CASE: Chris Watts Psychopathy, Narcissism, Infidelity and Murder

[Music] This is Drew Crime Psychology and Personality, where we discuss the pathology behind some of the most horrific crimes and those who committed them from a scientifically informed perspective. I'm Dr. Todd Grande. I have a PhD in counselor education and supervision and a licensed professional counselor of Metal Health. Dr. Todd Grande, that's my YouTube channel. Today's question asks if I can analyze the case of Chris Swats. Now Chris Swats is an individual who murdered his family in August of 2018 and this is a particularly horrific case so kind of just from the beginning I think it's important to note that this content really isn't for everybody. I actually found this to be a pretty challenging video to make. I researched the topic kind of on and off for about two weeks and did a lot of research about two days ago and then yesterday recorded a video on this, you know, really what was supposed to be this video and just didn't really feel that I got it right. There's just so much to this case that I kind of took a step back after recording that and did a little more research and reflection and then came back today to record it. So in this video I'm going to be talking about psychopathy, narcissism, rage and infidelity, a lot of different topics here and I'm not going to be diagnosing anybody involved in this case including Chris Swats just really speculating about what could have been going on in a situation like this. So really the main parts of this video will be the timeline which I think draws really interesting parallel in terms of how infidelity works and then I'll get into the kind of personality characteristics that might have been a work in the second part of the video. So this narrative starts in Frederick, Colorado which is a town about 30 miles north of Denver, Colorado. So what's really involved here includes Chris Swats, Shannon Watts is wife, he was 33, she was 34 and their two daughters Bella and Celeste, Bella was four and Celeste was three. Shannon was also 15 weeks pregnant at the time of the murder. Now we see that in 2015, three years before the story really takes place, they declared bankruptcy, Chris and Shannon declared bankruptcy and they were $70,000 in debt at the time of the murder. So moving forward to June of 2018, Chris Watts started an affair with a woman named Nicole Lee Kessinger, she was 30 years old and what's really interesting about this is because we have information about like different text messaging that went back and forth and all this, we can kind of piece together what was going on between Watts and Kessinger at the same time between Watts and his wife, Shannon. So as I mentioned before, we see this kind of parallel as the marital relationship kind of falls apart and the affair more or less strengthens to a point. So as I mentioned, June 2018, Watts and Kessinger start the affair and then we move to July 10th. So on July 10th, we see that there's text messaging between Chris and Shannon and Shannon indicates that she misses him and wants to talk and she kind of notices his behavior seems different toward her. So really, even at this early point, it seems like she's realizing something's changed in the marital relationship. On July 14th, Watts and Kessinger go to Car Museum on July 18th, Kessinger sends seven minute photos to Chris. Chris was hiding these photos on his phone. Later on, we see that Chris told investigators that what drew him to Kessinger was that he felt like she was pursuing him instead of the other way around. On July 24th, Kessinger Google searched the phrase, "Man, I'm having an affair with," says he will leave his wife. So again, we can kind of see where the state of mind may have been for Kessinger. There's no way to know for sure, but just looking at the evidence, including the text messages in this particular Google search. On July 28th, Watts and Kessinger spent the night at a campground. On July 30th, Watts wrote Kessinger a love letter. We see on July 31st and August 4th, we see kind of texts that have a negative content to them between Shannon and Chris. We see that she indicates that Chris wasn't missing her during a time that they were apart. Also on August 4th, we see Kessinger searches for wedding dresses online. On August 7th, Shannon Watts tells a friend that Chris hasn't touched her all week or kissed her or talked to her and then he appeared cold. One day later on August 8th, Kessinger searched Google on topics related to marrying, you're mistress. On August 9th, Shannon Watts again refers to Chris as cold, but also said they had the best talk ever. So it was kind of a hopeful day in some ways. She also sent a draft of a letter she was going to give to Chris to a friend. And then that letter she indicates that the last five weeks have been the hardest and she misses the affection that Chris used to give her and that she was confused. So again, interesting if you look five weeks back, that's somewhere near the beginning of the fair just a little bit after it started. So again, it seems Shannon has a really good idea at this point that something's changed in her relationship. On August 11th, Watts and Kessinger go to a baseball game, spent the day together and on August 12th, Shannon sends a draft of a speech that she was going to give to Chris again to a friend saying she wants to fix things in her marriage and that she's going crazy trying to figure this out. So if we look at these text messages in Google searches again with this triad informed Kessinger, Chris Watts and Shannon Watts, we see that increasingly Shannon's becoming more distressed over the nature of the relationship and Kessinger seems to be growing in confidence that relationship is going somewhere. We see more or less coldness and indifference from Chris towards Shannon and excitement and maybe some sort of future orientation in terms of Chris and Kessinger. So this brings us to the morning of August 13th early. Up to a.m., we see that Shannon returned home from a business trip from Arizona and Chris was home with the children at that time. The two fell asleep after they had sex and Chris woke up a few hours later and a conversation started between Chris and Shannon. It was about a 15 to 20 minute conversation and during this conversation Shannon cried and indicated to Chris that she knew that there was someone else. She knew there was a mistress. Watts denied that he had any type of affair but he did admit that he didn't love Shannon anymore and he indicated that they weren't compatible. It was at this point when Shannon told him that you're never going to see the kids again and this is what evidently contributed to Watts kind of snapping. That's the word he used snapped. He put his hands around his wife's throat and began to strangle her and he did this for about two to four minutes. Now, later on he would claim that she didn't struggle during this strangulation. Watts indicated that there was a part of him that felt like the idea of killing his wife was implanted in his mind and he had no control over it. Also when he was strangling Shannon, he wondered to himself why he just couldn't let go. So again at this point he's really saying that he felt like someone else had control over him during the time he was murdering his wife and his unborn child. We see after Shannon was killed, evidently one of the daughters walked in and kind of wondered what was going on. This loaded his wife's body into his pickup truck and put his two daughters in his pickup truck and drove 45 minutes to a work site. He also indicated that he was contemplating suicide at this time but changed his mind on that because he was afraid that someone else could get hurt if the place where he worked caught fire and exploded. So really inconsistent here, he was apparently okay with murder but then he was worried about hurting co-workers in some sort of explosion. He never really indicated why he didn't consider some other type of suicide. This was just kind of I think a strange thing to say but again this is something he told investigators. When Watts arrived at the work site, he buried his wife in a shallow grave and then he smothered his daughter Celeste with a blanket and put her an oil tank and then did the same thing to his daughter Bella. So he murdered his wife, unborn child and both his daughters. Now it seems clear up to this point because of Chris's behavior, because of his rage and the murders that there were characteristics of psychopathy and narcissism potentially going on. But that's not really the end of behavior that might be classified that way. We see that after the murders, he looked up the lyrics to a Mataukasson named Battery which includes this reference to a killing of family. We also see that Watts called his daughter's school to unenroll them. He texted back and forth with a realtor about selling his home. He texted with his girlfriend, Kessinger, about their future and he also Googled "Get away vacation deals using a group on." Shannon's friends became worried because she was missing and they alert the police and then after this Watts did an interview where he pleaded for his family's return. Indicated later that behind closed doors, he giggled because he had told police he had nothing to do with the disappearance of his family. Now we see that on August 15th, Chris was arrested for the murders of his family because he confessed and he told the story about, again, the murder of his wife and her child and then the murder of his daughters. A few months later, in November of 2018, he pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. We see that after these murders that Kessinger also did a Google search about Amber Frye who was the mistress of Scott Peterson, an individual who murdered his pregnant wife. She also searched about Amber Frye's book deal and her net worth. So potentially, Cowus behavior on that side of it too. Kessinger did cooperate with the police, however, and as far as I know, she wasn't charged in connection with these murders. So now kind of looking at all this information after hearing the timeline and this progression of the affair and the deterioration of the marriage. We look over to psychopathy and narcissism, and I've heard a lot of different opinions about what could be potentially going on with Chris Watts and what was going on at this time potentially. We see people to think that maybe psychopathy was at work, but not narcissism. Some people believe it was both psychopathy and narcissism, and still we see others who say it had nothing to do with either construct and it was simply rage. And I'm going to take a look here at some of the symptoms of psychopathy and narcissism and kind of go through and indicate where I think there may be some connection between these constructs and what was going on with Chris Watts. So I'll start here with psychopathy. It's important to note here that we're going through some of the characteristics, but these characteristics aren't dichotomous. They're not all or nothing. Everybody can have any of these characteristics to a degree, and that's really what I'll be looking at here. So the first one we see is psychopathy would be pathological lying. And this isn't just lying once in a while. This is lying for a purpose or sometimes lying for no purpose. And we see really a lot of deception involved here in this case, specifically where Chris was deceiving Shannon. So there appears to be pathological lying. Like a empathy, remorse or guilt, this seems pretty clear. We do see some evidence later on of some remorse and even guilt, but certainly right before and during the murders, we don't see any sign of empathy, remorse or guilt. Another indication of psychopathy is violating society's norms, and of course committing murder would qualify as that. The next characteristic is irresponsibility, and I think it's safe to say based on the horrific crime he committed, that was certainly irresponsible. Maybe not in the way we usually see what psychopathy, the irresponsibility is usually more related to on a long-term basis, just not being responsible. The next characteristic is impulsivity, and this of course seems pretty clear, especially the moment of rage when he committed the first murder of his wife. We see shallow affect, so this is when somebody doesn't really seem to have too much depth or sensitivity. That appears to be the case. It's also related to superficial charm, which evidently Chris had because he entered into an affair with Kessinger and she indicated that he was charming. Now this may not have been superficial charm, but again, just looking at this as a matter of degrees and speculating it seems reasonable to connect this characteristic to this situation. We also see a failure to have long-term goals. This is interesting because Chris did have long-term goals. They were just anti-social goals. We see poor behavioral controls. This seems pretty clear, again, going into a rage and committing murder. We see that criminal versatility is a sign of psychopathy. This is interesting because this means that somebody has the capability of committing a lot of different types of crimes. Now Chris did commit several crimes in the course of these murders, including of course the murders themselves. But if we look at the differences between the murders, it was kind of impulsive and in a rage with the first murder. That seems reasonable to believe that. The murder of Shun. Then a more cold and calculating murder of his daughters. He had 45 minutes in that truck to calm down for that rage to subsite. I would think it would be very unlikely that that rage could stay really in a high state for that long. It did demonstrate criminal versatility. We also see low neuroticism. This is when somebody is really calm under stress. Individuals who are psychopathic can commit horrific crimes and not have a lot of anxiety and depression. Not a lot of nervousness. We actually do see that here. Chris was able to commit these crimes in a cold and calculating way and then go back to texting with his realtor and texting with his girlfriend and giggling behind closed doors because he told the police he had nothing to do with the disappearance of his family. This does kind of indicate low neuroticism, a level of emotional stability that's really too stable. Low neuroticism is psychopathy. This is when somebody is too emotionally stable. They don't have really hardly any variation and emotions at all. The copathy also has sensation seeking. This is when somebody gets bored easily and I think this is really a major contributor to affairs and it does seem clear that Chris was enjoying this affair and it might have been kind of satisfying some of that sensation seeking characteristic. So it's a copathy. We see some areas of this construct that seem to connect to what was going on in this case. How about narcissism? Well, narcissism I think here is a little bit more difficult because narcissism has two types, grandiose and vulnerable. So we see some elements of narcissism that appear to be operating here and then some elements that don't really seem to be operating. So for example, with grandiose narcissism, we see extroversion. But with vulnerable, we see introversion. Well, there are some behaviors that Watts demonstrated that did seem extrovert like starting an affair, which clearly must have involved flirting and discussing sensitive material with Kissinger. We also see indications of introversion as well. It didn't seem to be extremely outgoing. Now another characteristic of grandiose narcissism is being socially bold. There's really no evidence that that was at work here. Self-confident. Like that's a possibility here. Again, superficial charm, which is also what's a copathy. Someone who's resistant to criticism, that doesn't seem to be what was going on here. We seem to hyper-sensitive to criticism, which is more lined up with vulnerable narcissism. With grandiose narcissism, we also see being chaos and an emotional, again, that overlaps with psychopathy. Now, with vulnerable, we also see shame. That may have been at work, but we see anger and aggression, and those clearly were occurring in this instance. We also see someone who's defensive, avoidant and anxious. I'm not sure that was really going on in this case at all. Then also someone who's socially awkward and shy, and that doesn't seem to be clearly going on either. Something we see with both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism is engaging in fantasies, having fantasies of success, power, and the ideal love. It does seem pretty clear that Chris was engaged in a lot of fantasy, in particular around that ideal love. It may be Kessinger had that fantasy as well. I'll talk about fantasy a little bit later, but it can be a very dangerous part of narcissism. We see some elements of narcissism here, but I think the stronger connection is with psychopathy. So some interesting points about this case, things that stood out to me from a mental health and personality and human behavior type perspective. Well, the first thing is we look at the day of the murder. We see that sex doesn't necessarily mean anything. Chris and Shannon had sex, and a few hours later, Chris murdered her. So we don't want to confuse sex with true feelings of positive regard, or love, or anything like that. So it shouldn't be confused with love. I think something else we can learn from this horrible occurrence is really the dangers of infidelity. We learn about the dangers of being unfaithful. This was really a tragedy. It had a sadness to it. Even before the murders, we saw how Shannon was reacting to her relationship falling apart. To an outside observer looking at those texts, it seemed so unfair and painful. It would have made a lot more sense for Chris just to leave, rather than stay in the relationship and kind of have a dangerous combination there. A life that he clearly was resenting in some way, and then a mistress that he was growing closer to. Those two things just don't mix. Of course, they usually don't end up in any type of violence or murder, but in this case, those factors did, I think, contribute to the murders. I think the real tragedy and all the pain that Shannon went through before the murders gets overshadowed by the fact that she was murdered. I think people don't look at that ordeal beforehand because of the terrible outcome of it. If Chris had not murdered her, if he hadn't murdered anybody, this still would have had, again, a degree of sadness to it because she suffered so much in confusion, really not understanding what was going on with her husband, not understanding why he was acting the way he was. This really kind of brings me to the root cause of these murders. Of course, we'll never know for sure, encyclopathy and narcissism may have been at work and rage may have been at work. If we look back before that, I think another factor that contributed, and at least some way, was that there wasn't a good relationship between Chris and Shannon, and then this left of vulnerability for an affair and Chris made a bad decision by engaging in that affair. That was really kind of the beginning of the end. He chose to have an affair, and again, he merged the problems with his marriage, with the excitement and sensation seeking involved in an affair. This is just, like I mentioned before, a bad combination. This didn't cause the murder. I think it was just a factor that contributed to the whole situation getting out of hand. Of course, the situation ended up with a really bad outcome. I think something else we can learn here is that fantasy is dangerous. One of the symptoms of narcissism is to engage in fantasy. We really see that pretty clearly here with Chris. He was living in a fantasy world as well as Kessinger would appear, where they had these plans potentially to get married or be together or whatever they were thinking. He wasn't really facing the reality that he was married and had children. Of course, all the financial factors. The fantasy world covers up reality, of course. That's why we call it fantasy, and it allows people to think about possibilities that they otherwise wouldn't consider. Again, this is just a really dangerous situation. Taking a step back and looking at this whole situation, what can we say was the cause of these murders? Well, we'll never really know, but it is an interesting case to study. I think we can learn a lot from looking at it. I would say that it appears that there was psychopathy and narcissism at work. This may have led to unhappiness in the marriage, or that could have been caused from something else we don't know. But either way, it seems like the psychopathy. and the narcissism set the stage for the affair and set the stage for the rage and impulsiveness and even the cold and calculating nature that were all required for Chris to engage in these murders, for him to commit these murders. So I think this was really just the intersection of psychopathy, narcissism, rage, impulsivity, and infidelity. It would appear that all these characteristics just came together and again, it was a terrible, terrible outcome in this case. As I mentioned before, this is really a challenging case to analyze at this level. It's different when you just look at strictly like a timeline or whatever. But when you get into the feelings, the people must have had during all this, the terror and the fear and the heartbreak, this is really such a horrible case. Difficult to analyze, difficult to not sympathize, right? Sympathy is when you feel the same way that somebody else feels. It's important to try to maintain empathy where you can understand how they feel. I think this is an interesting case in terms of how we balance sympathy and empathy, even just in examining it and putting together and analysis like this. There's a lot of lessons to be learned here and I think that it is worth looking at, again, looking at this case and trying to understand what happened so we can learn from it, potentially help people who may be in similar situations in the future and maybe try to prevent horrific crimes like the ones that occurred in this case. This has been True Crime Psychology and Personality from R's Longa Media. This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. R's Longa Vita Brebis.