Chris Watts' pen pal has claimed from her home in the United States that the convicted killer told her he murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters in Colorado in August 2018 because of what she describes as a 'very sexual, very twisted' obsession with his former mistress.
The pen pal, 72‑year‑old true crime author Cheryln Cadle, says Watts repeatedly framed the family annihilation as the price he was willing to pay to be with lover Nichol Kessinger.
Chris Watts' Obsession: Extreme and Deeply Unhealthy
In new comments reported by a US outlet on 8 March, Cadle said Chris Watts confided that he 'couldn't get enough' of Kessinger at the time of the murders. She told the outlet she would not repeat many of the details he shared, but characterised the relationship as sexually extreme and deeply unhealthy.
'A lot of it is stuff I just won't repeat,' she said. 'But his relationship with her was very sexual, very twisted, very mixed up. And that's part of why I believe he did what he did.'
According to Cadle's account, Watts was enthralled by the nude photographs Kessinger allegedly sent him and by what were described only as 'dark' sexual acts that he said his wife would not engage in.
Cadle, who portrays herself as a kind of surrogate parent figure to him, suggested he might have had 'some sort of fetish' that drove him to share explicit details with her that, in her words, 'you wouldn't tell your mother'.
She has previously turned her correspondence with Watts into a best‑selling book in 2019 about his confessions, positioning herself as a rare confidante with access to his unvarnished thoughts.
Desire to 'Kill' To Be With Mistress 'Nikki'
In one Watts' letters to Cadle, he directly tied his decision to kill to his relationship with Kessinger, whom he referred to as 'Nikki'.
'If I had not met Nikki, I would never have killed my family. All I could feel was now I was free to be with Nikki. Feelings of my love for her was overcoming me. I felt no remorse,' he wrote.
'The darkness inside of me had won,' Watts wrote. 'It was still in me, though, I thought maybe permanently. I felt evil, swallowed up by this thing inside of me. I felt like I could kill anything and be justified for doing it.'
Keeping in Touch Following Murders
Cheryln Cadle says she wrote to Watts in February 2019, about six months after the murders. At that point he had already been sentenced and transferred to Dodge Correctional Institution, a maximum‑security prison in Waupun, Wisconsin.
She has been open about her initial mindset when she contacted him. 'I thought he was totally guilty,' she admitted. 'I didn't ever expect him to write back.' He did, and in time she visited him in person at the prison.
Cadle says she made a conscious effort not to appear condemnatory when they spoke. 'I tried not to judge him — at least not to his face, and I listened to whatever it was that he had to say,' she said. 'So he felt he could confide in me.'
According to her, Watts did more than confess once and close the subject. He 'confessed not once, but repeatedly' in letters and conversations, circling back to the crime, contradicting previous versions and refining his justifications.
'He revisited details. He contradicted himself. He rationalised, minimised, and occasionally revealed more than he intended to,' she said, adding that his grief was focused less on his victims than on his lost self‑image. In her telling, he mourned 'being perceived as a good husband, a good father, a good man' rather than expressing sustained remorse for the deaths themselves.
Watts is serving five life sentences without the possibility of parole after admitting to killing his wife, Shanann, who was 15 weeks pregnant, and their daughters Bella and Celeste. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty after initially lying to police.
Originally published on IBTimes UK
© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.
