(Mirror UK) – To his family, friends, neighbours and colleagues Chris Watts seemed like the perfect loving father and husband.
But Chris was cheating on his devoted wife and when she revealed she was expecting the couple’s third child, he hatched a twisted plan to kill her.
As he plotted to murder his family, Watts kept up appearances and even helped to name the little boy Shan’ann was carrying. Their son would have been called Nico.
When she returned to their family home on Colorado from several weeks away on a business trip, she and Chris had a huge row and Watts confessed to his affair.
Devastated, Shan’ann told him in the heat of the moment that she would have full custody of their children.
In cold blood Watts then strangled his wife to death – but his brutal actions were witnessed.
Steven Lambert, the lawyer representing Shannan Watts family in a wrongful death lawsuit, told America’s Dr Phil Show: “The night in question Shanann came home.
“She and Chris had got into a fight. They made up. They were getting along really well. Later on, they got into a fight again. In that fight he essentially confessed to having an affair, that he wanted a divorce.
“That it was pretty much over between them, and she had said something to the effect of, ‘well you’re not going to see the kids again’.”
“As a consequence of that conversation he strangled her to death.”
But after Watts murdered her mother and was wrapping Shan’ann’s body in a blanket, little Bella walked into the room and asked “what are you doing to mummy?”
The four year old, who was said to be bright for her age “knew something was up”, according to Mr Lambert.
What happened next was truly chilling. Watts bundled Shan’ann’s body into the boot of the family car, put his two little girls in the backseat and belted them in.
The murderous father then drove 45 minutes to an oil field before carrying out the second part of his horrifying plan.
