Chris Watts wrote to mistress: “I did not harm my family” after the murder of his pregnant wife and children

In text messages to his mistress just hours after he murdered his pregnant wife and children, Chris Watts denied having anything to do with their disappearance, according to previously unreleased footage of him interviewing the woman with police.

In the video, Nicole Kessinger, who worked with Chris and had a two-month affair with him, candidly tells investigators about the last time she spoke to Watts after his family disappeared.

On August 13, 2018, Chris strangled his wife Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant with their son, at the couple’s home in Frederick, Colorado. He later strangled their daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste.

“I was still in my head. I was stressed out,” Kessinger told authorities three days later, according to footage released on March 2 by Frankie Rzucek Jr., Shannan’s brother.

“So I wrote to Chris for the last time and told him: “If you did something bad, you will ruin your life and ruin my life. I promise you this.”

And he said, “I didn’t hurt my family, Nicky.” And that was the last text. I didn’t say a word to him after that,” she said.

Chris, 36, is serving five life sentences plus 48 years in prison without the possibility of parole at the Dodge Correctional Facility in Wapana, Wisconsin.

Scroll down to watch the video:

Newly released footage shows lover Nicole Kessinger (right) telling police about the last time she spoke to Chris Watts before he was arrested for killing his family in August 2018.

Kessinger, who has since changed her name and gone into hiding, told police that Watts texted her, “I didn’t hurt my family,” after she pressed him for answers.

On August 13, 2018, Chris strangled his wife Shanann (right), who was 15 weeks pregnant with their son, and then strangled their daughters, 4-year-old Bella (left) and 3-year-old Celeste (center).

Watts is currently serving five life sentences plus 48 years in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of his pregnant wife and two daughters.

Last year, exclusively reported that Kessinger, who has since changed her name and gone into hiding, is still in touch with Chris, according to a cellmate and prison pen pal.

Footage released this week, some of which has already been viewed and reported, shows Kessinger talking to authorities for three hours.

She details the beginning of their relationship and how they met while working at Anadarko Petroleum. She worked as an office safety worker and Chris was an oil well operator who worked in the field but occasionally spent time in the building.

“We had several discussions about his current relationship and where it went,” she says.

“He talked about his children from time to time. But the thing is, he was never hostile. There has never been anything aggressive. It was also very kind. He’s like, “It doesn’t work.”

“It was not something unusual or something that could scare me,” Kessinger added.

“Even to this day, even after everything I’ve learned, I still look back and don’t see any red lights in the way he talked about his family.”

The killer’s mistress said that in one of their conversations after the murders, Chris told her that Shannan had left her wedding ring at the house.

– How much do you think it costs? he supposedly asked.

“And I remember hearing him say that and thinking, ‘What the fuck?’

She offered to pawn him, but he said he would probably book an appraisal.

“It was very embarrassing,” Kessinger said.

Kessinger filed for a name change in Jefferson County, Colorado in October 2020 and has not been seen since she spoke to police.

Watts killed his wife after she returned home from a business trip to Arizona.

The killer’s mistress said that Chris was wondering how much he could get for Shannan’s engagement ring after he killed her. She said, “I remember hearing him say that and thinking, ‘What the fuck?’

Watts strangled Shannan, put her body and two daughters in his truck, and drove to isolated oil storage tanks owned by Anadarko. Upstairs in court three days after the murder

At his trial, Watts pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, which has since been abolished in Colorado.

He strangled her and then placed her body and two daughters in his truck and took her to isolated oil storage tanks owned by Anadarko.

Watts buried Shann in a shallow grave and then strangled his two daughters and placed their bodies in storage tanks. “He told me he thought the oil would destroy bodies,” Carter told .

For two days, Watts claimed he had nothing to do with his family’s disappearance and went on television pleading for them to return home. After his arrest, he first claimed that Shannon had killed the girls after telling her that she wanted to be separated, then strangled her in anger.

At his trial, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, which has since been abolished in Colorado.

The murders and subsequent investigation were detailed in the Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door.

Despite the murder and his initial denial of the incident, Kessinger apparently wrote to him at Dodge Correctional Facility under her new name, cellmate David Carter said in an exclusive interview with last year.

“He told me that she said she needed to talk to him to clear things up,” Carter said. He didn’t tell me exactly what she said.

Inmate David Carter reported that Kessinger apparently kept in touch with Watts while he was in prison. ‘[Watts] told me she said she needed to talk to him to clear something up,” Carter said. “He didn’t tell me exactly what she said”

Carter showed a letter that Watts sent him last July after Carter was transferred to another prison in Wisconsin. It was full of biblical references. “Chris turned to God in a big way,” he said.

Watts told pen-friend Sherilne Cadle in 2019 that he still loves Kessinger and believes some of the letters he received in prison were written by her under assumed names. Cadle wrote a book about their correspondence called Letters from Christopher.

Now Carter has backed claims that Kessinger is indeed writing to the man whose crime shocked the nation — or at least Watts believes so.

Carter, who was released from Dodge on Feb. 27, said that back in September last year, Watts, 35, first told him that Kessinger was writing to him.

And Watts claimed that the prison authorities found out what was going on and punished him by blocking his email account while closely monitoring all of his mail.

“He shouldn’t have made contact with her, but she initiated it by writing to him.”

Carter shared a “thought note” from Watts dated December 2019 that quotes from the Bible.

Chris Watts claims that if he had not met his mistress Nicole Kessinger (pictured above), he would not have killed his wife Shannon and their two young daughters. Kessinger, 32, changed her identity and moved out of her home in Arvada, Colorado after Watts was arrested.

There was never any suspicion that Kessinger knew he intended to kill his family, but she was inundated with hate mail despite believing their affair was just a harmless fling. She still lives on the run, more than three years after the murders.

Carter, 34, said Watts told him he killed Shannon because he didn’t want to pay child support, didn’t want the son she was expecting, and was afraid his wife would take their Frederick, Colorado home in a divorce.

“I don’t buy any of this,” said Carter, who was jailed for possession of methamphetamine and for stealing money from his employer, Arby’s restaurant chain.

“I couldn’t kill my entire family just because I didn’t want a child or didn’t want to pay child support.

“There’s a lot going on in my life, but I never wanted to stop and kill my whole family because I wanted certain things to go my way.”

Carter, who now lives in a nursing home in Green Bay, Wisconsin, said Watts keeps pictures of his two daughters in his cell. “But there are no photos of Shanann,” he added.

“He told me he had nightmares every night, always the same, about his two girls standing in his cell and playing ball.”