Colorado Family Struggled With Debt Before Husband's Arrest In Wife And Daughters' Killing

Leeda.the.Paladin

Well-Known Member
Chris and Shanann Watts detailed their life on social media. They shared photos of beach vacations to San Diego and screengrabs of lovey-dovey text messages. They gushed about their daughters, Bella and Celeste, and posted photos of the little girls' gap-toothed grins and funny dances.

"Happy Husband Appreciation Day! I couldn't imagine a better man for us," Shanann Watts wrote next to their photo in April.
"You spoil us with love an(d) attention! You put up with 3 impatient, demanding women in the house," she continued. "You work so hard everyday to provide for us. I love you so much."
Four months after Shanann Watts posted that photo, her husband sits in a jail in Colorado, suspected of killing her, along with Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3.


The mother, who was pregnant, and daughters vanished Monday from their suburban Denver home. Their bodies were found Thursday at the site of the petroleum company where Chris Watts once worked, authorities said.
Chris Watts, 33, was arrested in connection with their deaths but has not been formally charged. He's next due in court Tuesday.
Authorities have not suggested a motive in the killing.


Shanann Watts is pictured with her two daughters, Bella and Celeste.
Couple files for bankruptcy in 2015
As stunned friends and neighbors ask how the story of a couple that seemed so picture perfect could end so tragically, bankruptcy filings reveal a family that had struggled financially.
Chris and Shanann Watts filed for bankruptcy in June 2015, according to documents in the court record. That was after they bought their house, an asset valued at $400,000, records show.
The year prior to the bankruptcy filing, the couple had a combined income of $91,000 -- most of it earned by Chris Watts, who made about $63,000 from his job at Anadarko Petroleum, records show. The rest was earned by Shanann Watts, who worked in 2014 at Children's Hospital Colorado.






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Video shows CO mom tell husband about pregnancy 01:52
Still, they were about $70,000 in debt, most of it from student loans and credit card purchases, according to the filings. The couple reported two savings accounts with a total of $9.51 and a joint checking account with $864.
By all accounts, they appeared to have moved past that, with Shanann Watts posting numerous times this year about her new job at a lifestyle company. She was also 15 weeks pregnant with a son the couple planned to name Niko, her brother, Frankie Rzucek, posted on Facebook.
"Little peanut!! Lover her/him already!!" her husband texted back in June when she sent him a photo of her ultrasound picture, according to a screengrab she posted on Facebook.

Some victims may have been strangled[/paste:font]
Documents filed Friday in Chris Watts' arrest reveal some of the victims may have been strangled, along with other grim details.
Shanann Watts and her daughters appear to have been killed at their house in Frederick, Colorado, a town of about 8,600 people some 30 miles north of Denver, prosecutors have said.


Chris Watts
Chris Watts' attorneys asked a court Friday to require pathologists conducting autopsies to swab the little girls' necks and hands for DNA, court filings show.
In a second motion, obtained by CNN affiliate KDVR, defense attorneys asked the court to compel the coroner's office to look for DNA under the mother's fingernails and on her hands.
Defense attorneys did not say why they made those requests. They also asked the court to allow defense expert Richard Eikelenboom to take swabs from the bodies.
It's not clear whether a judge ordered the coroner's officer to swab for DNA. The first motion was filed 20 minutes before the autopsies were scheduled to begin, documents show.
The cause of death for each family member is still pending while medical investigators wait on test results, the Frederick Police Department said.
Little girls found in an oil well


Some members of Colorado family may have been strangled, court documents reveal

Shanann Watts' body was found on the property of Anadarko Petroleum, authorities said. And the girls' bodies were in an "oil well filled with crude oil for several days," Chris Watts' attorneys indicated in a court filing.
A company spokeswoman confirmed that Chris Watts used to work there but declined to say when his employment ended or what role he served.
Watts was arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of tampering with a human body, a Weld County District Court judge said Thursday. He is being held at a county jail north of Denver, and prosecutors have until Monday to formally charge him.
A judge sealed the arrest affidavit, which might have provided information about a possible motive or other details.
Chris Watts describes 'emotional conversation'
In an interview Tuesday -- after his family disappeared but before his arrest -- Chris Watts said his wife got home from a business trip about 2 a.m. Monday.


Hours before his arrest, Chris Watts pleaded for his family's return

"We had an emotional conversation, I'll leave it at that," Watts told a reporter who asked whether they'd argued. "I just want them back. I just want them to come back."
Watts said he left for work about 5:15 a.m. that day and wasn't concerned when his wife didn't respond to his texts and phone calls, since she'd just returned from out of town.
But he grew worried, he said, when one of her friends contacted him around noon and said she wasn't responding to messages.
"I walked in the house and -- nothing," Chris Watts told KMGH. "She wasn't here. The kids weren't here."
 

Theresamonet

Well-Known Member
He looked so guilty in that interview he did. May as well have just confessed right then.

So tired of people on social media going on about how shocking this is because he looks so “normal”. :rolleyes: These “normal” looking white men have been butchering, strangling, stabbing, poisoning folks to death since forever. When will people get a clue? He fits the description of the average wife and child killer.

Also, I don’t understand people’s need to make the world think they are living a perfect life via social media. If what her friends say is true, and she was gearing up to leave her husband, why make and post all those videos about how he is the worlds greatest husband? I don’t get it. People close to her must have known the truth. Her friend reported her missing the same day she dropped her off, after she stopped responding to calls and texts.
 

nysister

Well-Known Member
Well said! I don't know if it was noted above but she told a friend she thought he might be unfaithful.

Let's see a nice looking man with a mortgage he can't pay for, two little girls and a wife carrying their third child involved in what seems to be an MLM.

That's a Lifetime movie waiting to happen, he was trying to find a way to start a new life with a younger, cuter woman without children and not have to make child support or mortgage payments. I could have seen that coming a mile away.

What an evil man. It's horrible enough to kill your wife, but your 3 kids too? Vile.

eta. He became too used to that bachelor life when she was away with the kids for 5/6 weeks.

He looked so guilty in that interview he did. May as well have just confessed right then.

So tired of people on social media going on about how shocking this is because he looks so “normal”. :rolleyes: These “normal” looking white men have been butchering, strangling, stabbing, poisoning folks to death since forever. When will people get a clue? He fits the description of the average wife and child killer.

Also, I don’t understand people’s need to make the world think they are living a perfect life via social media. If what her friends say is true, and she was gearing up to leave her husband, why make and post all those videos about how he is the worlds greatest husband? I don’t get it. People close to her must have known the truth. Her friend reported her missing the same day she dropped her off, after she stopped responding to calls and texts.
 
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OhTall1

Well-Known Member
Another example of how you cant get “in your feelings” about what you see on social media. People are sometimes hiding some very dark lives. How very sad that this husband and father did such a heinous thing to his family.
I guess I'm just a pessimist because I always assume that social media accounts reflect a carefully curated version of the life you want people to think you have.
 

Kindheart

Well-Known Member
Well said! I don't know if it was noted above but she told a friend she thought he might be unfaithful.

Let's see a nice looking man with a mortgage he can't pay for, two little girls and a wife carrying their third child involved in what seems to be an MLM.

That's a Lifetime movie waiting to happen, he was trying to find a way to start a new life with a younger, cuter woman without children and not have to make child support or mortgage payments. I could have seen that coming a mile away.

What an evil man. It's horrible enough to kill your wife, but your 3 kids too? Vile.

eta. He became too used to that bachelor life when she was away with the kids for 5/6 weeks.
Yup wouldn’t be the first time it happened .
Now he confessed he had an active affair and that he killed his wife because he caught her strangling one of the girls ,the kind of lies he comes up with is unbelievable. Sociopath . So he sees his wife killing his children on the baby monitor and not only he didn’t stop her but also disposed of their bodies in oil tanks what loving father does that ? He’s a straight sociopath . If you guys seen his interviews he can’t hold himself from smiling while he’s talking about their disappearance
 

nysister

Well-Known Member
Yup wouldn’t be the first time it happened .
Now he confessed he had an active affair and that he killed his wife because he caught her strangling one of the girls ,the kind of lies he comes up with is unbelievable. Sociopath . So he sees his wife killing his children on the baby monitor and not only he didn’t stop her but also disposed of their bodies in oil tanks what loving father does that ? He’s a straight sociopath . If you guys seen his interviews he can’t hold himself from smiling while he’s talking about their disappearance

Yes a total Sociopath! Just when I thought it couldn't be worse he tries to get off on manslaughter by lying and saying she killed the girls. A portrait of evil like the Menendez brothers and Scott Peterson.
 

Farida

Well-Known Member
How do you have a $400,000 house and an income of $91,000?
Right? As soon as I saw that I was like no wonder they are bad with money. I bet he felt the stress of the new baby would make life even worse...then he met his side boo. He wanted it to end.

And friends knew. Why would you call the cops if your friend did not answer the phone? Because she had reason to fear.
 

Maracujá

November 2020 --> 14 years natural!!!
My 0.2cents: will never understand why people feel the need to lie about their personal lives. My cousin wanted to make me feel bad, over the fact that I have not set foot outside of Europe in 10 years...she grew tired of it. I made it clear to her that traveling, though it may be her passion, is not a priority for me. Staycations are my thing, it's also what I can afford, so that's what I do *shrug*.
 

Kindheart

Well-Known Member
It could have happened that way. He has asked for dna from parts of their body.

However, his moving the bodies to a filled oil drum doesn’t help his case.
I highly doubt it ,his first reaction would be to call 911 and not chuck their bodies in crude oil to conceal the odour ,that’s a sign of gross lack of respect and empathy . Also he pretended to be looking for them in tv interviews showing no emotions and smiling all throughout it as if he was talking about something trivial . It’s called “dupe delight”. An innocent man wouldn’t do this
 

TCatt86

Well-Known Member
I haven't seen the interviews, but from what I heard he's clearly a sociopath. I do wonder if she ever saw anything in him that gave her pause or was he simply a good actor?
Sociopaths unlike psychopaths are particularly charming and really good as masking their crazy. She may not havr truly know he was crazy until recently. It's telling when her friend couldn't get in touch with her for just a couple of hours she immediately called the police..
 

nyeredzi

Well-Known Member
How do you have a $400,000 house and an income of $91,000?
I know a coworker who just bought a house, these figures are almost the same. She didn't even have a big downpayment. Just good credit and no other debt. These lending companies will do it.

We are in Maryland. But given what I know of my home state California, this scenario must be common. Having a home worth 4x your annual income, that is.
 

MzRhonda

Well-Known Member
appears she was in a MLM company called Level-Thrive and there was a fundraiser started for her prior to finding out she had been murdered.
 
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