Murder of Shanann, Bella, and Celeste Watts

In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, Christopher Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann, by strangulation, and their daughters, Bella and Celeste, by suffocation. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage site and placed the girls' bodies inside crude-oil tanks, each with an opening only 8 inches in diameter.

Shanann returned home from a business trip at approximately 1:48 a.m. that day, driven by her friend and colleague Nickole Utoft Atkinson. When Shanann missed a medical appointment and a business meeting and did not respond to messages, Atkinson went to the Watts residence and, after receiving no answer, contacted Watts and notified police. A welfare check that afternoon found the family dog unharmed but no trace of Shanann or the children; her purse, phone, wedding ring, and car (with the girls' car seats inside) were all still at the home.

The FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation joined the case the next day. Watts initially denied knowledge of his family's whereabouts and gave televised interviews pleading for their return. On August 15, after failing a polygraph, he confessed first to his father and then to investigators that he had killed Shanann, initially claiming he did so only after witnessing her smother their daughters. He was arrested that day. Watts directed investigators to an Anadarko Petroleum oil site, where Bella and Celeste's bodies were recovered from separate crude-oil storage tanks and Shanann's body was found in a shallow grave nearby.

On August 21, 2018, prosecutors charged Watts with three counts of first-degree murder, additional counts under a provision covering the death of a child under 12 by a person in a position of trust, unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body. He was denied bail. Surveillance footage released on November 29 showed Watts loading items into his truck in the early hours of August 13, contradicting his earlier statements and indicating he transported the bodies to the oil site.

On November 6, 2018, Watts pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree murder under a plea agreement that removed the death penalty from consideration, reportedly at the request of Shanann's family. On November 19, 2018, he was sentenced to five life terms without the possibility of parole, three of them consecutive, plus an additional 48 years for unlawful termination of a pregnancy and 36 years for tampering with a deceased human body. He was later transferred to Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where he continues to serve his sentence.

The case received extensive media coverage, including interviews with Shanann's parents, documentary and dramatized adaptations, and a 2021 report that Watts had made additional confessions to a pen pal claiming he had planned the murders in advance.