Chris Watts got very restless when he saw CCTV videos of family home, says neighbor: 'He wasn't acting right'
On August 13, 2018, Shanann Watts and her two young children disappeared without a trace. Her friends immediately sprung into action and assisted investigators to understand what may have happened to the young mother, but wouldn't find out until much later. Meanwhile, a neighbor of the Watts family already had his doubts that the threat to the missing family was closer to home.
In a new documentary on Reelz, Nate Trinastich is seen in a bodycam footage from the day of the disappearance. The neighbor is showing surveillance footage from his home to police officers. In the footage, Shanann's husband Chris can be seen loading his truck just after 5 am that fateful morning.
Watts's anxiety can't be missed as he tries to explain to the officer that he had moved the truck from its usual spot to make it “easier to lug everything with all the tools I had to bring in.” He had claimed earlier he was preparing for a busy workday ahead and therefore had to load the truck early that morning.
Trinastich had begun to sense something was wrong when Watts abruptly walked out of his house shortly after.
“He is not acting right,” Trinastich is heard telling the responding officer, noting how Watts was “fidgety” and “rocking back and forth" unlike his usual self. The quick-witted neighbor then insisted the officer watch the surveillance footage once again.
“Watch,” he said. “You’ll see him get out and then he walks back and forth a couple of times.”
Trinastich would later explain why he felt Watts' movements captured on the security footage seemed strange for a number of reasons.
“He was loading tools, but I thought that was a little bit odd because I had never seen him really back the truck into the driveway ever. He always parked it out front, so I definitely thought it was kind of odd," he told the producers of the documentary Chris Watts, Colorado Killer Dad: The Friends Speak.
The neighbor also pointed out how it was unusual for Watts to be loading things into the cab rather than the back of his truck. Even while checking out Trinastich's security footage hours later, Watts was pacing back and forth with his hands on his head, displaying clear signs of nervousness.
“The other thing I thought that was definitely weird was he wasn’t watching the footage at all,” Trinastich continued, “He would look at it for a second then go back to his phone or look at it for a second and then look away and if my family was missing, I would be glued to that TV 100 percent to see if I could see absolutely anything.”
Trinastich's suspicions were spot on, as noted by Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke. Watts would later fold under questioning and admit that he had, in fact, been loading his wife's body into the truck after strangling her to death.
Their children, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, were still alive at the time. Watts would take them along on a trip to an oil site, where he buried his pregnant wife in a shallow grave before smothering both his girls and burying them inside the oil tanks nearby.
The killer dad was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences after he pleaded guilty to murdering his family.
Trinastich could not digest the horrific details that came out following the investigation. He described the Watts as a “normal, everyday” American family, but recalled he had heard Shanann and Chris fighting in the past.
The next-door neighbor is heard in the bodycam footage telling the responding officer how he sometimes “heard them full out screaming at each other at the top of their lungs” and that Chris got "crazy" sometimes.
Nonetheless, Trinastich wants the world to remember Shanann and the girls for their bubbly, bright faces and the “great life” they had before it was tragically cut short.
At the same time, he admits it's hard to relate the disturbing details of the crime with the man he once knew as a doting father.
“Part of me thinks that he’s a monster, for you to be able to do that to your wife and especially your kids,” Trinastich told Dr. Oz in January 2019. “Like I love my son more than anything and I could never see myself hurting him at all. And the fact that he could go out of his way, to take her life and the kids’ lives and then act like nothing happened and try to cover it up just shows his character.”
The Frederick, Colorado community, as Trinastich notes in the documentary, needs time to heal from the harrowing ordeal. He reveals how curious observers often drive by his front porch and take photos of him playing with his children without consent -- thereby invading his privacy.
"I really appreciate all the people reaching out, but at some point, there's gotta be a line," he pleads. "Let these people heal, move on with their lives. Let the neighborhood heal. But with all the people coming every day, that's not happening."
At one point in the documentary, the grieving neighbor breaks down in tears as he recalls a candid conversation he had with his son.
"One of the hardest things for me was to hear my son say, 'look dad, when they get back, all those awesome presents out in front of their house, they're going to be so happy when they get them.' That was probably one of the hardest things for me, as a parent, to swallow," he says. "How do you explain to a seven-year-old that they're never going to be able to come back and get those?"
Chris Watts, Colorado Killer Dad: The Friends Speak – New special premieres on Reelz on January 25 at 7 pm ET/4 pm PT.