We’re at page 23, more-or-less halfway through the 50-page Phone Data Review. Despite the doldrums on August 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the timeline, August 4th and August 6th are two huge milestones in the review. Up to this point, August 6th is arguably the day when the most traffic passes between Shan’ann’s phone and Watts’ phone. And there’s a good reason for it. Watts eventually drops the bomb he’s been carrying for weeks.
This is going to be a long one so make yourself a cup of coffee, turn off the TV, strap yourself in and let’s get focused.
We begin our analysis of August 6th by observing the basics:
- It was the last full day of the Watts family reunion/vacation in North Carolina. [The next day at 17:00 they flew back to Denver, Colorado].
- Watts waited [or was forced to wait] until the very last day of his week-long trip to see his family. For the rest of the time he was with Shan’ann, and it wasn’t pleasant. While she was bickering, he withdrew. [Initially this pattern seemed to fit the basic mold of their marriage, but as the days wore on, and as Shan’ann grew more aggravated and he withdrew even more, she sensed something was seriously off].
- When Watts went to see his family on that last day, he went alone – without Shan’ann, and without the kids. This was massively symbolic, and hugely significant. [I’ll explain further down precisely why].
As we go through the timeline of the Phone Data Review, I want to bring in some of the statements from the Discovery Documents. Just to contextualize what we’re looking at, and the way Watts and Shan’ann’s friends describe elements of the timeline. These descriptions aren’t going to be 100% reliable, but they will provide us with some guidance.
Worth playing for?
So on page 453 of the Discovery Documents we have Cristina Meacham providing a broad recap. One of the more interesting artifacts in her statement is this:
This rings true, that in the middle of an argument, Watts timed out and left to sleep on the couch. Bear in mind that on Day 1 Shan’ann slept on the couch; now he is. We know they were constantly texting one another, which reinforces the notion that especially at night, although they slept in the same house, they didn’t share a room or a bed once during that week.
Although Cristina is right about them arguing about the baby, this aspect only came up on the last day, August 6th. Shan’ann seemed to want [or suggest] “sexual relations” with him for the first time on August 5th. According to Watts, the last time he had sex with Shan’ann was when she fell pregnant in late April, early May. Make of that what you will.
Now, let’s drill into the review itself.
Watts Googling the distance from the moon to the earth seems to be research for another love letter to his mistress. That’s where his head’s at.
Shan’ann doesn’t realize how close she is to figuring out the situation when she tells Watts at 06:20 that morning:
“I can’t handle this and you are ok with it.”
Watts is okay with splitting up from his family, and we know why, but she doesn’t. Although Shan’ann keeps at him, one wonders how or why she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – join the dots. It’s as if she expects him to say something, and only once the words are spoken can reality be acknowledged. Conversely, as long as he doesn’t say something, maybe there’s hope? Maybe he still loves her? Maybe she can still manoevre him? But this time she’s fooling herself.
At 06:22 Watts tries to rationalize his position, even though virtually none of it will be true in six days time.
“I’m not just staying because of the kids [he is]. They are my light and that will not change [it did]. I didn’t fall out of love in 5 weeks [he did, if he was in love with her then to begin with], that’s impossible [apparently not]. I don’t want to erase 8 years just like that. [But on second thoughts, that’s exactly what he ends up doing].”
In his final sentence of that text, Watts reveals what’s been playing out of late between them:
“I’m not sure what’s in my head. I don’t know if it’s my parents, the third pregnancy, if I’m just scared or what. I didn’t use you.”
All of this is likely true, from a certain point of view. He’s trying to be as honest as he can be, and he’s not sure what to do. It’s true that he doesn’t know how he’s feeling, or what he’s going to do about it. He mentions his parents, the third pregnancy and feeling scared. Or what is a kind of self disclosure, referring to Kessinger.
This is his first hint that he’s having doubts about the third child. It happens on the last day of their North Carolina trip.
Shan’ann’s accusation that he used her to have a third child doesn’t resonate at all. If anything, Shan’ann’s been using him all along:
A). …as a prop for her Thrive spiels,
B)…as a sperm donor so she could realize her dream [of being a mom] and,
C)…very clearly, she’s been using him as an ATM.
As Shan’ann goes on and on, with text after text, Watts feels a gnawing sense of dread.
“This has been the worst week of my life.”
Watts must have looked at that, shaken his head privately, and thought: “It’s so much worse! You have no idea.”
The key here is that in terms of Shan’ann, Watts is scared. He feels guilty and scared. He doesn’t know what to do. With Shan’ann’s hair trigger temper, anything can happen. He wants to keep things under control. He’s not sure what to do. He’s terrified that if he’s honest, if he tells her he wants to leave her, there will be a nuclear explosion. And he doesn’t know what that’s going to look like. What’s Kessinger going to think? That’s his dilemma. That’s what he’s afraid of.
We have confirmation of this on page 599 of the Discovery Documents, where Watts explains his misgivings about how to go about the separation while at the same time admitting he was completely infatuated, intoxicated by Kessinger.
This is Cassie Rosenberg’s version of the last week in North Carolina. [Discovery Documents, page 627].
None of this has happened yet, mind you. But it is going to play out today. On their last full day in North Carolina he’s going to tell her he doesn’t want the third baby, and he’s not in love with her. These are two huge bombshells, but on the morning of August 6th, the day he’s supposed to see his folks, they haven’t dropped yet.
On the last day, it seems Kessinger’s still sending Watts pictures of herself. [This is despite whatever she saw on Shan’ann’s public Facebook profile].
We can’t be sure exactly when Watts went to see his folks, or how he got there. Presumably they came to pick him up very early in the morning without waking the kids. This might explain the 06:00 texts. Watts may have answered them from the car.
In any event, he visits his family without Shan’ann and without the kids. This provides him with involuntary mental preparation. By being with his wife and kids for a week [described by Shan’ann as the worst week of her life] and then the relief to be away from her, Watts has an opportunity to imagine not just not being with his family, but further exploring the notion of getting rid of them.
What would that look like?
One thing was certain. If he did it the right way, Shan’ann would seize control and leave a scorched Earth around her. The introvert’s head was in overdrive – thinking, plotting. How can I fix this? If he did it his way, maybe…maybe things could work out, for him, for them.
It’s difficult to imagine Watts carrying out his annihilation six days later if it wasn’t for Shan’ann – symbolically at least – annihilating herself and the kids from the equation on August 6th. It’s this moment right here, where Watts goes to see his family, and Shan’ann refuses to let him take the kids, and she also cuts herself out of the equation.
At the end of the day, Watts lets Shan’ann know in his own craven way that he’d like to sleep at his folk’s house, if that’s okay. His folks would prefer for there not to be a scene. But Shan’ann’s not interested. Should she come pick him up?
Watts tries to explain that his father is prepared to drive him the next morning – is that okay? No. It’s not. Shan’ann puts her foot down:
“We fucking leave tomorrow. I need help.”
She elects to drive to them regardless, and regardless of her earlier declarations that she’s spotting and doesn’t want to risk walking into them. But Watts inverts the situation, and tells her they’ll bring him home anyway.
This was a precious time for Watts. It was good to be home. He felt himself dreading going back to her. Probably he had some kind of heart to heart with his parents, confiding to them about some of his feelings. His mother might have convinced him, or influenced him, to just tell her. And isn’t that what they spoke about that evening, perhaps while on the drive back to Aberdeen, when it was just him and his folks in the car, driving reluctantly back to her?
At 21:39 Watts is apparently back at the Rzuceks, and the arguing is still non-stop. He’s finally told Shan’ann how he feels. He’s not in love with her any more. She demands to be hugged. She bristles, adding:
“Make me feel like everything is going to be ok.”
With each successive text, things are getting worse and worse. How can he regain control of this precarious situation?
Now we’re at the very end of their last night in North Carolina, and it’s getting ugly. The expletives are coming out [from Shan’ann’s side]. She feels like he’s dropped a bomb on her, and she’s more indignant than ever.
“How many times do I have to ask you to hold me?”
Shan’ann despairs more and more, but Watts can’t hold her or hug her. It’s becoming clearer he must find a way to fix this, a workable way out, and as Shan’ann becomes more emotional, he becomes less so.
At 22:33 Shan’ann’s had some time to reflect. She’s realized there’s been a pattern from him for weeks. She remembers it’s been happening for a while – him falling asleep at 7 or 8. She’s so close to figuring it out! She’s already guessed [and guessed right], but unusually for her, now she puts the ball passively into his court.
“You’re not telling me something.”
Bingo.
“You’re not telling me something.”
This is definitely going to set the alarm bells in his head.
When we revert back to Cassie’s statement in the discovery, we see that Shan’ann begins to act counterintuively right here.
Shan’ann decided not to push Chris on the matter.
From Shan’ann’s perspective, this was a fatal mistake.
There’s a final aspect to deal with regarding August 6th. During the hours Watts was alone with his parents, what did they talk about? Bear in mind, Cindy had been “hesitant” about Shan’ann from the get go, and Ronnie couldn’t have been too happy about how he’d been treated either – he’d taken a week off work to babysit his grandchildren. It couldn’t have sat well with any of them for Watts to have seen his folks only once, and only on the very last day of the trip.
So, with Shan’ann not being there, and the kids not being there, there was an opportunity for the three of them to talk openly about Shan’ann. They would have chuckled derisively about her temper, but also been scornful of her attempts to control everyone and everything.
“I don’t see it…I don’t see what you see in her.”
Perhaps Watts confided in his father then that he was having an affair. We don’t know when his parents found out, but we know it was no surprise to Ronnie Watts when his son mentioned the affair during the First Confession. Watts may have felt more comfortable letting his father in on his secret, because his father may have had an affair as well, at least, Cindy had suspected as much.
Whether he told one parent or both parents, one thing was certain; at the time he was having serious issues with Shan’ann, they were having serious issues with her too. It would have been easy, and perhaps a comforting relief, and even validating, for him to offload.
He could share his misgivings about the marriage, and vice versa. His father and mother may even have expressed their solidarity to their son in terms of his predicament, while at the same time warning him about the perils of divorce.
The penny must have dropped for Watts right then that if something happened not just to Shan’ann but the kids as well, well, his parents had already resigned themselves not to seeing her, and the die had been cast in terms of them never seeing the kids again. And since they’d blocked Shan’ann on Facebook, Watts may have imagined they’d be in the dark about what happened to her going forward.
In other words, if Shan’ann and the kids disappeared, how would they know, and if they did know, would they really care?
If you’re finding these blogs drilling into the Phone Data Review useful and insightful, there’s far more analysis and insight regarding this aspect of the narrative in TWO FACE DRILLING THROUGH DISCOVERY. Book 5 in the TWO FACE series is also the most highly reviewed and rated of the 9 books [4.3 out of 5 stars].
True Crime Rocket Science II 