Netflix ‘American Murder’ Subject Still in Touch With Mistress That Sparked Family’s Murder

Chris Watts, the American Murder Netflix docuseries subject who murdered his family, reportedly still speaks to the woman he claims led to him choosing his deadly path. Watts was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two children, Bella and Celeste. The infamous true crime footnote pleaded guilty to the murders and claimed Nicole Kessinger was the driving factor behind the slayings.

Now according to a former cellmate and pen pal, it has been alleged that Kessinger is still in contact with Watts despite being barred from contacting his former co-worker. Fellow inmate David Carter spoke with The Daily Mail and revealed that Watts reportedly told him that Kessinger had written to Watts under her new name.

“He told me she said that she needed to speak to him to clear some things up,” Carter told the outlet. “He wouldn’t tell me exactly what she had said.” Kessinger changed her name and left her home in Colorado after Watts’ arrest for the murders. Once the news broke and Watts claim that he killed his family to be with her, she was overwhelmed with negative attacks and threats, seemingly forcing her out of her life.

But as The Daily Mail notes, Watts told author Cheryln Cadle in 2019 that he still was in love with Kessinger and believed she was still writing to him under “assumed names.” Cadle released a book about her letters to Watts in 2019, but Carter’s allegations offer support to the prior reports.

If Kessinger isn’t actually writing the letters, Watts seems to believe it to be the real deal either way. It shows that details revealed by the trial and documentary remain to be true, and that Kessinger may have some doors to close before moving on. “If I had not met Nikki, I would never have killed my family,” Watts told Cadle in one of the letters she published.

Cadle also spoke with The Daily Mail, noting that he felt the two months he spent with Kessinger revealed that they were meant to be. “Christopher says he loved her like he has never loved anyone else before,” Cadle said. “At the same time, he loves Shanann although he knows that she was not his soulmate and not the person he was supposed to be with.”

Watts avoided the death penalty due to his plea deal, instead ending up sentenced to 5 life sentences and an additional 48 years in prison without possible parole. Prior to the murder, he allegedly attempted to drug his wife with Oxycodone in order to end her pregnancy. When that failed, he chose to murder and killed her at 15 weeks along with their other two children.

As for Carter, he was released to a halfway home in February and made his feelings toward Watts very clear. “I couldn’t ever kill my entire family just because I didn’t want a child or didn’t want to pay child support,” he told The Daily Mail. “I have a lot of things going on in my life, but I have never wanted to stop and kill my entire family because I wanted certain things to go my way.”