The stunning report that convicted family killer Chris Watts may marry again while serving life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife and their two young daughters has ignited an obvious public reaction: Who would choose to marry him?
But the more urgent question is not about the woman involved. It is about how such a marriage could be permitted in the first place.
Watts admitted to killing his wife, who was 15 weeks pregnant, after having sex with her, before also murdering their daughters, ages 3 and 4. Yet under current rules, even a man convicted of those crimes can apparently be offered another chance at marriage.
And that raises deeply uncomfortable possibilities. What happens if his future spouse wants to build a family? What if she adopts a child, or becomes pregnant through a sperm donor?
Could Chris Watts, despite his crimes, end up with another pathway into fatherhood?
The absence of a federal law preventing convicted family murderers from remarrying is difficult to comprehend, especially in cases that have horrified the nation.
The same concern applies to Scott Peterson, who is serving life for the 2002 murder of his wife, Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant with their son, Conner. If Peterson sought to marry again behind bars, there appears to be little standing in his way.
Watts and Peterson were both involved with other women at the time of the killings. In both cases, prosecutors and the public narrative pointed to men who seemed to want new lives and new relationships without the inconvenience of divorce.
The bombshell report that family annihilator Chris Watts is getting married again, while serving a life sentence for the murders of his pregnant wife and two small daughters, has everyone asking one question — who is this clearly deranged woman? (Pictured: Lizzie Henderson)
But there’s a greater question we need to ask: How is this happening at all? (Pictured: Watts with his two daughters)
Have we not learned from Ted Bundy? He was the serial killer who, though denied conjugal visits upon being sent to death row, managed to impregnate his wife behind bars anyway.
Watts is denied conjugal visits but was nonetheless seen ‘making out’ with his new fiancée, 39-year-old Lizzie Henderson — who now goes by ‘Watts’ — by an eyewitness who spoke to Our News Outlet.
Watts and Henderson were going at it, in a public area, one day after the seventh anniversary of Watts’ triple homicide.
How is Chris Watts allowed to have any physical contact, at all, with a visitor? He’s a homicidal psychopath.
He could, potentially, slip his new bride something from inside — including a vial of his own sperm.
How is this possible? If any given state lacks the death penalty, can we at least agree that monsters such as Chris Watts should suffer every single day of their incarcerated life?
Henderson worked as a realtor before uprooting her life in Ohio to move to Wisconsin, where Watts, who is serving multiple life sentences, was transferred from a Colorado prison due to ‘safety concerns’.
The irony. The state cares more about Chris Watts remaining alive than Watts ever did about his own wife and daughters.
It’s worth discussing Watts’ crimes, because he — like other glamorized killers such as the Menendez brothers (both married in prison) and Luigi Mangione, who just pled guilty in New York on Friday — did not even act in the heat of rage.
All killed in cold blood. Each act was premeditated. Yet Lyle Menendez — who, with his brother Erik, shot their parents to death at such close range that their mother’s face was blown off — not only married in prison, but got himself a much younger girlfriend.
Only after, of course, he and his first wife had separated. Lyle would never be uncouth like that.
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And we all know it’s a matter of time before Mangioni, who has become a pin-up among leftist lunatics, is fielding marriage proposals behind bars.
That he, too, will be allowed to marry is a travesty. A man who shot a husband and father should not be allowed to build a family when he destroyed one.
So who cares about Lizzie Henderson? This is her sad psyche to deal with.
What we should care about is the new life afforded to Watts, who confessed to the following:
After killing 34-year-old Shanann, Watts, by his own report, said their 4-year-old daughter, Bella, came into the room and asked, ‘What’s wrong with Mommy?’
He said Bella watched as he loaded her mother’s body, wrapped in a bedsheet, into his truck.
‘She started crying a little bit,’ Watts told investigators.
Watts said he put little Bella and Celeste in the truck and drove 40 miles — a long time to think about what you’re going to do next, to change your mind and allow your daughters to live.
When he reached the oil site where he worked, Watts said he took Shanann’s body out of the trunk.
Moving dead weight, especially a pregnant woman, is extremely difficult. Imagine what his girls were witnessing. He didn’t even move Shanann’s body that far.
Watts told investigators that ‘Cece was first’. He went back inside the truck, put a blanket over her, his hand over her face, and suffocated her to death as Bella watched.
Bella must have been hysterical.
When he was done, he took Cece’s body out of the truck and threw her into an oil tank.
He returned to the truck. Watts told investigators that Bella, the lone survivor, asked: ‘Is the same thing going to happen to me as Cece?’
In his confession, Watts said he couldn’t recall if he told Bella ‘”yes” — like a horrible person.’
How is Chris Watts (pictured with Shanann and their girls) allowed to have any physical contact, at all, with a visitor? He’s a homicidal psychopath. He could, potentially, slip his new bride something from inside – including a vial of his own sperm
He took the same blanket he used to kill Cece and murdered Bella the same way, dumped her in a separate oil tank, then buried Shannan in a shallow grave.
Yet wedding bells ring anew for Chris Watts.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that marriage is a constitutionally protected right, one that also applies to prisoners.
Common sense would dictate that family annihilators are a different class. That perhaps, in murdering their families, they have automatically renounced the right to marry.
‘Daddy, no.’ That’s the plea Watts told investigators he thinks of every day.
If there were any true justice, those words would be the only thing keeping Watts company.
