TLDR
Freshly spotlighted investigative files on Chris Watts reveal a second mistress, unsettling online searches, and the heartbreaking contrast of Shanann Watts’ efforts to keep her family together.
In the garage of the Watts family home, investigators found an unopened Amazon box. Inside was “Hold Me Tight,” a couples-therapy guide Shanann Watts had ordered for her husband in a last attempt to repair their marriage. Chris Watts had thrown it away, still sealed.
By the time police discovered that box, Shanann had been dead for days. So had the couple’s daughters, Bella and Celeste, and the unborn son she had already named Nico. The Colorado oil worker would soon admit that he had strangled his pregnant wife and smothered their children, even as he stood before TV cameras as the seemingly frantic, heartbroken father.
For years, the public narrative around the case has centered on his affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger. She was the secret girlfriend, the woman he met at Anadarko, the affair that coincided with the sudden chill in his eight-year marriage.
But a new review of investigative files by Daily Mail highlights a deeper pattern of deception. Buried in those records is the account of another woman who says she met Watts on Tinder months before the murders. She described a terrifying sexual encounter, one that hinted that his double life had started long before Kessinger entered the picture. Her story never reached the level of notoriety Kessinger’s did, but it was in the files all along.
Against that backdrop, Shanann’s messages land with even more weight. She texted her husband pleading for affection, trying to understand why he had turned away. In one message, she wrote, “How many times do I have to ask you to hold me? You hate me that much?” Watts replied, “I will fix this. It will be better.” At the same time, she was telling friends he had suggested he did not want their third child and had even raised the possibility of an abortion.
While Shanann spent weeks in North Carolina with their daughters, he stayed behind in Colorado and pursued Kessinger. The files show museum dates, a drag-racing event, a camping trip to the Great Sand Dunes, and a stream of explicit photos hidden in a calculator-style vault app on his phone, some showing his reflection in the background.
Kessinger’s own digital footprint showed how seriously she seemed to take the relationship. According to the documents, she searched for “Man I’m having affair with says he will leave his wife,” browsed wedding dresses for nearly two hours, and looked up information about “marrying your mistress.”
One entry in her history stands apart. On September 1, 2017, nearly a year before the murders and months before she said the romance began, she searched the internet for “Shanann Watts.” Investigators did not determine why. Kessinger has not publicly explained it. The files also show that after Shanann and the girls were reported missing, she repeatedly searched Shanann’s name, then deleted those entries, along with questions like “Can cops trace text messages” and how long phone companies keep them.
By then, Watts’ story was crumbling. He told police he and Shanann had an “emotional conversation” about separating before he left for work. Her last text to a friend, sent after a late flight home from a business trip, simply read “Landed” with a row of sleeping-face emojis. Within hours, she was dead.
Watts pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree murder in November 2018 and is serving life in prison. Kessinger was never accused of a crime. Yet her search history after the arrest reveals a fixation on another infamous case. She looked up Amber Frey, the former mistress of Scott Peterson, and checked her book deal, net worth, and whether the American public despised her. It was as if she was studying a playbook for life as the other woman in a true-crime tragedy.
Kessinger granted a single interview, telling The Denver Post, “I don’t think there is a logical explanation for what he did. It’s a senseless act, and it’s horrific.” She has since disappeared from public view.
The newly resurfaced details do not explain why Chris Watts killed his family. They do, however, sharpen the picture of a man curating one image for the world while building another life in secret. In the end, a discarded marriage guide in a garage, a hidden calculator app, and a trail of late-night searches tell the story Shanann never got to finish herself.
Do the newly revealed searches and messages change how you see the Chris Watts case, or do they confirm what you already believed about his double life and its collateral damage?
