The Family Next Door was a popular documentary on Netflix about the horrific murders carried about by Chris Watts - but it left out three things.
Watts is currently serving multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to the 2018 murders of his pregnant wife and two young daughters in a case that drew widespread attention and national outrage.
In August 2018, Watts, then living in Frederick, Colorado, killed his wife, Shannan Watts, 34, who was 15 weeks pregnant, along with their two daughters, Bella, four, and Celeste, three.
He later disposed of their bodies at an oil worksite where he was employed.
While the 82-minute documentary stunned viewers with its footage and revelations, it didn’t tell the whole story.
People have now taken to Reddit threads and social media to piece together everything that was left out - hunting down court documents, interviews, and letters to uncover what the documentary didn’t show.
In 2015, three years before the murders, Chris and Shanann Watts filed for bankruptcy. According to court documents reported by CNN, the couple had just bought a $400,000 home and were facing around $70,000 in student loan and credit card debt.
Chris brought in about $63,000 of their combined $91,000 income, making him the main provider at the time.
But things began to shift in 2018. Shanann landed a new job at a lifestyle company, saw a jump in income, and was soon driving a Lexus and traveling for work to destinations like Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
While she was often away on business, Chris stayed home with their daughters - and quietly started a relationship with a co-worker, Nichol Kessinger.
Though the documentary hints at the idea that Watts killed his family to be with Kessinger, it barely touches on her significant role in the investigation.
Kessinger, a geologist, said she believed Chris was single when they began dating in July 2018. When news broke about Shanann and the girls’ disappearance, she called Chris with questions and grew increasingly suspicious of his answers.
Feeling that his responses “seemed off,” she quickly contacted authorities.
Speaking to The Denver Post months later, Kessinger said: “He's a liar. He lied about everything. ... If he was able to lie to me and hide something that big, what else was he lying about?”
Her cooperation turned out to be key. Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke later described her information as a major breakthrough in the case: “Nichol Kessinger turned out to have information that I can best describe as being a bombshell.”
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Chris Watts is currently serving five life sentences at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.
While behind bars, he has reportedly written to both family and strangers. Among them is author Cheryln Cadle, who published Letters From Christopher: The Tragic Confessions of the Watts Family Murders in 2019.
The book features personal letters in which Chris not only admitted to the killings but shared deeply unsettling details.
In one letter, Chris confessed to premeditating the murders long before the night they occurred.
“I walked away and said, 'That's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies,’” he wrote, recalling the night he put his daughters to bed.
About killing Shanann, he said: “All the weeks of me thinking about killing her, and now I was faced with it.”
According to the letters, Chris first tried to smother his daughters in their beds before killing Shanann - but the girls “woke back up.”
He continued: “It makes the act that much worse knowing I went to their rooms first and knowing I still took their lives at the location,” referring to the oil storage site where he worked and later concealed their bodies.
One of the most disturbing admissions came when Chris revealed that he had attempted to make Shanann miscarry.
“I thought it would be easier to be with Nichol if Shanann wasn’t pregnant,” he confessed, explaining that he gave her Oxycodone in hopes of ending the pregnancy.