Blood & Marriage

Chris Watts: With these hands

By: Kathleen McKenna Hewtson

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 9 hrs and 50 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.

Not Accurate

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

Some interesting insights BUT

The writing is laughably juvenile at times. Idk who this lady’s editor was but they probably should’ve stepped in a bit more 😂 I died when she started calling Chris Pennywise & talking about NK liking it up the butt. Didn’t think the computer narrated voice was as bad as other reviews say, but I can see why no legitimate human narrator would touch this project. Overall, an entertaining listen

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

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 ~

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.

Blood & Marriage

The voice was annoying. I’m not sure she could have said pennywise more. That was weird to use instead of the actual name. Glad it’s over.

The computer generated voice was unpleasant

A lot of this book is speculative and conjecture. It was dripping with sarcasm and venom, with scathing references to certain people or events. The author's nickname for Chris Watts (Pennywise) was childish as well as redundant. I didn't appreciate the author's work in this particular. I have to admit that I haven't read any of their other works. Now I'm not sure I want to.

Just terrible.

First for Audible, I understand using automated voices is inexpensive but just give up on it until it's a bit more developed. This "narrator" mispronounced the name of the subject every time it was mentioned. That could be seen a downright disrespectful to the real life murder victim this book is about.

Second, the way this is written is just AWFUL. She refers to Chris Watts as "Pennywise", the clown from the Stephen King novel "IT" and then goes on a "bash-a-thon". I get it, the guy killed his family...but any pretense of "unbiased story telling" is just non existent. The author goes out of her way to hurl insults every chance she gets. This book wasn't written to tell the story of Shanann and her daughters as much as it was written for the author to vent her personal opinion of Chris.

This is a fiction piece of work from the authors demented brain

The author literally just made up stories of what she believes could have happened and presented it as facts. Ridiculous. What a waste of time this entire book was. In addition, she skipped around, rambled about who knows what and repeated herself. It was like listening to a squirrel with ADD’s thoughts.

Interesting new perspective

Although we will never know the whole truth of this case, it was intriguing to hear the authors perspective on different aspects of the thoughts and motivation of CW. The life insurance money , framing S for the girls death , it all going wrong …….. very interesting