US5 min(s) read
Published 13:09 08 Jun 2026 GMT
Chris Watts' alleged fetish has been revealed by his former pen pal after he confessed to murdering his wife and two children.
When reports emerged that convicted killer Chris Watts had been pursuing relationships with women while serving a life sentence, author and former pen pal Cherlyn Cadle said she was far from surprised.
Cadle, 72, spent years corresponding with Watts after he was sentenced in 2018 for murdering his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, in a case that shocked the United States.
Like many people, Cadle initially wanted to understand how a man who appeared to be a devoted husband and father could carry out such horrific crimes and then publicly deny responsibility.
What followed was a lengthy correspondence that included hundreds of phone calls, letters, and several books based on their exchanges.
Now, Cadle is opening up about what she says happened during their private conversations, claiming Watts frequently discussed graphic details about his affair with Nichol Kessinger and appeared to enjoy shocking people with the stories.
According to Cadle, their relationship initially felt "motherly," but the tone of their conversations eventually changed.
"He told me dark, sexual things that he did with his mistress," she said. "There were a lot of things you wouldn't tell your mother, but he told me."
Watts was involved in an affair with Kessinger when he killed Shanann, 34, and their daughters Bella, four, and Celeste, three. Cadle claims he often spoke obsessively about the relationship, describing an intense sexual connection.
"He was obsessed by NK," Cadle said. "He talked about her all the time."
She alleges Watts told her he and Kessinger had sex several times a day and regularly engaged in lengthy phone sex conversations. While Cadle declined to repeat many of the details, she said the relationship appeared to play a major role in his mindset before the murders.
"A lot of it is stuff I just won't repeat," she explained. "But his relationship with her was very sexual, very twisted, very mixed up. And that's part of why I believe he did what he did."
The author believes Watts continues to seek attention and validation from women, even while behind bars.
"I think that's just who he is," she said. "He needs that validation."
Looking back on their conversations, Cadle now suspects Watts may have derived satisfaction from sharing disturbing details about both his crimes and his sex life.
"I think there's some sort of fetish there," she said. "To say things to shock people. And he told me, who he saw as a mother figure, those details about different sex acts he did with a woman."
In letters shared with Cadle, Watts repeatedly blamed his affair for setting events in motion.
"If I had not met Nikki, I would never have killed my family," he wrote in one letter.
In another passage, he described how his feelings for Kessinger overwhelmed him in the aftermath of the murders.
"All I could feel was now I was free to be with Nikki. Feelings of my love for her was overcoming me. I felt no remorse."
He continued: "The darkness inside of me had won, it was still in me, though, I thought maybe permanently. I felt evil, swallowed up by this thing inside of me. I felt like I could kill anything and be justified for doing it."
Cadle first contacted Watts in February 2019, around six months after the killings in Frederick, Colorado.
"I thought he was totally guilty and I decided to write him," she recalled. "I didn't ever expect him to write back."
But he did, and the pair eventually exchanged more than 100 phone calls. Cadle even visited Watts at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, where he is serving multiple life sentences.
"He said I was easy to talk to," she said. "In many ways he seemed to think of me as a mother figure.
"I tried not to judge him – at least not to his face, and I listened to whatever it was that he had to say. So he felt he could confide in me."
Over time, however, Cadle said the conversations became increasingly disturbing.
"He confessed, not once, but repeatedly," she said. "He revisited details. He contradicted himself. He rationalized, minimized, and occasionally revealed more than he intended to."
What stood out most to her was what she viewed as a lack of genuine remorse.
"Christopher Watts grieved himself," she said. "That may sound harsh, but it is accurate. He grieved the loss of admiration. The loss of being perceived as a good husband, a good father, a good man."
Watts eventually confessed to strangling Shanann before killing Bella and Celeste at an oil site where he worked. Shanann was buried in a shallow grave, while the girls' bodies were placed inside oil tanks.
According to Cadle, Watts described the murders in chilling detail during their conversations.
Speaking about Celeste, he allegedly said: "I couldn't believe how easy it was to just let her drop through the hole and let her go. I heard the splash as she hit the oil."
He also spoke about Bella's final moments, telling Cadle: "Out of all three, Bella is the only one that put up a fight. I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life, saying, 'Daddy, NO!!!'
"She knew what I was doing to her. She may not have understood death, but she knew I was killing her."
One letter from 2019 also saw Watts speculate whether he may have had Asperger's syndrome, writing: "I've never had a psychological exam... the Asperger's symptoms do make a lot of sense and I can match up a bunch of instances in my life that correspond with it.
"It would've been much easier to diagnose me with it when I was 11 years old instead of 33 years old."
Cadle also claimed Watts' mother, Cindy, disapproved of their correspondence.
"She got really ugly about it," Cadle said. "And then we stopped talking as much."
Today, Cadle no longer has contact with Watts, but says the experience left a lasting impression.
