We're back with episode three of the Interrogation Tapes, a special limited run series produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. I'm Deborah Roberts, co anchor of 2020. In today's episode, the Devil in disguise, we follow an investigation into the shocking murders of a pregnant mother and her two young children. Hear what made detectives suspicious in the interrogation room.

Careful. I. Daddy. Dad.

Facebook was central to Shannan's life. Hundreds of posts and videos. It was as if every minute of every day was documented and shared openly with the public.

Chris and I are sitting here, going out, waiting to board our flight to Miami. If you guys have an amazing day. Bye. See my hat?

I loved it.

So you can give me your personal Chris Watts. Would you like to study the life of your kids? If you're out there, just come back. I need to see everybody again. This house is not complete. Just tell me exactly what you remember, and I'll say things about where we can go.

So many people that step into the box with the cops, they think they're going to talk their way out of it.

What are you saying? To Athens? We're in now. Flyers regarding the missing woman in the neighborhood.

You don't know? I haven't seen him around the neighborhood, anything like that.

When you see a case like this where you have a fantastic family, kids are happy, you're always wondering what could possibly happen to force someone to commit such a heinous act.

The disappearance of a pregnant Frederick woman and her two children has captured the nation's attention, and we'll not rest until we have the answers that we are looking for.

There's still a chance that Shannan and the two children are still alive. They're under the pressure that we need to find where they are.

I think we're very, very close to the truth. But now it's like, there he is. I'm not a monster. I didn't home my baby.

This is very much a life altering moment.

I've been honest with you about everything that happened.

You are feeling that pressure.

The only way that we can help you is if you are cooperative with us.

If investigators are gonna learn the truth.

They'Re gonna have to do it inside the interrogation room.

My name is Jose Granado. I've been in law enforcement for 36 years with interviews and interrogations. It's a dance just coming in with ideas. And nothing is perfect. It's never linear.

I'm Colton Seale. I was an FBI special agent for 22 years. My job was to really understand all the new research on interrogation and figure out. How do we bring that together and use it? What we found is that first, most important thing is that you're seeking information and the truth. You're not trying to get a confession.

What do you think happens? At first, I really involved major shoes just at my house, just decompressing. Yeah. But after today, like, with the onslaught of all the cars, I mean, all the police cars, all the nudes, all the k nine units, it made me lean the other direction about. Someone took her.

If you look at Facebook, they had the perfect life. They have a nice, big, beautiful suburban house. They have the two girls, bella and Cece. Chris worked at a local oil field, and she worked as a marketing representative for a vitamin firm.

I'm grateful. Can you see it?

They meet on Facebook, and then they continue to live their love affair on Facebook.

One thing led to another, and he's the best thing that has ever happened to me. And because of my health challenges, because I got so sick, I let him in.

She had lupus, which for many people is very debilitating.

She battled lupus for a long time. You just don't sleep very good with lupus. And she had her head on his lap, and they were watching Tv, and he didn't move. He didn't get up to go to the bathroom. He didn't get a drink. He let her sleep for 4 hours. And I told her, God must have sent him to you. He was so in love with her. Oh, my God. He did everything he could for her, to make her happy.

Yeah, she was happy, so she was happy. Then we were happy.

Say hi, Cece. Hi, daddy. Dad. Careful, Bella. It's hot. You guys like my mug? Oh, my gosh. This is so good. She was an amazing mother. So much to the point that before she even got married and had children, she planned for her children. She had already bought baby clothes, even though she didn't know she was gonna have a boy or a girl. I got a doctor appointment in 2 hours. I know. Boy. Boy. Chris wants a boy. I hope it's a boy for him. It'll make him happy.

Shannan and Chris learned that they would have a third child, and this time it would be a boy. And they even named the baby Niko. And Shanann was overjoyed.

The Frederick police department, they got a call from Nicole Atkinson, who was a friend of Shannan Watts. Shanann and Nicole had come back from a work conference in Phoenix the night before.

I just told her, if you need help in the morning, let me know. If you need me to take the girls too.

School.

If you need me to come take you to the doctor's appointment, let me know. She said she would. And we gave each other a hug, and I watched her go into the house.

Nicole says to Shanann, text me in the morning, but she doesn't hear from Shanann.

Nicole came by ten or 11:00 in the morning to check on Shanann. She didn't get a response on a cell phone. She didn't get a response when she.

Drove to the house, called Chris and asked if he knew where Shannan was. And he said she went on a play date. And I said, chris, her car's in the garage.

Volcanic communications.

My name's Nicole, and I'm calling because I'm concerned about a friend of mine. She's not answering the door. She's not responding to text messages, phone calls. There's no movement in the house whatsoever.

How you guys doing? You Nicole?

Yes.

What's going on?

And they meet a police officer on the scene. They all get there before Chris gets there, but he shows up pretty soon thereafter.

Scott, how you doing? How's it going? So this is the only vehicle she would have. She would drive. You mind if I look around? Go ahead. Thanks. You're fine? Yeah. It didn't look like she went through and packed up. Oh, I mean, last time I talked to her was this morning. She said she was gonna take the kids to her friend's house, and then she asked where she was gonna be. And then I text her today and never heard anything.

We all ran through the house kind of looking for her.

You checked up there? She's not there.

It was odd, the things that you did see. It didn't make sense to me.

Does she work? Yeah, she works from home. Oh, from home. She works. This is her life.

Who goes anywhere without their cell phone? Certainly not a mom. They also see medication for one of her daughters. Cece.

My daughter never leave the house without her phone or the epi pins. Definitely an odd one. Yeah. My kids are my life. I mean, those smiles light up my life. I miss that. Like, I miss them, you know?

Chris decides the next day to go on local media and beg his wife and daughters, or whoever has them, to bring them back or to come home.

We were watching him live on the news, and it's jumped at us that we'd understand that people may have different reactions to emotional types of situations. He didn't have any emotion. He's saying the words that he thinks a grieving father should say, but he's not saying them in the manner that they should be said.

I want everybody to come home.

The husband is always the top suspect. Always the top suspect, no matter what. Then you have a highly suspicious disappearance of a pregnant woman. Of course he's the suspect.

Just tell me exactly what you remember, and I'll take you back where we can go.

Agent Graham. Coder was assigned to the case. Stakes were extremely high. I think there was still in the minds of law enforcement, a chance that they would find Shanann and the girls. Agent Coeder is very mild mannered, almost friendly. He sits side by side. His voice is soft. There's no shouting and yelling and pounding the table like we see on television.

At that first interview. As an investigator, what you want to do is you want to come in, and you want to set the tone, and you want to have that rapport. You want to be able to have it nice, smooth, and direct, and you want to be able to get basic information.

530. That's when I went to work, and I had heard from Shannan for about 2 hours there. So. 740. I texted her, and after she could tell where the kids were, she took them anywhere. Okay. Nothing.

In terms of getting the truth, it's first asking a lot of open ended questions. The best evidence you're gonna get is from the person who was involved. It puts everything else that you have into actual context. Otherwise, you're just trying to make sense of how all this fits together.

How could she have left the house? Only way I still left the house. Somebody picked her up, but it happened from back camera from the front, where the neighbor, the white faces, the driveway. They would have picked that up. Only thing I picked up was me leaving at, like, 526. Okay. How do you know I did your camera? It's never a sailor. Oh, did he tell you? Yeah, we were all over there watching it. Oh, God. Just trying to figure out if she's missing at this point.

There's a neighbor who sees all this activity at the Watts home, and he comes over to offer up the fact that he has camera footage. So they all decide to go next door and watch.

Is this on continually recording? Yep. He was standing right in my living room, basically watching it, and he looked very frantic. He had his hands like this in the air. The only time I saw him show any emotion was a little bit of nervousness when he was watching that tape. This is him at 517.

What's fascinating about the camera footage is what it shows and what it doesn't show. It does not show Shanann or the girls leaving the house. But what it does show is Chris Watts backing his car up into the garage and then leaving a short while later.

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As they're watching the camera footage from the neighbor next door, Chris Watts seems rather agitated. He's doing this, rocking back and forth.

He is seen on that video making three trips back and forth into the house, out to his truck, and then back inside, and then drives off from the driveway at about 540 in the morning.

I really don't think that Chris expected that footage to come out, because the moment that Chris sees that video, you see that change in the demeanor.

My detective just showed up. You just want to go talk to him. I'm going to get his info real quick. Not that. No.

Even the neighbor caught on to the fact that there's something off here with Chris.

It's not inconsistent with what he says about the time he went to work, but it's very suspicious, given that we see no other activity at the house for the rest of the day.

That camera captured everything. There is no Shanann, there is no Celeste, and there is no Bella. It's just a truck.

I think law enforcement began to realize that things weren't adding up fairly quickly. You're starting to see some pieces being put together.

Mind if I come in, Chris? What's that? I'm going to Bella's room. Going to Celeste room. Playroom, not the bedroom. I'm looking everywhere, like bathrooms and nothing. Okay. And then I found the wedding ring right there on the nightstand.

Chris Watts shows Shannan's wedding ring to the friends and the cop. And look, she may have left me.

That was just, like, probably a result of our conversation.

He acknowledges that they had a really hard conversation. So that's something he admits right away that the marriage is in trouble and that they had to talk about it.

Obviously, it gets pretty emotional, like we're talking about, you know, like, we felt this connection was there, like falling out of love.

There has to be a reason why Shananna left, because it's not plausible that she just disappears out of the blue. So he has to bring that up, as in his mind, hopefully, I can say that she just took the kids and left because of this.

It was very emotional. We were both crying, and at the end, like I said, you know, she said she was gonna take the kids to a friend's office of the day. She'd be back. Can we talk about something kind of hard? Phone call. The day she goes missing is the day that you guys have merrill bits over. So you can understand what I'm thinking about you. Yeah. What do you think of it? People knew that we were having marrow issues. They're gonna look at me, especially with the way everything looks. It honestly just makes me sick to my stomach, because this is something that would never do, ever.

That part really stood out for me. He says this is something that I would never do, that I could never do this to my family. In that moment in time, Shanann and Cece and Bella have just disappeared. We don't know where they are. But he says this, and this is a really concrete word referring to something specific. So he's referring to something that he's seeing in his mind.

I have no idea where she is or the kids. I promise you guys, nothing to do with any of that.

He then does have, I think it's about a 32nd pause, which I will say as an interviewer. Feels like about ten minutes. Chris needs to make a decision, and if you keep pushing and pushing him now he just has to respond and respond and deflect. You give him that space to make it. I'm going to tell them more. It becomes more likely that he will.

You've done very good at talking to me about this really hard conversation you guys had. Okay, so I need to ask you about your marriage and infidelity. Tell me about it. I have never to do that in my life.

Part of the investigation is trying to get a motive. What is happening here, and is there a motive for Chris to have done this? A very logical motive would be he's having an affair with somebody.

At this point, he denies that there's any infidelity I'm not going to tell the news.

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Look at that. Victory.

Asian coder presented a photograph to Chris. Photos are the classic way police break a suspect down.

You are trying to increase that internal pressure that somebody's feeling and that sense of guilt. You're trying to get an emotional response from him.

Buzzfeed of shoes. Even though they were winter shoes. They were what? Oranger shoes.

He's letting it play at the speed and the pace that Chris wants.

Those are her boots, aren't they? About her degrees outside her. Boy, she loves those.

You hone in on certain words that are thrown. She loved the moment that Chris goes into that past tense. It's already letting the investigator know that they're no longer here because in his psyche, he knows that they're not there. So he talks in that past tense.

You know that we have to get to the bottom of the son. You know that. Kev, would you take your polygraph? Sure.

I think at this point he doesn't have much choice. If he suddenly says, no, I won't take a polygraph, that's gonna make him look guilty.

That night they let him go home, and inexplicably he agrees to come back the next day.

He says, tomorrow morning, we'll go ahead and we'll set it up. So what is Coder doing? It's important for him to get that return of Chris back to the station for the polygraph, but he's doing it in a manner that is very low key.

Good night. Sleep. I'm sorry you have to go through all this. Part of the process. This is Tammy. Did you meet Tammy yesterday? No. This is Tammy.

Agent Graham, Coder and agent Tammy Lee decided to work as a team.

I mean, I hope that, you know, if you did have something to do with their disappearance, it would be really stupid for you to come in and take polygraph today.

Exactly.

At this point, she's gone and the girls are gone. We don't know where they're at.

Right.

So we're assuming the worst, but hugging the best. I think we can all assume that wherever Shannan is, the little girls are. So I'm just going to ask you about Shannan.

So now we're on day two, and he actually comes back voluntarily. Why?

Psychologically, he's committed to this. Now he is committed to going on tv and saying, I want my kids. Whoever has them, bring them home.

So you mean he's committed to the lie that he's created in the public eye and in the interrogation room.

Yeah.

And he's committed to basically living out that lie. So you just plow forward with this plan, even if it's not a good plan.

You're going to measure involuntary movement in your chest cavity during the test. Okay, the test was about to begin. Please remain still. Did you physically cause Shannon's disappearance?

No.

Are you lying about the last time you saw Shannon?

No.

Do you know where Shannon is now?

No.

This portion of the test is complete. Please remain still. I think the instrument out of operation.

Why would law enforcement at this point choose to do a polygraph?

I think they have a fairly good idea that he is their suspect. But you're never 100% sure, so they need to basically lock in their certainty that he's their guy.

So it is completely clear that you were not honest during the testing. I think you already know that you did not pass the polygraph test. So now we need to talk about what actually happened. I feel like you're probably ready to do that.

I didn't lie to you on that polygraph. I promise. Chris, I never thought I paused off for a minute. Take a deep breath. I want you to take a deep breath right now. We just can't figure out why there's two braces. We talked about that last night. We just can't figure it out. And so it's very surprising to me, and it warms my heart, that you're the type of dad who can pack a bag in the morning and you got just what to put in there. Okay, I may go.

There's the good Chris and there's the bad Chris. Sometimes we'll come in and we'll say something to the effect of sometimes things happen. He's letting Chris know. Listen, there might have been the one great Chris that you're saying that you are, but you had that one moment, the one moment where this Chris took over from the good Chris and the bad Chris showed up, and we need to find out why.

And you're not faking that, are you? That's it all. Okay. But you are near today lying about something else, so we need to talk about that. Okay. I know.

During that first interrogation, the day before, agent Coder asked Chris if they could search his phone, and he agreed immediately.

Do they have your phones? Have they looked at your phones? I don't think so. Okay, can I run that out and have a look real quick? Yeah. Okay.

Chris even hands him his phone and says, go ahead, search my phone.

I really want them to just really dive in. Okay. Okay. Okay.

They search the phone and make a surprising discovery. Chris has a kind of ingenious but creepy app on his phone that looks like a calculator. But behind it is all of his communications with the woman he's seeing on the side. Anything she sends, text messages, photos, and that's where he buries it all.

My daughter, she had no clue. She was clueless that if I reached.

Out alone, I was with her most. Most of the time. Who was her. But I don't want to get her involved in this. I wanted to come on that move in. Yes.

He's just backing himself further and further into that corner of that interrogation room. Literally. They're walking him down the path of confession.

So going into that energy today with chatting, where we stopped you in, we knew. We knew all about making. All about making all about.

Agent Coter says, we know about Nicole. He does that fairly nonjudgmentally. And it also makes Chris question, what else do they already know about?

Investigators learned that in the weeks before Shanann's disappearance, he kicked up a major affair with a co worker, Nicole Kessinger. And Nicole thought he was very close to finalizing a divorce. So you can imagine Nicole Kessinger's surprise when she learned that her boyfriend, Chris Watts family, was suddenly missing. She was, I think it's safe to say, horrified. And she came forward to tell the police everything she knew. And the police recorded audio of that interview.

We got along really well. I thought what we had, it was very comfortable for me. I enjoyed it. I think he did very much as well.

Did he ever tell you that he loved you?

Yes, he did.

Did you ever tell him the same?

A couple times.

By all accounts. And by all descriptions, it sounded like they were beginning a dating and intimate relationship. He had told her mister Watts and Shanann were in the process of getting a divorce, but that it hadn't been final yet.

I just realized that he was lying to me. And I was like, well, if you can lie to me about this, what else are you lying to me about?

I'm not proud of it. I didn't think anything I could have to about the day I ever do it, but I did.

Now there's a motive. What a coincidence that the wife comes home from her trip, he's having an affair, and now, on that very same day, the wife and the children are gone.

I promise you, when you start, I'm gonna see oil. Feel better. You gotta help me out, Christopher.

Give me a lifeline right now. You need to take it. You need to reach out and take it. I mean, I wanna believe that when Shanann did it, and you felt compelled to fix this so Shanann didn't look bad. That's why I wanna believe.

Agent Lee suggests that possibly Shanann could have had something to do with it. So she's minimizing his culpability. We know that people are more likely to confess to a minimized version of events.

There is no way that Tammy Lee thought Shanann killed her children. I think their gut told them that these people were dead. And Chris probably did it.

Chris, right now? Your dad's outside. Good morning. Bam. Can I talk to my dad or something? Absolutely. Cool. Do you want to bring him in here?

It's a golden opportunity. But the cops were taking a chance that he'd walk into the room and say, no, no, no. Let's not have this conversation here. Let's go home.

Well, how about this? If we bring in your dad, will you promise me you'll talk to him? I'll talk to him. Come on.

So they bring the dad in, and they have a full on conversation with the camera rolling.

There is no expectation of privacy inside that room. His father comes in, and now he kind of lowers his guard. He lowers his voice so that not everybody can hear. Just the father.

Congratulations, Danny. Now you let me go. Protect her. What? I want to protect her. Don't want to protect her. I don't know what else I got. Walk. Choking like. Well, you took those on the bed. I forgot to shave me.

At that moment, the father could have said, hey, listen, you need an attorney. And that could have been a detriment. But I think that Coter and Lee had such a good understanding with each other that when they made that decision to allow the dad to go in, I think that there was something there where they felt that it wasn't going to go south on him. I think the father was going to be more like the calming influence to get Chris to come forward. Lee was very good in the sense that she had that personal touch, her hand on his shoulder, soothing, letting him know I'm here to listen. I want you to tell me what happened.

So I'm wandering. I was covered and, like, pulled off, and she was just lying there. So I love her. She was on the opera, freaked out. I ran there, got on. What her?

What you do? Bring her to the. Shawn.

I'm not that person.

He's bought agent Lee's story that Shanann did it and decided to incorporate that into his events, recognizing he has nowhere else to go. So I'm gonna take this thing that she just gave me and use it. He's definitely trying to minimize his culpability in this.

The story that Shanann might have killed the children was just a tactic to get Chris to confess. There's no way that this woman police officer thought this mother murdered her babies.

I think that you killed these girls before their mom came home. It just doesn't make sense. I think we're very, very close to the truth, but not like there is. I don't know. I'm lodged. I didn't. Who might be.

There is the win in getting him to confess to a fault, false version of events. They can now use that to say, where are they? And move quickly. And that is critical because evidence degrades fairly rapidly over time. So you want to find the body as quickly as you can.

Where do you put them? Out there, because that's all important. Whereabouts Shannon and the girls.

One of the most dramatic moments in this incredibly long interrogation sequence is watching Chris Watts diagram the location of the bodies.

Can you like it for me? The expression in and where the girl.

Left.

Shanann is in the shallow grave, wrapped in a sheet with just some dirt thrown on her. And it's like she's trash, like he's just disposing of the trash. And then he stuffed his two daughters into eight inch wide holes in oil drums. That is horrifically monstrous.

Chris, don't stand up for me. I'm gonna have you face that wall. Just face it.

Sickening, isn't it? If you read your Bible, the devil comes to you in any shape, size, and form.

Walk out this way. He is a monster. How do you put someone you love into an oil tank?

Especially your children?

His original story was that Shanann had strangled the little girls. But once they recovered the bodies, it became clear that he had smothered the girls.

Bella, the four year old had obvious signs of injury around her mouth. We knew that based upon those injuries, that she had tried to struggle back against her father as he smothered her.

This kid keeps me going. I knew in my heart of hearts the friend I cared so much for would never hurt her babies. They knew from day one that that was not true. Oh, and Bella has her baby.

To find out that my granddaughter struggled to live, that probably threw us over the edge.

But the story doesn't end here. Ultimately, he gives a final interview to agents Graham Coter and Tammy Lee about what happened.

Cold. I didn't love her anymore. That's gonna happen. Every time I think about it, I'm just like, did I know I was going to do that before I got on top? Or.

This afternoon, my office filed formal charges against Christopher Lee Watts.

When it comes to the motive in this case, I think it was a variety of factors for Chris. He was clearly feeling a lot of pressure about that third child, but he was also sowing his oats and going back to his youth and not sure he wanted to be a dad or a husband anymore. What I don't get, and I never get with any of these cases, we do get a divorce. He was a coward.

Father and husband accused of killing his pregnant wife and their two little girls. You'll remember he made a public plea for his wife, his family to come home. Tonight. He's offering a plea deal to save his own life.

Chris agreed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. And that was in line with the religious beliefs of Shanann's family. They're deeply spiritual people. Her mother has said that she just doesn't believe in the death penalty.

Good morning.

It's a lot harder to spend the rest of your life in prison when you're a young man like Chris.

You carry them out like trash. You buried my daughter Shannon in a shallow grave, and then you put Bella and Celeste in used containers of crude oil. This is hard to say, but may God have mercy on your soul.

I didn't want death for you because that's not my right. Your life is between you and God now, and I pray that he has mercy for you.

Having worked cases very similar to this, it really does take an emotional toll on you. And then you go to a sentencing and see the impact that it has on the family.

Our families have been irreparably broken by the needless deaths of Shannan, Bella, Cece, and Nico. This is something we will never get over now. To my son, Christopher, we have loved you from the beginning. And we still love you now. We love you and we forgive you, son.

Please rise.

After Chris is sentencing, the original investigative team, they fly out to Wisconsin to the jail that he's being held. The reason that they wanted to do that, I believe, was I don't think that they felt like they were done investigating the case. They felt they did not have the actual story.

The last thing we talked about was.

Where the girls were.

But we never really got to talk about that night. That's what happened.

Oh, God, it lower anymore.

That's going to happen. Every time I think about it, I'm just like, did I know I was gonna do that before I got off opera? Put Shannon in that sheet, carried her downstairs, back my truck up.

So you put Shani in the trunk, and then you put the two girls in the trunk.

He gives a final interview acknowledging that he strangled Shannan and how he put them in the car all together, their mom wrapped in a sheet, and the girls strapped into the back with their dead mother. So Cece and Bella were still alive when he drove them all out to that oil site.

Honestly, like, I try to picture that whole ride, like, it's like 45 minutes to an hour ride out there, and it's just like, could not have, like, saved my girl's life. Couldn't I have done something? Why did I do. I don't know.

He finally admitted that he smothered the girls to death at that oil site. To have 40 minutes to think about whether or not to kill two little baby girls and to do it anyway, that's just monstrous.

She was an amazing daughter. She was a best friend. She wanted to soar the earth, and she always said, mom, I want to leave my mark on the earth. And she did. She really did. I couldn't be prouder. My grandchildren. I couldn't have loved them any more than I did.

Oh, my goodness. Come give me a hug.

Oh.

Oh, I love you.

The interrogation tapes was produced by ABC News Studios in partnership with 2020. The series is streaming on Hulu next week. We'll be back with the sins of the father, about decades of family secrets. Thanks so much for listening.