The Megyn Kelly Show - Horrific Chris Watts Family Murders: A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special | Ep. 570

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

"Hot Crime Summer" week on The Megyn Kelly Show begins with a deep dive on the horrific Chris Watts family murders. Megyn Kelly is joined by retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole to discuss the details of the case, the chilling lack of apparent warning signs to the crime, how to spot red flags with your partner, the affair and the pregnancy, whether it's possible for any of us to raise a killer, what to look for as a parent, the unfathomable way Watts killed his daughters after killing his wife, the horrific way he committed the crimes, the bizarre Watts TV interview, the confession, how to deal with everyday life after encountering evil, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and to the first day of our Hot Crime Summer Week. Yes, our Hot Crime Summer Series was so popular last year, we are bringing it back by popular demand. And we kick off this week with a case that has haunted me and so many for years. I just, I cannot get over it. I need to understand it. And that is the case of Christopher Watts. In August of 2018, Chris Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann, along with their two little girls. The murders were gruesome and seemingly out of the blue. The disturbing details of this murder and the lack of red flags leading up to it has haunted me. It makes it so hard to understand, but I feel like we must, we have to try. Here to help us dig into the details

and to answer my questions is retired FBI profiler, Mary Ellen O'Toole. Throughout her career, she has helped capture, interview, and understand some of the world's most infamous criminals. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, the Green River Killer, the Zodiac Killer, and many more. She also worked the Elizabeth Smart

and the Natalie Holloway disappearances, the Columbine shootings, and many, many other very high profile cases. She's the perfect person to help us break down this case. Mary Ellen, great to see you again. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you. I'm so glad How are you doing? show on family annihilators. And we mentioned Chris Watts, but I just can't get past it. And I needed to spend more time on it. And I'm so glad to have someone with your expertise here to help walk us through it. It's just one of the most disturbing crime cases I've ever seen. And I'm into crime. I follow crime. But this one is just unforgettable in its awfulness. You've lived your life fighting crime and trying to figure out criminals professionally. Is it, is it as bad as I say,

you know, as somebody who's seen a lot more crime than I have, is it a standout? Well, I think it's definitely a standout and I'll tell you why. When you have a case like this, where the parent, especially the biological parent, goes after their own children, it really causes the case to stand apart from other crimes. I can understand domestic violence, which is a partner kills another partner. That's actually fortunately very common. But when you see someone going after their biological children purposely, that makes it extremely egregious. And then the manner in which the children were killed here, and the manner in which their bodies were disposed of in such a callous and cold-blooded way,

it's really disturbing. So let's go through the story. When these two met, they seemed very much in love. Shanon was larger than life, very strong personality, but had been going through a difficult time. She'd been diagnosed with lupus. And this woman documented her whole life on Facebook. So we have a lot of videotape of her. It makes you feel like you kind of knew her. Here's a little bit of Shanann sharing the story of how she and Chris Watts met. My friend sent me a friend suggestion for him. It was actually his cousin's wife. And I deleted it. I was like, I'm not interested. I don't want to meet a guy. Bye-bye. So I deleted her friend's suggestion for him. I was diagnosed two months later.

And I went through one of the, I would say, darkest times of my life. Because things just got scarier. Got a friend request from Chris. I was in a really, really, really bad place. And I got a friend request from Chris on Facebook. And I was like, oh, what the heck. I'm never going to meet him. Except one thing led to another.

And eight years later, we have two kids. We live in Colorado. And he's the best thing that has ever happened to me. Do you think there's any connection between the fact that she was in a dark place, physically and mentally, when she met this guy and the ultimate fate that she met? It could have been. Sometimes our judgment is colored or flawed by our own emotional experiences like poor health. So certainly could have been. Their personalities seem diametrically opposite. And when you go back and you look at how people pair up, you wonder how much somebody really is aware of the other

person's personality and how much they're really aware of how that person is going to handle life and the stressors of life and all the things that life brings in terms of challenges and so forth. And my experience over the years is that we really don't read people very well. We oftentimes read what we want to see. And that may have been impacting the relationship here. And again, it's really very common. They met in 2010. They got married in 2012.

And she was killed in 2013. I mean, it all happened so fast. And look, I met my husband in July of, sorry, okay, so it was 2018 that she was killed, sorry. But I met my husband in July of 06 and we were married by March of 08. So I'm not saying it can't happen quickly and work out wonderfully. But I do think there's just a little bit of a warning here where if you meet your partner in a very low time in your life, take the time to make sure you're not, for emotional or other reasons, overlooking potential warning signs of a problem. I agree with you. And that's certainly one of the things I cover with my students in class when we study violent crime is what are all of those characteristics that confuse us, that impact our ability to read people, especially at a time in our life when it really becomes important? What do we look at that really don't tell us the potential for dangerousness? And what should we be looking at in terms of personality traits?

And again, I think it's really very common, but we're not raised and we're not trained to know what to look for. They had a baby pretty soon into the marriage, again, married on November 3rd, 2012, December 17th, 2013, first child Bella was born. And then they suffered a bankruptcy and 2015, so two years later, their second daughter, Cece, her name was Celeste, was born. So two babies in a couple of years, flash forward to three years after that, and she's pregnant with their third child, a little boy. Now, anybody who's had two babies in two years and the marriage, it's stressful. And then they have a bankruptcy in the middle of it. That doesn't make you kill anybody. That doesn't turn anybody into a murderer. So as you look back at this situation, knowing what Chris Watts would

ultimately do, you know, do you have any thoughts on those years, any red flags, anything jump out at you? Well, I started to look when the case even happened, started to go back and look at when did the stressors really start? These are not cases where someone just snaps and they decide one morning, this is what they're going to do. They're going to annihilate their whole family. There's thinking about it beforehand. There's planning about it beforehand, even if they don't admit to it. So when did the stress really begin? And it probably really started to compound about the time that they filed for bankruptcy.

And then when they started to have the children, we know that those are very stressful times in relationships, especially depending on a person's personality. If they have a very if they have a difficult time dealing with the idea that we have one more baby, we have one more pressure in my life, especially with those kinds of thought processes that can be very stressful. So now you've got a second child and then you have surprisingly, now you have a third child. And so I think the stress and, and possibly the resentment had been building actually for years. It didn't just happen days before Chris committed the murders. They, in June of 2018 is when everything started to take a turn for the worst. That is when he met the woman who would become his affair partner.

And it is when Shanon told him that she was expecting a third child, which he very clearly did not want. She, of course, put the clip on Facebook where she told him the news and any outsider could see the guy was not thrilled, notwithstanding what his words were. Here's a bit of that. She's wearing a shirt that reads, oops, we did it again. And he walks in. We did it again. And he walks in. We did it again. I like that shirt. Really?

Really. That's awesome. So pink means... That's just a test. I know. It's just that pink is going is gonna be girls i don't know just the test that's awesome guess i guess guess when you want to it happens wow that bit at the end there right that bit at the end there, right? That bit at the end where they,

wow, as he's looking at the pregnancy test and not to mention, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's something you say when your kid is like, you know, I got on first base. You know, you're having a child. It's, it tends to be in a very emotional, very moving moment. None of which was present there. No, but you know, I looked at that again. I remember seeing that years ago, but I also looked at his confessions and he is one of the most subdued, low key people in those confessions. So I think that's his personality. He's not going to be extremely expressive. It's just not part of who he is. And so that reaction to the news that Shanann is going to have a third baby is, you know, is pretty much in keeping with his very low key, almost at times depressive personality. It's the common at the end when he says words to the effect, something about when

you want something, meaning when she wants it. He did not make a comment about what he wanted. So I thought the affect was keeping with how he is, but it was the final comment that was telling to me. Is there any reason to be concerned if you partner up with somebody who has that flat affect as a default? Like they have difficulty feeling emotion. They have difficulty feeling emotion, whether it's great love or great hesitancy in committing a murder. You know, they're not built in a way that is necessarily safe. Well, that's a good point. But I think with the whole idea of being able to understand your partner or your family members, you know, you have to really look at them and be a pretty good judge of character on a daily basis and not, you know, just every couple of months or something like that. So you, I think it's important to look at whether or not they're becoming more

depressed. Are they talking about suicide? Are they talking about leaving the family? Are they talking about not wanting to be a part of the family again? So for me, there are a lot of puzzle pieces that are likely missing from this family that were never posted on Facebook that would give us more indications that he had started to check out. But with that checking out, was there any indication that with that decision to no longer be really an emotional part of the family, could that have meant that that anger towards Shanann was building and building and building? Because looking at Chris, you don't see an angry man, but that means he's internalized it. But what did she see on a daily basis? What did she see

that many of us would have just looked at and said, he's just having a bad day. And sometimes that's the case, but sometimes it's not the case. And those are the kinds of indicators that you want to look for. He, to me, everything seems to go downhill as soon as he meets this other woman, like his be to me based on her Facebook, based on the Netflix documentary, which is very worth your time on this whole show. It's called American Murder, The Family Next Door. He was kind of the beta in the relationship. I mean, she was the alpha and in control about most of the decisions they were making. And then he met this other woman and really started distancing himself and started, it seemed to me like a hatred started to brew for Shanon. The other woman's name is Nicole Kessinger. She worked like he did at this

petroleum company. We're showing a picture of her on the board now. And I mean, they met in June of 2018. It was August 13th, 2018, that he committed a triple murder, quadruple murder of his entire family. I mean, two months, Mary Ellen. How do we even start to understand that? Well, his girlfriend, the woman that he met and started to have the affair with, she was kind of the conduit. He was already in that emotional state. My sense is that he was already feeling incredible animosity towards Shanann, and she didn't realize it.

Then he meets this woman, and it could have been Susie Smith. It could have been, you know, Ann Jones. But he meets her, and she responds to him, and they begin to have that relationship. I don't think it was specifically her, but I think he was ready at that point. So I think it had been building up. That's interesting. So it could have been anyway, because we'll talk about her, but she's been very demonized by most people looking at this case.

And there are questions about whether she did something intentionally to encourage this? Well, I think I would be really careful as a profiler to credit her with any involvement in this case until I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to her and look at her background, look at her personality, look at the kinds of things that kind of really made her tick on a daily basis to see whether or not her personality lends itself to being co-opted like this. Because if it did, we have to look at it and say, they just met. They just met. She starts to have this relationship, which she's probably very excited about. She's even looking at wedding dresses. And then to jump to the conclusion that now she morphs into this co-conspirator to help him, you know, annihilate

his whole family is a little bit too much for me at this point. I think she got caught up in this, in the excitement of having this relationship. And it really is hard when something like this happens, um, um, just like Scott Peterson, not to say, oh, she had to know, or she had to encourage him. That is a big step to say that the partner encouraged, um, Chris in something like this. I'm not sure that that's there. And we know that in Scott Peterson, Amber Frye did not know anything about Lacey Peterson. She, she was truly caught off guard that he was married at all, had no idea. And as soon as she found out, she went to cops, work with them. And as part of the reason he is

now in prison, um, she was a good guy in the whole thing. This woman, I don't know. She definitely misled the cops. She, she tried to tell them, Oh, I didn't know he was married. And then they found Google searches by her. Um, you know, like does the mistress ever get the man? I mean, she knew she knew that he was married and downplayed her knowledge with the the same time, we see that lackluster, I'm having the third baby reaction. Shanon posted one of many videos of the daughters talking about their dad, Chris, on Facebook. And I mean, you could find any number of these, but every video between him and the children showed a loving interaction, what looked like a loving interaction. This is one that, you know, really pulls on the heartstrings because you know what's going to happen to this young girl. But here's Bella on June 14th, 2018,

four years old at the time, singing a song about how much she loved him. My daddy is a hero. He helps me grow up strong. He helps me snuggle too. He reads me books. He ties my shoes. If you're a hero, blue and blue, my daddy, daddy, I love you. Oh my God. I don't, this is why I'm so obsessed with this case. How does someone who we have to acknowledge is a human being who has seen that video and has created and loved that child for four years within two months of that, kill her, murder her and dump her in an oil tank. How, how? Well, a couple of things I think probably are going on. I think he likely didn't respond the way most people would have to that video.

The video probably added more pressure to him to feel that he needed to stay with the family when, in fact, he did not want to stay with the family. He may have even resented that video, seeing that because he was ready to go. He was ready to start life over again. He had new plans. And so he was emotionally separating himself from his family at a certain point. And when you do that, to be pulled back into the family, once you've decided I'm done, it's over. I'm just going to wrap it up. That can also contribute to the anger. And with somebody like with Chrisris who internalizes that anger it's really hard to measure it because usually people express their anger they yell they scream their face gets red

that doesn't seem to be the case with him but i'm also not sure that he wasn't looking at those videos thinking i'm separating enough with this i'm moving on with my life. I'm starting over again. So looking at your kids may be, may have been certainly a part of that. This is interesting because this is a no way to blame Shanon for anything that happened to her, but there is a chance it was an emotional manipulation by her. I mean, the affair started in June of 18. That's when this video was made and posted. And there was another video posted by Shanon right around this same time talking about, you know, how you're like, you're our rock. You're the great. And I did wonder, is it any accident? She's trying to build him up in this way right around this time. Hold on a second. We have it here. It's a Father's Day message. Okay. And in it, she's saying, Chris, we're so incredibly

blessed to have you. You do so much every day for us. You take such great care of us. You're the reason I was brave enough to agree to number three, from laundry to kids showers. You're incredible. And we are so lucky to have you in our life. Happy Father's Day. Now to me, Mary Ellen, this suggests this is over the top. You know, I, this is just over the, it makes it, it sound like she's trying to prove something or maybe manipulate a bit. Or maybe in her way, appeal to him. So for example, if you're in a relationship with someone and you try to have a conversation with them, let's fix things, let's make this better, and your partner shuts down on you. They won't talk or they'll just answer in

one or two words. So you can't have a conversation about it. They just emotionally turn off. When that happens, you have to have an outlet. You have to have a way you feel to be able to express to them how you feel so you can do something. And Shanann was probably feeling at that point she was losing Chris and he wasn't talking to her about it. So I could see where she would naturally put something up on Facebook and try to appeal to him that way. But you're right. It does seem over the top, but she may have been kind of feeling it at her last resort was to get his attention and, hey, please listen to how we're feeling about you. We don't want to lose you. For the next two months, she would ramp that up as any spouse might. You could tell that Shanon

felt him distancing himself from her. She wound up taking a six-week trip to North Carolina where they were from and brought the girls home to the grandparents and was getting frustrated that he wasn't even texting or calling to check in on his wife and two daughters. And she was pregnant. You know, weeks were going by without him seeming to give a damn about how they were doing or trying to reach out. And, you know, she would do what any spouse would do, which is like, thanks for all the calls. What's going on. Right. In retrospect, how do you think, like, would he have received that in the same way you're saying he might've received the, my daddy is my hero video, you know, like I don't need this pressure. I I'm trying to get out of this thing. I think that's more than likely how he responded. I'm done. Internally, mentally, when you have a case like this, at least in the cases that I've worked or been aware of,

there is a mental break where the person says, I'm done. They don't necessarily tell their partner, I'm done, but they're done. And they make the decision to move on. And again, they don't have to tell anybody. They just do. So any efforts to reel them back in will just upset them and make them angry, but their partner doesn't know it. So that failure to communicate is a huge problem when you're dealing with someone that throws up these emotional walls and internalizes how they feel and how they feel is they're getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And Shanann may not have seen that. She may not have been aware of that. That's his personality. That's not something that he just started once he married her. That's how he was. He just internalized his feelings. He has very flat affect. I think his ability to empathize with her is really very low. And even his ability to

empathize with his kids, it's really pretty low. And when you compound that with, he's made the decision now to move on with this new girlfriend, that's a serious issue. Again, if he keeps getting angrier and angrier and angrier. So we know that was happening. We know that because we'll get to this, but the letters he wrote some woman from prison where he talked in great detail about the night of the murders are absolutely horrifying. His coldness, his lack of empathy, his, the, the, how he described, especially the murder of his wife and how little he felt for her. All of that is building over this two month period for sure. And you're saying it would have been longer than that, but here's how he was

responding to her. It's such a juxtaposition. The Netflix documentary does a great job of laying out her texts to him and then his responses. And she is an understandable beginning a little bit more aggravated, but she's not forgive the term getting like bitchy. She's just like, Hey, you know, what's going on? And instead of being like, I've got something I need to discuss with you when you get back, or like, I'm not in a good place right now, which would be what an honest person might say. Here are some full screen quotes showing how he was responding to her. He writes, I didn't see these FaceTimes and I'm sorry, I missed those calls. I'm very, very, very sorry.

The FaceTime went through on my work phone. And then here's another one where he's trying to appease her saying, I know. And I will FaceTime Bella and Cece as soon as I wake up from now on. I'm extremely sorry. I feel like a jackass. Please be okay. So Marilyn, when you hear him talking like that, again, he seems like whipped. He seems like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry. I don't, I feel like most of us wouldn't look at that and be like, that guy's about to murder his family. No, I don't think most people would look at it like that. But I think what he's doing there, I think he's buying time. I think he's buying time so he doesn't raise her suspicions any higher.

And her suspicions are being raised. She starts to doubt what he's saying to her. She's starting to doubt whether or not he's being loyal to her. She's starting to doubt whether or not he has a girlfriend. And he's trying to delay that. But what we don't know is at what point in their relationship in the past, and this becomes important because past behavior can predict future behavior. At what point in the past had Chris become really angry with Shanann based on her responding to him this way? And what did he do? How did he retaliate against her? What had he done in the past

to demonstrate his anger? We know at a certain point, he started to spike her drinks with oxycodone. So had he done that in the past? And was she aware of that? So that behavior seems to will probably be lost with time. We won't know that. But again, this probably wasn't the first time that he behaved like this, but it was the first time he acted out in such a lethal way. Is the inability to express anger a warning sign?

In combination with other things, it could be a warning sign, especially if the retaliation in those circumstances is really excessive. That's what you have to look for. It's one thing to be shy. It's one thing to be quiet. It's one thing to be more introverted. But when you're angry and somebody is making you angry, how do you act out? What do you do? Do you go into their room and take all their clothes and throw them out the window?

Do you destroy something and then leave it for them to clean up? What do you do when you're really angry, but you're a person that internalizes thing and have little empathy for your partner with all, he has a cluster of traits that I think were very important, but that in resistance to sitting down, having a conversation, expressing himself, showing his anger, expressing his anger in a way that is proper and acceptable. What had he done in the past? And again, that's what we're missing here. We don't know how he did that in the past. Another thing I can't help but feel, and I realize people have affairs all the time, they don't wind up killing their spouse, but the affair was so dangerous here. It really was the spark that lit the fuse on this keg of

dynamite. And as you see him starting to pull away from Shanann and the girls, you see fire between Chris Watts and his affair partner, Nicole. You see she's texting him nude photos of herself. He seems to be becoming near obsessed with her, like he's got to see her more and more. As soon as Shanann goes out of town, he he's going out with Nicole. He's trying at first to cover up, um, you know, the bills cause they don't have any money on the bank statement, but then eventually he stops doing that. And Shanon is indeed watching the bank statement and seeing, you know, he said he went to this restaurant, but I can see the bill is double what it should be for one guy. And so she's getting on it. But like, to me, I can't help

feeling like you are playing with fire when you have an affair outside of your marriage. You don't know what you are starting inside of yourself or someone else or your spouse. Yeah, it certainly can be, it certainly can be dangerous and i'm my sense at this point is that chris is not happy with his life and he's not really blaming himself he's blaming shenan he may be feeling very trapped very backed up in the corner may feel like he has no control so there are are other feelings that are going on. It's just not his inability to express himself. So he's now engaged in this behavior

where it's almost escalating to the point where he's rubbing it in her face. He's not responding to her communications when she's back here on the East Coast trying to communicate with him. He is taking his girlfriend out. He's spending time. He's probably extremely distant from her when he is home. He's probably very short tempered with her. So, you know, again, those are things that become kind of that, that slow evolving snowball that is rolling forward. But a lot of it has to do with him thinking that the

only way out of this relationship, the only way to move on with his life is to annihilate his family. But that means you have to get to the point where you develop hate for them. And hate is not anger. Hate is a very cold-blooded emotion. And it takes a while to develop that. But to be able to carry out something so cold-blooded and so heartless, you have to blame people for what they've done to you, right or wrong. You have to blame them. And then your only way out of your life is to destroy them. Whose mind goes to murder? You know, there's good old-fashioned divorce. Yeah, there's good old-fashioned divorce. And we see it in so many cases where people will not take that logical step to file for divorce,

get custody of the children, do it in a very pro-social way. And why people choose to behave like this is just astounding to think that this would be a way out. And to think like that also makes me think that, you know, your sense of, you know, what is pro-social versus what's anti-social has to be a little flawed as well. You can't get away with something like this. Who's the first person you look at when a partner is murdered?

Who's the first person you look at when young children are murdered? You look at when a partner is murdered? Who's the first person you look at when young children are murdered? You look at the partner, the surviving partner. So there's no even good sense in committing a crime like this. So it really has to do with poor judgment. He's so dumb. We now know, thanks to, again, these letters that he wrote, he was planning this crime. It was not spur of the moment, at least so he would later claim. So who he's not a complete moron. Maybe he is. Maybe I'm overestimating his intelligence.

But who that's planning to annihilate their family doesn't come up with a sound plan to explain where they went. You know, who leaves like the wife's purse sitting there and the keys sitting there and her shoes sitting there and her car sitting there and just wants people to believe she just walked away with their two young daughters while she was pregnant. Shoeless, purseless, keyless, phoneless. Like it was so dumb. It was so predictable that he would get caught. Well, the other thing that I thought he did, in addition to everything that you've said, to leave those things behind and knowing that his wife would never leave the house without her cell phone, that seemed to be tied to her side. When he gave that TV interview where he stood there with the emotion that he did have, and he had a smirk on his face, and he talked about wanting to see his children again. And I looked at that, when I watched it

the first time, it was pretty clear, at least to me, this man is responsible for having murdered his entire family. The moment I saw that, again, I thought of Peterson. And when he gave his interview right after his wife went missing. But Chris talked about wanting to see his kids and his wife again. He didn't say he wanted them back. He said, I want to see them. So he was very guarded in what he said. But that was one of the stupidest things that he could have done was to attempt to do that TV interview and expect to have people believe him. So I don't think this person was very sophisticated when it came to criminal behavior. And I think that accounts for it. Was there also some narcissism there where he's smarter than

everybody else? Yeah, that could have been there too. But I think that there is just a naivete about thinking that he could get away with this. I mean, I'm going to ask you the same when we get to the polygraph. Like, who that knows he's done this sits willingly for a polygraph and an interview with police? Hello? You can always say, I'm going to have a lawyer. I don't feel comfortable. He didn't, and it's what led to his confession. Here is a bit of that television interview to which you just referred.

I left work early that morning, like 5.15, 5.30, so she barely got into bed pretty much. This might be a tough question, but did you guys get into an argument before? It wasn't like an argument. We had an emotional conversation, but I'll leave it at that. But I just want them back i just i just want them to come back and if if they're not safe right now that's what's that's what's tearing me apart because if they are safe they're coming back but if they're not this this

this has got to stop like somebody has to come forward shenan bella celeste if you're out there just just come back like if somebody has her just please bring her back i need to see everybody i need to see everybody again this house is not complete with without anybody here please bring her back oh my god mary i'm like it's all himself, first of all. If you were actually missing your spouse and your children, I think you'd say, I am so terribly worried. Please, where are you? I'll do anything to find you. This is how you can reach me. This is where we are. Whatever. You'd plead to the kidnapper. He's like, if they're not okay, this needs to end. I mean, this has been a lot for me, you know, crazy.

Yeah. And I, and I think with, with a number of these family annihilators, it really is very selfish. Their approach to what happened, their description of what happened, their, their amount of commitment, their investment of emotion and explaining what happened. And you see that in his interviews with the detectives. It doesn't make a strong emotional investment in the interviews. And I've done hundreds of interviews with people, some guilty, some not guilty. But you see generally a tremendous amount of emotion. With him, it's just very flat. You don't see it. Again, and I think it's all about him. And again, I think that's very consistent with someone who does annihilate their entire family.

It's the, meanwhile, the, the neighbors knew enough and, and Shanann's friends knew enough about him to suspect him immediately that God bless her friend, Shanann's friend, another Nicole. This one was Nicole Atkinson, who was all over her disappearance like white on rice. I mean, she was like, she's pregnant. She has a doctor's appointment today. We were just on a business trip. I dropped her off here at 2 a.m. She should be here. She was going to the doctor. She's not answering her phone. That's not like her. And she's the one who called 9-1-1 just here's a flavor of that it's nicole uh calling 9-1-1 stop for all county communications this is stacy hi stacy my name is nicole and i'm calling because i'm concerned about um a friend of mine um i dropped her off at her house at two in the morning last night because we were out of town

together and we were on the way back from the airport. And she's pregnant. And I haven't been able to get a hold of her this morning. And I've gone to her house and her car is there and stuff like that. But she won't answer the door. She won't answer phone calls. She won't answer text messages. And I'm just really, really concerned.

And she had a doctor's appointment this morning and she didn't go to it. And I'm just I don't know what to do. I've called him and talked to him. And he said that she went on a play date with her other two daughters. But like if she went on a play date, they're both in car seats. Why would she not take a car? So good. As somebody who's devoted her life to law enforcement, Marielene, just what's the lesson there for concerned friends, concerned family members? Because this woman did not wait two seconds. Oh, absolutely. When you suspect that there's something going on or that you're really worried because there's not that typical pattern that you expected, somebody doesn't show up, somebody doesn't go into an appointment, don't worry about embarrassing yourself or bothering the police. Call. Report it.

Make sure people know about it. Check with others. Find out. Don't just let it go and say, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure that she'll show up somehow, someplace. Don't do that. Be very proactive, which is what happened here. And I think that made an incredible difference in how

this case was ultimately resolved and how quickly it was resolved. And it was good too, I have to say for Shanon to have shared her concerns about her marriage with, you know, a couple of close friends because they then knew when she went missing, we think we know what's going on here. I mean, I recognize out of respect for your marriage, you're not running around to everybody saying, we have this argument, we have that argument. But this was getting to a point where Shanon was getting really worried. And I mean, there's a lesson there too. Do confide in at least a friend or two. I think that was very impressive here that a friend realized pretty much right away something was wrong.

That suggests to me that the friends did not see Chris the same way that Shanann did. And it would have been interesting if this did go to trial, what would this friend have testified to? What had she seen? What were her instincts? What had she overheard? Were there examples of domestic violence in the household? And I suspect that there were. They may have been a little bit subdued,

but I suspect that there was domestic violence. And so these friends may have been telling Shanann, leave him. There's something wrong with this guy. You need to get away from him. But to make a phone call that quickly and to be that concern, that suggests that they knew more than what it would appear by just kind of living across the street. They were more aware of the dynamics of that relationship. Definitely. And we'll talk about the actual murder in a second. But the other neighbor, while we're on the subject of the neighbors and the friends,

the other neighbor, while we're on the subject of the neighbors and the friends, the other neighbor was great. He had a camera out in front of his house for security purposes, and he pulled up the footage. And this is all from the police body cam. We can see he's like he had his truck in front of his house this morning at 5 a.m. And then and Chris is Chris Watts is in there. He's in the guy's house. And then as soon as Chris Watts walks out, the neighbor's like, that's not normal. He's not a talker.

What's happening? We have a little bit of that again from Netflix. Here it is. Uh, six. So unless they pull it right here, but I would have caught her walking out. Diesel. Yeah, I thought. Nothing.

Nothing for the rest of the day. No, that's it. You just want to go talk to him. I'm going to get his info real quick. He's not acting right. No. He's not acting right. He's never rocking back as far. He said he's not acting right. He's never rocked back and forth.

He said he's not acting right. He's rocking back and forth. He's not acting right. And that guy, as he's describing what his cameras may or may not have picked up on, there he's not talking about Chris Watts' truck pulling out. You can see Chris Watts, like, the hands are on the head. Like, you can tell he's stressed out. I don't think he realized the neighbor has cameras. Well, he probably wasn't aware of that, but you know what it also tells me is that these neighbors

were suspicious of Chris before that morning. They, when they saw that behavior, they interpreted it correctly, but they were suspicious of him before. So my question would be, if I were interviewing them, why were you suspicious of him? Why were you so able to zero in on that behavior and interpret it correctly? What did you know beforehand that would be helpful to understand how this relationship unraveled? Good point. Because, you know, in a lot of these cases, you see the neighbor saying, no, I could never have seen him doing this. These neighbors and friends were like, it's the husband. This isn't normal. They did right away. Right. Yeah. So let's talk about the crime.

It's the reason why this case became such a national story and haunts us still. She comes home from the business trip two in the morning, two plus between two and three. She had told her friends that she was on the business trip with, I'm going to talk to him about what I saw on the receipts for the credit card and my fear that he's having an affair. She had already been texting about how he wouldn't touch her. He knew she wanted sex and he didn't give it to her and it's not normal. And, um, she felt him distancing from her. So she shows up and she said, uh, according to that friend who had called 911, Nicole Atkinson, she, she had given Shanann a ride to her home and she said that, that Shanann had planned on, um, giving a speech. I guess one of the friends said Shanann had read me or sent me a draft of a speech she

planned to give to Chris when she arrived saying some to this effect, I try to fix things and make them better. This is making me crazy. I need you to give just a little bit of what I did or didn't do. So I'm not going crazy in my head to figure it out. I know I can't fix this by myself. We are going to have to work together. Chris would later tell investigators that she got home around one 48 in the morning and that she Shanann initiated sex and that then they went to bed. Um, he claimed that then he murdered her. He claimed that initially that, um, he killed her and then killed the daughters. And then he would shift the story as time went on. Um, no, I'm sorry. Let me correct that. He initially claimed that he killed her because

she killed the daughters. That was his first confession. We have it on tape. The police were interrogating him. And, um, before, let me set it up like this before they got him to confess, they sat down with a polygraph and the polygraph operator, Mary Ellen, she was, I thought she was amazing. She's super cash. You know, like we're just going to ask you a few questions. You know, everybody does these polygraphs and like, you know, whatever. And he doesn't actually confess here, but this sets the table for the confession. Here's a bit of that. And obviously, I mean, I hope that, you know, if you did have something to do with their disappearance, um, it would be really

stupid for you to come in and take a polygraph today. Right? Like, it would be really dumb. Like, you should not be here right now sitting in this chair if you had anything to do with Shanann and the little girl's disappearance. Okay? Okay. So he sits for the polygraph. They ask him all the questions.

He denies having anything to do with it. And then they come back to him, she and a male colleague, and they start really pressing him. Like he didn't tell the truth. We know the truth. And then they bring in his dad. His dad is the one who gets the confession out of him. And here is a bit of that. She smothered him, he asked. He choked them. Chris, I didn't, I didn't hear anything. They came back up and they were gone.

I don't know why you, what else to say. I freaked out. I freaked out and had to do the same blanking thing. Those are my kids. So what do you make of how the police handled the interrogation, I freaked out and had to do the same blanking thing. Those are my kids. So what do you make of how the police handled the interrogation, the polygraph, and then bringing the dad in? I thought it was impressive. And just to start off with the woman interrogator, she says something very effective.

She said, if you had anything to do with this, you shouldn't be sitting here talking to me. In other words, only sit here and talk to me if you're innocent, giving him an out. And she did that purposely. So I think the way that she did that and also did it in a kind of a really pretty low key, easygoing way, I thought that was really very effective. And during the polygraph, again, I think, you know, you get more out of trying to build rapport with people and not yelling and screaming at them. So I thought that they did really a good job, an excellent job, as a matter of fact. And I was amazed when I saw them bring in the father. This shows me that they were very flexible to try whatever they had to try to get to the truth. You typically would not bring in a parent or a spouse into an interview, just wouldn't do that unless you felt

it was completely necessary. So they probably briefed the father. They probably explained what they had in terms of evidence, explained what they have in terms of the facts of the case. And they brought him in after they went through the briefing of the father. And that worked extremely well. And the father did an extraordinary job of showing his son love and care, putting his arm around him and getting him to explain what happened, even though it wasn't the truth the first time around. But still still it got

the ball rolling. So that says a lot about the investigators and how they operated that interview. I can't help but look at that and say, that seems like a loving dad. Seems like a responsible man who would go in there and do that. How does a man like that have a son like that? I know he seemed very kind and very loving. But from some of the information that I read, I don't know that he had that kind of relationship with his daughter-in-law. But nonetheless, you cannot like your in-laws, but you still don't kill them. But I think the father fulfilled the fatherly role. He wanted to

emphasize with his son how important it was that he tell the truth. You could see the father knew just what the repercussions were going to be. And he played the role of the father extremely well. He didn't play the role of an attorney. He didn't play the role of a negotiator. He went in there because he cared about his son. It doesn't mean that his son is in the exact likeness of him. It just means that he did his job really well. Parents that have kids that act in a very violent way, in a very brutal way, they have a difficult time seeing it. They have a difficult time understanding how the heck did you get to be like that? Can any of us raise a killer?

Do you know if you're raising a killer? Well, number one, I think it's possible for families and parents to raise someone that can ultimately act out in a way that ends in somebody else being murdered. But you have to look at what were the circumstances of the murder. And in this case, very cold blooded. In this case, it was planned. In this case, it involved the biological children. In this case, it involved the biological children. In this case, it involved a triple murder. And the spouse, Shanann, Celeste, Bella, were treated like objects. That's very different than someone that murders in a really impulsive way or someone that murders because they've had too much to drink.

So in this case, I'm sure the family is really struggling with what the heck happened here. How did this, how did this happen? Do you think there'd be signs, Marilyn, doing what you do? Do you think if we got that dad on camera and he was really honest about raising Chris Watts, he'd have stories of like, whether it's animal torture or lack of empathy, you know, are there usually? There are red flags along the way, but I'll tell you this, and I've seen it over the last, I don't know, 40 years, whatever, but it's so difficult for family members to look at a loved one and say, there's a problem. You have a problem how you get along with people, how you interact with people, the rage that you show or that you don't show, but it's there. We know it's there. It's so

difficult for family members to see that. And really, that's part of the reason that we have problems when we put out the warning behaviors for these mass shooters. The warning behaviors are really designed for the family to see. And then once you analyze one of these cases, the family said, well, I didn't see anything. So I've just seen this and heard this over and over again. When you love someone, you just don't see what's there. Oftentimes that can be dangerous. As you pointed out, even if you're the wife versus the neighbor versus the friend, you know, it could be go beyond that sort of blindness. The parents in this person who's a family annihilator

benefits from that blindness from the people who love him most. Um, he confessed there. He tried to blame the murder of the children on Shanann. That wasn't true. He later told the truth that he killed all three of them, including his unborn son, which makes it four. And later he would write in a handwritten letter from prison to a the daughters before he killed Shanann. Now, I don't know what to believe. I don't know whether this is true, the order in which he did the murders, but this is what he wrote. I went to Bella's room, then Cece's room. Bella was the older, Cece was the younger, and used a pillow from their bed. That's why the cause of death was smothering. After I left Cece's room, then I climbed back in bed with Shanann and our argument ensued. He goes on, um, he said he told Shanann about his affair with that woman, Nicole, and said that their marriage wouldn't last. That Shanann replied,

Chris would not see the kids again. And then he strangled her to death. He then wrote after Shanann had passed, Bella and Cece woke back up, woke back up. I'm not sure how they woke back up, but they did. Bella, who was four, came in and asked what was wrong with mom. And Chris said he then wrapped Shanann in a blanket, carried her to the truck, put the two daughters in the back seat and drove to the oil site where he worked, where the oil tanks were. Before we get to that stage, there's so much in here. You won't see the kids again. Chris Watts wouldn't have cared about that. He didn't want to see the kids again. I'm not sure why he's even offering that detail.

But why is he saying he tried to smother the girls before he killed Shanann and then later he will change the story? I think. Actually, I'm not sure. Later, the story is simply, I smothered them at the oil site. Right. Well, if we're to assume that what he wrote in the letter to a female pen pal is true,

then he had to have a motive for wanting his two baby girls killed first and that may have been so they didn't interrupt him when he was killing shenan if we are to assume then however on the other hand that he said that for other reasons that and they weren't true, but he wanted to impress this pen pal, then that would be very telling about some serious issues with his personality. My sense is that may have been true, that he went in and attempted to murder the two girls first. That was the first time he attempted murder. He was not successful. And that the reason may have been because he knew it was going to be more difficult to kill his wife. She could make noise. She could scream. She could fight him. And he did not want the baby girls to come in and interrupt

him because then it would be difficult to carry out the murder of Shanann. My sense is that's probably, if that's true, that's probably the sequence of events and the reason that he would have done that. He didn't do it successfully. And so when he gets to the site where he has already buried his wife, now he's got to look into the eyes of his daughters and kill them as they sit in the truck, which is almost worse than killing them while they're semi-asleep. Yeah, it is worse. If you can get worse, it is worse. This is a viewer warning. I mean, this is genuinely disturbing. So I want to let the viewers know this is dark, dark, dark stuff I'm about to read. In more letters to this Cato, he reverses his claim to the police earlier that the murders were spontaneous. He writes, August 12th, when I finished putting the girls to bed,

I walked away and said, that's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies in. I knew what was going to happen the day before, and I did nothing to stop it. I mean, what a strange phrasing. I did nothing to stop it, as though he knew it was somebody else what was going to happen the day before and I did nothing to stop it. I mean, what a strange phrasing. I did nothing to stop it as though he knew it was somebody else who was going to do it. Later, he said of Shanann, isn't it weird how I look back and what I remember so much is her face getting all black with streaks of mascara, all the weeks of me thinking about killing her. And now I was faced with it. I knew if I took my hands off of her, she would still keep me from Nikki. They asked me why she couldn't fight back. It's because she couldn't fight back.

Her eyes filled with blood as she looked at me and she died. I knew she was gone when she relieved herself. And then he goes on to talk about the daughters, which we can talk about in a second, but that this poor woman, completely helpless, several months pregnant, dying on her bed at the hands of the man she loved and was building a family with. And he can talk about all I, all I really, isn't it so weird? All I remember is the streaks of mascara, the coldness, the inhumanity. Yeah, that's what I mean. There's just a cold-blooded aspect from beginning to end about all of this and what he remembers about what her face looked like, what he remembers about the blood in her eyes. That's not somebody that truly empathized with her, that loved her. That's really someone that had great hatred and disdain for her. So the hatred, and again, when you see hatred in a case,

it takes you down a different path because there's only two things you can do when you hate another human being. And hatred takes time to develop. The only two things that you can do is you can destroy them or you can remove yourself completely from them. Hatred gives you very few options if that's how you feel about another human being. And what he's describing is almost, he's describing someone that's not human, but it's his wife. It's the mother of his children. And yet he's describing her as someone that's almost

a monster. Yes. Cause he goes on in this letter, he dumped his wife's body in a shallow grave that he dug at the oil site. Um, and he writes, I, I, he says, when I dug the hole, it seemed a lot deeper than it was. As I pulled on the sheet, she rolled out and into the hole. I think she had given birth. She landed face down. I remember being so angry with her that I was not going to change how she landed. This is the same guy who wrote those texts a few weeks earlier. I'm so, so, so, so, so sorry.

You know, the sweet, compliant, docile Chris. This is that guy who loathed her so much. He murdered her. He couldn't be bothered to flip her right side up and talked about his dead baby as if it was a absolute nothing, a piece of trash. And basically his words really defy him. That's exactly what it was. And he hated her, meaning Shanann, so much that he wouldn't lean over into the grave he dug for her and turn her over. And he comments that he thinks that she gave birth. This is he's speaking about somebody that's a non-human object. He's not. And that non-human perception of somebody is consistent with hatred. So, again, we see the same very cold blooded features as he's reliving having putting her in the grave and and seeing the grave and seeing the fact that she's rolled over

and she's probably given birth already. And then he covers her up and walks away. It really doesn't get any more hateful than that. And that really goes to that lack of feeling and emotion and that ability to empathize. It's just not there. It's just not there at all. How is this person walking amongst us in society and not, and people aren't knowing he's this man. How, how does this person go to the CVS and collect his prescription from the pharmacist or interact with the mailman or have any friendly relations in, in life? You know, how is it not that like we have a sea of people coming forward to say he's a psychopath and we all knew, like, we all said, this guy's going to snap. He's a bad guy. That's not what happened. No, it's not what happened. He did not snap. And I

don't think that this man meets the features of psychopathy. They're not there. I didn't think that they were there at the time because that, but it doesn't mean that he can't have this cold blooded side to him where he's made the decision that this woman is ruining his life. And the only way to regain control is to kill her and to kill the two babies. So he's able to reconcile that this is what he has to do. But I think walking around in life and going to the store and interacting with people, he's just not putting out a lot of emotion. People that will describe him will say, yeah, he was a nice guy, didn't know him very well. He kept him himself. He was kind of quiet. And that's by design. That's by purpose. But when you're in a really intimate

relationship with someone like that, it becomes really important, no matter who they are, to realize how do they handle what's going on in everyday life? Do they engage in domestic violence? Do they engage in acting out in violent ways or really passive aggressive ways? It really becomes important to try to understand that and to measure that. The murder of the daughters is almost unspeakable. I don't know that we can ever understand it. That's what I'm trying to do. That's my futile mission, to understand. He says in the letter that his daughters walked in on him as he was wrapping Shanann in a bed sheet, that he drove to the oil site where he buried Shanann, and it was there that he smothered C.C. first, the little girl, and then he went for Bella, the four-year-old. Forgive me, this is so dark. Again, an audience warning. He writes, little quiet Bella had a will to live. Out of all three, Bella is the only one that put up a fight.

I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life saying, Daddy, no. She knew what I was doing to her. She may not have understood death, but she knew I was killing her. I can't reconcile the fact that there are people like this on this earth sharing space with me, my family, my audience, you. I can't reconcile it. I can understand Charles Manson. I can understand Jeffrey Dahmer. I see them.

I say, lunatic. Got it. I would notice to your clear. This guy was kind of a good-looking guy. He had a decent job. He had a beautiful family. He didn't have some history that we knew of hurting people or animals. How can this monster, monster, how can I spot the next one? I guess is what I'm asking you, Mary Ellen. Like what good can come from this that can prevent this? I can't live without an answer.

Let me say it this way. We cannot look at somebody and just tell that they are going to be dangerous. We just can't do it. You can see people on the street that are scary looking, but unwashed hair or frumpy clothes living on a homeless lifestyle does not correlate to being violent. It just doesn't. But we grow up thinking that we can look at someone and we can just tell they're going to be dangerous. If someone has a good job, if they go to church, if they like animals, if they have children, those are all features that we believe make them safe, make them harmless. That couldn't

be further from the truth. The whole idea of the potential for dangerousness comes from within their personalities. And if they get trapped or feel they get trapped or feel angry and begin to develop hatred, that's all done internally. But, and it depends on the right set of circumstances. So let's go back with Chris Watts. If Chris Watts' life was based on a different set of circumstances. He may never have murdered anybody. He's not a serial killer. The right set of circumstances came together.

And he decided that this was the only way that he could deal with it. And the only way was to, in my opinion, he was blaming Shanann for a life in which he was miserable. But if those circumstances didn't exist, if he had never gotten married and lived alone somewhere, I don't think he would go on to commit murder. The question about the daughters is, of course, why? You know, we understand sort of why the wife, you know, yes, divorce, but spouses kill their other spouse sometimes. Why, why the daughters? The only one that's really going to know that is Chris. And wouldn't you love to have the opportunity to ask him and with the hope that he would be candid and truthful with you?

So the only thing that we say in cases like this is we have to look at the behavior. These little girls were not a threat to him. These little girls were not going to be dangerous, but he killed them anyway. And he killed them by looking in their eyes and smothering them. And then that's not even enough. Then he takes them into these oil containers and then drops them in. He basically wants to destroy them as though they never existed. So think about that. He wanted them as though they never existed. That tells me, if I were talking to him, Chris, you never wanted to be a dad. You never wanted those responsibilities.

You didn't want a life like the one that you had. And is it true that you felt once you could get rid of every memory of those girls and who they were, you could get back some control of a life that you wanted? That may be the approach I would take with him because he was trying to destroy them physically, take their life away. And that's the way to do it. That's what he did. Yeah. That's interesting. So the discarding, the way in which he discarded the daughter's bodies, which is one of the most gruesome parts of the story, dropping them in these neighboring oil tanks, talking about how he could hear the splash when the bodies hit. And that told him how much oil was in each tank, not even together, not even in the same

tank, shoved them through this little hole. I mean, she's shoving his dead daughters. It just shows you the level of callousness. This is not, I snapped. Um, you know, I found out my wife was having an affair and I shot her. Not excusing that, obviously this is something, this is just a whole nother level of evil and anger. And you're saying same as we, we interviewed another great, great expert who is also saying he does, he, he doesn't look like a psychopath. And that's what's most terrifying. So it's hatred, it's loathing of the life that you're in, and we may not have a bunch of red flags other than

maybe he doesn't express his anger, maybe he's got controlling behaviors, possibly domestic violence that you may or may not know about. God, that's not much to go on. No, not as observers from the outside looking in. But if Shanann were here with us today, we'd certainly want to ask her questions about some of that behavior that kind of evolved over the years that they were married, it seems pretty clear to me that he saw Shanann as the enemy. She was the cause for his being miserable. She was the cause for his feeling trapped. She was the cause for how he viewed life. Is it true? Well, of course

not. I mean, he's an adult male, but the way he viewed it is, is I think that that component, you know, had to be there. And those children were anchors around his neck in order to move forward. He had to start over again. I remember you, I had cases where, um, the, the spouse would take the other spouse up to, um,, and then they would push the spouse over. And those were really hard cases to really investigate. But as you begin to unravel that, and it was different from this, but still some of the components are the same. As you begin to unravel it, you see the same kind of emotional changing. They started to live their life over again. They started a new life. They no longer were married to this person. They no longer were in a relationship. So mentally,

they checked out months before they murdered their spouse. And so the murder was almost anticlimactic because they needed to get rid of the person that made their life miserable. They needed to be gone, completely, absolutely gone, not divorced, not live in another city. They needed to be gone. his life. He was given five life sentences. And even the judge, Marcelo Copcow, was absolutely horrified by the circumstances of this case. I mean, I know a lot of judges, been in front of a lot of judges over the course of my life. It's very rare that they offer this strong a personal opinion on a case. But here's just a little bit of the judge during the sentencing hearing, November 19th, 2018. I've been a judicial officer now for starting my 17th year. And I could objectively say that this is perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime that I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen.

And nothing less than a maximum sentence would be appropriate. And anything less than the maximum sentence would depreciate the seriousness of this offense. You know, usually we have the death penalty in part because we want to deter, you know, we want to punish. We also want to deter other criminals. Does does this sentence fit the crime and do you think it effectively deters the next Chris Watts? In my opinion, it fits the crime. Do I think it will deter someone else from doing this again? No, I don't. I don't see that happening. But in a case like this, I always think about that when a person gets a sentence like this, sitting in prison, you're a young man still, You are in prison for the rest of your life. You're never going anywhere. I mean, that is a profoundly negative, profoundly impactful sentence. the incredible damage that he did. But will somebody else stop and think about Chris Watts

if the right set of circumstances exists for them tomorrow? Will they think about Chris Watts and say to themselves, I better not do this? And I would say to you, I don't think so. That's not how the criminal mind works. The line in his letter to the pen pal that I just read saying, I knew if I took my hands off of her, she would still keep me from Nikki. She would keep me from Nikki. He needed to be with the affair partner. He felt it on some sort of primal level. Reminded me of the last line of the movie presumed innocent spoiler alert. If you haven't seen presumed innocent or read the Scott Terrell book tune out now, because it's a great, great, great, powerful last line there, the circumstances of whom were murdered, whom were different. But he,

he's, he said the following. This is a husband writing about his affair. With all deliberation and intent, I reached for Carolyn. I cannot pretend it was an accident. I reached for Carolyn and set off that insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another. Set off that insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another. I'm not saying you have an affair and you're going to become a murderer, but as I said earlier, you are playing with radioactive materials. So many cases where one of the spousal partners has an affair ultimately lead to some sort of marital violence, including murder. I mean, how many times have you seen it, Mary Ellen? A lot. A lot. motion that exists in a relationship, a motion that if you compound it with the person has

weapons in the house, the person has children in the house, now you've got an incredibly explosive situation, incredibly explosive. And, you know, depending on the personalities of the people involved, it can become exponentially explosive. What happens to the people who were friends with Shanann? I mean, I feel like we know what happens to her family members. They try to move on with their lives. I don't know how you do it as the mother, as the brother. The dad was at the sentencing hearing with heartfelt remarks as well. He was so angry, called Chris Watts a monster. But what about the other victims? you know, like the best friend, Nicole, who called 911? What happens to them? I would say this, they'll never have closure.

The C word does not work in a crime of violence. You just never have closure. I would say there's going to be a certain level of guilt that exists for the rest of their life. They would go through the stages of death and dying. And that's pointed out beautifully by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross years ago, who wrote about the stages of death and dying. And I think they wake up some mornings feeling very guilty. Why didn't I do more? Then the next morning, it's sadness. And then the next morning, it's anger. Eventually, if you can get to the level of acceptance, that's where you want to be. But I find most people don't get there. Most people struggle with should they have done more? Could they have done more? Could they have stopped it? And family members go through similar feelings

of just being on that roller coaster where every day it's different. And Dr. Ross says we need to get to the level of acceptance. But I can tell you in a case like this, there's no one that will get to the level of acceptance of what happened. You are someone who has worked on so many of these big murder cases from the Zodiac killer, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. We're involved in the Elizabeth Smart, the Natalie Holloway disappearances. I mean, you've dealt with evil professionally your entire life. So how do you walk the streets? How do you laugh at silly jokes? How are we as humans to compartmentalize this into the right box so that we can go have dinner with our families tonight and laugh and be joyful and understand how to

categorize evil? The way that I was really trained to do it, I'm actually a mental health counselor by training. But going through the FBI, we learned to become, we had to become desensitized because of what we saw. You just couldn't do your job. And I hear people talk about doctors and nurses that work in emergency rooms. And I think to myself, oh my God, how do they do that? They see people come in, they have to sew limbs back on. And I don't know how they do that. I found the perfect job because it lets me get into the criminal mind and explore and understand behavior. I find it not upsetting, but very challenging. And I think that perspective has really helped tremendously. If this bothered me, if this was something that hung on to me seven days a week, 24 hours a day,

I can tell you that I could not do it. I just couldn't. And I also think the way that I was raised has been really helpful. We were raised in a family that having a really solid, good sense of humor and pulling away from things, knowing when the time was right to pull away from things has been really helpful. But I'm just really challenged. I'll think tonight about Chris Watts. I'll think about, boy, I would love to talk to him someday. I'll think about more reasons that this happened because I'm always in searching for why people behave the way that they do, especially in a case like this. You're not walking around thinking potential killer. He's there's another like, you know, I think I'm going to get eaten by a shark every time I go in the ocean because I'm in news. And so this is just we know we cover these stories. You're not thinking that way when

you're just walking down the street. No, I'm not. And I'll tell you why. Because when you look at somebody, I just know you could be wearing a beautiful suit and leather shoes and a leather briefcase. And the thoughts that are going in your head on in somebody's head could be as frightening as anything in the world. We cannot tell just by looking at someone that they're not going to hurt us. So I watch behavior. I can sit for hours and just watch human behavior in a restaurant or in a train station. That's what gets me interested. It's not how they look. It's how they behave. Do you think if I gave you 10 people and I let you watch them

each for two hours in a train station, in a restaurant, whatever the setting were, do you think you'd be able to say these are the top two candidates for crime, for murder? No, I don't think I could do that. I would probably be able to tell you more about their personality, but I think I would need more opportunities to see them in different contexts and see how they interact with people they didn't know, strangers, and then people that they were in their close circle. Profilers get the kind of the rap that we can look at people, know what's going on in their head,

but we have to study their patterns of behavior over a lifetime. So two hours wouldn't be enough time. Do you have any kids you marry? I don't know if you reveal that publicly, but I'm just wondering, what do you tell your kids or your nieces or your friends, kids like to protect themselves? It's really funny because I have nieces and nephews and they don't really want to know a lot about what I know. And so they don't ask me questions and I don't force my information on them. My students ask me a lot of questions. So I'm very sensitive about letting people know as much as they want to know. Every once in a while, it gets the better of me.

And if somebody I know is about to engage in behavior that I think is really risky, I'll tell them. But I understand, too, that they probably won really risky, I'll tell them. But I understand too, that they probably won't listen and they'll go forward and have to see for themselves what will happen. I'm like only extroverts in my life from now on. If you're not a talker, if you can't express anger, you're out, you're out of here. You got to laugh, right? Because it's just, this stuff is so dark, but I'm always looking for the lessons, you know, just whatever lessons we can find to make our society a little safer,

our kids a little safer. And just to wrestle with the basic question of good versus evil, and when evil's in front of you, how do you spot it? And you don't just see it the first time. And extroverts tend to be probably, extroversion is a trait of psychopathy. So that's not good either. So you really, you really do have to look at people's behavior and see how they treat other people see how they they happen to react when're angry, when they're stressed out. What do they do? You really have to understand the behavior. And that's just not one sit down session. That's just not one time where you go out to dinner. If you're going to let somebody into your home, if you're going to let somebody into your comfort zone, you really have to do an analysis of their behavior over time and place and distance and with different people. And you know what else? I will say this rounding back to the affair. If you think your partner's

having an affair, I'm sorry, but especially if you're the wife and it's a man cheating on you, be careful. Be careful about the confrontation. Be careful in general. The odds are he's not feeling all warm and fuzzy toward you. There could be hatred, as Mary Ellen points out, there could be hatred for you growing. It might not just be an innocent dalliance. Like you're, you're in a danger zone there. Well, and I think the research is certainly going to back you up on that because, um, the time for a spouse to be really at highest risk is oftentimes when they say to a cheating spouse, I'm leaving, you're not going to see the kids again. That can really ignite an already incendiary situation. So understand domestic violence. That is really critical. Be aware that you could unknowingly incite a worse situation.

So you're absolutely correct. Take precautions. You can deliver news like that in the presence of a loved one, someone who could protect you, can have your exit plan and should have your exit plan all laid out. There are these small but meaningful things that we can do just in case just in case, just in case Mary Ellen O'Toole, it's always fascinating talking to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being one of the good guys and helping put guys like this behind bars and helping us figure out what makes them tick so we can hopefully prevent

the next one. So good to talk to you again. Thank you for having me very much. All the best to you. Thanks for joining us today. Our hot crime summer week continues tomorrow with an in-depth look into the having me very much. All the best to you. Thanks for joining us today. Our Hot Crime Summer Week continues tomorrow with an in-depth look into the Jodi Arias case with my pal, Mark Eichlarsch. We'll talk to you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.