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What Made Chris Watts Giggle During His Police Interview?
The man who would later admit to murdering his wife and two daughters had an odd reaction when investigators asked him to think of all the ways to make someone physically disappear.
Chris Watts sat across from a Colorado state investigator days after his wife and two daughters went missing and was asked to describe all the ways someone could make another person physically disappear. Then he giggled.
The exchange is documented in roughly 2,000 pages of records detailing the investigation that were released by the Weld County District Attorney's Office after Watts was sentenced last week to life in prison without parole for each of the three August murders he ultimately confessed to: his wife Shanann, 34, and daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste 3. He was also given 48 years for the life of the unborn child that Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant with.
On Aug. 15, two days after Watts' family supposedly vanished from their home, a Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent preparing to administer a polygraph to him asked if he could explain “all the ways someone could physically make someone disappear.”
“I mean, like, if you’re talkin’ bout like what I’ve seen like on the movies or like, how like people, if you read about other people …I mean, you hire somebody (like a hit man), I’m just being honest,” replied Watts, who at the time had not been charged with their deaths and was speaking voluntarily with authorities.
Then, the investigator asked Watts to think of all the possible scenarios in his head “and he said he could hire someone or a person would use someone they knew to ‘do it.’”
The agent noted that Chris “giggled” at the question.
“At that point, Chris giggled and told me it was a hard question to answer because he had nothing to do with the disappearance,” the agent wrote. “Chris said he didn’t like to think about it.”
The agent then asked Watts to list all the physical ways a person could cause someone else’s disappearance through murder.
Watts replied, “Stab someone, shoot someone, hit 'em with a blunt object, um, what else is there, I mean, use a weapon of like a gun or a knife.”
Then, after a pause, the agent said, “You could smother someone” and added “you could strangle someone.”
Watts replied, “You could hang some - yea, you can – all that kind of things … I mean, it’s hard to even think about that kind of stuff right now.”
Days after the police interview, the bodies of Shanann, Bella and Celeste were found buried at an oil site Watts had recently worked at. After his arrest on suspicion of murder, Watts claimed that his wife killed their daughters after he admitted to her that he was having an affair and wanted to "go through with a separation," so in a fit of rage strangled her.
Later, of course, he would admit to murdering them all.
After discussing possible ways of killing someone to make them disappear, the agent told Watts that sometimes people can feel guilty for causing someone to leave and talking about separating.
“That’s why I feel like a jackass right now,” Watts replied.
[Photo: Associated Press]
