Chris Watts scored –18 in polygraph test and talked about daughters in past tense when they were still 'missing'
Over a year after Christ Watts murdered his pregnant 34-year-old wife Shanann Watts and their two daughters, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste, at their Frederick, Colorado, home on August 13, the horrifying crime continues to appall people across the world.
Watts strangled Shanann at their home, before driving her body along with Bella and Celeste to his work-site, where he smothered his daughters to death. He then buried Shanann's body in a shallow grave and dumped his daughters' bodies in oil tanks.
The most shocking aspect for many, however, was how, after killing his entire family, Watts appeared on various local media outlets and made emotional pleas for information that would reunite him with them.
Law enforcement and investigators had long suspected Watts' hand in the trio's disappearance, whether it was through his inconsistent stories or certain behavioral cues — he appeared oddly calm and composed despite it being such a traumatic situation and seemed emotionally uninvolved.
The latest season of Oxygen's 'Criminal Confessions' opens with a 90-minute special featuring the high-profile case that highlighted how lead investigators with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI tirelessly worked to break down Watts' facade and got him to confess to the brutal murders.
During his first interview, CBI agent Tammy Lee and FBI agent Graham Coder went at Watts for three hours, seemingly assuring him that they were still looking for the abductors while simultaneously lowering his defenses.
While they had always had him down as the prime suspect, what convinced them of his guilt was his reaction to a photo of Bella and Celeste they showed him. Not only did he not react, but he also started talking about them in the past tense.
They eventually got him to agree to take a polygraph test, which would prove to be the final nail in his coffin. In the test's grading chart, a score of a +2 or higher meant that the person was telling the truth. A score of –4 or lower meant they were lying. Watts was found to have scored a –18.
The investigators cornered him with the results, and after initially becoming defensive, Watts gave in and confessed. He insisted at the time that it was Shanann who killed Bella and Celeste and that he killed his wife in self-defense, but later recanted the statement and admitted to killing all three.
On November 6 last year, Watts pleaded guilty to multiple parts of first-degree murder as part of a plea deal with prosecutors that saw the death penalty removed from him sentencing — Shanann's family agreed to the request as they did not want to see any further deaths in the family.
He was ultimately 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 is serving his sentence at the Dodge Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison, in Waupun, Wisconsin.