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A man who made an emotional TV appeal for the return of his pregnant wife and kids has confessed to murdering them.
Chris Watts was reportedly arrested after confessing to killing his wife Shanann Watts, 34, and her daughters, Bella, four, and three-year-old Celeste - who goes by the name Cece.
Denver7 reports that officers are currently in the process of recovering their bodies.
Watts' arrest came just hours after he gave a tearful interview about his family's disappearance in which he said: "I have no idea, like where they went".
Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant with her third child, and the two girls were declared "endangered and missing" on Tuesday and the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had been searching for them.
(Image: Instagram)
(Image: NBC)
She had just returned home from a business trip before she went missing from Frederick, Colorado on Monday.
Chris said he last saw his wife at 5.15am before he left for work.
Speaking on NBC's Today show , Watts said he and Shanann had had an "emotional" conversation that morning but didn't give any further details.
He said: "I don't feel like this is even real right now. It's like a nightmare I can't wake up from."
He said Shanann was planning to go to a friend's house with their daughters and Fox 31 reports that was the last time he heard from her.
Watts said he saw his two girls asleep on the baby monitor as he left the house.
(Image: Instagram)
(Image: Instagram)
(Image: Instagram)
He said he text her numerous times but didn't receive any response which he thought was odd.
At around midday, he checked their doorbell camera and saw that a friend had stopped by but no one opened the door.
Watts said he rushed home but no one was there, even though Shanann's car was in the driveway.
He then spoke to police and reported them as missing at 1.40pm.
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Watts said: "When I got home yesterday, it was like a ghost town.
"I was trying to get home as fast as I can, I was blowing through stop lights, I was blowing through everything just trying to get home as fast as I can because none of this made sense."
The Frederick Police Department confirmed they had made an arrest "in connection to the missing person's case" of Shanann and her daughters and were awaiting charges.
(Image: Instagram)
(Image: Instagram)
Dave Baumhover, a detective at the Frederick Police Department, said there were no signs of foul play and there was nothing to suggest Shanann had mental health problems.
Shanann's friend, Amanda Thayer, said she left everything, including her phone, wallet and handbag, inside the house.
According to Facebook, Shanann worked as a brand promoter for Le-Vel, who make a Thrive weight loss and wellness patch, which she can be seen wearing in some pictures.
A day after his pregnant wife and two daughters vanished, Christopher Watts stood in his front yard and faced the parade of news cameras with uniform solemnity.
“I came home and walked in the house and nothing. Just vanished,” the 33-year-old husband and father told Denver 7 ABC on Tuesday.
“It just seems like I’m living in a nightmare, and I can’t get out of it,” he told KUSA-NBC, as officers from the Frederick Police Department led search dogs through the family’s 4,000-square-foot house.
“In my heart I believe she is somewhere, and I hope she is safe,” Watts told Fox 31 the same day, while dogs barked in the house behind him.
There were no interviews the next day. Shortly before midnight, police returned to the house, quietly arrested Watts and began hauling trash bags out the front door.
Now the same TV stations that had interviewed the father are reporting that he has been jailed on charges of murder, and his family is dead.
Earlier in the week, when there seemed to be some hope of a happy ending, idyllic photos of the family plastered the news: 4-year-old Bella; her little sister, Celeste; Christopher and his wife, Shanann; who was in her second trimester with the newest Watts family member.
“She would take the kids to the pool, and he would always take them in a little wagon,” a neighbor in the subdivision told KUSA. “We were always impressed by his doting over them and how much he appeared to love them.”
[A teen reunited with her birth mother — who then killed her and burned her body, police say]
Their life, however, wasn’t apparently perfect. Two years after buying their $400,000 house in 2013, the Wattses filed for bankruptcy. They were drowning in a mortgage and more than $50,000 in credit card debt, bankruptcy court documents show. His paycheck from an oil and gas company and hers from a children’s hospital weren’t nearly enough.
But they resolved the bankruptcy: A deal was struck with the creditors, they stayed in the house and the family kept growing.
This month, Shanann took a trip to Arizona to see her family and attend a conference for her new occupation, marketing a “lifestyle system” called Thrive.
“Everyone have an amazing day and absolutely fantastic month!” she wrote on Facebook before leaving.
It’s unclear whether the girls went, too, or stayed home with their dad. KDVR reported that a friend picked Shanann Watts up at the airport when she flew home on Monday, dropped her off at home about 2 a.m. and never saw her again.
Another friend called police after Shanann missed a doctor’s appointment that morning, then didn’t answer her door, ABC11 reported.
By Tuesday, state investigators and the FBI had joined the search. Posters of the family were being handed out to drivers around the neighborhood as Watts stepped into his driveway to tell the reporters what it felt like to find out they were missing.
“I was blowing through stoplights. I was blowing through everything just trying to get home as fast as I can, because none of this made sense,” he told KUSA.
RAW INTERVIEW: Chris Watts, husband of missing Frederick woman, speaks to Denver7's Tomas Hoppough "Shanann, Bella, Celeste… if you're out there, just come back," Chris Watts, the husband of a pregnant Frederick mother of 2, told Tomas Hoppough Denver7 on Tuesday, during a 7-minute interview. "If somebody has her, please bring her. … This house is not complete without anybody here. Please bring them back." Today, police officials say he confessed to killing his wife and two young daughters. Officials believe they know where the bodies are. Story: http://bit.ly/2PbRaOz Posted by Denver7 on Wednesday, August 15, 2018
He said he had left the house for work shortly after 5 a.m. on Monday — just a few hours after his wife came home from the airport.
“I texted her a few times, called her, but she never got back to me,” he told Denver 7.
He figured she was just busy, he said. Only after one of Shanann’s friends called him and said she wasn’t at the house did he begin to worry.
“Just vanished,” Watts said. “Nothing was here. I mean she wasn’t here. The kids weren’t here. Nobody was here.”
Watts wanted to drive around looking for them, he said, but police told him it wouldn’t do any good. All he could do was sit in his house or stand in his yard, listening to police dogs bark while he described his emotions.
“Last night, I had every light in the house on,” he told Denver7. “I was hoping I would just get ran over by the kids, running through the door and just, like, barrel rushing me. But it didn’t happen.”
He paused a moment.
“I mean, the kids are my life,” he said. “I mean, those smiles light up my life. And just, like, I mean, last night, when they usually eat dinner, it was like, I miss them. I miss telling them, ‘Hey, you gotta eat that or you’re not gonna get your dessert.’ I miss that. I miss them, you know, cuddled up on their couches. They have like a Minnie Mouse couch and Sofia couch that they cuddle up on and watch ‘Bubble Guppies’ or something. And to just, like, you know, I was …”
He sighed.
“It was tearing me apart last night.”
There was another pause as Denver7’s videographer shifted the angle.
“This might be a tough question,” the reporter asked, “but did you guys get into, like, an argument before she left?”
“It wasn’t an argument,” Watts said quickly. “We got into a conversation, but I’ll leave it at that.”
And then he talked some more about how much he missed them.
This interview, and others like it, played over the news through the afternoon and into Wednesday.
A few oddities about the search began to leak out. Shanann’s friends said her phone, keys and wallet had all been found in the house, ABC11 reported. Her car was still in the garage, per NBC News. No one who knew her said she was the type to just pick up and leave.
Late that afternoon, Frederick police held a short news conference.
“There is a lot at stake here, and we are exploring all avenues to not rule anything out,” a spokesman said.
After dark, more police vehicles began to show up at the Watts house.
Reporters photographed officers taking bags of evidence out and towing a pickup away. Things became clearer on Thursday morning.
At a terse new conference in the late morning, flanked by police and FBI agents, Colorado Bureau of Investigations Director John Camper announced “absolutely the worst possible outcome anybody could imagine.”
“We’ve recovered a body we’re quite certain is Shanann Watts,” he said. “We have strong reason to believe we know where bodies of the children are.”
Their father was now officially a “suspect,” he said. His arrest warrant had been sealed by court order, and he remained jailed on three counts of evidence tampering and three counts of first-degree murder. He had a bond hearing set for Thursday afternoon, and the district attorney’s office is now reviewing whether to bring formal charges by Monday.
Investigators released almost no other details about the killings or what made them suspect Watts, citing the need to protect an investigation that was only just beginning.
It’s unclear whether Christopher Watts has a lawyer, and Shanann Watts’s family could not be reached for comment. But a relative sent a statement to CBS4: “It is with deep hurt, confusion and anger to confirm our beautiful cousin Shanann Watts, her unborn child, and her two angelic daughters, Bella (4), Celeste (3) were viciously murdered by husband Chris Watts; who confessed to the killings,” it reads.
The family’s house now sits unoccupied. In the same yard where Watts had spoke of his hopes and fears hours earlier, a memorial of crosses and stuffed bears lie in the grass.
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AFTER his pregnant wife and two daughters disappeared, Christopher Watts stood on his porch in Colorado and lamented to reporters how much he missed them. He longed for the simple things, he said, like telling his girls to eat their dinner and gazing at them as they curled up to watch cartoons. “Last night, I had every light in the house on. I was hoping that I would just get ran over by the kids running in the door, just barrel-rushing me, but it didn’t happen,” he told Denver TV station KMGH. On Thursday, Watts was in jail after being arrested on suspicion of killing his family, probably before he spoke those words. Authorities did not offer a motive. The body of 34-year-old Shanann Watts was found on a property owned by Anadarko Petroleum, one of the state’s largest oil and gas drillers, where Christopher Watts used to work, police said. Investigators believed they knew where to find four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste and were working to recover their bodies. “As horrible as this outcome is, our role now is to do everything we can to determine exactly what occurred,” John Camper, director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference in Frederick, a small town on the grassy plains north of Denver, where fast-growing subdivisions intermingle with drilling rigs and oil wells. Watts, 33, has not been formally charged. A judge ordered him held without bail and told prosecutors to file charges by Monday afternoon. He set a Tuesday hearing to review the case. As he was escorted into the courtroom, Watts did not speak. He looked down for much of the hearing but made eye contact as the judge reviewed his rights.
Watts’s attorney, James Merson of the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office, left without commenting to reporters. He did not immediately respond to a voicemail left at his office Thursday by The Associated Press. A family friend reported Shanann Watts and her daughters missing on Monday, police said. In his previous interviews with Denver TV outlets, Christopher Watts said his wife of nearly six years returned home about 2am Monday after a flight for a work trip was delayed. He said the two had an “emotional conversation” before he left for work a few hours later and that he became concerned after she did not return his calls or texts or those of her friends. He said he came home to an empty house after a friend knocked on the door at noon and got no answer. Shanann Watts’ Facebook account paints a portrait of a happy married life, with a constant feed of photos and videos of friends, relatives and herself. Her comments were typically upbeat, whether she was running errands, playing with her kids or promoting a health program. She posted selfies of her and her husband smiling in restaurants, at the ocean on vacation and at their house. On May 5, she wrote: “I love this man! He’s my ROCK!” On June 19, she posted a photo of some texts with her husband after sending him a picture of a sonogram. He replied that he loved the baby already. She posted: “I love Chris! He’s the best dad us girls could ask for.” Her page has photo collages and video slide shows praising Chris Watts, describing how their love was growing stronger and how he gave her the strength to have a third child. The couple’s 2015 bankruptcy filing captures a picture of a family caught between a promising future and financial strain. The filing estimated that they had the same range of assets as liabilities, according to court records. At the time, Christopher Watts worked for Anadarko, earning about $61,500 a year as an “operator.” His wife was working at a call centre at a children’s hospital, making about $18 per hour. Combined, they earned $90,000 in 2014. But they also had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, along with some student loans and medical bills — for a total of $70,000 in unsecured claims on top of a sizeable mortgage. A spokeswoman for the oil company said Christopher Watts was fired on Wednesday, but she declined to provide any details, citing the active investigation. Shannan’s friend Ashley Bell said she never detected that anything was wrong between Shanann and her husband, who she described as a loving father. “She was always about her girls,” Bell said. “She would do anything for her girls.” Shanann’s father, Frank Rzucek, said on Facebook that the family did not want to talk to the media.
The husband of a missing, pregnant Colorado woman was arrested Wednesday evening in connection with her disappearance and that of their two young daughters, police in Frederick, Colorado, said. Chris Watts has been charged with three counts each of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence, reports CBS Denver.
The station says Chris Watts confessed to killing Shanann Watts, 34, who was 15 weeks pregnant, and daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. The station says investigators were seen removing items from the family's home. A truck was also taken.
CBS News hasn't independently confirmed that Chris Watts admitted to police that he killed Shanann, Bella and Celeste. Authorities didn't say anything about the whereabouts of the three.
CBS Denver
The station says Shanann Watts' family was also told Chris Watts agreed to bring officers to the bodies.
A relative of Shanann Watts provided this statement tonight. The husband is being held by police. https://t.co/My4xSGrxth pic.twitter.com/8DNpr4xLEN — Tim Wieland (@CBS4Tim) August 16, 2018
Chris Watts told "Today" Wednesday morning he was living a "nightmare." He said the last time he saw his family was early Monday morning before leaving for work.
"I just want them back," he said. "I just want them to come back."
Frederick Police told a news conference earlier Wednesday that officers went to check up on Shanann and the girls in their home around 1 p.m. Monday after a concerned friend said she hadn't heard from Shanann.
One of her friends posted on Facebook that Shanann left her phone, purse, car seats and children's medicine at home Monday morning, CBS Denver reported.
CBS Denver
By Tuesday afternoon, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation issued an endangered missing alert for all three.
The FBI was assisting the CBI and local authorities with the investigation.
