The media still don’t know why Chris Watts committed murder.
Who does?
Do we have to wait for prosecutors to tell us Chris Watts’ motive, or can we figure it out on our own? If we can’t, what does that say about our ability to intuit the thoughts, desires and machinations of those around us? If we can’t figure out hypothetical catastrophes in other folk’s families, do we have any chance of piecing the puzzles [hidden and less hidden] of the motives of those that are part of the fabric of our lives?
What true crime offers is a series of precedents and templates. The criminal psychology is never a new journey, although some tangents along the way may be a little unusual or even novel.
The best place to start in order to fathom a motive for Watts is Scott Peterson. There are many similarities: pregnant wife, business trips, Mr Perfect persona, picture-perfect marriage and family, fairy-tale home, sunny smiles all round versus fertilizer/oil, selling, foreclosure, financial ruin, her earning more than him and the collapse of the Picture Perfect Charade. There’s a lot of vanity in both marriages. There’s also a lot of shallowness. Under the vanity there’s no real wealth, just empty words.
Of course, to intuit a motive in the Watts case requires that we went to the trouble to figure out Scott Peterson’s motive. Did we? Was Scott’s motive that he wanted to have an affair? I hope that’s not your answer, because millions of married folk cheat on each other quite happily, without resorting to murder. The affair was a factor, and I believe it was a factor with Watts. Both good looking, charming and facile men. In both cases, women who knew or should have known their husbands were cheating, but kept up the pretense that everything was just fine, including through the new pregnancy.
Was money a factor? Of course it was. But millions of couples struggle through financial difficulty without resorting to murder, though perhaps less than the group committing adultery. Add together financial difficulty and adultery, and we’re starting to get somewhere, but we’re still not quite there.
The vital element of course is the pregnancy. In the Scott Peterson case, Scott endured the pregnancy for eight long months, until just before Christmas. He figured Christmas was a good time to do things when people would be away or not watching so closely.
In the Watts case, fifteen weeks proved to be his cut-off date. What does the pregnancy reveal about the motive? Simply that her husband’s threshold for commitment had been exceeded by a substantial margin.
It’s not just financial commitment, and financial overreach that’s at issue here. Like Scott, Watts is having a kind of existential crisis. He doesn’t want to be married.
He doesn’t want to be a dad. He doesn’t want to be burdened or pressured by life-sapping and gut-draining expectations. He was living a life he didn’t want to be living, and it was killing him. He was living a lie, and in his fucked psychology, the only way to fix that was by killing them. That way he could get his life back. By taking their lives, he got his.
It’s transactional, but then Capitalist society is rigged that way. Give and take, cash on delivery, no work no pay. So we’re wired to function in a transnational system, but every now and then someone thinks they can outsmart it. How to get something for nothing. How to get what you really want without paying the price.
So in a sense, it is the simply dimension of a man who wants his freedom. He wants to escape the bind he’s in. But we have to look at the scale of the things that are tearing at him. Moneylessness. Pregnancy and the raft of commitments and expectations that are part of that. And probably someone else pulling him away from the marriage, some sort of fairy-tale romance that offered him a better, alternative happily ever after.
When we add all of these together, we need to come up with a simple hypothesis. Why, in a single word, did Watts commit triple [actually quadruple] murder of his own family.
Greed.
He wanted more. But he wasn’t prepared to pay the price to get what he wanted, so he chose subterfuge, so that he could dodge paying for what he wanted, the same way he’d been dodging reality for year.
He wanted to have his cake and eat it. Just like Scott Peterson did. I suspect further investigation will show Watts was a spoiled kid, and used to entitlements. He didn’t like the drudgery of his job. He wanted to convert his family to oil and gold, cash in his chips and start a new life with someone else.
JUST IN from People Magazine – When Nickole Atkinson, Shanann’s friend, didn’t hear from her, she called Chris Watts to find out what was going on. That’s when he made this surprising disclosure to Nickole about his 6-year marriage:
“I didn’t find out that they were going to separate or anything like that until I called Chris that morning. When I called him and asked him where she was, that’s when he told me and I basically told him that that wasn’t my [concern] at that particular moment, because it wasn’t and that their business was their business, that they would either work it out or they wouldn’t.”
Why would Watts be chomping at the bit to tell someone their marriage was in trouble immediately after his wife was dead and the kids gone? Why would it not be okay for his own wife to know [or say] their marriage was in trouble?
There could be other factors too, depending on issues of Watts’ identity. Without knowing his background, his make-up, his backstory, it’s difficult to be more accurate.
Now let’s see what the prosecutors have to say today…
#SHAKEDOWN 
The affidavit has just been released. It confirm Watts was having an affair with a coworker.
https://t.co/zRnoXj78wW
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$448,820 in debt.
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There was as with Scott Peterson, a preoccupation with how things look, because underneath it all things don’t look too good and really never have. Likely a string of failures and unfulfilled expectations for both men and damn it, it shouldn’t be like that! I have the wife now, two children, one on the way (or with Peterson a wife and a baby on the way) haven’t I done all that was expected of me but I deserve so much more. It’s not what I WANTED. Scott rang up a string of debts as well. One of the 7 deadly sins: greed. I want more, I deserve more. And more is never enough.
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“Want it more” – message I saw posted on an Asics running shirt today. Greed is good in some circumstances like sport. But it can get real ugly as we see here.
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Yes, used in competitive sports, or to push yourself to be your best why not. Any thoughts about any symbolism of submerging your children in crude oil? Smothering them twice. But mom got a shallow grave.
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A little digging – the Watts owned a house in Belmont West of Charlotte, NC which Shanann bought in 2009. The couple were married in 2012. According to the Denver Post the new owner of the house said the Watts were in a hurry to sell and left all of the furniture behind. SHE bought the house before they met and married. Why were they in a hurry to sell and why did they leave all of their furniture behind?
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Holy shit. Shanann bought the house. This has even more echoes of Laci Peterson and Scott. He’s emasculated because he has no money, and can’t work worth a damn to earn any. She’s putting up the the Perfect Picture narrative in social media. And it’s all a lie. Well done Pauline. Can you reply to this comment with the link of that Denver Post article, I think it deserves it’s own blog post.
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Please try this link – the name of the man who purchased Shanann’s house is Byron Falls. I have three other articles that state the same thing. Yes, it was her house, maiden name Shanann King.
https://www.denverpost/com/2018/08/16/who-is-christopher-watts
or try:
https://www.omaha.com/news/nation/the-latest-missing-woman
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I’d like to correct a mistake – I had said Shanann’s maiden name was King – obviously it is Rzucek. However, I did learn that she was previously married before she married Watts, and that her married name from the first marriage was King. That was the name on the home she owned. So – it might be interesting to look into that marriage. As we know Lacy Peterson had a bad relationship with a boyfriend who mistreated her before she found Scott. I’m not saying Shanann did as well, but if she did Chris Watts may have looked like a night in shining armor to her, when in fact he was not.
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Actually her maiden name was onorati, same as her mother. Her brother carries his fathers name, Rzucek. Odd to name your children different surnames, but she did not have the Rzucek surname before she was shanann king
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It would be interesting to find out what went down during that first marriage. It may have been so unpleasant she went to a lot of effort not to have history repeat itself.
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Yes, this is what I was thinking. She put together in her mind the kind of man and father she wanted to have to have her life be perfect but she picked the wrong man. His “relationship tips” video shows that. Sounds like he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. No conviction.
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Nick Van der Leek:
Is it possible for you to investigate about Chris Watts Parents? There are not any interview neither any information about his family up to now.
His childhood?
His family ?
Life aspects that could have affected him in the past when he was very young?
The other important thing here is Shannan trying to convince the world around her thru social media, that she had a perfect marriage. Why?
Human being is very complex and we may give any multiple opinions about this complex crime case, but I think that is going to be very difficult to know the real reason Chris watts killed his wife and, in process of proving, he killed his children.
We will never know how was the way they shared their life together inside their home.
This case really impacted me and I will follow up on your excelent work until the end, which could take years for compiling precise information.
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She’s a salesperson for a MLM company. She wants others to see her as a very successful, happy person….life is great, fun & so as her job…kept talking about all free fun trips, free luxurious cars….even though they couldn’t even pay their mortgage & had so many debts. It’s all about images so people will fall for Le-vel just as she did.
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