Chris Watts' Secret Letter to Slain Wife and Daughters Revealed as Parents Break 8-Year Silence on Bitter Family Feud

Chris Watts’ parents shared a letter he wrote in prison to his late wife, Shanann Watts, on what would have been her 36th birthday, more than a year after he murdered her and their two young daughters.

In the 2020 letter, Chris said “the man you married isn’t the man who turned his back on his family” and blamed “an evil outside source” for his crimes.

Chris opened the letter with a birthday greeting. “Hey boo! Happy Birthday! Thirty-six years young today,” he wrote. “This is the first time of year when I could always say you’re ‘two’ years older than me. You didn’t like that too much, but I liked messing with you.”

Chris then addressed what he did to his wife, who was pregnant at the time of her death, and their two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3.

“There’s so much I wish I could say to you and make up for what I did to our family. No one needed to go through this. You and our babies had a long life ahead of them and deserved to see that life,” he wrote.

The letter included statements intended to distance Chris from the crimes. “I promise the man you married isn’t the man who turned his back on his family. That man was an aberration brought on by an evil outside source. You know the husband and dad I am and would testify to that today,” he wrote.

The rest of the letter was largely religious in tone. “I close my eyes and imagine the light of God shining across your cheeks and radiant smiles beaming down from Heaven when you look down upon us,” he wrote.

He ended the letter with, “Cheer me on as I walk the path God is putting in front of me. I love you all to the moon and back!”

Chris’ parents, Ronnie Watts and Cindy Watts, got the letter while visiting him in prison, and he asked them to read it at the graves of Shanann and the girls, which they did. Ronnie and Cindy shared the entire letter when they spoke to a publication, and it’s also included in the book Killer in the Family by Melissa G. Moore and Michele Matrisciani.

Cindy has said she doesn’t believe her son killed the girls, even though he pleaded guilty to their murders. Tension has long existed between the Watts family and Shanann’s parents, Frank Rzucek and Sandra Rzucek. In response to Ronnie and Cindy defending their son in a televised interview in 2018, the Rzuceks issued a statement saying “their false statements, however hurtful and inaccurate, will never alter the truth about Shanann, and will never alter the truth about the crimes committed by their son.”

On Monday, August 13, 2018, Chris killed Shanann, 34, at the family’s home in Frederick, Colo., and then killed their daughters at an oil site where he worked. Initially, he lied to his father by telling him Shanann had killed the girls. In November 2018, he pleaded guilty to all three murders to avoid the death penalty, and he later admitted to investigators that he had killed the girls himself.

Chris, 41, is serving five life sentences without the possibility of parole at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisc. The case was documented in the 2020 Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door.