Chris Watts may be behind bars but it hasn't stopped him from talking to the woman he murdered his family for, revealed a former inmate.
In 2018, communities across the United States were left shocked when they saw the news that a Colorado man named Chris Watts murdered his 15-week pregnant wife, Shannan, and their two daughters, Celeste and Bella Marie, to be with his mistress. The case became so high-profile that it was made into a chilling Netflix documentary titled American Murder: The Family Next Door which followed the investigation and the trial. Chris was eventually charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and taken into the custody of Dodge Correctional Institution to serve a life sentence.
However, a former inmate, by the name of David Carter, revealed that Chris still kept in touch with his alleged mistress, Nicole Kessinger. At the time of his arrest, Nicole, who knew nothing about her lover's plans and thought he was separated, left Colorado and assumed a new identity. She has been in hiding for the last two-and-a-half years.
David, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, said it was in September 2020 that Chris told him Nicole was writing to him. "He told me she said that she needed to speak to him to clear some things up. He wouldn't tell me exactly what she had said." When prison officials found out about this, they suspended Chris's email account. He said, "[Watts] wasn't supposed to have any contact with her, but she initiated it by writing to him." Wisconsin Department of Corrections spokesman, John Beard, said that he couldn't comment on David's claims.
But Nicole wasn't the only one sending letters to Chris though. Many women were communicating with the killer after the documentary was released. According to People, a source said, "He got a lot of letters at first. Many of them are from women who thought he was handsome and felt compassion for him. He had nothing better to do, so he wrote them back. And he started having penpals. A couple of them stood out, and they've kept in contact. Some of the letters are angry. A lot of them are from people of faith who want to pray for him. But then he gets letters from women who want to connect with him, you know, romantically. Believe it or not, they have compassion on him, despite what he did."
34-year-old David, who had been jailed for possessing methamphetamines and stealing money from his Arby's employers, also shared with the news outlet that Chris told him he killed his wife because he didn't want the son they were about to have, didn't want to pay child support, and was worried that if they divorced, Shannan would lay claim to their house in Frederick, Colorado. "I don't buy any of that though," David said. "I couldn't ever kill my entire family just because I didn't want a child or didn't want to pay child support. 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."
He also revealed that Chris kept pictures of his daughters in his cell "but there are no pictures of Shanann." He added, "He [Chris] told me he has nightmares every night, always the same, of his two girls standing in his cell playing catch."
References:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9419993/Chris-Watts-touch-mistress-killed-family-with.html
https://people.com/crime/chris-watts-corresponding-women-from-prison-cell/
Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by RJ Sangosti
