Chris Watts killed his wife, Shanann, and their two daughters, Bella and Celeste, in Frederick, Colorado, on August 13, 2018. He was 33. Within days he was under arrest, and within a week he had been charged with nine felonies in Weld County. He confessed, and on November 6, 2018 he pleaded guilty to all nine counts in Weld County District Court. On November 19, 2018 the same court sentenced him to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, with a further 84 years on the remaining counts.
The case moved quickly. There was no trial and no contested hearing on guilt. The death penalty was open to the prosecution when the charges were filed, but the defendant's lawyers approached the district attorney, the district attorney spoke with the victims' family, and the family agreed that execution should not be sought. The pleas fixed the sentence at imprisonment for the rest of his life.
The victims' family attended each hearing in the case. The count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy was charged separately from the murder counts.
Chris Watts was arrested late on Wednesday, August 15, and booked into the Weld County jail in the early hours of Thursday, August 16. Frederick Police announced the arrest. The first charges announced were three counts of first-degree murder and three further counts. A judge ordered him held without bail, and a review hearing was set for the following Tuesday.
Police said that he had confessed. A sworn affidavit was made public on August 20.
On Monday, August 20, 2018, the Weld County District Attorney's Office filed nine felony counts against him. They were five counts of first-degree murder, one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and three further counts. Of the five murder counts, three were charged as murder after deliberation, one for each victim. The other two, one for each daughter, were charged under a second provision of the same statute.
The two statutory routes are found in Colorado's first-degree murder statute, section 18-3-102 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. One covers a death caused after deliberation and with the intent to cause the death of a person other than the defendant. The statute classes murder in the first degree as a class 1 felony, the highest felony class in Colorado law. Unlawful termination of a pregnancy in the first degree, the offense in section 18-3.5-103, is a class 3 felony.
At his first court appearance after the charges were filed he waived a preliminary hearing and was held without bond. Prosecutors had 63 days from arraignment to decide whether to seek the death penalty. The district attorney, asked in August whether the state would do so, said it was too early to make that determination.
On Tuesday, November 6, 2018, in the afternoon, Watts appeared before the district judge in Weld County and entered guilty pleas to all nine charges. The judge read each count aloud and he answered "guilty" to each in turn. The charges were the five counts of first-degree murder, the one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy and the three further counts.
The agreement removed the death penalty from consideration. The district attorney later explained how it came about. The defendant's attorneys approached the prosecution first. The district attorney did not accept until he had met the victims' family face to face, and the request that execution not be pursued came from the family. They discussed the position of the death penalty in Colorado and concluded that an execution might not take place in their lifetimes. The district attorney said that the discussion had helped the family reach some closure.
The family attended the plea hearing. Sentencing was set for November 19.
The sentencing hearing took place at the Weld County Courthouse in Greeley on Monday, November 19, 2018, before the same judge. The family of the victims addressed the court. The victims' father told Watts that prison was too good for him and that he had trusted him to take care of them. The victims' mother said she did not want him executed because that was not her right. The victims' brother's statement was read to the court.
Members of Watts's own family also spoke. They said they forgave him and accepted that he was guilty.
Watts declined to speak. His attorney read a statement on his behalf, saying that he was devastated and sincerely sorry. He kept his head down through much of the hearing.
The judge described the crime as perhaps the most inhumane and vicious that he had handled out of thousands of cases. He sentenced Watts to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, one for each of the three people who died. He imposed 48 years on the count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy and 12 years on each of the three further counts, to run consecutively, for a total of 84 years on top of the life terms.
Colorado law fixes the minimum at life for a class 1 felony. For offenses committed on or after July 1, 1990, the statute provides that life imprisonment means imprisonment without the possibility of parole, so the judge had no sentence to impose on the murder counts other than life without parole once the death penalty was off the table.
The Weld County district attorney said that Watts would first go to the state's diagnostic center in Denver for evaluation and that the Colorado Department of Corrections would then decide whether he served his sentence in Colorado or elsewhere. By December 7, 2018, he had been moved to Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections would not confirm the transfer. A spokesman for the Colorado Department of Corrections said that he could not say where Watts was held but that the victims' family and the district had been notified of the location.
In August 2026 he was still held in Wisconsin, serving several life sentences, including life without parole.
On Wednesday, November 21, 2018, two days after the sentencing, the Weld County District Attorney's Office released more than 2,000 pages of documents from the investigation. The district attorney's office, the Frederick Police Department and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation were the agencies named in the release. At a news conference after the sentencing the district attorney had said that an unredacted affidavit had been given to the judge so that the court could impose a just and fair sentence.
The district attorney also said that his office planned to seek restitution from Watts's assets.
Colorado had carried out one execution since reinstating capital punishment in 1975, that of Gary Davis in 1997. In May 2013 Governor John Hickenlooper signed an executive order granting a temporary reprieve to a man on death row, which delayed that execution without commuting the sentence, and the district attorney in the Watts case cited the governor's stance on executions among the reasons why a death sentence would probably never be carried out.
On March 23, 2020, Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 20-100, which repealed the death penalty in Colorado going forward and took effect on July 1, 2020. On the same day he commuted the sentences of the three men on death row to life in prison without parole. The statute that governs class 1 felony sentences now provides for life imprisonment, and provides for death only for offenses charged before July 1, 2020. The repeal came after Watts was sentenced and does not alter his sentence, which was already life without parole.
There are no disputed convictions. All nine counts were pleaded to and sentence was imposed on all of them. Because the case ended on guilty pleas, the facts behind the charges were not tested at a trial before a jury.
The initial charges announced on August 16 were three counts of first-degree murder and three further counts. The nine counts filed on August 20 replaced them. Those nine counts are the ones to which he pleaded guilty and for which he was sentenced.
Watts did not make a statement at sentencing. No motive was stated by the defendant in open court.
August 13, 2018: Shanann Watts, Bella Watts and Celeste Watts are killed in Frederick, Colorado.
August 15, 2018: The FBI joins the investigation; Chris Watts is arrested late in the day by Frederick Police.
August 16, 2018: He is booked into the Weld County jail; first charges are announced.
August 20, 2018: Nine felony counts are filed in Weld County; the affidavit is made public.
Late August 2018: He is held without bond.
November 6, 2018: He pleads guilty to all nine counts; the death penalty is taken off the table.
November 19, 2018: Sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole plus 84 years.
November 21, 2018: More than 2,000 pages of case documents are released.
Early December 2018: He is moved to Wisconsin.
March 23, 2020: Colorado repeals the death penalty (Senate Bill 20-100), effective July 1, 2020.
August 2026: Still held in Wisconsin, serving several life sentences.