'He was making no sense': Last person to see Shanann Watts alive says she suspected Chris from Day 1
A close friend of Shanann Watts, who believes that she was the last person to see the Colorado mom before she went missing, has come out and said that she is not at all surprised to find out that it was the husband who allegedly killed his wife and two children.
According to the Daily Mail, prosecutors in the case plan to file murder charges against Chris Watts on Monday after he was arrested last week for the alleged murders of his wife Shanann and daughters Celeste and Bella. The 33-year-old's arrest came only days after he told police his family had gone missing and pleaded on TV for their safe return.
During her conversation with Good Morning America, Shanann's friend Nickole Atkinson said that she was not in the least surprised at the arrest of Chris since he did not appear to be very much concerned when they had vanished initially.
"He just kept saying that he didn't know where she was and that she was on a playdate. But he couldn't give us the name of the friend," Atkinson said of Chris' behavior after his wife was reported missing.
"I knew he had something to do with it the day I was at his house with him, but I didn't want to think that. Anyone in their right mind will start piecing things together and think something had happened, but you don't want to go there. You want to believe the best in people."
Atkinson revealed during her conversation that she had gone on a business trip to Arizona with Shanann and had dropped the mother-of-two off at her Frederick home at 2 am on August 13. However, she grew concerned when she did not receive any calls or messages from Shanann later that day and reported her missing.
She believes she was the last person to see her alive.
Speaking about believing in Chris' confession, she said, "He was defending himself, but it just didn't make sense. Like in that moment it is kind of surreal. He was just sitting there waiting for something to happen; it just didn't seem right to me."
On the other hand, Atkinson said that although the couple had always had a happy marriage, there were cracks showing up in their relationship about three weeks prior to the murders. "He wasn't being the loving Chris that he normally was. He wasn't touching or hugging or doing stuff like that. He wasn't being as attentive to the girls as he normally is," she said.
Although it has been revealed that the couple had planned on separating before the gruesome murders took place, Atkinson revealed that she had no inkling about this development in her close friend and Chris' relationship. "No, she did not talk about leaving him or separating. She very much loved her family and wanted to be a family," Atkinson said.
"I didn't find out that they were going to separate or anything like that until I called Chris that morning. When I called him and asked him where she was, that's when he told me and I basically told him that that wasn't my (concern) at that particular moment."
Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke reportedly plans to formally file the charges against Chris on Monday and also seek the release of his arrest affidavit, which has been under seal since they lay out details of the crime. As per the investigators on the case, Chris allegedly killed his family at home and then drove their bodies to a property owned by the company he worked for, Anadarko Petroleum.
Shanann's body was found buried in a shallow grave on Thursday, whereas the bodies of the two girls were found submerged in a nearby tank filled with crude oil. As per the police, Chris allegedly confessed to murdering his family a day before he was arrested.
Chris is currently facing three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of evidence tampering.
