Where is Nichol Kessinger? Inmate says Chris Watts' girlfriend back in touch after she went into hiding
Nichol Kessinger, the former mistress of Chris Watts, is allegedly back in touch with him three years after assuming a new identity and going into hiding.
David Carter, a fellow inmate of Watts, said the family killer told him that Kessinger wrote to him inside the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, under her new name. "He told me she said that she needed to speak to him to clear some things up," Carter told the Daily Mail. "He wouldn't tell me exactly what she had said."
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Kessinger, 32, reportedly took on a new identity and moved from her Arvada, Colorado residence after Watts was arrested for killing his pregnant wife Shanann and their two daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, in August 2018. Watts was sentenced to five lifetimes plus 48 years in prison without the possibility of parole. The bone-chilling case was covered in excruciating detail on Netflix's “American Murder: The Family Next Door."
In 2019, Watts reportedly told pen pal Cheryln Cadle that he was still in love with Kesinger and that some of the letters he received in prison were possibly from her writing under assumed names. Cadle subsequently wrote a book about their epistolary correspondence titled 'Letters From Christopher.' Carter has now corroborated those claims by alleging that Kessinger does, in fact, write to Watts, or at least that he believes she does. Carter was released from Dodge on February 27. He said that Watts had first told him about Kessinger's letters in September last year.
Watts reportedly also claimed that prison officials had found out about the correspondence and proceeded to suspend his email account and monitor all his mail. "He wasn't supposed to have any contact with her, but she initiated it by writing to him," Carter said.
Kessinger and Watts first met at Anadarko, the oil company they worked for. At the time, Watts told her he was separated from his wife. He later told investigators he committed the murders because he wanted to be with Kessinger.
Authorities have never suggested that Kessinger had any knowledge about his intentions to kill his family to be with her. She is reportedly still living in hiding, more than two and half years after the murders. Carter told the Daily Mail that Watts said he killed his wife because he didn't want to pay child support and that he didn't want the son she was expecting. According to Carter, Watts also feared that Shannan would take their Fredrick, Colorado house in a divorce.
"I don't buy any of that though," said Carter, who was put behind bars for meth possession and for stealing money from his employers. "I couldn't ever kill my entire family just because I didn't want a child or didn't want to pay child support," he told the outlet. "I have a lot of things going on in my life, but I have never wanted to stop and kill my entire family because I wanted certain things to go my way."