Watts Family Home

Author: Jewls Krueger

In the summer of 2018, Chris Watts lived in a five-bedroom house in Frederick, Colorado, with his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two young daughters, Bella and Celeste. On social media the family looked settled and happy. That picture fell apart on August 13, 2018, when Watts strangled Shanann and smothered both girls, then drove their bodies to a remote oil site where he worked and disposed of them.

For several days afterward, Watts appeared on local television pleading for his family's safe return. Within a week he had failed a polygraph, confessed, and been arrested. The case became one of the most heavily covered family annihilation cases in recent American memory, and the house where the family lived still draws people who follow it.

Shanann Watts

Shanann Cathryn Watts was born in North Carolina in 1984. She met Chris Watts through Facebook in 2010, and the couple married in 2012 before moving to Colorado. She worked from home selling health products for a multilevel marketing company and was active on social media, where she documented the family's daily life. At the time of her death she was 34 and about 15 weeks pregnant with a boy the couple planned to name Nico. Her daughters were Bella, 4, and Celeste, known as CeCe, 3.

Chris Watts

Christopher Lee Watts was born in North Carolina in 1985. He worked as an operator for Anadarko Petroleum at oil and gas sites near Frederick. In the months before the murders, he began an affair with a coworker, Nichol Kessinger, who later told police she had been unaware he was still living with his wife and who cooperated with the investigation. The couple had filed for bankruptcy a few years earlier and were carrying significant debt. Investigators concluded that Watts wanted to end his marriage and start over.

The Murders

Shanann returned home early on the morning of August 13, 2018, dropped off by a colleague after a work trip to Arizona. Later that day, when she missed a medical appointment and a business meeting and could not be reached, the colleague went to the house and contacted police. A welfare check found her purse, phone, keys, and medication inside, and her car still in the garage with the children's car seats, but no sign of Shanann or the girls.

Watts first told investigators he did not know where his family had gone. He later confessed to killing Shanann, at first claiming he had done so only after finding her harming their daughters. That account was quickly disproven. Watts eventually admitted that he strangled Shanann and smothered Bella and Celeste, then drove all three bodies to an Anadarko oil site. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave and placed each girl inside a separate crude oil tank.

The Investigation and Arrest

On August 15, 2018, Watts failed a polygraph examination and confessed, first to his father and then to detectives. He was arrested the same day. He marked the locations of the bodies for investigators, who recovered them from the oil site that night. On August 21, prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of first-degree murder, unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and tampering with a deceased human body. Surveillance footage from a neighbor's security camera, released later, showed Watts loading his truck in the early morning hours, contradicting his original statements.

The Trial and Sentencing

Watts pleaded guilty on November 6, 2018, under an agreement that removed the death penalty from consideration. Shanann's family had asked prosecutors not to seek it. On November 19, 2018, he was sentenced to five life terms without the possibility of parole, three of them to run consecutively, plus additional decades for terminating Shanann's pregnancy and for tampering with the bodies. The judge described the case as among the most "inhumane and vicious" crimes he had handled in thousands of cases. On December 5, 2018, Watts was moved to Dodge Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Waupun, Wisconsin, where he remains.

Recent Developments

In September 2020, Netflix released American Murder: The Family Next Door, a documentary built largely from the family's own home videos, text messages, social media posts, and law enforcement recordings. The film renewed national interest in the case and in the house itself.

In the years since, Watts reportedly made further admissions in letters to a pen pal, claiming that he had planned the killings and had tried to harm the children before the day of the murders. Those claims come from his own correspondence rather than from court findings and have not been independently confirmed.

The House Today

The family home is a large two-story house in a Frederick subdivision of similar homes, about 30 minutes north of downtown Denver. After the murders it fell into foreclosure and sat empty for a long stretch, deteriorating while repeated auction attempts failed, in part because of its history. The property has since changed hands twice. It was purchased by a family in 2022, listed again in 2024, and most recently sold in October 2024 for $650,000. As of 2026 it is privately owned and is not on the market.

The home is private property and is once again occupied. Anyone visiting the area should stay on public roads and sidewalks, avoid blocking traffic, and not approach, photograph, or contact the current residents or their neighbors. People who live nearby have said the continued attention is difficult for them, and the house is now simply a family's home.