 4: But he pursued, He pursued, he pursued, He really went
Speaker 4: after her. And the dynamic of their relationship from day
Speaker 4: one was that she was kind of more of the
Speaker 4: assertive one, you know, kind of wearing the pants and
Speaker 4: the relationship she was very much self admittedly OCD. She
Speaker 4: really things in their order. She really liked control. Everything
Speaker 4: was meticulous in her house. You know, she was very
Speaker 4: much a perfectionist and she did everything really well. And
Speaker 4: Chris again had always had with everybody in his life.
Speaker 4: It seeing this really quiet, laid back again, very deferential,
Speaker 4: very submissive, and he made it seem like he was
Speaker 4: okay with that dynamic that he kind of liked being
Speaker 4: told what to do. That his role was kind of
Speaker 4: again this really good guy who doted onto his girlfriend
Speaker 4: who then became his wife. And so that was the
Speaker 4: dynamic that they always had, but that was also the
Speaker 4: dynamic that Chris sold to her. So if we look
Speaker 4: at somebody she's pushing him away, and he's convincing her
Speaker 4: to be with him. He's going above and beyond. In
Speaker 4: the first few months of dating, he's driving her to
Speaker 4: Colonosk at the appointments, he is rearranging her pills in
Speaker 4: their pill box. You know, things that are very, very
Speaker 4: over the top when we're first meeting someone. So he's
Speaker 4: really trying to sell her something here. And eventually she's like, well,
Speaker 4: this is the opposite of my first marriage, and this
Speaker 4: is how you know, I really like being treated like this.
Speaker 4: I feel adored, I feel loved, and so of course
Speaker 4: she said, you know what, this is probably what I
Speaker 4: need and a husband and a father. So the dynamic
Speaker 4: was there from the beginning. But as many of us
Speaker 4: who are married or have kids know that you get
Speaker 4: married you have young kids, your life changes and a
Speaker 4: lot of the time, little children have lots of needs,
Speaker 4: and people are busy, you know, they're working, they're trying
Speaker 4: to put food on the table, they're driving their kids
Speaker 4: to school, and so their life became very they fell
Speaker 4: into very much of a monotonous, typical, you know, lifestyle
Speaker 4: of parents with young children. And again, when he met
Speaker 4: Nicki Nicole Kessinger, who he calls Nicki, she was you know,
Speaker 4: she's thirty, she's single. She you know, Chris said that
Speaker 4: he felt that she respects did him in a way
Speaker 4: that nobody else had ever respected him before. I think
Speaker 4: he felt that she really was interested in what he
Speaker 4: had to say, and I think he kind of felt
Speaker 4: over the years, at least this is what he says,
Speaker 4: is that, you know, I think he felt like he
Speaker 4: didn't have as much control with Shanan or maybe didn't
Speaker 4: feel respected by her, although he never articulated that to her,
Speaker 4: and so there was never a chance to repair this
Speaker 4: dynamic if he was unhappy with that. But of course,
Speaker 4: in the honeymoon phase of a relationship, when you're first
Speaker 4: meeting somebody and he's first meeting Nicki Kessinger, you put
Speaker 4: your best foot forward, and we're not always showing, you know,
Speaker 4: the worst sides of ourselves as well. So he's sort
Speaker 4: of looking at the projections fantasy of what he thinks,
Speaker 4: Nicki is he doesn't really know her. You know, he's
Speaker 4: been with Shanan for eight years, Nicki, he's known for
Speaker 4: what a few weeks, and so he's romanticizing and projecting
Speaker 4: on her as well what I think he wants her
Speaker 4: to be. But ultimately, I think the big comparison for
Speaker 4: him him was, oh, there's this person and I feel
Speaker 4: respected and heard by them, and I haven't felt like
Speaker 4: that with anyone in my life. And I believe you know,
Speaker 4: he did say that that she was the person he
Speaker 4: felt respected him the most.
Speaker 6: We haven't talked about this Leavey company and also Shenan's success,
Speaker 6: and also that her friends were all tied up, some
Speaker 6: of her best friends were tied up, not tied up.
Speaker 6: But we're also involved in this company and this Thrive
Speaker 6: and also what Thrive meant to Chris Chris Watts, because
Speaker 6: he wasn't always a healthy, fit person growing up, and
Speaker 6: what did Thrive represent in terms of a supplement and
Speaker 6: a lifestyle for Chris.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Bill Lavelle is a company. It's a multi level
Speaker 4: marketing company that has a product called Thrive, which is
Speaker 4: you know, shake supplements. It's supposed to give you er.
Speaker 4: There'sposed to feel natural, you know, healthy lifestyle, weight loss.
Speaker 4: And Shanan actually she's always been you know, she had
Speaker 4: always been quite an entrepreneur, go get her, and like
Speaker 4: a lot of mothers, she wanted to be home with
Speaker 4: her children and also make money. So something like this
Speaker 4: appealed to her because she could work from home. And
Speaker 4: so she actually, because she had her own health issues,
Speaker 4: she started, i believe, as a customer of this Thrive
Speaker 4: and she really liked it, and she started to promote it,
Speaker 4: and she she became, you know, quite successful with these
Speaker 4: type of things. You know, you make money when you
Speaker 4: get consultants to work under you and then you sell
Speaker 4: the products and sort of the more people you have
Speaker 4: working under you, the more money you make. So she
Speaker 4: was able to use that of her only career, so
Speaker 4: she was able to quit the other jobs she had had.
Speaker 4: She had worked you know, at a call center in
Speaker 4: a children's hospital before, and had done some other dabbled
Speaker 4: and some other types of things. And while she was
Speaker 4: doing that, she also goot Chris to you know, use
Speaker 4: the supplements, and part of selling this is using social media,
Speaker 4: so she and Chris, you know, would be on social
Speaker 4: media promoting the products. And Chris was quite overweight, you know,
Speaker 4: they joked, his family joked that he was like a
Speaker 4: garbage disposal. He would eat everything, you know, love McDonald's
Speaker 4: kind of thing. And he started eating healthy and working
Speaker 4: out and taking Thrive, and he dropped a lot of weight,
Speaker 4: and he started working out and running and weightlifting, and
Speaker 4: he became you know, more muscular as he was tanned
Speaker 4: and he was fit, and he was just I think overall,
Speaker 4: way more attractive than he had been in the past.
Speaker 4: And so part of this, you know, was in it
Speaker 4: seems like a lot of it was when he started
Speaker 4: Thrive and in conjunction, but Thrive adopted this healthy lifestyle
Speaker 4: and in turn, you know, maybe maybe Nicki Kessinger would
Speaker 4: not have noticed him before when he was you know,
Speaker 4: sort of overtweight self, so that it's another interesting thing
Speaker 4: to look at. Well, all of a sudden he's attractive,
Speaker 4: you know, by a lot of people would say that,
Speaker 4: I think, and not now, of course, after what he's done,
Speaker 4: but before that, you know he may have been attracting
Speaker 4: attention from women before, and I think Nikki was the
Speaker 4: one who pursued him and made him feel sexually desirable,
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure he's ever had that before in
Speaker 4: his life. So there was felt to that attraction of
Speaker 4: this woman who finds him very sexually attractive, and I
Speaker 4: think he was very very much enthralled with somebody who
Speaker 4: felt like that about him.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about the motivation for this, and there's
Speaker 6: incredible discussion about the issue of psycho pathology, psychopathy, and
Speaker 6: also on narcissism, and then you discuss sub sets of
Speaker 6: narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. When people look at someone
Speaker 6: like Chris, it's easy to say he's a psychopath and
Speaker 6: very simplistic. Let's talk about the distinction between those psycho
Speaker 6: pathology and this malignant narcissism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so psychopathology is sort of the study of mental illness,
Speaker 4: mental disease, and when we're looking at narcissism anyway, those
Speaker 4: are considered technically by people in the mental health field
Speaker 4: are diagnostic manual is personality disorders are you know, narcissism,
Speaker 4: but they're not mood disorders. So mood disorders are depression
Speaker 4: and post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and there's certain
Speaker 4: medications that people can take that can sometimes help those symptoms.
Speaker 4: As a personality disorder, you can't take a medication for it.
Speaker 4: It's sort of fixed in your personality. And so the
Speaker 4: the malignant narcissism is it's very parallel to psychopathy, and
Speaker 4: so there's lots of you know, debate in the field
Speaker 4: about psychopathy versus sociopathy versus malignant narcissism, where there's also
Speaker 4: something called the dark triad, which is traits you know,
Speaker 4: like masthew vellianism, but they all sort of share the
Speaker 4: same thing. And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 4: that's important to know is sort of when we're looking
Speaker 4: at malignant narcissism psychopathy, we're looking at narcissistic personality disorder
Speaker 4: or the subtypes of narcissism, which I you know, discussed
Speaker 4: in the book. They're defining features are lack of empathy
Speaker 4: and remorse, and so you know, I think that's thing
Speaker 4: that you always want to look for. But malignant narcissism,
Speaker 4: I think is when it's it's really dangerous narcissism, Like
Speaker 4: this is the real the worst type of the narcissist,
Speaker 4: very psychopathic. Again, they think of people like objects and
Speaker 4: they will just if they will discard you, they will
Speaker 4: do whatever it takes to just do whatever they want.
Speaker 4: Like there's just no regard for other human beings. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of impulsivity, there's a lot of recklessness or
Speaker 4: you know, they break the law, which again Chris didn't
Speaker 4: do any of this, but there's always a first time,
Speaker 4: right for every criminal, and so there was always I
Speaker 4: think there was always that he was always capable of it.
Speaker 4: But again these perfect storm factors came out later in life,
Speaker 4: which you know, he's I think he's about thirty five
Speaker 4: now and this happened two years ago.
Speaker 6: Now let's talk about the influence basically of his family, Ronnie,
Speaker 6: his father, and Cynthia's mother, and his sister Jamie, and
Speaker 6: also the relationship they had with Shannan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the complicated stuff right there. So Ronnie and
Speaker 4: Chris were I would say Chris would think his his
Speaker 4: father was his hero. You know, we're talking about my book.
Speaker 4: My daddy is a hero. There's a couple father you know,
Speaker 4: father child's relationships or the father is the hero. You know,
Speaker 4: which is kind of a theme in the book. And
Speaker 4: Ronnie was Chris's hero. They had a lot in common.
Speaker 4: They would go to racetracks together. Chris was a really
Speaker 4: skilled mechanic. He was really into you know, race cars
Speaker 4: and things like that, so they would they would do
Speaker 4: that together. They were quite bonded. Ronnie would go to
Speaker 4: Chris's Little league games and you know what was his
Speaker 4: big supporter was at every game, Cindy and Chris's sister,
Speaker 4: Jamie's about seven years older than he is, and you know,
Speaker 4: they had a more distant relationship with Chris. It wasn't
Speaker 4: a contentious relationship and childhood by any means, but they
Speaker 4: which you know, I get into the book as well
Speaker 4: as that they had said that, well, they never knew
Speaker 4: what he was feeling as a child. You know, he
Speaker 4: was really closed off and they were always asking him,
Speaker 4: how are you feeling. Nobody really kind of knew what
Speaker 4: he was thinking or feeling a lot and so I think,
Speaker 4: you know, Jamie was the older sister and doted on him,
Speaker 4: and you know, his mother. I think because he was
Speaker 4: so passive as a child, I think again he sort
Speaker 4: of always lets you know, certain people in his life
Speaker 4: just kind of dictate things for him. Whether or not
Speaker 4: he liked that, I don't know, but I think that
Speaker 4: was a dynamic that started probably with his mother and
Speaker 4: sister that he was used to being in relationships with
Speaker 4: people who kind of just told him what to do
Speaker 4: and he kind of just went along with it, or
Speaker 4: he was just more of a passive bystander in the relationship,
Speaker 4: and you know, nobody kind of really knew what was
Speaker 4: really going on with him. So, as you know, sNaN
Speaker 4: was probably his first real girlfriend. I think you've had
Speaker 4: maybe like very more casual girlfriends before that, but this
Speaker 4: is the really serious one. And you know, he moved
Speaker 4: in with her, and right away Shannan clashed, especially with
Speaker 4: Cindy and Jamie, but she clashed with all three of them.
Speaker 4: And you know, as is in the discovery documents of
Speaker 4: the case and in my book and you can you know,
Speaker 4: find it everywhere on YouTube, that they met for the
Speaker 4: first time when Chanan had this really nice, big house
Speaker 4: and she had a cookout and they all came, and
Speaker 4: I think Jamie and Cindy were very skeptical of her
Speaker 4: to begin with, How does this young woman have such
Speaker 4: nice things in this big house? And why do you
Speaker 4: need all that. You know, where Chris came from, I
Speaker 4: guess more of a humble background. And Shanan's mother, Sandy,
Speaker 4: also felt there was a cold vibe from them. And again,
Speaker 4: you know, well, I don't think we'll ever really know
Speaker 4: the truth behind some of these stories that have happened.
Speaker 4: Like there was the famous story about Shanan and Chris's
Speaker 4: engagement party where Sanan had given Jamie the invitations to
Speaker 4: be mailed and nobody showed up at the party except
Speaker 4: you know, immediate family, and Shenan believed that Jamie never
Speaker 4: sent those invitations. I believe Jamie says that she did.
Speaker 4: So again, you have all these different stories, but the
Speaker 4: tensions were really high and everything came to a head,
Speaker 4: you know, when Shenan was in North Carolina the last
Speaker 4: summer of her life, when the famous incident nutgait happened,
Speaker 4: when her children had severe nut allergies, especially the youngest one, Ceci,
Speaker 4: and Chris's mother Cindy had allegedly put you know, something
Speaker 4: to do with nuts. There's been different stories. Again, did
Speaker 4: the ice cream have nuts or was there a bowl
Speaker 4: of nuts on the table. I've heard different versions of it,
Speaker 4: but Ultimately, Shanan felt that not only was she front
Speaker 4: of the girl, but she was also disregarding Shenan's you know,
Speaker 4: wanting to protect her children. And this is really sad.
Speaker 4: I think when I think back some of the texts
Speaker 4: Shanan had with Chris about that incident, where she's talking
Speaker 4: about protecting her children at whatever cost and protecting them
Speaker 4: from evil family, you know, and she's talking about his mother,
Speaker 4: and she has no idea this whole time that her
Speaker 4: husband is the one she really needs to protect herself from.
Speaker 4: I mean, she didn't need to protect herself from the
Speaker 4: whole family because it was a very toxic relationship. But
Speaker 4: it's just really, you know, I still can't get over it.
Speaker 4: Like when I think about how Shenan had zero idea
Speaker 4: her husband was plotting her murderer, capable of this, and
Speaker 4: that also that he would murder her children. She never
Speaker 4: once thought that she would have to protect herself and
Speaker 4: her children from her husband. So it's that still kind
Speaker 4: of shakes me to my core to this day.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, let's just take a second for the break for
Speaker 6: these messages.
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Speaker 4: What's everybody else? Now?
Speaker 6: You talked about the idea that he could kill his
Speaker 6: own children. What you have in this book too, is
Speaker 6: some horrifying details and I'm not sure everybody's aware of
Speaker 6: in terms of the sheer horror of what he had done. Originally,
Speaker 6: you talk about that he confessed that, and this is
Speaker 6: where it comes from, and this account is from Chris Watts.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about what happened and when he talks about
Speaker 6: killing his children and then afterwards, believing they're dead, he
Speaker 6: goes to deal with and have this conversation and kill Shanan.
Speaker 6: What happens this while he's wrapping her up in a
Speaker 6: bed sheet in the bedroom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so when actually the investigators from the case, both
Speaker 4: from Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Frederick Police Department
Speaker 4: in Colorado, had flown out to his prison and Wisconsin
Speaker 4: about you know, several months after he was sentenced to
Speaker 4: life in prison, and this was one of the confessions
Speaker 4: that was extracted from him, and this is the first
Speaker 4: time he had told people, you know, what really happened
Speaker 4: and according to him, And you know, some people also
Speaker 4: believe he's a very unreliable narrator, which I try to
Speaker 4: put that in my book that when I'm talking about
Speaker 4: what's happening, this is what he's saying. But we also
Speaker 4: have to keep in mind that he's unreliable narrator and
Speaker 4: he's lied and changed his story multiple times. But he,
Speaker 4: you know, said that he he strangled sNaN and I
Speaker 4: think it's debatable about there's some theories that he had
Speaker 4: drugged her because he had admitted to previously giving her
Speaker 4: oxy codon to try to get her to miscarry the
Speaker 4: baby when they were in when he came out to
Speaker 4: North Carolina, and you know, people were people were a
Speaker 4: little confused about, Oh, it didn't seem like she fought back.
Speaker 4: I've talked to the survivors of domestic violence who have
Speaker 4: been choked, and some of them will say, you're in shock,
Speaker 4: you can't fight back. So it's again, I don't think
Speaker 4: we really know if she she didn't fight back because
Speaker 4: she couldn't, if she was drugged, if what happened. But
Speaker 4: I think he waited for her and after they had had,
Speaker 4: you know, a contentious discussion about their marriage. I think
Speaker 4: he had waited for her to drift off to sleep
Speaker 4: and then he kind of climbed on top of her
Speaker 4: and strangled her. And you know, he when he knew
Speaker 4: she was dead, her body in a sheet, and Bella,
Speaker 4: who was the four year old, walked into the room
Speaker 4: and you know, said daddy was wrong with mommy, and
Speaker 4: he said something, you know, like mommy doesn't feel good.
Speaker 4: And ultimately I guess CC woke up as well. And
Speaker 4: in another confession, he actually has said that he smothered
Speaker 4: them in their beds with their pillows before Shanana got
Speaker 4: home from a business trip, so she the night she
Speaker 4: was murdered, she had been away for the weekend.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 4: In one of his confessions he says he smothered them first,
Speaker 4: but I guess he didn't finish what he had started
Speaker 4: because he was surprised, you know, that they had woken up.
Speaker 4: And he says that he was angry that they were
Speaker 4: still alive. And he also said they looked like they
Speaker 4: had been traumatized. I think maybe one of them may
Speaker 4: have had bruises under her eyes or something like that,
Speaker 4: and so they were confused and disarray. And again, this
Speaker 4: is just one of several different stories he's told, so
Speaker 4: I'm just repeating them. But he did drag Shenan's body
Speaker 4: down the stairs in front of the girls, wrapped in
Speaker 4: a sheet because he couldn't carry her, she was too heavy,
Speaker 4: and you know, put them, put her in the car
Speaker 4: on the bed of the truck in the back, put
Speaker 4: the girls with their feet dangling over their dead mother,
Speaker 4: and drove forty five minutes oil field where he worked,
Speaker 4: where you know, he then proceeded to strangle his mother,
Speaker 4: Ceci with her favorite blanket, in front of Bella. And
Speaker 4: then I think, I believe you put her in the
Speaker 4: oil tank then and then he came back to Bella
Speaker 4: and she said, Daddy, are you going to do the
Speaker 4: same thing to me that you did to Ceci? And
Speaker 4: he says he doesn't remember what he said, and obviously
Speaker 4: then he goes and does the same thing and then
Speaker 4: puts her body in the oil tank. But I mean,
Speaker 4: you look at again. I mean the time, the amount
Speaker 4: of time, the complete lack of mpem a mother and
Speaker 4: I have a daughter who was born three months before
Speaker 4: Bella was, So when I'm writing this book, I have
Speaker 4: I can picture what a girl Bella's age is. It's
Speaker 4: my own daughter, and there's just nothing in you know,
Speaker 4: I get my voice first cracking because it's just so upsetting.
Speaker 4: I'm still I'm so upset to this day. There's nothing
Speaker 4: on this earth that would make a parent who loves
Speaker 4: their child, who's begging for their life, and to subject
Speaker 4: them to what he subjected, that type of trauma, what
Speaker 4: he did to them, It's just, you know, it is
Speaker 4: pure evil as far as I'm concerned. That is not
Speaker 4: a human thing to do. So it's it's still it's
Speaker 4: I can't even go back and read my own book.
Speaker 4: I cannot read that chapter. But you know, writing that
Speaker 4: chapter I had to disassociate from. It was hard to edit.
Speaker 4: It's just most incredibly one of the most incredibly disturbing things.
Speaker 4: I think most of us have ever heard from a father.
Speaker 6: Well, and not too. It gets worse because he digs
Speaker 6: a shallow grave to bury the mother, puts her in
Speaker 6: face down. She's fifteen weeks pregnant. I'm sorry, but what happens.
Speaker 6: I've never heard of this, and he sees how he
Speaker 6: sees what has happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess. Then there's a decomposition process where you know,
Speaker 4: it's called cough and birth where the baby is. You know,
Speaker 4: she's basically given birth after being deceased. And so the
Speaker 4: baby was you know, I believe the baby was out
Speaker 4: as well. And yeah, and you know, this was the
Speaker 4: son he had allegedly always wanted. This says he had
Speaker 4: pushed for the third child. He really wanted the son.
Speaker 4: Shenanne was so excited to give him a boy. And
Speaker 4: it was again he's like, I don't even care. He
Speaker 4: did not care that about his third child. He did
Speaker 4: not care he was having a son. Literally zero attachments
Speaker 4: his wife to any of his children. All he wanted
Speaker 4: was his new life that he had decided was the
Speaker 4: right thing for him, and he was willing to do
Speaker 4: anything to get what he wanted.
Speaker 6: It's fascinating too that this confession is horrible, but what
Speaker 6: he does to his own father that he considers a hero.
Speaker 6: He's taken. He's in the police station for questioning. There
Speaker 6: is detective bomb Hover, there is a CBI agent, Carleral
Speaker 6: Bureau of Investigation. So these people are speaking with him
Speaker 6: and they're suspicious of him. Immediately his father goes to
Speaker 6: this questioning with him. He asked to see his father
Speaker 6: at some point in the questioning. They allow that it's
Speaker 6: one of the most horrifying parts of incredibly horror horrifying tale.
Speaker 6: What does he tell his father about his culpability in this.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, one of the things that we have
Speaker 4: to look at too is that when they were trying
Speaker 4: to extract a confession from him, Tammy Lee was you know,
Speaker 4: giving and Graham Coder, the detectives were proposing different scenarios.
Speaker 4: You know, they just wanted him to confess with something.
Speaker 4: They wanted to find the body as quickly because you know,
Speaker 4: the more you wait, the less evidence you have. And
Speaker 4: so one of the scenarios they had offered him was
Speaker 4: they said, did Shenan do something to the girls? Did
Speaker 4: she do something? You know, and then did you get angry?
Speaker 4: You know, sort of feeding him those lines, and so
Speaker 4: when he called, when he said he wanted to speak
Speaker 4: to his father, he said that he had seen he
Speaker 4: had told Schanan that he wanted to leave her, and
Speaker 4: she got so angry that she strangled the girls. He
Speaker 4: changed his story at first he said smothered and then
Speaker 4: the father asked why she was choking him or was
Speaker 4: she smothering him? And he said, oh, choking, so you know,
Speaker 4: and he even said he saw them blue in the face,
Speaker 4: but the baby monitors are black and white. They're not
Speaker 4: in color, so I don't even know, you know, when
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about all these details, he told, I'm still like,
Speaker 4: how could you tell that they were blue from the
Speaker 4: baby monitor? Anyway, this is what he told his father,
Speaker 4: and by the time he got up there, the girls
Speaker 4: were dead and he strangled Shanan in a rage. And
Speaker 4: then he didn't know what to do with what he said,
Speaker 4: and that's why he put the bodies in the oil tanks,
Speaker 4: is that he didn't know what to do. So that
Speaker 4: also started a wave of again, you know, people believing
Speaker 4: that Sanan did it. And you know, Chris Wats has
Speaker 4: had his fans, you know, there's people who still believe
Speaker 4: in his innocence, no matter you know, what he's said
Speaker 4: or what he's confessed to, and you know, so it's
Speaker 4: it's pretty shocking just to think about. And I believe
Speaker 4: his his family even you know, there's different stories I've heard,
Speaker 4: but you know, I think there's a part of them
Speaker 4: that still believe he's innocent or still you know, are
Speaker 4: looking and again, you know, of course, I'm they're probably
Speaker 4: in such shock and denial, like this is not anything
Speaker 4: they ever expected to happen. But obviously they want to
Speaker 4: search for any possible answer to make it so that Chris,
Speaker 4: you know, doesn't have culpability in this and and that
Speaker 4: that you know, was started initially by this false story
Speaker 4: that he he brought to light.
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Speaker 6: we were speaking about this incredible case. Eventually he is
Speaker 6: pressured to avoid the death penalty. But also there are
Speaker 6: other reasons. Tell us why you think that it was
Speaker 6: that he agreed to a plea deal in this case.
Speaker 4: I think there were several reasons. Again, you know, looking
Speaker 4: at what I believe is his narcissism, and you know,
Speaker 4: I describe this subtype of what's called communal narcissism, which
Speaker 4: I believe it's the profile of Chris. To understand how
Speaker 4: these narcissistic people operate is they are constantly looking for
Speaker 4: something called narcissistic supply, which is attention, admiration, anything that
Speaker 4: makes them feel special. They're addicted to it. They'll do
Speaker 4: anything to get it. Someone who's a communal narcissist uses
Speaker 4: good deeds or the persona of being helpful and trustworthy
Speaker 4: to get that narcissistic supply. And so you know, people
Speaker 4: always think, well, if people are psychopaths or you know, narcissists,
Speaker 4: they don't care what other people think. But actually, narcissistic
Speaker 4: people very much care about what other people think about them.
Speaker 4: In fact, it's it's central to sort of the way
Speaker 4: they operate. They need other people to admire them, and
Speaker 4: Chris really need it that, you know, he really needed
Speaker 4: people to see him in a good light. And even
Speaker 4: you know, after his wife is missing and he's texting
Speaker 4: with her friends, he's even saying things to them like, oh,
Speaker 4: I don't want you to think I'm a bad person.
Speaker 4: And so I also think that there's a part of
Speaker 4: the motivation and the crime of you know, people say, well,
Speaker 4: why didn't he get a divorce? I think there was
Speaker 4: multiple reasons why he didn't do that in his twisted mind.
Speaker 4: That's not a normal mind. So normal people don't think
Speaker 4: like that, which I think was interesting when I was
Speaker 4: studying psychopathy. You know, they'll say that psychopathic people, when
Speaker 4: they think about solutions to their problems, they think about
Speaker 4: antisocial solutions, so and that that would be murder, for example,
Speaker 4: whereas people who are not psychopathic, like Shenan for example,
Speaker 4: will think of pro social solutions to their problems, which
Speaker 4: is what she did when she started noticing trouble in
Speaker 4: her marriage a few weeks before she was killed. She
Speaker 4: was sending him self help books. She wanted to go
Speaker 4: to counseling. She was looking at her else she was saying,
Speaker 4: what can I change to make things better? But that's
Speaker 4: a pro social solution to a problem, and so you know,
Speaker 4: that's something to understand too. So in Chris's mind, he's
Speaker 4: thinking of these anti social solutions. But I also believe
Speaker 4: that what would it look like to Chris if he
Speaker 4: divorced his pregnant wife and left pregnant white, you know,
Speaker 4: his wife with three children, and it came out that
Speaker 4: he had a new woman like it would look it
Speaker 4: would make him look really bad. And I think he
Speaker 4: wanted to avoid that at all costs. And so again
Speaker 4: part of that motivation, I think he just wanted to
Speaker 4: be rid of them and just didn't want any baggage.
Speaker 4: But I also think, you know, he could also set
Speaker 4: himself up to look like the victim. You know, oh
Speaker 4: my wife. I think he wanted to make it appear
Speaker 4: like she left him, and that he didn't have enough
Speaker 4: time to set it up that way, but there were
Speaker 4: certain things he did and said that alluded to the
Speaker 4: fact that you know, oh we had a fight, and
Speaker 4: to like me, she took the kids and she left me.
Speaker 4: So then he could be this victim and that people
Speaker 4: could feel sorry for Chris. And so I think that
Speaker 4: was really really important to him that people saw him
Speaker 4: in a good light. And so I think the confession,
Speaker 4: the early confession, was one to he's still playing the
Speaker 4: role of the good boy that he always was, you know,
Speaker 4: that he's the people pleaser, he's doing the right thing.
Speaker 4: But also I believe he wanted to avoid a trial.
Speaker 4: I don't think he expected. I don't think any of
Speaker 4: us expected that we would get a public dump of
Speaker 4: the documents, which you know, became public records, and everything
Speaker 4: came out anyway, and the sentencing was televised, and the
Speaker 4: prosecutor he outlined exactly what had happened as well, and
Speaker 4: you know, he made look like a horrible person, even
Speaker 4: in you know, the short speech that he gave just
Speaker 4: just talking about the affair with Nicki. And while his
Speaker 4: wife is begging him to talk to her, he's researching
Speaker 4: jewelry and Victoria's secret for Nicki, and you know, just
Speaker 4: he's already totally forgotten about his life. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: believe that he wanted to avoid a trial. He wanted
Speaker 4: to avoid being dragged through the mind, and I also think, yeah,
Speaker 4: he wanted to just maintain the appearance that he saved
Speaker 4: everybody from the trouble of a trial.
Speaker 6: Sure, you spoke and consulted with Kim Gorgan's psychologist, and
Speaker 6: she talks about her concept of a failed psychopath. But
Speaker 6: can we talk about your idea that people might wonder
Speaker 6: why somebody seemingly so intelligent and organized to a great degree,
Speaker 6: and with this great evidence of a lot of premeditation
Speaker 6: into these murders, why somebody so smart could do something
Speaker 6: so stupid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean, I guess it's there's different types
Speaker 4: of smart and intelligence, right, So we know that Chris
Speaker 4: had zero emotional intelligence. We know that they did describe
Speaker 4: him as sort of a rain man type like in
Speaker 4: certain ways, he was a genius. He could recall facts.
Speaker 4: You know, his grandmother when he was a child would
Speaker 4: test him in all the state capitals while they would
Speaker 4: wait for his sister to come out of school, and
Speaker 4: he would get them all right. He was great with cars,
Speaker 4: you know, he had this memory that was incredible, so
Speaker 4: he had a certain amount of intelligence. But the other
Speaker 4: thing again with to me the failed psychopath, was just
Speaker 4: an aha moment when doctor Gordon said that to me.
Speaker 4: And I'll have to get back to that in a minute.
Speaker 4: But again, when somebody is really narcissistic, they do not
Speaker 4: think that any They think there's the smartest person in
Speaker 4: the world, and they think they can get away with anything.
Speaker 4: So Chris thinks he's really convincing. He actually believed that
Speaker 4: he could create this scenario and people would believe it.
Speaker 4: I think he really thought that he could convince people
Speaker 4: that Shenan took off to spite him, and so you know,
Speaker 4: he made all these mistakes. He didn't even think about
Speaker 4: the GPS tracking in his truck, which you know law
Speaker 4: enforcement was going to find. Obviously, he probably doesn't watch
Speaker 4: a lot of CSI or crime shows. When you have
Speaker 4: the husband is always suspect number one, no matter what.
Speaker 4: Like I really, his narcissism I think was so off
Speaker 4: the charts that he just he just was believed that
Speaker 4: he could convince people of anything, and that I think
Speaker 4: was his stupidity and his downfall was his narcissism. He
Speaker 4: doesn't understand the perspective of other people, he doesn't give
Speaker 4: other people enough credit.
Speaker 6: Now with that idea as well, is that the difference
Speaker 6: between this, again the failed psychopath. What exactly was his
Speaker 6: once he was in prison. We talked about it in
Speaker 6: the introduction. What was his attitude and about culpability and
Speaker 6: what was his response from his own family after they
Speaker 6: realized that, despite their support, that he really was most
Speaker 6: likely guilty completely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again I think his family goes back and
Speaker 4: forth about I don't know, I don't speak to them,
Speaker 4: I don't know them, but just again from you know,
Speaker 4: things I may have heard. I don't know what they
Speaker 4: think now. But he in prison has he has shown
Speaker 4: no real remorse. You know, everything is him feeling sorry
Speaker 4: for himself. It's all about you know, I hear he's still,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to think of ways to get out
Speaker 4: of prison, one of those things. You know, he's all
Speaker 4: of a sudden a reformed man of God, and he
Speaker 4: wants to get out and proselytize to people and help people,
Speaker 4: and you know, all of these things. But he's never
Speaker 4: really shed any real tears. He's never talked about how
Speaker 4: he misses his children or any qualities about them. I've
Speaker 4: done several interviews, and this is one of the things
Speaker 4: that I always share because it stuck out to me
Speaker 4: so much. Is when he was talking about his girls
Speaker 4: in the interrogations, when he when he knew they were dead,
Speaker 4: and he was conjuring up memories of them, and the
Speaker 4: only thing he could think of to say about them
Speaker 4: was like he missed them throwing chicken nuggets at him.
Speaker 4: I was like, wow, that's a really interesting, really cold,
Speaker 4: removed thing to say when your children are missing. And
Speaker 4: he almost said it with this disdain for them too.
Speaker 4: And he even goes on to say that he says
Speaker 4: sometimes they're bossies, like there, and he's about to say mother,
Speaker 4: and he stops himself. He actually realizes that he is
Speaker 4: the images he has at his own children or them
Speaker 4: pelting chicken nuggets of them were being bossy. This is
Speaker 4: what he thinks. He can't even say anything human about
Speaker 4: them when they're missing, Like there's nothing genuine he can
Speaker 4: say about them. And even now, you know, he's saying, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm looking out the window and I could have a
Speaker 4: one year old, a five year old, and you know
Speaker 4: how old they would be at the time, but he's like,
Speaker 4: but now it's just me, and that's him feeling sorry
Speaker 4: for himself. And that's all I've heard from him, is
Speaker 4: just constant pity for himself. And I you know, his
Speaker 4: his parents still, you know, tell them how much they
Speaker 4: love him and they stand by him. And I'm not
Speaker 4: here to put a judgment on on that. You know,
Speaker 4: other people have their different opinions on that, but that
Speaker 4: is I think an insight into how he's never really
Speaker 4: taken any culpability or accountability for anything. And I don't
Speaker 4: think his you know, his family has never really held
Speaker 4: an accountable either, So it kind of makes sense when
Speaker 4: you look at it that way.
Speaker 6: You mentioned Sherilyn Catle's book and the Confession, just to
Speaker 6: tell us briefly about how she was able to do
Speaker 6: this and who she is, and just tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the whole mess. You know, her book came
Speaker 4: out in October of twenty nineteen, and mine came out
Speaker 4: in the first week of December, and shortly after she
Speaker 4: published that, there was some scandal around plagiarism, which I
Speaker 4: had not known about, you know when my book was published.
Speaker 4: But she had plagiarized excerpts from another true crime author,
Speaker 4: so it wasn't plagiarism around Chris Watts, but it was
Speaker 4: just her own writing. So that book ended up being
Speaker 4: pulled off the shelves because because she literally plagiarized. The
Speaker 4: author's name is Anne Howard, I believe, and that information
Speaker 4: is all out there if anybody wants to, you know, Google.
Speaker 4: But she approached Chris apparently. I heard she has a
Speaker 4: second book coming up to you, like a follow up
Speaker 4: of this. But apparently she had approached Chris in prison
Speaker 4: as a as a you know, religious woman and telling
Speaker 4: him she wanted to write a story about his past
Speaker 4: to redemption, so making it out to be like this
Speaker 4: is going to be more of like a religious finding
Speaker 4: God book a redemption for him. And she went and
Speaker 4: met with him in person. She several times had driven there,
Speaker 4: and you know, she has described when he talks about
Speaker 4: the murders, his eyes going dark, Like I think she
Speaker 4: got some really dark, bad energy from him, And I think,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe as she sat with him and spoke
Speaker 4: with him, maybe she started to really dislike him. You know,
Speaker 4: that's the impression sort of that I get that she
Speaker 4: one hundred percent believed he's guilty, but he had written
Speaker 4: her letters and in person was the one who had
Speaker 4: you know, this was the first time he had confessed
Speaker 4: to certain things like giving Shenan the oxy to Miss Carrie.
Speaker 4: He had mentioned to SHERYLN. Catle, and some of her
Speaker 4: letters the Daily Mail published as an ex elusive so
Speaker 4: they're also out there on the internet. But you know,
Speaker 4: I think that particular letter in the Daily Mail that
Speaker 4: they had printed was one where he is like, after
Speaker 4: I buried them and put them in oil tanks, I
Speaker 4: drove away and I felt no remorse. All I could
Speaker 4: think about was had the dogs eaten? Yet? Like he
Speaker 4: would make those kind of comments. And you know, I
Speaker 4: don't think any of those actual letters have been disputed
Speaker 4: by anybody. I do believe that those letters, you know,
Speaker 4: are very much in his handwriting and very much a
Speaker 4: reflection of who he is. But yeah, the entire thing
Speaker 4: around that book, unfortunately, it is just a big mess.
Speaker 6: You cite doctor Douglas Fields that you consulted with, a
Speaker 6: neuroscientist and author of Why We Snap a rage Circuit
Speaker 6: in the brain, regarding and snapping the concept of snapping.
Speaker 6: Can you discuss what he feels, how this would really
Speaker 6: or you feel this would relate to this case? Can
Speaker 6: you discuss that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was really important to me to also look
Speaker 4: at neuroscience and snapping because everybody else, everybody wondered too,
Speaker 4: is this a nice guy who snapped? So I thought, well,
Speaker 4: what does it mean to snap? I mean, we know
Speaker 4: there's a show about it, right, there's snapped. And when
Speaker 4: we think of snapped, we think, in a second, somebody
Speaker 4: goes into a rage and does something and regrets it.
Speaker 4: But doctor Fields, you know, studies the brain, and in
Speaker 4: his work he identified that in humans, and you know
Speaker 4: in animals there are about nine circuits in the brain
Speaker 4: that when stimulated or triggered, prompts us to go into
Speaker 4: a violent rage. And so he identified what those nine
Speaker 4: triggers are, and you know, some of them are pretty obvious.
Speaker 4: One he calls he has like a sort of acronym
Speaker 4: for it called life Morse and the L stands for
Speaker 4: life or limb. And so that means, of course, when
Speaker 4: you you're threatened, it's like self defense, right, the self
Speaker 4: defense reasoning when you feel like you're going to be
Speaker 4: threatened physically, like bodily harm or murder, you don't even
Speaker 4: think about it, right, you go into a rage. But
Speaker 4: there's other things too, And you know, one of the
Speaker 4: things that I found really interesting from talking with him
Speaker 4: was called the S trigger, which he says stands for stopped,
Speaker 4: So when whenever anybody feels like they are impeded from
Speaker 4: doing something, that can be stopped. So, you know, he
Speaker 4: explained it to me, is like when you're in traffic
Speaker 4: and road rage comes up, you feel like you're being
Speaker 4: stopped from going somewhere. And this is because these these
Speaker 4: pathways that we have in our brain, these neural pathways
Speaker 4: are primitive. They're you know, they've evolutionary for us. They
Speaker 4: they haven't fully adapted. And so even though the logic
Speaker 4: in us knows like, oh, we're just being we're just
Speaker 4: in traffic, it's okay, we're gonna get we're going to
Speaker 4: get to where we're going to be, the primitive response
Speaker 4: in the brain is like real threat. And so that's
Speaker 4: why sometimes you have people who do really crazy things
Speaker 4: with road rage. And one of the other things he
Speaker 4: mentioned to me is that snapping is what he defines
Speaker 4: as a break from reality, which again, it just it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean that someone is not accountable for their actions,
Speaker 4: and I really think it's important that he says that,
Speaker 4: and I say that as well, that we are all
Speaker 4: fully accountable for our actions. But what I did find
Speaker 4: interesting was that he said this process of snapping can
Speaker 4: go on for weeks or even months. And I had
Speaker 4: read some other SBI profilers that talked about this as well,
Speaker 4: that people think snapping is just an in an instant,
Speaker 4: but this break from reality is like something that also
Speaker 4: allows people for weeks or months to plot something like murder. Again,
Speaker 4: when people are like, how is he so stupid, there's
Speaker 4: also this response from him that's a real break from
Speaker 4: reality where he's not seeing clearly. He just wants to
Speaker 4: get what he wants. And doctor Field doesn't do anything
Speaker 4: with personality disorders or anything like that, but he does
Speaker 4: get letters from people in prison all the time who
Speaker 4: are thanking him. They've read his book and thank you
Speaker 4: for helping me understand. He thinks that with a lot
Speaker 4: of people who snap, they end up having remorse for it,
Speaker 4: and that's where I think, you know, I diverged by saying, well,
Speaker 4: there's people who absolutely do not have remorse, and we
Speaker 4: can see that, you know, with some of I'm sure
Speaker 4: many of the criminals you've covered in your podcasts, in
Speaker 4: your work. So we know that there's a spectrum of
Speaker 4: good and evil, and all people fall somewhere, you know,
Speaker 4: on that spectrum, and there are unfortunately a rare subset
Speaker 4: of people who are who have absolutely no remorse, And
Speaker 4: so I think it's possible for all of those things
Speaker 4: to exist together, which again goes back to the perfect
Speaker 4: storm of factors in my book is I think you
Speaker 4: can be a psychopathic, narcissistic person be you know, have
Speaker 4: that s trigger where he felt he was stopped from
Speaker 4: getting the life he wanted and his anger was then
Speaker 4: in turn projected on to his wife and children, who
Speaker 4: he believed were the barrier for him to get what
Speaker 4: he wanted. And then he turned to his anti social
Speaker 4: solution and thought it was a good idea for him
Speaker 4: to get what he wanted.
Speaker 6: When he texted Nicki at pardon me, Nicki Kessinger that
Speaker 6: his family was gone. Later, when he discussed the case
Speaker 6: and his guilt with her, he acted like, will this
Speaker 6: be a deal breaker? I did not use an exact words,
Speaker 6: can you to discuss his seem to be oblivious about
Speaker 6: that and his statement to her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really think he felt like, Okay, got rid
Speaker 4: of my family, you know, after he killed them. You know,
Speaker 4: it's also in the book that he called the girls school.
Speaker 4: It was the daycare as he told them that they
Speaker 4: weren't going to be coming back anymore. This is hours
Speaker 4: after he killed them. He calls the school and says, Oh,
Speaker 4: they're not going to be coming back anymore. Then he
Speaker 4: proceeds to call his real estate agent and says, oh,
Speaker 4: we're putting the house on the market. Let's get it going.
Speaker 4: So he's already like, I've killed the family. I'm done.
Speaker 4: I'm ready to start my new life, putting the house
Speaker 4: on the market, you know, on enrolling my children from school,
Speaker 4: and then texting her and saying, like, my family's gone.
Speaker 4: He responded to an email about fantasy football, saying he
Speaker 4: was in like he was all ready to just go
Speaker 4: forward with his life. And if he had gotten away
Speaker 4: with this, you know, I believe that he he would
Speaker 4: have never had any remorse about it. And Yeah, he
Speaker 4: just expected that, you know, Nicky was going to be like,
Speaker 4: oh okay. I think he just expected that everyone is
Speaker 4: going to be like, Okay, they're gone. Now that's all wealth,
Speaker 4: you know, and NICKI was going to be like, great, okay,
Speaker 4: you don't have a family anymore, let's all. It was
Speaker 4: just a very delusional, illusional state of mind. But again,
Speaker 4: it's just a reflection of how again, these really narcissistic
Speaker 4: people operate. They don't think like normal people. They actually
Speaker 4: think that that's an acceptable response when your children are missing,
Speaker 4: and they can't understand that other people are scratching their
Speaker 4: heads saying, what's wrong with you? This is weird, This
Speaker 4: is not how you respond when your family's missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And his response too that he said that one of
Speaker 6: the reasons for killing hushan An was that she said,
Speaker 6: you will never see your kids again if you leave.
Speaker 6: So yeah, very interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we don't know if she said that either.
Speaker 4: You know, again, that's what he says. You know, a
Speaker 4: lot of people have pointed out that, you know, he says, Oh,
Speaker 4: I got angry when she said you'll never see your
Speaker 4: kids again, So then you killed your children so you
Speaker 4: would ensure that you would never see them again.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: There's just that there's a lot of discrepancies to what
Speaker 4: he's to what he said. And I don't think you know,
Speaker 4: we're never going to know the full truth.
Speaker 6: What's interesting too, is I mentioned it before earlier, was
Speaker 6: the neighbor named Nate, and also Nicki Atkinson and their role.
Speaker 6: But what's one of the most fascinating, I guess vivid
Speaker 6: cinematic scenes in your book is Nate and some of
Speaker 6: the friends initially tell us about Nate and his video
Speaker 6: footage and the scene where he puts it on the
Speaker 6: television set in front of Chris and some of Shanan's friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is crazy because you know when Nicki Atkins
Speaker 4: been who's one of Shanan's best friends, within hours, she
Speaker 4: had dropped Shanan at her home at two in the morning,
Speaker 4: and literally by nine am, knew something was wrong, and
Speaker 4: you know it called the police to do a wellness
Speaker 4: check in the afternoon. And while the officer Kuonrod, who
Speaker 4: was the one who responded to this scene, well he was,
Speaker 4: you know, going around and looking Nate Trinistitch, their next
Speaker 4: door neighbor, came by and he said, you know, I
Speaker 4: have a security camera that feazes in front of their
Speaker 4: house and I have some footage and you guys just
Speaker 4: come over and watch it. And so Nate, you know,
Speaker 4: they all go to Nate's house and he turns on
Speaker 4: the footage on the TV and you can see Chris
Speaker 4: standing next to it, his hands on his head, He's
Speaker 4: rocking back and forth. This is the only time you
Speaker 4: see real emotion from him. You know, he looks really scared.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think in my book too, I
Speaker 4: had I had cited a research study that showed that
Speaker 4: psychopaths do feel fear. So there is some misconception that
Speaker 4: psychopathic people don't feel anything, but they actually do feel
Speaker 4: fear and anxiety. And so again that's you know, that's
Speaker 4: when he shows emotion, is when he's he thinks he's
Speaker 4: going to get caught because he knows that he loaded
Speaker 4: Shenan's body into the truck and brought the girls out.
Speaker 4: And you know, you can't see too much in that
Speaker 4: video footage. You can see him walking back and forth,
Speaker 4: but you can't really see what he's doing. And there
Speaker 4: have been multiple video that have zeroed in and analyzed
Speaker 4: that that security footage over and over again. And there's
Speaker 4: some footage, you know where you can see like the
Speaker 4: shadows of the girls and him kind of picking them
Speaker 4: up and putting them in the truck, and the prosecution
Speaker 4: has verified that that was the case, that that actually
Speaker 4: did happen, and so so they kind of knew, you know,
Speaker 4: you can kind of know that the girls were alive
Speaker 4: at that point based on that. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: it's really interesting that he's really worried he's going to
Speaker 4: get caught and Nate Trinisitch, who doesn't know him, He
Speaker 4: wasn't friends with Shanan and Chris, he was just their neighbor.
Speaker 4: But as soon as Chris leaves, he turns there and
Speaker 4: he's like, this isn't right. This guy's acting weird, and
Speaker 4: he kind of knows. It's almost like everybody, even Shannan's
Speaker 4: mother right away, even though they never would have pegged
Speaker 4: him for it before. It's like this gut feeling that
Speaker 4: everybody had about him, that something was just really really
Speaker 4: wrong with his behavior. And yeah, that was a really
Speaker 4: wild moment that security footage.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about this again. It's amazing to me after
Speaker 6: all of these years that this comes up so much,
Speaker 6: this element that for many people, and I guess nonfiction
Speaker 6: would say, wow, that's just a much tell us about
Speaker 6: the supernatural experience that Sandy has witnessed by her husband.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she had said on Doctor Philip. You know, I
Speaker 4: have kind of researched all different interviews from different places,
Speaker 4: and on Doctor phil she was woken up, you know,
Speaker 4: in the middle of the night and she felt this
Speaker 4: presence of some you know, Shanan, or she heard some
Speaker 4: voice and she it was around four in the morning,
Speaker 4: which could have been around the time Shanan was killed,
Speaker 4: and at that moment she believed that something was wrong
Speaker 4: with Shanana. She woke up her husband and her son,
Speaker 4: Frankie Junior, and she was really worried and she said,
Speaker 4: something's wrong with Shanana. They were kind of like, no,
Speaker 4: it's there, right, you know, you're just having a bad dream.
Speaker 4: It's fine, go back to sleep. But yeah, again, this
Speaker 4: there's a real a sense of a real powerful mother
Speaker 4: daughter connection where it was almost like she the mother
Speaker 4: was experiencing what was happening to Shanan, and you know
Speaker 4: it woke her up. And so I think that that
Speaker 4: was a really another powerful There's so many powerful relationships,
Speaker 4: you know, just thinking about uh, Sandy and Shanan in
Speaker 4: that moment, and the love that Nikki had for her
Speaker 4: friend Shanan, where you know, she didn't have to call
Speaker 4: the police for a wellness check, but It's like she
Speaker 4: just acted on her instincts and she went right away
Speaker 4: for it. And you know, again we have a lot
Speaker 4: of credit to her because without her, who knows how
Speaker 4: you know how much Chris would have been able to
Speaker 4: cover up his tracks. Without her, you know, we may
Speaker 4: not have had Schanane's cell phone which he had hit
Speaker 4: in the cushions, but somebody had found it, you know,
Speaker 4: because he didn't have time to clean up his tracks,
Speaker 4: they were able to find her. Everything was left at home,
Speaker 4: her purse or medication, her phone, the car and the
Speaker 4: car seats were there. So he really had no way
Speaker 4: out at that point because he had no time to
Speaker 4: disclose of anything. And again I credit that to Nikki,
Speaker 4: Shenan's best friend.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, It's interesting, very much like the Bernard or Homalco
Speaker 6: case when the police do come and of course in
Speaker 6: that case they didn't expect the police to be there
Speaker 6: so soon. There's just like in this case, Chris is
Speaker 6: washing his daughter's clothes, washer and dryer going when when
Speaker 6: they do get to the to the to the home
Speaker 6: and the police officer comes upstairs and what does he
Speaker 6: notice about the beds, again making him immediately suspicious given
Speaker 6: again this pressure where Chris didn't anticipate the police being
Speaker 6: in the house that quick at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Masterbred, you know, had had its sheet stripped
Speaker 4: and there they had found some of the one of
Speaker 4: the sheets in the garbage can at the house, and
Speaker 4: the other sheet was found at the burial site of
Speaker 4: Shenan and they had found that with the drone and
Speaker 4: so yeah, he didn't have time. I mean, it's very suspicious,
Speaker 4: you know that they're going to find sheets with mascari
Speaker 4: staines and things of that nature in the trash can.
Speaker 4: So he was obviously trying to dispose of evidence, and
Speaker 4: again he wasn't very smart. He had also disposed of
Speaker 4: the book that she had self help books she had
Speaker 4: sent him called Old Me Tight Seven Conversations for a
Speaker 4: Lifetime of Love. And he hadn't even opened it out
Speaker 4: of the Amazon box. He literally sort of or he
Speaker 4: had opened the box or something, but the book was
Speaker 4: still in the box and he had just thrown it
Speaker 4: into the trash. And so when the investigators were going
Speaker 4: through everything, they find the sheets in the trash, they
Speaker 4: find the self help book. You know, it was like
Speaker 4: everything was just so discarded by him. It was like done, done, done,
Speaker 4: left behind so much evidence even you know it wasn't
Speaker 4: all forensic evidence, but all of it together really painted
Speaker 4: a picture of the disregard he had for his family.
Speaker 6: Now, we mentioned now that he's in prison, and you
Speaker 6: write that he finds God and believes about his mission
Speaker 6: in life. But also he has fans, fans, fan mail letters.
Speaker 6: So what is his position now about these murders once
Speaker 6: he's in prison, and what does he again I just
Speaker 6: mentioned what does he think his mission is now?
Speaker 4: Yeah, in his mission, I think, well, it may have
Speaker 4: changed by now, But last I heard, you know, he
Speaker 4: is wanting to help people through the Bible. I heard
Speaker 4: with another inmate they're potentially writing some something religious together.
Speaker 4: You know, he's really again I think using it though
Speaker 4: as an angle, Like I think again, for his entire
Speaker 4: of his life, he's used this good boy, helpful image
Speaker 4: and that's gotten him out of trouble. And I really
Speaker 4: think that part of him thinks, like, oh, if I
Speaker 4: just act really good, they're going to let me out.
Speaker 4: But it's almost like he's totally ignorant of the fact
Speaker 4: that he has sentences life sentences for killing three people,
Speaker 4: an unborn child, tampering with human body, you know, with bodies.
Speaker 4: There's so many charges against him that it's like hundreds
Speaker 4: of years, you know, of like you don't just get
Speaker 4: out on good behavior when you do those kinds of crimes.
Speaker 4: But I really believe that he thinks, again his narcissism,
Speaker 4: that he's going to convince everybody that he's this man
Speaker 4: of God. And he does. He gets lots of letters,
Speaker 4: He corresponds with women, some of them visit him in
Speaker 4: prison and talks to him. You know, in the narcissism world,
Speaker 4: we have a term called flying monkeys, which is the
Speaker 4: people around the narcissists that sort of do their bidding
Speaker 4: for them and pass on their messages. And you know
Speaker 4: that could be the case here, is that he has
Speaker 4: all these He does have some people around him where
Speaker 4: he can where then they can talk to the press
Speaker 4: or people magazine and you know, say whatever they want
Speaker 4: to say, that he's a changed man or that, or
Speaker 4: you know, just pass messages from him that he wants
Speaker 4: the public to hear. I did hear. He was upset
Speaker 4: about the Netflix documentary that came out because it painted
Speaker 4: him in a bad light. Again. You know, it's funny
Speaker 4: because I hired an attorney for this book, because you know,
Speaker 4: I'm I'm a psychotherapist. There's ethics involved. I really wanted
Speaker 4: to make sure that this book was ethical legally and
Speaker 4: otherwise and professionally, and I just really wanted to do
Speaker 4: my best with it. And you know, I say, really,
Speaker 4: the only person that I really talk about in a
Speaker 4: negative light of Chris Watts. And my attorney told me
Speaker 4: a funny story that someone in prison who is a
Speaker 4: murderer as well, had written him and was upset that
Speaker 4: there was a book about him and he was, you know,
Speaker 4: talking about libel and all this stuff. And my attorney
Speaker 4: had written back to that prisoner and said, sorry, you
Speaker 4: already ruined your reputation when you killed people. So you know,
Speaker 4: the idea that like there's just nothing You've already done
Speaker 4: this to your reputation, there's nothing you can do to
Speaker 4: redeem yourself, you know, but these people will keep trying.
Speaker 4: They really again, they can't see, they can't see what
Speaker 4: the rest of us are seeing because they don't have empathy.
Speaker 4: They can't put themselves in someone else's shoes.
Speaker 6: You also talk about, I mean the phenomena of someone
Speaker 6: Shnan and also other people the family people in the
Speaker 6: family that didn't see that didn't see the con that
Speaker 6: were duped. And so you talk about it's impossible to
Speaker 6: void being to Why do you think that. Tell us
Speaker 6: discuss that a little bit. Why do you don't think
Speaker 6: it's well, you would think it's impossible to avoid being fooled.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know. I spoke to a journalist who wrote
Speaker 4: a book called Duped, where she had been duped by
Speaker 4: a con man. Her name's Abby Ellen, and she wrote
Speaker 4: about her experience about it and the psychology of being duped.
Speaker 4: And she's a friend of a friend, so I had
Speaker 4: actually interviewed her for the book as well, and she's like,
Speaker 4: you know, even the smartest people get duped because we
Speaker 4: don't think we're going to be duped. But there's also
Speaker 4: this human side of us that believe the best in people.
Speaker 4: And I think else, if we're generally good people, a
Speaker 4: lot of us have a bias that other people are
Speaker 4: going to act in the same ways we do. And
Speaker 4: I think a lot of us just believe the best
Speaker 4: in people. But I think Chris was an exceptional con
Speaker 4: man in the sense that I really don't believe anybody
Speaker 4: that knew him or was involved with us. Anybody could
Speaker 4: have ever predicted this. That's what a good con man
Speaker 4: he was. And you know, in the book, I talk
Speaker 4: about how psychopaths, and I even cite the experience of
Speaker 4: a self described psychopath about how they spend a lifetime
Speaker 4: crafting a mask that they portray to the world. And
Speaker 4: I think Chris had spent a lifetime mimicking people and
Speaker 4: creating this mask that he put on, and psychopaths can
Speaker 4: create really convincing masks, and that's the scary part. But again,
Speaker 4: he had you know, I don't even think he ever
Speaker 4: really if he had raised his voice with people, it
Speaker 4: had been on a very rare occasion. He had showed
Speaker 4: no signs of violence or anything. Again, all his behavior
Speaker 4: had just been you know, doting father and husband up
Speaker 4: until he met Nikki Kessinger. Apparently, you know, even Shanan
Speaker 4: was shocked. She felt that the carpet had been pulled
Speaker 4: out from under her because she had, you know, in
Speaker 4: private text messages to friends that we have never had
Speaker 4: problems like this in our marriage. This is that of
Speaker 4: the blue. I don't know what happened. So here she
Speaker 4: is for you know, up until she left for the
Speaker 4: summer vacation. She's thinking she has this great marriage. They're
Speaker 4: physically affectionate, you know, they have, they have a good
Speaker 4: sexual relationship, they're loving, they're playful, they have you know,
Speaker 4: she's she thinks that she's got it all. And I
Speaker 4: really believe she felt that way. And I think again,
Speaker 4: one of the chilling moments that you know, I will
Speaker 4: never be able to shake is we have the the
Speaker 4: footage of the last moment, one of the last moments
Speaker 4: of her life, when Nicki Atkinson drops her off at
Speaker 4: her house at you know, around two in the morning,
Speaker 4: and we have the security camerage, the doorbell camera footage
Speaker 4: from her house, and you know, she's walking into her house,
Speaker 4: and you know, we all know now that she is
Speaker 4: walking into her death. And at that point, Chris is
Speaker 4: probably already attempted at smothering the daughters. And she has
Speaker 4: no idea what she's walking into. And that is and
Speaker 4: nobody had an idea. If somebody had, she never would
Speaker 4: have walked into that house. She never would have left
Speaker 4: her children there. Nobody would have ever allowed this to happen.
Speaker 4: And so again I think that just shows the how
Speaker 4: he was really able to dupe and con people and again,
Speaker 4: you know, it goes back to the failed psychopath thing
Speaker 4: where doctor Gorgan's who told me about community psychopaths, which
Speaker 4: is what she did her dissertation on. And you know,
Speaker 4: she said to me, Lena, we only study the psychopaths
Speaker 4: who are in jail, and we call them the failed
Speaker 4: psychopaths because they're not very good at what they do.
Speaker 4: And so that's why I said, you know, there's a
Speaker 4: there's a first thing for every criminal. Chris's first time
Speaker 4: was killing his family that we know of. Who knows,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe there was other things we'll never know,
Speaker 4: but you know, as far as we can tell, I
Speaker 4: think the most likely scenario was this really was and
Speaker 4: she probably didn't even really have a speeding ticket before.
Speaker 4: You know, this is truly his first real crime. But
Speaker 4: she says, you know, there's a whole world of psychopaths
Speaker 4: but never get calls that are never in prison, and
Speaker 4: those are the successful psychopaths. And so I think when
Speaker 4: you put it like that, it's really easy to see
Speaker 4: that he actually just failed at what he said. He
Speaker 4: was probably a psychopath all along and he just eventually
Speaker 4: failed at it, and that's why he's in prison now.
Speaker 6: Tell us the reason for the book being called Daddy
Speaker 6: Is a Hero? Tell us about this incident, Well, you
Speaker 6: know there.
Speaker 4: Was the title to this day is still the I
Speaker 4: still struggle with that. I couldn't think of a title.
Speaker 4: What we wanted to portray, which is me and my editor,
Speaker 4: mostly was the idea again of the con man of
Speaker 4: the you know, the other book about this case by
Speaker 4: John Blaff called The Perfect Father, for example, So I
Speaker 4: think that's the thing that sticks out for everybody about
Speaker 4: this case and the obsession with it is again Bella,
Speaker 4: his daughter. So a few months before he told the family,
Speaker 4: she Shanan had taken a video of her where she
Speaker 4: was singing this song called My Daddy as a Hero.
Speaker 4: And every chapter in the book, for the most part,
Speaker 4: especially the storytelling part of the book where you're going
Speaker 4: through the events, so if it's in real time, every
Speaker 4: chapter has a quote from somebody that's sort of about
Speaker 4: the irony of Chris's double life, like what he portrayed
Speaker 4: to the world versus who he really was. And so
Speaker 4: you know, one of the chapters could be headings, could
Speaker 4: be I couldn't have asked for a better man, which
Speaker 4: is what Shnan said, you know, So they sort of
Speaker 4: all have that a theme to it, about his psychopathy
Speaker 4: and narcissism and how he was able to fool everybody.
Speaker 4: And so I think my daddy as a hero was
Speaker 4: the ultimate con in a way. But it also I
Speaker 4: think it really you know, again goes through these were
Speaker 4: real people. He killed his children, He killed his children
Speaker 4: who called him a hero like this, I think it
Speaker 4: really encompasses the truth severity of what he did and
Speaker 4: that you know, how evil it was. And so I
Speaker 4: wanted I wanted that to really be to come across.
Speaker 4: And I mean it's chilling and it's jarring. And then
Speaker 4: again there's other aspects. Again, Chris's father was his hero,
Speaker 4: so you know, you could interpret it of you know,
Speaker 4: there's different father heroes in this story. And it's sort
Speaker 4: of all again about the the mirage of of what
Speaker 4: of how scary it is that people can pretend to
Speaker 4: be something they're not and fool everybody.
Speaker 6: I know, this sounds almost like a cliche cliche about
Speaker 6: you know, warning signs, something that might be seen so
Speaker 6: that we might possibly prevent something like this in the future.
Speaker 6: But were there warning signs? Were they subtle? What were
Speaker 6: the warnings, if any? Were the yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean the warning signs were not warning signs where
Speaker 4: you would say, Okay, this person's going to kill me
Speaker 4: warning signs, which again is like I said, there's absolutely
Speaker 4: no way anybody would have predicted this or been able
Speaker 4: to stop this. But again I wanted, I wanted to
Speaker 4: make something good come out of this. Again, I did
Speaker 4: not want this to be sensational. I wanted people to
Speaker 4: maybe learn something. I really get very touched when I get,
Speaker 4: you know, letters from people that said, thank you for
Speaker 4: putting this information out there. This could have been me
Speaker 4: I got out. I want other people to read this
Speaker 4: book so they know because sometimes people are in these
Speaker 4: relationships and there are more obvious signs that are there,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's nice to hear that people could
Speaker 4: use this book to identify those signs, and even if
Speaker 4: they're not in danger of being murdered, maybe it will
Speaker 4: make them look at their relationships or put up boundaries
Speaker 4: where they need to put them up. But one of
Speaker 4: the bigger signs I tell people, and again this doesn't
Speaker 4: mean someone's going to This is not a sign in
Speaker 4: someone who's going to murder you, But narcissistic and psychopathics
Speaker 4: people have a pattern in relationships, which is referred to
Speaker 4: as love bombing, devalue, and discard, and so actually you
Speaker 4: can you know, I sort of illustrate how that happened
Speaker 4: with Chris and Shaman. We're in the beginning. He loves
Speaker 4: bombed her. It's in the beginning of this interview we
Speaker 4: talked about him really pursuing her and going over the
Speaker 4: top to win her over. So with narcissistic people, again,
Speaker 4: they're really trying to win you over. They go really
Speaker 4: over the top. They may not even know you well.
Speaker 4: They may know you for two days and say I
Speaker 4: want to send the rest of my life with you.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean that someone is a narcissist if they
Speaker 4: do that, by the way, but that is that can
Speaker 4: be a red flag if somebody doesn't really know you
Speaker 4: well and they seem to have this agenda to really
Speaker 4: win you over. So that's called love bombing. But when
Speaker 4: you know you're kind of dealing with a person, you know,
Speaker 4: someone with more of a personality disorder. Once they win
Speaker 4: you over, they shift to something called devalue. And so
Speaker 4: in Chris's case, which I think is more rare because
Speaker 4: I think usually in these situations, at least in the
Speaker 4: ones I've encountered personally and in my professional life. The
Speaker 4: devalue face comes pretty quickly, and that's when they become
Speaker 4: very a lot of the times emotionally abusive, although it
Speaker 4: can also be other forms of abuse, and that can
Speaker 4: be look like criticizing or you know, when you know
Speaker 4: something's wrong, or mistreating you. So Chris began to devalue
Speaker 4: Sheanan much later on when he met Nicki. In the
Speaker 4: beginning the first few weeks, he was playing along with
Speaker 4: Shanan while he was having an affair with Nicki. He's
Speaker 4: still telling Shannan he loves her to the moon and back,
Speaker 4: and you know, playing a game. But then when he
Speaker 4: really decides he wants to be rid of his family,
Speaker 4: this is when Shannan starts getting really upset because all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, her husband turns on her. So after
Speaker 4: being together eight years and having a third kid on
Speaker 4: the way, all of a sudden, her husband doesn't want
Speaker 4: the third baby, wants the separation, doesn't want to work
Speaker 4: things out. And so I said, this is a real
Speaker 4: red flag, like when you're with somebody and you have
Speaker 4: children with them and they turn on you with no
Speaker 4: explanation on the drop of the hat. There's something wrong there.
Speaker 4: That's not a person who has real attachments or emotional
Speaker 4: maturity or commitment or investment to you. That's not normal
Speaker 4: for somebody to just flip like that. And so again
Speaker 4: I don't think that was predictive of him going to
Speaker 4: murder her, but I think it was a sign and
Speaker 4: it was true that other things were going on. I mean,
Speaker 4: he flipped because you know, he was having a fair
Speaker 4: and he didn't want anything to do with her anymore.
Speaker 4: But that's the thing with narcissistic people. When they don't
Speaker 4: need you anymore, you're like garbage to them, and they
Speaker 4: only keep people around that again fuel their narcissistic supply
Speaker 4: or serve them in some way. So for Chris, his
Speaker 4: family could have given him admiration, could have made him
Speaker 4: look good to the outside world, like he needed them
Speaker 4: for something, until he didn't. And that's when the discard
Speaker 4: phase comes in. And that's basically like I said, with
Speaker 4: Chris Walks, it was the ultimate discard. Discard we usually
Speaker 4: refer to as like they leave you and then they
Speaker 4: don't want anything to do with you again, or they
Speaker 4: act like you never mattered. Literally discarded his family like garbage,
Speaker 4: like I'm done with you. That's it. You're not human
Speaker 4: to me. And so again that's when we're going really
Speaker 4: to the malignant side of narcissism, the real severe side
Speaker 4: of psychopathy, because the empathy is just pretty much non existent, zero,
Speaker 4: it's so self focused on the gratification of his own
Speaker 4: needs at the expense of everybody else. And so that's
Speaker 4: what I would say about all of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he certainly did dispose of these people. He certainly
Speaker 6: discarded them, and in a spectacular, horrible fashion. I want
Speaker 6: to thank you so much for coming on in time
Speaker 6: talking about your book My Daddy's a Hero, How Chris
Speaker 6: Wats went from family Man to Family Killer. You are
Speaker 6: a clinical instructor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Science.
Speaker 6: Is at the George Washington School of Medicine, mentoring medical students.
Speaker 6: And tell us about your your co host of a
Speaker 6: psychology podcast. Tell us about what that podcast is and
Speaker 6: if there's a website for this or Facebook page for
Speaker 6: this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my god, life, I hate social media. One of
Speaker 4: my close friends as a marketer, and she kind of
Speaker 4: looks at my Facebook page every now and then, which
Speaker 4: is Lena Durholly dot com. That's my website and there's
Speaker 4: also a Facebook page Lina Durholly my podcast because of
Speaker 4: the pandemic. We really my colleague Bob and I who
Speaker 4: have done that together. We really haven't updated it much,
Speaker 4: but you know, we sort of get together as couple therapists.
Speaker 4: He's a male therapist, I'm a female therapist, and we
Speaker 4: talk about all kinds of issues that our clients are experiencing.
Speaker 4: And we do a lot of relational issues and couples
Speaker 4: issues and anxiety, and we do have sessions with Bob
Speaker 4: and Lina, but yeah, we just kinda we do that
Speaker 4: as inspired when we think there's something out there we
Speaker 4: could talk about that could help other people.
Speaker 6: Fantastic, Thank you so much. My daddy is a hero.
Speaker 6: How Chris wass Watts went from family man to family killer.
Speaker 6: It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Lena,
Speaker 6: Dear Hollie, Thank you Dan.
Speaker 4: It's been great speaking with you today.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Have you have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Good night you cheer okay, bye bye, good night.