A former cellmate of Chris Watts has claimed the convicted killer continues to avoid full responsibility for the murder of his wife and children, years after the crimes that shocked the United States.
Watts was sentenced in 2018 for killing his pregnant wife, Shanann Watts, and their two daughters, Bella, four, and Celeste, three. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including first-degree murder and the unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and is serving five life sentences without parole in Wisconsin.
According to Dylan Tallman, who spent seven months housed near Watts at Dodge Correctional Institution, Watts made repeated comments that appeared to shift blame onto Nichol Kessinger, the woman he was having an affair with at the time of the murders. Tallman said Watts became emotionally fixated on women who contacted him in prison and often wrote lengthy letters to them.
Tallman also claimed Watts spoke about a turning point during his case, when television host Nancy Grace publicly confronted him during media coverage of the investigation. He said Watts later turned to religion while in prison, describing the moment as a personal “rock bottom”.
Despite his claims of faith and remorse, Tallman said Watts’ private letters suggested he continued to deflect responsibility. In one letter shared publicly, Watts appeared to describe his former partner in negative religious terms, language Tallman said reflected ongoing blame rather than acceptance of guilt.
Watts’ crimes became widely known through court proceedings and the Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door. Prosecutors said he killed his wife at their Colorado home before murdering his children and hiding their bodies at an oil site where he worked.
Authorities have maintained that Watts alone was responsible for the killings. He remains imprisoned, with no possibility of parole.
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