Watts family murders
2018 mass murder in Colorado / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, American oil field operator Christopher Lee Watts (born May 16, 1985)[1] murdered his pregnant wife Shanann (34) by strangulation, and their two children Bella (4) and Celeste (3) by smothering them. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility, and dumped his children's bodies into crude oil tanks. Watts initially maintained his innocence in his family's disappearance, but was arrested on August 15, after confessing in an interview with detectives to murdering Shanann. He later admitted to murdering his children.
Watts family murders | |
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Location | Frederick, Colorado, U.S. |
Date | August 13, 2018; 5 years ago (2018-08-13) |
Attack type | Familicide, mass murder, uxoricide, filicide, child murder, feticide |
Victims | 3[lower-alpha 1] |
Perpetrator | Christopher Lee Watts |
Verdict | Pleaded guilty |
Convictions | |
Sentence | Three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 84 years |
On November 6, 2018, Watts pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree murder as part of a plea deal when the death penalty (which was later abolished in Colorado in 2020) was removed from sentencing. He was sentenced to five life sentences without the possibility of parole, three to be served consecutively.