Chris Watts’ attorneys blocked his family from any discussions with him about his decision to plead guilty to the murders of his pregnant wife and two young daughters, his mother told KUSA.
Cindy Watts said she and other family members were told not to correspond with her son or speak with him – edicts she told KUSA were handed down by his court-appointed public defenders.
“We were denied contact with our son, from August through October,” Cindy Watts told KUSA. “When they called us down to Colorado, they said we were going to discuss the plea deal with Chris, and we were never able to do that.”
She said that she, her husband, Ronnie, and her daughter were each given 30 minutes to visit with him – but that when she tried to discuss the pending plea deal the defense team “shut me down.”
“They would not let us discuss anything,” she told KUSA.
As a result of that deal, Chris Watts pleaded guilty on Nov. 6 to nine different felonies:
- Three counts of first-degree murder after deliberation for the slayings of his wife, Shanann, 34, and daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3.
- Two counts of first-degree murder where the victim was under age 12 and the killer was in a position of trust for the deaths of Bella and Celeste.
- A single count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy for Shanann’s unborn child, a boy the couple had planned to name Nico.
- Three counts of tampering with a deceased human body for burying Shanann’s remains in a shallow grave and dumping the corpses of the girls into oil storage tanks.
Watts’ attorneys, public defenders James Merson, John Walsh and Kathryn Herold, could not be reached for comment.
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In exchange for the guilty pleas, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke agreed to take the death penalty off the table.
Chris Watts, 33, is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday. He faces a minimum of three consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole under the terms of the deal.
Shanann Watts returned from a business trip early on Aug. 13, dropped off by a friend just before 2 a.m. her home in the 2800 block of Saratoga Trail in Erie. Shanann Watts, who 15 weeks pregnant and not feeling well on the business trip, and the two girls were reported missing about 12 hours later when that same friend became concerned and went to the family’s home.
The friend discovered that Shanann Watts’ car was parked in the garage, and she could not get past a latch on the front door so she called Chris Watts and asked him to come home, fearing Shanann has suffered some kind of medical issue, according to the arrest affidavit in the case.
The friend also called police.
The first officer at the scene found all the doors and windows were locked. After Chris Watts arrived, he let the officer into the home.
According to the affidavit, Chris Watts told the officer his wife had come home around 2 a.m., he’d awakened later “and began talking to Shanann about marital separation and informed her he wanted to initiate the separation,” the affidavit said.
“Chris stated it was a civil conversation and they were not arguing but were emotional,” the affidavit said.
Watts said that around 5:30 a.m., he backed his truck into the garage to load it with his work tools, then headed off – events captured on a neighbor’s security camera. According to the affidavit, he said Shanann and the girls were in bed when he left.
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Watts also allegedly told the officer that his wife had told him she and the girls would be going to a friend’s house later in the day.
But the officer and detectives who subsequently responded were suspicious of the fact that Shanann Watts’ cell phone, purse, wallet and medication were in the house, according to the affidavit.
A detective found that bed in the master bedroom had been stripped of its bedding – but they found no signs of foul play.
Within two days, detectives had concluded that Chris Watts was having an affair, according to the affidavit.
That day, Chris Watts asked to speak with his father, according to the affidavit, who was at the Frederick police station, telling detectives he would tell the truth afterward.
Following that conversation, according to the affidavit, Chris Watts made the claim that his wife had killed their daughters and that he had subsequently killed her, according to the affidavit. Then, it said, he loaded the bodies into the back seat of his work truck and took them to an Anadarko petroleum well site a little more than three miles north of Roggen in Weld County.
There, he told officers that he buried Shanann Watts and dumped the girls’ bodies into oil tanks, according to the affidavit.
Investigators recovered the bodies of all three the next day.