Ahead of Slain Daughter's 4th Birthday, Killer Dad Chris Watts Claims He's a Changed Man in Prison
August 13, 2019 marks the one-year anniversary of the murders of Shanann, Bella and Celeste Watts.
Just last month, Chris Watts, the Colorado man who murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters, claimed in a chilling jailhouse letter to his mother that he was a changed man with a newfound relationship with God.
His mother, Cindy Watts, was interviewed in the HLN special: Killer Dad: Chris Watts Speaks. During the show, she read the letter she received from her son.
“I’m still a Dad! I’m still a son! No matter what,” Watts wrote. “Now, I can add servant of God to that mix! He has shown me peace, peace, love and forgiveness, and that’s how I live every day.”
It was a stunning declaration for Watts, 33, who is is serving multiple life sentences for an unspeakable crime. Last November, he pleaded guilty to the August 13, 2018, murders of his pregnant wife, Shanann, 34, and the couple’s two young daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, the latter of whom would have turned four on July 17.
He later buried Shanann in at a remote oil field where he put his two daughters in large oil tanks. Their bodies were found three days later.
The murders came after Watts began an affair with coworker Nichol Kessinger, who told police that he had told her that he was separated from his wife.
The HLN special detailed how Watts and Kessinger traded photos, which Watts hid from his family using an app on his phone that looks like a calculator until a secret passcode is entered. Those photos included ones from a secret trip the pair took to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
RELATED: Behind the Scenes of Family Murderer Chris Watts’ Surprising Guilty Plea
In a Feb. 18 interview from inside prison, Watts gave chilling details of the murders to authorities from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
He said his wife Shanann “may have been” praying as he strangled her to death inside their bedroom. He said he then drove his wife’s body to his job site, where he buried it in a shallow grave as his daughters waited in the car. Then he smothered both girls.
During the confession, he said that whenever he closes his eyes, he hears his oldest daughter’s final words begging him not to kill her.
“Daddy, no!,” Bella Watts, 4, screamed as her father moved in to smother her with the same blanket he’d used to kill her sister Celeste, 3, moments before.
“I hear it every day, when Bella was talking to me,” Watts told police. “When she said, ‘Daddy, no!'”
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RELATED: Chris Watts Killed Daughters at Oil Field After Driving There With Their Mom’s Dead Body: Lawyer
RELATED: ‘Daddy, No!’: Chris Watts Hears Daughter’s Haunting Last Words ‘Every Day’ in Prison
Watts sits in a Wisconsin prison on 23-hour lockdown. When he is in his cell, he has little to do: He is allowed to have a Bible, but not much more. He says that he speaks to the photos of his family in his cell and reads a book out loud every night to the daughters he murdered.
Watts has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the Wisconsin prison system. He is not eligible for parole.
Killer Dad: Chris Watts Speaks presents never-before-seen photos and evidence in the case. It aired Saturday, July 13, 2019 on HLN.
