Here are some of my observations and my conclusion on the interview.
1. Sensitivity about phone. This is something that is expected from most all teenagers and adults, regardless of guilt or innocence. It must be understood in both greater and lesser context.
2. Sensitivity about the children. This is expected in the greater context (affair, breaking up a family) but also in the lesser or smaller context (why she is being interviewed).
She does not show guilty knowledge, but an internal conflict between helping police, not knowing much, and, what I believe to be, a lingering and serious doubt within her.
I wonder if she expressed, in person or via text, that she may not have been ready to be a step mother. If so, it does not mean she "inspired" Watts to kill his family. Given the brutal nature of the crime, Watts did not need inspiration from anyone. This is who he is.
3. Deceptive about relationship and her responsibility -- minimizing, distancing and deceptively withholding information about sex and the affair is expected. She was deeper in the relationship with Watts than she admitted. An affair exists on deception and she would have to cope with shame for her family, condemnation from friends, and, as she showed later in the interview, an awareness of how her life was about to be publicly exposed in all its shame.
I think the guilt here is related to fears that somehow she inadvertently was involved in Watts' decision. She wasn't.
4. Embarrassed by her personal texts being reviewed as well as the reaction of family and friends. She willfully deflects and diverts, but this is not about criminal activity. In personal texts, people have an expectation of privacy and will often complain about others, including people they love (family) and sometimes vent. Having these read by others will cause people to physically grab at their phones, rather than have someone else read them.
5. Failure to remember associated with "low hormonal" events---not important enough to remember whereas the murders would have triggered powerful recall due to the accompanying hormonal response.
6. The length of her "open statements" indicate the free flow of information --she works with the officer for the facilitation of information, yet with embarrassment and distancing. It is very difficult to lie in an open statement. "I hope I am helping you guys" should be believed.
7. She has more concern over her self than the victims. She is likely both humiliated by the case and selfish or narcissistic like.
8. She was under acute stress. Seeking to help Police may have helped reduce the stress, though she knew her name would be in the papers, soon.
The subject has No guilty knowledge of Watts' crime, which includes cover up. Subject has lots of guilt and shame regarding being in a relationship with Watts. I believe she likely worried that she was, somehow, responsible for their deaths. She wasn't.
The sensitivity indicators must be viewed by the analyst in the greater and lesser context.
The officer did not find a "scent" which would lead him to subpoena records for deleted messages.
The police were right in concluding that she was not involved.
The officers did a good job in the interview.
If you wish to study Statement Analysis, please visit Hyatt Analysis Services.
17 comments:
I’m not doing this right - I still suspect she was at least involved.
I’ve listened to that interview, and her other conversations with agents at least a dozen times, maybe more. I find her more about ingratiation than to have any real desire to be helpful - she makes so many pointless tangents/avoidance of the questions.
It seems quite often she’s attempting to account for and explain away the content of some iffy text messages which she believes may be retrieved.
I think CW was as scared of her as he was infatuated - he wouldn’t even tell her where his kids went to school - it seems she knew, all the same. She knew too much about everything Watts for her apparently not being into Chris as much as he was into her.
I’ll listen again and read the transcript and reconsider.
I will still think she’s a psycho.
Mr. Hyatt summed most of the problem up with the analogy of she exhibited narcisstic tendencies.
What narcissistic personalities do is "muddy the waters" or what he dubbed filibustering. It's obfuscation at its finest.
When two of those like minded individuals get together it unlikely to result in anything good.
She was a paler shade of what he is/was.
He is what he is.
Let it go!
NK’s first recorded conversation with agents was the one which took place in the park - in which she said she’d been into the Watts home twice - which in the later interview she revised to three times, and then to an undetermined number, maybe “always” or “every time”, in reference to whether they went through the front door or the garage. The sound quality in the park is not so clear.
I get she could lie through embarrassment, but her minimisation of her relationship with Chris Watts, against how involved she really was, and how much she was into their personal affairs is such a contradiction. Her disdain towards Shan’ann, even in context of her being a murder victim - her resentment towards Chris for not “providing her with that information”, and for not telling her where his kids went to school - his need to “talk her off a wall” - her turning up at his house after he went home for the day in case Shan’ann called - NK is a scary individual. She was intrusive, disrespectful of Shan’ann’s privacy, and determined to have him - meanwhile he wasn’t really divorcing Shan’ann, though they were downsizing from the big house, Shan’ann had intended to contact the realtor the day the family was reported missing, but Chris phoned the realtor that day. He didn’t want that house, possibly NK did - I found interesting how NK referred to the house as his house, and later the house. Also, how eventually she promoted Shan’ann from his “significant other” to “his wife” - a grudging acknowledgement of their actual relationship.
Well, I don’t understand her need to lie so much - she lied a lot; if her motive was to “help you guys” - why did she work so hard at avoiding helping them, whilst also portraying herself as the good guy throughout? I think she was given too easy a pass - the questions she skirted were not returned to. At least she considered that she could have been the catalyst for the family annihilation, whist also rejecting it.
NK was a home wrecker - Chris had his daughters and Shan’ann on his phone home and lock screens - she always knew he was a married man with children. Chris said he didn’t know he was unhappy till Nikki told him. He seemed a very patient and passive guy to have endured and supported all that Thrive malarky, to also do a job he didn’t like for higher income, to be treated like a servant at home. He didn’t choose easygoing women, but then, he didn’t choose Nikki, as such, she pursued him. No, he did choose her - he could have said no.
HJ,
anything in her statements that show guilty knowledge of the crime?
Peter
Peter - I don’t think they asked NK about the crime, only if she had any reason to believe he might do something like that, before or in hindsight, and I’m not sure her response was satisfactory.
If you find she doesn’t have guilty knowledge of the crime I am not going to argue - but in context, they weren’t questioning her about the crime, rather her relationship with Chris. It seemed she dominated the interview and turned it into an opportunity to explain away her text messages, and to lie about the relationship. She was told she was not suspected of anything, even before her deleted text message history was retrieved or it was known her truck’s GPS pinged near the Watts home on the morning of the day they disappeared - that seems at least a bit premature, to me. Still, that’s outside of the interviews/conversations.
She’s so lacking in concern for Chris’s family - her indifference, excepting the (IMO) cringe fake crying moments, seems so suspicious, to me. How does she not express shock and horror at what was done to them - she’s too blasé, she doesn’t appear even surprised, which is shocking in itself. I think she is trying too hard to disassociate herself, to the point of appearing unnatural - no-one could be that selfish and heartless, surely. These were kids she heard about, saw photos, knew were dear to Chris - she came across as though she couldn’t care less about them.
I haven’t given a straight answer to your question - I want to say yes, but I can’t demonstrate that she does have guilty knowledge of the crime.
So, I have to say No, thus far.
Is that the only question to ask in relation to her interviews and possible involvement? Would nudging and coercion be akin to involvement? I am not sure anything about NK was inadvertent or as subtle as nudging - she seemed to know what she wanted.
I think I can’t be objective in this case because from early on I have believed she was there - she hasn’t convinced me otherwise. There are moments I almost believe she didn’t know, as in “He killed his kids!” - but even that raises the question, would it have been okay with her if it was only Shannan who was killed?
It’s difficult to start from the point of believing she knew nothing and is telling the truth because I am already convinced otherwise.
If she nudged, coerced, manipulated him to the point where only Chris without family and accompanying financial baggage seemed acceptable to him, could it really have been inadvertent? Would and should there be no culpability?
I also wonder if Chris did not kill his family despite his confession. That’s how much I can’t be objective on this one. He’s so passive and malleable - she’s the one who had to be talked down, the table striker (during interview), the teller - she told him a lot and she is the one who seethed against Shan’ann. Chris didn’t want NK involved, NK by turn didn’t want Jim involved. Was Jim ever involved, questioned, or did they leave Jim alone, as instructed? Why did she want Jim left alone if he was her alibi, in the event of NK ever becoming the subject of investigation?
I think NK would have been investigated had Chris not confessed - when the agents visited him for their post-conviction follow up interview they said their investigation had been shut down because he confessed, though they had still had more to investigate - resources maybe.
I know the one agent won’t countenance the possibility of NK as anything other than a victim.
One way and another, I believe the Watts family fell victim to NK.
I think Chris killed Shannan, and Nicholl killed the children. I also believe she was the one who orchestrated it, and he was easily led.
She has a criminal record, her gps was pinged near the house, she was obsessed with Chris, googling him one year before they got together.
Dead people have once lived. When they were alive, they may have been loving, kind, evil, charming, stupid, wonderful or saints. Being dead does not change what they were or their personalities. Shannan was not a nice person, she was a narcissist, and lived her fake life on social media. Chris hated that life, and since he was a nasty man, and too much of a coward to break it off, he killed her.
I hope he rots in prison, and that his mistress will soon follow him.
Alas, I believe she is in witness protection now, having made a deal with the devil.
I can’t get past Chris likening Shannan, as she was being strangled, to Jesus on the cross, possibly silently praying, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” May not be quite as he quoted it. Maybe he elevated Shan’ann to divine status when he no longer had to do her bidding?
Following his pronouns, does he not suggest that more than one person was present? It’s easy enough to change that quote to “him” and “he”, but he retains “them” and “they” and I wonder why. Does he want to throw shade on NK, or does his new found love for the scriptures prevent him from modifying them so as not to possibly throw shade? Does his use of pronouns here count?
Also, I find interesting the association of Shan’ann at her time of death with a helpless person, executed at heckler demand, arms and legs pinned. Shan’an couldn’t move to fight him off, but he doesn’t say that he restrained her. How then, did he do that by himself?
It’s interesting he chooses that prayer, because Shanann’s more likely response to being strangled, unless she was already a saint, would be, “Get off me,you ***** “. Apparently she had said something like that, but earlier according to him, when he had straddled her, “Get off me, you’ll hurt the baby”.
It’s not too much of a stretch for me to consider that someone else, all hell bent, could have crept out of the shadows round abut that time, either by design with Chris, or not, after which time Shan’ann did not speak again, except to say repeatedly that she knew there was somebody else.
Well, he said he dreaded to think what Shan’ann saw in her final moments, or something similar,
which makes me wonder if she saw a murderous NK, in addition to Chris, which would have to be more terrible, because at least with Chris she knew there had been seven years of servitude, and a couple of years of non-stop Thrive with his forced YouTube appearances, and most recently Nutgate, plus her wanting them to go to couples counselling and him not, which might all have pushed him too far in the end - but what if she was also having to think, ‘Well, who the hell is this in my house, and in my face?’ You might find more dreadful for your wife, the sight of your enraged lover in your house, rather than just your usually unassuming self now in a rage, if you were Chris.
But then - people don’t always know quite who they married. Perhaps he really did mean it was only himself, in an uncharacteristic rage, who Shan’ann saw, and finally had to take seriously.
It’s difficult to imagine Chris in a rage - he seems so demure, unlike NK, who is banging away at the desk at the agents in the interview room as if that’s a normal thing which people do.
Was it really him who lost it, or could it have been NK, thwarted, furious and curious as to whether there really had been any justification for her googling wedding dresses for hours. Did she hide in the Watts home, and ken that there was no divorce in the offing? She probably had seen and memorised Chris using the code to access the home, though she denied it. I do suspect that by invitation, or by trickery, she was there.
Shan’ann seeing anything would have to point away from her being unconscious as the reason for her not fighting for her life - she must have been restrained to have not been able to fight. Chris didn’t say he restrained her - just said he didn’t know why she didn’t fight, perhaps she was praying Father forgive them, etc - he is very light and lacking in details, as though he didn’t much know how any of it happened. Is his vagueness only an attempt to distance himself from his actions, or does he really not know some things because he didn’t do all of it?
I wonder if there was an element of surprise, if NK just turned up in his house - it seems unlikely he was making sandwiches for work, whilst also murdering his wife, and putting her body in his work truck with his children, yet someone had made sandwiches. Is that how family annihilators work? Well, yes, strangely, it often is. I hate it when my questions don’t pan out.
It all perturbs. I think he is protecting NK, but possibly weakening. Why did he reference her as being on the outside, as though he had maybe anticipated her ending up in prison (inside), too? Something along the lines of - as she’s on the outside, he hopes she can get on with her life. Why would he say that, if there was no reason for her not to be on the outside? That irks - at the least he seems to be throwing shade on NK there. Maybe in a couple of other places too - I forget, it’s a long time since I listened to the prison interview. Would he describe his or Shan’ann’s parents like that - as they’re on the outside, he hopes they can get on with their lives? Of course they are on the outside - they haven’t done anything to make anyone think they might not have been on the outside. Why describe NK as being on the outside? Is Chris giving away guilty knowledge of NK’s involvement? It’s not just that he has picked up prison vernacular, I’m pretty sure cons refer to themselves as being inside, ex-cons or criminal mates as being on the outside - it’s not used of friends or relatives who aren’t in prison, or people who have never served time.
I can’t stop suspecting NK because she, and Chris, give reason to suspect her, IMO. It might be too much to suspect she was in the house, but why was she so reluctant to give the real number of times she went there, and whether she knew the code, etc? Why didn’t she mention she gave Chris a key to her apartment? Did she get a key or code to the Watts home, which she would have absolutely no business to have? Why did she whine and skirt that type of question? I see how a lot can be accounted to embarrassment and shame at being associated with a family annihilator, but she seems to have no shame in so many ways - she was anticipating Amber Frey book deals and sympathy, without being an Amber Frey. I think she didn’t want the texts retrieved because they would clarify the type of influence she had on Chris and possibly prove incriminating.
If she’s totally an Amber Frey, I regret my suspicions, but she can take it, she used to work on oil rigs and she is hard as nails - plus she barely batted an eyelid when a pregnant mother was murdered, and her two babies were dumped in oil batteries in the middle of nowhere. “Oh, my loser ex-boyfriend has just confessed to killing his family, so I’d better forget about the wedding dress, the fancy house and the Lexus, and see how I can cash in on this turn of events -,just as soon as I’ve deleted all my text messages and social media, because HE LIED TO ME, yeah, that’s why.”
The extreme nature of Chris Watts' crime indicates origin in childhood.
Peter
They are not the type of murders more commonly committed by women - women are more likely to poison or hire hitmen, avoid confrontation, unless they’re like Stephanie Lazarus or Jodie Arias, who have something of the predator about them.
What we know of Chris Watts’ childhood, according to him is that he was raised mainly by his mother, and older sister - he regarded his sister as a mother-like figure; that he was quiet, non confrontational, not very social but had a few friends, got into a fight when he was about twelve in which he and the other boy tore each other’s shirts, that he never went camping, hunting or fishing, but he did enjoy NASCAR with his father - he never returned home from college.
Of Nikki, that she has a sister, and their parents divorced when they were around the same age as the Watts children. They lived between parents, enjoyed double celebrations of Christmas and other holidays with their respective parents, and they had to share a bedroom - but that would be great for Chris’s girls because they would grow up really close. She thought she and her sister were too young to have been greatly impacted by their parents break up, but she had cousins who were older when their parents split, and it messed them up.
(From which it can be deduced that she doesn’t consider herself messed up, despite she went into and spent time in Shannan’s home. That’s very messed up, IMO. Maybe she’s a thrill seeker. Was she exerting power over Shan’ann, in her own mind, by entering her home - inspecting her things, eating from her fridge, her plates?
It’s strange - it put me in mind of Stephanie Lazarus turning up at her former lover’s home, after he was married, to get him to clean her skis, or something, and him humouring her. Another time his wife, Lazarus’ victim, came home to find Lazarus standing in her sitting room when no-one else was at home. Creepy, power issues.)
Why does Nikki volunteer that information about her childhood to the agents? Was she worried that retrieved texts would show she tried to pressure Chris into divorcing Shan’ann, maybe created worries about his children being messed up if their parents divorced, or delayed divorce? Initially, she said he was separated, and didn’t have a wedding ring “on his finger”. Did he wear it on a chain, or keychain, where she saw it? If not, why not just that he didn’t wear a wedding ring? Did he volunteer that he and Shan’ann were separated, or did she assume it towards him, and he went along with it, because he liked her and that she gave him attention?
My suspicion is that she snared and groomed him, little by little, first toward the idea of divorce, and then away from the need to carry the financial stress at all of supporting sometimes sickly children who needed epipens and grommets, and who would only cost more as they grew.
I can’t get away from it, or keep to what I was trying to say.
I don’t know whose childhood might produce those results - could it be both of theirs combined, like some folie a deux, where a crime would not have happened if two particular people had never met and become close?
She said he didn’t give any inkling he might harm his family, he didn’t speak ill, but later says it would inevitably have happened sooner or later, no matter who he was with - she wasn’t the catalyst, his cracker slid off his plate.
He seems such a dependent type, and as Linette put it, easily led. He doesn’t strike me as an innately nasty person, or to have been hostile towards his family - As Nikki said, he never spoke ill of Shan’ann - strange if true, to not speak a word against his wife or kids to his lover, rather just exterminate them.
I don’t find he’s a thinker. This mainly due to, “And then she bought a supercharger for my car!” - of Shan’ann, as a reward for getting her pregnant - with Bella, I think. So bizarre - does he think like a young child, maybe operate by rewards - well, prison must suit him, so long as he does what he’s told.
I’m paraphrasing where I should quote what they said. It’s very lazy - I should try to analyse some of it rather than opine. It’s easier to opine and to go off on tangents but enthusiasm is not a substitute for making a proper effort. I just heartlessly return to denigrating an innocent maiden in distress. Writing all this took time I could have used better, more methodically. Be better, me.
My word "nasty", I used for two reasons. One, my English is not good enough to express what I really mean. And two, I felt I had to use a derogatory word describing Chris. Since I called the victim bad words, it would not look good if I did not use any bad words towards the killer.
I think he suffered in the marriage, he hated his wife, and he finally snapped. I do not believe he is evil or a sociopath.
Hence, I do not believe he killed his innocent babies.
Women usually kill the very young or the very old.
I am trying to accept Peter’s analysis of NK interview but it’s difficult - I find it excusatory of her.
I’m such an upstart.
—
Linette - your English is good.
I don’t know if Chris hated Shan’ann- it would be interesting to look at his linguistic disposition toward Shan’ann, and also what it was toward Nikki when he was in interview, and what it is more recently.
Once Chris confessed, the police stopped their investigation.
In his confession, he describes how his daughters are sitting in the back seat of the car while he dumps Shananns body.
He then says he strangled Celeste with a blanket, took her body out, walked over to the oil tower, unhinged the lid and dumped her body. Then he returned to the car. All this while four year old Bella is sitting in the back seat, very much alive.
Yet, in the surveillance video from the neighbour, Chris is seen carrying three sheets/blankets, rollled up so we can assume the bodies are in there.
By hate, II mean he hated Shanann because (in his mind), she was the one keeping him from his mistress, she was just an annoyance.
Maybe dislike is a better word, but at that time in his life, I really believe he hated her and everything she represented.
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