Chris Watts is locked inside his cell 23 hours a day, has 'no hope for his future' as 35th birthday approaches
Chris Watts, who murdered his pregnant wife and two young children in cold blood, is set to turn 35 behind bars in the coming days and is now spending his days resigned to the fact that he will not see freedom for the rest of his life.
Watts killed his fifteen-week-pregnant wife Shanann, 34, and two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, at their Frederick, Colorado, home on August 13, 2018. He then dumped the young girls' bodies in oil tanks and buried his wife in a shallow grave at his work site.
He pleaded guilty to the murders on November 6 that year and was sentenced to five life sentences -- three consecutive and two concurrent -- without the possibility of parole. He also received an additional 48 years for the unlawful termination of his wife's pregnancy and 36 years for three charges of tampering with a deceased body.
He has since been incarcerated at the Dodge Correctional Institute, where he is on lockdown for 23 hours a day, according to People. He can leave his cell for a shower or exercise, but not much else. When he is in his cell, there's little he can do since the only possessions he's allowed are a Bible and some family photos.
Watts is set to turn 35 this coming Saturday, May 16, and a source who talked to him at the prison said he doesn't have much hope for the future. "Nothing changes," the source said. "Every day is like the day before, and every day in his future will be the same as today."
While he's considered filing an appeal, he realizes that a release is highly unlikely. "He knows that this is his life. There really isn’t much hope for his future,” the source added.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported that Watts was spending his time behind bars thinking about the past and how he regrets his actions. "He’s sad that everyone is hurting," a family friend had shared. "He wishes he could go back in time. He wishes he had handled things differently."
He does have the legal option to challenge his case under a specific law known as Rule 35c, which provides the defendant with a chance to appeal his/her conviction and sentence. However, do so, he would have to either prove that there is new evidence or that his conviction was unconstitutional, neither of which is likely.
Watts' life sentence was handed down after Shanann's family had declined to pursue the death penalty and no doubt justified considering the horrific nature of his crimes.
In a series of revealing letters published as a part of author Cherlyn Cadle's explosive new book, 'Letters from Christopher: The Tragic Confessions of the Watts Family Murders,' he had detailed his family's murders.
He confessed he had slipped his wife the potent painkiller Oxycodone in the hope of inducing a miscarriage so it would be easier to leave her for his mistress, Nichol Kessinger, and confirmed that it was he who killed Bella and Celeste, and not Shanann, as he had claimed in police interviews after his arrest.
"August 12th when I finished putting the girls to bed, I walked away and said, 'That's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies in,'" he wrote in one letter. "I knew what was going to happen the day before and I did nothing to stop it!"