Blood & Marriage

Chris Watts: With these hands

By: Kathleen McKenna Hewtson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

From the author of 'Murdaugh, She Wrote' and 'The Night My Husband Killed Me' ...

In August of 2018, in a wealthy Denver suburb, a shocked and horrified nation learned that Christopher Lee Watts had murdered his pregnant wife, their two little girls and their unborn son.

But shock was soon replaced by puzzlement. Why?

And the surprising answer is that a standard Anadarko Petroleum employee policy led, unintentionally of course, to the murders.

By early 2018, the Watts family finances were beyond dire again after a recent shattering bankruptcy, then Chris Watts’ employer, Anardarko Petroleum, offered him a life insurance policy on the lives of his wife, Shan’ann, and his very young daughters, Bella and CeCe, for a total of $450,000.

Wouldn’t that get him out of a spot?

After that, Shan’ann’s days were numbered, preferably via a perceived oxycontin overdose.

Well, Chris Watts tried that twice and failed. Then he decided to go for the jackpot. Shan’ann would ‘murder’ the girls, and would then disappear. Nobody was going to find her body in the Cervi 19 oil storage tanks. He would collect on the girls immediately and then get the rest when Shan’ann was legally declared dead.

It was an excellent plan, to be carried out by a complete moron.

On the night of Sunday August 12, 2018, two things went catastrophically wrong, leaving Chris Watts to dispose of three bodies, not one, and facing a nail-biting time crunch.

Then a friend of Shan’ann’s called in the cops on the morning of Monday August 13, and it was game over.

But, for some, that’s when the party started.

Love the Take

I have followed this case and wanted to see if there was information I may have missed. I love the angle from which it is written. Eventhough I knew alot of the information, I was not bored or chored to hear it again. Thank you for sacrificing your time and life to give Shannan Watts, Niko, Bella, and Ce Ce a voice to last into the future.

Excellent! Information Never Before Heard

If you get past the AI voice it’s an excellent book! I love true crime and this writer tells morbid details of what took place that night. It’s so many have left out. This writer really gives a whole new meaning to the disturbing ax committed by Chris Watts. You must listen until the end otherwise you are missing some of the best parts of this piece.the parts that truly set this title apart from most others who take a whimsical lighthearted approach.

Pennywise???

I like the fact that she kept the Cindy and Sandy letters a part of the book and the the flow of the book is pretty good overall however I HATE the fact that the Author refers to Chris Watts as Pennywise the Clown and its extremely immature and almost comes off as comical and this isn’t a comical case. My biggest issue is the implication that perhaps the children were Sexually abused by Chris and there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever so I feel as an Author that’s extremely irresponsible to throw accusations out there that as far as we know are baseless and there are parts of this book where it would be literally impossible for her to know these things in detail! For example she talks about a conversation that takes place between Sandy and Shanann in private and she says Shannan’s family didn’t cooperate in this book so how would she know these things? She wouldn’t! There is a lot of bias in this book and some of the language sounds like a petulant teenager wrote this it sure would be nice if someone would just write a true and accurate account of this case and how they arrived where they did! It doesn’t do the victims any justice at all if you canonize someone after they’re gone telling the truth and victim shaming are two different things and when telling the story the way most people cover this case is Shanann was an Angel and never did or said anything wrong and Chris was always evil and just killed his wife! Anyone with any sense knows that just isn’t realistic! She was a flawed human like the rest of us and when you’re looking at this case from a mental health position it benefits no one to make it seem like she was a saint and he was the devil! Last but not least CINDY AND RONNIE WATTS killed no one! They didn’t get along with their daughter in law! Cindy didn’t like Shannan and vice versa and it’s perfectly normal for that to occur! They are not bad people they too are victims! All in all it was ok just a lot of inaccuracies and unverified claims

the way writer describes Christopher's Mom.

I did enjoy the book. I didn't like the computer voice, it would have been better if it was a human voice.

Interesting

We will never know what truly happened that dreadful night. A night that the world will never forget. This book just piggybacks off of this horrific story, yet opens up new theories that were originally unknown. May their souls rest in paradise ~

AI TERRIBLE

Should never ever write another book. It may have not been so bad if not narrated by AI, but would still be awful. Freaking “Pennywise”, really? Understand the dude is horrid but that was just really weird. Like it was SO bad I had to listen to the whole book. Like a horrible car crash that you couldn’t help but watch. I would worry about my grammar in typing this for anything else but in this case, NOPE . Obviously this author isn’t concerned about it. Lord have mercy

Not Accurate

The narrator was a robot, the lady who wrote this book made up her own story.

Just Awful

First of all, this book is narrated by AI, so it sounds like the telephone voice from back in the 80s that told the time & temperature. Not pleasant to listen to for 9+ hours. Not only was the voice monotone & not human, but many things were not pronounced correctly.
Secondly, the murderer in this sad true crime book was not called by name, but rather was, throughout the entirety of the book, referred to by the name of a Stephen King character. Hopefully for the author Stephen King is as nice of a guy as I have always heard, because I can't imagine people are just allowed to do that.
Finally, I have to think a lot of the content in this book is just pulled out of the imagination of the author because there are situations and conversations that she could not possibly have been privy to. You might as well just read some Reddit accounts on this case because the credibility appears to be the same.

Glad it’s free

While there were a few good points in this book, overall, it’s a pretty bad read. It’s poorly written, repetitive and frankly, quite rude at times. No one is canonizing Shanann, but their dynamics aren’t really up for discussion imo. Also, based on discovery documents, so much incorrect info in this book as well. The automated voice is lazy. As a matter of fact, this whole book is lazy.