Nick Van Der Leek

Two Face Nick Van Der Leek

In the early hours of August 13, a Ring doorbell camera records 34-year-old Shan'ann Watts arriving home in Frederick, Colorado from a business trip at 01:48. The pregnant mother enters her home on Saratoga Trail and is never seen alive again. Shan'ann's 33-year-old husband Chris Watts is seen on his neighbor's doorbell camera from 05:27 onward. The camera records Watts backing his truck into the driveway, then heading back into the house and out to the truck several times. Although no bodies can be seen on the camera, during one of the trips to his truck he appears to be walking backwards, dragging something. Exactly what happened in the 3 hours 39 minutes between those two camera recordings remains unclear and uncertain. RAPE OF CASSANDRA undoes the distortions, untangles the web that exists on both sides of the crime, and probes deep inside the fabric and psychology of the crime scene to find the signal buried in the noise. During the sentencing hearing on November 19, 2018, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said investigators don't know the exact sequence of events. Because of the gruesome manner the bodies of his two children, Bella [4] and Celeste [3] were disposed of, investigators haven't been able to establish time of death either. Were the children killed before or after their mother?RAPE OF CASSANDRA investigates the exact sequence of events, from the time of the first death in the Watts home, to the disposal at the Cervi site, to how and why a "normal" family man wreaked a holocaust against his own family, and ultimately, himself. The Discovery Documents reveal how Watts' story of the crime comes about. Eventually Watts is prompted: "Did Shan'ann do something?" But even Watts' confession isn't reliable. In the moment that Chris Watts steps forward out of his quiet, introverted self and rises as the hero in his "confession", Shan'ann falls as the villain, a convenient, symbolic and of course cowardly distortion of the truth. So what is the truth?Watts was undoubtedly devoted but weak during his marriage, inspired but duplicitous during his affair, and the murders themselves were the ultimate manifestation of his quintessential cowardice. But his resolve to murder didn't arise in a vacuum. It germinated in a troubled paradise; that aspect has to be acknowledged as well. That aspect is RAPE OF CASSANDRA's terrifying terra firma.