Chris Watt, also known as Christopher Lee Watts, is an alleged murderer who is culminated in multiple life sentences for his crime of murdering his own family in 2018. Watt’s case also termed “The Watt Family Murders” is regarded as one of the most horrific and senseless murder cases of the last decade.
The murder occurred in the early morning hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, US, where his 15 weeks pregnant wife, Shan’ann Cathryn Watts was murdered by strangulation along with her unborn son named Nico Lee Watts in utero, their four-year-old daughter, Bella, and three-year-old Celeste, by smothering.
The 2020 Netflix true crime story series, “American Murder: The Family Next Door” which details about Watt’s crimes, gave a hint that he was dating another woman named Nichol Kessinger at the time when the murder took place. According to the documentary, he had begun a sexual relationship with Kessinger while he was still married to Shan’ann Watts and also that he had recently talked to his wife that he wanted to separation before the incident took place.
Looking at the picture frame, we can somehow figure out that the reason for Watts’s act could be his wish and want to start a new life with his younger girlfriend, Nichol Kessinger. If Nichol was the reason for the murder, then was she also a part of this crime or was innocent??
Netflix’s ‘American Murder’: Chris Watt’s Girlfriend, Nichol Kessinger
Source: NETFLIX
Chris Watt, the heartless man who didn’t hesitate to even have a second thought about his toddler daughters and his 15 weeks pregnant wife before suffocating them to the death, had a heart full of love towards a beautiful younger girl named Nichol Kessinger. Matt, 33 met his then-girlfriend Nichol Kessinger, 30 at the time while they were both working together at Colorado’s Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
Kessinger was born in 1988 in the United States and had completed her education from Colorado State University in 2013 earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Science, specializing in geology. She started off working life as a bookkeeper, later working as a field engineer. Her link with Anadarko Petroleum Co. came after she joined Tasman Geosciences.
Kessinger was already attracted to him since the very first day they met each other. They started dating each other in around late June 2018, roughly a month and a half before the senseless murder. Watt even had written love notes to his secret mistress, Nichol at the time one of which reads:
“Wow, where do I even start? The first day I saw you, you took my breath away. The first day I had the gut to talk to you, I got lost in those sparkling green eyes. The first day we hung out in the park. We kissed, I knew I had met the most amazing, unique, and electric woman EVER!! We have a lot of FIRSTS together NKK. And I went to keep having them with you!!
“All night till the sun comes back I wanna love, wanna love and wanna love you like that”.
Even at their first outside-of-work meeting, Kessinger had questioned about his divorce for which Watt had lied her saying that his divorce was mutual and was at the tail end. She did not know at the time that Watts was lying to her that he had not started any divorce proceedings. In hope that they would be together, by July, they began meeting more often meeting four or five times a week, though Kessinger told Watts to take their relationship slow since he had two children to focus on.
For Kessinger who was blindfolded with false hope, Watt appeared to be a softspoken man and a thoughtful father until August 2018, when the news of the murder of his family aired all-around media. As soon as she heard the news, Kessinger approached investigators before Watts’ arrest and participated in multiple police interviews, describing details of their relationship and what he had told her about his missing family to help police with the case.
According to The Denver Post, Watt was the one who came to her office to introduce himself, and Kessinger said he was not wearing a wedding ring at the time of their meeting.
Even while on an ongoing investigation at Watts’ home, Watt was still on his phone most probably with Kessinger in awkward silence, just answering with few sentences while responding to the police without even a blink of fear and tension about his missing family. His merciless act was captured in the security footage of his neighbor’s house which he was completely unknown.
Besides, it was also found that on the night of the murders, Watts and Kessinger shared a 111-minute-long phone call which ended at 23:19, around the time Shanann was originally supposed to have arrived home from her work trip–but the flight had been delayed.
Where is Nichol Kessinger Now?
Nichol Kessinger, who had a very hard time following a brief affair with Chris Watt, completely changed her life upside down. She went through several mental abuse, placed into several witness protection, and was heavily blamed for Watt’s actions just because she was with him at the time of the murder even though she was completely unaware of that act. She received several threats, public shaming, and was considered one of the “most hated women” in America.
Nobody saw the positive side of her as her confession about Watt was one of the crucial reasons for which the murder case was solved within no time. Kessinger said that she just wanted to help with a statement: “I just wanted to help”. “With a pregnant woman and two children missing, I was going to do anything that I could.”
Her suspicions proved true when police arrested Watts later that night, Aug. 15, 2018, for the killings of his wife and two daughters. After seeing the news on TV, she felt more depressed saying, “I just felt so, so sad”.
Since his arrest, she has never doubted that he killed them. The story that Watts told police that he killed Shanann after he saw her strangling one of the girls—is a lie, Kessinger said. “He’s a liar. He lied about everything”.
Kessinger has repeatedly said that she wouldn’t have been involved with Chris Watts if she knew the truth and has called the entire situation “not fair” to both herself, Shan’ann Watts, and the Watts children. She later confessed that their brief affair that barely lasted for 2 months had turned her life upside down as people have named her on social media and discussed the relationship in online forums.
On November 15, 2018, Kessinger said, “He lied about everything”. “We had just met. I barely knew him”.
Kessinger has since deleted all social media pages and was reportedly living a bit healthy peaceful life. She planned to start fresh with a new name, new town, and ultimately a new identity. Currently, she is supposed to be living in a new place with new people, presumably a thousand miles away from Colorado.
Also, in an interrogation video, Watt had said sorry to Kessigner explaining: “She’s a wonderful person, and she knew I was married, yes, and I told her that we were going through issues, yes. I told her that we were to get separation, but I didn’t know what that was going to be.”
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