Colorado man who pleaded guilty to killing pregnant wife, their two young daughters sentenced to life in prison

DENVER (AP) — Colorado man who pleaded guilty to killing pregnant wife, their two young daughters sentenced to life in prison. As NPR's Scott Neuman reported earlier this month, "Watts acknowledged strangling his wife, Shanann, 34, and their daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, and dumping their bodies in an oil field belonging to Anadarko Petroleum, where Watts had worked until he was arrested in the case." … What kind of person slaughters the people that love them the most?”

He called his sister his “best friend” and said his brother-in-law “took away my privilege of being an uncle to the most precious girls.”

“Hearing my mother and father cry themselves to sleep … causes me anguish beyond words,” he continued. “We were duped.”

Within days of the disappearance, Chris Watts was arrested and the bodies of his wife and children were found. Chris Watts pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him: five counts of murder in the first degree; three counts of tampering with a deceased human body; and one count of unlawful termination of pregnancy. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said it's likely he will never give a truthful account of what happened and why he carried out the killings. The judge called it perhaps “the most inhumane and vicious crime that I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen.”

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Before Watts was sentenced, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke revealed details of how Watts strangled his wife and smothered his daughters in mid-August, and then disposed of their bodies at an oil and gas site where he works.
Chris Watts of Frederick, Colorado, is sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his pregnant wife Shanann and their two young daughters.