Murderer Chris Watts Planning to Marry Ohio Woman Who Relocated to Be Closer to His Prison as He Serves Multiple Life Sentences, Family Confirms

Gruesome killer Chris Watts is reportedly engaged and planning to marry Lizzie Henderson, a 39-year-old former realtor from the Cleveland, Ohio, area. Henderson’s family members confirmed the relationship, which comes nearly eight years after Watts murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two young daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, in Frederick, Colo.

Lizzie relocated from Ohio to Wisconsin to live closer to the maximum-security Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, where Watts, 41, is serving multiple life sentences without parole.

Prison logs show she has visited Chris at least 20 times over the past year, which included spending Christmas Day with him in 2024.

Lizzie filed an application for a confidential name change on September 12, 2025, and has already begun identifying herself as "Lizzie Watts."

The couple has submitted an official marriage request through the prison system. Photographs obtained by the media showed Lizzie wearing what appeared to be wedding bands.

When contacted by reporters regarding the relationship, she acknowledged that the situation could be perceived as "weird.”

When questioned on how the romance began, she stated, "How things began is between me, him and God."

Regarding Chris' crimes, she referred to the triple homicide as "something harsh for anyone to experience."

Chris is serving five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at the maximum-security Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun. He pled guilty in November 2018 to the gruesome murders of his 34-year-old pregnant wife and their two young daughters.

On August 13, 2018, Watts strangled Shanann (who was 15 weeks pregnant with their unborn son, Nico Lee) inside their home. He then drove his daughters and his wife's body to a remote oil storage site owned by his employer, Anadarko Petroleum, where he smothered both children.

The murderer buried Shanann in a shallow grave and stuffed his daughters' bodies through narrow 8-inch openings into crude-oil storage tanks.

Investigators discovered Chris was living a double life and was deeply entrenched in an extramarital affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger. He killed his family in a calculated attempt to break free from financial strain and start a fresh life with his mistress.

Facing capital punishment, Chris agreed to a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, a decision supported by Shanann’s family to circumvent a lengthy, agonizing trial.

Chris was originally incarcerated in Colorado but was secretly transferred to Wisconsin's Dodge Correctional Institution out of extreme safety and security concerns surrounding his high-profile case highlighted in the 2020 Netflix documentary, American Murder: The Family Next Door.

Jailhouse logs, letters and interviews revealed Chris has heavily embraced religious rhetoric while incarcerated. In public letters to pen pals, he routinely stated that "God has forgiven" him, using scripture to frame himself as a "new man."

Despite pleading guilty, Chris has written prison correspondence painting himself as a victim of temptation. He has explicitly blamed his former mistress for "tempting" him and minimized his actions by writing that he was a great husband and father until "things happened."

In 2019, a judge ordered Chris to pay a $6 million civil lawsuit settlement to Shanann's surviving family. Due to his life sentence, the family does not expect to collect the money, but the judgment serves to ensure he can never financially profit from his crimes, books or media coverage.