Chris Watts, a confessed and convicted murderer, admitted to strangling his pregnant wife Shanann Watts to death in August 2018. He also admitted to murdering their two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. Watts reported them missing on August 13, 2018, but three days later, their bodies were found on the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation property. Watts was arrested on August 14, 2018.
Watts initially tried to blame Shanann for the murders, alleging that she strangled their daughters. However, he later confessed to the murders while in jail. He pleaded guilty to nine criminal counts and received five life sentences without parole.
Currently, Chris Watts is serving his sentence at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. His sentences include three consecutive and two concurrent life terms for the murders of his pregnant wife and two daughters. He also received additional years for unlawful termination of a pregnancy and tampering with their corpses.
In February 2019, while already in prison, Watts confessed to investigators that he told Shanann of his intentions to separate due to his affair with Nichol Kessinger. He claimed they got into an argument, and Shanann threatened to take their daughters away. Watts then strangled Shanann to death. He admitted to taking their two daughters, still alive, and Shanann’s body wrapped in a blanket to the oil plant where he once worked. There, he smothered Celeste with a blanket in the backseat of the truck and dumped her body in a nearby field. He returned and smothered Bella the same way as she screamed, “Daddy, no!” After murdering the girls, he buried Shanann’s body.
The case of Chris Watts and the horrific murders of his family has been chronicled in the Netflix documentary “American Murder: The Family Next Door.”
