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

[Steelhead]

He might have thought, since she had an appt. that nobody would be stopping by or paying attention when she might have come home. Many people just stay out for awhile once they're out for the day.

I think the doc appt. was incidental, but ultimately the catalyst to his early downfall.

 

[NuttMegg]

Well I won't keep mentioning it but "possible problems" does not equate with saying that he had already shown signs of detachment, and apparently he had told Shan'nan he was not happy. I don't know any other way to say it, anyway, it's my opinion that we didn't learn until CW said on the affidavit he had wanted to separate. Well after he had annihilated the whole family and desecrated their bodies.

 

[dgfred]

I get your point. I'm thinking he could've disposed of them in any field, ditch, culvert along the 50 miles or so he drove.

But it certainly makes sense that he would dispose of them in a place he is familiar with where he thinks they'd be concealed. Doesn't explain where he put his wife though.

You pick:
Along the route with the high possibility of being seen on at least 3 trips to the site and the truck.

At a desolate and isolated site that you are familiar with... in tanks that might not ever be looked into.
SW would not fit/too heavy tho... so he had to improvise for the time being. Fixing things just right later just like he was planning at the home.

 

[riolove77]

You are not selling a product to the general public I assume.

The timing (what was going on then) was my main question. Why would he do that?

Someone mentioned- he was tired of her posting gushy stuff about him when they were discussing seperation...
they didn't answer back when I asked- what does her gushy post have to do with HIS account? Why delete his when her post are the problem?

I bet she was tagging him in those posts, and then maybe the AP could see them and was questioning him if he was possibly telling her that the relationship was over, etc.? So maybe she was like hey why is your wife still saying this and this, so he decided to delete it? Just speculation on my part of course.

 

[NuttMegg]

ETA: I just saw the transcript from the oil expert, saying that he thought CW moved the oil from one tank to the other, etc. That surprises me, that the main office wouldn't notice if that was happening. But maybe not?

That was the least solid part of his interview, IMO. He knew a lot about the construction of the tanks, but his last opinion of moving the oil around doesn't show much awareness of probable company monitoring practices. And having to know precisely how much oil is in each tank, not setting off alarms. And "time". You have to take it all with a grain of salt. But he did mention the tank model number, so some day when I have time I will look it up for myself.

 

[gitana1]

Unless you've been there, I don't think you can say what someone would, should or could feel.
jmo

I've been through sudden, horrific trauma. And sat in a room with 35 families who went through the same thing, for days during the aftermath.

And we've all seen it. Over and over and over. Following cases for years. Watching the news for years. Seeing people in hospitals, at accident scenes, listening to 911 calls.

People react in different ways. True. But one does not need a degree in behavioral science to know what someone DOESN'T look like or act like the day after going through unimaginable horror.

I challenge anyone to show me just ONE example of an innocent human that has behaved like that after losing his whole family. Just one example to counter the thousands of examples of guilty murderers acting just like him.

EVIDENCE PHOTOS - SCOTT PETERSON TRIAL

 

[SN76]

Could also be a hickey (somebody here said it looked like a bite mark/shape), maybe from whenever he used the babysitter. Saturday, wasn't it?
MOO

Yes IMO I have always thought it looked like a lovebite/hickey....

Perhaps SW noticed this and that was a possible trigger for the events that followed?

 

[NuttMegg]

I'm not an oil expert, so I can't answer, but here is the relevant part from last night's transcript (BBM):

BANFIELD: So that leads me to my next question, Wesley, because none of this is now making sense. They found those children in tanks that were nearly full. And as I have learned from you, the full capacity of these tanks is somewhere between 600 and 700 barrels of oil. That is a lot. So,
let`s just say nearly full is 500, correct?

WILLIAMS: Yes, exactly. And you know, the strange thing to me is openly available, you can find the production rate of that well. And at its best, it was producing about 200 barrels per month. So it leads me to believe that, you know, the oil probably wasn`t completely drained out by whoever put the girls in these tanks, you know. They probably shifted the liquids from one tank over to the other one, opened, put it in and then shifted the liquids back to the other side. That requires quite a bit of technical knowledge. It does take a certain amount of time to do that --

BANFIELD: Let me stop you there --

WILLIAMS: -- that type of operation.

BANFIELD: -- because that was my next question. Obviously that drill site producing only you know, 200 barrels a month is not going to be able in four days -- that is the time it took to find the bodies -- to fill even one of those tanks up to 600-700 barrels. It would take three months to
fill them naturally. So, just thinking that through, 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 or he would have been gushed on by a full tank of oil. So you`re saying there is a pump that goes between those two tanks and he could pump one tank empty --

[18:10:23] WILLIAMS: Yes.

BANFIELD: -- and put -- there is the thief hatch, I think that is your hand Wesley, correct, next to the thief hatch at the top.

WILLIAMS: Yes, that is my hands to give you scale.

BANFIELD: They have a tank that is similar.

WILLIAMS: Yes. That is part of what kind of bent my brain. I really don`t think you could easily get anything -- and it`s designed that way for you to not drop anything through that top hatch. They keep it very small. So eight inches is quite small. That is what made me think, you pretty
much have to take that bottom man way open. And the standard design, you know, there`s 64 bolts. You have to drain all of the liquids out to really, you know, --

BANFIELD: We have a picture of that, put the picture of the bottom man way. Because Wesley has also given us an example photo of the tank where he is standing next to the man way. This is the actual site. What I`d like now is the example site of the man way that Wesley shows us, if we can show that.

It`s called the clean out man way. There it is. You can see Wesley`s hand. Now you can see the relative size of that opening. All of those bolts that would have to be opened, unscrewed and screwed back on, clearly it is at the bottom of the tank. So it`s going to have to be really --
that tank is going to have to be literally dry.

But Wesley, just in terms of the time -- because Chris Watts was seen leaving his house at 5:30 in the morning. And he had to have some kind of alibi to be working by 7:30, 8:30, 9:30 in the morning. So they were -- it`s 45 minutes to drive there. So he didn`t have an inordinate amount of time at this site to dig a shallow grave for his wife and then do all this work at these two oil tanks. How much time does it take to pump the oil between the tanks? It can`t be the same as that forensic vacuum.

WILLIAMS: No. I think you can probably do that within an hour, more or less, depending on how full the tanks were. You could maybe do it within an hour or so. And then the bolting itself, you know, I work a lot around this hands-on type stuff. And even with power tools, taking out 64 bolts on both of them, so, 128 bolts, taking them off, putting them back and taking them off and putting back on, it just takes a lot of time to do.

BANFIELD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: It`s pretty --

BANFIELD: I think, I mean, honestly, what takes even more time, I`m guessing, just from what I`m learning from you, and your petroleum experience, if both of those tanks were nearly full, then how would you have -- reproduce that oil? You can`t, you can`t put two nearly full oil tanks into one while you stash a body and do the reverse. It doesn`t make sense which now sadly leads me to believe that the only physical way that this could have happened, especially in the time that was permitted, was that he must have put the children through the top hatch of the tank.

And to that I want to bring in Joseph Scott Morgan who is a certified death investigator, he is professor of forensic at Jacksonville State University.

Joe, you and I have been talking about this through the day.

And I know that your theory is just too small. The eight-inch opening is just too small to put a three-year-old, or a four-year-old through. But now you know how difficult it would be to have emptied those tanks and refill them in order to open the larger hatches at the bottom. Are you rethinking the possibility that maybe something more violent happen and that this was the only way those children could get in those tanks?
Because there`s one thing we know, those children were in those tanks and they were nearly full.

Read more: CNN.com - Transcripts

Banfield: if both of those tanks were nearly full, then how would you have -- reproduce that oil? You can`t, you can`t put two nearly full oil tanks into one while you stash a body and do the reverse. For once I agree with her!

 

[Mrspratcher]

I agree. I don't understand the insistence regarding people's emotions. There may be reactions and presentation which are more typical, but this whole "no, people only feel this emotion in these situations" seems rather ridiculous to me.

We are all here to provide our opinions. Clearly, we all have different ones - and that's ok!

 

[PommyMommy]

“He has an incredibly large ego,” says Dale Yeager, a criminal analyst and forensic profiler who is unconnected with the case, adding, “He really comes off as sociopathic. That doesn’t mean he is mentally ill, just that he has a personality defect.”

Drawing a parallel between Watts’ case and that of Scott Peterson, who notoriously murdered his pregnant wife and then repeatedly gave interviews, Yeager says, “He’s Scott Peterson, just less charismatic.”

Man Accused of Slaying Pregnant Wife & Kids Is 'Scott Peterson, Just Less Charismatic': Profiler

 

[Deleted member 182072]

It is really odd that so many women defend him & pick apart everything about Shannan EVERYTHING. I sometimes think it's purely jealousy. She was attractive & had a wonderful personality. Or is it subconsciously because they think she should have seen the monster he was about to reveal? Do they think she should have done more to protect her children ? Are they afraid because the Watts relationship reminds them so much of their own? I believe they think if she had looked different, been less alpha and more beta, a poor housekeeper, a mediocre mother and wife things would have been much different. I just don't get it at all.

I think they all have their own reasons like jealously, misogyny, schadenfreude, etc. I imagine that pretty much all of them are unhappy in their own lives to take part in victim bashing.

Probably similar reasons for those who don't actively participate yet smugly bask in victim blaming and bashing. IMO JMO MOO

 

[Tigerlily75]

I agree. I don't understand the insistence regarding people's emotions. There may be reactions and presentation which are more typical, but this whole "no, people only feel this emotion in these situations" seems rather ridiculous to me.

And yet, Law Enforcement, profilers and criminologists disagree. They will set up media interviews just to watch what a person says and does, and their demeanor. They will also send plants to funerals and vigils to do the same. One case I followed, they put microphones in the victims coffin.

 

[Charlot123]

Surely this creep, will plead guilty, and there will be no trial.
Prison life for him, will be atrocious, as inmates will hear, how he disposed of his little girls.
SW's family would have the info about tank openings.
They must be so distraught.

I don't care how he is punished. There is capital punishment in my state, but there has also been moratorium on it, so death row is full of serial killers and atrocious murderers. Life is not fair.

What I want is for a fair trial. Exonerating SW from this horrible accusation.

Mind you - I will not be surprised if in the course of the trial some things will pop out indicating that she was not an easy person to live with.

In no way does it explain or normalize what he did. You have a person who puts you down and you don't like it? Leave and get a divorce before you got kids! You have a spouse who puts you down and controls your money and you have a kid together? Leave now, after the first kid. You have not? Preferred to stay, to be under her heel? Do it after the second one.

He stayed, he chose that life, he, basically, was on the way of having a third kid with her, and then he found another person and killed his whole family - the family that, give or take, loved and trusted him. And blamed his wife whom he hated.

So to me the priority would be exonerating SW of his accusation, and the trial will serve this purpose. What punishment the state of Colorado meters out to him - I don't care.

This case might go down in history as the case of two people who were horribly unfit for one another, and maybe needs to be studied (as I have already mentioned), by family therapists (hopefully it will happen one day - usually we get books after the last lawsuit has been settled). Because we need to understand how to avoid such tragedies in the future.

However, today we simply need to wait for the trial and hopefully, the prosecution does a good job with the evidence.

 

[Gardener1850]

Your rant is way off target.

By choice I mean after he killed them.

By choice I mean what could he then do with the bodies.

By choice I mean he almost had to dispose of the bodies at his workplace as he had no other 'choices' of burial or disposal sites because of the GPS on his truck.

Dang.

Ok, I'm sorry if I'm not getting your point. You said:

Sorry to put it this way but-
'If' you are him... where besides the oil tanks (at your workplace) would you put the bodies?

He had no choice IMO, so I don't think he planned (counted) on anything.

Assuming you are talking about him disposing of them and not wanting to get caught, why would he not have a choice about putting them in the oil tanks? He drove at least 40 minutes to get to the dump site and then had to go to work at a different location. Any place along the way could have worked to throw them all in a shallow grave or ditch them in a culvert. And most other locations would not be directly connected to him as the worksite immediately was. What part of his plan gave him no choice but to use the oil tanks? The choice to put his children's body's in oil tanks was his choice. And most people are horrified and cannot imagine thinking of that place of all places to put their child. MOO.

 

[PommyMommy]

To the untrained eye, Watts may have given the impression of a quietly anxious husband and father seemingly clueless about the whereabouts of Shanann, 34, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3.

But to renowned body language specialist Judi James, the subtle quirks in his physical behaviour told a different story to the one coming out of his mouth.

Ms James has identified nine techniques that Mr Watts may have used to conceal his guilt as he was filmed on the front porch of the family's home in Frederick, Colorado on Tuesday.

She says Mr Watts may have gone to extraordinary lengths to appear calm and unruffled in the belief that was how innocent people behaved.

CHILLING VISION: ‘Killer’ dad’s calm actions on camera

 

[MistyWaters]

I'm not an oil expert, so I can't answer, but here is the relevant part from last night's transcript (BBM):

BANFIELD: So that leads me to my next question, Wesley, because none of this is now making sense. They found those children in tanks that were nearly full. And as I have learned from you, the full capacity of these tanks is somewhere between 600 and 700 barrels of oil. That is a lot. So,
let`s just say nearly full is 500, correct?

WILLIAMS: Yes, exactly. And you know, the strange thing to me is openly available, you can find the production rate of that well. And at its best, it was producing about 200 barrels per month. So it leads me to believe that, you know, the oil probably wasn`t completely drained out by whoever put the girls in these tanks, you know. They probably shifted the liquids from one tank over to the other one, opened, put it in and then shifted the liquids back to the other side. That requires quite a bit of technical knowledge. It does take a certain amount of time to do that --

BANFIELD: Let me stop you there --

WILLIAMS: -- that type of operation.

BANFIELD: -- because that was my next question. Obviously that drill site producing only you know, 200 barrels a month is not going to be able in four days -- that is the time it took to find the bodies -- to fill even one of those tanks up to 600-700 barrels. It would take three months to
fill them naturally. So, just thinking that through, 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 or he would have been gushed on by a full tank of oil. So you`re saying there is a pump that goes between those two tanks and he could pump one tank empty --

[18:10:23] WILLIAMS: Yes.

BANFIELD: -- and put -- there is the thief hatch, I think that is your hand Wesley, correct, next to the thief hatch at the top.

WILLIAMS: Yes, that is my hands to give you scale.

BANFIELD: They have a tank that is similar.

WILLIAMS: Yes. That is part of what kind of bent my brain. I really don`t think you could easily get anything -- and it`s designed that way for you to not drop anything through that top hatch. They keep it very small. So eight inches is quite small. That is what made me think, you pretty
much have to take that bottom man way open. And the standard design, you know, there`s 64 bolts. You have to drain all of the liquids out to really, you know, --

BANFIELD: We have a picture of that, put the picture of the bottom man way. Because Wesley has also given us an example photo of the tank where he is standing next to the man way. This is the actual site. What I`d like now is the example site of the man way that Wesley shows us, if we can show that.

It`s called the clean out man way. There it is. You can see Wesley`s hand. Now you can see the relative size of that opening. All of those bolts that would have to be opened, unscrewed and screwed back on, clearly it is at the bottom of the tank. So it`s going to have to be really --
that tank is going to have to be literally dry.

But Wesley, just in terms of the time -- because Chris Watts was seen leaving his house at 5:30 in the morning. And he had to have some kind of alibi to be working by 7:30, 8:30, 9:30 in the morning. So they were -- it`s 45 minutes to drive there. So he didn`t have an inordinate amount of time at this site to dig a shallow grave for his wife and then do all this work at these two oil tanks. How much time does it take to pump the oil between the tanks? It can`t be the same as that forensic vacuum.

WILLIAMS: No. I think you can probably do that within an hour, more or less, depending on how full the tanks were. You could maybe do it within an hour or so. And then the bolting itself, you know, I work a lot around this hands-on type stuff. And even with power tools, taking out 64 bolts on both of them, so, 128 bolts, taking them off, putting them back and taking them off and putting back on, it just takes a lot of time to do.

BANFIELD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: It`s pretty --

BANFIELD: I think, I mean, honestly, what takes even more time, I`m guessing, just from what I`m learning from you, and your petroleum experience, if both of those tanks were nearly full, then how would you have -- reproduce that oil? You can`t, you can`t put two nearly full oil tanks into one while you stash a body and do the reverse. It doesn`t make sense which now sadly leads me to believe that the only physical way that this could have happened, especially in the time that was permitted, was that he must have put the children through the top hatch of the tank.

And to that I want to bring in Joseph Scott Morgan who is a certified death investigator, he is professor of forensic at Jacksonville State University.

Joe, you and I have been talking about this through the day.

And I know that your theory is just too small. The eight-inch opening is just too small to put a three-year-old, or a four-year-old through. But now you know how difficult it would be to have emptied those tanks and refill them in order to open the larger hatches at the bottom. Are you rethinking the possibility that maybe something more violent happen and that this was the only way those children could get in those tanks?
Because there`s one thing we know, those children were in those tanks and they were nearly full.

Read more: CNN.com - Transcripts

I don’t have a problem with Banfield but rarely do the talking head guests have any inside information nor is the purpose of the program to inform the public of facts.

In this example of a guest who’s a professor of petroleum engineering at Louisiana State University, clearly he’s not directly involved in this case. While well production records are indeed published, the oil company operates more than one well so variables including how it manages its oil storage or whether it buys oil from smaller producers, other than speculation we haven’t yet been given any factual information to determine when the tanks were last empty.

 

[dgfred]

Ok, I'm sorry if I'm not getting your point. You said:


Assuming you are talking about him disposing of them and not wanting to get caught, why would he not have a choice about putting them in the oil tanks? He drove at least 40 minutes to get to the dump site and then had to go to work at a different location. Any place along the way could have worked to throw them all in a shallow grave or ditch them in a culvert. And most other locations would not be directly connected to him as the worksite immediately was. What part of his plan gave him no choice but to use the oil tanks? The choice to put his children's body's in oil tanks was his choice. And most people are horrified and cannot imagine thinking of that place of all places to put their child. MOO.

The dump site is one of his work areas.
You really think he would stop somewhere along his normal route and 'throw out' 3 bodies. Would nobody ride by? Etc
As I said in many post... no difference to me whether a dead body is put in oil or buried in a shallow grave.
Both suck for the dead person.
His choice is to bury them too, leave them in the open, burn a giant fire, or throw them in the tanks.
Of those... which would be less likely to be found out?

So you would think it 'better' to throw the bodies in a ditch?

 

[Mrspratcher]

Right, but stating something as fact isn't an opinion.

There are plenty of posters presenting facts as opinions. They just end the post with JMO/MOO, etc.

 

[Kensie]

Been reading for a couple of pages. Seems like a lot of folks are emotionally exhausted. I know I am. This case is so horrible and tragic that you cannot wrap your head around it. Nothing makes sense. The Why's are endless. CW will never get out of prison. He is doomed. His future is over. A life of normalcy is over. He chose this life of hell by murdering 4 people as his choice of freedom.
Again, the why's -.

 

[Gardener1850]

The dump site is one of his work areas.
You really think he would stop somewhere along his normal route and 'throw out' 3 bodies. Would nobody ride by? Etc
As I said in many post... no difference to me whether a dead body is put in oil or buried in a shallow grave.
Both suck for the dead person.
His choice is to bury them too, leave them in the open, burn a giant fire, or throw them in the tanks.
Of those... which would be less likely to be found out?

So you would think it 'better' to throw the bodies in a ditch?

BBM. So now he did have choices other than the oil tanks?
I'm sorry, but I'm not following your reasoning and I'm starting to feel like you just want to argue for the sake of arguing. So I'm going to agree to disagree move on to other topics.