Chris Watts seemed appeared as loving husband and doting father when he pleaded for his family's safe return - but he was hiding a dark secret.
But in August 2018, after Shanann, Celeste and Bella all went missing, Watts was placed at the centre of a media storm, as he pleaded to news cameras for his family to be found safe and alive.
In reality, Watts’ guilt was hiding in plain sight: he had killed his wife, his daughters, and his unborn child in cold blood, and he was trying to cover his tracks.
Now, in new true-crime documentary Chris Watts: A Faking It Special a body language expert examines television footage of Watts appealing for his family’s return in the immediate aftermath of their disappearance, and highlights the four key gestures that indicate how Watts was lying to the world all along, giving him away as the man behind the disappearance of his family.
Mother-of-two Shanann Watts was last seen alive on her doorbell cam as she returned home from a business trip to Arizona in the early hours of 13 August 2018.
The alarm was raised later that same morning when Shanann failed to respond to texts and messages from friends. She had also failed to attend a medical check-up, despite being 15-weeks pregnant
But it was not until days later, when Watts made a seemingly impassioned plea for his family’s safe return on television, that the true extent of his deception was revealed.
Speaking to news cameras, Watts expresses his distress. But for Professor of Linguistics Dawn Archer, while the words Watts used convey sadness, the tone of his voice didn’t back up them up.
“It’s about him. And there’s a lot of if ‘I’ statements in there,” she says.
“He then focuses on his apparent despair, but there’s no matching affect in the voice; we don’t hear that despair. More red flags.”
Analysing Watts’ facial expressions and body language, Cliff Lansley highlights a cluster of four behaviours that give Watts away as a liar, as he shamelessly pleaded for his family’s safety, fully in the knowledge that they were dead.
This includes a look of pleasure, possibly in getting away with his crime and fooling those watching his feigned pleas at home.
“If you look at Watts’ face in more detail with a close-up, on the left-hand side you’ll see baseline. This is Watts’ normal face during the non-emotional parts of the interview,” Cliff starts.
“But on the right, when he says, ‘I just want them back,’ and he’s talking about his children here, you see the lip corners raised; you see the eyes tighten. His cheeks are raised. This combination of these two muscles is an indicator of genuine pleasure,” Cliff notes.
As the interview comes to an end, Watts looks down the camera to make a direct appeal to Shanann, Bella and Celeste to come home. As Watts does this, his body continues to leak clues pointing towards his guilt.
“In addition, while he’s saying that, he slings out a left hand – a hand shrug – which rotates anticlockwise,” Cliff explains.
“Now, a single hand shrug is not enough for a behavioural analyst to rely on, but when he closes his eyes for a full second, and you see a slight head shake no when he’s making the claim he wants them back, we’ve got a cluster of four behaviours which say there’s nothing in this statement that you have confidence in, because it’s not true.”
Captured on police bodycam footage, a seemingly worried Watts runs to his front door to greet police, as they begin to search the Watts property for signs of Shanann and the couple’s two children, Bella and Celeste. Here, Watts began to lay the foundations of his lies.
As seen in the footage, Watts plays the role of the concerned husband, assisting officers with the search. But from the outset, Watts was giving away clues to his guilt, such as nervously swaying from side to side, as body language expert Dr Cliff Lansley points out.
“We’ve got the swaying, we have the double-handed hand shrug, and we have a volume drop,” Cliff explains.
“The swaying shows anxiety, so there’s anxiety going on. He’s making an affirmative claim that she was still here when I was here at 5:15am, but his hands are doing a partial gesture – it’s leakage, you can just see it on the bottom of the screen – so that small movement of the hands, the rotation, is what we call a double-handed shrug, which is part of the full gesture ‘I have no confidence in what I’ve just said.’”
As the search for Shanann and the kids intensified, Watts’ neighbour told officers that he had a security camera on his property that pointed at the Watts’ driveway.
In the footage, a partially obscured Watts can be seen loading his truck with unidentified items. Seen watching the CCTV footage on a police bodycam, Watts is visibly on edge, further indicating that he has something to hide.
“There’s lots of things going on here. You’ll see a lot of the swaying that we see often with Watts’ behaviour,” Cliff Lansley describes.
Explaining the footage to police, Watts claims he was loading his truck with work equipment. In truth, he was moving the bodies of his murdered wife and daughters.
Fearful of being caught out, Watts’ palpable anxiety culminates into a look of genuine despair, as Cliff Lansley highlights. “We also see a gesture which is often linked to despair or anguish, in terms of covering the head with the hands.”
As Forensic Psychologist Kerry Daynes adds, Watts’ twitchy behaviour even raised the suspicions of his neighbours. “Even the neighbour immediately clocks that ‘hey, there’s something wrong here, he’s acting a bit strange,’ because he’s used to Chris Watts being really uncommunicative.”
Police quickly pieced together Watts’ trail of deceit, which painted an entirely different picture of the all-American family man that Watts had led those closest to him to believe he was.
On the contrary, Watts was leading a double life, carrying on with an affair behind Shanann’s back.
Chris Watts pleaded guilty to the murders of his wife and two children and was handed five life sentences – three consecutive and two concurrent – without the possibility of parole.
He also received an additional 48 years for the unlawful termination of Shanann’s pregnancy and a further 36 years for three charges of tampering with a deceased body.
For Kerry Daynes, Watts’ motivation for the murders of his wife and children, whose bodies were discovered at the oil plant where he worked, is clear.
“I think Watts killed Shanann because he simply decided he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her anymore. He felt control by her, he felt belittled by her. These are valid things to feel,” she says.
“But, for God sakes, get a divorce. But he didn’t do that because he didn’t want to deal with the emotional fallout of it, he didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of it. So, he took control of the situation in the most cowardly way possible.”
*Chris Watts: A Faking It Special will be available to stream from Saturday 15th May exclusively on discovery+
