Chris Watts | Psychopathy, Narcissism, Rage, Infidelity, & Murder

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze the case of Chris Watts now Chris Watts is an individual who murdered his family in August of 2018 and this is a particularly horrific case so kind of just from the beginning I think it's important to note that this content really isn't for everybody I actually found this to be a pretty challenging video to make I researched the topic kind of on and off for about two weeks and did a lot of research about two days ago and then yesterday recorded a video on this you know really what was supposed to be this video and just didn't really feel that I got it right there's just so much to this case that I kind of took a step back after recording that and did a little more research and reflection and then came back today to record it so in this video I'm gonna be talking about psychopathy narcissism rage and infidelity a lot of different topics here and I'm not gonna be diagnosing anybody involved in this case including Chris Watts just really speculating about what could have been going on in a situation like this so really the main parts of this video will be the timeline which I think draws really interesting parallel in terms of how infidelity works and then I'll get into the kind of personality characteristics that might have been at work in the second part of the video so this narrative starts in Frederick Colorado which is a town about 30 miles north of Denver Colorado and the family involved here includes Chris watts Shannon watts his wife he was 33 she was 34 and their two daughters Bella and Celeste Bella was four and Celeste was three Shannon was also 15 weeks pregnant at the time of the murder now we see that in 2015 three years before the story really takes place they declared bankruptcy Chris and Shannon declared bankruptcy and they were $70,000 in debt at the time of the murder then moving forward to June of 2018 Chris Watts started an affair with a woman named Nicole Lee Kessinger she was 30 years old and what's really interesting about this is because we have information about like different text messaging that went back and forth and all this we can kind of piece together what was going on between watts and Kessinger at the same time between watts and his wife Shannon so as I mentioned before we see this kind of parallel as the marital relationship kind of falls apart and the affair more or less strengthens to a point so as I mentioned June 2018 Watson Kessinger start the affair and then we moved to July 10th so on July 10th we see that there's text messaging between Chris and Shannon and Shannon indicates that she misses him and wants to talk and she kind of notices his behavior seems different toward her so really even at this early point it seems like she's realizing something's changed in the marital relationship on July 14th Watson Kessinger go to car museum on July 18th Kessinger sends semi nude photos to Chris Chris was hiding these photos on his phone later on we see that Chris told investigators that wood drew him to Kessinger was that he felt like she was pursuing him instead of the other way around on July 24th Kessinger google searched the phrase man on having an affair with says he will leave his wife so again we can kind of see where the state of mind may have been for Kessinger there's no way to know for sure but just looking at the evidence including the text messages in this particular Google search on July 28th Watson Kessinger spent the night at a campground on July 30th Watts wrote Kessinger a love letter we see on July 31st and August 4th we see kind of texts to have a negative content to them between Shannon and Chris we see that she indicates that Chris wasn't missing her during a time that they were apart also on August 4th we see Kessinger searches for wedding dresses online when August 7th Shannon Watts tells a friend that Chris hasn't touched her all week or kissed her or talked to her and they appeared cold one day later on August 8th Kessinger searched Google on topics related to marrying your mistress on August 9th Shannon Watts again refers to Chris as cold but also said they had the best talk ever so it was kind of a hopeful day in some ways she also sent a draft of a letter she was gonna give to Chris to a friend and then that letter she indicates that the last five weeks have been the hardest and she misses the affection that Chris used to give her and that she was confused so again interesting if you look five weeks back that's somewhere near the beginning of the affair just a little bit after it started so again it seems Shannon has a really good idea at this point that something's changed in her relationship on August 11th Watson Kessinger go to a baseball game spent the day together and on August 12th Shannon sends a draft of a speech that she was going to give to Chris again to a friend saying she wants to fix things in her marriage and that she's going crazy trying to figure this out so if we look at these text messages and Google searches again with this try a deformed Kessinger Chris Watson Shannon Watts we see that increasingly Shannon's becoming more distressed over the nature of the relationship and Kessinger seems to be growing in confidence that relationship is going somewhere we see more or less coldness and indifference from Chris towards Shannon and excitement and maybe some sort of future orientation in terms of Chris and Kessinger so this brings us to the morning of August 13th early about 2:00 a.m. we see that Shannon returned home from a business trip from Arizona and Chris was home with the children at that time the two fell asleep after they had sex and Chris woke up a few hours later and a conversation started between Chris and Shannon it was about a 15 20 minute conversation and during this conversation Shannen cried and indicated the crisps that she knew that there was someone else she knew there was a mistress wotz denied that he had any type of affair but he did admit that he didn't love shannon anymore and he indicated that they weren't compatible it was at this point when Shannon told him that you're never gonna see the kids again and this is what evidently contributed to Watts kind of snapping that's the word he used snapped he put his hands around his wife's throat and began to strangle her and he did this for about two to four minutes now later on he would claim that she didn't struggle during this strangulation WAIS indicated that there was a part of him that felt like the idea of killing his wife was implanted in his mind and he had no control over it also when he was strangling Shannon he wondered to himself why he just couldn't let go so again at this point he's really saying that he felt like someone else had control over him during the time he was murdering his wife and his unborn child so we see after Shannon was killed evidently one of the daughters walked in and kind of wondered what's going on Chris loaded his wife's body into his pickup truck and put his two daughters in his pickup truck and drove 45 minutes to a work site he also indicated that he was contemplating suicide at this time but changed his mind on that because he was afraid that someone else could get hurt if the place where he worked caught fire and exploded so really inconsistent here he was apparently okay with murder but then he was worried about hurting co-workers in some sort of explosion he never really indicated why he didn't consider some other type of suicide this was just kind of I think a strange thing to say but again this is something he told investigators when Watts arrived at the worksite he married his wife in a shallow grave and then he smothered his daughter Celeste with a blanket and put her in an oil tank and then did the same thing to his daughter Bella so he murdered his wife unborn child and both his daughter now it seems clear up to this point because of Chris's behavior because of his rage and the murders that there were characteristics of psychopathy and narcissism potentially going on but that's not really the end of behavior that might be classified that way we see that after the murders he looked up the lyrics to a Metallica song named battery which includes this reference to killing a family we also see that Watts called his daughter's school to unenroll them he texted back and forth with a realtor about selling his home he texted with his girlfriend Kessinger about their future and he also googled getaway vacation deals using a Groupon Shannon's friends became worried because she was missing and they alerted the police and then after this watched in an interview where he pleaded for his family's return he indicated later that behind closed doors he giggled because he had told police he had nothing to do with the disappearance of his family now we see that on August 15th Chris was arrested for the murders of his family because he confessed and he told the story about again the murder of his wife and unborn child and then the murder of his daughters few months later in November of 2018 he pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole we see that after these murders that Kessinger also did a Google search about amber Frey who was the mistress of Scott Peterson an individual who murdered his pregnant wife and she also searched about amber Fry's book deal and her net worth so potentially callous behavior on that side of a two Kessinger did cooperate with the police however as far as I know she wasn't charged in connection with these murders so now kind of looking at all this information after hearing the timeline and this progression of the affair and the deterioration of the marriage we look over to psychopathy and narcissism and I've heard a lot of different opinions about what could be potentially going on with Chris Watson what was going on at this time potentially we see people think that maybe psychopathy was at work but not narcissism some people believe those both psychopathy and narcissism and still we see others who say it had nothing to do with either construct and it was simply rage and I'm going to take a look here at some of the symptoms of psychopathy and narcissism and kind of go through and indicate where I think there may be some connection between these constructs and what was going along Chris Watts so I'll start here with psychopathy and it's important note here though me going through some of the characteristics but these characteristics aren't dichotomous they're not all or nothing somebody can have any of these characteristics to a degree and that's really what I'll be looking at here so the first one we see what psychopathy would be pathological Lyme and this isn't just lying once in a while this is lying for a purpose or sometimes lying for no purpose and we see really a lot of deception involved here in this case specifically where Chris was deceiving Shannon so there appears to be pathological lying lack of empathy remorse or guilt this seems pretty clear we do see some evidence later on of some remorse and even guilt but certainly right before and during the murders we don't see any sign of empathy remorse or guilt another indication of psychopathy is violating society's norms and of course committing murder would qualify as that the next characteristic is irresponsibility and I think it's safe to say based on the horrific crime he committed that was certainly irresponsible maybe not in the way we usually see with psychopathy the irresponsibility is usually more related to on a long-term basis just not being responsible the next characteristic is impulsivity and this of course seems pretty clear especially the moment of rage when he committed the first murder of his wife we see shallow effect so this is when somebody doesn't really seem to have too much depth or sensitivity that appears to be the case that's also related to superficial charm which evidently Chris had because he entered into an affair with Kessinger and she indicated that he was charmed now this may not have been superficial charm but again just looking at this as a matter of degrees and speculating it seems reasonable to connect this characteristic to this situation we also see a failure to have long term goals this is interesting because Chris did have long term goals they were just antisocial goals we see poor behavioral controls this seems pretty clear again going into a rage and committing murder we see that criminal versatility is a sign of psychopathy and this is interesting because means that somebody has the capability of committing a lot of different types of crimes now Chris did commit several crimes in the course of these murders including of course the murders themselves but if we look at the differences between the murders it was kind of impulsive and in a rage with the first murder like that seems reasonable to believe that the murder of Shannon by Chris but then a more cold and calculating murder of his daughters he had 45 minutes in that truck to calm down for that rage to subside I would think it would be very unlikely to that rage could stay really in a high state for that long so he did demonstrate criminal versatility we also see low neuroticism and this is when somebody's really calm under stress so individuals who are psychopathic can commit horrific crimes and not have a lot of anxiety and depression and not a lot of nervousness and we actually do see that here Chris was able to commit these crimes in a cold and calculating way and then go back to texting with his realtor and texting with his girlfriend and giggling behind closed doors because he told the police he had nothing to do with the disappearance of his family this does kind of indicate low neuroticism a level of emotional stability that's really too stable low neuroticism with psychopathy is when somebody's too emotionally stable well they don't have really hardly any variation and emotions at all psychopathy also has sensation-seeking this is when somebody gets bored easily and I think this is really a major contributor to a and it does seem clear that Chris was enjoying this affair and it might have been kind of satisfying some of that sensation-seeking characteristic so it's a copy we see some areas of this construct that seemed to connect to what was going on in this case now how about narcissism well narcissism I think here is a little bit more difficult because narcissism has two types grandiose and vulnerable so we see some elements of narcissism that appear to be operating here and then some elements that don't really seem to be operating so for example with grandiose narcissism we see extraversion but with vulnerable we see introversion well there are some behaviors that watts demonstrated that did seem extrovert like starting an affair which clearly must have involved flirting and discussing sensitive material with Kessinger we also see indications of introversion as well he didn't seem to be extremely outgoing now another characteristic of grandiose narcissism is being socially bold there's really no evidence that that was at work here self-confident I think that's a possibility here again superficial charm which is also with psychopathy someone who's resistant to criticism that doesn't seem to be what was going on here he seemed hypersensitive to criticism which is more lined up with vulnerable narcissism and with grandiose narcissism we also see being callous and unemotional again that overlaps with psychopathy now in vulnerable we also see shame that may have been at work but we see anger and aggression and those clearly were occurring in this instance we also see someone who's defensive avoidant and anxious I'm not sure that was really going on in this case at all and then also somebody who's socially awkward and shy and that doesn't seem to be clearly going on either something we see with both grandiose and vulnerable narcissism is engaging in fantasies having fantasies of success power and the ideal love it does seem pretty clear that Chris was engaged in a lot of fantasy in particular around that ideal love and maybe Kessinger had that fantasy as well and I'll talk about fantasy a little bit later but it can be a very dangerous part of narcissism so we see some elements of narcissism here but I think the stronger connection is with psychopathy so some interesting points about this case things that stood out to me from a mental health and personality and human behavior type perspective well the first thing is we look at the day of the murder we see that sex doesn't necessarily mean anything Chris and Shannon had sex and a few hours later Chris murdered her so we don't want to confuse sex with true feelings of positive regard or love or anything like that so it shouldn't be confused with love I think something else we can learn from this horrible occurrence is really the dangers of infidelity we learn about the dangers of being unfaithful this was really a tragedy it had a sadness to it even before the murders we saw how Shannon was reacting to her relationship falling apart to an outside observer looking at those texts it seemed so unfair and painful it would have made a lot more sense for Chris just to leave rather than stay in the relationship and kind of have a dangerous combination there a wife that he clearly was resenting in some way and then a mistress that he was growing closer to those two things just don't mix of course they usually don't end up in any type of violence or murder but in this case those factors did I think contribute to the murders I think the real tragedy and all the pain that Shannon went through before the murders gets overshadowed by the fact that she was murdered I think people don't look at kind of that ordeal beforehand because of the terrible outcome of it but if Chris had not murdered her if he had murdered anybody this still would have had again a degree of sadness to it because she suffered so much in confusion really not understanding what was going on with her husband not understanding why he was acting the way he was and this really kind of brings me to the kind of root cause of these murders of course we'll never know for sure and psychopathy and narcissism may have been at work and rage may have been at work but if we look back before that I think another factor that contributed and at least some way was that there wasn't a good relationship between Chris and Shannon and then this left a vulnerability for an affair and Chris made a bad decision by engaging and that affair right that was really kind of the beginning of the end he chose to have an affair and again he merged the problems with his marriage with the excitement and sensation-seeking involved in an affair and this is just like I mentioned before a bad combination this didn't cause the murder I think it was just a factor that contributed to the whole situation getting out of hand and of course the situation ended up with a really bad outcome I think something else we can learn here is that fantasy is dangerous like one of the symptoms of narcissism is to engage in fantasy and we really see that pretty clearly here with Chris he was living in a fantasy world as well as Kessinger would appear where they had these plans potentially to get married or be together or whatever they were thinking and he wasn't really facing the reality that he was married and had children and of course all the financial factors so the fantasy world kind of covers up reality of course that's why we call it fantasy and it allows people to think about possibilities that they otherwise wouldn't consider and again this is just a really dangerous situation so kind of taking a step back and looking at this whole situation what can we say was the cause of these murders well we'll never really know but it is an interesting case to study I think we can learn a lot from looking at it I would say that it appears that there was psychopathy and narcissism at work and this may have led to unhappiness in the marriage where that could have been caused from something else we don't know but either way it seems like the psychopathy and the narcissism set the stage for the affair and set the stage for the rage and impulsiveness and even the cold and calculating nature that were all required for Chris to engage in these murders for him to commit these murders so I think this is really the intersection of psychopathy narcissism rage impulsivity and infidelity it would appear that all these characteristics just came together and again there was a terrible terrible outcome in this case as I mentioned before this is really a challenging case to analyze at this level it's different when you just look at strictly like a time line or whatever but when you get into the feelings the people must have had during all this the terror and the fear and the heartbreak this is really such a horrible case difficult to analyze difficult to not sympathize right sympathy is when you feel the same way that somebody else feels it's important to try to maintain empathy where you can understand how they feel and I think this is an interesting case in terms of how we balance sympathy and empathy even just in examining it and putting together an analysis like this there's a lot of lessons to be learned here and I think that it is worth looking at again looking at this case and trying to understand what happened so we can learn from it and potentially help people who may be in similar situations in the future and maybe try to prevent horrific crimes like the ones that occurred in this case so I know whenever I talk about psychopathy and narcissism and a lot of the things I discussed in this video there gonna be a variety of opinions if you have any areas here where you agree with me or disagree you have other opinions please put those in the comments I hope you found this description of the Kris Watts case to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 1,208,645

Rating: 4.8392758 out of 5

Keywords: Chris Watts, murders, Watts family murders, ) psychopathy, narcissism, rage, impulsivity, infidelity, Shanann Watts, Nichol Lee Kessinger, grandiosity, pathological lying, manipulation, superficial charm, callous, unemotional, low neuroticism, lack of remorse. sensation seeking, irresponsibility, a failure to have long term goals, poor behavioral controls, criminal versatility, extroverted, socially bold, self-confident, anger, aggression, homicide

Id: E8yPWbKYdXA

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019