Analysis of Netflix's "American Murder: The Family Next Door"

hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can analyze the netflix documentary american murder the family next door this film examines the watts family murders perpetrated by chris watts in august of 2018. another question here is why is this case fascinating to so many people so just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video first i'll take a quick look at the background of the case i'll talk about a few items featured in the documentary that i found to be interesting and then i'll answer the question about the fascination with this case the watts family lived in frederick colorado about 30 miles north of denver going back to the summer of 2018 we see that chris watts was 33 years old his wife was 34 years old and was pregnant with the son she pronounced her name shenan although her parents pronounced it shannon the couple had two daughters as well bella and celeste ages four and 3 respectively sometime in early july chris swatt started an affair with a co-worker named nicole kessinger chris watts grew increasingly distant from his wife on august 13 2018 he killed his wife and his two daughters and of course by killing his wife he also killed his unborn son he would eventually confess to the murders and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole now the documentary is kind of unusual it essentially features only video and audio recordings as well as text messages it is not narrated and we don't see any interviews with any of the people involved in the case i think it's an interesting style but there was some information that really didn't get covered using this method of storytelling for example the nature of chris watt's relationship with nicole kessinger its intensity really wasn't captured and they omitted his financial problems which were pronounced however i did like how they featured the most meaningful parts of the police interviews the body camera footage the recordings from court and the text messages i think for people who are quite familiar with this story the documentary was helpful and interesting if someone is unfamiliar with what happened the film really doesn't offer an excellent summary there are five key items that stood out from the media presented in the film number one how distant chris watts was in just about every interaction he seemed disconnected his mannerisms were odd and cold almost like he was an emotionless alien who was trying to act like a human for example his interactions with his children seemed uncomfortable and forced number two how his affection for his wife radically changed during his affair i find this interesting because i think it tells us something about their relationship in affairs like this involving a husband and a wife with the man having the affair if the man is just trying to have fun like he is bored in the marriage he will often go out of his way to appear affectionate and not draw suspicion he wants to have sex with someone else but he doesn't necessarily want to give up the marriage if he's having an affair in part because he hates his wife or is otherwise quite unhappy then we see the behavior featured in this case he's just done he's not even going to pretend that he's still interested in the marriage the third item is how chris's wife was dominant now in maryland relationships it's quite common for one person to be dominant and the other person to be submissive murder is not a likely outcome from this type of relationship i think in this case it could tell us something about why chris was so determined to escape for him the affair was exciting because of the sex but also because of the freedom he wanted to break free from his wife and his family what it doesn't explain is why he killed his entire family to escape when he simply could have left it could be that because he was submissive in that relationship when he became assertive he lost control because he really didn't have a lot of experience with that behavior so both the relationship and being assertive were frightening to chris he may not have been physically afraid of his wife but perhaps he was scared at an interpersonal level like he didn't want to be judged or belittled this certainly doesn't justify murder but perhaps it sheds light on his thought process another thought related to this is how chris's wife tried to project this image of a perfect family using social media for example chris seemed uncomfortable during the pregnancy announcement video the fourth item was how he murdered his daughters murder is actually not terribly common but when it does happen in a family like this the husband murdering the wife would be the most common scenario a husband murdering his children would be uncommon if it was kind of a heat of the moment crime one would think that he would stop after killing his wife did his anger for his wife extend to his children or was he simply so callous that it became a calculation the children's existence became inconvenient to him after he killed their mother i think it's more likely that the latter is true therefore this crime was likely premeditated he wanted to wipe out his family and start a new life the fifth item is the propagation of pseudoscience as we've seen many times in other cases here we see that the police use the so-called lie detector test referred to as a polygraph to determine if chris was being deceptive in reality of course these instruments are only slightly better than chance at detecting lies and often do more harm than good my concern is that the outcome of this case may convince people that polygraphs are good after all most people agree that chris watts should be in prison for the rest of his life and that's what happened but pseudoscience is never good it's never actually helpful this is just another example of police trying to out deceive a deceiver essentially we see a contest to determine who can lie more the exact motivation for chris watts to commit these murders is a mystery it was probably due to a confluence of vulnerability the dominant submissive dynamic of the relationship excitement seeking like the affair financial stress marital stress selfishness and a heavy investment in fantasy now moving on to the question of the public's fascination with this case what is it about this case that captures people's attention i think there are three key factors chris watts may have been odd and distant but he certainly didn't appear to be a killer i think this is quite confusing for a lot of people i think there is this idea that if someone like this could commit these crimes who is safe like if chris watts could do this how many other people are capable of such actions i don't think this component of the fascination is strictly about a fear of being a murder victim it could also be a fear of being the perpetrator of homicide it forces people to examine their own destructive potential many people can identify with the dynamics of chris watt's marriage being dominated being unhappy having an affair so they might wonder if they themselves are capable of committing homicide the second item of fascination would be the conspiracy theories even though it's clear that chris watts did commit the murders the exact details of what happened are still a mystery because all we have are the statements made by chris swatz and again he's fairly comfortable lying for example did he really murder his daughters after his wife or did he murder them before she came home early on august 13th there's no way to know for sure whenever there's a serious crime and details are not known it becomes fascinating because of all the conspiracy theories these elaborate schemes fill the void where knowledge would normally be now moving to the third reason that this case is fascinating i think this has to do with how their lives seemed perfect yet ended tragically from the outside the watts family should have been happy they had each other people thought they had satisfactory financial resources they had that big house we see these social media postings of a picture-perfect life chris watts destroyed that in a matter of hours it is the uncertainty that is both troubling and fascinating are families so fragile that an affair combined with a few other stressors could result in their destruction i think it's likely that watts would have not committed this crime if he wasn't involved in that affair this tragedy really does point to the dangers of infidelity affairs inject excitement and hope into a miserable marital relationship but the difficulty is that the marital structures are not easy to move in and out of people who are married are tied together in many ways emotionally through other members of the family financially the image that they project to the public so their self-esteem if an affair is so appealing that one of the parties cannot picture it ending they may take extreme action this dynamic is the most dangerous when the affair not only brings what the person thinks of as joy but alleviates their pain this creates a massive differential between the marital and affair relationship in the short run affairs often seem very desirable a heavy investment in fantasy can magnify this differential even more if the person can suspend reality anything becomes possible those are my thoughts on the netflix documentary about chris swatz please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 201,344

Keywords:

Id: rPFCcG-pT7o

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020