Horrific Chris Watts Family Murders: A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special

hey everyone I'm Megan Kelly welcome to the Megan Kelly show and to the first day of our hot crime summer week yes our hot crimes summer series was so popular last year we are bringing it back by popular demand and we kick off this week with a case has haunted me and so many for years I just I cannot get over it I need to understand it and that is the case of Christopher Watts in August of 2018 Chris Watts murdered his pregnant wife shanan along with their two little girls the murders were gruesome and

seemingly out of the blue the disturbing details of this murder and the lack of red flags leading up to it has haunted me it makes it so hard to understand but I feel like we must we we have to try here to help us dig into the details and to answer my questions is retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole throughout her career she has helped capture interview and understand some of the world's most infamous criminals Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber the Green River Killer the Zodiac Killer and many more she also worked the Elizabeth Smart and

the Natalie Holloway disappearances the Columbine shootings and many many other very high profile cases she's the perfect person to help us break down this case foreign to the show on YouTube and follow me on Facebook Instagram and Twitter in a startling description the UN food Chief warned the world with these words knocking on famine's door say what he called what we're facing a perfect storm of a perfect storm and he's not alone a Baron's report says a food shortage could be coming even in the United States Farmers see it too John Boy Jr a fourth

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viewers will get 10 off their first order at 4patriots.com that's the numeral four patriots.com by using the code MK go to fourpatriots.com use codemk to start your stockpile today [Music] Mary Ellen great to see you again how are you I'm good how are you doing I'm doing great thank you I'm so glad to have you here this case has been haunting me as of late I got on to the Chris Watts story because of the Alec Murdock case and the use of the term family annihilators and then we did a whole show on family annihilators

and we mentioned Chris Watts but I just can't get past it and I needed to spend more time on it and I'm so glad to have someone with your expertise here to help walk us through it it's just one of the most disturbing crime cases I've ever seen and I'm into crime I follow crime and but this one is just Unforgettable in its awfulness you you've lived your life fighting crime and trying to figure out criminals professionally is it is it as bad as I say you know as somebody who's seen a lot more crime

than I have is it a standout well I think it's definitely a standout and I'll tell you why when you have a case like this where the parent especially the biological parent goes after their own children um it really causes the case to stand apart from other crimes I can understand domestic violence which is a partner kills another partner that's actually fortunately very very common but when you see someone going after their biological children purposefully that makes it extremely egregious and then the manner in which the children were killed here and the manner in which

their bodies were disposed of and such a callous and cold-blooded way it's really disturbing so let's go through the story uh when these two met they seemed very much in love Shannon was larger than life very strong personality uh but had been going through a difficult time she'd been diagnosed with lupus and this woman documented her whole life on Facebook so we have a lot of videotape of her it makes you feel like you kind of knew her here's a little bit of shanon sharing the story of how she and Chris Watts met my friend

sent me a friend suggestion for him it was actually his cousin's wife and um I deleted it I was like I am not interested I don't want to meet a guy uh bye-bye so I deleted her friend's suggestion for him I was diagnosed two months later and I went through one of the I would say darkest times of my life because things just got scarier got a friend suggestion friend request from Chris I was in a really really really bad place and I got a friends to friend request from Chris on Facebook and I was

like oh what the heck I'm never gonna meet him except oh one thing led to another and eight years later we have two kids we live in Colorado and he's the best thing that has ever happened to me do you think there's any connection between the fact that she was in a dark place physically and mentally when when she met this guy and the ultimate fate that she met could have been um sometimes our judgment is colored or flawed by our own emotional experiences like poor health so certainly could have been their personality seemed diametrically

opposite and um when you go back and you look at how people pair up you wonder how much somebody really is aware of the other person's personality and how much they're really aware of how that person is going to handle life and the stressors of life and all the things that that life brings in terms of challenges and so forth and my experience over the years is that we really don't read people very well we oftentimes read what we want to see and that may have been impacting the relationship here and again it's it's really

very common they met in 2010 they got married in 2012 and she was killed in 2013. I mean it all happened so fast and look I I met my husband in July of um was it oh sorry okay so it's 2018 that she was killed sorry but I met my husband in July of 06 and we were married by March of 08 so I'm not saying it can't happen quickly and work out wonderfully but I do think there's just a little bit of a warning here where if you meet your partner in a very low

time in your life take the time to make sure you're not for emotional or other reasons overlooking potential warning signs of a problem I agree with you um and that's certainly one of the things I cover with my students in class when we study violent crime is what are all of those characteristics that um confuse us that impact our ability to read people especially at a time in our life when it really becomes important what do we look at that really don't tell us the potential for dangerousness and what should we be looking at in

terms of personality traits and again I think it's really very common but we're not raised and we're not trained to know what to look for they had a baby pretty soon into the marriage again married on November 3rd 2012 December 17 2013 first child Bella was born uh and then they suffered a bankruptcy and 2015 so two years later their second daughter CeCe her name was Celeste was born so two babies in a couple of years Flash Forward to three years after that and she's pregnant with their third child a little boy now anybody who's

had two babies in two years in the marriage it's stressful and then they have a bankruptcy in the middle of it that doesn't make you kill anybody that doesn't turn anybody into a murderer so as you look back at this situation knowing what Chris Watts would ultimately do you know do you have any thoughts on those years any red flags anything jump out at you well I started to look when the case even happened started to go back and look at when did the stressors really start these are not cases where someone just snaps and

they decide one morning this is what they're going to do they're going to annihilate their whole family there's there's thinking about it beforehand there's planning about it beforehand even if they don't admit to it so when did the stress really begin and it probably really started to compound about the time that um they filed for bankruptcy and then when they started to have the children we know that those are very stressful times in relationships especially depending on the person's personality if they have a very if they have a difficult time dealing with the idea that

we have one more baby we have one more pressure in my life especially with those kinds of thought processes that can be very stressful so now you've got a second child and then you have surprisingly now you have a third child and so I think the stress and and possibly the resentment had been building actually for years it didn't just happen um days before Chris committed the murders they in June of 2018 is when everything started to take a turn for the worst um that is when he met the woman who would become his affair

partner and it is when Shannon told him that she was expecting a third child which she very clearly did not want she of course put the clip on Facebook where she told him the news and any Outsider could see the guy was not thrilled notwithstanding what his words were here's a bit of that yeah she's wearing a shirt that reads oops we did it again and he walks in I like that shirt [Music] really really that's awesome [Music] so pink means that's just a test I know it's just because the pink is going to be

girls I don't know that's awesome yes I guess guess when you want to see what happens that bit at the end there right that bit at the end with it as he's looking at the pregnancy test and not to mention that's awesome that's awesome that's something you say when your kid is like you know I I got on first base you know you find that you're having a child it's it tends to be in a very emotional very moving moment none of which was present there no but you know I looked at that again I

remember seeing that years ago but I also looked at his confessions and he is one of the most subdue low-key people um in those confessions so I think that's his personality he's not going to be extremely expressive it's just not part of who he is and so that reaction to the news that uh shanan is going to have a third baby is you know it is pretty much in keeping with his um very low-key almost at times depressive um personality it's the it's the common at the end when he says words to the effect something

about when you want something meaning when she wants it he did not make a comment about what he wanted so I thought the affect was keeping with how he is but it was the final comment that was telling to me um is there any reason to be concerned if you partner up with somebody who has that flat affect as a default like they have difficulty feeling emotion they have difficulty feeling emotion whether it's great love or great hesitancy in committing a murder you know they're not built in a way that is necessarily safe well that's

a good point but I think with um with the whole idea of being able to understand your partner um or your family members you know you have to really look at them and and and be a a pretty good judge of character on a daily basis and and not you know just every couple of months or something like that so you I think it's important to look at whether or not they're becoming more depressed are they talking about suicide are they talking about leaving the family are they talking about not wanting to be a part

of the family again so for me there are a lot of puzzle pieces that are likely missing from this family that were never posted on Facebook that would give us more indications that he had started to check out but with that checking out was there any indication that that with with that decision to no longer be really an emotional part of their family could that have meant that that anger towards shenan was building and building and building because looking at Chris you don't see an angry man but that means he's internalized it but what did

she see on a daily basis what did she see that um many of us would have just looked at and said he's just having a bad day and and sometimes that's the case but sometimes it's not the case and and those are the kind of indicators that you want to look for hmm he to me everything seems to go downhill as soon as he meets this other woman like his be it to me based on her Facebook based on the Netflix documentary which is very worth your time um on this whole show it's called American

murder the family next door um he was kind of the beta in the relationship I mean she was the alpha and in control about most of the decisions they were making and then he met this other woman and really started distancing himself and started I seemed to me like a hatred started to brew for Shannon the other the other woman's name is Nicole kessinger she worked like he did at um this petroleum company they were showing a picture of her on the board now and I mean they met in June of 2018 it was August

13 2018 that he committed a triple murder quadruple murder of his entire family I mean two months Mary Elliott how how do we even start to understand that well his girlfriend the woman that he met and started to have the affair with um she was the kind of the conduit he was already in that emotional state my sense is that he was already feeling incredible animosity towards shenan and she didn't realize it then she made he meets this woman and it could have been Susie Smith it could have been you know Ann Jones but he

meets her and and she she responds to him and they begin to have that relationship I don't think it was specifically her but I think he was ready at that point so I think it had been building up hmm that's interesting so it could have been anyway because we'll talk about her but she's been very demonized by most people looking at this case and there are questions about whether she did something intentionally to encourage this well I think I would be really careful as as a profiler to credit her with any involvement in this case

um until I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to her and look at her background look at her personality look at the kinds of things that you know that kind of really made her tick on a daily basis to see whether or not her personality lends itself to being co-opted like this because if it did we have to look at it and say they just met they just met um she starts to have this relationship which she's probably very excited about she's even looking at wedding dresses and then to jump to the conclusion

that now she morphs into this co-conspirator to help him you know annihilate his whole family is is a little bit too much for me at this point I think she got caught up in this in the excitement of having this relationship and it really is hard when something like this happens um just like Scott Peterson not to say oh she had to know or she had to encourage him that is a big step to say that the partner encouraged um Chris in something like this I'm not sure that that's there and we know that in

Scott Peterson Amber fry did not know anything about Lacey Peterson she she was truly caught off guard that he was married at all had no idea and as soon as she found out she went to Cops worked with them and as part of the reason he is now in prison um she was a good guy in the whole thing this woman I don't know and she definitely misled the cops she she tried to tell them oh I didn't know he was married and then they found Google searches by her um you know like does the

mistress ever get the man I mean she knew she knew that he was married and downplayed her knowledge with the police it doesn't mean she encouraged a murder a triple quadruple murder but it's one of the reasons why this woman has now had to change her name she's effectively in witness protection because people blamed her um so at the same time we see that lackluster I'm having the third baby reaction uh shanon posted one of many videos of the daughters talking about their dad Chris uh on Facebook and I mean you could find any number

of these but every video between him and the children showed a loving interaction what looked like a loving interaction this is one that you know really pulls on the heartstrings because you know what's going to happen to this young girl but here's Bella um on June 14th 2018 four years old at the time singing a song about how much she loved him my daddy is a hero he helps me grow up strong he helped me um it's not good too [Music] reads me books he tied my shoes for a Hero blue and blue buddies I

love you oh my God I don't this is why I'm so obsessed with this case how does someone who we have to acknowledge is a human being who has seen that video and has created and loved that child for four years within two months of that kill her murder her and dump her in an oil tank how well a couple of things I think probably are going on um I think he likely didn't respond the way most people would have to that video um the video probably added more pressure to him to feel that he

needed to stay with the family when in fact he did not want to stay with the family he may have even resented that vid that video seeing them because he was ready to go he was ready to start life over again he had new plans and so he was emotionally separating himself from his family at a certain point and when you do that to be pulled back into the family once you've decided I'm done it's over I'm I'm I'm just gonna wrap it up um that can also contribute to the anger and with with somebody

like with uh Chris who internalizes that anger it's really hard to measure it because usually people Express their anger they yell they scream their face gets red that doesn't seem to be the case with him but I'm also not sure that he wasn't looking at those videos thinking I'm separating enough with this I'm moving on with my life I'm starting over again so looking at your kids maybe may have been certainly a part of that this is interesting because this is in no way to blame Shannon for anything that happened to her but there is

a chance it was an emotional manipulation by her I mean the affair started in June of 18. that's when this video was made and posted and there was another video posted by shanon right around the same time talking about you know how you're like you're our Rock you're the great and I I did wonder is it any accident she's trying to build him up in this way um right around this time hold on a second we have it here it's a Father's Day message okay and in it she's saying Chris we're so incredibly blessed to

have you you do so much every day for us you take such great care of us you're the reason I was brave enough to agree to number three from laundry to kids showers you're incredible and we are so lucky to have you in our life Happy Father's Day now to me Mary Ellen this suggests this is over the top you know I this is just over the day it makes it it sound like she's trying to prove something or maybe manipulate a bit or maybe in her way appeal to him so for example if you're

in a relationship with someone and you try to have a conversation with them let's fix things let's let's make this better and your partner shuts down on you they they won't talk or they'll just answer in in one or two words so you can't have a conversation about it they just emotionally turn off when that happens you have to have an uh an outlet you have to have a way you feel to be able to express to them how you feel so you can do something and shenan was probably feeling at that point she was

losing Chris and he wasn't talking to her about it so I could see where she would naturally um put something up on Facebook and try to appeal to him that way but you're right it it does seem over the top but she may have been kind of at feeling it at her last resort was to get his attention and hey please listen to how we're feeling about you we don't want to lose you for the next two months she would ramp that up as any spouse might you could tell that Shannon felt him distancing himself

from her she wound up taking a six-week trip to North Carolina where they were from and brought the girls home to the grandparents and was getting frustrated that he wasn't even texting or calling to check in on his wife and two daughters and she was pregnant you know weeks were going by without him seeming to give a damn about how they were doing or trying to reach out and you know she would do what any spouse would do which is like thanks for all the calls what's going on right in retrospect how do you think

like would he have received that in the same way you're saying he might have received the my daddy is my hero video you know like I don't need this pressure I I'm trying to get out of this thing I think that's more than likely how he responded I'm done internally mentally when you have a case like this at least in the cases that I've worked are or been aware of there is a mental break where the person says I'm done they don't necessarily tell their partner I'm done but they're done and they make the decision

to move on um and again they don't have to tell anybody they just do so any efforts to reel them back in will just upset them and make them angry but their partner doesn't know it so that failure to communicate is a huge problem when you're dealing with someone that throws up these emotional walls and internalizes how they feel and how they feel is they're getting angrier and angrier and angrier and shenan may not have seen that she may not have been aware of that that's his personality that's not something that he just started once

he married her that's how he was he just internalized his feelings he has very flat affect I think he's his ability to empathize with her is really very low and even his ability to empathize with his kids it's really pretty low and when you compound that with he's made the decision now to move on with his new girlfriend um that's a serious issue again if he keeps getting angrier and angrier and angrier so we know that was happening we know that because we'll get to this but the letters he wrote some woman from prison where

he talked in great detail about the night of the murders are absolutely horrifying his coldness his lack of empathy his the how he described especially the murder of his wife and how little he felt for her all of that is building over this two-month period for sure and you're saying it would have been longer than that but here's how he was responding to her it's such a juxtaposition the Netflix documentary does a great job of laying out her texts to him and then his responses and she is and understandably getting a little bit more aggravated

but she's not forgive the term getting like she's just like hey you know you what's going on and instead of being like I've got something you need to discuss with you when you get back or like I'm not in a good place right now which would be what an honest person might say here are some full screen quotes showing how he was responding to her he writes I didn't see these face times and I'm sorry I missed those calls I'm very very very sorry the face time went through on my work phone and then here's

another one where he's trying to appease her saying I know and I will FaceTime Bella and CeCe as soon as I wake up from now on I'm extremely sorry I feel like a jackass please be okay so Mary Ellen when you hear him talking like that again he seems like whipped he seems like I'm sorry I'm sorry so so so sorry I don't I feel like most of us wouldn't look at that and be like that guy's about to murder his family no I don't think most people would look at it like that but I

think what he's doing there I think he's buying time I think he's buying time so he doesn't raise her suspicions any higher and her suspicions are are being raised she starts to doubt um what he's saying to her he's she's starting to doubt whether or not he's being loyal to her she's starting to doubt whether or not he has a girlfriend and he's trying to delay that but what we don't know is at what point in their relationship in the past and this becomes important because past Behavior can predict future Behavior at what point in

the past had Chris become really angry with shenan um based on her responding to him this way and what did he do how did he retaliate against her what what had he done in the past to demonstrate his his anger we know it at a certain point he started to spike her drinks with oxycodone so had he done that in the past and was she aware of that so that behavior seems to will probably be lost with time we won't know that but again this probably wasn't the first time that he behaved like this but

it was the first time he acted out in such a lethal way is the inability to express anger a warning sign in combination with other things it could be a warning sign especially if the the retaliation in those circumstances um is really excessive that's what you have to look for it's one thing to be shy it's one thing to be quiet it's one thing to be more introverted but when you're angry and somebody is making you angry um how do you act out what do you do do you go into the room and take all

their clothes and throw them out the window um do you destroy something and then leave it for them to clean up what do you do when you're really angry but you're a person that internalizes thing and have little empathy for your partner with all he has a cluster of traits that I think were very important but that in resistance to sitting down having a conversation expressing himself showing his anger expressing his anger at a you know in a in a way that is um um you know proper and acceptable what had he done in the

past and again that's what we're missing here we don't know what um how he did that in the past some people take CBD for better sleep or less stress or more calm some take it for pain relief better energy or better focus and concentration today I want to tell you about CB Distillery and there are over 2 million satisfied customers according to a poll of their customers 90 reported they do sleep better with CBD 81 say CBD helps with stress and 80 say CBD helps with aches and pains after physical activity if you struggle to

get a good night's sleep if you're dealing with too much stress and you could use a little calm in your life if you suffer with pain and discomfort especially after physical exercise you could give CBD a try from cbdistillery.com use my 20 discount by visiting cbdistillery.com and enter my initials MK for your discount no prescription required that's cbdistellery.com promo code MK for 20 off cbdistillery.com [Music] another thing I can't help but feel and I realize people have affairs all the time they don't wind up killing their spouse but the affair was so dangerous here it

really was the spark you know that Lit the fuse on this keg of dynamite and as you see him starting to pull away from shenan and the girls you see fire between Chris Watts and his affair partner Nicole you see she's texting him nude photos of herself he's he seems to be becoming you know near obsessed with her like he's got to see her more and more as soon as Shannon goes out of town he he's going out with Nicole he's trying it first to cover up um you know the bills because they don't have

any money on the bank statement but then eventually he stops doing that and Shannon is indeed watching the bank statement and seeing you know he said he went to this restaurant but I can see the bill is double what it should be for one guy and so she's getting on it but like to me I can't help feeling like you are playing with fire when you have an affair outside of your marriage you don't know what you are starting inside of yourself or someone else or your spouse yeah certainly can be um it certainly can

be dangerous and I'm my sense at this point is that Chris is not happy with his life and he's not really blaming himself he's blaming shenan he may be feeling very trapped very backed up in in the corner may feel like he has no control so there are other other feelings that he's that are going on it's just not his inability to express himself so he's now engaged in this Behavior where it's almost escalating to the point where he's rubbing it in her face he's not responding to uh her Communications when she's back here on

the East Coast trying to communicate with him he is taking his girlfriend out he's spending time he's probably extremely distant from her when he is home he's probably very short-tempered with her so you know again those are things that become kind of that that slow evolving snowball that is rolling forward but a lot of it has to do with him thinking that the only way out of this relationship the only way to move on with his life is to annihilate his family but that means you have to get to the point where you develop hate

for them and hate is not anger hate is a very cold-blooded emotion and it takes out it takes a while to develop that but to be able to carry out something so cold-blooded and so heartless you have to blame people for what they've done to you right or wrong you have to blame them and then your only way out of your life is to um destroy them whose mind goes to murder you know there's there's good old-fashioned divorce yeah there's good old-fashioned divorce um and we see it in so many cases where people will not

take that logical step to file for divorce um get custody of the children do it in a very pro-social way and why people choose to behave like this is just astounding to think that this would be a way out and to and to think like that also makes me think that you know your sense of you know what is Pro Shop pro-social versus what's anti-social has to be a little flawed as well you can't get away with something like this who's the first person you look at when a partner is murdered who's the first person

you look at when young children are murdered you look at the partner they're surviving Partners so there's there's no even good sense in committing a crime like this so that's that's one of the things that he's so dumb areas poor judgment he's so dumb we now know thanks to again these letters that he wrote he was planning this crime he it was not spur the moment and at least so he would later claim so who he's not a complete maybe he is maybe I'm overestimating his intelligence but who that's planning to annihilate their family doesn't

come up with a sound plan to explain where they went you know who leaves like the wife's purse sitting there and the keys sitting there and her shoes sitting there in her car sitting there and just wants people to believe she just walked away with their two young daughters while she was pregnant shoeless purseless keyless phoneless like it was so dumb it was so predictable that he would get caught well the other thing that I thought he did in addition to everything that you've said to leave those things behind and knowing that his wife would

never leave the house without without her cell phone that seemed to be you know tied to our side when he gave that TV interview where he stood there with the emotion that he did have and he had a smirk on his face and he talked about wanting to see his children again and I looked at that when I watched it the first time it was pretty clear at least to me this man is responsible for having murdered his entire family the moment I saw that again I thought of Peterson and when he gave his interview

right after his wife went missing but Chris talked about wanting to see his kids uh and his wife again he didn't say he wanted them back he said I want to see them so he was very guarded in what he said but that was one of the stupidest things that he could have done was to attempt to do that TV interview and expect to have people believe him so I don't think this person was very sophisticated when it came to criminal behavior and I think that accounts for it was there also some narcissism there where

he's smarter than everybody else yeah that could have been there too but I think that there is just a naivete about thinking that he could get away with this I mean they say oh I'm going to ask you the same when we get to the polygraph like who that knows he's done this sits willingly for a polygraph and an interview with police hello you can always say I'm gonna have a lawyer I don't feel comfortable he didn't and it's what led to his confession here is a bit of that television interview to which you just

referred I left work for work early that morning like 5 15 5 30 so like she barely let me she barely got barely gotten into bed pretty much yeah this might be a tough question but it did you guys get into an argument before it wasn't it wasn't like an argument we had an emotional conversation but I'll leave it at that but it's I just want them back I just I just want them to come back and if if they're not safe right now that's what's that's what's tearing me apart because if they are safe

they're coming back but if they're not this this has got to stop like somebody has to come forward shenan Bella Celeste if you're out there just come back like if somebody has her just please bring her back I need to see everybody I need to see everybody again this house is not complete with without anybody here please bring it back oh my God I'm like it's all about himself first of all like if you were actually missing your spouse and your children I think you'd say I am so terribly worried please where are you you

know I'll do anything to find you this is how you can reach me this is how this is where we are whatever you'd plead to the kidnapper he's like if they're not okay this needs to end I mean this is it's been a lot for me you know crazy yeah and I and I think with with a number of these family annihilators it really is very selfish their approach to what happened their description of what happened um their their amount of commitment their investment of emotion and explaining what happened um and you see that in

his his interviews with the detectives it doesn't make a strong emotional investment in the interviews and I've done hundreds of interviews with people some guilty some not guilty but you see generally a tremendous amount of emotion with him it's just very flat you don't see it again and I I think he's just it's all about him and again I think that's very consistent with someone who does annihilate their entire family hmm it's the meanwhile the the neighbors knew enough and and shanan's friends knew enough about him to suspect him immediately the God bless her friend

shenan's friend another Nicole this one was Nicole Atkinson who was all over her disappearance like white on rice I mean she was like she's pregnant she has a doctor's appointment today we were just on a business trip I dropped her off here at 2 A.M she should be here she was going to the doctor she's not answering her phone that's not like her and she's the one who called 9-1-1 just here's a flavor of that it's Nicole uh calling 911. All County communications assistant Stacy my name is Nicole and I'm calling because I'm concerned about

a friend of mine um I dropped her off at her house at two in the morning last night because we were out of town together and we were on the way back from the airport and um and she's pregnant and I haven't been able to get a hold of her this morning and I've gone to her house and her cards there and stuff like that but she won't answer the door she won't answer phone calls she won't answer text messages and I'm just really really concerned and she had a doctor's appointment this morning and she

didn't go to it and I'm just I don't know what to do I've called him and talked to him and he said that she went on a play date with her other two daughters but like if she went on a play date they're both in car seats why would she not take her car so good as somebody who's devoted her life to law enforcement Maryland just what's the lesson there for concerned friends concerned family members this woman did not wait two seconds oh absolutely when you suspect that there's something going on or that you're really

worried because um um there's not that typical pattern that you expected somebody doesn't show up somebody doesn't go into an appointment don't worry about embarrassing yourself or bothering the police call report it make sure people know about it check with others find out don't just let it go and say I'm sure it's fine I'm sure that she'll show up somehow someplace don't do that be very proactive which is what happened here and I think that made an incredible difference in how this case was ultimately resolved and how quickly it was resolved it was good too

I have to say for Shannon to have shared her concerns about her marriage with you know a couple of close friends because they then knew when she went missing we think we know what's going on here I mean I recognize out of respect for your marriage you're not running around everybody saying we have this argument we have that argument but this was getting to a point where Shannon was getting really worried and I mean it's there's a lesson there too like do confide in at least a friend or two I think that was very impressive

here that a friend realized pretty much right away something was wrong that suggests to me that the friends did not see Chris the same way that shenan did and it would have been interesting if this did go to trial what would this friend have testified to what had she seen what were her instincts what had she overheard uh were there examples of domestic violence in the household and I suspect that there were they may have been a little bit subdued but I suspect that there was domestic violence and so these friends may have been telling

shenan leave him there's something wrong with this guy you need to get away from him but to make a phone call that quickly and to be that concerned that suggested they knew more than than what it would appear um by just kind of living across the street they were more aware of the Dynamics of that relationship definitely and we'll talk about the actual murder in a second but the other neighbor while we're on the subject of the neighbors and the friends the other neighbor was great he had a camera out in front of his house

for security purposes and he pulled up the footage and this is all from the police body cam we can see he's like he had his truck in front of his house this morning at 5am and then and Chris is Chris Watts is in there he's in the guy's house and then as soon as Chris Watts walks out the neighbor's like that's not normal he's not a talker what's happened we have a little bit of that again from Netflix here it is sat uh six nothing for the rest of the day you just want to go

talk to him I'm going to get his info real quick no he's not acting right you said he's not acting right he's rocking back and forth uh he's not acting right and and that guy as he's describing what his cameras may or may not have picked up on there he's not talking about Chris Watts's truck pulling out you can see Chris Watts like the hands are on the head like you can tell he's stressed out I don't think he realized the neighbor has cameras well he he probably wasn't aware of that but you know what

it also tells me is that these neighbors were suspicious of Chris before that morning they uh when they saw that behavior they interpreted it correctly but they were suspicious of him before so my question would be if I were interviewing them why were you suspicious of him why were you so able to zero in on that behavior and interpret it correctly what did you know beforehand that would be helpful to understand how this relationship um unraveled hmm good point because you know in a lot of these cases you see the neighbors saying no I could

never have seen him doing this these neighbors and friends were like it's the husband this isn't normal he did right away right yeah so let's talk about the crime it's the reason why this case became such a national story and haunts us still she comes home from the business trip two in the morning two plus between two and three she had told her friends that she was on the business trip with I'm going to talk to him about what I saw on the receipts for the credit card and my fear that he's having an affair

she had already been texting about how he wouldn't touch her he knew she wanted sex and he didn't give it to her and it's not normal and she felt him distancing from her so she shows up and she said uh according to that friend who had called 9-1-1 Nicole Atkinson she she had given shenan a ride to her home and she said that that shenan had planned on um giving a speech I guess one of the friends said shenan had read me or sent me a draft of a speech she planned to give to Chris

when she arrived saying some to this effect I try to fix things and make them better this is making me crazy I need you to give just a little bit of what I did or didn't do so I'm not going crazy in my head to figure it out I know I can't fix this by myself we are going to have to work together Chris would later tell investigators that she got home around 1 48 in the morning and that she shanan initiated sex and that then they went to bed um he claimed that then he

murdered her he claimed that initially that um he killed her and then killed the daughters and then he would shift the story as time went on um no I'm sorry let me correct that he initially claimed that he killed her because she killed the daughters that was his first confession we have it on tape the police were interrogating him and um before let me set it up like this before they got him to confess they sat down with a polygraph and the polygraph operator Mary Ellen I thought she was amazing she's super casual you know

like we're just gotta ask a few questions you know everybody does these polygraphs and like you know whatever and he doesn't actually confess here but this sets the table for the confession here's a bit of that and honestly I mean I hope that you know if he did have something to do with their disappearance um it would be really stupid for you to come in and take a polygraph today exactly right like it would be really dumb like you should not be here right now sitting in the chair if you had anything to do with

shanan and the little girl's disappearance okay okay so he sits for the polygraph they ask him all the questions he denies having anything to do with it and then they come back to him she and a male colleague and they start really pressing him like you didn't tell the truth we know the truth and then they bring in his dad his dad is the one who gets the confession out of him and here is a bit of that [Music] she smothered him he asks I'll choke them apparently I recall [Music] I don't know about that

no no talking about separation and everything about things I don't know like what else to say it's like freaked out I freaked out and had to do the same blanking thing to her those are my kids so what do you make of all of the how the police handled the interrogation the polygraph and then bringing the dad in I thought it was impressive and just to start off with the woman interrogator she says something very effective she said if you had anything to do with this you shouldn't be sitting here talking to me in other

words only sit here and talk to me if you're innocent giving him an out um and she did that purposely so I think the way that she did that and also did it in a kind of a really pretty low-key easy going way I thought that was really very effective and and during the polygraph again I think you know you get more out of trying to build rapport with people and not yelling and screaming at them so I thought that they did really a good job an excellent job as a matter of fact and I

was amazed when I saw them bring in the father this shows me that they were very flexible to try whatever they had to try to get to the truth you typically would not bring in a parent or a spouse into an interview just wouldn't do that unless you felt it was completely necessary so they probably briefed the father they probably explained what they had in terms of evidence explained what they have in terms of The Facts of the case and they brought him in after they they went through the briefing of the father and that

worked extremely well and the father did an extraordinary job of you know showing his son love and care putting his arm around him and getting him to explain what happened even though it wasn't the truth the first time around but still it got the ball rolling so that says a lot about the um the investigators and how they operated that interview I can't help but look at that and say that seems like a loving dad seems like a responsible man who would go in there and do that how does a man like that have a

son like that I know he seemed very he seemed very kind and very loving but from some of the information that I read I don't know that he had that kind of relationship with his daughter-in-law but nonetheless you cannot like your in-laws but you still don't kill them but I think the father fulfilled that the fatherly role he wanted to emphasize with his son how important it was that he tell the truth he you could see the father knew just what their repercussions were going to be and he played the role of the father extremely

well he didn't play the role of an attorney he didn't play the role of a negotiator he went in there because he cared about his son it doesn't mean that his son is the you know exact in the exact likeness of him it just means that he did his job really well [Music] junk science that's what the doctor called many of those fruit and vegetable supplements on the market junk science because they use extracts of common produce department fruits and vegetables with few health benefits but I want to tell you about Field of Greens Field

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a deal so let me get you started with 15 off visit fieldofgreens.com and use my promo code MK promo code MK at fieldofgreens.com parents that have kids that act in a very violent way in a very brutal way they have a difficult time seeing it they have a difficult time understanding how the heck did you get to be like that I like can any of us raise a killer do you know if you're raising a killer well number one I think it's possible for um for families and parents to raise someone that can ultimately act

out in a way that um ends in somebody else being murdered but you have to look at what were the circumstances of the murder and in this case very cold-blooded in this case it was planned in this case it involved the biological children in this case it involved a triple murder and the the spouse shenan Celeste Bella were tweeted like objects that's very different than someone that murders in a really impulsive way or someone that murders because they've had too much to drink so in this case I'm sure the family is really struggling with what

the heck happened here how did this how did this happen do you think there'd be signs Maryland doing doing what you do do you think if we got that Dad on camera and he was really honest about raising Chris Watts he'd have stories of like whether it's animal torture or lack of empathy you know are there usually there are there are red flags along the way but I'll tell you this and I've seen it over the last I don't know 40 years whatever but it's so difficult for family members to look at a loved one

and say there's a problem you have you have a problem how you get along with people how you interact with people the rage that you show or that you don't show but it's there we we know it's there it's so difficult for family members to see that and and really that's part of the reason that we have problems when we put out the warning behaviors for these you know Mass Shooters the warning behaviors are really designed for the family to see and then once you analyze one of these cases the family said well I didn't

see anything so I've just seen this and heard this over and over again when you love someone you just don't see what's there oftentimes that can be dangerous as you pointed out even if you're the wife versus the neighbor versus the friend you know it could be go beyond that sort of blindness the parents in the in this person who's a family Annihilator benefits from that blindness from the people who love him most um he confessed there he tried to blame the murder of the children on shenan that wasn't true he later told the truth

that he killed all three of them including his unborn son which makes it four and later he would write in a handwritten letter from prison to a pen pal Sherilyn kadle and he would detail how he claimed he first attempted to kill the daughters before he killed shenan now I don't know what to believe I don't know whether this is true the order in which he did the murders but this is what he wrote I went to Bella's room then Cece's room Bella was the older CeCe was younger and used a pillow from their bed

that's why the cause of death was smothering after I left Cece's room then I climbed back in bed with shenan and our argument ensued he goes on he said he told shenan about his affair with that woman Nicole and said that their marriage wouldn't last that shenan replied Chris would not see the kids again and then he strangled her to death um he then wrote after shenan had passed Bella and CeCe woke back up woke back up I'm not sure how they woke back up but they did Bella who was four came in and asked

what was wrong with Mom and Chris said he then wrapped shenan in a blanket carried her to the truck put the two daughters in the back seat and drove to the oil site where he worked where the oil tanks were before we get to that stage there's so much in here um that you won't see the kids again Chris Watts wouldn't have cared about that like he he didn't want to see the kids again I'm not sure why he's even offering that detail but why is he saying he tried to smother the girls before he

killed shenan and then later he will change the story I think I actually I'm not sure later the story is simply I smothered them at the oil site right well if we're to assume that what he wrote in in the letter to a female pen pal is true then he had to have a motive for wanting his two baby girls killed first and that may have been so they didn't interrupt him when he was killing shenan if we are to assume then however on the other hand that he said that for other reasons that and

they weren't true but he wanted to impress this pen pal then that would be very telling about um some serious issues with his his personality my sense is that may have been true um that he went in and attempted to murder the two girls first um that was the first time he attempted murder he was not successful and that the reason may have been because he knew it was going to be more difficult to kill his wife she could make noise she could scream um she could fight him and he did not want the baby

girls to come in and interrupt him because then it would be difficult to carry out the murder of of shenan my sense is that's probably if that's true that's probably the sequence of events and the reason that he would have done that he didn't do it successfully and so when he gets to the site where he has already buried his wife now he's got to look into the eyes of his daughters and kill them as they sit in the truck which is almost worse than killing them while they're semi asleep yeah it is worse and

if you can get worse it is worse he this is a viewer warning I mean this is genuinely disturbing so I want to let the viewers know this is dark dark stuff I'm about to read um in more letters to this kadle he reverses his claim to the police earlier that the murders were spontaneous he writes August 12th when I finish putting the girls to bed I walked away and said that's the last time I'm going to be tucking my babies in I knew what was going to happen the day before and I did nothing

to stop it I mean what a strange phrasing I did nothing to stop it as though he knew it was somebody else was going to do it later he said if shanan isn't it weird how I look back and what I remember so much is her face getting all black with streaks of mascara all the weeks of me thinking about killing her and now I was faced with it I knew if I took my hands off of her she would still keep me from Nikki they asked me why she couldn't fight back it's because she

couldn't fight back her eyes filled with blood as she looked at me and she died I knew she was gone when she relieved herself and then he goes on to talk about the daughters which we can talk about in a second but that this poor woman completely helpless several months pregnant dying on her bed at the hands of the man she loved and was building a family with and he can talk about all I all I really isn't it so weird all I remember is the streaks of mascara the coldness the inhumanity yeah that's what

I mean there's just a cold-blooded aspect from beginning to end about all of this and what he remembers about what her face looked like what he remembers about the blood in her eyes that's um that's not somebody that truly empathized with her that loved her that's really someone that had great hatred and disdain for her so the hatred and again when you see hatred in a case it takes you down a different path because there's only two things you can do when you hate another human being and hatred takes time to develop the only two

things that you can do is you can destroy them or you can remove yourself completely from them hatred gives you very few options if if that's how you feel about another human being and what he's describing is almost he's describing someone that's not human but what it's his wife it's the mother of his children and yet he's describing her as some one that's almost a monster yes because he goes on in this letter he dumped his wife's body in a shallow grave that he dug at the oil site and he writes I I he says

when I dug the hole it seemed a lot deeper than it was as I pulled on the sheet she rolled out and into the hole I think she had given birth she landed face down I remember being so angry with her that I was not going to change how she landed this is the same guy who wrote those texts a few weeks earlier I'm so so so so so sorry you know the sweet compliant docile Chris this is that guy who loads her so much he murdered her he couldn't be bothered to flip her right

side up and talked about his dead baby as if it was a absolute nothing a piece of trash and and basically his words uh really defy him that's exactly what it was and he hated her meaning shenan so much that he wouldn't um lean over into the grave he dug for her and turn her over and he comments that he thinks that she gave birth this is he's speaking about somebody that's a non-human object he's not in that non-human perception of somebody is consistent with hatred so again we see the same very cold-blooded features as

he's reliving having putting her in the grave and and seeing you know the fact that she's rolled over and she's probably given birth already and then he covers her up and walks away it really doesn't get any more hateful than that and that really goes to that lack of feeling and emotion and that ability to to empathize it's just not there it's just not there at all how is this person walking amongst us in society and not and people aren't knowing he's this man how does this person go to the CVS and collect his prescription

from the pharmacist or interact with the mailman or have any friendly relations in in life you know how is it not that like we have a sea of people coming forward to say he's a psychopath and we all knew that like we all said that this guy's gonna snap he's a bad guy that's not what happened mm-hmm no it's not what happened he did not snap and I don't think that this man um meets the features of psychopathy they're not there I didn't think that they were there at the time because that but it doesn't

mean that he can't have this cold-blooded side to him where he's made the decision that this woman is ruining his life and the only way to regain control is to kill her and to kill the the two babies so he's able to reconcile that this is what he has to do but I think walking around in life and going to the store and interacting with people he's just not putting out a lot of emotion people that will describe him will say yeah it was a nice guy didn't know him very well he kept him himself

he was kind of quiet and that's by Design that's by purpose but when you're in a really intimate relationship with someone like that becomes really important no matter who they are to realize how do they handle what's going on in everyday life do they engage in domestic violence do they in in engage in acting out in violent ways or really passive aggressive ways it really becomes important to try to to you know understand that and to measure that hmm the murder of the daughters is almost unspeakable this is I don't I don't know that we

can ever understand it that's what I'm trying to do that's my feudal mission to understand he he says in the letter that his daughters walked in on him as he was wrapping shenan in a bed sheet that he drove to the oil site where he buried shenan and it was there that he smothered CeCe first the little girl and then he went for Bella the four-year-old forgive me this is so dark again an audience warning he writes little quiet Bella had a will to live out of all three bella is the only one that put

up a fight I will hear her soft little voice for the rest of my life saying Daddy no she knew what I was doing to her she may not have understood death but she knew I was killing her I can't I can't reconcile the fact that there are people like this on this Earth sharing space with me my family my audience you I can't reconcile it I I can't I can understand Charles Manson I can understand Jeffrey Dahmer I see them I say lunatic got it I would notice to your clear this guy kind of

a good looking guy he had a decent job he had a beautiful family he didn't have some history that we knew of of hurting people or animals how can this monster monster how can I spot the next one I guess is what I'm asking you Mary Ellen like what good can come from this that can prevent this I I can't live without an answer let me say it this way we cannot look at somebody and just tell that they are going to be dangerous we just can't do it you can see people on the street

that are scary looking but um unwashed hair or frumpy clothes living on a homeless lifestyle does not correlate to being violent it just doesn't but we grow up thinking that we can look at someone and we can just tell they're going to be dangerous if someone has a good job if they go to church if they like animals if they have children those are all features that we believe make them safe make them harmless that couldn't be further from the truth the whole idea of the potential for dangerousness comes from within their personalities and if

they get trapped or feel they get trapped or feel angry and begin to develop hatred that's all done internally but and it depends on the right set of circumstances so let's go back with Chris Watts if Chris what's his life was based on a different set of circumstances he may never have murdered anybody he's not a serial killer the right set of circumstances came together and he decided that this was the only way that he could deal with it and the only way was to in my opinion he was blaming shenan for a life that

in which he was miserable but if those circumstances didn't exist if he had never gotten married and lived alone somewhere don't think he would go on to commit murder [Music] the question about the daughters is of course why you know like we understand sort of why the wife you know yes divorce but spouses kill their other spouse sometimes why why the daughters the only one that's really going to know that is Chris and wouldn't you love to have the opportunity to ask him and with the hope that he would be candid and truthful with you

so the only thing that we say in cases like this is we have to look at the behavior these little girls were not a threat to him these little girls were not going to be um dangerous but he killed them anyway and he killed them by looking in their eyes and smothering them and then that's not even enough then he takes him into the these oil containers and and then drops them in he basically wants to destroy them as though they never existed so think about that he wanted them as though they never existed he

that tells me if I were talking to him Chris you didn't never want you never wanted to be a dad you never wanted those responsibilities you didn't want a life like the one that you had and is it true that you felt once you could get rid of every memory of those girls and who they were you could get back some control of a life that you wanted that may be the approach I would take with them because he was trying to destroy them physically take their life away and that's the way to do it

that's what he did yeah right that's interesting so the discarding the way in which he discarded the daughter's bodies which is one of the most gruesome parts of the story dropping them in these neighboring oil tanks talking about how he could he could hear the splash when the bodies hit and that that told him how how much oil was in each tank not even together not even in the same tank shoved them through this little hole I mean she's shoving his dead daughters it's just it just shows you yeah the the level of callousness this

is not this is not I snapped um you know I found out my wife was having an affair and I shot her not excusing that obviously this is something this is just a whole other level of evil and anger and you're saying same as we we interviewed another great great expert who is also saying he does he he doesn't look like a psychopath and that's that's what's most terrifying so it's hatred it's loathing of the life that you're in and we may not have a bunch of red flags other than maybe he doesn't Express his

anger um maybe he's got controlling behaviors possibly domestic violence that you may or may not know about God that's not much to go on no not as observers from the inside outside looking in but if shananne were here with us today uh we certainly want to ask her questions about that some of that behavior that kind of evolved over the years that they were married it seems pretty clear to me that he saw shanan as the enemy she was the cause for his being miserable she was the cause for his feeling trapped he she was

the cause for how he viewed life is true of course not I mean he's an adult male but the way he viewed it is is I think that that component you know had to be there and those children were anchors around his neck in order to move forward he had to start over again I remember you I had cases where um the the spouse would take the other spouse up to um uh like to a a Mountainside and and then they would push the spouse over and those were really hard cases to to really investigate

but as you begin to unravel that and it was different from this but still some of the components are the same as you begin to unravel it you see the same kind of emotional changing they started to live their life over again they started a new life they no longer were married to this person they no longer were in a relationship so mentally they checked out months before they murdered their spouse and so the murder was almost anticlimactic because they needed to get rid of the person that made their life miserable they needed to be

gone completely absolutely gone not divorced not live in another city they needed to be gone erased right so he winds up pleading guilty they I mean of course they had him and that spared his life he was given five life sentences and even the judge Marcelo cop cow was absolutely horrified by the circumstances of this case I mean I I know a lot of Judges been in front of a lot of Judges over the course of my life it's very rare that they offer this strong a personal opinion on a case but here's just a

little bit of the judge during the sentencing hearing November 19th 2018. I've been a Judicial officer now for starting my 17th year and I could objectively say that this is perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime that I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen and nothing less than a maximum sentence um would be appropriate and anything less than the maximum sentence would depreciate the seriousness of this offense [Music] you know usually we have the death penalty in part because we want to deter you know we want to punish we

also want to deter other criminals does does this sentence fit the crime and do you think it effectively deters the next Chris Watts um in my opinion it fits the crime do I think it will deter someone else from doing this again no I don't um I don't see that happening but in a case like this I always think about that when a person gets a sentence like this sitting in prison your young man still you are in prison for the rest of your life you're never going anywhere I mean that is a profoundly um

negative uh profoundly impactful sentence and um and certainly the judge thought it was consistent with um the incredible damage that he did but um will it will somebody else stop and think about Chris Watts if the right set of circumstances exist for them tomorrow will they think about Chris Watts and say to themselves I better not do this and I would say to you I don't think so that's not how the Criminal Mind works the the line in his letter to the pen pal uh that I just read saying I knew if I took my

hands off of her she would still keep me from Nikki she would keep me from Nikki he needed to be with the affair partner he felt it on some sort of primal level reminded me of the last line of the movie Presumed Innocent spoiler alert if you haven't seen Presumed Innocent or read the Scott Terrell book tune out now because it's a great great great powerful last line there the circumstances of whom were murdered whom were different but he he's he said the following this is a husband writing about his affair with all deliberation and

intent I reached for Carolyn I cannot pretend it was an accident I reached for Carolyn and set off that insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another set off that insane mix of rage and lunacy that led to one human being to kill another I'm not saying you have an affair and you're going to be able to become a murderer but as I said earlier you are playing with radioactive materials so many cases where one of the spousal Partners has an affair ultimately lead to some sort of marital violence

including murder I mean I'm how many times have you seen it Mary Ellen a lot a lot and then you you include in that just the emotion that exists in a relationship emotion that if if you compound it with the person has weapons in the house the person has children in the house now you've got an incredibly explosive situation incredibly explosive and you know depending on the personalities of the people involved it can become exponentially explosive what happens to the people who were friends with shenan I mean I feel like we know what happens to

her family members they try to move on with their lives I don't know how you do it as the mother as the brother you know the dad was at the sentencing hearing with heartfelt remarks as well you're so angry called Chris Watts a monster but what about the the other victims you know like the best friend Nicole who called 911 how did what happens to them I would say this they'll never have closure the c word does not work in a crime of violence you just never have closure um I would say there's going to

be a certain level um certain level of guilt that exists for the rest of their life they would go through the stages of death and dying and that's pointed out beautifully by Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross years ago who wrote about the stages of death and dying and um I think they wake up some mornings feeling very guilty why didn't I do more then the next morning it's sadness and then the next morning it's anger eventually if you can get to the level of acceptance that's where you want to be but I find most people don't get

there most people struggle with should they have done more could they have done more could they have stopped it and family members go through similar feelings of just being on that roller coaster where every day it's different and Dr Ross says we need to get to the level of acceptance but I can tell you in a case like this there's no one that will get to the level of acceptance of what happened you are someone who has worked on so many of these big murder cases from the Zodiac Killer Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber um were

involved in the Elizabeth Smart the Natalie Holloway disappearances I mean you've dealt with evil professionally your entire life so how do you walk the streets how do you laugh at silly jokes how you know how are we as humans to compartmentalize this into the right box so that we can go have dinner with our families tonight and laugh and be joyful and understand how to categorize evil the way that I I was really trained to do it I I'm actually a mental health counselor by my training um but going through the FBI we learned to

become we had to become desensitized because of what we saw you just couldn't do your job and I hear people talk about doctors and nurses that work in emergency rooms and I think to myself oh my God how do they do that they see people come in they have to sew limbs back on and I don't know how they do that I found the perfect job because it lets me get into the Criminal Mind and explore and understand Behavior I find it not upsetting but very challenging and I think that perspective has really helped tremendously

if this bothered me if this was something that hung on to me seven days a week 24 hours a day I can tell you that I could not do it I just couldn't and I also think the way that I was raised was has been really helpful um we were raised in a family that um having a really solid good sense of humor and pulling away from things knowing when when the time was right to pull away from things has been really helpful but I'm just really challenged I'll think tonight about Chris Watts I'll think

about boy I would love to talk to him someday I'll think about more reasons that this happened because I'm always in in searching for why people behave the way that they do especially in a case like this you're not walking around thinking potential killer he's there's another like you know I think I'm gonna get eaten by a shark every time I go in the ocean because I'm in news and so this is just you know we cover these stories you're not thinking that way when you're just walking down the street no I'm not and I'll

tell you why because when you look at somebody I just know you could be wearing a beautiful suit and leather shoes and a leather briefcase and the thoughts that are going in your head on in somebody's head could be as frightening as anything in the world we cannot tell just by looking at someone that they're not going to hurt us so I watch Behavior I can sit for hours and just watch human behavior in a restaurant or in a train station that's what gets me interested it's not how they look it's how they behave do

you think if I gave you 10 people and I let you watch them each for two hours in a train station in a restaurant whatever the setting were do you think you'd be able to say these are the top two candidates for Crime for murder no I don't think I could do that I would probably be able to tell you more about their personality but I think I would need um more opportunities to see them in different contexts and see how they interact with people they didn't know strangers and then people that they um were

in their close Circle profilers get the kind of the the rap that we can look at people know what's going on in their head but we have to study their patterns of behavior over a lifetime so two hours wouldn't be enough time do you have any kids you marry like what's your I don't know if you reveal that publicly but I'm just wondering what do you tell like your kids or your nieces or your friends get like to protect themselves it's really funny because I have nieces and nephews and they don't really want to know

a lot about what I know and so um they don't ask me questions and I don't force my information on them my students ask me a lot of questions so I'm very sensitive about letting people know as much as they want to know every once in a while it gets the better of me and if somebody I know um is about to engage in behavior that I think is really risky I'll I'll tell them but I understand too that they probably won't listen and they'll go forward and have to see for themselves what will happen

I'm like only extroverts in my life from now on if you're not a talker if you can't express anger you're out you're out of here you gotta laugh right because it's just this stuff is so dark but I I'm always looking for the lessons you know just whatever lessons we can find to make our society a little safer our kids a little safer and just to just to wrestle with the basic question of good versus evil and when Evil's in front of you how do you spot it and you don't just see it the first

time and extroverts tend to be probably extroversion is a is a trait of psychopathy so that's not good either so um you really are screwed you really do have to look at people's behavior and see how they treat other people see how they they happen to uh react when they're angry when they're stressed out um what do they do you really have to to understand the behavior and that's just not one sit-down session that's just not one time where you go out to dinner you if you're going to let somebody into your home if you're

going to let somebody into your comfort zone you really have to do an analysis of of their behavior over time and place and distance and with different people and you know what else I will say this rounding back to the affair if you think your partner's having an affair I'm sorry but especially if you're the wife and this is the and it's a man cheating on you be careful be careful about the confrontation be careful in general the odds are he's not feeling all warm and fuzzy toward you there could be hatred as Mary Ellen

points out there could be hatred for you growing it might not just be an innocent dalliance like you're you're in a danger zone there well and I think the research is certainly going to back you up on that because um the time for a spouse to be really at highest risk is oftentimes when they say to a cheating spouse I'm leaving you you're not going to see the kids again that can really ignite and already incendiary situation so understand domestic violence that is really critical be aware that you could unknowingly incite a worse situation so

you're absolutely correct take precautions you can deliver news like that in the presence of a loved one someone who could protect you can have your exit plan and should have your exit plan all laid out there are these small but meaningful things that we can do to to just just in case just in case Mary Ellen O'Toole it's always fascinating talking to you thank you thank you thank you for being one of the good guys and helping put guys like this behind bars and helping us figure out what makes them Tech so we can hopefully

prevent the next one so good to talk to you again thank you for having me very much all the best to you thanks for joining us today our hot crime summer week continues tomorrow with an in-depth look into the Jodi Arias case with my pal mark iglarsh talk to you then [Music]