Chris Watts Confession: First Lie, 2019 Prison Tapes, and Truth

Chris Watts confessed twice, and the two accounts do not match. On August 15, 2018, after failing a polygraph, he told investigators that his wife Shanann had strangled their two daughters and that he killed her in a rage when he found out. Six months later, in a five-and-a-half-hour interview at a Wisconsin prison on February 18, 2019, he admitted that story was a lie: he had strangled Shanann himself, then driven the girls to a remote oil site and smothered them one after the other.¹

The First Confession: Blaming Shanann

Shanann Watts arrived home from a business trip at roughly 1:48 a.m. on August 13, 2018. By the afternoon she was missing, and Chris Watts spent the next two days telling police, reporters, and even Shanann’s phone that he had no idea where she and the girls had gone. In a televised plea on August 14, he asked for their safe return. Privately he told investigators there was “nobody else,” though he was in the middle of an affair with a coworker named Nichol Kessinger.²

On August 15 he agreed to a polygraph administered by a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent. Asked whether he had physically caused Shanann’s disappearance, he said he had “no part in any of that.” The examiner concluded he “showed deception,” and investigators told him so bluntly: “It is completely clear that you were not honest during the testing. You did not pass the polygraph test.”³

Watts was not under arrest and could have walked out. When he asked to speak with his father, Ronnie Watts, who had flown in from North Carolina, CBI agent Tammy Lee and FBI Special Agent Grahm Coder made what Lee called a “make or break” call: they let the meeting happen inside the interrogation room, hoping his father would draw the truth out rather than tell him to lawyer up.⁴

Alone with his father, Watts broke down. “She hurt them. And I freaked out and I hurt her,” he said. He told his father the children “were blue” when he found them.³ When the agents came back in, he gave them the same story: Shanann had strangled Bella and Celeste, and he had killed her in a rage.⁴ That night he was arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body.

Why Investigators Knew the First Story Was a Lie

The bodies were recovered on August 16 at an Anadarko Petroleum oil site called Cervi 319, about twelve miles northeast of Keenesburg, Colorado, where Watts worked. Shanann was buried in a shallow grave. Four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste had been placed inside two separate crude oil tanks.⁵

Forensic pathologist Michael Burson found that Shanann died of asphyxiation from manual strangulation. Both girls died of asphyxiation, but from smothering, not strangulation. Neither had neck injuries consistent with being strangled. Oil was found in the throats, stomachs, and lungs of both children.⁶ Bella’s autopsy also showed blunt force trauma on her jaw, lacerations and contusions inside her mouth, and bite marks on her tongue, which prosecutors said indicated she “fought for her life.”⁷

The physical evidence flatly contradicted the story that Shanann had strangled the girls. On November 6, 2018, Watts pleaded guilty to all nine counts against him, and on November 19 he was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, plus 84 years.⁸ The plea did not require him to explain what had actually happened.

The February 2019 Prison Confession

On February 18, 2019, roughly three months after sentencing, Watts sat down at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, for a second interview with the same core team: CBI agent Tammy Lee, FBI Special Agent Grahm Coder, and Frederick Police Department detective Dave Baumhover. The agents told him this was not about an “open investigation” but about understanding “what happened.”⁹

He dropped the story about Shanann killing the children. He said he had never seen her hurt the girls at all. The false narrative, he said, had been introduced to him by an investigator during the original interrogation, and “I just went with it.”¹

What He Said Happened That Morning

Watts said the killings began in the couple’s bedroom. He told Shanann he was having an affair and no longer loved her. She cried, asked if there was someone else, and said he would “never see the kids again.” He strangled her while sitting on top of her in the bed.¹⁰

As he was pulling the sheet off the bed, Bella walked in holding a pink blanket and asked, “What is wrong with Mommy?” He told her that her mother “doesn’t feel good.” He wrapped Shanann in the sheet, carried the body downstairs while Bella watched, and loaded it into the floorboard of his truck. Celeste woke up during the commotion.¹¹

He put both girls in the backseat, above their mother’s body, and drove to Cervi 319. During the drive, the girls dozed on and off. At one point Bella mentioned that the car “smelled.”¹²

At the site, Watts said, he first removed Shanann’s body from the truck. He then returned and smothered Celeste with a blanket while Bella sat beside her. He placed Celeste’s body in one of the oil tanks and went back for Bella. She asked, “What happened to CeCe?” and then, “Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?” Her last words, he said, were “Daddy, no.” He put her body in a second tank and buried Shanann in the field nearby.¹³

Watts described feeling as if “something else” was controlling him, calling the event “the epitome of being angry, the epitome of showing a rage, the epitome of losing your mind.” He also said, “I wasn’t thinking. If I was thinking, none of this would have happened.”¹⁰

What He Said About the Affair

A significant part of the interview turned on Nichol Kessinger, a coworker at Anadarko Petroleum. Watts said the physical relationship began in early July 2018, while Shanann was visiting family in North Carolina. He described it as a “roller coaster ride that I just kept punching a ticket on and never could get off,” and when asked whether he loved her, said “it felt like it was true.”¹⁴

Kessinger told investigators a different story. She said Watts had lied to her throughout, claiming he was already separated and finalizing a divorce, and that she only learned Shanann was pregnant after the family was reported missing. On August 15, she contacted the Weld County Sheriff’s Office on her own and met with the FBI. She called him “a liar” who “lied about everything.”¹⁵

How Much of the Final Confession to Believe

Investigators did not treat the prison account as the last word. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said before the interview even happened: “I don’t expect that he will ever tell the truth about what truly happened or why.”⁷ CBI agent Tammy Lee, who had led the original interrogation, said Watts’ revised account was “more horrible than I had even let my mind go to,” and of Bella’s reported last words: “I feel like it’s kind of what he deserves. I hope he hears that every night.”¹⁶

Netflix documentary director Jenny Popplewell, who worked from the full body of primary-source recordings, went further, calling Watts “a stranger to the truth” and noting that his accounts leave out the physical resistance a strangulation victim would show.¹⁷ FBI Special Agent Grahm Coder framed the confession’s timing more simply: once the bodies were recovered, “he knew he had no other choice.”¹⁸

Where the Recordings and Transcripts Live

The audio and a redacted transcript of the February 2019 prison interview were released to the public in two parts on March 7 and 8, 2019.¹ Beyond the murders, the recordings cover Watts’ relationship with Kessinger, his prison routine, and his denials of other alleged affairs; he claimed to keep photographs of Shanann and the girls in his cell and to talk to them each morning and evening.¹¹

The prison interview is held separately from the main case file. The nearly 2,000-page investigative file, which includes the earlier FBI interviews, Frederick Police reports, and jail correspondence, was released by the Weld County District Attorney’s Office two days after sentencing following Colorado open records requests.¹⁹ The February 2019 interview is maintained by the CBI and requires its own records request.²⁰

1
KOAA. Transcript of Chris Watts Confession Released to the Public
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9News. Newly Released Videos Show Chris Watts Failing Polygraph Test
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ABC7 New York. The Interrogation Tapes: Chris Watts Changes His Story
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Oxygen. Why Chris Watts Was Allowed to Meet With His Dad During Questioning
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Denver7. Sources Say Bodies of 2 Daughters Concealed Inside Oil and Gas Tanks
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Craig Daily Press. Autopsy Reports Show Cruelty of Killings, Body Disposal in Christopher Watts Case
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KOCO. Prosecutors Say Autopsy Shows 4-Year-Old Fought for Her Life
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ABC News. Chris Watts Sentenced to Life for Killing Pregnant Wife and Young Daughters
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CBI Interview Transcript. Watts Interview – Section: February 18, 2019 Transcript
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Denver Post. Christopher Watts Confession Murder Details
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CBS News Colorado. Chris Watts Confession Recordings
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NBC News. Chris Watts: What He Told Investigators About His Murders
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ABC News. Chilling Confession: What Chris Watts Told Police About Killing His Family
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CBS News Colorado. Chris Watts Confession Details About Mistress Nichol Kessinger
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Denver Post. Christopher Watts Murder Mistress Nichol Kessinger
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Oxygen. CBI Agent Tammy Lee on Bella and Celeste Watts
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Yahoo Entertainment. American Murder Director on the Chris Watts Family Murders
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People. Chris Watts Investigators Reveal Confession to Killing Wife and Daughters
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Denver Post. Christopher Watts Case File Released
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Weld County District Attorney’s Office. Information on Watts Case