The Watts Family Murders

The Watts Family Murders is a duplicate entry referring to the August 2018 murders of Shanann Watts and her two daughters Bella and Celeste by Shanann's husband Chris Watts in Frederick, Colorado. Watts strangled his pregnant wife and smothered his daughters before burying the bodies at his oil company worksite. He was arrested two days after reporting them missing, having given a televised plea for their return while police were already building a case against him.

Watts pleaded guilty in November 2018, receiving five consecutive life sentences plus eighty-four years. He later gave revised accounts of the murders from prison, including a Netflix documentary interview. The case became one of the most widely covered true crime stories of the decade, fueled by Shanann's extensive social media archive and the Netflix documentary "American Murder: The Family Next Door."

Chris Watts remains incarcerated at a federal facility in Wisconsin. The case is studied as a landmark example of intimate partner homicide, social media's role in both documenting family life and providing evidence in criminal investigations, and the warning signs of domestic violence that were visible in retrospect.