True Crime Campfire - Scorched Earth: Chris Watts and the Family Annihilator

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

In the summer of 2018, the whole country was riveted to the story of a young, pregnant mom named Shan’ann Watts. Shan’ann and her two little daughters, Bella and Cece, went missing from their comfortable Colorado home one morning. And as the story unfolded, it became increasingly obvious that Shan’ann’s husband Chris was responsible for their disappearance. As bad as we all thought it might be at the time, we had no idea how bad it really was. Turned out, Chris had murdered his wife and two daughters, in pretty much the most appalling way imaginable. The Chris Watts case has been a national obsession ever since, but Chris is by no means the only example of this kind of horror. There have been many others, and sadly, there will probably be many more. And when we start to unravel these cases, a chilling pattern begins to emerge. What could possibly motivate a person to murder their whole family? Sources:https://www.insider.com/chris-watts-murder-timeline-2018-12https://www.biography.com/news/chris-watts-wife-daughters-murder-mistress-confession-timelineLive Abuse Free, Chris Watts playlist (multiple videos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyndzKXJdMA&list=PLbXDQtH_u9kxjZVPzIFFbmyx5YP3FlSGpInvestigation Discovery's "Family Man, Family Murderer," documentary about the Watts caseOne Last Kiss by Michael W. CuneoInvestigation Discovery's "American Monster," Episode "Live By the Sword"https://www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/characteristics-of-family-killers-revealed-by-first-classification-studyhttps://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/22/christopher-foster-news-crimehttps://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/neil-entwistle-sex-lies-how-2480709British television show "Faking It: Tears of a Crime," Episode "Neil Entwistle"True Story by Michael Finkelhttps://www.laurarichards.co.uk/what-are-the-signs-of-coercive-control/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In the summer of 2018, the whole country was riveted to the story of a young pregnant mom named Shanan Watts. Shanan and her two little daughters, Bella and Cece, went missing from their comfortable Colorado home one morning. And as the story unfolded, it became increasingly obvious that Shanan's husband, Chris, was responsible for their disappearance. As bad as we all thought it might be at the time, we had no idea how bad it really was.

Turned out, Chris had murdered his wife and two daughters, in pretty much the most appalling way imaginable. The Chris Watts case has been a national obsession ever since. But Chris is by no means the only example of this type of horror. There have been many others, and sadly, there will probably be many more. And when we start to unravel these cases, a chilling pattern begins to emerge. What could possibly motivate a person to murder their whole family? This is scorched earth. Chris Watts and the Family Ennihilator. So, campers, we're in Frederick, Colorado, Monday, August 13th, 2018. A woman named Nicole Atkinson called police.

She was worried about her friend Shanan Watts. She hadn't been able to reach her all day. Shanan was supposed to have gotten back from a business trip the night before, and they usually talked all day every day. Shanan had two little girls, Bella and Cece, and she was pregnant, Nicole said. She also suffered from lupus and diabetes. Nicole was worried that something could be wrong medically. So after they'd failed to get in touch with Shanan several times,

Nicole and her teenage son had gone over to the Watts's house. They saw Shanan's car through the windows of the garage, but nobody came to the door. Not Shanan, not Bella, not Cece. Not Shannon's husband, Chris, who was quickly. determined to be at his job at an oil company Anadarko Petroleum, which I swear to God sounds like a corporate villain in a Batman comic.

Doesn't it? So does. It's like Anadarko Industries, definitely building some kind of death ray. That's when Nicole and her son decided to call the police. So an officer came out to the Watts's house, a nice, spacious place in a nice upper middle class neighborhood. The cop's

body cam captured his investigation, and that footage is worth watching. It's all over YouTube, and it's really interesting to watch Chris's reaction to the situation, especially in contrast to Shanan's friend Nicole's, because it's like you can tell Nicole's genuinely freaked out, and Chris is just, it's a different vibe. It's really interesting. As the next few days passed and police dug into the disappearances of Shanan and her two daughters, it quickly became clear that Shanan's husband, Chris, had something to do with it. From day one, his responses and body language is just telegraphed guilt as clearly as if he'd had it tattooed on his

forehead. So let's go through just a few details from the case to illustrate what I'm talking about here. Day one. Chris seemed uninterested in finding his wife and daughters and gave only vague answers to questions about where they might be. Now, I don't necessarily subscribe to all the theories of body language experts, especially since there's like a dime a dozen on YouTube and some of them are actually really well trained and some probably aren't, I get the feeling. You never know. but I think there's some value in that stuff, but only when taken in context and only when you can get a baseline on the person's normal behavior. So I'm not sure how valuable it is in isolation.

I mean, a suspect might rub his neck as a self-comfort gesture because he's afraid the police are on to him, but he also just might have an itch. And I mean, how could you possibly know? Either way. That said, though, Chris Watts's body language on day one when he and the responding officer watched home surveillance footage captured by a neighbor was clear as day. The footage showed Chris backing his truck up to the garage and loading it up with something early on the morning of the disappearances.

Now, later, we learned that this was footage of Chris loading his wife's body into the truck, that you can't really see that on the recording. But the recording blew Chris's story that Shanan had left the house with the girls that morning while he was at work, completely out of the water. No one but him had been captured leaving the house that day. And as he was watching this, Chris obviously knew he was about to get caught in a major lie. He looked away from the TV screen, he put his hands on his head, he sweated bullets, kind of swayed back and forth and fidgeted.

You did not have to be a body language expert to read him in that moment. He was scared shitless. On day two, Chris did an interview with a local news station and pretty much continued to dig his own grave. Again, his body language gave away a lot. Defensive posture, arms crossed over his chest. And the weirdest thing was, he couldn't seem to stop smiling. I mean, he's in this horrifying situation, his wife and two daughters were still missing. Experts in lie detection call this duping delight, basically a liar's unconscious pleasure at putting one over on people.

That's creepy. Yeah. On top of all that, Chris just didn't look like a guy who was desperate to find his family. His eyes were dry and clear, and he looked like he'd had a good night's sleep. And there was a fresh red mark on his neck that looked, suspiciously like a fingermail scratch. Chris used a lot of revealing language in that interview. He referred to his wife and daughters mostly as she and her or they and them instead of by their names, which had the effect of kind of distancing himself from them. In fact, the only

time he did use his family's names was when the reporter asked him, what are your wife's and daughters' names again? He told the reporter he and Shanan had an, quote, emotional conversation. the morning she had disappeared, but didn't specify what that was about. And even then, he seemed strangely unconcerned, not like a guy who's worried that his wife may have taken his kids and run off or been abducted or whatever. Oh, and another little body language thing. As he said the phrase, my kids are my life, he was shaking his head, no. Yeah. Now, again, make of that what you will, but according to some experts in deception detection, that can be a tell. It's like the subconscious and the conscious are out of sync for a second.

mouth is lying, but your body language is ratting you out. When the reporter asked him to speak directly to his wife and daughters in case they were watching the interview, he gave a bizarrely flat appeal to, just come home. I've seen people use more emotion ordering chicken McNuggets of the drive-thru. Yeah, you used more emotion just then than he did when he's... Yeah, I know. I was trying really hard to be flat, but I can't be as fine. It's like you can't because you're a human being.

Right. Yeah. Unlike Chris. Yeah, true. Day three, August 15th, was the day the investigators discovered the mistress, Nicole Kessinger. It was also the day Chris flunked a polygraph test. When they confronted him with all that, Chris first tried to deny everything. But eventually, he asked to talk to his dad and finally, confessed that he'd strangle his wife when he came home to find she'd murdered their daughters.

Of course, we now know that Chris was lying. Well, let's be honest, we knew it then, too. the only people who bought that bullshit for a hot second or his mama and daddy. As a matter of fact, Chris later said that he hadn't considered blaming the kids' murders on shenan until the detectives interrogating him suggested it. Which they did if you've seen the interrogation tapes. They repeatedly suggested it, in fact, which frustrated me at the time when I first saw the interrogation because it just gave him such an easy out.

But, I mean, I get that they were trying to get him to admit that his family was dead. They just wanted to find the bodies and they were hoping he would tell them where they were. So I know that. And I know they didn't really believe that's what happened. So whatever. But it was frustrating to watch. Like, don't give him a face saving scenario. Yeah. It felt like a, like a, they were throwing him a buoy, like a, a lifelined. Yeah. And, you know, watching it, you know, years later, you're like, yeah, it did get him to finally crack, which is, I guess, a good thing. Yeah. It's probably what they had to do, but it was frustrating to watch. I mean, you and I would just scream at him until admitted it though so. Chris told the investigators where he dumped Shan and the girls at a job site

associated with his work. On August 16th, the police recovered the bodies of all three victims, Shanan from a shallow grave and the two kids from containers of crude oil. Chris pled guilty to first-degree murder and was given life without parole. Shanan's family told prosecutors they didn't want to pursue the death penalty. Now, later on from prison, Chris retracted his original story. and confessed to police that he strangled Shanan after she accused him of cheating. Here is what he said in that second confession. Shanan got home for her business trip at about 1.30 a.m. And they talked for a while and had sex.

And after a couple hours of sleep, Chris woke her up to talk. He said Shanan was lying on her back in bed and he was straddling her as they talked. Shanan wanted to cancel an upcoming trip. She wanted to talk about moving. And finally, she started crying and told him she knew he must be cheating on her. He admitted the affair, he said, and told her he didn't love her anymore and wanted a divorce. And Shanan got angry and said, get off me. You're hurting the baby.

And when she said, you're never going to see those kids again, Chris said he just snapped and strangled her to death. Now, I have a couple issues with this story, but we'll talk about that in a bit. After Shanan was dead, Chris said the four-year-old Bella came into the room. This is heartbreaking, presumably because she heard the commotion and asked, what's wrong with Mommy? Chris told her, Mommy wasn't feeling good and they needed to take her to the hospital, so he wrapped Chanan's body in a bed sheet, dragged her down the stairs, which apparently woke the littlest one up, and loaded her into his truck. And he laid her on the floorboard of the backseat cab. And then, and this was probably the most surprising thing to me about this revised

confession, he put the two little girls who were still alive at this point on the seat. As he drove the 45 minutes to the remote job site where he'd dispose of their bodies, Bella and Cici sat in the back with their mother's body at their feet. Now, Chris told police that they asked about her a couple of times, and he told them that she would be okay. I wonder if they believed him. I don't think so. I think Bella must have known it. Bella, at least, because she was the older one, she must have known something was wrong, and she was probably terrified. It's just a horrible thought. When they arrived at Chris's job site, a location out in the middle of nowhere with two big silo-type things full of crude oil, Chris pulled Shanan's body out of the truck and laid her down

in a pile of dirt. He buried her in a shallow grave in about the most undignified pose possible. He dumped her in head first, knees bent, rear end in the air. Later, he just casually mentioned to the detectives that he thought she might have, quote, given birth. Just digest the horror of that for a second. God only knows what his daughters were thinking, as they witnessed all this. When he got back to the truck, he said, C.C. was first. He took the three-year-old's favorite Yankees blanket and put it over her head, then strangled her. I wasn't thinking, he told the detectives, something else was controlling me. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Oh, I didn't know what I was doing, but you had the presence of mind to cover her face so you didn't have to see the betrayal and fear on her eyes. Die in a fire, Chris. Sorry, campers. I'm out of creative bullying attempts here. That's pretty creative That's okay It would really suck to die in a fire It would He took Cece's body And put it into one of those big containers of oil

All the time he was doing that Little Bella who was five Or four I forget which He was just a little bitty thing He was still sitting in the back seat of the truck And he said that when he got back to the truck Bella asked him

What happened to Cici Is the same thing going to happen to me Chris says he's not sure whether he answered her or what he said if he did, but he took the Yankees blanket, put it over her face, and did the same thing to her that he'd done to her sister. He told investigators that Bella's last words were, Daddy, no. Ooh, boy, I hate this piece of shit. So much.

He put Bella into the other oil container, and he said that the reason why he disposed of the girls this way was because he knew that if he put them into the oil, they wouldn't wake back up again. like he wasn't quite sure he'd killed them as opposed to just choking them unconscious so he was just hedging his bets and this is interesting original profiler

John Douglas he's the one that Mind Hunter is based on everything on Netflix he said that people who kill loved ones will often display some degree of remorse in the way they leave the bodies but Chris Watts shoved his children's bodies through eight or nine inch openings in those oil tanks

which would have required scratching and scraping their skin and in one case, cracking bones. And he buried Shanan in a shallow grave wrapped in a bed sheet, face down. So obviously we don't see that with him. But Chris did express remorse to the investigators, or at least he paid lip service to it.

He said he hears Bella's last words every night as he tries to go to sleep, because he's found religion now, supposedly. He said when he found out that Bella had bitten her tongue repeatedly as she died, he wanted to bang his head against the wall. Go for it, sports. Bang until you see brain matter.

Those are my kids. Those are my babies, he told investigators. I talk to them every night. I don't see how this could happen. Every time I see pictures of them now, I don't know how this could happen. Being a dad was the best part of my life, and I took it all away. I've even read books that say, you know, like no dad would ever do anything to hurt his children. So I think to myself, was I even a dad at one point? I don't know. Oh, Chris, I'm weeping for you, you damp little water. factory reject molecules. But you know, it's an interesting question he poses. Was he ever really a

father, a husband, a human being capable of love and empathy? He confessed, but has he told us the whole story? He was definitely lying when he said he snapped. There's evidence he texted a coworker the night before the murder, telling him he'd take care of some work that needed doing at the site where he ended up dumping the bodies of his family. So he called off his co-workers. He knew what he was going to do. Even Chris admitted that at another point to his confession. He said the night before the murders, he tucked Bella and Cece into bed and thought, this is the last time I'll ever tuck my babies in. Chris Watts will never see daylight again. Thank God. But it's important to consider his story because it tells us a lot about what's going on in the lives and heads of these

killers. So let's get a little background on what was going on in their lives leading up to this horrible crime. Financial trouble is one common element in family annihilator cases, and the Watts case is no exception. Chris and Shanan filed for bankruptcy in 2015, and they were in a lot of debt, about $70,000. Some of y'all have seen that house they lived in. Now, their combined income at their last joint tax filing was about 90K. No way they could afford that house on that amount of money with two kids, so they were

obviously living well above their means. On June 11, 2018, a few months before the murders, Shanan posted a video of her telling Chris about her pregnancy. She was wearing an oops, we did it again, T-shirt, and a huge smile. Chris and Shanan had a huge social media presence. We'll talk more about this later, but I believe that ties in with the motive for the murders. Family annihilators are deeply concerned about image, and Chris and Shanan definitely seemed to work at crafting the image of this beautiful, almost too perfect family. For Shanan, I think this may have been part of her job as a saleswoman for Thrive Products. For Chris, it was all about ego. The video almost looks staged to me,

but I could be reading it wrong. Chris acts like he's happy about the news. Really? That's awesome. Oh, you'll appreciate this campers. At one point, he picks up the pregnancy, test and says, so that, uh, that pink line there, does that mean it's a girl? Oh, wow, Chris, seriously? Sman has conceived two other children and he thinks a pregnancy test can identify the sex of like a four-week-old fetus. Woo! Lord have mercy, bless his heart. Happy about the baby or not, just three days later, Chris entered the contact info of a co-worker

named Nicole Kessinger into his phone. This, by the way, was on the same day that Shanan and Bella recorded the famous home video of Bella singing My Daddy is a Hero. Damn it, I was hoping to forget that existed. Oh, it just rips your heart out and stomp's on it. Sure does. Father's Day, June 17th, rolled around about a week after Chris found out about the baby. Two notable events happened on this day. First, Chris told Nicole Kessinger he was married, but in the process of separating from his wife.

Lie. Shanan had no idea any of this was happening. and she thought she and Chris were still madly in love. Also on Father's Day, Shanan posted a tribute to Chris on Facebook. Chris, we are so incredibly blessed to have you. You do so much every day for us and take such good care of us. You are the reason I was brave enough to agree on number three. Already, Chris's life was forking off into two distinct paths.

His life is a husband and father and his secret life with Nicole. Ten days later, on June 27th, Shanan and the two girls took off to North Carolina for a five-week trip to visit Shanan's family. Chris stayed home to work. The plan was for him to join them for week five. All seemed well to Shanan before they left. On the 19th, she'd posted an ultrasound pick with a caption, Chris, you're the best dad us girls could ask for. You know, every time you read one of her sweet little social media posts, it makes me want to

burn something down. Ugh, she was just so in love with him, and he's just such a soulless sack of shite. It just makes me really mad. She's trying so hard to make it work. Ugh. So while his family was away in North Carolina, Chris kicked his relationship with Nicole Kessinger into high gear. At one point, he even took her on a two-day sandboarding trip to some desert dunes outside

town, which, by the way, I didn't know sandboarding was even a thing that existed, but apparently it is. Yep. They took cute little selfies together. Isn't that nice? and afterward he gave her a card with Valentine Hearts all over it an interesting little sidebar on that card by the way I've seen it and there are no original sentiments in it whatsoever

it's just quoted song lyrics wow that's it like a bunch of quoted song lyrics not one original thing from Chris's heart by which I mean the desiccated little raisinette that resides inside his ribcage what is it profiler John Douglas has said about psychopaths that they know the words but not the music and speaking of music On August 13th, after disposing of the bodies of his family, Chris looked up the lyrics to the Metallica song, Battery. Now, here's a little snippet of those. Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me.

Cannot stop the battery, pounding out aggression, turns into obsession. Cannot kill the battery. Cannot kill the family. That's a sweet little song. Now, in an interview with investigators after he was sentenced, he said he was just looking up those lyrics because Nicole Kessinger liked the song and asked him what it meant. Uh, okay. He denied that he'd look them up on the way to or from the oil site after the murders, but the evidence shows us otherwise. Anywho, back to our timeline.

So while Shanan was down in North Carolina with the kids, Chris slowly started getting more and more distant with her. Of course, she had no way of knowing that by early July, Chris had started sleeping with Nicole. Text from Shanan to Chris and to some of her friends during this time are just heartbreaking. You can see her confusion about why he's suddenly gotten all weird. honor. And as July wore on, Chris spent more and more time with Nicole Kessinger and got colder and colder toward his wife. One day, he took Nicole to a car show and ignored four of Shanan's phone calls in a row. Ugh, fuck off. Your pregnant wife, who is not in the state, calls you once, and you should probably answer. Just a tip. The lack of empathy is astounding, but I suppose it's not surprising.

Yeah, I think that ship sailed when we found out that he murdered one of his children in front of the other one. Yeah. On July 31st, Chris sent Nicole a sappy love letter. Then flew to North Carolina to join Shanan and the kids, and from the get-go, it was a disaster. Everybody could tell something was wrong. For Shanan, it literally felt like her sweet, loving husband had suddenly turned into a different person. There's a flurry of tense text between Shanan and Chris during that week he was down there in North Carolina with her, one where Chris had apparently accused her of causing a rift between him and his family.

And what I think that was about is that Shanan had lost it with Chris's mom at one point because either she gave little Cece some ice cream without checking to see if it had nuts in it or let some of the other kids have the nut ice cream in front of Cece and told Cece she couldn't have any. I'm not sure which. But Cece had a nut allergy. And Shanan was furious, which is understandable. I mean, I think we've all met grandparents who kind of poo-poo their grandkids food out. allergies. Like, you know, in my day, we ate what was put in front of us. And if our throat

started closing up, well, we just walked it off, Sonny. But the thing is, in reality, if you give a kid with a nut allergy nut, she could, you know, die. So I can see why Shanham wigged out over this. But it caused a lot of tension between Chris and his folks, between Shanan and his folks, and most importantly, between Shanan and Chris. Another time during Chris's week in North Carolina, Shanan and her parents were in the car with him, and he started driving like a madman, like speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, scared the shit out of everybody in the car, and it just seemed really out of character. That incident made Shanan's mom so uneasy that she tried to talk her into staying in North Carolina

instead of going back to Colorado with Chris. But Shanan felt a really strong pull to try and figure out what was going wrong in her marriage and try to fix it, which is understandable. Plus, she needed Chris's health insurance, and she had to be in Colorado. to see the N-network doctors. I mean, she was pregnant, she had lupus. So sadly, she said goodbye to her parents and flew home. Whatever she thought was going to happen there, I'm sure she would have never imagined this in a million years. Chris told investigators that he believes he may have killed his wife and kids partly because of pent-up anger at Shanan for causing

drama between him and his family. Now, this may be true to some extent, but I think it's very telling that during his second confession, he said he knew that if he didn't kill Shanan, she would keep him from Nikki, meaning Nicole Kessinger. Now, why kill the kids too? Well, for one thing, we know Nicole didn't want a ready-made family. She had told him that. She didn't want to be a stepmom. I think Chris wanted a fresh start with his new love interest, aka his new source of adoration. Life had just gotten a little bit too real with Shanan and the kids, and there was a new kid on the way. The kids were soaking up some of that love and attention Shanan used to give only to him. And I am very convinced Chris is a narcissist, and to a narcissist, a home that's anything other than adoration station is completely intolerable.

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Much better to be the grieving husband and father, the subject of sympathy. Chris himself, in a rare moment of brutal honesty, I suspect, told investigators that he'd like to say he'd killed the kids to prevent. them from having to suffer without their mom or something like that. But he didn't. He said he was just angry at Shanan, and he took it out on whoever was in front of him that morning. Chris Watts is the latest super famous case of a kind of offender we call a family

annihilator, someone who murders multiple close family members. Now, put on your nerd hats for a second, campers, because we're going to crack a little leg of knowledge on you. I got mine right here. It's a beanie. With a propeller. Mine's a fez. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a parent, usually a father, wipes out his family and often himself about once a week.

And these crimes are on the rise. Interestingly, they tend to rise with unemployment rates. There's rash of them after the 2008 financial crisis. Oh, my God. God only knows what freaking coronavirus is going to do to those stats. I don't even want to know. Oh, yeah, I don't want to think about it. Here's some basic info on family annihilators.

According to multiple sources, including former FBI profiler Brad Garrett, the U.S. Department of Justice, and a 2013 British study. They tend to be male. They tend to be white. They tend to be in their 30s, for some reason. They tend to commit their crimes in August, which is super weird but true. Start paying attention. That is so weird.

When those stories hit the news and you'll notice it. Mm-hmm. There tends to be some kind of isolation involved. Social isolation, marginalization within the family, or a feeling of being marginalized, even if it's not true. Geographical isolation, you know, any kind of isolation, really. They tend to attempt or commit suicide after the murders. They tend to have no criminal records, and they are usually unknown to police, social services, and the mental health system. Before the murders, many of these killers are seen as less. loving and devoted to their families. And this is interesting. Many are seen as very successful with a, quote, perfect image, just like Chris Watts. Annihilators don't have to be the husband or wife in a family, by the way. There are quite a few cases where children wipe out their parents and siblings, too. There tend to be common themes in these cases.

Financial trouble, infidelity, or a secret life. Custody battles, divorce, or a loss of face, like losing a high-powered job or your wife leaving you for another man? John Ronson, who wrote the fantastic book, The Psychopath Test, wrote an article a few years ago about a British family and editor named Chris Foster.

Foster was an inventor who created a fireproof shield for oil companies and made majolions off of it. He hadn't been wealthy before, but suddenly he had a shitload of money, and he made the most of it. Buying luxury cars, a huge mansion,

memberships to exclusive clubs, He cheated on his wife over and over again, and his self-indulgence cost him because he spent so much money on his fancy pants lifestyle that he sank his company into debt and it got taken away from him. And a few years later, he shot his wife Jill and their 15-year-old daughter, Kirstie, in the back of the head. He shot their horses and pet dogs, the piece of shit, and he flooded his mansion with oil and set it on fire. Then he shot himself as his world burned down around him. It was the day that Repo men were scheduled to come and take away some of the fancy stuff he'd bought before he lost his company. One of the things that disturbed John Ronson when he was researching the article was how several of Foster's friends said they'd felt empathy for Chris. One friend said, I feel guilty for empathizing.

Don't get me wrong. There's no way I could harm my children. But I'm going through a divorce at the moment. It's looming. I probably seem normal and relaxed to you. you, but inside I'm finding it very stressful. My chest is real tight. So John Ronson asked him why he felt the need to keep that stress hidden away.

And the man said, we're supposed to be manly. We're not supposed to get upset. We're supposed to be the breadwinners and the providers, especially in our children's eyes. We're supposed to do miracles. Which like, I weep for you, truly, but go to therapy. I'm begging. Or chain yourself to the fridge. I mean, whatever you need to do to not murder your family.

Right. Criminal psychologist Dr. David Wilson conducted one of the biggest studies on family annihilators in 2013 and he's come to believe that gender roles, toxic masculinity especially, which is exactly what that guy was just talking about. Exactly, yeah. You know, that pressure to feel like your Superman are a key element in this equation. They played a role in 83% of the cases he investigated

and he investigated a lot spanning decades. The idea of image comes up again and again in these cases and the offender's rationales tend to be incredibly narcissistic. And this seems to go hand and glove with the idea of shame. Kate Mann wrote an article about the gender dynamics involved in these family annihilator cases. She points out that a lot of annihilators try to kill themselves after the murders. And then she writes, Maybe annihilators kill themselves because they now lack an audience.

His achievement of freedom from shame leaves him free, but lonely. His murders remove the problem and the point of his being. He's no longer humiliated, but he's lost the others whose admiration felt like an existential necessity. I find that really interesting. British annihilator Chris Foster shot his wife and daughter in the back of their heads. Couldn't stand to look him in the eyes.

Chris Watts covered Bella and Cece's faces with a blanket before he strangled them. Shame. Fear of being exposed as a failure. Total narcissism. My self-image is more important than your life. Of course, they don't all take their own lives. Like our boy Chris Watts, some try to start new lives instead,

safe face that way. Get rid of the people who knew I was a failure, build a new image. Get sympathy for being the grieving husband and father, or just run away and assume a new identity and be whoever I want to be. Maybe Chris Watts didn't try to kill himself because he had Nicole Kessinger waiting in the wings, a new admirer to make him feel like Superman again. So let's look quickly at some other famous cases of family annihilators and see how they compare. First up is Christian Longgo, and can I just stop for a second and point out how many flipping Chris's there are in this list. There's another one coming in a minute, too. Chris's.

Just chill, babies, okay? Bless your hearts. Chill, Chris's. Anywho, Christian Longo is the subject of the fantastic book True Story by Michael Finkel, which you should all read because it's awesome. There's a movie, too, with James Franco, but I haven't seen that. Longo and his wife Mary Jane were both raised in Jehovah's Witness families, so they grew up with lots of pressure to be devout and adhere to religious standards, which are pretty strict in the Jehovah's Witness community.

Handsome, blonde Christian maintained a successful golden boy image on the outside, as he and Mary Jane built a family, ultimately having three kids, Sadie, Zach, and Madison. But underneath, Christian was a narcissist and a con man. When he started a construction cleaning business and had some early success, he realized he liked fancy stuff, luxury cars, nice digs, nice clothes, vacations. So when his business failed, he was willing to commit check fraud and other such shenanigans to get the luxuries he wanted, and more importantly, to maintain the image he wanted.

Of course, he hid all this from Mary Jane as long as he could, but eventually she became aware that he was stealing. Much to Mary Jane's distress and shame, Christian got in trouble with the law again and again, but every time he'd pile on the charm and act all contrite and he'd slide out of it. Probation, fines, etc., but no prison. He cheated on Mary Jane at least once, too, because of course he did.

But Mary Jane stayed, because divorce is heavily frowned upon in the Jehovah's Witness religion, and Chris moved them all around the country to stay ahead of law enforcement. What a way to live, right? at one point he had the family living in a rented warehouse full of stolen property he was trying to sell and when chris got wind that the police were on his trail he whisked mary jane and the kids away and left town again leaving treasured possessions behind including mary jane's wedding dress her wedding dress y'all in that

drafty ass not meant for human habitation warehouse that he'd had her living in that little detail alone just makes you want to fire this prick out of a cannon preferably at a brick wall. They went out to Oregon, and despite landing only a minimum wage job at Starbucks, Christian rented them a luxury apartment on the waterfront. He knew time was running out for him. And a little before Christmas in 2001, Christian came home from work one evening, initiated sex with Mary Jane, and then strangled her to death. Then he strangled all three children. He dumped their bodies in the water nearby and fled to Mexico.

Using a credit card he'd stolen from a Starbucks co-worker and not even trying to cover his tracks. In Mexico, he had the time of his life for a while, posing as New York Times reporter Michael Finkel and claiming he was working on a story. He hooked up with a German woman, a freelance photographer, and started a freewheel and sexual relationship. When the FBI tracked him down, he was smoking weed with her and a few other travelers in a cabana on the beach. So not losing any sleep over the family, he murdered. Huh? No, not at all. At first, Longo tried to pull the same shit Chris Watts did. He said he'd come home to find that Mary Jane had killed the two older children and tried to kill the baby. And he'd flown into a rage and strangled her. Then he strangled the baby to put her out of her misery since she was struggling to breathe. Oh, sure, like you do, because you wouldn't call 911 or anything, right? Right. Right. Sure, bud. Nobody was buying it. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to death.

Next up is Neil Entwistle. Oh, y'all are going to hate Neil. This is another one who tried the, My wife killed our child and I flew into a rage nonsense. Like, get a new defense, y'all. Blaming your dead wives for your actions make you losers look even more pathetic and reprehensible than you already do. And like, the bar is already well below the earth's crust at this point. Couldn't get any lower.

Not really. Neil was an Englishman. He met his American wife, Rachel, when she was studying abroad in the U.K. Like the others, he was handsome, charming, a golden boy type. He worked for a while as an IT guy for a defense contractor in the U.K. As he put it, building bombs in that, I'd tell you more, but I'd have to kill you. Hilarious. He and Rachel, like most of the families were looking at, cultivated that perfect family image. They had a website they called The Happy Family. At some point, they moved to the States to be closer to Rachel's family and had a baby girl named Lillian. Neil put up the front of a successful businessman, but in reality, he was a hot mess on toast. His money-making ventures failed miserably, including a how-to-build-your-own-porn site business.

Apparently, Neil didn't know shit about building a porn site because that little project fell even flatter than the others. Which is sad because it really doesn't seem like it'd be that hard, right? I mean, just slap up some pictures of tits and you're halfway home. It's just like tits. There you go. He also sold stuff on eBay, software, and services, and he had a terrible seller rating. People would post warnings to other buyers to stay away from him. They were living on credit with debts of around $30,000 when the murders happened.

And Neil had a secret life. Of course he did. He was constantly on the lookout for hookups. One of his online profiles showed him butt-ass naked in a lawn chair with a hard on. He wrote, American women, show me if you're better than English women at sex. Ew. Okay, Neil, buddy, nobody wants to see your wang.

And as an American woman married to a Brit, let me just weigh in and say, it's not a competition. Okay? I'm sure English women and American women are both equally good at the sex. Calm down. Yeah, stop nagging women, you absolute fucking waste of carbon. Like he thinks they're just going to be lining up to win the competition. Jesus. Neil was constantly meeting women, both through dating and hookup sites and through escort services,

all unbeknownst to Rachel, of course. He was on these sites every day, including the day he killed his family, including the days after when he fled back to England. The happy family. Right. At some point, he must have decided he needed out of the mess he created for himself, and on January 22nd, Neil shot nine-month-old baby Lillian and wife Rachel as they slept together in bed. The two bullets went through the baby and into Rachel, killing them both.

After shooting them, Neil fled to England and his parents' house, and he left classical music playing, which is fascinating because another famous family annihilator named John List did the exact same thing decades earlier. Those little parallels always give me chills. There's so many of them. Detectives tracked him down by phone, and he was vague with them, saying he knew his wife and baby were dead, but not giving any details about how that might have happened. He claimed he was just in shock.

He didn't even fly back for the funeral. Police had to get him extradited from the U.K., and they nabbed him just in time. He'd written his parents a letter indicating he was planning to go on the lamb, and he was holed up at a friend's house. Once he was back in the States, he pulled that ridiculous shite in court, and Rachel for the deaths. Nobody bought it but his mommy and daddy, thank God, and he's in prison

where he damn well belongs with no chance of parole. Okay. Next, we have Chris number four, Chris Coleman. Former military worked as security for Joyce Meyer, a televangelist with a strict quote morality code for employees. In part, that means no affairs and no divorce. Chris was married to a lovely woman named Sherry and they had two kids, 11-year-old Garrett and 9-year-old Gavin. Their neighbors all said they seemed like a sweet family. Chris used to play touch football with the kids in the yard, but they'd been having some trouble lately. Chris had been getting death threat emails,

first at work and then at home. Creepy shit, cut out letters from magazines, horrible emails, renounce your God now or else, I'll kill your family in their sleep. Tell Joyce to stop preaching the bull or you'll regret it. This is your last warning. Your worst nightmare is about to happen. Stuff like that.

Does it started in November 2008, and it went on for months and months. The police were looking into it, but they hadn't narrowed down any good suspects. And then, on May 5, 2009, Chris called his police detective neighbor and asked if he'd check on his wife and kids. He'd been at the gym all morning, and he hadn't been able to reach him on the phone. The detective discovered a horror scene. Sherry and the two boys all strangled to death and messages like, you have paid on the walls in red spray paint. At first, of course, it seemed like the anonymous letter writer had struck, but soon the truth came out. Chris had a secret in the form of his wife's former best friend, Tara Lentz.

Turns out they've been seeing each other for a while. Tara believed Chris was on his way out the door. She had a wedding date on her calendar, vacations planned with Chris, but he'd done nothing toward a divorce. Reminds me of Nicole Kessinger in the Chris Watts case. She'd been looking at wedding dresses online a week or two before the murders. Sherry knew about the mistress, but she was trying to fix her marriage. She begged Chris to go to counseling. He went a few times, told the counselor what he wanted to hear, then yelled at Sherry once they got home. At one point, Sherry told a friend, if anything happens to me, Chris did it.

During the funeral for his wife and sons, Chris texted back and forth with his girlfriend, Tara Lynch. The investigators uncovered a nice pile of circumstantial evidence, including proof that Chris had sent those threatening emails to himself, using his own computer, like a giant flaming dumbass. Chris was convicted of the murders of Sherry and the kids and sentenced to life in prison. He maintains his innocence and is appealing. It's fucking gross. And this seems significant to me. In addition to the image he had to maintain as a former military guy and security for the morality conscious Joyce Meyer,

Chris was a preacher's kid, so there was probably quite a bit of pressure from his parents, too, to conform to a certain standard of behavior. Like Chris Watts, Christian Longo, Neil Entwistle, and so many others, if he divorced Sherry to be with Tara Lynch, he'd lose not only his job, but his image. He'd lose face. He'd be a jerk.

And he just couldn't handle that. Narcissists never can. Murder was a better idea. Now, we're going to switch gears and talk about a really rare type of family annihilator. A female one. In 2007, Manling Williams was married to her husband Neil. They had two kids, seven-year-old Devon, and three-year-old Ian. Neil was a stay-at-home dad.

Manling was the breadwinner, with her job as a waitress. Neal's mom says she noticed that Manling seemed really into motherhood when the boys were babies. But as they, quote, became people, as Neil's mom puts it, she seemed to lose interest. She'd tell them to take care of things themselves. Manling missed being a single woman. She loved being the center of attention,

and she was frustrated by Neil's terrible housekeeping. They struggled a lot financially. Manling was the social butterfly. She was great at her waitress job, but it didn't bring in a ton of money. Neil worked from home selling insurance, but he wasn't a natural salesman, and he didn't make much money at it. And Manling was frustrated by the fact that he spent money on his favorite hobby, collecting swords. Which is a cool-ass hobby, Manling. Get off his back. That is a cool-ass hobby. We actually have quite a collection at our house of beautiful swords and knives.

Damascus steel? Oh, can't beat it. So pretty. She was working a lot of hours, and she told her friends that Neil wasn't pulling his weight. I don't know if this is true, or if she was just undervaluing the time he spent caring for the kids, which, as we know, is fucking hard work. Kids are endless little need machines, way more than your average restaurant customer. Yeah, that's why I decided to have cats instead.

Anyway, Manling asked for divorce once, but Neil begged her to stay, and reluctantly, she agreed to try and make it work. But the problems only got worse, and then Manling took up with an old boyfriend who reached out to her online. She hooked up with him and began an affair. At last, she was getting a little taste of freedom. But soon her lover started pulling away. He felt guilty that she was married and had kids, and he told her he didn't want to be involved with somebody who was tied down. to a family. Manling was devastated at losing her boyfriend. Those close to the family say they could sense Ling pulling away from the family around this time. But she was reaching out frequently to friends and

members of her family. She'd call her sister at 3 a.m. and say she just needed to hear her voice. She told people she couldn't face the shame of divorce. Her family would disapprove, God forbid. And on August 7th, 2007, August again, Manling smothered the two children in their sleep. She left them in their beds and went out for drinks with friends. Now, I don't know if Neal was asleep too, or if he was out of the house when she killed the kids and then came home and just thought they were asleep or what, but after her night out, she came home,

picked up one of Neal's prized collectible swords, and attacked him in his sleep. When he woke up from the pain and started fighting, a mighty struggle ensued. She ended up slashing him 97 times. Ninety-seven times, y'all. With a sword. Yeah.

That bitch was angry. Yeah, that's rage. And then she grabbed her cigarettes. She hopped in her car. She drove up to a lookout point where she liked to go and smoke when she was having trouble sleeping. She sat there on the hood of her car, smoking and watching the sunrise. And then she drove back home and discovered the bodies. Neighbors woke up to her screaming for help in the street, covered in her husband's blood.

Police began to suspect her when they discovered Neal's blood in her car and on a pack of cigarettes. in her purse. Uh, yeah, I imagine it was the world's easiest case to solve. She ended up confessing that same day. Eventually, evidence showed that she'd planned the murder at least a month in advance. Dr. Laura Richards, certified badass and UK-based criminal behavioral analyst, has created a list of warning signs that can signal a high risk for family violence. She trains law enforcement to recognize the signs,

and since she started doing that, family violence has gone down pretty significantly on her patch. She's an amazing resource. Y'all should read up on her. Okay, so what are some of these warning signs according to Dr. Richards? Some of them are pretty obvious. Self-centeredness, controlling attitude toward the family, violence toward children. Then we have remoteness. Think back to how distant and cold Chris Watts was towards shenan in the weeks leading up to the murders. Lack of a support structure, a sense of inadequacy, an inability to confront difficult emotions and problems. Building resentment and a sense of victimization, which of course is really common with narcissists. You know, anytime life's not going the way they want it to, they're the victim.

I mean, think about it. We saw a lot of that stuff in the cases we've talked about in this episode. So this stuff all builds up over time. And according to Dr. Richards, two main factors tend to set off the final stick of dynamite and family annihilator cases. Finances and the threat of separation. As we've talked about before, in any abusive relationship, the most dangerous time is when you try to leave. No exception here. Yeah, and there's one last point I want to make here. It's not only spouses slash parents who become family annihilators. Kids can kill parents, siblings, and other family members too. And I don't necessarily mean children. I mean just the kids of the family, like adult children. Maybe I'll have heard of Alan Ruby. Alan was a college student.

student in Oklahoma who murdered his mom, dad, and sister so he could cash in on his inheritance. Even when he was in high school, he was obsessed with designer labels and fancy cars. His grandmother, it's so loathsome, his grandmother had dementia, and he used her mental state to con her into giving him huge amounts of money. Like, he'd just be like, Grandma, remember how you said you'd give me $1,000? It's not disgusting. And when his parents caught on to that and put a stop to it, he just straight up stole her credit carts and used them to finance a luxury trip to Europe and a lavish shopping spree.

His parents called the cops on him trying to scare him straight, but even that didn't shake sense into this nasty little grebe goblin. And one afternoon, he just drove home to his parents' house and shot his whole family dead. Got caught immediately, of course, and is now sitting in prison with no hope of parole. And there are lots more of these cases. Take Ashton Sacks. whose story is almost exactly parallel to Alan Rubies, except that he didn't succeed in killing all his siblings. He killed his parents and paralyzed his little brother. And remember Seth Gonzalez and Christopher Porco from our killer kids grab bag?

So this shit happens too. And it's important to tuck those warning signs away in the back of your mind in case you ever start to see these dynamics brewing in your own family or the family of someone you love. So we just kind of barely touched on the Chris Watts case. And there's a lot more to learn about that. So if you're interested in that case and you want to dive in more deeply, we strongly recommend you check out a YouTube channel called Live Abuse Free.

It's run by a British psychologist, and her analysis of that case is absolutely superb. It takes a lot to really impress me. She impressed me. And her channel is totally fascinating. She gets really deep into the psychology behind the murders, analyzes Chris's confession piece by piece, and talks in detail about some of the myths and misconceptions surrounding that case, like the frankly disgusting

idea that Shanan somehow brought this on herself. Ew. So, check her out. She's fantastic. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week, but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.

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