Inside the sick mind of killer dad Chris Watts and his twisted urges

To the outside world, the Watts family had a picture-perfect, all-American life.

Heartwarming social media posts showed pregnant Shanann heaping praise on her seemingly devoted husband Chris Watts.

Smiling videos and pH๏τos showed their children, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste, playing happily – even singing: ‘My daddy is a hero.’

So when Watts murdered his entire family in August 2018, their friends, loved ones and the nation were stunned.

But, according to clinical and forensic psychologist Dr Gary Brucato, it is not surprising to see someone like Watts masquerade as a doting husband and father – only to be hiding secret affairs and being capable of such disturbing violence

‘Some people can live compartmentalized lives,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘Their dynamics with a partner are affecting their self esteem and so they go out and initiate a new relationship with somebody who makes them feel like they are more in control, more confident or more manly.’

It is an attempt to ‘fragment’ his life, Dr Brucato explained, presenting one version of himself to the world all the while privately building an entirely different reality.

‘It is not surprising at all that the people around the initial relationship would be fooled into believing that everything was terrific.’

Shanann Watts was 15 weeks pregnant with her third child when she was strangled to death by her husband Chris Watts. Pictured: The couple with their two daughters Bella, four, and Celeste, three

Read part two of our interview with Chris Watts’s lover Amanda McMahon on Monday August 3 

At the time of the murders, Shanann was pregnant with the couple’s third child Nico.

Meanwhile, Watts had embarked on an intense affair with a colleague, Nichol Kessinger.

For Watts – who always appeared to be the pᴀssive, less dominant partner to the more outgoing Shanann – this affair was about much more than his new lover.

‘The point of the affair was that she made him feel the way he wished to feel about himself,’ Dr Brucato explained.

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‘I think this is somebody who had insecurities and felt emasculated in his relationship. So he went out and started a relationship that seemed like a fairy tale – one where he felt he was more in control and felt more virile and wanted.’

The affair allowed Watts to masquerade as the dominant man that he had always wanted to be.

And so, Dr Brucato explained, his wife and children simply became obstacles in the way of him truly becoming that person. ‘You feel justified to eliminate the now inconvenient family that you had with a person who doesn’t make you feel that way,’ he said.

It’s a phenomenon that the top psychologist terms ‘elimination murder’ – where someone must be eliminated because they are an obstacle to something such as romance, money or freedom.

Though Dr Brucato said he cannot diagnose Watts from afar, this type of crime is committed by both ‘emotionally immature’ people and those who are psychopathic.

The former involves a person who has gotten ‘caught up in feelings that they’re feeling a little out of control with.’

‘They want to pretend the first relationship doesn’t exist and want to tear that page out of the book of life and move on, because that’s just an inconvenience.’

On the latter, there is less impulsivity and less emotion.

Shanann with the two children Bella and Celeste. Forensic psychologist Dr Gary Brucato explained Watts saw his wife and children was obstacles in the way of him becoming the man he wanted to be seen as

At the time of the murders, Chris Watts was having an affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger

‘The scary thing about that kind of person is that while they lack compᴀssion, they have enough empathy to look very charming,’ he said.

‘Everyone thinks they’re wonderful… but at the same time they are capable of dispatching human beings as if they are simply pawns on a chessboard.’

How exactly the murders unfolded and how much planning went into them only Watts truly knows – and depends on which of the killer’s many versions of events one believes.

But based on his experience and what is known about Watts, Dr Brucacto believes the crimes were both ‘simultaneously premeditated and impulsive.’

Haunting trove of pH๏τos killer Chris Watts didn’t want you to see: Images lay bare his pregnant wife and two daughters’ unimaginable final moments before they were slain

‘I think he decided he needed to eliminate his family, because they were an obstacle to his freedom but at the same time there was a catalyst – like an explosive argument – that set it off,’ he said.

When Shanann and the children suddenly vanished from the family’s Frederick, Colorado, home in August 2018, Watts initially played the concerned husband and father – even appearing on TV to appeal for their safe return.

Days later, the truth emerged. Watts had strangled Shanann inside their home and then driven the children with their mom’s body in the car to an oil site where he worked.

There, he smothered Bella and Celeste one-by-one, before stuffing their small bodies in an oil tank. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave.

Dr Brucato explained that the different methods of murder also suggest different motives behind killing them.

‘When you strangle somebody to death, it takes some time. It’s very intimate and you have to look the person in the face,’ he said.

‘It requires a great deal of closeness and it shows a lot of emotion. In intimate-partner situations, we see it where somebody has a kind of rage or a sense of desire to control a person who makes them feel a certain way.

‘Sometimes the face can be ᴀssociated with mocking or judging you so we sometimes see an impulsive lunge at the face or neck… A person would have to be in the throes of a great deal of hatred or rage to complete an act like that.’

Watts eventually admitted killing Shanann, Bella and Celeste. In November 2018, he pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and other charges

Crime scene where Shanann’s body was found in a shallow grave. Watts disposed of the bodies of his two daughters in the oil tanks

By contrast, in smothering the children Watts covered their faces so he could not see them. ‘He might not have wanted to look in their faces during the smothering act,’ Dr Bruacto said.

‘I think the primary hostility was toward his wife and the children were almost a kind of collateral damage.’

That said, the process of driving his children to the site where he murdered them in the car with their mom’s body shows a level of callousness.

‘I’ve often wondered about that drive: was he scheming and thinking, how am I going to do this? What am I gonna tell the kids I’m doing? What happens when I’m doing it to one kid and the other kid sees what I’m doing? Are they going to run and scream? There is the horrifying process of scheming that out and then doing it – and that takes a lot less impulsivity, and a lot more scheming.’

Watts’s decision to then callously push the children’s bodies into oil tanks also shows that, at that point, he had reached a ‘total objectification’ of his daughters. ‘They were just objects in the way,’ Dr Brucato said.

Having pleaded guilty to the murders, Watts avoided a trial – a move that restricted several details of the crimes from coming to light, and left more questions than answers.

Among those questions are the length and seriousness of Watts and Kessinger’s love affair. Both told investigators that it began merely weeks before the murders – something that many have doubted.

But, Dr Brucato believes it is possible the affair was still in a somewhat early stage or honeymoon phase.

That would explain why Watts felt like the man he always wanted to be seen as.

‘Shanann likely saw him as a whole human – the positive and the negative. For some people being seen as warts and all is an insult. They want to be seen as the greatest, most perfect, most virile creature on the face of the earth,’ he said.

After the horrific murders, Watts played the role of the distraught husband and father, insisting he had no idea where his family had gone

‘So how do you find someone who doesn’t see your faults and thinks you’re magnificent? You go with somebody who doesn’t know you very well for a brief period of time. Because if you’re with somebody for only a few weeks, they don’t know your faults yet so, of course, they think you’re magnificent.’

Based on this desire, it is unsurprising that Watts continues to seek – and revel in – female attention behind bars.

In the Daily Mail’s new investigation and podcast revisiting the case, stunning details about his latest romantic escapades in prison will be revealed for the first time.

For a man who wants to control how the world sees him, Dr Brucato said that Watts is no doubt ‘very drawn to connections with women who might be fascinated by him.’

‘Being in prison makes it very hard for somebody to really know you,’ he said.

‘All they’re going to know is what he puts in a letter or says on a call or during a visit – so that it is the perfect situation in which to control the narrative.

‘You become almost like a cloaked figure behind the curtain.’

For Watts, then and now, Dr Brucato said that his ‘truest motivation is a desire to ultimately manipulate the way he is seen by the world.’

But, while unanswered questions still linger about Watts and his twisted motives and crimes, the people whose lives he stole must be remembered.

‘These people that he turned into objects that could be easily disposed of, we cannot allow that. The emphasis must be on Shanann, Bella and Celeste,’ Dr Brucato said.

‘They were beautiful human beings with our whole lives ahead of them.

‘So no matter why he did this, we must remember that he left a woman, an unborn child and his two children ᴅᴇᴀᴅ because of his selfishness.’

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