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We're back with episode three of The Interrogation Tapes, a special limited run series produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. I'm Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of 2020. In today's episode, The Devil in Disguise, we follow an investigation into the shocking murders of a pregnant mother and her two young children. Hear what made detectives suspicious in the interrogation room.
Facebook was central to Shanann's life. Hundreds of posts and videos. It was as if every minute of every day was documented and shared openly with the public. Chris and I are sitting here waiting to board our flights to Miami. If you guys have an amazing day, bye. See my hat? I love it.
So you want to give me your personal last name? Chris Watts. Would you like to tell your wife and your kids? If you're out there, just come back. I need to see everybody again. This house is not complete. Tell me exactly what you remember and I'll take notes about where we can go. So many people that step into the box with the cops, they think they're going to talk their way out of it. We're using answers. We're handing out flyers regarding the missing woman in the neighborhood.
You don't know? I haven't seen him around the neighborhood, anything like that. When you see a case like this where you have a fantastic family, kids are happy, you're always wondering, what could possibly happen to force someone to commit such a heinous act? The disappearance of a pregnant Frederick woman and her two children has captured the nation's attention. And we'll not rest until we have the answers that we are looking for. There's still a chance that Shanann and the two children are still alive. They're under the pressure that we need to
find where they are. I think we're very, very close to the truth, but not what there is. I'm not a monster. I didn't kill my baby. This is very much a life-altering moment. I've been honest with you about everything that happened. You are feeling that pressure. The only way that we can help you is if you are cooperating with us. If investigators are going to learn the truth, they're going to have to do it inside the interrogation room.
My name's Jose Granado. I've been in law enforcement for 36 years. With interviews and interrogations, it's a dance. Just coming in with ideas and nothing is perfect. It's never linear. I'm Colton Seal. I was an FBI special agent for 22 years. My job was to really understand all the new research on interrogation and figure out how do we bring that together and use it.
If you look at Facebook,
They had the perfect life. They have a nice, big, beautiful suburban house. They have the two girls, Bella and Cece. Chris worked at a local oil field, and she worked as a marketing representative for a vitamin firm. I'm grateful. Can you see it? They meet on Facebook, and then they continue to live their love affair on Facebook.
Well, one thing led to another, and he's the best thing that has ever happened to me. And because of my health challenges, because I got so sick, I let him in. She had lupus, which for many people is very debilitating. She battled lupus for a long time. You just don't sleep very good with lupus, and
She had her head on his lap and they were watching TV and he didn't move. He didn't get up to go to the bathroom. He didn't get a drink. He let her sleep for four hours. And I told her, "God must have sent him to you." He was so in love with her. Oh my God. He did everything he could for her to make her happy. Yeah, she was happy. So if she was happy, then we were happy. Say hi, Cece. Hi, Daddy. Careful, girl. It's hot. You guys like my mug? Oh my gosh, this is so good. She was an amazing mother.
So much to the point that before she even got married and had children, she planned for her children. She had already bought baby clothes, even though she didn't know she was going to have a boy or a girl. I got a doctor appointment in two hours. I know. Boy, boy. Chris wants a boy. I hope it's a boy for him. It'll make him happy.
Shanann and Chris learned that they would have a third child, and this time it would be a boy. And they even named the baby Nico, and Shanann was overjoyed. The Frederick Police Department. They got a call from Nicole Atkinson, who was a friend of Shanann Watts. Shanann and Nicole had come back from a work conference in Phoenix the night before. I just told her, if you need help in the morning, let me know. If you need me to take the girls to school, if you need me to come take you to the doctor's appointment, let me know.
She said she would, and we gave each other a hug, and I watched her go into the house. Nicole says to Shanann, text me in the morning, but she doesn't hear from Shanann. Nicole came by 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning to check on Shanann. She didn't get a response on a cell phone. She didn't get a response when she drove to the house. Called Chris and asked if he knew where Shanann was, and he said she went on a play date. And I said, Chris, her car's in the garage.
How are you guys doing? You're Nicole? Yes. What's going on?
And they meet a police officer on the scene. They all get there before Chris gets there, but he shows up pretty soon thereafter. Scott, how you doing? How's it going? So this was the only vehicle she would have? Only one that, yeah. She would drive? Okay. You mind if I look around? Go ahead. Thanks. We are fine. Yeah. It didn't look like she went through and packed up. I mean, the last time I talked to her was this morning. She said she was going to take the kids to a friend's house, and that's where she was going to be. And then...
I've texted her today and never heard anything. We all ran through the house kind of looking for her. You checked up there? She's not there. It was, it was odd, the things that you did see. It didn't make sense to me. Is she work? Oh, from home?
Who goes anywhere without their cell phone? Certainly not a mom. They also see medication for one of her daughters, Cece. My daughter never leave the house without her phone or the EpiPens. Definitely not one.
My kids are my life. I mean, those smiles light up my life. I miss that. I miss them. Chris decides the next day to go on local media and beg his wife and daughters or whoever has them to bring them back or to come home. We were watching him live on the news and it's jumped at us that we'd understand that people may have different reactions to emotional types of situations. He didn't have any emotions.
He's saying the words that he thinks a grieving father should say, but he's not saying them in the manner that they should be said. I want everybody to just come home. The husband is always the top suspect. Always the top suspect. No matter what. Then you have a highly suspicious disappearance of a pregnant woman. Of course he's the suspect. Just tell me exactly what you remember and I'll take notes about where we can go.
Agent Graham Coder was assigned to the case. Stakes were extremely high. I think there was still, in the minds of law enforcement, a chance that they would find Shanann and the girls. Agent Coder is very mild-mannered, almost friendly. He sits side by side. His voice is soft. There's no shouting and yelling and pounding the table like we see on television.
At that first interview, as an investigator, what you want to do is you want to come in and you want to set the tone, and you want to have that rapport. You want to be able to have it nice, smooth, and direct. And you want to be able to get basic information. In terms of getting the truth,
It's first asking a lot of open-ended questions. The best evidence you're going to get is from the person who was involved. It puts everything else that you have into actual context. Otherwise, you're just trying to make sense of how all this fits together. How could she have left the house? The only way she still left the house is if somebody picked her up, but it had to have been from the back. The camera at the front, where the neighbor's white face is in the driveway, it would have picked that up.
Just trying to figure out if she's missing at this point. There's a neighbor who sees all this activity at the Watts home, and he comes over to offer up the fact that he has camera footage.
So they all decide to go next door and watch. Is this on continually recording? Yep. He was standing right in my living room basically watching it, and he looked very frantic. He had his hands like this in the air. The only time I saw him show any emotion was a little bit of nervousness when he was watching that tape. This is him at 517.
What's fascinating about the camera footage is what it shows and what it doesn't show. It does not show Shanann or the girls leaving the house. But what it does show is Chris Watts backing his car up into the garage and then leaving a short while later.
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As they're watching the camera footage from the neighbor next door, Chris Watts seems rather agitated. He's doing this, rocking back and forth. He is seen on that video making three trips back and forth into the house, out to his truck, and then back inside, and then drives off from the driveway at about 5.40 in the morning. I really don't think that Chris expected that footage to come out because the moment that Chris sees that video, you see that change in the demeanor.
Even the neighbor caught on to the fact that there's something off here with Chris. It's not inconsistent with what he says about the time he went to work, but it's very suspicious given that we see no other activity at the house for the rest of the day.
That camera captured everything. There is no Shanann, there is no Celeste, and there is no Bella. It's just a truck. I think law enforcement began to realize that things weren't adding up fairly quickly. You're starting to see some pieces being put together. Come in, Chris. I'm going to Bella's room, going to Celeste's room, playroom, not so good room. I'm looking everywhere, like bathrooms, and nothing. Okay. I'm in.
Chris Watts shows Shanann's wedding ring to the friends and the cop and look, she may have left me. He acknowledges that they had a really hard conversation. So that's something he admits right away, that the marriage is in trouble and that they had to talk about it.
Obviously, it gets pretty emotional. Like, we're talking about, you know, like, we felt this-- this connection over there, like, falling out of love. There has to be a reason why Shanann left, because it's not plausible that she just disappears out of the blue. So he has to bring that up as, in his mind, hopefully, I can say that she just took the kids and left because of this. It was very emotional. We were both crying. And at the end, I just said, you know,
She said she was gonna take the kids to her friend's house today. She'd be back. Can we talk about something that's kinda hard to come by? The day she goes missing is the day that you guys have marital disorder. So you can understand what I'm thinking about you. Yeah. What do you think I'm about? People knew that we were having marital issues. They're gonna look at me, especially with the way everything looks. It honestly just makes me sick to my stomach because this is something that would never do. Ever.
That part really stood out for me. He says, "This is something that I would never do, that I could never do this to my family." In that moment in time, Shanann and CeCe and Bella have just disappeared. We don't know where they are, but he says, "This." And "this" is a really concrete word referring to something specific. So he's referring to something that he's seeing in his mind. I have no idea where she is or the kids.
I promise you that has nothing to do with any of that. He then does have, I think it's about a 30-second pause, which I will say as an interviewer feels like about 10 minutes. Chris needs to make a decision. And if you keep pushing and pushing him, now he just has to respond and respond and deflect. You give him that space to make it. I'm going to tell them more. It becomes more likely that he will. Are you excited to do the crew? I have to ask you.
Part of the investigation is trying to get a motive. What is happening here and is there a motive for Chris to have done this? A very logical motive would be he's having an affair with somebody. At this point, he denies that there's any infidelity.
I'm not going to tell the news. I'm not going to tell anyone. But I do need to know. I'm on your end. I got asked, what's your name? I don't have another one. Are you sure? I'm sure.
Thank you.
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Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.
And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News. Asian coder presented a photograph to Chris. Photos are the classic way police break a suspect down. You are trying to increase that internal pressure that somebody's feeling and that sense of guilt. You're trying to
get an emotional response from him. He's letting it play at the speed and the pace that Chris wants. You hone in on certain words that are thrown. She loved.
The moment that Chris goes into that past tense, it's already letting the investigator know that they're no longer here. Because in his psyche, he knows that they're not there. So he talks in that past tense. You know that we have to get to the bottom of this, don't you? You know that, Ben, Ken, would you take a polygraph? I think at this point, he doesn't have much choice. If he suddenly says, no, I won't take a polygraph, that's going to make him look guilty.
That night, they let him go home, and inexplicably, he agrees to come back the next day. He says, tomorrow morning, we'll go ahead and we'll set it up. So what is Coder doing? It's important for him to get that return of Chris back to the station for the polygraph, but he's doing it in a manner that is very low-key. Even at sleep, I'm sorry you have to go through all this, but it's part of the process.
Agent Graham Coder and Agent Tammy Lee decided to work as a team. Right.
Assuming the worst but hoping the best. I think we can all assume that wherever Shanann is, the little girls are. So I'm just going to ask you about Shanann. So now we're on day two and he actually comes back voluntarily. Why? Psychologically, he's committed to this now. He is committed to...
going on TV and saying, "I want my kids, whoever has them, bring them home." So you mean he's committed to the lie that he's created in the public eye and in the interrogation room? Yeah, and he's committed to basically living out that lie, so you just plow forward with this plan even if it's not a good plan. No.
Are you lying about the last time you saw Shenan? No. Do you know where Shenan is now? No. This portion of the test is complete. Please make so I can get the instrument out of operation.
Why would law enforcement at this point choose to do a polygraph? I think they have a fairly good idea that he is their suspect, but you're never 100% sure. So they need to basically lock in their certainty that he's their guy. So it was completely clear that you were not on the student's attention. I think you already know that.
- So now we need to talk about what actually happened. I feel like you're probably ready to do that. - I didn't lie to you on that polygraph, I promise. Chris, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop for a minute. Take a deep breath. I want you to take a deep breath right now. We just can't figure out why there's two braces. We talked about that last night. We just can't figure it out.
It is very surprising to me, it warms my heart, that you're the type of dad who can pack a bag in the morning. And you got a chess book to put in there? I'm a glow. There's the good Chris, and there's the bad Chris. Sometimes we'll come in and we'll say something to the effect of, sometimes things happen. He's letting Chris know, listen, there might have been the one great Chris that you're saying that you are, but you had that one moment.
The one moment where this Chris took over from the good Chris and the bad Chris showed up. And we need to find out why. And you're not making that right. That's real, okay? But you are here today lying about something else. So we need to talk about that, okay? Let's see who's lying. I know.
During that first interrogation the day before, Agent Coder asked Chris if they could search his phone, and he agreed immediately. Chris even hands him his phone and says, go ahead, search my phone. They search the phone and make a surprising discovery. Chris has...
a kind of ingenious but creepy app on his phone that looks like a calculator, but behind it is all of his communications with the woman he's seeing on the side. Anything she sends, text messages, photos, that's where he buries it all. - My daughter, she had no clue. She was clueless. - If I reach out to a woman, I will let her know most of that who is her. I don't wanna get her involved in this. I don't wanna ruin her life.
He's just backing himself further and further into that corner of that interrogation room. Literally. They're walking him down the path of confession. We knew all about Vicky. We knew all about Vicky. All about her.
Agent Coder says, "We know about Nicole." He does that fairly non-judgmentally, and it also makes Chris question what else do they already know about. Investigators learned that in the weeks before Shanann's disappearance, he kicked up a major affair with a coworker, Nicole Kessinger. And Nicole thought he was very close to finalizing a divorce.
So you can imagine Nicole Kessinger's surprise when she learned that her boyfriend, Chris Watts' family, was suddenly missing. She was, I think it's safe to say, horrified. And she came forward to tell the police everything she knew.
And the police recorded audio of that interview. We got along really well. I thought what we had, it was very comfortable for me. I enjoyed it. I think he did very much as well. Did he ever tell you that he loved you? Yes, he did. Did you ever tell him the same? A couple times.
By all accounts and by all descriptions, it sounded like they were beginning a dating and intimate relationship. He had told her Mr. Watts and Shanann were in the process of getting a divorce, but that it hadn't been final yet. I just realized that he was lying to me, and I was like, well, if you can lie to me about this, what else are you lying to me about? I'm not proud of it. I didn't think any time that could happen was about to take out or do it, but I did. Now there's a motive. What a coincidence that the wife comes home from her trip
He's having an affair, and now on that very same day, the wife and the children are gone. I promise you, when you start talking to us, you will feel better. You got to help me. I know. I mean, I want to believe that if you should end it and you felt compelled to...
Agent Lee suggests that possibly Shanann could have had something to do with this. So she's minimizing his culpability. We know that people are more likely to confess to a minimized version of events. There is no way that Tammy Lee thought Shanann killed her children. I think their gut told them that these people were dead, and Chris probably did it.
It's a golden opportunity. But the cops were taking a chance that he'd walk into the room and say, no, no, no, no. Let's not have this conversation here. Let's go home. So they bring the dad in.
and they have a full-on conversation with the camera rolling. There is no expectation of privacy inside that room. His father comes in, and now he kind of lowers his guard. He lowers his voice so that not everybody can hear. Just the father. What's going on with you? You thought I grabbed you? That much emotions? It's dirty. Now you don't let me go. I don't want to protect you. What? I don't want to protect her.
At that moment, the father could have said, hey, listen, you need an attorney.
And that could have been a detriment. But I think that Coder and Lee had such a good understanding with each other that when they made that decision to allow the dad to go in, I think that there was something there where they felt that it wasn't going to go south on them. I think the father was going to be more like the calming influence to get Chris to come forward. Hello, Kate? Hello.
Lee was very good in the sense that she had that personal touch, her hand on his shoulder, soothing, letting him know, I'm here to listen. I want you to tell me what happened. I was covered and pulled off and she was laying there. I was like, oh, I'm really sorry. She was on top of her.
He's bought Agent Lee's story that Shanann did it and decided to incorporate that into his events, recognizing he has nowhere else to go. So I'm going to take this thing that she just gave me and use it. He's definitely trying to minimize his culpability in this.
The story that Shanann might have killed the children was just a tactic to get Chris to confess. There's no way that this woman police officer thought this mother murdered her babies. I think that you killed these girls before their mom came home. It just doesn't make sense. I think we're very, very close to the truth, but not like there is. I'm not. I'm not sure. I didn't kill my babies.
There is the win in getting him to confess to a false version of events. They can now use that to say, "Where are they?" and move quickly. And that is critical because evidence degrades fairly rapidly over time, so you want to find the body as quickly as you can. Where did you click the number? Could I still throw a button? Whereabouts? Just sitting in the middle.
One of the most dramatic moments in this incredibly long interrogation sequence is watching Chris Watts diagram the location of the bodies. Shanann is in this shallow grave.
wrapped in a sheet with just some dirt thrown on her. And it's like she's trash, like he's just disposing of the trash. And then he stuffed his two daughters into eight-inch-wide holes in oil drums. That is horrifically monstrous. Chris, come stand up for me. I'm going to have you face that wall. Just face it. It's sickening, isn't it?
If you read your Bible, the devil comes to you in any shape, size and form. Let's walk out this way. He is a monster. How do you put someone you love into an oil tank? Especially your children. His original story was that Shanann had strangled the little girls. But once they recovered the bodies, it became clear that he had smothered the girls. Bella, the four-year-old,
had obvious signs of injury around her mouth. We knew that based upon those injuries that she had tried to struggle back against her father as he smothered her. This kid keeps me going. I knew in my heart of hearts the friend that I cared so much for would never hurt her babies. They knew from day one that that was not true. Oh, and Bella has her baby. To find out that my granddaughter struggled to live...
That probably throws her to the edge. But the story doesn't end here. Ultimately, he gives a final interview to Agents Graham Coder and Tammy Lee about what happened. I told her I didn't love her anymore. That's what happened. Every time I think about it, I'm just like, did I know I was going to do that before I got on top of her?
This afternoon, my office filed formal charges against Christopher Lee Watts. When it comes to the motive in this case, I think it was a variety of factors for Chris. He was clearly feeling a lot of pressure about that third child. But he was also sowing his oats and going back to his youth and not sure he wanted to be a dad or a husband anymore. What I don't get, and I never get with any of these cases we do, get a divorce. He was a coward.
Chris agreed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, and that was in line with the religious beliefs of Shanann's family. They're deeply spiritual people. Her mother has said that she just doesn't believe in the death penalty.
It's a lot harder to spend the rest of your life in prison when you're a young man like Chris Watts. You carry them out like trash. You buried my daughter Shannon in a shallow grave, and then you put Bella and Celeste in huge containers of crude oil. This is hard to say, but may God have mercy on your soul. I didn't want death for you because that's not my right. Your life is between you and God.
now, and I pray that he has mercy for you. Having worked cases very similar to this, it really does take an emotional toll on you, and then you go to a sentencing and see the impact that it has on the family. Our families have been irreparably broken by the needless deaths of Shanann, Bella, Cece, and Nico. This is something we will never get over. Now to my son Christopher, we have loved you from the beginning, and we still love you now. We love you.
And we forgive you for that. After Chris is sentencing the original investigative team, they fly out to Wisconsin to the jail that he's being held in. The reason that they wanted to do that, I believe, was I don't think that they felt like they were done investigating the case. They felt they did not have the actual story. The last thing we talked about was where the girls were. But we never really got to talk about that night. That's what happened.
So you put Shanann in the trunk and then you put the two girls in the trunk. He gives a final interview acknowledging that he strangled Shanann.
And how he put them in the car all together, their mom wrapped in a sheet and the girls strapped into the back with their dead mother. So CeCe and Bella were still alive when he drove them all out to that oil site. Honestly, like I try to picture that, that whole ride, like it's like 45 minutes to an hour ride out there. And it's just like, couldn't I have like saved my girl's life? Couldn't I have done something? Why did I do it? I don't know.
He finally admitted that he smothered the girls to death at that oil site. To have 40 minutes to think about whether or not to kill two little baby girls and to do it anyway, that's just monstrous. She was an amazing daughter. She was a best friend. She wanted to soar the earth and she always said, "Mom, I want to leave my mark on the earth." And she did. She really did. I couldn't be prouder. My grandchildren,
I couldn't have loved him any more than I did. Oh my goodness. Come give me a hug. Oh. I love you. The Interrogation Tapes was produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. The series is streaming on Hulu. Next week, we'll be back with The Sins of the Father, about decades of family secrets. Thanks so much for listening.
Hi all, Kate Gibson here of The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. This week we talked to Whoopi Goldberg about lots of things. But one of the things we talked to her about is how as a science fiction and graphic novel fan, she never saw herself on those screens or on those pages growing up. I mean, I didn't realize that part of me until I watched Star Trek. And I saw it because I love sci-fi.
And for some reason, it never occurred to me that I was missing until I was present. You're not going to want to miss this episode of The Bookcase from ABC News.
