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- FEMALE NARRATOR: It's a crime that shook us all to the core.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

- FEMALE NEWSCASTER: A Colorado man gets life in prison

for killing his pregnant wife and two young daughters.

- Trying to stuff your daughter into this little, tiny hole

is really beyond comprehension.

- NARRATOR: And shattered the carefully curated image

posted online.

- Hey guys, I'm here with my little munchkins.

- They just seemed like they were like

the perfect, happy American family.

- SHERYL ZIEGLER: You have this middle-aged couple,

married, young kids, pregnant wife,

and you get to be kind of like a voyeur, you get to peek in.

- I mean, you really felt like you were her friend.

I mean, she took photos of everything.

Recorded everything, posted everything.

- Ho ho ho.

- NARRATOR: But as we've seen recently,

what happens online isn't always real.

- MALE NEWSCASTER: Investigators believe Brian

holds vital information on the disappearance of his girlfriend,

Gabby Petito.

- There's a mismatch between what you share

and your real life.

- FEMALE NEWSCASTER: Houston Instagram influencer

who disappeared was scared for her life.

There have been reports that she wanted a divorce.

- Everybody's performing, and the pressure to keep that up

is a 24-hour job.

- NARRATOR: Now our experts examine all the media

in the Watts case to reveal what was really happening

behind the scenes.

- LENA DERHALLY: That's a unique thing

that I don't think we've really ever seen before.

We were watching everything as it really happened on video.

- He didn't normally come out through the garage. Why?

- MATT FRANCIS: If you look at, you know, his mannerisms,

I think there's signs there that there's a lot of frustration.

- STEFFAN TUBBS: The real Watts family

was not what social media portrayed.

- REBECCA OSEI: He had spent so much time in front of the camera

to some degree acting. - I just want them back.

- It's like, "What did I miss? Let's look at it again.

Is there something that we're not seeing?"

- I just, I just want them to come back.

- ♪

- STEFFAN: Frederick, Colorado,

is a beautiful, bucolic, middle America-type town

in the northern suburbs of Denver.

It's a place where I bet you every neighbor would say,

"All of the bad stuff, that happens somewhere else.

Not in our backyard."

- VONDA KNOX. This is definitely not a high crime area.

The area that I live in, it's very...

it's quiet, it's secluded.

There are children playing, you know, riding their bikes

and their skateboard and shooting hoops.

- NARRATOR: But on August 13, 2018,

a dark reality casts a shadow

over this picture-perfect neighborhood.

- FEMALE NEWSCASTER: Shanann Watts and her two girls,

three and four years, old are all missing.

Watts is 15 weeks pregnant.

- Shan, if you're hearing this or you're out there,

please, please let somebody know you're okay.

- I got the phone call that said my neighbors are missing.

And everybody was kind of just in shock.

- NARRATOR: 34-year-old Shanann and her two daughters,

Bella and Ce-Ce, have seemingly disappeared.

- VONDA: Shanann and the baby girls were precious.

I saw them many times in the backyard,

swinging and playing and they were the happiest little things.

They just seemed like they were like

the perfect, happy American family, living the dream.

- Hey guys.

So I'm here with my little munchkins.

Hi.

- NARRATOR: Shanann Watts has lived in Frederick, Colorado,

for six years with her husband, Chris

and their two daughters.

The missing mom is also pregnant.

- SHANANN: Mommy has a baby in her belly.

- Again!

- HEATHER ASHLEY: There was so much evidence on Facebook

and social media that everything was wonderful.

The girls were always put together.

Shanann was always upbeat

and talking about how wonderful her husband was.

- He's the best thing that has ever happened to me.

- NARRATOR: But scrolling back 10 years

on Shanann's social media page

shows life wasn't always so easy for the North Carolina native.

- Shanann was definitely driven as a person.

I think it came from a deep down desire

to get out of her own holes and hard places in life.

- LENA DERHALLY: She went through a really dark time

in her life previously and she was really unhappy.

She struggled with her health.

- SHANANN: I thought my life was crumbling underneath me

and I didn't know which way to turn.

I didn't have a lot of friends at the time,

because a lot of my friends, friends I did have,

I lost because they didn't understand

that I looked perfectly fine, and I felt horribly inside.

Horribly.

I quit my job of nine years.

I just said, "I'm done, I can't do this anymore."

- NARRATOR: In May 2010,

Shanann's lifelong health issues are diagnosed as lupus.

That same year, she meets fellow North Carolinian Chris Watts.

- SHANANN: I met Chris because of my friend,

sent me a friend suggestion.

- HEATHER: What really got her was on their first date,

she got a migraine and Chris let her lay down on his lap

and then she woke up like three hours later

and she was still in his lap, he hadn't moved,

and that was it for her. Like, he didn't judge her,

he accommodated her needs without being asked.

- Well, one thing led to another and eight years later

we have two kids, we live in Colorado,

and he's the best thing that has ever happened to me.

He knew me at my worst and he accepted me.

And you know, through your vows,

like through sicknesses and everything,

he's been there.

- REBECCA: Chris had been essentially marketed

as this really sweet guy who came to her when she needed him

and had been an amazing husband,

and still was an amazing husband,

I mean, as far as social media was concerned.

- NARRATOR: Shortly after marrying in November of 2012,

Chris and Shanann moved to Frederick, Colorado,

where Chris finds work as an oil field worker.

- HEATHER: Chris got a new job.

They decided they were going to follow their American dream

and start new in Colorado.

- SHERYL: It's a kind of small town.

I think people probably felt great about living there.

Felt like this was a safe, beautiful place

to raise a family.

- NARRATOR: A year after the move,

the couple welcomes their first child, Bella.

19 months later, Shanann gives birth to another daughter,

Celeste, nicknamed Ce-Ce.

- VONDA: They were lovely children.

They were like, "Hi lady, hi lady."

You know, we would have just a verbal interaction

because our porches are so close.

They would have their little wagon out in the front

and Chris would be pulling them around in the wagon.

They were outside doing the family thing.

- NARRATOR: Shanann also finds work again

as a marketing representative for a weight loss supplement

called Thrive.

- LENA: She had lupus, she had some other conditions,

and she wanted to be home with her kids

and also work and bring in income for the family.

She was a go-getter.

It was actually kind of fitting for somebody like her.

- MARK: Because of her job, online sales,

Shanann is regularly posting, she's a huge Facebook person.

She's got a lot of followers.

Every day, basically, her life is on Facebook

and it all looks great.

- MATT: She really saw a connection

with what she could do online, making sales and revenue,

but also more importantly, like, to really truly just

help other people achieve a better life

for themselves, and a better identity.

- NARRATOR: But Shanann's job requires frequent travel.

Just before 2 a.m. on the morning of August 13, 2018,

she returns from a two-day business trip to Arizona,

captured here on her home's doorbell camera.

- It was later than they had expected,

she wasn't gonna get as much sleep as she wanted to get.

She rolls her suitcase up and inside and, and that's it.

- [ringing phone]

- She was supposed to go to a doctor's appointment,

and she hadn't updated her friend

about this doctor's appointment.

She's trying to get a hold of her, but her phone is off.

The girls were gonna have their first day of school.

You would expect to hear an update on social media like,

"Oh my gosh, they were so cute. Here's a picture."

This was a day that you would expect

all sorts of updates online

from somebody who already regularly updates everyone,

and there was nothing.

- VONDA: A lot of people were very concerned.

You know, "Where are they?"

You know, it's a pregnant woman and her two small children.

- STEFFAN: The community, the neighbors were wondering,

"What happened? We just saw her."

- OFFICER: How you been?

- NARRATOR: When police arrive,

they are met by Shanann's friend Nickole Atkinson,

and Nickole's son, Nicholas.

- HEATHER: Her friend was worried about her blood sugar,

because Shanann hadn't felt well the night before.

And you know, they were worried at first that maybe something

had happened and she was sick at the house

and nobody knew and no one could help her.

- [ringing phone]

- NARRATOR: Chris Watts is at work on an oil site

when he learns from a friend Shanann is missing.

He tells them he will be home in 45 minutes.

- NARRATOR: The house is locked tight.

- NARRATOR: Three hours after the news

of his wife's disappearance,

Chris Watts finally returns home.

- OFFICER: Scott, how you doing? - How's it going?

- OFFICER: So this is the only vehicle she would have?

- CHRIS: Only one that, yeah.

- OFFICER: She would drive? Okay.

- MARK: When Chris gets there, if you watch the video,

Chris runs into the garage,

and he looks into the car as if they might be in the car.

Then, he actually opens the car door

and he bends down and he reaches around under the front seat.

It happens very fast.

But you ask yourself, what is he doing?

What is he looking for under the front seat?

Is he gonna find his wife or daughters

under the front passenger seat?

- We still don't know exactly what was going on.

- WOMAN ON SPEAKERPHONE: Nicky, I'm giving you permission

to walk in my daughter's house.

- NARRATOR: Frederick Police find the house empty

and the first floor apparently undisturbed.

- MARK: He lets the officers in,

he's not calling out for his daughters and for his wife.

It's the officers

who actually start to go and search for Shanann.

- NARRATOR: At first glance, nothing appears out of place.

But then Nickole spots something.

- Why would she not take her phone?

- EXAVIER POPE: People are now sleeping with their phone.

They are getting directions with their phone, ordering food.

So people, now, lives are so dependent on phones.

- She had just vanished into thin air.

- NARRATOR: Shanann Watts has been missing

for nearly 24 hours.

Not only have she and her two young daughters

seemingly disappeared,

but the 34-year-old marketing entrepreneur

who makes her living posting almost nonstop online

hasn't done so for nearly 18 hours.

Now her husband and friends have uncovered one reason why.

- There's a conversation, once they've searched the house,

the police officer is having with him

and they're talking about like, so where would she go?

- OFFICER: Did she tell you anything about leaving?

Moving out? - Not moving out.

I mean, the last time I talked to her was this morning,

she said she's gonna take the kids to a friend's house,

and that's where she was gonna be.

- MARK: This is Monday when the police have arrived.

The girls were supposed to be attending school.

- HEATHER: Bottom line was that two children

and a pregnant woman were missing.

And at this point, with all communications ceased,

because of the amount of communication there usually was,

it was clear that something was wrong.

- NARRATOR: As the group investigates

the rest of the house, they find even more reason for alarm.

- NARRATOR: In addition to Shanann's own health issues,

both Watts children have severe food allergies.

But inside Shanann's purse,

police find their medications have been left behind.

- Shanann left her purse, her phone, her keys,

her children's medications.

The car was still in the garage with the car seats.

Anyone who has half a brain cell knows that that's not normal.

A woman does not leave with her children

without any of these critical things.

- NARRATOR: As more officers file into the house,

and the search continues upstairs,

one thing immediately stands out.

- In the master bedroom, the sheets are off the bed.

The pillows are off the bed.

It's like, why are the sheets off the bed?

- Shanann was really a fastidious housekeeper.

If she was the last one at the house,

she just simply would not have left the room like that.

So the likelihood of something bad having happened

is really high.

- NARRATOR: When word of the family's disappearance spreads,

the Watts' typically serene neighborhood is left spiraling.

But neighbor Nate Trinastich thinks he may have an answer.

- LENA: The neighbor comes by, he sees what's going on.

Police are at the house,

and there's a missing pregnant woman and children and he says,

"Hey, you know, I have a security camera

that looks right upon their driveway."

- NARRATOR: Police are hopeful the camera can provide a clue.

- VONDA: My son was like,

"Oh, somebody's missing. Well, let's look and see.

"Did somebody come and pick them up and where did they go?

You know, let's look."

- EXAVIER: We're at a society

that we're recording every event of our lives.

There are some trade-offs with that.

The more cameras we have in our world, the less privacy we have.

- NARRATOR: Inside the neighbor's home,

Chris Watts and police review the security footage with Nate.

- What we see in the videotape

is that about 5:17 in the morning,

Chris comes out through the garage.

He didn't normally come out through the garage.

Why? Because the kids' rooms were above the garage

and the garage door opening up would wake the kids up,

because they slept very lightly.

But Chris comes to the garage door, and he goes to his truck,

and then he backs his truck into the driveway.

- NARRATOR: But Chris has an explanation.

- Chris usually did not ever park in the driveway,

and so that seemed a little bit unusual.

- His neighbor knows what Chris does every day

when he goes to work, right?

How he acts, how he brings stuff to and from the truck.

- MARK: What's really interesting

is she would have had to have been seen

coming out of the house with the kids on camera.

There's no evidence that they ever left the house.

- VONDA: Chris was just very uncomfortable.

Like, "This is not my comfort zone.

I'm not comfortable with this."

- VONDA: And when the officer finally did say,

"Go ahead and leave,"

looked like to me that he bolted for the door.

- NARRATOR: When the neighbor's left alone with the police,

he's quick to call out that something's off.

- MARK: The police officer, well, steps in and goes,

"Well, yeah, but you know,

his wife and daughters are missing,"

and you know, kind of expect that he might be, you know,

anxious and nervous,

and so he sort of, in a sense, defends Chris.

- NARRATOR: As the search for Shanann and her daughters

continues through the night and into the next day,

local news outlets soon pick up the story--

with Chris Watts leading the charge to bring them back home

and even pleading his case.

- HEATHER: He was all over the media like,

"Oh yeah, I just want... I want them back, I want my girls back,

"I just want him to come home.

If you have them, just let him come home."

- Again, you see this objectively handsome, tan guy

in front of this beautiful suburban home.

But even though it appeared perfect on the surface,

there was something with how he presented himself to the world

that gave everybody this really intense gut reaction

that something is not right with this guy.

- REBECCA: One might think that

he would have acted more emotional, but of course

the role he had always played thus far

had been relatively sober, you know, calm individual.

- He's got this, you know, confidence that, you know,

"I'm being cooperative. I'm talking to the news.

I'm not trying to hide from anything."

- [knock on door]

- NARRATOR: In the wake of his pregnant wife

and two daughters' disappearance,

Chris Watts welcomes a sea of media into his Colorado home.

- The police then get a search warrant for the house.

- It was absolutely chaotic.

It was bombarded with the police drones and the canine.

The dogs came, they did all of these investigations.

- NARRATOR: But there's no evidence in the house

to indicate where Shanann and the girls are

or what might have happened to them.

As news of their disappearance continues to spread,

alarm grows within this tight-knit community.

- There were people up and down the streets handing out flyers.

The cops had set up, like, areas outside of the neighborhood

to see if anybody had seen them.

They were handing out flyers, too.

- These were attractive people that you imagined living

next door to you with these two beautiful children.

And as more and more came out, then there was the feeling of,

"Wait, what happened here?"

- NARRATOR: Now in the second day

since Shanann Watts' and her daughters' disappearance,

the public turns to their only outlet for answers,

Shanann's social media.

- MARK: You've got Shanann,

who has a really high social media presence

because of her job, her online sales job.

So she had a huge Facebook following,

not only for her business, but also for her personal life.

- LENA: Shanann had a lot of friends

and a lot of people in her life.

And social media is something that allows us

to share with all those people at once.

She was pregnant with her third child,

she was figuring out her career,

she had a beautiful house in Colorado.

So I think she was really happy

and wanted to share that with the people that she loved.

- Hey guys.

- SHERYL: The more visuals we have,

the more we can relate to people,

the more we feel like we know them, right?

And so I do think that the country

got particularly invested

because we could see these images and hear their voices

and hear them singing and, you know,

just seeing them in their kitchen,

it was all very relatable.

- REBECCA: Maybe it did start out as just a way

to keep her family in the loop, and it grew from there.

We're not really sure what her motivation was,

but we can see very clearly from her behavior

that Shanann felt the need, for some reason,

to be constantly keeping everybody in the loop.

- NARRATOR: Even the family's intimate moments

are on display for the public to see.

Like the instant that Chris learns

they are expecting a third child.

- SHERYL: And I think that was the intention.

"Let me invite you into my very normal world

with my very happy life that we can all connect on."

This is what the dangers are of social media.

All you have to do is capture just a minute or two

of smiling faces to convince the world of something,

everything's okay. Maybe everything's not okay.

- You could tell when Chris came in about the announcement

that he was...

he had a hard time reacting, like, the way that, you know,

I'm sure she was hoping he'd react.

She was so excited to share with him that she was pregnant.

But if you look at, you know, his mannerisms,

I think there's signs there that there's a lot of frustration

in the relationship, for sure, and with him.

- OBARI CARTMAN: I think there's something

about the human experience that requires a level of separation

from being viewed,

and the cameras are sort of taking that away from us.

There's a judgment attached to the camera lens.

So there's this sense of being right or wrong, or good or bad.

- SHERYL: There's also an intimacy that gets lost.

I think in these videos it shows that she envisioned

this whole thing playing out a certain way.

She probably thought about it for a good amount of time

and staged it.

And that's exactly what staging is.

I mean, this is... it's a performance.

- NARRATOR: Despite the sunny home life

Shanann puts forward on social media, there are problems.

- The real Watts family life, internally,

was not what social media portrayed.

- NARRATOR: As police dig into their finances,

they discover the Watts are $70,000 in debt,

and their homeowners' association is suing them

for unpaid fees.

- REBECCA: A lot of people, especially around Chris's age,

grew up with this idea

that the man is supposed to make the money,

so you're supposed to be financially stable.

You know, the man is supposed to keep the family together.

The man is supposed to be the reliable one,

and his family is falling apart. The money is disappearing.

In a lot of ways, you know,

Chris's identity as the masculine male

was being questioned at that time.

- He's not the dominant one in the relationship.

You get the sense that Shanann kind of really ran that family.

She ran the household, and she ran the kids,

and she essentially ran Chris.

- NARRATOR: Still, Chris doesn't lack self-confidence.

He even begins a serious workout regimen.

- REBECCA: He'd lost a significant amount of weight

while also toning significantly.

There's been multiple videos of him working out,

getting in shape.

We do know that on the social media side of things,

Shanann seemed to be happy with his physique.

- NARRATOR: But again,

there's another angle to Shanann's posts.

- HEATHER: He was using the products that she sold.

And him working out with his shirt off, you know,

would have been good advertisement

for Shanann's business.

"Look at my husband's transformation."

- NARRATOR: Overweight at the time of his wedding,

Chris has lost more than 60 pounds in the last few years.

- I think Chris, definitely, once he started losing weight,

he started caring about his macros and his diet

and he was working out.

I think that gave him a new confidence

that he didn't have before.

He became more objectively attractive to women

as he lost his weight and he bulked up.

- STEFFAN: So he goes from this dad bod

to addicted to working out.

Well, you can either look at it one of two ways.

He's either working out for all the right reasons.

He wants to be healthier.

"Look at me, I can do it. I've transformed."

Or, probably a story that's played out

millions of times in our country--

he's wanting to look better for somebody else.

- NARRATOR: It's now been more than 34 hours

since a pregnant Shanann Watts and her two young daughters

disappeared from their Frederick, Colorado home.

As the Colorado Bureau of Investigations and the FBI

join the search efforts...

- NARRATOR: ...investigators are beginning to realize

there are two very different Watts families.

The one online,

and the one in real life.

When investigators gain access to Shanann's cellphone,

they discover the couple had been

spending time apart in recent weeks.

- Shanann had been away in North Carolina

with family for about six weeks.

- NARRATOR: Both Shanann and Chris' parents

live in North Carolina.

While Shanann and the girls spend the summer there

with their grandparents,

the expectant mother makes every effort to keep Chris,

who is home in Colorado, in the loop.

- STEFFAN: Chris blows her off completely.

There's no text of, "I miss you. I love you."

It's, "Oh, I was working out," or "Oh, I was asleep."

- NARRATOR: This lack of attention

seemingly leads Shanann to post more while she is away.

- SHERYL: There's a reason why people put posts out there,

whether it's conscious or not.

You're seeking praise, you're seeking validation,

you're seeking relatableness, connection, maybe you're lonely.

There's something that you're seeking

when you put it out there.

- JESSICA SHELTON: Oh my God.

I mean, you really felt like you were her friend

or her family, or you maybe even lived with her.

I mean, she recorded everything, posted everything,

took photos of everything.

- REBECCA: There are a lot of people

that we might think of as being over-sharers.

We probably all have someone we know or follow online

that we feel shares a lot of information

and maybe things that we are like,

"Ooh, that didn't need to be online."

- I think Shanann really started using that as her outlet

and ignoring some of the things that were going on at home.

- NARRATOR: On July 31, 2018, Chris flies to North Carolina

to be with his family.

Shanann is eager to record the moment of reunion.

- REBECCA: When her husband was getting off the plane

and she's texting him,

"Let me know when you're coming down the escalator

so that I can film the kids,"

you know, and this was for content.

This wasn't because we miss you and I want the kids to be ready.

It was this...

I mean the kids were authentically happy to see him,

I imagine.

But her motivation seemed to be so that I can film it.

She seemed to feel some type of need

to be making these videos and having this content available

frequently so that the world would see her happy family.

- I can hug you. Come here. Come here, little girls!

- LENA: Even if he was unhappy or stressed out

with what was going on,

even if he wasn't comfortable being on social media,

he went along with it anyway.

He never expressed displeasure to Shanann.

- NARRATOR: But some emotions did slip through the cracks,

which investigators discover

when they speak with Shanann's friends.

- HEATHER: Chris's mom had asked for a list of peanut-free foods

that they could have in the house,

and so Shanann sent them a list.

And they have kind of an ice cream night

for all the grandkids, and one of the ice cream

has nuts in it, and Stacy cannot have nuts,

and Shanann catches it and she's like, "No, no, no!"

You know, she had asked Chris, like,

"You need to talk to your mom."

- NARRATOR: When investigators sit down with Chris,

he admits this feud between his mom and Shanann

has been longstanding.

- NARRATOR: As police continue to probe Chris

about his relationship with Shanann,

the weary husband becomes increasingly open

about the troubles in their marriage.

He admits to investigators that he and Shanann had a fight

the night before she disappeared.

- And that--that was it.

He had left the house to go to work

and she was still in bed with the girls,

and that's the last he knew.

- MARK: In all these cases that I've worked on

over the years, we sort of have this saying

when we were watching these kind of interviews,

"If you don't see snot, then you've got a problem,"

because parents who are truly believe that something

has happened to their children and it's not good

are grieving, and they are crying, and they are begging,

and they are pleading,

and their eyes are all puffy from having cried so much.

You don't get any of that from Chris.

- NARRATOR: Colorado investigators are starting

to uncover cracks in Chris and Shanann Watts' marriage.

Still, with a pregnant Shanann and their young girls

now missing for two days, the lone husband continues

to attract sympathy from the public.

- People were calling my show in tears.

They were incredibly upset.

So many people had prayed for Chris Watts himself.

This poor man.

What it must be like to have a wife pregnant,

missing kids, this poor guy.

- LENA: If you look at all the interviews

with everybody who was interviewed by the police,

the FBI,

nobody has one bad thing to say about this guy.

I have not found one person, before this happened,

who had one bad thing to say about him.

- MARK: There's no evidence of any family violence.

Shanann never reports any kind of violence

to either her or the children.

And Shanann was pretty upfront with a lot of her friends.

She had a lot of close friends.

- STEFFAN: I didn't think this was a kidnap.

So then you start thinking,

well, maybe, some marital problems,

maybe she took the kids.

- When we think about midlife crises, for example,

and the things that men are stereotyped to do,

going out and finding a young girlfriend

is one of the ones we hear often, right?

- NARRATOR: Digging deeper into Shanann's text messages,

investigators find evidence suggesting she suspected

Chris was having an affair.

- LENA: She was floored when he came to North Carolina

and he was disinterested in her,

romantically, sexually, emotionally,

everything like that,

because he had always had such a strong sexual attraction to her.

So, it was really confusing and really horrible.

And you know, she was making note of it.

- HEATHER: I think she was trying to figure out

what was going on with him.

She was talking to her friends about it.

You know, at one point he's like,

"Oh, I don't even want this baby."

And she's like, "What do you mean you don't want this baby?

Like, "I'm 15 weeks pregnant."

Like, "This is not the time to have this conversation.

"You wanted this baby. I agreed to have this baby,

"we are having a baby boy.

"And now you're saying all of a sudden

you don't even want this baby."

And that really freaked her out.

- NARRATOR: Still, the face Shanann presents online

doesn't change.

- HEATHER: All of Shanann's videos

were about how wonderful Chris was, how understanding he was,

how he took on the medical struggles that she was having,

how great of a father he was.

Everything she did, she was singing his praises,

and he seemed like a loving, doting father

who loved Shanann for everything that she was.

- MATT: I think deep down Shanann

had a had a lack of self worth that she held on to

throughout the years.

And I think there are certain things she would put up with,

certain people, because she didn't think

she deserved better.

- REBECCA: Social media adds to the pressure

that people have to perform,

to look better than maybe is realistic within their lives.

You know, we all have struggles, struggles are normal.

In general, as a therapist,

I would say struggles are healthy, you know?

They build who you are.

But, I think social media adds this pressure to be perfect.

This pressure to show your best self all the time.

- SHERYL: Burnout is a real thing.

Is there a coincidence that we are now

in a mental health epidemic?

Is it a coincidence

that there are epidemic levels of anxiety and depression?

It totally coincides with the smartphone.

Everybody's lives on display.

- MATT: She looked at divorce as a possible failure, and I think

she was worried it might even hurt her brand with Thrive.

She was willing to do anything to save the marriage.

- NARRATOR: In public, all is well with Shanann.

In private, with her close friends, it's anything but.

And it only gets worse after Shanann and the girls

return to Colorado from their North Carolina trip.

- I think they were in a very toxic relationship at the time.

For sure.

Little did we know, right? How toxic it actually was.

- NARRATOR: With Shanann and the girls

now missing for two days,

investigators are coming to the conclusion

that they didn't simply run off,

and that Chris might have had something to do

with their disappearance.

But Chris is determined to prove his innocence

with a polygraph test.

- NARRATOR: Investigators know that Chris Watts

is hiding something behind his cool, calm demeanor.

- In the polygraph, what they're detecting is,

are you being truthful or not?

Not really whether you're lying or not.

First, we get a baseline of Chris's behavior.

- And then of course they ask the really difficult questions,

watching for a change in that baseline behavior.

- You see he struggles even early on, like,

"Hey, you're gonna have to calm down a little bit."

- NARRATOR: If a subject scores minus four on this examination,

it indicates they are not being truthful.

Chris Watts doesn't know it yet, but his score is minus eighteen.

Aside from answering his name correctly,

he's found to be deceptive on every question.

- Chris fails the polygraph, miserably.

- LENA: I think he was under immense pressure,

and he believed he could be convincing enough to pass it,

but he was not smart enough to understand

the perspective of other people.

- STEFFAN: I mean, he's in that room,

and he's talking with the detectives, then the polygraph.

Chris Watts knew everything was closing in on him.

- Self-sabotage is when you do something knowing

that it's not going to work out,

sort of as a way to hold yourself accountable.

So did Chris self-sabotage?

Did he know he wasn't going to pass?

Or did Chris really think that he could pass the polygraph?

- They're really suspicious

about everything that's going on.

I think they really believe that Chris is involved in this.

What they need for him to do

is establish the facts as he knows them, as he saw them,

to establish what he did.

- He's backed into a corner.

He doesn't know what to do and they're skilled investigators,

so they had to use several strategies.

- LENA: After he fails the polygraph, he's saying, "Okay,"

he's trying to change the story around.

"I did lie to you,

but I lied because I've been having an affair."

- STEFFAN: The news comes out about the affair,

and I think even those of us in the media,

skeptical as we may be,

maybe going, "Wow, that's a shocker."

- NARRATOR: For the last two months,

Chris has been having a torrid affair with a coworker,

29-year-old geologist Nichol Kessinger.

But investigators already know this.

Nichol reached out to them herself earlier that day.

- LENA: Chris had a secret app in his phone.

This secret calculator where, you know,

it looks like a calculator,

but it's actually a place where he would store photos

of him and Nichol Kessinger,

along with the selfies,

even some of the more provocative photos

that she would take for him.

- HEATHER: They were visiting each other's houses,

having all the sex,

they were very emotionally involved,

they were invested in each other.

They felt like they were soulmates for each other.

They finally found their person.

- NARRATOR: According to Nichol,

things really start heating up with Chris

about six weeks before Shanann's disappearance,

which police now know is the exact same time

that Shanann was away in North Carolina.

- HEATHER: Chris gets this amazing opportunity

to live out his fantasy with his new girlfriend when his wife

decides that she's gonna stay in North Carolina for six weeks.

- HEATHER: He has this bachelor life with this girl

who has a totally different vibe than Shanann.

I think that Kessinger had this damsel vibe about her,

she didn't have any kids and she was kind of a do-over

and he could kind of swoop in and save her

and he got to be everything for her

that he wasn't in his marriage.

- STEFFAN: They made no bones about it,

at least with each other, taking pictures, going on trips,

going to the sand dunes.

I mean, this was this guy rolling the dice.

- We know that around the same time he started working out,

you know, there's a picture of her in a bikini

posing against a wall,

and I think the majority of people would agree

that she herself appears to be in very good shape.

Meanwhile, his wife is 15 weeks pregnant

and is maybe showing what tends to go with that.

- Nichol told the police that she had absolutely no idea

that Shanann was pregnant,

and that she was disgusted when she found out,

and that's why she came to the police.

- NARRATOR: Having finally admitted

he cheated on Shanann, Chris provides more details

about his relationship with Nichol Kessinger.

- STEFFAN: Nichol was completely led on.

He lied to her throughout that affair,

like he lied to the media every time he came out.

And, quite frankly, he lied to law enforcement.

- MARK: Police are actually saying,

"Okay, Chris, we know you killed your family."

They're accusing him of killing his family.

Now, if you didn't kill your family,

how should you react to that? With indignation.

Like, "This is ridiculous. Why are you looking at me?

"Why aren't you out there getting the bad guy?

This is crazy. I didn't do anything."

Do you get any of that from Chris? No.

- NARRATOR: Hours into

the Colorado Bureau of Investigations' interview

with Chris Watts, the stoic husband

continues to deny any knowledge about the disappearance

of his pregnant wife and two young daughters.

- Chris Watts' whole persona was crafted around this idea

of the ideal father and husband.

So the forefront of his mind was always like,

"I want to be seen as this great guy."

- REBECCA: He got to be seen as the victim.

This poor, amazing father who had just lost his little girls

and his wife and we didn't know what had happened

and, you know, poor Chris.

- NARRATOR: That's when investigators

offer Chris a possible way out.

- LENA: They asked, "Oh, did Shanann hurt the girls?

And then did you do something to hurt her?"

They planted that seed in his head because they wanted

to get him to confess to something.

- NARRATOR: At Chris's request,

investigators bring in 60-year-old Ronnie Watts,

who has just arrived in Colorado from North Carolina that day.

- LENA: I would say the one person

Chris had some attachment to was his dad, Ronnie.

Ronnie adores Chris,

and that was why

he wanted Ronnie in the room with him.

- He blamed Shanann and said that she killed the girls,

which I do not believe could even be possible.

- MARK: I think he wants to run this by his dad first

to see if his dad sort of buys this,

and then if his dad buys it, then he can, you know,

give it to the police.

- VONDA: Once he admitted that he did it,

then there was just this flush of huge sadness,

because then everybody was like, "Okay, she's not coming back.

And those babies are not coming back."

And the sadness just...

it started there, and it just built.

- MARK: His dad actually believes that something

has happened to the family,

and Chris isn't responsible for any of this.

I mean, this is probably the normal reaction for a parent.

- Again, he didn't want people to believe

that he could do something like this.

- NARRATOR: But investigators don't believe

Shanann killed her girls.

They can assign guilt later.

For now, they just want to find the bodies.

- Yeah. Unimaginable.

Then it gets crazier.

- NARRATOR: As police race to the oil fields

where Chris Watts claims to have hidden

his murdered family's bodies,

the guilty husband is more concerned

about what people think of him.

- REBECCA: He did not break down

until he was actually confessing.

Which begs the question of who he was crying for.

Was it for his children and his wife

because he felt guilty or sad that he wouldn't see them?

Or was it for himself?

Knowing that he was now going to jail,

knowing that now this version of himself was the real version

everybody would know,

knowing that the fantasy and the fairy tale was now over?

- I believe Chris Watts is a type of narcissist.

They don't have feelings and attachments to people.

So they have to learn to mimic other people

to fit into the world.

- STEFFAN: You know, everybody following this story,

you're forming your own opinion.

And there were even people that thought, "Poor Chris.

"She was very controlling and demanding

and look at all the stuff, and her life's on social media."

- My husband's a genius.

- LENA: That then really unfairly

painted Shanann in a bad light.

There's still people who believe that

and will go at great lengths to defend Chris.

- NARRATOR: But investigators don't buy Chris's explanation

that Shanann killed the girls, and then in a fit of rage,

he killed her.

As their hours-long interview

with the 33-year-old father continues, they're determined

to break through his self-serving web of lies.

- NARRATOR: Looking at the evidence, however,

investigators are convinced that Chris is a monster,

a rare and specific form of killer

known as a family annihilator.

- REBECCA: Family annihilators in general do tend to be male.

They're most often in their thirties.

These things often happen at the end of summer.

They often happen on weekends.

There are a number of correlations

between when and who commits family annihilation.

As far as why, that may go back to the stressors.

Finances being one. Affairs being another one.

- For most family annihilators, it is an event

that is thought out, it's planned, it's organized.

It's done, if not days, weeks in advance.

I think in this five-week period where Shanann and the girls

go to visit her parents in North Carolina

is what solidifies this in Chris's mind.

"This is what's gotta to happen,"

because he's spending all of his time with Nichol.

And it's like, "This is the relationship I want."

- LENA: He had no use for Shanann anymore

once he had found a new woman.

In the narcissism world, we use the word "discard"

for when the narcissist is done with someone

who they no longer have value from.

This was a literal discard in every sense of the word.

- NARRATOR: After Shanann and the kids returned

from their summer trip to North Carolina,

Shanann soon left again for Arizona on a work trip.

She could tell that things weren't right with Chris,

so she gave him a note to read while she was away.

- LENA: Shanann poured her heart out to Chris,

telling him how much she loved him,

how much she wanted to make the marriage work.

Everything she loved about him.

What she was willing to do, you know,

even though she didn't like his family, she said,

"I'm willing to work with them for you."

She was trying to do everything to save her marriage.

- JESSICA SHELTON: In the text messages she sent to her friends

before she passed, you know, she was realizing that,

"Maybe I was hard on Chris, maybe, you know,

I'm such a go-getter and a perfectionist,"

and she made things, you know, difficult for herself

trying to achieve so much.

- LENA: She got self-help books.

She tried to persuade Chris to go to counseling,

and those are called prosocial solutions.

The difference between a psychopath and, you know,

a normal person is that

psychopaths turn to antisocial solutions to their problems.

So an antisocial solution to a problem like marital problems

would be murdering your family.

- NARRATOR: Investigators believe it was while Shanann

was away on a work trip in Arizona

that Chris put his plan into action.

- LENA: He was plotting, you know, over the weekend,

exactly what he was going to do.

He knew that he was going to kill his wife

and so he didn't care anymore. And so in a lot of ways,

I believe that Chris was toying with Shanann on purpose.

- NARRATOR: The investigators confirm their suspicion

when they interview Shanann's best friend, Nickole Atkinson.

- JESSICA: Chris just swiped his card

knowing Shanann would see it.

She was on top of all their finances.

He calculated this, he knew what he was doing.

- NARRATOR: On the night of August 12, 2018,

the Watts' home security log shows Chris returning home

at 10:30 p.m.

Shanann, still in Arizona,

is now all but convinced something's wrong.

- NARRATOR: At the airport, Shanann finally reveals

her mounting frustrations to her friend.

- NARRATOR: Throughout the trip,

Shanann continues to try to make contact.

- LENA: She's walking into what her safe haven was with

the person that she believed would protect her

and her children the most,

and she was walking, literally, into her death.

- NARRATOR: After weeks apart,

Chris and Shanann are finally home together,

but the night soon takes a frightening turn.

- MARK: Chris is saying,

"Well, I told Shanann I didn't want to be married anymore."

You know, "That I had this girlfriend

and I wanted a new life,"

and then Shanann strangled the girls.

So this doesn't even make sense behaviorally.

You tell your wife that you're having an affair,

so she goes and kills the kids.

Nobody believes this.

- NARRATOR: Now investigators want to know,

will Chris ever admit what really happened?

And where are his pregnant wife and their two daughters' bodies?

- NARRATOR: Investigators reach the remote site

in the Colorado desert where Chris Watts claims

to have dumped his pregnant wife and daughters' bodies.

But the sprawling 35,000-acre oil facility

is simply too large to search.

They need help from the killer himself to locate them.

- NARRATOR: Investigators on site make a startling discovery:

Chris stuffed four-year-old Bella

and three-year-old Ce-Ce's bodies into the oil wells.

- HEATHER: Police, they're shocked.

The hatches on the oil tanks,

they're about the width of a paper plate

and they can't figure out how you would get a child

through them, let alone two.

- MARK: Just the nature of trying to stuff your daughter

into this little tiny hole

and put her, drop her, into this

really just horrific mixture of oil and water,

is really beyond comprehension.

It's just...

goes against so much of the hardwiring

we have as parents.

- HEATHER: Once their bodies are recovered,

they were able to say, "Okay, we found them."

You know, "She was wrapped in this.

She was wearing this."

And when you give him the facts

and he has to re-live what he's done,

you hope he's got some kind of remorse.

- NARRATOR: But even as he is taken into custody

and charged with the murders of his wife and children,

Chris Watts refuses to accept responsibility

for his daughter's deaths.

It is only to escape the death penalty

that he agrees to plead guilty on all charges.

In November 2018, Chris Watts receives five life sentences

without the possibility of parole,

plus an additional 84 years

for the unlawful termination of a pregnancy

and tampering with deceased bodies.

- OBARI: A man with conviction, even after, you know,

messing up so bad, may have said,

"Okay, let me just fess up, let me just come clean.

I can't get away with this thing."

But somebody like a Chris had the audacity to not do it,

but to think he can get away with it.

And so that's the problem is that we don't really know

who he was because he spent so much time

in a play, performing this act.

- So basically he pleads guilty, gets life in prison,

and the end.

There's no trial, there's no presenting evidence.

He never has to say anything more.

- NARRATOR: But four months after his conviction,

Chris Watts decides he does in fact have more to say.

He sits down with investigators a second time,

and this time he finally decides to tell the truth.

- He's in prison when then he makes the,

sort of this final confession, where he says,

"Okay, here's what really happened."

- REBECCA: I mean, as far as social media was concerned,

he was an ideal husband, essentially.

So for him to have come forward with,

"I'm having an affair and I'm leaving you," or even just

"I'm leaving you, we're getting a divorce, period,"

is certainly a big swing from the perfect family that,

you know, he had basically been up part of

presenting to the world for a number of years at that point.

We don't know how that may have

played into his ultimate decision to kill

his children and his wife instead of simply leaving.

- He just strangled her, until he said he watched

her eyes fill up with blood and then, you know,

your body releases all of its withheld fluids when you pass

and that's when he knew she was dead.

- SHERYL: He truly killed her

very shortly after being intimate.

It's just, it's almost like none of this makes any sense

to a common person, a layperson,

or somebody who studies psychology,

it's just really difficult to understand this.

- NARRATOR: But what's even more confounding is what Chris does

when his daughters wake up.

- I think the horrific, really evil, nature of the acts

is that he brought his daughters alive out to the location.

- The autopsies show that Bella and Ce-Ce were likely smothered.

- The fact that someone could do this to a pregnant woman

who is your wife,

the two little girls,

Chris Watts, in my opinion, deserved the death penalty,

should have been executed.

- MATT: To do that to your own children,

and then to be a coward enough to, like,

take the first plea that they give you

so that you didn't have to be put to death,

it just says a lot about him.

It says a lot about how far he had gone in his narcissism.

He's a true sociopath.

- MARK: Family annihilators are a very rare type of killer.

And thank God, because you can't predict men like this.

Even the family members would say,

"He could never hurt me, he could never hurt our kids."

You do not know what lies in the hearts of some men.

If you study familicide

and men that commit these types of crimes,

most of the time they suicide.

But I think Chris thought he could get away with this.

He just thought he was gonna be that good.

- HEATHER: So he could maybe get away with it

and live with Nichol forever?

I mean, that's the prize for all this?

It's horrible.

- LENA: Chris Watts destroyed so many lives

by these really selfish actions.

It's not just the immediate family,

it ripples out into the community.

The main detective on the case did retire from PTSD,

specifically because of this case.

- VONDA: The ripple effect is just huge.

At the time when it occurred,

the children were a main concern in the neighborhood,

because, you know, daddies don't kill their babies,

and how do you wrap your mind about that?

- ♪ My daddy is a hero

♪ He helps me grow up strong

♪ He helps me [unintelligibile] ♪

♪ He reads me books

♪ He ties my shoes

♪ You're a hero through and through ♪

♪ My daddy, daddy, I love you ♪

- ♪

- My name is Chris Watts. Welcome to Broomfield, Colorado.

It's about 70 degrees, and it's awesome outside,

so welcome. I'm doing my speech on

relationship deterioration and repair

and this is my PowerPoint to help me.

Deterioration.

The relationship technology nowadays,

you'll be on your iPhone, your Blackberry, at a restaurant,

and you'll just--you'll see two people at the table,

and you'll see both of them on their phones,

either Facebook comment status or maybe playing a game,

and there's no communication at all.

You have to ask yourself three questions

when you're in a relationship:

Do I have the desire to keep this relationship going?

Do I have a moral obligation to stay in this relationship?

Or is it a necessity for me to stay in this relationship?

Sometimes when you have children

and your relationship starts to deteriorate,

a child could help repair it.

All relationships are held together, in part,

by form of commitment.

And in conclusion, I have to say that relationships are hard,

but they're worth it in the end.

And as the Swedish proverb says, "A double joy is a shared joy

and a double sorrow is not a shared sorrow." Thank you.

- [applause]

- ♪♪ - [clock ticking]

- [streetcar bell rings]