HEAR IT: Chris Watts says he blamed daughters’ murders on pregnant wife Shanann Watts because he thought his family would believe it [AUDIO]
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“I told them I pled guilty for a reason,” Watts told investigators about conversations with his family about entering into a plea arrangement, adding that his family said they felt he was “railroaded” into it. Watts indicated that his parents believed Watts did not kill his daughters, and that they did not think prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him at a murder trial.
Watts said his parents still sometimes tell him to “fight it,” and revealed in the interview that he was not planning on telling his parents the full story until they visited him in prison this coming spring.
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Watts also seemed concerned about protecting his parents from the truth, and indicated he was motivated to pin the blame for the children’s death on his wife in part because he thought his family would buy that story.
“I knew they would probably believe it… because my mom and my sister just never really liked Shanann,” Watts is heard saying in the audio recording of the February interview, as the investigators press him for confirmation.
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“One of the reasons we are here, we keep telling ourselves, Chris just does not fit the mold,” one of the agents is heard saying in the audio recording.
The investigators asked several questions about Watts’s use of the “Thrive” nutrition and fitness patches that he was using at the time of the deaths, and tell him that they have others say they suspect Nichol Kessinger, Watts’s mistress, may have been involved somehow in the murders.
Watts denied that Kessinger put him up to the murders in any way, while admitting that the Thrive patches seemed to have a strong effect on him.