Found Deceased CO - Shanann Watts (34), Celeste"Cece" (3) and Bella (4), Frederick, 13 Aug 2018 *Arrest* #33

[Nudgee]

Or if one spouse has been the homemaker for several years and has not worked outside the home. Where I live they would get alimony, I think it's one year for every three years of the narriage.

In my state.... it can be for ”permanent” depending on income & length of marriage!

 

[MsBetsy]

So does this info about the 8" diameter opening mean that they weren't in garbage bags or plastic ?

I think it would make it harder to slip them in with the plastic around---am I right?

I don't think they were in plastic bags, although he may have used them to transport them. But there was nothing ever stated about them being in bags, that I have heard. Jmo

 

[NuttMegg]

Yes, I think you're right. He never intentionally left the bag or sheet there, the wind blew them away. CW must have been in a hurry and built up a sweat? Could hear heavy vehicles in the vicinity?

Hot and dry weather could have meant he saw a vehicle, via dust trail. I think your theory is very good.

 

[riolove77]

Technically yes. And great explanation of the law by the way.

But any increase in value due to marital efforts becomes marital property. So paying down the mortgage would usually cause an increase in equity and that increase in equity is subject to division after separate property contributions are reimbursed.

Oh yes, absolutely. I just meant if she contributed any SP to the down payment or any improvement/principal. Then again, like I said, I'm spouting CA law, which as you know, is a CP state.

 

[Lorelei1]

Here's a clip from AB's show last night for anyone who missed it: Ashleigh Banfield

The expert on the show has a photo of his hand on the thief hatch to give an idea of the scale of the opening and AB holds up a cutout circle to show the size compared to her head.

Thank you for this! Darn, the first night I’ve missed it and it looks it was a good show last night.

 

[Nudgee]

I didn't cry the night my son died. Some kind of adrenaline kicked in and I was just moving on fumes. However, some friends came over to my house and started cleaning and stuff. Two friends cooked us dinner. I mostly sat in the bed and stared at the TV. When my cooking friend came up and asked me for a potato peeler, I finally burst into tears. Why? Because we didn't HAVE a potato peeler and I was embarrassed to admit that I just used a little knife.

I didn't do television interviews, but I did plenty of other interviews: with KODA for organ donation, with the newspaper, with LE, the coroner, and the countless friends who filed in one after the other to help. For the most part, I was composed, steady-voiced, and articulate. That is, until someone said something off the wall.

I yelled at KODA when, during the interview, they asked me how often my son drank alcohol and smoked. (He was a small child.) I yelled so loudly at them, and used so many choice words, that the police officer standing next to me actually chuckled out loud. It's not something I would do under other circumstances.

Yeah, grief does weird stuff to you.

On the day he died, I had dressed with care, since I was getting ready to go to my book signing when I discovered him. The shirt and skirt combo was one I'd purchased the week before. He'd been with me in the store. It was a whole day of us together. At one point someone, who didn't know what else to say, told me that my outfit was "cute." I felt like I'd been punched in the gut because it immediately reminded me of how much fun we'd had on the day I'd bought it. And how we'd never be able to do that again. I honestly can't imagine preening to the camera, laughing a little, and talking about said outfit like CW did about his T-shirt.

The couple that came over fixed my favorite meal: fried salmon patties, macaroni and tomato juice, mashed potatoes, and cornbread (I'm a southern mountain girl). It was all gorgeously cooked. And I took one bite and threw it all up and had to go back to bed.

I slept all right, but only after they dosed me with lethal levels of Tylenol PM. I hated sleeping. Hated it because there was always this second upon awaking in which I'd forget about what happened. For just a second or two, life would feel "normal" again. And then reality would come sliding in, hitting me in the head like a brick. It was absolute torture.

There are other child loss parents on this board. I am certain that while the details of our experiences may vary, they probably have similar stories to mine.

So sorry @mtnlites .... I could not even imagine...

 

[Gardener1850]

I wonder if anyone who was on the fence on whether CW murdered the girls has changed their mind about that after seeing the size of the openings their little bodies had to be forced through? A few threads back I recall a discussion about whether the tanks were "mostly full" of oil or not. There seemed to be an effort to deny they could be very full of oil despite official documents noting the bodies were submerged in oil. The relevance of the discussion was lost on me at the time but now I understand. CW did not have time to drain the tanks to use the larger manway hatches at the bottom. So in order to continue to defend and believe CW's version, someone may prefer to think that the media is lying or mistaken amount the amount of oil in the tanks. JMO.

 

[JudgeJudi]

@Colorado

I only started reading this thread a while ago and when I got to the video of the tanks I decided to see how big the top opening was. I got an 8" flan tin, removed the base and discovered that it fitted over my head (obviously I'm not a child), but there is no way that I could see that the children's shoulders would fit even if you twisted them severely. I saw your post and read the comment made by your source and decided to transcribe the the conversation between AB and Wesley. I don't know if this will help but for what it's worth ...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=329890524437521

AB: If in fact the opening on the top – and again I’ll hold it up – is too small for Chris Watts to – as he apparently, according to the police, admitted, too small for him to put those children through, he would have had to do it from the bottom which means the tank would have had to be empty …

Wesley: Mm mm.

AB: … or he’d have been gushed on by a full tank of oil. So you’re saying that there’s a pump that goes between those two tanks and he could pump …

Wesley: Yes.

AB: … one tank empty and put the chil… – and that’s, there’s the thief hatch and you can – I think that’s your hand, Wesley, correct, right next to the thief hatch at the top?

Wesley: Yeah.

AB: Okay. So we can have the relative size.

Wesley: Yeah, that’s my hand to give you scale. Yeah, mm mm.

AB: And that’s at the top.

Wesley: Yeah. So they do have …

AB: So this is an example tank that’s similar.

Wesley: Yeah. That’s part of what kind of bent my brain is, you know, I really don’t think you could easily get anything that’s designed that way for you to not drop anything through that top hatch. They keep it very small, so 8” is quite small. That’s what made me think you pretty much have to take that bottom manway open, and the standard design, you know, there’s 64 bolts and you’ve got to drain all of the liquids out to really, you know, …

AB: We have a picture of that.

Wesley: … let all the fluids out.

AB: Put the picture up of the bottom manway because Wesley’s also given us an example photo of this tank where he’s standing next to the manway. …

AB: It’s called the clean-out manway. There it is, and you can see Wesley’s hand. Now you can see the relative size of that opening, and all those bolts that would have to be opened, unscrewed and screwed back on and clearly it is at the bottom of the tank. So it’s going to have to be – really, the tank’s gonna have to be literally dry.

 

[Only4Justice]

I think we may have lost the #31 forum thread data due to server error/glitch. Sometimes that can happen.

I recall that Tricia pulled that #31 thread to clean it up.

 

[mtnlites]

So sorry @mtnlites .... I could not even imagine...

Thank you. Not trying to be like "oh, poor me", just trying to give others a different perspective of how grieving parents (real grieving parents) initially react. IMO and MOO and all that.

 

[kebdal23]

I can confirm, through my source who works in the industry, that the specific tanks shown in the photo of the actual body disposal site, do only have 2 access points, that CW could NOT have drained the tanks to gain access to the manway/cleaning doors unless they were practically empty, and that putting the bodies of a 3 and 4 year old into the thief hatches at the top would have taken some effort, and possible damage to their bodies. This person also became extremely shaken and disturbed when I spoke to him about it and had some very vulgar things to say about CW, and the fact that he's trying to blame his dead, pregnant wife for this.

I honestly do not understand whatsoever how anyone can continue to defend CW and entertain his ridiculous version of events after knowing exactly what he did to Bella and Celeste's bodies. There were multiple other options to disappear them if he was in fact just panicked and terrified of how things looked. Any shred of doubt I had while reading to all these alternate theories for why he might be telling the truth about SW killing them is completely gone. Even if all he ever did was shove his daughters' bodies through those holes for some seemingly justified reason, that alone is enough for me to know without a shadow of a doubt that he is a sick, twisted person, capable of taking their lives.

MOO and I need to go kiss my sweet 5 year old in bed right now. Rest in paradise, lovely mama Shan'ann, sweet Bella, CeCe and Nico. Your light will shine on through us <3

The more we learn about what happened, the more I am convinced that NUA's early call to LE may have kept this case from dragging on for months and months or longer, JMO.

If CW had hours from when he got off work on Monday to take care of the things that were bound to bite him in the rear end, JMO, this may have been a very difficult case to solve. He could have removed the interior locking mechanism from the slider door in the back of the house to make it appear SW and the girls left the house that way.

He may not have necessarily needed to do anything with SW's cell phone, purse, keys, etc. if he made it look like an abduction. With the back door open, who could prove it wasn't an abduction? There were no security cams in back, so an abductor (s) could have entered and exited the house that way.

He had big problems at the oil tank site with SW's shallow grave. If not for NUA, he would have had time to go back there and collect the items he left behind and dispose of them and do something else with SW's body. Without a clandestine grave and bed sheet at the site waving big, red flags, would LE have had a reason to look in the oil tanks? IDK.

To me, CW's insistence that he and SW had an emotional conversation where he told her he wanted to initiate a separation was very stupid, but I think it reflects his ego, and he may have been protesting too loudly that he was the one who wanted out of the marriage. Bizarre. IMO.

If he had the time to handle all of these things, he could have then called LE Monday night and told them SW and the girls were not there when he came home, and he thought SW may have walked the girls to a park, so he waited a while but was now getting worried. LE would have been suspicious of him from the get-go, of course, but would they have had enough to arrest him? IDK.

I'm grateful NUA listened to her instincts and intervened as she did, and I'm also grateful he made so many mistakes and didn't have the time or the intellect to fix.

All JMO, but we could still be discussing a very frustrating missing persons case at this point in time, rather than having the wheels set in motion for justice.

THIS and THIS.
IMO he is an evil monster, only didn't put SW in the oil too because she wouldn't fit, and is further victimizing his victims by blaming his tired, pregnant, loving wife who was trying to keep her family together because at that point it was the only explanation he could come up with to keep people from seeing what a monster he really is. MOO. Thank goodness for NUA.

 

[Mrspratcher]

If she made as much or more than he did, she would either not receive spousal support or she would have to pay him.

It is likely that, due to her availability as a work from home mom, and the coming of a newborn, and his work schedule, she would have primary care of the kids. So if their incomes were similar or even if hers was somewhat greater, he would likely have to pay her support and that would balance against any spousal support order.

Each would pay half of child cares/preschool as additional support.

I have a feeling they were having financial issues and living beyond their means. I don't have evidence for that. It's a suspicion based on the lifestyle I saw online and their past bankruptcy.

Also, IMO, a lot of what MLM's are about is hope and hype.

In a majority of family annihilator cases, which this case has been charged by the state of Colorado to be, financial strain and the desire to be free from the responsibility of caring for children, is a major factor or motivator.

I also note that their house was likely upside down but if there was any equity, SW would likely get it all if they divorced since they apparently purchased the home with proceeds from her separate property (so separate property reimbursement to her), IIRC. Unless she was dead of course. Then she'd get nothing.

BBM. Interesting...

 

[SausagePizza]

I recall that Tricia pulled that #31 thread to clean it up.

It may be best just to go with the server data fault theory at this time.

 

[riolove77]

I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

I think what he did could be related to the foot print on the bag.

Ugh I actually did dream about SW and the girls last night. I was so sad when I woke up.

 

[Mrspratcher]

Wow!!, WS Peeps, I'm impressed with Judge Kopcow's Orders today. Having seen innumerable Orders, I have to say he's clear, he's concise, and these are solid records that don't leave much room for cries of error on appeal. @Mrspratcher @gitana1 your takes, please?

Excellent work by Judge Kopcow!

 

[Jennifer17]

He went to a lot of trouble to conceal those little girls because he panicked and thought that he would be blamed, didn't he or to protect his murdered wife's reputation?
What a weak, cowardly person.

 

[JudgeJudi]

It makes an enormous difference whether the bodies of Bella and Celeste were dumped through the top of the drum or through the bottom. Much of that difference has to do with time, on the one hand, but if it required a lot of unfastening and fastening of bolts, and Chris Watts stepping inside the tanks, then the possibilities for getting his clothing covered in evidence [including oil] goes up significantly.

Knowing the total disregard he has for human life, I imagined that he probably virtually threw them in, not stepped inside.

 

[MsBetsy]

So sorry @mtnlites .... I could not even imagine...

Yes, I just read that. What a horrible thing to go through. So sorry, Mtnlites. I went through some of that when I lost my mom, but losing a child I just cannot comprehend how one would carry on. Grief can be expressed in different ways, but it can always be recognized. It just can't be disguised, it's an automatic reaction and we didn't see one ounce of it in SW. Even at his neighbors, away from the public, they could not detect a single sign. It's just something that cannot be controlled. This only means one thing to me, and that is that he felt no grief or remorse whatsoever. He did exactly what he intended to do. Now that we know how he crammed the bodies of his little girls inside that hole I can't see how that FB group can still say the things they have said. If that is still going on. I haven't seen any of it, but I have heard about it. Why would anyone defend him? I just don't get it. Jmo

 

[NuttMegg]

I wonder if anyone who was on the fence on whether CW murdered the girls has changed their mind about that after seeing the size of the openings their little bodies had to be forced through?

But you know he did it to save Shan'nan's reputation.
Sorry Jennifer now I see you said the same, just above. But I'll leave it for emphasis. I don't know where that story came from in the first place about wanting to protect Shan'nan's image, IIRC it was floated around right after he decided to tell the truth if he could speak alone with his father again.

 

[Jennifer17]

But you know he did it to save Shan'nan's reputation.
Sorry Jennifer now I see you said the same, just above. But I'll leave it for emphasis. I don't know where that story came from in the first place about wanting to protect Shan'nan's image, IIRC it was floated around right after he decided to tell the truth if he could speak alone with his father again.

It is just sickening isn't it? And some are still defending him and trashing her.