July 27th was a Friday. Wine and romance seemed on the cards before leaving for their adventure in the dunes the next day. Watts told his wife he was going hiking. Plausible deniability. A small lie to hide a bigger lie. This way he could get away with not having reception on his phone for long periods.  This would be his same MO when lying to friends, family and cops. Watts may have imagined himself a good liar, but lying to a wife and mistress about minutiae is a different ball game to lying to the media and the FBI about triple murder. 

It’s likely a lot of data has been deleted from July 27th, including Watts’ bogus hiking bullshit to Shan’ann.