Ignorance Was Bliss - Nice Guys Don't Kill their Families

This is a podcast about how we become who we are — about making just about anything sound normal, from PTSD to podcasting to serial murder. It’s about people’s stories. Are you sure you really want to know?

Subscribe to "Ignorance Was Bliss" today.

https://iwbpodcast.com/

———

"Nice Guys Don't Kill their Families"

In 2018, family annihilator Chris Watts committed a horrific crime and landed squarely in the media spotlight. He seemed like such a nice guy… is it possible to be both a nice guy and a murderer?

Patreon | Socials | Website

https://iwbpodcast.com/
https://bit.ly/iwbasylum
https://bit.ly/iwbpodcastmerch
https://www.patreon.com/IWBpodcast

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Hey, this is Kate. Ifyou've been with me for any amount of
time, you know that this wasinitially a true crime podcast. Maybe a
little bit adjacent or askew, buttalking about crime. That's because I found
it fascinating. That's because that's whatI knew about, and it's because it's

(00:30):
what other people were talking about,and I had thoughts, and then over
time I drifted because that's what Ido. I don't focus very well.
Every so often, though, Igo back to my roots, and that's
what happens in this episode. I'mtalking with Joy, who is from a

(00:52):
podcast called Watts Up Watts, andher show is a deep dive into to
the Chris Watts case. He isthe perpetrator. The victims were his wife,
Nan, and they're two very youngdaughters. It's not something I had

(01:12):
really given a whole ton of thoughtto covering because I don't know a lot
about the case. The crimes werecommitted after I started the podcast, and
even after I had drifted away frombeing strictly true crime, so it never
really landed heavily on my radar.I never studied it, I never looked

(01:36):
into it. And Joy is onthe opposite end is that this case,
for reasons that we talk about,just caught her. It just caught her
attention. And I say reasons,but some of the answer is she's not
entirely clear why except that it did. And I understand that completely. There

(02:00):
are just some cases that are morecompelling than others, depending on what you're
used to reading about or hearing about, or what your life experience then or
all kinds of I don't even know, Like some cases just hit you.
So between the two of us,then she's got her deep dive, I've

(02:22):
got my friends. It's like background. It worked beautifully, and so we
do talk in depth about a murdercase. We talk about the perpetrator.
It gets dark and it gets intense. And so if true crime is not
your thing, this is not yourthing, and that's okay. I'll be

(02:44):
back soon with something different. Butjust consider this like an extra level of
disclaimer if you're used to hearing morepsychologically based stuff. But I think this
was fascinating. I had so muchfun putting my friends Psychecat back on and
effectively hearing about the case for thefirst time in the moment. So by

(03:10):
and large, what you're hearing inthis episode is kind of my thoughts out
loud about how I would absorb acase when they were handed to me,
When I got the docket in handand I had to do something with it,
These were sort of how my thoughtsdrifted. Are you sure you really

(03:30):
want to know? This is ignorance? Was bliss? My name is Joy.

(04:08):
I have a podcast which I doa deep dive into the Chris Watts
tragedy. This is the family murdercase. It took place in Frederick,
Colorado, about two years ago.The story is quite bizarre. It's sort
of stranger than fiction. It's astory that you probably couldn't even write if

(04:30):
you wanted to, so the factthat it actually happened really captured public attention,
including my own. So basically,it's a story of what appears to
be a sort of picture perfect family. Beautiful wife and some husband, young
children, and there's like the mistress, and there's the fight between the mother

(04:50):
in law and the daughter in law, and there's all these things that are
kind of brewing behind the surface.But the photos of them are very gloss
and they're very beautiful, and youthink, gee, they have it all.
They live in a big house,they have an idyllic life. They
have a lot of friends, theyhave travel their jets at their upwardly mobile.

(05:12):
They have a lot going on.And then one night, what was
it August thirteenth, twenty and eighteen, the wife had been out of town
on a trip. She came backhome from Arizona from a business trip.
She arrived home at two o'clock inthe morning, came into her house,
and she was never seen alive again. So basically the story is is that

(05:34):
her husband, sometime between two amand five thirty am, killed her and
killed the young children. Then afterhe was done, he made his lunch,
he took his computer, he tookhis book bag, he took everything
that he needed for work. Heput it into his truck. He drove
his truck out to an oil field. He worked for an oil company.

(05:57):
He buried his wife in a shallowgrave, and he took his young daughters
and he put them in separate oilbatteries and closed the hatch. And that
was it. So the story isobviously horrifying and shocking, But I think
what is most compelling about it,it's the story of this like American dream

(06:19):
and you're like, what happened?It's it just makes your head spin,
like you cannot believe this happened.And the question that I think has been
on everyone's mind throughout this entire storyand the investigation and ultimately the confession is
why why did you do it?And I think that's a question that will

(06:40):
never be answered no matter how muchthis case is all over YouTube. You
can read the discovery file, youcan read everything about this case, but
you're never going to get the answerwhy. It doesn't even exist. I
don't even think he knows why.So that's pretty much what it's about.
It's interesting the cases blow up inthe age of social media. We get

(07:02):
such fast turnaround. Yeah, youknow, such quick your gratification for oh,
I want to know more. Iwant to know more, and there's
always more out there, and thewebsites get involved and people dig stuff up
so much quicker, you know,because twenty eighteen, Like that means my
podcast is older than this case,and I still feel like a baby podcaster.

(07:24):
So that's insane to me. Yeah, I hear you. And do
you think that that pulled you inmore so? My sort of origin story
into this case is that I havebeen an avid reader of People magazine,
for like twenty five years. It'sthe only thing I do sort of religiously.

(07:46):
It's sort of a bible for me. And every week, I mean,
I read it because they have entertainmentand they have celebrity gossip, but
it's a really well written magazine.I think it's the most popular magazine in
the country. And every week theyalways have a tragedy story. And this
just happened to be in the pagesof this magazine. And I read this

(08:07):
story and I was just like what, Like I was horrified. Like I
read so many stories every week there'salways a story similar in nature, something
really awful that happened because I guess, you know, crime cells, right,
so people get off on it,for lack of a better word,
And this came across my radar,and I started following this story completely unaware

(08:33):
and sort of almost blind to thefact that this was like a trending story
and I just could not turn awayfrom it. And the more I knew
about it, I feel like theless I knew about it, and the
more I learned about it, itwas like it was like a moving target.
Every time I felt like I understoodwhat was going on, it just
got slipped away from me and there'sjust you couldn't figure it out. But

(08:54):
just back to your point, Yeah, it seems like there's a data jump
on YouTube, social media. Readit and it's almost like a virtual reality
murder story. Like you're kind ofshocked that law enforcement even allows this to
be made public, Like, youdon't really know why, but it's right

(09:16):
out there. I have to imaginethere's some reason why they disclose all this
information if it's too for pr becausethey want to convince the public that they
went by the book. I don'treally know. I mean, this is
the first time I really dove intoa story like this, and I still
I'm fascinated by it, even thoughtechnically it's a settled case. I mean,

(09:37):
he's in prison, he's been sentenced, but there's still a million unanswered
questions, so it just doesn't makeany sense. I mean, that's one
of those things that there's a lotof little details about the case, and
we can hit on some of thosehere and there, but that sort of
goes to the heart of why Istarted my podcast way back initially, is

(09:58):
that people would ask why why isthis detail or that, or this diagnosis
or not that one or whatever,and I knew the answer, and so
for me, I forget that it'smystifying to people who aren't in the system
because the system is messed up andconfusing and convoluted, and it seems arbitrary.

(10:22):
But the answer is the criminal justicesystem tries to be as transparent as
possible, and so the default settingfor cases is that all case material is
public domain as soon as the caseis closed. Right, So every case
has all of this stuff released tothe public by default. It's only if

(10:45):
there's some expectation that there's going tobe a significant backlash in the media that's
going to cause problems, if theperson may ask for an appeal, or
if there's to doubt the validity oftheir confession, things like that, that
they may hold back in you know, thinking the case beyond going. But

(11:07):
in this case, the case isclosed, it's it's done, and so
they wouldn't like, there's no youknow, it would be illegal for them
to withhold this information, right,But I also got the feeling that and
I, like I said, thisis the only thing. I followed a
couple other stories, but never tothis extent, and I feel like part
of the reason why so much wasreleased, like way more than I assumed

(11:31):
the average. I mean, ofcourse the discovery and basic disclosures that are
expected by law from law enforcement.But I'm saying this one about like beyond
the pale, like above and beyond, and I think, and I don't
know, A theory is that maybethey wanted to release all of this because

(11:52):
he confessed so early on, sothey didn't want people to think, the
public to think there was something untoward, Like they who follow a procedure and
they forced a confession, so theywant to show you. They want to
kind of demonstrate and say, hey, we went by the book. But
you know, because there's so manypeople watching, and because of social media

(12:13):
and everyone is in everyone's lives,people can look upon this and say,
well, you didn't do that right, or clearly this was done wrong,
or clearly you had an agenda.Like everyone weighs in with their opinion,
you know, right or wrong.So it's like, I don't it just
makes your head spin. You're like, well, clearly they did the right
thing, Like well, maybe theydidn't do the right thing. And everyone

(12:35):
I'm a you know, everyone's anexpert, and everyone has an opinion,
and there are people who work inthe system, they say, Oh,
the system's broken, the system's flawed. I don't know, it's just it's
a lot to unpack, and itjust really makes your head spin, you
know. And I mean it's truethe system is broken and flawed. Absolutely,
it's there. I don't think thatthere's ever a perfect case no errors.

(13:01):
And you know, whether they're proceduralerrors or problems with the forensics or
problems with testing, or problems withthe way the confession was elicited or whatever,
like, there are always errors alongthe way, and then the question
becomes does that error rise the levelwhere a different jury might have a different
result, right, But just topoint out, so there actually was no

(13:26):
trial, right fast. So inthis case, there was no trial,
and I think that also lends itselfto maybe law enforcement wanted to say,
Okay, maybe you're suspicious because there'sno trial, so the information is not
delivered to the public, and maybeyou think there was some sort of like
backroom deal or something like some dirtydealings, like I don't know if it

(13:48):
was like a pr thing to disclosethis much. There's like bodycam footage,
the holograph, the confession, allof this is like laid out like a
movie. I mean, but that'slike it's supposed to be like that,
Like that should be the default,not the unusual, not the exception to
the rule. Right, So itshouldn't be like closed doors, like you

(14:11):
know, it should be like acongressional hearing where it's public doman, like
you can watch it and you shouldn'tbe thinking their backroom deals going on and
things like that, right, Imean that's court TV. Yeah, you
know, it was a moneymaker becauseall of that stuff is legally available to
the public, right, and theyjust tapped into something that people found interesting
in a way we go, youknow, because there's not a trial in

(14:35):
the sense that there doesn't need tobe a jury trial, there's still court
proceedings, right, Like there stillhas to be some evidence presented to a
judge, and you know, theyhave to Chris Watts had to appear in
front of a judge and a firmthat yes, I made this confession and
yes this is my plea right andall had to say. He also had
to say no, no one coercedme that I understand my rights were read

(14:58):
to me. I unders dan whenI'm agreeing to I'm not being pressured into
this because that has to be publicbecause no one wants to think they held
a gun to his head and madehim confess and now he's serving a life
sentence. So right, Yeah,how long did it take for the bodies
of his wife and children to befound? Like a week? I'd have

(15:20):
to check my dates on that,but it was a very short turnaround time.
So in my humble look, notin my opinion. I mean I
believe that because the police are athis house literally hours after he discarded the
bodies with body camps, Like theywere literally inside his house walking around with

(15:41):
him, and he had to puton game face like oh, I'm just
the concerned husband, and he justlike he had been up. I'm assuming
he was up the entire night thathe didn't sleep one single wink Okay,
So he had to do all ofthis, get rid of the evidence,
and then he gets called back hometo his house. So I think that
the neighbor, I'm sorry, I'mgetting all over the place here, Like

(16:03):
the neighbor next door had driveway footageof him like loading up the car,
okay, loading up his truck,and body camp footage, like I think
he was quartered like a rat likeI don't think he felt like, Okay,
I could push for a jury trial. I can get a good legal
team. I can get OJ's legalteam. I can get you know,
Gloria all Red or somebody to defendme. But where am I going to

(16:27):
go with all of this? Likethey have so much on me. So
my point is just to answer yourquestion. He confessed very early on,
and he pointed out X marks thespot, this is where my wife is.
They had drone footage, they hada photograph from a drone, this
is where my wife is, thisis where my kids are, and he
put like his daughter's Celeste. Heput a c on one of the oil

(16:49):
tanks and a bee for Bella onthe other oil tank. So he just
mapped it all out within a week. I think it was about one week
to him, because I just thinkhe he was like, they've got me.
There is nowhere for me to go. There's no angle, you know,
So it was a very short,short turn around time. I mean,

(17:10):
one of my favorite favorite like Ialways want to use visual quotes,
right, but like my favorite casesis there's a guy named Colonel Russell Williams
in Canada. Yeah, I've heardof I know a little bit about it,
but please continue. Yeah, it'sit's just a you know, it's
a it's a person who started asa serial home invader and he was collecting

(17:33):
women's underwear and taking At first hewas just taking pictures of himself wearing it,
and then he was taking it homehimself, and then he became a
serial sex offender and then became aserial murder. And the whole time he's
climbing the rinks of the Canadian Bear. Of course I don't I don't know
military words, but he, youknow, colonel, like big deal,

(17:56):
dude. And I went to collegeup in that part of New York State,
like just on the other side ofthe border, and so I felt
this sort of connection to the crimes. And one of them happened, one
of the not the murders, butone of the sex offenses happened when I
was pretty close by at the time. And so, you know, in

(18:19):
retrospect, it's like, wow,you know that you think that stuff happens
over there, and then it happensover here, and not overly over here,
but in Canada, Like aren't theyall really nice in Canada? Right?
And his interrogation video just brings joyto my cold dead heart. Do
you know what I mean? Becauseif you ever watch it, it's he

(18:41):
starts off real cool and chill,and no, I don't need a lawyer.
I got this. And you cantell here's a man who's used to
literally commanding the room, right,and he's sort of cock sure, and
you know, his body language issort of he's leaned back, and he's
trying to show like I'm not concerned, and yeah, I kind of heard

(19:03):
about those cases and oh yeah,I worked with one of the women that
was killed, and oh that,you know, that's terrible, and and
he could tell he's just he's justbrushing it off. And then there comes
a point where the interrogator sort oflays it all out. Here are the
tire prints we have, here's whatwe found in your home, etc.

(19:23):
And so on, and there's thisincredibly long pause and finally he looks at
the interrogator and he says, gota map. And the way he does
it just brings chills right up me, because I'm like, oh my god,
he just he just skipped all ofthe steps that you're used to,
like the media circus trial and hiringthe high priced defense attorney who was going

(19:48):
to come up with some bullshit hailMary pass at the end of you know
or whatever, like, he justcut it all off and confessed. And
it's mind boggling because we expect,we have a certain expectation for how a
case is going to go, andthen it sounds similar, you know,
the way that you reacted to thekritat. It's like, Wow, that
just came at me out of nowhere. Serious saying that. When he said

(20:11):
got a map he was confessing,He's like, you've got me, just
put the cuffs on me. Well, you say, show me a map
and I'll show you where the bodyis. Yeah. I mean, look,
the investigators, the detectives, they'rewell trained and they probably know how
to box you into the point whereyou're like, Okay, I don't wait.
I can try and defend myself,but it's kind of futile. Although

(20:33):
I think that in society most peoplewould say, I'm just going to fight
this. I don't care what thehell you say. I'm just going to
get a lawyer. I can beguilty as hell, and I'm just gonna
fight you anyway. I'm just gonnaclam up and say nothing but you know,
I guess it depends on the person. Well yeah, and I mean
sort of public service announcement. Peopleout there, that's what you should do,

(20:56):
because the police are not acting inyour best interest. They're acting in
the public's best interest, in theirown best interest, and they want to
get you to say that you didit. But you did it of course.
I mean. Chris Watts did notblowyer up like he went into a
polygraph. He just was like,yeah, sure, I'll take a polygraph.
I don't have a lawyer, myfamily's not here, but I'm just

(21:18):
gonna do what you guys tell meto do because I'm a nice guy,
and nice guys don't kill their families. In my opinion, I felt like
he complied with everything that they askedof him, in large part because he
was trying to prove that he didn'tdo it, because only a guy who
did it would refuse their questioning.You know what I'm saying. Mmmm,

(21:40):
Well, it's it's a different flavorof narcissism than we're used to seeing,
you know when a lot of timeswhen we think of narcissists, we think
about like the know it all,the bragger, the gaysy right, in
this sort of brash, in yourface narcissism. But there's this other flavor
of narcissism where it's like, look, I've been able to get by my
whole life by playing the nice guycard and by succeeding the things that I

(22:06):
set out to do, So I'mjust going to do that, and you're
gonna let me go home. Yeah, exactly right. I you nailed it.
That's exactly right. That's exactly whathe tried to do. He realized
he's in front of trained investigators,like they smell his bullshit a mile away.
M And you know, and Iam always fascinated by that when I

(22:26):
when I watched somebody, they almostseem baffled, like it's just because I
said so right, yeah, likehe actually said in his when they were
questioning him, they said, whatdo you do? What do we do
to have you walk out of herefor the entire world not to think that
you killed your family? And hesays, you have to trust me because

(22:48):
I'm a nice guy like you doesn'thave that trust me. You have to
believe me because I'm not the kindof guy that would do something like that.
And they're like okay, and youknow, the entire time they were
questioning him, you know, rightor wrong. I think they were pretty
much already convinced even though at thispoint they were only missing that they were
all dead. Like I think theywere already onto the murder investigation and it

(23:11):
was still missing persons because there wasno there was no there was no like
confession or anything. But they werejust kind of humoring him. I felt
like, just tell us your story. Who reported the missing? Oh okay,
so this is really interesting. Thewife, her name was Shanane.
I mean, her parents called herShannon, but she referred to herself as

(23:33):
Shanan, so did her friends.And she was away. So she worked
for a multi level marketing company calledLavelle, and the product that she saw
was a product called Thrive. Sothey went on this Thrive convention to Arizona,
and I think they were in Tucsonand she was with her friend and
her friend drove her home at twoo'clock in the morning because their flight was

(23:55):
delayed. So this woman, Shananne, was pregnant and she also have lupus
and she had a lot of achesand pains in her body, so she
was really unwell. She also gotwind of the fact that her husband was
cheating. So she's like a mess, Like she's just emotionally despondent, she's
in pain, she feels terrible.So she comes home, her friend drops
her off, and then her friendtries to reach her that morning and she's

(24:21):
unresponsive. So she's like, youknow, okay, that's weird. And
then everyone's trying to reach her andthere's no response. So her friend,
I'm sorry for such a long story, it's just her friend drives over to
the house. She sends a textand she says, I'm coming over,
like I'm very worried about you.Drives over to the house and sees in

(24:42):
the garage. This woman's car isin the garage, the baby's car seats
are in the garage, her shoesthat she wears every day, or by
the front door, like there's shehasn't left the house. It's very obvious,
and she's like looking for her.She's like, where is she.
She's not answering the door, she'snot answering her phone. This is completely
unlike her. So what the frienddid. She called the police for a

(25:06):
wellness check, and that's how itall got kicked off. So the police
were literally at his house just afew hours after he completed the job.
Yeah, So I mean that's verylucky, because if the friend had not
checked on her, it may verywell be that the husband was planning to

(25:26):
go act normal at work all dayand then scurry home and deal with the
aftermash shows and that kind of thing, any forensic that he could think of,
right, I mean, I feellike his first, first and foremost
priority was get rid of the bodies. That's like murder one on one,
no bodies, no crime, right, So he has to do that.

(25:48):
He's up all night. And Ialso feel like, and I discussed this
in the podcast, is that becauseher flight was delayed, that completely threw
his entire plan into a tailspin becausehe had no time. And I've thought,
and I joked us, like,maybe you should like murder her another
day when you have more time.I mean, you have real schedule,

(26:10):
reschedule, you know, why areyou doing it now? Where's the buyer?
You know she's going to be homein the house. You've got plenty
of opportunities to do it. Buthe's like, Nope, it has to
be to night. So he hadno time. He was up all night.
You get three and a half hoursto kill them, put the bodies
in the car, get to theoil site, get rid of the bodies.
Come. You know. It wasa mess, So I think I

(26:30):
don't think. I know that ifhe had more time, he could have
cleaned things up. But he didn'thave any time. So you think this
was a planned event? Yes?Absolutely? What makes you think that?
Because they I mean it was likea perfect storm. I mean, number
one, they were having they hadalready gone into bankruptcy. They filed a

(26:52):
bankruptcy, and I think now whenthis all happened, they were in the
midst of another, like they filedthe bankruptcy, and I guess they were
doing okay, and then now they'relike, they're underwater on their mortgage,
their mortgages coming do they owe thehomeowners association? He's got a mistress.
All these things were happening like aperfect storm was brewing. And he had

(27:15):
this mistress for several weeks, andhe was crazy about her. And I
think that, I mean, norespect, I don't want a victim blame,
but I think she was very controlling, and I think that he was
just like, I don't need youanymore. I've got somebody else who's going
to treat me better. You know, I've got her on the side.

(27:36):
And that's what they say about narcissists, like they have the final discard,
but they're not going to discard youuntil they have another person in place.
So he had the other person inplace. The other person in place was
looking for an apartment for them.She was getting their life all set up.
Thank you for listening to the TrueCrime podcast with TZ and this advertisements

(28:00):
help us keep this podcast free,and so we will take a quick one
minute ad break. Feel free toskip ahead one minute if you don't want
to hear the ad and we willbe right back. She was getting their
life all set up, you know. And she wasn't doing this because she

(28:22):
was in the boots. She reallythought that this guy was in love with
her and they were going to startanother life together and he was going to
divorce his wife. So why premeditated? First off, he said that it
was. He said he planned it. He did. There was a lot
of things he said. He said, he tried to make her miscarry the
baby, He dosed her with oxycodone. He did all these diabolical things right

(28:47):
leading up to it. Now interms of premeditation. It's very perplexing because
I think, yes, it waspremeditated, but I think he was under
some sort of like I think likethe idea that he was a monster lying
in wait is not correct. Ithink he was a nice guy, but

(29:07):
I think he was under tremendous stress. He was kind of going back and
forth between two women, trying tohide the fact that his wife is pregnant
from his lover because he knows asecond, she knows the rights pregnant,
she's going to leave him. He'sgoing to end up with nobody, you
know, and now he's going tobe stuck paying alimony payments and you know,
child support and all this crap.So I think he was like trying

(29:29):
to hold things together. And Idon't know, there's not like one specific
reason why I think it was premeditatedother than the fact that he said he
did plant, but like there's alot of things that went on, little
hints. I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of a hard question to
answer. Sure, it was justbatting things, you know, throwing things
at the wall and see what stays. You know, there's no way to

(29:52):
really know, right, Do youknow how Nan found out about the affair.
Yes, okay, so and againeverything about this is so perplexing.
So according to her friend, andthis is in her friend, Nicole was
meeting with the police prior to theprior to the confession, so at this
point they were still just missing,but she had a very strong hunch that

(30:15):
something very bad had happened, Likeshe didn't know for sure, but she
was leaning in that direction. Soaccording to Nicole, she said that up
until very recently, they were havingsex like rabbits, which would suggest their
marriage was very much intact. Accordingto their friends, they said they were
always like loving on each other,very civil to each other, very sweet

(30:36):
to each other, and they seemedlike a very happy couple. So that
seemed perfectly normal. But Shanan hadgone and visited her in laws as well
as her parents, who both livein North Carolina, for six weeks.
Chris was going to join them onthe sixth week, so she was there
five weeks without him. She cameon the sixth week. He came on

(30:57):
the sixth week while he was away. Oh okay, I'm getting the timeline
mixed up. When she went toArizona, which was after her North Carolina
trip, so she went to NorthCarolina. She came back home, and
then she went to Arizona for acouple of days. While she was in
Arizona, Chris told her he wasgoing to a Rockies game. I guess

(31:18):
that's a baseball and a football.I don't know, it's some sports ball,
ye, sports ball, right,So he told his wife he was
going to a Rockies game and gota babysitter and instead he took his girlfriend
out for dinner. So basically,he had been using gift cards from his
company. He worked for Anna Darko, which is a oil and gas company,

(31:41):
and they'd given him a bunch ofgift cards which he was using to
pay for stuff around town so hecould hide his affair because he had another
source of payment. Because they hadtracking on their they had alerts on the
phone, you know, every timehe made a payment on something, and
she would have gotten this. Sothe night before she came back home,
he went to the Rockies game withhis mistress and he decided to use their

(32:04):
shared credit card, so she gotan alert while she was in Arizona.
And I'm pretty sure, I feelvery confident that that was completely deliberate.
And that's also part of the premeditation, because I think that he was like,
I don't care and I'm going tokill her anyway, So what's the
difference if she knows I'm having anaffair? You see what I mean?

(32:27):
No, I follow? I mean. Family annihilators fascinate me on some sick
level because it's like, dude,just get a divorce, right, like
a divorce. But I mean,there's there's so many famous cases to the
point where there's a name for it. Family annihilator of more often men than
women, who have some sort oftriggering event. It seems to often be

(32:52):
money, but sometimes an affair,and in this case, it sounds like
both and they just all once,all in one day. Snap. And
you know, the case that Ialways think of is the John List case.
He's a guy in New Jersey whohad this huge mansion on the hill,

(33:16):
married to his wife for I don'tknow, several hundred years. They
had three teenage children and his motherlived in an attached apartment, and he
had been bankrupt or on his wayto bankrupt He had lost his job months
and months prior and had just sortof been throwing out the mortgage statements and

(33:37):
had been avoiding It had been likedriving himself to the train every day and
then like sitting in the train stationor going to the public library or things
like that. Like he wasn't hewas pretending to everybody except himself that he
was going to work, and hiswife was a stay home mother, and
this just it seemed idyllic on thesurface, and he ended up very what's

(34:05):
methodically killing his entire family, includinghis mother. He wrote out a three
page confession letter to his pastor,so he up right up, you know,
like you're talking about, like veryquickly confessed. But in his case,
he disappeared because his planning was soextensive that he had figured out where

(34:27):
and how he was going to spendhis time. And he was gone for
like twenty years, Like I don'thave the case information in front of me,
but he was gone for an incrediblylong time, long enough to create
an entire new life. He remarried, although it's hard to call it ree
when he was married for the firsttime under his new identity, and moved

(34:50):
around the country a couple of times, and ultimately the case was featured on
America's Most Wanted as like a verycold case, and there's a guy,
Frank Bender, who has now passedaway, but he's a forensic sculptor,
and they asked him to make athree D age advanced image of what this

(35:12):
guy would look like, and sortof at the very last minute, he
grabbed a pair of glasses that hethought would sort of just went with what
he thought of as the guy's personalityand background, and they put this on
America's Most Wanted and his neighbor recognizedhim, you know, decades later,
and he was very clear about like, you know, talking about it in

(35:37):
his mind almost I mean, helaughs at himself, so it's hard to
know how serious he meant it.But there's an interview where he's talking about
it, and he's like, yeah, I thought that it was a sin
to live in poverty, and soif I killed off my children, I
was somehow protecting them from the firesof hell. You know, how how

(36:00):
great am I? How how wonderfula father am I? That kind of
thing religiously like a sin, likea religious sin. Yeah, he was.
I mean, he confessional pastor.He was very he was very religious
and very very much believed that,you know, godliness is associated with material

(36:21):
wealth, which is a little bitof a like not a whole lot of
religions actually say that. But hein his mind, you know, poverty
was a sin and he couldn't allowhis family to experience that. Did he
have a second family? Did hehave more children after the first? He
didn't have more children, but hegot remarried, he died. I mean,
this was all he got caught.I want to say, in the

(36:43):
nineties. Um, I think thecase was the early seventies. Yeah,
and um and again, you knowit's that sort of in his case,
not so much nice guy, butsocially upright, well off right, perceived
as a nice guy, right,And all of a sudden, he you

(37:06):
know, he knew this whole houseof cards was coming down around him,
and all he could think to dowas kill his family and then high tail
it. Where did he move to? Do you know? He started?
He started in New Jersey. ThenI believe he moved to Colorado, and
then he was caught. And Iwant to say North Carolina. Interesting.

(37:27):
That sounds like the Chris Wats trajectory. Right, What do you know about
that? I mean, maybe there'sa big Bermuda triangle that we need to
look into. Yeah, because actuallyI think Shenan M. Chris's wife was
born and raised in New Jersey.Then the family moved to North Carolina,
and then they moved to Colorado,and I wonder, I wonder, what
is trying. We discovered the theyeah, I mean the family and n

(37:52):
it's kind of terrible, but we'veheard it here first, right, we
discovered it, right, But thereis something about that about people who are
so invested in their own image thatthey've lost all track of actual attachment and
actual human love and emotion and evenobligation. Yeah, I mean I think

(38:15):
that they taught well, you know, it's whatever you tie your sense of
meaning to. So I remember afterwhatever the financial crisis, like the housing
bubble crashed, and there were peoplelike committing suicide, you know, and
after the Bernie maidoff thing, thereare people committing suicide because they're like,
I can't live if I'm not abillionaire or a millionaire, Like I can't

(38:36):
live my life, like there's nopoint going on, you know. I
mean, that's what they tie theiridentity to, and a lot of people
do. I don't know that it'sworth suicide, but I guess it depends
on what's important to a person.It's especially fascinating to me, Like I
almost and it's a stretch, butI almost understand if someone gets that point

(39:00):
of desperation where they kill their wholefamily and then they sort of step back
and look at what I have done, Like I can't believe I just hurt
the people closest to me and thenthey die by suicide as well, Like
I can that there's sort of anarc to that, a trajectory that almost
makes sense. But this idea ofI'm going to go dump my family in
an oil field and then I'm goingto go to work, like that's there's

(39:23):
a coldness and an emptiness inside thatperson that I don't even want to understand,
right exactly like they said, youknow, the prosecutor he said,
or the da he said something like, you know, you threw your family
away like they were garbage, Likeyou look threw them away like trash,
Like you're taking trash out to thestreet, Like what are you doing?
Like what goes on in someone's mindlike that? And I think that's kind

(39:46):
of why it's so perplexing, becauseif you're here to speak, you watch
him talk, You're like, no, that that's not him. But it's
really mysterious. I mean the waythe mind works and what we perceive versus
what is real, you know.And I always think about like this,
the wife who had the social mediaprofile which was perfectly curated to make it

(40:08):
look like they lived in this fantasyand that was how she sold her business.
And then I think about someone likeHilaria Baldwin or Hilary Baldwin and this
big scandal. It's like, what'sreal, you know? I mean,
you can create a Facebook or anInstagram or something to present an image that

(40:29):
you want other people to know andbelieve, but is that really congruent with
who you are a lot of timesno, I mean the whole. So
the Hilaria Baldwin thing, from whatI understand, just has to do with
this is Alec Baldwin's right, isthat the one who introduced herself as Hilary

(40:52):
Iria. There's some specific way thatshe pronounce it, like it's not Hillary,
it's hilarious. There you go,And that she was from Spain and
she sold like introduced herself this way. She would correct people on their on
their pronunciation of her name and justhad a real like really heavily leaning into

(41:13):
her cultural background, and very recentlyit comes out that no, no,
she vacationed in Spain a couple oftimes. Right, she grew up in
Boston, Like she literally, Ithink was on the Today's shows, some
morning show and she was looking ata cucumber and she's like, oh,
how do you call that again?Oh? Really, they don't have cucumbers
in Boston, I could say,I mean, I live in Boston.

(41:34):
I could say that they do,like for sure, one hundred percent.
So yeah, but I think that, you know, with social media and
everything, I think we're entering anew phase of life for a society where
it's like people don't want to belined to. They can peer behind the
curtain in a way that no onehas ever been able to do that ever,
ever, ever. And this affectsall industries, Hollywood and you know,

(42:00):
everything is like you get to actuallysee what goes on beyond awards on
all. Yeah, and people,I guess they get angry when they feel
they've been deceived or lied too,you know. And what's fascinating to me
is now I'm I'm not a publicfigure in the People magazine sense of the
word, Like, let's just noway, but you know, I think

(42:21):
just in my own limited span,I was having a rough weekend. I
have have ADHD, and a featureof ADHD, A symptom of ADHD is
called RSD its rejection sensitive dysphoria,And basically which that means is that's the
voice inside your head that's like,everybody hates me. They're only you know,

(42:44):
they're only placating me, you know. And as soon as I'm done
with a conversation, I'm immediately replayingit in my head, like, oh
my god, what do I screwup? What do they think about me?
They're never gonna want to hang outwith me again, you know,
that kind of thing, a lotof self doubt and misread things. Like
what sent me kind of into atailspin was that someone blocked me on one

(43:07):
of my social media accounts. Andit turns out it was done by accident,
right, Yeah. As soon asI realized it had happened, I
was appalled because this is a personthat I had never had any direct,
one on one interaction with. Ithad always been in groups format, and
I was like, oh my god, just the whole group, no something
about me, you know. Andit wasn't paranoia, like I didn't.

(43:27):
I don't think that, you know, because a key sort of fundamental ingredient
to paranoia is that you have tothink you're special, but you have to
think there's a reason the government iswatching you, or there's a reason people
are talking about you. And Idon't rise to that level of paranoia.
But I was. I started tothink, like, shit, did I

(43:47):
do something in the group that Imisread or that I that I something?
Did I? Did I step init in some way? And so I
gave in and reached out and askedanother group member, somebody that I to
be honest with me. They're like, did I do you? Because I
knew that he knew both of us, and he was like, no,
I'm pretty sure it's an accident.I'll ask. And this was before I

(44:07):
even had the chance to say likeno, no, no, don't like,
I don't want to put her onthe spot, you know, if
it was intentional. And the answerwas no, no, no, it
was she's new to that format andit was mistake right, And so I
gave in. After this, Iwas kind of laughing at myself a little
bit, but I was also irritatedwith myself because I get mad when I
allow it to ruin my day,and so I posted it in my Facebook

(44:30):
group, like I have had thisexperience. Tell me of a time that
you've had this experience too, Andpeople not just unloaded and talked about their
own times that they've done it,but they were like, that happens to
you too. I had no ideait happened to you. How did I?
You know, I had no idea. So many smart people a lot,

(44:51):
because you know, it was itwas a thread that kind of blew
up in my group a little bit. And I think that people ultimately felt
reassured by that, you know,by that by showing the warts on all
absolutely you know that I'm not I'mnot okay, like I don't have it
all together. I'm just blailing aroundit, making it up you and everybody
else, right, And then Ilook at these celebrities who are trying to

(45:13):
like keep it at all together andyou know, make up before they leave
their bedroom, that kind of thing, and I'm like, man, there's
so much pressure that you're putting onyourself. It is, you know,
you make and it's interesting you seethat because I think that what happens is
you end up with this like cognitivedissonance about your life, and I think
that maybe, I mean, I'mnot Chris Watts's therapist, but I have

(45:35):
to imagine that if your real lifeis so far removed from your online persona
or your wife's online persona, andyou're trying to convince everyone that the online
persona is the real one, andour mortgage isn't underwater, and we're not
heading towards another bankruptcy, we're notgoing to lose our house, and we
are okay to have another baby becauseeverything's great. You're going to explore old.

(46:00):
I mean, you're just gonna goI'm not defending him. I'm saying
that it's very hard to live thatdouble life and like keep it going.
You know, it makes people crazy. I mean, I think it's important
to understand why people do bad things. It's okay to understand. It's okay
to have some empathy for the peoplewho offend, because that's how you understand

(46:21):
them, and that's how you tryto set some safeguards in place. Yere
and I mean, some of thefunniest people I ever talked to was a
serial one. Like, one dayI was a serial killer in New Hampshire.
I used to work in a prisonand sitting and trading. Dad jokes
with this serial killer on the securehousing unit who's not confined to a wheelchair.

(46:43):
And it was just this incredibly weirdday. But ultimately it was like
this is important to remember that thisis how these people sort of travel among
us. Yeah, it scary isbecause they're not only a monster, right,
Like that's the thing, because youknow, I actually had a conversation
with my aunt and I was talkingabout how his mistress, like people have

(47:07):
said over and over and over,or that the police missed the boat,
she was definitely involved. People werelike out for her blood. They want
to see her head, you know, her on a spit or head on
a platter. I don't think shewas involved, but I didn't rule it
out. But it's possible, ButI don't think she was like somehow had
like they think that her family waslike her dad was in the Freemasons and

(47:30):
he had an inn and like hegot her off or something like that.
You Know, what I had saidis like she you know, she was
very outdoorsy. She liked to goclimbing and hiking, and she was very
into her body and fitness and health. And I said, you know,
she just doesn't strike me. She'slike an earthy granola person. She doesn't

(47:52):
strike me as a baby killer.And my aunt said, you know,
you know, you don't want togo there, like you don't know what
people are, like what that means. So well, my perspective is someone
who is super into their body andfitness and yoga, pilates, being outdoorsy,
hiking, having a dog, countingtheir macros, like all this stuff
is not a baby killer. LikeI don't see those two together. That

(48:14):
doesn't mean that she's not. Itjust means that she doesn't. But like
you said, like you don't knowwho's a baby killer, Like he doesn't
look like a baby killer. Youdon't none of the people in this like
cast of characters looks like a babykiller. So like you don't know what
that is or what that even lookslike. So I guess that is scary
to think that there is no realI mean, surely you see someone with

(48:37):
a scar like down his face andhe's like, you know, gold teeth
and whatever, Like maybe you wantto be a little bit cautious. You
know, there's an image that wehave from TV and movies of who are
scary people and who are not scarypeople. But it's not always it's not
always how it is, you know, no, absolutely, and that's that's

(48:57):
one of those like I am Iam not delighted when there is a family
annihilator that blows up, like let'sbe clear about that. But I am
delighted when a case that's effectively kindof mundane reaches such huge proportions in the
public eye because this case is notthat unusual for you know who. Domestic

(49:25):
violence is among the most common crimesin the US, and that whether that
be between partners or parent to child, that's super common. And because who
do you get angry enough to hurt? It's the people that you see every
day of right, And so whenyou know, I, when I hear

(49:49):
about a family annihilator case, it'slike, well, yeah, it'd be
really, really weird. It'd bereally out of the blue if he got
really angry at his wife and andwent and killed the neighbors, right,
right, but make any sense?Right? But you know, I mean,
I think it sounds like here's aguy who had a legitimate, if
irrational panic, right, because panicis by definition it's not rational, and

(50:15):
he freaked out. He thought thathis whole life was about to come tumbling
down and he was going to loseall the things that made him happy,
and he couldn't think beyond that,and so he panicked and he you know,
fight or flight, Yeah, right, and so he kind of did
an extreme version of a very mundaneact. Right. It's like when when

(50:38):
you have a bad day at work, you don't go you don't go home
and like kick your neighbor's dog,You go home and kick your own dog.
Well, I wouldn't kick my Idon't have no but I wouldn't kick
my cat. I wouldn't encourage thatat all. But like, it would
be really weird if you went offthe deep end and throttled your neighbor's pets
or went into a pet store.Right, you're gonna home and you're gonna

(51:00):
channel it towards the person who causedhowever, you know in your mind,
in your mind, they cause youto feel that way exactly, you know.
And then probably with the children,there's a degree of well, maybe
I can build a defense that shetook the kids and ran and I don't
know where she is. Yeah,what am I going to do with the

(51:22):
kids. I can't drop them offat daycare and make up some excuse I
don't have time something. Who knows, maybe they caught him in the act.
Who knows scenarios of like when thekids died? Did they die before
the mom came home? Did theydie after? Like at which point it's
like a choose your own adventure story. Like I don't mean that to be

(51:45):
glib, but it's just like thiseither this happened or that happened, or
this happened or that happened in somany different scenarios. It's a puzzle.
The only person who really knows forsure is him, the only person who
knows, and he's actually confessed,but it's still like his story is you
just don't know. You're like Ifeel like if I I mean, I

(52:06):
don't want to do this, Butif I had a couple of years,
if I'd be like, Okay,come on, spill, tell me what
happened. I need to know.I need changing to tell me. Okay,
I mean, that's not going tohappen, but I feel like I
do need to know, you know, And I don't think he really tells
anybody. I think he's just hopingfor a redemption from God or something.
You know, well, he's stilltrying to eat. I mean almost everybody.

(52:27):
I mean, as far as Ican with certain qualifications. Pretty much
every human engages in something called imagemanagement, which is not outright lying per
se, but it's how you speakdifferently at work versus with your mother,
versus on your podcast, versus withyour friends. Right, you just sort
of show different sides of yourself andbehave in insightly different ways. And image

(52:51):
management. It sounds like like that'ssuper common within a lot of confessions,
is that they'll give you just enoughinformation to basically get the police office back.
Right. You know, I'm gonnaI'm going to give you a version
of the confession that's hopeful of thatbad well and also makes you stop.
You know, it's got to bedetailed enough that you stop investigating. Yeah,

(53:14):
but yeah, put me in thebest possible light. Yeah, um,
Yeah, I agree, because Ithink that he still wanted to preserve
his relationship with his parents, andI think if they knew that he like
had a list of what he wasgoing to do and how and when he
was going to do it, thatrelationship would have tanked because as it is

(53:36):
now, they still really believe inhim. They still believe that she killed
the children, not him. Theyare like singing that song all over town.
They really think that, which issuch an odd like logically that that
wouldn't make sense, right, ButI guess to them, it doesn't make
any more sense that he would havekilled them. Yeah you know, I

(53:58):
mean, yeah, I wouldn't wantto believe it about my kids either.
Yeah, I mean, you don'twant to believe that. And they had
anna mut well at least the motherin law had animosity towards her from the
very beginning, Like they didn't evengo to their wedding, so that's how
much they didn't like this woman.I mean, my so, my husband
is adopted and his biological mother isfantastic, we adore her, but his

(54:22):
adoptive mother was sort of like theclassic mother in law right right, And
we always joked that if we hadn'tpaid for our wedding that I wouldn't have
been invited. So I get that, Like, I feel that completely.
At the start of this this conversation, you used a phrase that I fully

(54:46):
buy into, but you talked aboutit being a case that you sort of
get off on that people collectively getoff on this. And do you have
any opinions or sort of thoughts aboutthe what I call murder porn aged porn?
I do, And actually I heardyou say that when we spoke a
few days ago, and it mademe feel a little bit disturbed about my

(55:07):
own impulses to actually be attracted tosomething which is so violent, and ask
myself, why does it sort ofthrill me a little bit? You know?
And I don't really know, Likepeople have asked me, why are
you swollowing this? I'm like,I don't know. I don't know if
it's like do I envy them somehowor I mean, obviously I don't envy

(55:28):
the outcome, but did I envytheir idyllic life and say ha ha like
a little bit of Shot and Friday. And I don't mean that offensively,
but like, obviously they did presentthe image of idealism, you know,
and I think that was deliberate.I mean, hey, they had very
good looks, but it's not evenjust their good looks. It was like

(55:51):
they were selling a product. They'reselling a lifestyle, they're selling a brand
of themselves. Now, he hada legit day job and a good job.
You know, for an oil company. Oil companies have a lot of
money, so he was making adecent living. But her job was in
marketing and sales, so like herjob was to present an image and she
had to wrap it all into that. And back to your question. I

(56:14):
think that myself and probably a lotof people that follow this sort of thing.
I don't know what everyone else isdrive is or why they follow it.
I don't know if it's shottenfreeda orif it's some sort of like go
like maybe it's like I try tothink of it, like maybe it's like
going on a roller coaster or goingup to a very high peak or a

(56:37):
cliff. It's like a thrill ofgoing to the edge but not actually going
down haunted houses, things that makeyou get scared but you don't actually experience,
or virtual reality. I don't know. I don't know. I wish
I knew what it was that Ijust maybe I think at the end of
the day, I look at themand I say, you had everything,

(56:58):
like you took a lot of ticketit and just set it on fire,
Like why did you do that?Like everyone would love to have a winning
Latto ticket, but most people wouldn'tset it on a fire right. No,
absolutely, And I mean, look, I went into forensic psychology,
like I totally get the draw ofit. Yeah. I didn't go into

(57:19):
forensic psych because I was bored,you know. I went into it because
there's that degree of that draw towhat makes people the things. Yeah,
and it's and it's sort of medifferent for different cases. In overall,
ultimately it became I sort of startednot I don't want to say champion the
offenders because I don't I don't condonetheir behaviors, but I felt like it

(57:40):
was a lot of society was sortof missing the point that if you don't
do, if you don't put itin that effort to understanding why they did
what they did, then it's goingto happen again. Absolutely absolutely. You
know I always say I mentioned toyou the other day, I mentioned mine
Hunter, and like that was veryinteresting to me because they were talking about

(58:04):
this guy comes into the FBI andhe wants to introduce different methods of reaching
you know, criminals and talking withthem and actually getting a profile on them.
And this is probably in the earlystages where they were building a psychological
profile on somebody rather than just thinkingyou're a bad guy, I'm going to
go after you. Like, thinkabout who is this person and what drives

(58:24):
them, because this is useful information, and I think that this kind of
evolved over time, you know,to build a profile of that person,
and that is useful to know.But you know, yeah, and I
mean I you know, I'm inthe podcast community. I started off as
very much in the true crime community. Many of my closest friends are true

(58:45):
crime podcasters, and so that conceptof murder porn, of tragedy porn,
I get it, but I don'tjudge it because like it just we we're
into what we're into, we're interestingand what we're interested in. And I
know, I don't fully understand thisanymore than I understand people's interest in like

(59:08):
somehow it's it's more sanitized to beinterested in like war history. Yeah,
right, like like somehow that's morehighbrow than true crime when the reality is
all of it is humans treating otherhumans badly, right, So absolutely,
you know it's just right now,this is the big sensationalist thing. And
yeah, well you mentioned the generalthe pilot, right Rush Williams. Yep,

(59:31):
So there's actually I don't know ifI mentioned to you. There's a
podcast which is one of my favorites, which is True Crime Loser. This
guy is absolutely hysterically funny and heactually breaks down this case and he breaks
down the interview with him, andhe talks about like he like calls him
an underwear weirdo, and like allthis stuff. He just kind of like
jokes how ridiculous it is that thislike decorated guy, this highly esteemed guy,

(59:55):
is like an underwear free click weirdo. Like why how do you reconcile
those two things? Like how doyou put them together? They don't fit,
they don't make sense, And Ithink from the outsider's perspective, you're
like what, like why why isthis? Like it just kind of flies
in the face of what you wouldexpect. It's kind of like, you

(01:00:17):
know, I think about like Ialways think that the examples like Michael Jackson,
you know, O J. Simpson, who else? I mean,
Woody Ellen, like all of thesepeople, and you just like elevate them
to this very high status and youthink they're wonderful people that couldn't possibly do
anything wrong because look what their artBill Cosby, look at what they produce.

(01:00:38):
It's so wonderful, you know,and you just assume they would be
the last person who would do anythingdiabolical or terrible, you know. But
maybe we're just wrong about our ideasof who's capable of doing bad things,
and maybe maybe we're all capable.Maybe that's the answer. Maybe we're all
capable of doing bad things. Pushcomes to shove or whatever situation we're in.

(01:01:09):
I loved that. I mean,it's proof that I still have very
much of an interest in the tragedyporn segment of society, even though I
chose not to go in that directionwith my whole podcast, Because there is
something compelling about what would make thishappen. And I really liked the process

(01:01:37):
that we went through here of here'sthe basics of the case, and then
I don't feel like I did somuch direct the conversation, as we just
had a shared sort of journey throughit. And at the very end,
she reaches a potential conclusion that droveme throughout my professional work and to start

(01:02:04):
the show, and that's this ideathat maybe anybody with the right or wrong
set of circumstances could do terrible things. And there it is, like,
that's that's it. That's what's magical, and I mean a real dark magic
and a terrible magic. But stillabout the human psyche is fundamentally people are

(01:02:32):
not very predictable. So Joy,thank you for walking me through the case
and helping those brain cells light up, because it's been a long time since
I've used those exact neurons, andit was it was sort of a dark
beauty to me in going back tothat part of my brain and tapping into

(01:02:57):
that part of my life that Idon't use as much. This is not
to say that I'm going to moveall the way back into true crime,
but there is a fascination there andI think that Joy did a beautiful job
of tempering that fascination with a thoughtfulnessand with consideration, and I love that.

(01:03:21):
Thank you guys for listening. I'mnot sure what's next, but I've
started collecting conversations again and so Ihave some NAT stuff lined up and I
can't wait to share more. Soin the meantime, hanging there, stay
sane. You matter far f