Killer dad Chris Watts says he has changed since he murdered his entire family in cold blood – and that he now believes God has forgiven him for his crimes.
The 40–year–old, who is serving a life sentence for the 2018 murders of his pregnant wife and their two young daughters, made the shocking claims in jailhouse letters to one of his middle-aged female pen pals.
His handwritten letters are often several pages long, with references to Bible verses and religious symbolism.
‘I am a new man,’ he said in one letter viewed by the Daily Mail, whose recipient asked not to be identified. ‘I am not the person who committed those horrible acts. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” That’s me. I’m a new creature.’
‘I know that God does not see me as a sinner who killed his family; he sees me as His child. I have confessed my sins. I am forgiven. The hardest thing I have had to do was to forgive myself.’
Petroleum worker Watts murdered wife Shanann, 34, as well as the couple’s daughters Bella, four and three year-old Celeste at the couple’s large house in Frederick, Colorado in August 2018.
Shannan – who was 15 weeks pregnant with a boy the couple planned to call Nico – had asked Watts for a divorce after uncovering an affair.
He was sentenced to life without parole in November 2018 and now resides at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.
But despite the gravity of his crimes, Watts says he has been cleansed of his horrific ‘sins’.
‘God has separated me from my sin as far as the east is from the west,’ he writes.
‘But forgiveness of self is another matter entirely and it has taken me years to find my peace, the peace that passes all understanding.
‘I am finally at peace with myself.’
In the most recent letter to the female penpal, written in April, Watts reiterated his oft-repeated twisted claims that his mistress, Nichol Kessinger, was really to blame for the murders.
‘I have always taken full responsibility for what I did, even though I was misled by a wicked woman,’ he wrote in the April letter.
‘She was a harlot, a Jezebel who led me astray. Who spoke sweet words of destruction.
‘But I will let God have his justice with her. I was weak and I let her cloud my morals and my judgement.’
It’s not the first time he’s made similar claims towards Kessinger.
‘I was having an affair with this girl and I ended up in love with two women at the same time,’ Watts allegedly wrote to his former jailhouse friend Dylan Tallman in 2019.
‘It’s what led up to what happened. She is of evil spirits, like Jezebel.’
In an open letter to God in 2020, Watts wrote a prayer of confession. ‘The words of a harlot have brought me low,’ he wrote.
‘Her flattering speech was like drops of honey that pierced my heart and soul. Little did I know that all her guests were in the chamber of death.’
Kessinger has never been charged with any crime and police do not believe she was involved in the murders.
She has not responded to the Daily Mail’s requests for an interview. She has changed her name and lives in another part of Colorado.
The facts of the murders are uncontroverted.
On August 13, 2018, Watts was embroiled in an affair with Kessinger when he strangled his wife, Shanann, in their Colorado home. He then drove her body to a job site at the oil company where he worked, and buried her in a shallow grave.
After he disposed of his wife’s body, Watts then smothered daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, while they begged for their lives.
He dumped the girls’ lifeless bodies in large oil tanks on the property. He then went on the local news after claiming that his family was missing and begged for their safe return.
Authorities soon realized that Watts was responsible for his family’s deaths. In a recorded confession, Watts acknowledged the affair with Kessinger, who believed that he was separated. He also admitted to killing his entire family.