Chris Watts - Eyes Of A Monster

on august 13 2018 the world heard chris watts plea for his family's safe return on local and national news i have no idea like where they went but just two days later he admitted to the unthinkable he had murdered all three of them since then the story has captivated the world but what has never been told is the story of those who shared the last happy moments with chris and his daughters this week we sat down with jeremy and jennifer lindstrom close friends with chris and shanann i've replayed that birthday party in my head a thousand times did you guys take a bunch of pictures that evening oh yeah i have a picture of him standing in the background of my kid blowing out a candle so when you see that picture and you see him is it a different chris watson you know every time i look at that photo his face changes and now it's like that's a creepy [ __ ] picture that's the image that's in my brain this is their exclusive energy [Music] i have jennifer and jeremy lindstrom here with us tonight and we're going to be talking about the chris watts story you guys have intimate details potentially the last person to actually see chris and the girls alive is that correct yes we want to kind of go into your aspect of the story and and as it's told in a first person there's a whole lot of information and detail that you guys have some of which i don't think has actually been shared before and so we want to kind of dive into this story um obviously the anniversary is coming up it's been a big story around the country and a lot of people are really interested in it so we are very appreciative that you guys are here to actually hear this story firsthand from the people that actually probably saw them last so introduce yourself i'm jeremy lindstrom and how do you know the what i know them because i uh worked with both of them okay go into a little bit of that for me worked with him as in how how what was your relationship chris was a very good mechanic uh master technician uh shanann was a salesperson at the dealership i was at uh met them there they don't have family that live in colorado neither do we so we kind of struck off a little bit of a family friendship they would come over to our house for birthday parties our kids birthday parties father's day super bowls sporadic football games because they were big pittsburgh steeler fans so and we're from san diego so chargers fans if they ever played we were together for that game uh they would have parties at their house uh for steelers parties and we'd go over and watch uh the game with them and you know just random barbecues throughout the summer so your initial contact was through work though uh-huh absolutely and what about you jennifer how did how did you know them through jeremy he he met them both at work and he said you know hey there's this nice couple and they just moved out here and they don't have any family and you know we should you know go out to dinner with them and hang out and then after that we just started hanging out with them regularly ian so i kind of want to go back and forth between the two of you because i really want to set the stage there's a whole lot of documentation on the story and in the documentation the story there is kind of a common theme really that most people didn't think this guy was capable of this no absolutely not so i kind of want to get your perspective um a when you first met him kind of when you first got to know the guy and and and so on and so forth and no shenan because part of this story is and you'd said it before a little bit uh most people think that you knew him first but you actually knew shenan better yes so i kind of want to get that perspective on this i want you both uh we'll start with you kind of how you knew them first and then i want to get your perspective on what you thought of both chris and shanann shenan was very detail-oriented very ocd in a way right chris was mow the lawn clean out the garage it was a very old school traditional family value in their house chris was a mechanic shanann was a mother right like very traditional along a lot of those i told her one day at work hey i want to meet with you every monday at one o'clock let's go through your customers let's see what i can help you with let's see what i can do she would show up in my office whether i was ready or not with her phone my alarm went off she would hold me accountable for our meetings and chris was meticulous with everything that kid was one of the best mechanics i've ever seen fixing cars he had a passion for what he did fixing cars at the at the store as a service guy uh one day for his birthday she bought him a supercharger for his mustang like would you think anything different no she knew what he loved he knew what she loved it worked right everything worked he is a hard-working kid anything she said to do he would do it 100 of the time hey my parents are going to move out here you're going to fly out to the east coast and you're driving the moving truck back and they're going to fly home he's like i'm good with that i'll drive the truck so they can fly home they don't have to ride in the truck right this is the kid that did this so there's no way shape or form would i ever believe this could happen well there's certainly a consensus with a lot of the stuff that's out there that that is that is a very accurate description from a lot of people how did you feel about the two um pretty much the same like shenan was always like from the moment i met her she was always super outgoing and super friendly she wanted to you know when we first met her she didn't have any kids yet and she was but you could tell that they really wanted to have kids and she was really interested in you know our girls and what you know what they liked and wanted to spend time with them and then um and then she got pregnant with her oldest bella and you could tell that that was you know always her dream is to have kids and exciting moment yes nothing seemed odd well she wasn't even sure she could have kids right yeah they yeah they did have i know some fertility problems with um the first two and um that she discussed with you yeah absolutely yeah she just always really wanted to be a mom and she loved like when she was pregnant she would always be excited about oh i'm you know decorating the baby's nursery and this is the theme i chose and i got all the clothes ready and they're all washed and hung up and but i'm only four months pregnant and so very type 8 like like jeremy just described it yeah very organized and just always like ready to go like what's what's the next thing and you know she just always had something going on that she could really dive into and be involved in and and consistently that way every time you met him oh yeah absolutely so so tell me how often that you guys did get together i know we talked about some football games and and some parties which we're gonna get to the the one party which was the night before but prior to that did you hang out on a pretty regular basis regular as in maybe six eight times a year okay depending on stuff if i ever invited them to something they showed up yeah it's just if they invited us to something we showed up it was just how we we we lived what two miles from each other so she but she worked with you did you develop a relationship with him yes and no well you know when you go to parties a lot of times and you're and you're hanging out the mental kind of go over to one side women will kind of do their thing were you with him one-on-one a lot no not so much no he he uh he can he would come over and his main goal was my food whatever i barbecued whatever i smoked up whatever i cook whatever we put out he was like i'm coming over because i know there's food right right but he spent a lot of time with the kids yes um shenan was more hey how can i help clean what can i cook what can i do what can i she needed to be involved in the party right chris was involved in the kids and making sure they were taken care of they were okay right like that's just how it always happened hey they wouldn't leave shenan's like i want to help clean the kitchen i want to help put the dishes away i want to do this like that was normal as normal as could be with really good friends consistently every time too 100 100 so there was nothing early on where you were like wow this is an interesting type of dynamic relationship it was actually one of those just really good old-fashioned school relationships no it this was a relationship that people would probably wish for with what she demanded in life and his acceptable personality fit which is which is really interesting because it sets up a story that's almost unfathomable anyway and we're going to get to that because we've talked off-camera about this before and this is what makes the story so intriguing to me um because it is is very difficult to place and we're going to ask you a lot of those questions because i know you feel the same way so leading up to that night i want to jump right into the night before they're at your house birthday the birthday describe that party that's the night before uh extremely normal we invited chris because we knew shenan was out of town she she they talked and we knew she wasn't going to be there now she was in arizona yes did you talk to her while she was in arizona um no i did not but my daughter did because she had actually babysat the girls the night before the birthday party correct so chris could go to a baseball alleged baseball game right when which i invited him to the broncos game because i received tickets and he told me he couldn't go because his work would be mad if he didn't use the tickets and this was the night before the party yes yeah this was literally saturday night yeah okay so let's just start there so the night before your party you had invited him to the bronco game yeah i invited him a few days earlier and that's when he texted me back oh i can't go i got tickets to the rockies game and if i don't use them my work's going to be mad that i didn't use them and i get that because that's a hundred percent normal conversation because if my work gave me their season tickets for the uh broncos and they saw they didn't get scanned in somehow they know yeah they know they didn't get used or if they find out they didn't get used you're never getting tickets again yeah so we know in hindsight though that that he had taken this mistress yes to the game right but you did not know that no your friends but did did they have any other friends that they were really really close to that they did a lot of things with the thrive friends um but we didn't know any of them but i but i heard shanann would talk about them um but you guys had never heard any marital problems no one had neither one of them had discussed any of that none of the marital none of the financial none of any of that on the surface it's just like this is the perfect family yes okay so again hindsight we find this out but you invite him he says he's gonna go to this game normal normal excuse normal everything i'm not i don't think anything i have zero radar of this kid ever lying to me zero radar right yeah and so when he said oh the work's gonna get mad if i don't use these tickets i get it i've been there right makes a hundred percent sense um and i invited him because i thought i remembered him saying one time he'd never actually been to a live nfl game so i was like i thought of him right out of the gate i'm like why not i know that she's out of town and uh before she had went to uh even before she went to north carolina she's like hey make sure you call him and hang out with him i don't want him doing anything dumb while i'm gone now when did she leave to go to north carolina that was prior too that was what five weeks before maybe yeah okay but the be like more towards the beginning of the summer right did we think it was weird she was leaving for five weeks with the kids to north carolina sure yes but shanann's personality didn't lead down any paths of marital issues or anything right well this is why we're getting your story because you guys have a really interesting perspective on the story because again knowing people being friends now there's a lot of times in relationships people don't tell their personal stuff right sure but it was odd that she had left but still in your mind because you'd seen them interact so well together if i was just five weeks you thought maybe she's type a she's going to go do whatever she's going to do yeah absolutely okay get me to the the party the night before the your son's birthday party yes he came over like he has they have for the last four years right uh they came over he shows up he's got the diaper bags he's got the girls you know and it was normal conversation with shanann it was hey chris is gonna bring the girls over of course nothing out of the blue when playing in the backyard the girls are running around playing they're playing in the little swimming pool was he on time give or take there was no time well i mean he was a little bit later but he had mentioned when he got there that the girls had just woken up from their nap and and nap was very important shenan had these girls on a schedule okay so they were on schedule so nothing there was odd it's just they were taking a nap and then they showed up okay they were and we uh we're playing water balloons in the backyard chris was throwing water balloons the girls were throwing water balloons they were all normal normal kids birthday party nothing nothing crazy right do you see why i ask these questions because on the outside it's extremely difficult and because you guys have this is really intimate knowledge this is why it's really an interesting topic and i'm trying to make sure that we don't skip anything or miss anything because i think you guys would have caught it you know him pretty intimately so he's out there everything was off yeah say that again if anything was off absolutely we would have seen something correct but it's it he would be out there playing with the water balloons because we talked about it earlier where you're like he would kind of migrate towards where the kids are at yep okay so he's out playing with the kids nothing out of the normal he was a little bit late but there's a nap we kind of know that right well at the same time this is the first time we've seen one of them without the other so we wouldn't have anything to judge off of okay but it was still normal like with the kids um but you know then when we got to the birthday cake he was standing in there he knew that the girls had allergies she knows more about what their allergies were but he didn't let him have cake he didn't let him have certain things because he knew they had allergies right we got them popsicles out of the garage because they could have popsicles and then shortly after the cake it was time for them to go home because their bedtime is seven ish yeah seven initially again on schedule on schedule so let me ask you a question when you were talking about the birthday birthday cake when he tells you they can't have because of their allergies was it just a sincere i mean was there anything about that where you were to be like okay that's odd or anything like that no because i mean we knew the kids had allergies and um he just said you know i'm sorry they can't have cake and you could tell that they were disappointed so that at that point i said okay well we have you know just ice pops in the freezer outside and was the conversation the same conversation you'd always had with them yes that's what i was going to say every birthday party has been the same they can't have the cake yeah yeah yep so it was not abnormal by any means yeah i've replayed that birthday party in my head a thousand times since then just to see like did was there something that we missed that you know we couldn't we haven't had his birthday party in our house since then yeah well so one of the things that that i certainly wanted to ask is obviously at a birthday party you're taking pictures did you guys take a bunch of pictures that evening oh yeah and tell me anything about the pictures was there anything about the pictures that that stood out to be different no no well well here's so in my mind and i can and i have the picture and i can send it to you now somebody tried to steal it off my facebook page from another media source right and i had them take it down and they did they did take it down but you have i have a picture of him standing in the background of my kid blowing out a candle right and it's probably the most awkward lack of better words just that's the image that's in my brain of him blowing out his candles and chris standing behind him and the girl standing on the side with bella looking up and over trying to watch him blow out his candles right that's my last image of them so when you see that picture and you see him is it a different chris watson you knew you keep looking at it and his face changes right every time i look at that photo his face changes and now it's like that's a creepy [ __ ] picture yeah right like for real he truly looks evil in that picture yes truly in the beginning absolutely not now absolutely right because yeah like and the way his eyes he's just like slightly looking up at like towards the camera just with like like no soul in his eyes did you have the same visceral response as jeremy did yeah when you saw that picture yeah and it was the same too when we saw him being in his infamous porch interview after everything happened right he looked and sounded different in that interview like it wasn't him like it i mean it was him obviously but like he looked and sounded different because we're going to get to this a little bit because you haven't kept up quite as much as she has right and i'm probably one of three supporters that thought that news interview was not what everybody else saw right when you're inside the bubble and you don't want to believe things you still don't see things well i'm going to get to that because i'm going to really hammer that hard because especially with uh i mean you were there you were at the house but we're i'm going to bring that up in just a second so as with anybody that goes to a birthday party or anything there comes that moment where it's time to go and and obviously shenan's not there who would have cleaned up and and made sure all that happened was there any anxiety anything or did was the departure also what you would consider normal extremely normal was it you know come on girls let's get in the car i mean what what was that it was bed times coming up right yeah we know that we know shenan's schedule like she has a schedule and if you tell us it's her schedule we're going to say yeah okay yeah right that's okay right and we don't yeah well and they stayed they stayed a long time too it's not like they were there and left in 30 minutes well that's what i want to know the party started kind of when how long were they there probably for three hours three or four hours yeah they were there and that would be normal yeah they were there for the playing and the eating and the cake and the presents like they're in all you know like in during a party you take a series of pictures like of the kids playing of the presents in the cake they're i mean they're in all of those events that happened at the party and then um and then they you know just and he doesn't drink or anything right so they just said all right well we've got to get going so he had nothing to drink no he doesn't he doesn't drink not his thing yeah very very very fascinating because again this is kind of the story i think that a lot of people have never heard before right and that that's a it's a real interesting thing because again when you i mean we can all put ourselves in that situation to know what is coming down the pipeline here you would think absolutely think that there would be something out of place or something not right yeah i mean there's no way in my brain that this kid said hey can't wait to marry that girl so we can have kids and kill them all yeah right that didn't happen like yeah that that's not how that works i guess like are you convinced that i mean obviously i think we know through you know what investigations have taken place that um it was pre-planned he knew he was going to do that based on all the stuff i've heard since then apparently yes yeah right that's kind of the consensus how can anybody freaking go to a kid's birthday party knowing that hey hurry up why would you protect the cake like all that [ __ ] goes through my head right right why would you say why would you care that they're allergic to something if you're about to take them home and freaking do what you did yeah that doesn't work right it doesn't which is kind of that gap of speculation did the guy really intend to do it while he was at the birthday party did he according to his post interviews on his post interviews that i've seen it was weeks before i i believe the kid going maybe i'm going too far into the story but when he got with this other girl and got to go camping and got to go to the shelby museum which he's a big ford mechanic right yeah that's his passion was ford mechanics his passion wasn't the oil field it was the ford mechanic it was going camping going to the shelby museum going to all these moab and everywhere else he got to go in that five weeks period a period of time probably is what transformed his brain to a lifestyle that he didn't have that he didn't know existed and then wanted yeah i mean there's there is a lot of speculation to that and and kind of how that transition went i mean there are certainly a ton of interviews i at true talks we don't want to you know we don't want to put everybody else's perspective into this because it's really about you guys telling the story but there is certainly some perspective that it that it had been going on for a while the thought process was there and then obviously we did it that's why it's so interesting to know that you guys saw them the night uh before and that was what was really interesting um one of the things you want to talk about is again when you hear that um your daughter babysit for them yes uh that's got to be a little chilling too yeah yeah well in her story was when she babysat the night for the baseball game right when she came home she had mentioned the pantry was a mess like the house was a mess it was not clean anymore it was not organized anymore there was zero regard for everything that shenandoah's at the house right she's like i've never seen that house that dirty stuff was everywhere and that is interesting because that's the whole reason why i wanted to bring that up is there was something awry that as far as that goes and your daughter noticed that right and brought that to your attention so we know that man it is really structured how they live their life but yet she noticed that there was something not right right yeah and and it was there anything else that she said yes it was about the allergies so when i picked her up she said that you know everything went good she said that i said well how did bedtime go because i know if she would to be babysitting her brother you know bedtime wouldn't go good he wouldn't want to go to sleep and um but i know you know they have a very regimented schedule so she said that cece went to bed pretty easily on time but then bella went to bed and then came downstairs and said she wasn't ready she wasn't tired yet wasn't ready to go to bed and through some conversation that she had with bella bella had mentioned that her sister can't have coconuts and that she does have coconuts that she won't be able to see her anymore so that really stood out to my daughter and she thought that was kind of sad that she you know had thought that in her little mind but possibly someone had told her if she has an allergic reaction to it that they could die or something like that yeah so it's probably just so that she would know to you know help watch out so yeah she doesn't eat the wrong foods and but then you know eventually bella settled down and went to sleep um another strange thing was that chris when she got there chris ordered pizza and said um the girls have already had all their medications because my daughter was a little worried like am i going to have to give them medications at certain times you know am i going to have to give them nebulizer treatments because they had asthma so she was worried about the medications and giving them the right medications but he said no they're all good i gave them their medications you just have to feed them um and put them to bed they were already in their pajamas um chris didn't leave his phone number with her and she didn't leave her phone number with him it wasn't like a conversation um and he didn't like contact jeremy or any of us to ask how the girls were doing um but shenan who was in arizona contacted our daughter to check on the girls and asked her to send pictures of them so shanann must have known that he was at the game yeah she knew yeah she knew that she was babysitting and that he was at the game but she was the one that was checking in on how things were going with the girls not crazy that's kind of still par for the course right because she was always the one that was going to make sure everything was in order and detail yeah so again not probably not too out of the ordinary for their lifestyle yeah but i i guess he assumed if there was some sort of emergency that she would just contact me because i was you know at home right down the street so so after the after your guys's party then we know that fateful night right so i want to go through when you first heard about it i mean obviously you're at this party they're there the girls are there he's there the girls are with him you go to bed that evening was it the next morning right that we found out yeah the next that was the next night the next night i was sitting on the couch i came home from work uh watching tv looking at facebook on my phone and i noticed that there was a post that the girls were missing all three of them and i didn't i kind of looked at it and then i'm like okay that right my mindset is not that this is the family that something would happen to and i had seen it again and i looked over at her and i said i think shanana the girls are missing and i don't know if that means so i'm going to text chris and i texted him and this is the next night next night so the way the story goes is that the friend who dropped her off at i think it was 1 48 a.m uh they'd just come back from a conference um she'd miss an ob gyn appointment and the friend was actually who called the police and called chris as well which is which is interesting because we've discussed this case before as we were kind of preparing and um we both were kind of like you know who really follows up that quickly i mean i don't think we would have but obviously a good friend of hers probably knowing that the type a personality if they didn't answer that first time then something's going on so that was kind of the initial setup that was going on but you guys didn't know any of that was taking place but after i knew she was getting home in those two days right like yeah we knew that much when you guys heard that part of the story was that was that shocking at all for you uh knowing that the neighbor would be like hey she didn't answer this text she missed obgyn appointment well my my instant reaction is how does somebody's friend know that they missed a doctor's appointment nobody's doctor ever called me because one of my buddies missed an appointment right that's my mindset of things what they talked about in arizona or what they did in arizona or conversation from the airport i don't know any of that right yeah who knows if there wasn't a conversation that was like hey if you can't if you don't hear from me right like i don't know now that everything i know later brings me back to some of this right which is all speculation in my head right but when i followed this through and i'm like there's no way he did anything who who calls the cops after dropping somebody off at 2 am or whatever at 10 a.m because they missed a doctor's appointment nobody's doctor calls that somebody else to say hey your friend missed an appointment right right that's my brain yeah no i kind of went down that road too and then what is interesting is but we're talking now this is like noon that the police have showed up they're they're talking about but then it hits the airwaves that night well and at the end of the day good for her right right good for her for absolutely wherewithal to know that something's wrong right because we knew them and we were close to them and we didn't speculate anything would ever be wrong yeah but so good for her right but you you then hear this information how and when on facebook at about 8 30 at night and i looked at her and i said i'm texting chris hey is everything okay what was the initial message that you saw on facebook yeah the girls were missing help find my girls right from her from shenan's mom right from shenan's mom okay right and i was like i'm texting chris hey is everything okay right and he texts me back oh i'm sick to my stomach blah blah blah can you give me a timeline on that about what time that was let's just say 8 30 and about 8 30 in 30 seconds okay i texted chris but by 8 31 i was already in my car driving to his house right like what the hell is going on here i have flashlights in my car who are we going to look for or did they go on a walk because they have a pool in their area did they go to use the bathroom in the pool because the girls had to go to the bathroom did they get stuck in a bathroom i'm not leaving them overnight stuck somewhere right right that was my initial let's go right and so i went over to the house his door's wide open he's on the phone with somebody um i go in the house and i'm like what the hell is going on it's like i don't know i don't know where they went her said she was gonna maybe stay at a friend's house like oh i got all the [ __ ] okay i wanna i wanna stop you right there though and again this is in hindsight yep you see chris at the party and even before yeah was there anything different about that engagement no okay nope when i when i went into the house i'm sitting at this table he's on the phone with someone and it's like where the hell are they i'm like hey where do we go where do we go look what do we do and he says oh the cops told me to stay here i don't know what i'm looking for um they told me just to go to bed and we'll do this tomorrow and whatever whatever right he was just saying things and i'm just like okay i don't want to push him too far i don't want to bug him i don't want to not be supportive by any means and so maybe 30 minutes goes by or so and then i'm like okay well i guess i'll go home right and when i walked out to my truck my phone rings let me back up while i'm in the house she's texting my phone where's her car are the car seats in the car where's their medications all right right all the mother so you're thinking about this cause i'm like maybe they got into a fight and she left and went back to north carolina or something along those lines right but then he's like no all the stuff is here and that really did not sit well because i'm like okay so she would have to like get an uber that had car seats in it and already have medication like i'm trying to logically think like okay she she left and went back to north carolina that's where you knew her type a personality yeah i'm like that's totally what must have happened and she just needed time to cool down so but the stuff being there was really and then to come to find out her purse was there her wallet was there her phone was there correct so that like that was really the kicker right there now did you relay that information sure that the person so i asked them i said where's their medication where's their medicine he said oh she has more more than enough medication yeah than we have at the house did you go inside the garage and see the car with the car seats no he just told you that i didn't want to i guess in my my subconscious did not want me to attack anything right yeah nor was i thinking i should i asked him straight up i said is the car in the garage he said yes car seats yes where's our phone it was on the counter cops took it right he answered my question so i didn't have any reasons to and still your radar is like this is the same guy that i've known i'm thinking you're the cool calm calm headed guy and i know her well enough to know that if you try to screw her over she's taking these kids and she's getting the hell out of here yeah right because her personality says so yeah and so when he said well we got an argument and she said she was just going to take the kids and go to her friend's house i'm thinking okay that's probably it right because nobody comes home from work and says hey by the way you know your best friends you're not best friends but your friends they just killed their family but at any point but any point in your mind it's like well number one that friend would have to live close right and then certainly by then the cops would have found they probably would have called every friend that they had sure did you get a call from the police i did so when i left his house i go outdoor shots i'm standing on his porch i look down there's a dead bird on the floor and i'm thinking why is that bird on the ground dead right it doesn't happen i said yeah that's not a sign i'm leaving right right away i'm like yeah that's not a sign of anything i'm leaving and i'm walking to my truck and my phone rings and it's the frederick police department calling my phone hey how's it going this is blah i forget the name but at frederick police department um do you know chris and shannon i said yeah i'm at his house right now and he goes oh should i call you back right out of the gate should i call you back this is a bad time i said i'm actually getting in my truck right now and he's like oh okay you know we start talking and he just asked a few questions and he goes hey i'm gonna i need your your uh email address and he asked personal information right and he's like i may be contacting you in the next few days if i have any other questions blah blah blah right do you mind disclosing what questions that they ask normal how do you know them um what's your my cell phone number he's he called it but he wanted to write it down um and i asked him i said do you guys have her phone yeah we're going through all the phone numbers on our phone we're just calling them all i don't have any questions he didn't have major questions of anything it was general information just hey i just want you to uh have my phone or uh i want to have your phone number i want to have your email address we may be calling you um you're at the house right now yes um what'd you guys talk about nothing i'm just looking for where these kids are right where shenan is and then he's like okay well thanks for talking to me and that was it so nothing about you know when did you get there what are you doing there how long have you been there they weren't investigating anything right they were just going through phone numbers yeah yeah i think at that point they didn't even know what they were up against or looking for one would think that right yeah you would think that that that anytime something like that happens the first thing you do is everybody's a suspect i would think sure and because i want to get to that a little bit later too i want to talk to you a little bit about what your experience was with that and if you felt like you had um you know there was any type of really questioning of you like what was your role in this thing right um so you again you you then you hear this news you you go home what happens after you go home are you still texting him no nope i didn't text him at all uh the rest of the night went to work the next day are you texting shanann no oh i did texted shenan and i said hey where are you yeah and i got nothing back right um i said and i'm looking at facebook and i'm looking at different things and i texted her again i said hey dude if you're somewhere just tell your mom right tell your mom where you're at because your mom's worried shitless yeah um just let her know nothing and uh there was there was things that would happen like because the cops had certain things like on facebook and stuff like that they had access to her account and everything you would see where it looked like she was gonna respond to something but then no responses like when you text somebody and they text you back if you have an iphone it shows a little cloud that they're typing right there was different things where it shows that the messages were read not from my phone but from facebook because i messaged her on facebook and i'm like i don't know what to do do you guys mind opening up uh this for just a second but you get home that night um after talking to him and so sorry do you mind telling me what your guys's conversation was essentially it was the conversation of i was at the house uh yes her phone was there which she knew most of that the cops called me on the way home um they just wanted to ask me if i knew the family and that i was there right like i don't know all the details of all that part but then it was like where the hell did they go and both of us look at each other and it's like she left right she left with the kids well and you also found out kind of an important piece of information while you were over there as i'm grilling him with questions when he comes home that's what i want to know what do you like ramping up questions yeah because i'm like trying i'm like trying to make sense of all this and he mentioned that chris said that they were having marital problems and that was the first time the last time you know that we saw them all in person together she was newly pregnant they were excited never heard of any marital problems so he said yeah they've been you know having disagreements and whatnot so immediately i thought okay she left she took the girls she left having issues you were 100 convinced in your mind that they just left well that's what i was trying to convince myself of but the whole piece of the phone the car seats the medication like my mind couldn't reconcile that part of those things being gone so i'm like okay shanann's really really smart she's really organized so maybe she got it she left that phone and she got a new phone like i start thinking about you know movie type stuff like but you went through a lot of scenarios of which her being murdered by her husband was not one of them no yeah absolutely like that and then and then one that even went through my head at some point was maybe their problems were really bad and maybe she took her life and the girls like maybe it was a murder-suicide that way that's what i was that was like the worst case scenario in my head like maybe they had such a bad fight and there was going to be a custody and she was pregnant she was stressed out she just couldn't handle it anymore like that was my worst case scenario which is what is so interesting to me because obviously we know the outcome of the story and but that didn't cross your mind no never yeah and then as time started going on and you know he started doing interviews and you know he started becoming a you know suspect in the media well so we're gonna where i want to get to that so this he comes home that's that you guys have this conversation of trying to really figure out what might happen it might have happened and you probably were trying to even be helpful like okay what can we do to do what we've got to do to help help find them um tell me when the next basic communication happened where you found out information that that he was doing these interviews or whatever yeah the following day so tuesday the the colorado bureau bureau of investigations came to our house okay and they could they had called previously and they said hey we want to come talk to you and come talk to your daughter they're trying to put together she babysat right yeah they're just trying to you know get together the timeline they're trying to put their timeline together but you guys would have had to but you guys would have had to have been on the top of that list because if she had all these these multi-level 100 percent because you guys are the last people to be with them did they know that already oh i'm sure well yes because my conversation was my daughter babysat the kids okay the night before they were at our house for the birthday party right now they're missing yeah right okay her her mindset was why the [ __ ] did he do that to us i mean i guess that's later in life later in conversation but why this nutshell to bring us into this bubble right but until tuesday the cbi comes over we sat with one in our uh living room and the other one was like hey i want to go talk to your daughter in a different room closed door about the night of uh babysitting right and we're like okay that's fine right we're trying to help prior to them showing up somebody else showed up because they needed pictures of what the kids were wearing and she had pictures of uh when she babysat the kids what they were wearing would they go to sleep with what they wake up with like they were detailing three nights ahead of the birthday party night right yeah they're looking for missing persons uh-huh because i know in in some of the research that we've done um the police actually even showed him a picture of a woman and two kids in a walmart and they were asking if if they those were his kids now i think there were some other psychological things they may have been doing at the time but um they were actually at this point still looking for a missing person yeah obviously you guys are on the top of the list which is why they probably called you somewhat similar first at any point in that time was were you were you still just trying to picture what could possibly have happened or now that you're actually getting questioned by police uh and we're talking now the zero stuff when cbi came to our house and were talking to us they kind of said the comment of there's other people who already have an outcome right yeah i'm assuming her family her family right they already but they probably knew a lot more about what was going on between the two of them than we did right so i'm still just i was a supporter of chris not doing this and there's no way in help that that's what the outcome was when they when they questioned your daughter what were they asking her about like normal stuff like you know how long have you known them what was your relationship with them and then tell us tell us about just like walk us through your night of when you babysat was anything out of the ordinary did anything eventful happen what they were wearing yeah yeah the night that she left they took pictures of her phone that had pictures of what they were wearing and they showed her pictures of clothes right which that would have had to have been pretty pretty intense for your daughter too at the time yeah were was she were you guys talking to her about the disappearance missing was she fully aware of what was going on yeah and at any moment did she come to either one of you and say mom i think i know what happened dad i think i know what happened or was she also under the influence or under the thought process of of um you know where do they go wonder if they left did she ever say anything potentially of the outcome that that involved no no we were all in the same thought process of what what is happening like is is this even real like it like none of it seemed real right and then you know their new their faces start getting plastered all over the news and it's then it's really like what is happening where where are they thank you for leading me directly into that so when you see this news interview that he does i feel like this isn't even real right now it's like a nightmare that i just can't wake up from tell me about that that that was weird because since we know chris we know that he's he's not an emotional type of guy he's very passive so i know a lot of people were saying like he wasn't showing any emotion like what's wrong with him and at that point we kind of just brushed it off as well that's chris like i know his family is missing and this is a crazy time but he's not the type to be freaking out and showing emotion so that's kind of what we thought like it kind of looked like he did look a little awkward and obviously he's a very awkward person but that's but yeah but that's how he is and then but then looking back in hindsight like watching it again after knowing what happened like he he did he had really weird body language he kept chuckling he i don't know he was just really so after a little bit too about it after the fact you noticed things that you were like okay yeah i didn't see that before yeah because one of one of the things um i mean obviously there's a lot of people who've done a lot of stuff on this dr phil was one of them that that did a whole uh presentation with it and you know he was using pronouns instead of the names and a lot of things that make sense kind of in a hindsight 2020 thing because it's a big story it's it's the unfathomable and and again i can't tell you how much i appreciate you guys sharing this because there's somebody's going to benefit from this there's going to be something that that comes out that you know this stuff does happen and it's real and uh but what is so intriguing is the way you guys have described him and also even the that's chris that's the the kind of demeanor that he does i think that's really a fascinating thing but now you are seeing these things you have to be hearing from friends that this guy did it oh yeah well just reading the comments on the news after his interview everyone after that interview thought that he did it they had him pegged because they had no idea who he was yeah they didn't know who he was and we're like no like he still didn't sway you it's different when you're inside the bubble correct we're like and i had people calling me from where i worked before that also worked with him like what the hell did she do right everybody was like not surprised that she would take the kids and run yeah not surprised of like just everybody was pointing at her absolutely taking the kids and running yeah like because nobody would peg him as having the balls if you will yeah to do something that drastic so even though you're hearing all this this you know the comments and everything you guys still were on the i mean she just laughed because they're still it's the same thing it's there's no way that kid is capable of doing that right like there's no way like the kid wouldn't smash a fly at a barbecue right that was the mentality he carried around and the dad he loved those kids he loved her he loved his world with them in it right yeah he was content so it seemed yeah with everything right which is just incredibly fascinating let's fast forward then to now he's getting arrested now so wednesday wednesday we're sitting hanging out with producer chad obviously everybody already knows we're neighbors but we're sitting outside and just hanging out and it's kind of a dull hangout a really dull hangout because there's a lot of things in the air where are these kids where are these girls like where is everybody right and my daughter gets a text from her friend who lives in the neighborhood hey i think the dad just got put in the police car i think the dad got this and we looked at each other like there's no way we're not ready to accept anything other than that no no she left right that's the only thing that my brain will allow right is that she took the kids she left and they're safe right and the news comes on at about nine ten o'clock we're sitting in bed we're watching tv and chad texts me he checks me he texted me holy [ __ ] right or whatever he said what the [ __ ] and we had just saw it too we have breaking new details in just the last few minutes contact 7 investigates is learning new details about the case of that missing pregnant mother we want to bring in denver 7 investigative reporter jace larson who's learning from top sources more about this investigation and the husband's involvement jace tonight we have learned from two law enforcement sources who are close to the investigation they tell me that this husband has confessed to killing his family and he is now detained and it's like holy [ __ ] he killed him right yeah and i'm sitting there i got the blank stare on my face i'm not an emotional person girls obviously all start crying she starts crying they start crying by the time i get to the door he's already at my door and he's got whiskey in his hand and it's like looks like we're standing on the porch for a minute right because i'm trying to process i was at this fucker's house two days ago trying to help find these people is this real is this not real is this real is this not real it's the way my brain goes right yeah and ah oddly as it can be i get up in the morning obviously there's a lot of emotion that goes on overnight right right i get up in the morning i'm driving to work and the black and yellow [ __ ] song comes on of all songs that can come on black and yellow knowing that they're pittsburgh steeler fans and that's what i lost it right like i just broke down crying all the way to work i'm sitting at work i'm sitting at my desk and they're like why are the [ __ ] are you here because they all knew because of uh tuesday and they saw stuff on the news they knew i was friends with him they you know a lot of people are like oh he's your neighbor he's he wasn't my neighbor but he lived close by yeah and i'm sitting at work and they're like why are you here right now like this isn't normal none of this is okay and i'm just trying to be normal yeah because it hasn't set in all the way and so i was at work maybe 10 minutes before i was heading back home yeah and they were just like call me if you need anything like and just still trying to process it right where were your emotions at at that point oh just completely in shock in shock like i cannot believe this is happening and that we're a part of this and so like close knit a part of it and yeah just complete shock and not know what to do at that point yeah no and this this whole time like like our brains wouldn't let us go there that they were not okay and then to find out that yeah they're all dead and he's the one that killed them yeah and that they were just at our house and then he was just at his house and had normal conversation like that just just trying to like wrap our heads around it was a lot to process these kids that that you're around and taking care of and giving popsicles to yeah just literally not long before yeah unbelievable i mean just unbelievable when did it set in for you though that it was real and that you know at some point i want to go back to that picture that when you saw the kind of that evilness or something in that picture when was that was that after you had heard it was for me i'm sorry that's okay yeah either one for me it was months later right because i'm still on board of okay now i need to know how this happened like how and then the story comes out of well i went into the room and she was strangling the kids or whatever and i'm like okay so i'm still a little bit on board i'm still a little bit on board i'm still a little bit on board you know i was strung along with the hope of the reality wasn't what the reality was right if that makes sense like okay okay that makes more sense to me right it doesn't make sense but it makes a little bit more sense because if she's that ocd and she's that type a crazy personality maybe maybe you said that you wanted a divorce and she says you're not taking the kids and this is all from news stories back in history of how this thing shakes out right right that's all that's going through my head that there's no way that this calm collected no personality kid decides huh i can't wait till they get home tonight right and this is what's gonna happen like it doesn't work that way like my brain doesn't allow that right yeah i still don't believe that that happens well you know did have you guys watched the movies yeah yeah documentary and somebody tears it apart well that's what i want to talk about how how tell me when you watch it because i've watched them both was there any part of that movie that you were just like yeah it either is kind of dead on or was there holes in it or how did you feel about that well the movie with the actors it was both there were parts that were true not true semi true like i mean because they were saying there was a lot of stuff that they had to fill in right and i'm sure the fill-in part wasn't quite as accurate as as what it could be right but but did the storyline seem to fit uh what you knew yeah i mean for the most part overall and and as you were watching it were you getting kind of the picture of what you then later find out actually happened was it was it nauseating to you was it just like where were you at emotionally when you saw that just kind of like numb like it was just kind of weird because i watched like when all the all the documentation came out and all the body cam footage and all the all the police reports and you know all the all the digging that they did for this trial that never happened yeah um so i like i watched all of it because for my brain i to try and even like piece this together and make it make sense which obviously it still doesn't but i'm an information person so i'm like i have all this information at my fingertips i want to know like how did this happen like obviously we weren't aware of their issues and did the did those issues lead up to this and those marital issues financial you know it's like all this stuff comes out to and obviously because you guys have a relationship with these people yeah so yeah so and then obviously and then finding out that he's having an affair and so just like all this information you know comes forward that okay now it makes a little bit more sense because there was all the stuff behind the scenes going on that we didn't know about so it wasn't just like oh they were super happy up until that night and then something happened it was obviously like there was a lot of things that played into this um that they hid well they hid well from you guys yeah we had no idea especially when you hang out a lot i mean they hit it well which is hard for a lot of people to do um so i i want to talk about one thing though and hopefully you guys have seen it did you see his actual confession when he he brought in his dad and then they they end up coming well that was one of the texts he texted me was he was waiting for his dad to come in okay so i want to talk about that because we've got to bring it in you had had text messages with him of course i've actually seen those was that the last text that you got the last text i got was my dad's flying in and then i texted him back and said hey is your dad here nothing hey how's things going nothing so you hear that confession you're watching on tv that he just confessed he fails the polygraph test yeah you you you hear this confession obviously that drives it home at that point now you know when you see the videos with him at his neighbor's house with his neighbor's doorbell cam right he's watching his truck and he's standing there his hands are on the wall now i look at it like man am i glad i didn't know when i sat on his kitchen table the night after well that's kind of where i want to go with this segment is you know where all this information comes out you see the doorbell cam um you see the other camera where you know the truck is backing up you see another car goes by and i'm going to kind of finish this up here in just a minute again and and i'm going to ask you guys your honest opinion on this because there's a lot of speculation that there may have been an accomplice but did you when you saw all of that stuff at any point in that time where you like yeah this was completely premeditated it he he didn't decide this that night after he left our party this was decided weeks before did you have that that sensation no tell me that would you not at all because everything was just way too normal like i i feel like if there was something coming up he wouldn't have showed up to our party if there was something something would have been out of the normal but he kept everything way too normal which to me now is like how do you how do you know you're going to do that and keep everything that normal and i guess that's a good thing because that means i could never do such a thing right i guess if you can't if you can't wrap your head around the why the why the kids the why like i i could understand a little bit of you could heat of passion a fight with someone whether it's your wife whether it's a person at a bar whether it's a friend whether it's something another adult another adult things happen a little bit easier than the whole kid kid wife pregnant wife to be right like kid kid pregnant wife how do you the best part is if you can't wrap your head around the why's good for you because you're not that guy right like yeah no that makes perfect sense perfect sense uh a couple questions have you talked to him at all since his arrest no if you had the chance would you yeah what would you ask him what the [ __ ] yeah yeah obviously she probably wouldn't be allowed in the room like i mean seriously like download your brain because the problem is is that you know the fbi has gone back to interview him and he's had another story and then some lady wrote him letters and wrote a book and then he had another story but there weren't like enough questions to still answer like it's still there's still a lot of holes in it even when and he keeps telling different stories and every time he tells the story it gets worse so it's like what really is the truth has to be in there somewhere like what is the truth and what what is your like what was your thought process leading up to this and now like i don't know they're like the fbi interviewed him again but they didn't ask the questions that i would have asked right it wasn't it would it be important for you to know do you feel like you would like to know just for your own closure and peace of mind yes just just to know because and i'm going to follow this up with another question so we we obviously know he had a mistress we obviously know that that he was having this affair but you knew him before the affair most likely during the affair obviously yeah he never changed at all did he seem happier being this happy-go-lucky guy he's got this girl on the side 100 he has a poker face he whatever's going on in his head you never win he doesn't show it do you think this guy was a cold-blooded murderer or do you think that there were other circumstances that pushed him to do this that's a tough question man like i i don't know like from what you knew about this guy and you just don't think there's any possible way he could do it do you think just your opinion that there was an outside influence that helped him make this decision would you speculate that no if anything the kid was maybe introduced into a lifestyle that he didn't have by being with this other girl where he got to go to the shelby museum being a ford guy got to go camping got to go to moab got to do all these different things right and maybe right and maybe that's just me trying to circle it together to where there's a uh realistic reason for anything but i don't know if if her showing him this lifestyle is enough to make him do this because in my mind you're a [ __ ] then just get a [ __ ] divorce right right don't kill your [ __ ] kids don't kill your [ __ ] wife just man the [ __ ] up and get a divorce you know i i want to i want to run a couple things uh by you guys again chime in however you feel but um there is there is a few different uh people that speculate that there was an accomplice and they're pretty they're pretty hardcore on it um there's a lot of video evidence that people have broke down to to show that there was potentially two people there at the time my question again to you guys i think i already know the answer but to you guys knowing him and knowing her knowing the children do you think he would have had to have had an accomplished or do you think he was able just to do it by himself if he was doing it was going to be by himself he doesn't know anyone he didn't go places he didn't hang out with anybody that he didn't work with right like he the only person he knew it where i worked with him was me because of shenan right i've never met any of his oil field buddies at any party we've ever had with them right he was very cockroachish for lack of better words on that if they went anywhere it was her friends it was her people it was her friends that came over it was her thrive people that came over it was her world that he was living in okay if that makes sense like did you talk to any of her friends have any of them contacted you no no not at all would you like to would you want to talk to him uh sure if they have questions or if they have things like i've tried to reach out to a couple of them with hey i have pictures of the family together and the kids and this and that nobody's ever contacted me back what about her parents have you reached out to them and said you had pictures of them on anything one time and i didn't get anything back so i didn't push the issue yeah i think that's good i i know i did read some stuff as i was doing uh preparing for for the podcast and um it does seem as if her parents want this just to go away and be done and i totally get that um well that's the other reason why we waited so long to even talk to anybody right yeah we're not trying to intrude on anything but oddly enough we were as close to those people in the last few days as anyone could be yeah right we saw them last right yeah i went to his house the day they were missing they were at my house the day before they were missing right that makes us the missing link in the world of movies they want to make stories they want to come up with right and it doesn't mean much but it means in a 24 hour period of time they were at our house i was at his house right all right again true talks we want to thank you guys for telling your story your honesty um just everything that you know it's not easy to come on these shows and tell these stories especially the the traumatic events that you guys went through you know you guys are kind of those people that people forget about right it was extremely traumatic for you you knew them you knew the girls you knew you knew shenan and and even for chris i mean for lack of of an emotional thing he's still a person uh regardless of the heinous crime he did he's still a person that you guys knew so that's also kind of like a loss or a death i would say as well um but again thank you so much for coming on our show telling the true story as you know it and i just tell you we want to appreciate that yeah thank you so much thank you you

Channel: Truth Talks Media

Views: 197,469

Rating: 4.7862916 out of 5

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Id: Sl5M-jYgl0k

Length: 69min 22sec (4162 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020

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