Found Deceased CO - Shanann Watts (34), Celeste"Cece" (3) and Bella (4), Frederick, 13 Aug 2018 *Arrest* #41

[Best of What's Around]

The extracurricular as you experienced exits in law school and it's called "moot court."

As a project to help in a current or pending case? I have not heard of that.

 

[LittleFleurDeLys]

People don't believe him because he went on to commit more felonies. Threw away the evidence. If she had killed the girls, there would be evidence of that. I do not believe CW lived in a bubble. Even people with no history like ours of following true crime are aware of basic forensics. IMO there is no way he didn't know he would be throwing away, hiding, and destroying the only evidence of his innocence if we believe this scenario. If he didn't do it, there is no reason to hide it IMO. That he did so with such apparent ease has people thinking he lacks basic empathy IMO. It is scary.

I think he killed them all because he dumped his girls in oil tanks. Simply as that. This is the point where he lost his credibility to me as a "loving father". I have a little son myself. I could not ever imagine placing him into such a lost, dark and (for a living child) scary place. Makes me feel ill to even think about it. These tanks seem sooo huge. Never could this be a possibilty to me and I think same goes for many other loving parents. Seems to me just disrespectful. Of course there is still a chance that he just panicked after (pregnant and probably very exhausted) Shannan killed the girls. But then there is this interview where he went from allegedly rage and panic to calmness. He seemed to be nervous but not sad or even shocked. For me there is absolutly no doubt...

 

[Amandaaa]

The extracurricular as you experienced exits in law school and it's called "moot court."

I have been a judge in the moot court competition but it was not like the one described.

 

[Thepoet]

I would say some of us are honestly trying to understand the hypothetical and give it consideration. I also admit that I personally struggled with the challenge of it, and you might interpret that as misunderstanding.

I too look at and try to understand the hypothetical and I do consider alternate explanations. What I won't do is participate in bashing or disrespecting SW, and I won't ignore the facts. I am happy to discuss the facts. Lay the facts out, look at them, and logically analyze them, and discuss them.

 

[dlharris2712]

I have a query for a lot of posters here as I see this mentioned a lot.

what difference does it make whether chris discarded the girls easily into the oil tanks or with difficulty?

for me it its a moot point.
him disposing of his dead children in those tanks to hide it is equally despicable whether he had trouble getting them in there or not.

I'm not seeing the relevance.
the decision to do it is the important part for me.
once he committed to doing it how much trouble it was to get them in there isn't a factor of guilt premed or meanness.
they were dead now and he was simply eliminating their presence.

jmo

For me, the difference is - to get the girls in the oil tanks he probably had to break their collar bones to get their shoulders to fit. It wasn't enough he killed them and then dropped them in an oil tank - but the fact that he had to abuse their bodies even after they were dead. I would have rather he just buried them with their mother. And least they would have been in her loving arms. jmo

 

[Seattle1]

I have thought about the other possibilities until my brain almost exploded. It comes back to he loaded all 4 bodies up.... drove them to an oil site dumped his precious daughters in crude oil tanks, dug a hole for his wife & precious son...threw dirt over their faces.. and lied over & over to LE & the public saying he didn't know where they were ..calling for their safe return.

The fact is CW behavior did not coincide with his words. And actions speak louder than words. LE saw it, Prosecution saw it, and I don't think it's necessary to apologize if you also see it. Until somebody else is charged with the murders of the 4 victims, its upward and onward to trial for me. MOO

 

[Thepoet]

It is the defendant and the defense team who have accused SW of murdering the children. They filed a motion asking certain evidence be collected. Do you have a link to the LE report there is no evidence that SW killed her daughters? I missed it. Thanks.

There was no defense team when CW made his self-serving accusations. He consulted his father and then made those self-serving accusations himself! The LE report was referred to in a People magazine article.

 

[mtnlites]

I think your hypothetical question is valid and I understood your point. IMO the majority don't want to give other possibilities any attention and avoid such scenarios.
jmo

<modsnip - personalizing>Every poster I've seen commenting on here has definitely given other possibilities a chance-and then they've weighed the evidence and information and decided that no other possibility, other than CW killing both girls, can reasonably exist. That is what I have done <modsnip - unnecessary> IMO

 

[Medstudies]

If his story is true, then his immediate reaction was rage against SW and not thoughts of protecting her from an out-of-character act that was precipitated by him asking for a separation.

I would think that thoughts of trying to save the lives of the children (and Nico) by calling 911 would take precedence over any other thoughts. We've heard so many examples of that happening in other cases where people didn't care about anyone's reputation, they cared about trying to revive their children.

After calling 911 and seeing his wife, the mother of his children, taken away in handcuffs, or in the back of an ambulance if he'd hurt her in his attempts to subdue her and get her away from the children, then I can imagine that a protective instinct 'might' kick in, and say she died as a result of him subduing her, then maybe he'd really want it put out that she had a psychotic break as a result of his news and this was out of character and he wanted her remembered as a loving wife and mother. Nothing about what he's done, said in media interviews, or said in the parts of confession that are in the affidavit suggests anything like this was happening in his head. And, I would also say that I don't think there's any reason someone ought to feel that protective instinct for the murderer spouse after such a horrific thing...if they did I would try to understand, if they didn't then I wouldn't blame them.

And if CW had called 911 and I'd read this story and he'd never done the media interviews to do fake pleas for his family, my initial feeling would be one of massive sympathy for him. I could easily be hoping for him to not get life imprisonment as a result. But he said in one of the media interviews that his children were his life....once they were dead, what was his life? Sadly, some parents wouldn't be able to care too much about the outcome of a trial after losing the children that were their life...life in prison vs life outside, it might not seem to make a lot of difference to them. I don't think that would be their first thought, though, I think the first thought would be "call 911 fast!" Then, when talking to LE about what happened it would probably enter their head that they might be arrested. I suppose some might think, "no, this is wrong and unfair as I'm telling the truth and even though I failed, I have to organize funerals and all sorts of things that I don't want to do but they have to be done". And some might just allow themselves to be led off and struggle to have the will to fight for themselves. CW doesn't seem to be in either category. Maybe there are other categories, and maybe it's because he killed them all and was only ever thinking about getting away with it.

I'm sorry to reiterate this, but everything he did from the second he decided to not call 911 is indicative to me that he was only ever thinking about how to get away with the murder of his entire nuclear family.

Completely agree with you.

An aside: (MOO) had CW left all bodies in the home, I would be sitting on the fence. I would be willing to believe his story. It could be plausible.

However, he didn’t, and there is zero logic in this. destroy evidence? It is so contradictory and absurd. - His double life, countless lies, and jovial- if not complete lack of emotion? There isn’t a fence for me to sit on.

 

[mtnlites]

Conversations with NUA, with LW, and the three (3) interviews speak volumes! Ease, lots of ease. "Dupers delight", smirking, posing, preening, etc. And experts have weighed in on his behavior.

Not to mention that he apparently went straight to work after dumping the bodies and that the Thayers were so concerned about how he was handling the disappearances that they literally called LE.

 

[mtnlites]

I will try to choose my words wisely in future post as to not offend anyone.

Thank you!

 

[Thepoet]

Not to mention that he apparently went straight to work after dumping the bodies and that the Thayers were so concerned about how he was handling the disappearances that they literally called LE.

That's so true! Thank you. He caused great concern to the Thayers, his friends!

 

[mtnlites]

It is the defendant and the defense team who have accused SW of murdering the children. They filed a motion asking certain evidence be collected. Do you have a link to the LE report there is no evidence that SW killed her daughters? I missed it. Thanks.

CW was the one who accused SW of killing the kids and that was before he had an attorney.

There's 'no evidence' Chris Watts's wife killed their kids as he claimed, according to a new report

"Police have reportedly found no evidence of Watts' claims, saying instead that it suggests Watts killed all the members of his family himself.

An unnamed police source told People magazine:

"There is absolutely no evidence that she killed her children. None at all. And there is physical evidence to tie him to their murders. Strangulation is a very personal way to kill someone, with a lot of physical contact.

"Just based on the preliminary evidence, everything is consistent with him killing them all."

 

[Tippy Lynn]

Thank you!

 

[MassGuy]

@MassGuy.

RSBM

“The plan may have been vague, and it certainly wasn’t well executed, but things would look very different had Shanann’s friend not acted as early and aggressively as she did.

I just don’t think we have enough information to discern premeditation here”.

I see you and I are still sitting in our respective places where we were weeks ago.

Planning and premeditation are not mutually exclusive.

Premeditation is often defined as any planning or design to cause the death. It can mean the time it takes to pull a trigger, or in this case, strangling which takes minutes to complete. He could have chosen to stop.

US case law:

In Chisley v. State,...the Court of Appeals defined the time element required for a finding of premeditation as follows:

"[t]he time need not be long. It must be sufficient for some reflection and consideration upon the matter, for choice to kill or not to kill, and for the formation of a definite purpose to kill. And when the time is sufficient for this, it matters not how brief it is."...

“In his excellent discussion of the meaning of premeditation in Smith v. State,...Judge Moylan noted that "the period of time required for premeditation and deliberation in first degree murder is only that which is necessary for one thought to follow another."..."For a killing to be premeditated, there 'need be no appreciable space of time between the intention to kill and the act of killing—they may be as instantaneous as successive thoughts of the mind.'"

“Applying this legal framework to the facts at hand, the court then concluded that:

Even without any other evidence of [Hounshell]'s mental state, the jury could have concluded, as it apparently did, that within the time it took [Hounshell] to strangle the victim to death, [Hounshell] achieved the necessary mental state which constituted the crime of first degree premeditated murder. Logic and common sense dictate that for one person to strangle another person to death, a significant length of time must pass for the victim to die. This time period in which the perpetrator must continuously exert sufficient force on the victim's throat to block the victim's breathing affords the perpetrator a significant opportunity for reflection and a change of heart”.

Premeditation & Manual Strangulation

I rest my case.

In talking about premeditation, what I mean to convey is my indecision as to if CW planned all along to kill SW and the kids on that night.

I’m not talking about legal premeditation, what I am talking about is the level of thought that went into this.

Specifically, were the kids already dead before Shannan arrived home?

Did he have a specific plan in place to commit this crime on this night?

When I say “premeditation” this is what I am talking about, not if he meets the legal standard.

 

[Tippy Lynn]

CW was the one who accused SW of killing the kids and that was before he had an attorney.

There's 'no evidence' Chris Watts's wife killed their kids as he claimed, according to a new report

"Police have reportedly found no evidence of Watts' claims, saying instead that it suggests Watts killed all the members of his family himself.

An unnamed police source told People magazine:

"There is absolutely no evidence that she killed her children. None at all. And there is physical evidence to tie him to their murders. Strangulation is a very personal way to kill someone, with a lot of physical contact.

"Just based on the preliminary evidence, everything is consistent with him killing them all."

An unnamed police source told People magazine:
An unnamed police source doesn't hold much credibility IMO.

 

[Gardener1850]

Bolded by me...
A Police Officer was on our local news, about safety tips.
One of the tips were, if you can't afford a security system, use your car key alarm button.
If someone is/has breaking into your house. Or if some emergency is happening in your house, push the car alarm button on your keychain.
Your car alarm will go off, the perp will get spooked and run away or the neighbors will hear it.
I wish more people knew about this.

That is a good tip to know, thanks!
Too bad it wouldn't have worked for SW trying to get attention as she was being attacked by CW.
I can't find it now, but I read somewhere on these threads that she kept her car keys in her car when it was parked in the garage (plus she was coming back from AZ so may not have had them with her).

 

[MassGuy]

An unnamed police source told People magazine:
An unnamed police source doesn't hold much credibility IMO.

Yes, but People Magazine does.

 

[mtnlites]

An unnamed police source told People magazine:
An unnamed police source doesn't hold much credibility IMO.

Just providing the link. Others can interpret it as they want.

 

[WildWest]

I have thought about the other possibilities until my brain almost exploded. It comes back to he loaded all 4 bodies up.... drove them to an oil site dumped his precious daughters in crude oil tanks, dug a hole for his wife & precious son...threw dirt over their faces.. and lied over & over to LE & the public saying he didn't know where they were ..calling for their safe return.

Your post just gave me a thought. "no inclination" of where they are, misused that word. There has been thoughts here that they were smothered vs. strangled and CW misusing those words too? @MassGuy used a different term too, was it choke hold?