Records show Chris Watts’ mistress Nichol Kessinger Googles Shanann Watts in 2017, nearly a YEAR before her & Chris began having an affair. Is this the sinister truth- or is the explanation simple? We found out.
“SHE DID IT! Phone log says Nichol Kessinger googles Shanann on September 1 2017. She’s been STALKING Shanann Watts but said her and Chris weren’t dating for long. Yeah rite!! They’ve been dating and planned this for a year she knows everything and needs to be in jail for the rest of her life!!!!!” –Marissa C., YouTube comment
Chris Watts’ mistress Nichol Kessinger is currently on trial. No, it’s not happening at the Weld County Courthouse in Colorado where her boyfriend was sentenced. It’s taking place across the internet- in comment sections of news articles, posts on Reddit & YouTube videos. In the Court of Public Opinion, and as long as you have WiFi, you too can serve as judge and jury.
Nichol Kessinger dated a married man, and she knew he was wed. According to Kessinger’s 2018 police interviews, Watts told her he and his wife Shanann Watts were separating and planned to divorce. Later in his 2019 interrogation, Chris confirmed this, admitting he lied to Nikki about being separated and divorcing (we’ve been in the process of typing the entire five hour interview- if you’re interesting you can read the Chris Watts Confession Transcript here).
Despite this, a vast amount of true crime followers don’t buy it. They are extremely vocal about their position that not only did Nikki know that Chris was taken man, but she was involved in the crimes. Of course, cheating isn’t right, and it’s absolutely not out of the realm of possibility that she knew more about the actual status of his relationship than she admitted in an attempt to salvage her reputation (in fact, she very likely did). However, it’s an entirely different thing to accuse someone of being involved in the murders of a family without any tangible proof.
The ‘Evidence’
The most prominent piece of evidence used to back up this theory is within the 2000 page Watts Discovery file. Nikki Kessinger willingly gave her phone to police to be forensically analyzed. Soon after, a detective from the police department downloaded data from Nichol Kessinger, Chris Watts, and Shanann Watts phone and wrote up a fifty page phone data review, placing information from the devices in a descriptive timeline format.
One of the biggest surprises in the timeline was an entry stating Nichol Kessinger Googles Shanann Watts : September 1st 2017 . Immediately, this jumps out as very odd. Based on all other phone data (and by admission), Nichol Kessinger and Chris Watts did not begin talking until June, and weren’t ‘dating’ until late June / early July of 2018. This would mean hat Nichol was well aware of both Shanann, and the marriage to her co-worker Chris for almost ONE YEAR prior to their relationship, and her story of how they had a conversation for the first time in June would be up in smoke.
Nichol Kessinger’s Employment History
But is the “Nichol Kessinger Googles Shanann a year before she knew Chris” statement correct? The answer is no, and it can easily be debunked. To begin with, Nichol was hired by the geotech firm that contracted her to Anadarko Petroleum as a Health & Safety rep only FOUR months before the tragic murders of the Watts family (see police interview transcript confirming employment date). That puts her at Anadarko some time in May. Subsequently, the first email she ever sent to Chris (saved on the company’s servers) was on June 5th, regarding log-in credentials for a safety app the company used. She was a new employee at this time.
Correcting the Record
One of the media outlets that noticed the oddity of Nichol Kessinger Google-ing Shanann Watts before she had even met Chris was CrimeOnline, and they went right to the horses mouth to confirm it’s accuracy. After reaching out to law enforcement handling the case, they were contacted by Frederick Police Department Records Supervisor Amanda Purcell. Purcell stated that the September 1, 2017 date was incorrect and was a typographical error. Additionally, there are 2-3 other errors within the report internet sleuths have discovered as well (unrelated to Kessinger) that doesn’t match what is on the hard copy phone records. Not all data was able to be successfully extracted from the 3 phones, and it seems quite likely that there may have been some tech issues that mismatched dates as well as a human data entry error or two.
Understandably, people have concerns about Nichol, as her relationship with Chris and behavior in police interviews didn’t come across as overly likable. While she’s the one who went to police to inform them of the relationship once she realized something wasn’t right about Chris’ story that his family magically disappeared, she did delete all of her phone calls and texts with Chris.
But what’s more likely? She was scared out of her mind that she could have been dating a murderer and panicked, afraid of the world knowing her identity, relationship with a married man, and the most intimate details of her life? In case you haven’t read the discovery, some of her search history was incredibly intimate and embarrassing. Or she was a co-conspirator who approached police before they even knew she existed, and had no problem giving them her phone and consenting to forensic search? While it’s easy to analyze what a person should or shouldn’t have done when you have an all knowing vantage point, you truly never know how you would behave- hindsight is 20/20.
Coming Up: Nikki Kessinger Phones from Frederick
Up next, we’ll be examining another point that has been brought up regarding Nichol- on the mornings of the murders, her phone bill showed a call originating in Fredrick, CO. While comparing phone bills that are publicly available online from July, August, and September, we found something interesting.
Shanann’s Family (Sandi, Frank, and Frankie Rzucek) have asked that those interested in remembering and honoring the lives of Shanann Watts, Bella Watts, Celeste ‘CeCe’ Watts Shanann Watts and Baby Nico Watts can make a donation in their honor to one of three charities they adore: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital or The Lupus Foundation.
