Chris Watts, Serving Five Life Sentences for Killing His Family, May Marry Again — Meet His Alleged Bride-to-Be

A man who confessed to smothering his own daughters with their bedtime blankets is now filling out paperwork to become someone's husband again.

For years, Chris Watts has written from a Wisconsin prison cell about forgiveness, faith, and starting over. Somewhere along the way, a woman on the outside decided she wanted to be part of that new chapter, name change and all.

Getting there means untangling a story that stretches from a quiet Colorado suburb to an oil field, then into stacks of handwritten letters and a growing list of pen pals. What she's said about agreeing to marry him is only the latest twist.

The Suburban Life Before It Fell Apart

Chris and Shanann Watts once looked like any other young family in Frederick, Colorado. She ran a home-based weight-loss business and shared much of their daily life, including their two daughters, on her own Facebook page.

That footage, along with police bodycam recordings and interrogation-room audio, later formed the backbone of the Netflix documentary "American Murder: The Family Next Door."

The film tells the story using no outside narrators, only the family's own words and images. A memorial Instagram account set up after their deaths still posts photos and tributes to Shanann and her girls.

Colleagues Watched Him Unravel

By the summer of 2018, Watts was working as an oil field operator at Anadarko Petroleum while a pregnant Shanann managed their household and business from home. To the men he worked alongside, though, the easygoing father everyone knew seemed to be slipping.

Longtime contractor Brian Spence told People in a 2022 interview that Watts had grown noticeably withdrawn and irritable in the weeks leading up to the murders.

"Things changed; he changed," Spence said, noting Watts had also stopped rushing home after his shifts, staying out with contractors at happy hour far past when the other family men called it a night.

Spence recalled Watts occasionally joking about women taking interest in him at work, though he brushed it off as harmless bragging at the time. "I didn't know it was actually happening," he admitted. "I thought it was just talk."

What He Was Hiding at the Office

It wasn't just talk. According to Watts's own account in a redacted Colorado Bureau of Investigation interview transcript, he met coworker Nichol Kessinger at Anadarko in early June 2018 after bringing a broken gas meter to her for repair.

Kessinger, who spotted a photo of Shanann on his phone, knew from early on that he was married with children. Following a Watts family vacation to San Diego later that month, the two began meeting outside work, first at a Thornton, Colorado park, then almost every day through July.

Watts told investigators he spent nearly the entire month sleeping at Kessinger's house whenever Shanann and their daughters were out of town visiting relatives, using the empty house as an escape from thinking about his marriage.

He described feeling more like himself around Kessinger than he ever did with his own wife, saying the relationship gave him a sense of control he didn't otherwise have. He also acknowledged letting Kessinger believe he and Shanann were already separated, a lie he never corrected.

The Last Words in the Master Bedroom

Shanann returned home from a business trip around 2 a.m. on August 13, 2018. The couple had sex before falling asleep, and when Watts woke for work that morning, he climbed back into bed to talk to her, straddling her on the mattress.

He told her their marriage wasn't working and that he had fallen out of love with her. Shanann, sensing there was someone else, began to cry and confronted him directly.

"You're never gonna see the kids again...you're never gonna see them again...get off me...don't hurt the baby," she reportedly told him, according to the same transcript, moments before he wrapped both hands around her neck.

Watts told investigators she never screamed or fought back, and that he now believes she may have been silently praying as he strangled her, a detail he shared in a separate CBI report later obtained by People.

The Drive to the Oil Field

Four-year-old Bella wandered into the bedroom afterward, asking her father what was wrong with her mother. He told her Shanann "didn't feel good," then dragged his wife's body down the staircase in front of both daughters, who kept asking what was happening.

He loaded Shanann into his truck, then buckled Bella and three-year-old Celeste into the back seat, each clutching a blanket from home; Celeste also brought along a small stuffed dog. Partway through the roughly 45-minute drive to a remote oil site, Bella told her father the truck "smells."

During the drive, the young girls dozed off, held each other, and lay in each other's laps. At the site, Watts pulled his wife's body from the vehicle while his daughters, still watching from the back seat, asked what he was doing to their mother.

He buried her in a shallow grave before turning his attention to his youngest daughter. He used a blue Yankees blanket to smother three-year-old Celeste right beside her sister, who sat inches away, silent the entire time.

The Two Words She Screamed

When Watts returned to the truck afterward, Bella asked what had happened to her sister, then quietly asked if the same thing was going to happen to her. Watts later told investigators he wasn't certain how he answered.

He covered Bella with the same blanket and began smothering her as he had Celeste. This time, she fought back with two words that would become the last anyone ever heard from her: "Daddy, No!"

Watts then dropped both girls' bodies into separate oil tanks on the property before returning home, disposing of his clothes and the blanket in a neighbor's dumpster, and reporting his family missing. He appeared on local news pleading for help finding them before investigators zeroed in on him as their killer.

Nine Guilty Pleas, Five Life Sentences

Prosecutors formally charged Watts on August 20, 2018, with five counts of first-degree murder, one count of unlawfully terminating a pregnancy, and three counts of tampering with a body.

On November 6, 2018, he pleaded guilty to all nine counts under an agreement, reached with input from Shanann's family, that removed the death penalty as a possible sentence, according to records from the Colorado district attorney's office.

A judge sentenced Watts on November 19, 2018, to five consecutive life terms without parole. He was later moved out of state to Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin.

Behind Bars, a New Identity

During a five-hour interview with Colorado investigators on February 18, 2019, later reported on by People, Watts said he keeps photographs of his wife and daughters inside his cell and talks to them every morning and night.

He also described reading his daughters' favorite bedtime book aloud to their photos, along with scripture, each evening. A family friend identified only as Kim told People that same year that Watts spends much of his limited time outside his cell replaying the past.

"He's sad that everyone is hurting," Kim said. "He wishes he could go back in time. He wish he had handled things differently." By 2025, Watts was casting himself as a fully reformed man.

In letters obtained by the Daily Mail, he wrote that he had been forgiven and was no longer "the person who committed those horrible acts," describing himself instead as "a new creature."

He has also used his letters to repeatedly pin blame on Kessinger, referring to her as a "harlot" and "Jezebel" who led him astray. Kessinger, who was never charged in connection with the murders, has since legally changed her name and doesn't respond to requests for comment.

Writing Letters From Cell 14

Reinvention hasn't slowed his correspondence with women on the outside. Prison records reviewed by the Daily Mail show Watts regularly exchanges letters with roughly a dozen female admirers, several of whom have added money to his commissary account, funds he reportedly spends mostly on paper and postage stamps.

One of them, a 36-year-old Colorado woman named Deborah, first wrote to Watts in late 2022 after seeing him on the news, and was surprised when he wrote back. Over three years, he repeatedly compared his imprisonment to the suffering of Jesus, telling her in one letter that "God had a plan for me... He wants me in prison," according to correspondence shared with the Daily Mail.

By late 2025, he'd grown noticeably more religious and less interested romantically, eventually telling Deborah they couldn't continue and that "God has other plans" for him.

Dylan Tallman, a former prison neighbor who lived beside Watts for seven months, described the pattern to the Daily Mail as a familiar one. "He can't resist women's attention," Tallman said. "A lot of women write him in prison, and he responds to them. They become his everything."

The Woman Who Wants to Marry Him

Now, according to a Daily Mail exclusive, one relationship has gone further than any before it. Watts and a 39-year-old Cleveland realtor named Lizzie Henderson are reportedly applying for permission from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to marry.

Prison visitation logs show Henderson has visited Watts 23 times over about 15 months, with each session lasting up to three hours. The facility permits a brief embrace and kiss at the beginning and end of visits, though nothing more, and conjugal visits aren't allowed under any circumstances.

Court records confirm Henderson has already filed for a confidential, sealed name change, and she's reportedly begun introducing herself as Lizzie Watts. Photos circulating online show her already wearing what appears to be a wedding ring, and her Zillow and LinkedIn pages confirm her career in real estate.

Pressed on how the two connected in the first place, Henderson kept her answer short. "How we met is between Chris and I and God," she said.

Asked directly about marrying a man who strangled his pregnant wife and smothered their two young daughters, Henderson didn't dodge the question, calling what happened to his family "something harsh for anyone to experience."

The marriage still needs sign-off from the warden under a strict set of requirements, so nothing is finalized yet. But by most accounts, the couple already behaves like two people planning a future, and during one recent visit, witnesses say "they hugged their whole ten seconds while they were kissing."

Whether officials in Wisconsin ultimately approve the union remains an open question. Either way, the man who once stood in front of cameras begging for his family's safe return now has someone on the outside preparing to take his name.

While the public struggles to comprehend Watts carrying on with a new romance behind bars, the catastrophic impact of fatal family violence continues to leave nationwide scars.

In a heartbreakingly similar loss of young life, a mother lost her two young daughters in a Winneconne home after years of frantic warnings about their safety. Both stories remain terrifying reminders of the devastating price paid when innocent children are caught in unchecked domestic crises.