TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY: Chris Watts, Shanann & American Murder

Why would a father kill his pregnant wife and two young daughters instead of just getting a divorce?

Trigger warning: This episode discusses the murders of a pregnant woman and two young children, including how they were killed.

In August 2018, Chris Watts reported his wife Shanann, who was fifteen weeks pregnant, and their daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, missing from their home in Frederick, Colorado. Days later he was arrested, and their bodies were found at the oil site where he worked. We break down the case and Netflix’s American Murder: The Family Next Door, and what the documentary chooses to show and leave out.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy work through the differential. Why the insanity defense doesn’t fit. Whether he meets the picture of narcissism, sociopathy or both, and why calling him a “narcissistic sociopath” oversimplifies it. Why he doesn’t match the usual profile of a family annihilator. How premeditation and emotional reactivity can exist together. And why narcissism is so often mistaken for a lack of emotion. Along the way: gaslighting, the affair, the polygraph, finding faith in prison, the difference between healthy and pathological narcissism, and why the DSM is only one blunt piece of the puzzle.

A note: our discussion of Chris Watts’s possible diagnoses is clinical opinion based on public reporting and the documentary, not a diagnosis. We have never assessed him.

Covered in this episode:

• The murders of Shanann, Bella and Celeste Watts in Frederick, Colorado
• American Murder: The Family Next Door (Netflix, 2020)
• Family annihilators and familicide
• Ruling out insanity
• Narcissism vs sociopathy
• The affair, gaslighting and the documentary’s portrait of the marriage
• Premeditation vs impulsivity
• The plea deal and five life sentences
• His later confessions and letters from prison

Clinical themes: family annihilation, narcissistic traits, sociopathy, the insanity standard, premeditation, emotional reactivity, gaslighting, compartmentalization, healthy vs pathological narcissism, the limits of diagnosis.

Related episodes:

• TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY: The Ted Bundy Tapes - What Berlinger Missed
• PSYCHOLOGY: Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Dee Dee & Munchausen by Proxy
• CULTS: Lori Vallow Daybell & Chad Daybell — The Doomsday Couple

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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