Six years before being accused of murdering his pregnant wife and children, Chris Watts made a video of himself giving a presentation about saving relationships.
Watts, now 33, posted a nine-minute video titled “Relationship Deterioration and Repair” on his YouTube page in April 2012. He explained in the caption that the PowerPoint slideshow was created for a communications class he was taking at the time.
The Colorado native talked about being “bored [with] the everyday routine” of a relationship. He used a workplace affair as an example of something that can cause a romance to “fall apart, crumble or fail.”
“Even at the job, you might meet a new person, and it could strengthen into something else and weaken the bond you have with the partner you have,” he said. “You spend less time with each other and sometimes you have no time to maintain the relationship.”
Watts went on to discuss how “a child can help repair” a relationship. He also spoke about the importance of resolving conflicts by communicating. “Don’t keep things bottled up because it will later come back to bite you,” he warned.
Toward the end of the video, Watts admitted that “relationships are hard, but they are worth it in the end.” He concluded by misquoting a Swedish proverb: “A double joy is a shared joy, and a double sorrow is not a shared sorrow.”
In the comments section of the YouTube post, Chris’ wife, Shanann Watts, wrote, “Great job Christopher! Good information!”
Fast-forward to present day, and Chris is behind bars. He was arrested on August 15, one day before Shanann, 34, and the couple’s daughter, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, were found dead on the property of his former employer. Chris was charged on Monday, August 20, with nine felonies, including five first-degree murder counts. Prosecutors brought two murder charges each for Bella and Celeste’s deaths as the girls “had not yet attained 12 years of age and the defendant was in a position of trust,” according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly.
Chris’ YouTube video is particularly eerie because the Frederick Police Department said in an arrest affidavit obtained by Us that a two-day investigation found he was allegedly “involved in an affair with a coworker” prior to the murders of his family members.
