Chris Watts, who murdered wife and smothered his little girls as they begged for mercy, lives in fear of fellow inmates: ‘They want to kill him’
Chris Watts is in a hell of his own making as he serves a life sentence in a small cell in at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin. He hardly talks to anyone, instead choosing to read his Bible — and to ponder the wife and two young daughters he ruthlessly murdered in 2018.
The Post has spoken to three people who have had contact with the 39-year-old killer behind bars — and they all say that he lives a sedentary lifestyle, has gained significant weight, and has lost most of his hair.
What’s more, the triple murderer often avoids eye contact with other inmates for his own safety. When he attends Bible studies, he often keeps to himself and doesn’t talk to new people.
“A lot of guys would like to get their hands on him,” said Eddie Nieves, who spent a year at the prison alongside Watts.
“He killed two little girls who didn’t do nothing to deserve it. He’s the lowest of the low at Dodge. A lot of people want to get their revenge for those girls.”
Watts admitted to strangling his pregnant wife Shanann in their Colorado home in August 2018. He then drove her body to a job site at the oil company where he worked and disposed of it.
He returned home and then smothered his daughters — Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3 — as the little girls begged for mercy.
After he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Colorado prison officials arranged to have him transferred to Wisconsin for his safety.
“They protect him at Dodge,” Nieves continues. “If the guards weren’t always around, everyone would take a swing at him.”
Those sentiments are echoed by Watts’ former cellmate from 2018-2020, who said that Watts is often in danger behind bars.
“He’s an outcast,” said Dylan Tallman, who worked on a yet-unpublished devotional book with Watts. “When people found out that his victims were two little girls, they wanted to kill him. He had nowhere else to turn; I think I was his only friend.”
Authorities said Watts committed the murders because he was having an affair with Nichol Kessinger, a co-worker who would later claim that she thought he was already separated.
“Every day, he thinks about what he did,” Tallman said. “He has photos of the girls and he prays for forgiveness every day. But he knows he can’t undo what he did.”
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections said that Watts has had no scheduled visitors for several weeks. He occasionally receives a pastoral visit. His mother visited him earlier this year.
However, Watts has several prison pen-pals, mostly women.
“At times, when he would talk about the murders, his eyes would turn so black,” his one-time pen pal Cherlyn Cadle told Inside Edition in 2021.
“He just would get a different look on his face, and he talked about it so nonchalantly, like going down to get a cup of coffee.”
“He’s f–ked in the head,” added Nieves. “When you’re in prison with a lot of guys who did really bad things, but you’re still considered the worst person there, you’re just evil.”
