Crime and Courts

Chris Watts' Mistress Shares Last Text He Sent Her After the Murder of His Wife and Kids

In a newly surfaced video of Nichol Kessinger's interview with the police, she revealed the text that now-convicted murderer Chris Watts sent her shortly after killing his family

RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Before the bodies of his pregnant wife and two daughters were found in an oil field in 2018, Chris Watts denied any wrongdoing in a chilling text to his mistress, Nichol Kessinger.

In a newly surfaced police video filmed during the investigation, Kessinger detailed her affair with Watts and told officers that she questioned him about his family's disappearance when it made headlines. Per People, who verified the authenticity of the three-hour video, Kessinger shared with authorities that she and Watts exchanged texts after Shanann Watts and her daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste, went missing.

"I kept asking him, 'What did you do, Chris? What did you do?'" she reportedly said in the video. "I asked, 'Where's your family?'"

Explaining that she was "stressed out" at the time, Kessinger recalled, "So I texted Chris one last time, and I told him, 'If you did anything bad, you're going to ruin your life and you're going to ruin my life. I promise you that.' And he responded, 'I didn't hurt my family, Nicky.'"

According to Kessinger, that was "the last text" she received from Watts. She told investigators in the police video, "I never said another word to him after that."

Susan Medina, a spokesperson for the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, confirmed the audio of the police interview was previously released.

Shanann, who was 15-weeks pregnant, and her daughters were first reported missing from their Colorado home on Aug. 13, 2018. While Watts initially pleaded for their safe return on local news, he later confessed to killing them and hiding their bodies at his then-work site. He pleaded guilty to all three murders on Nov. 6, 2018, and was sentenced to five life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.

In the police video, Kessinger said that Watts told her he had separated from his wife and was planning on divorcing her. Still, Kessinger told officers that Watts was "never hostile" when they would talk about his family.

"There were several discussions that we had about his current relationship and where it had gone," she said, according to People. "It was never anything aggressive. It was still very kind. He was just like, 'This is not working.'"

Kessinger went on to say that Watts' behavior throughout their relationship "wasn't anything out of the ordinary or anything that would scare me. She added, "Even to this day, even after everything that I've found out, I still look back at that, and I don't see any red lights about the way he spoke about his family."

E! News has reached out to the Frederick Police Department, who investigated the case, for comment.

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