In this age where true crime content is ubiquitous, one story stands out this year for being more evident to the public on social media. With the Watts family murder, their social media presence made their lives accessible and relatable to their followers, creating a kind of chronicle through which people could see the progression of the Watts’ family life from beginning to end. The Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door lures us into the family’s home and digital space, inviting us to piece together this true-life horror story.

A modern-day Holcomb or DeFeo case, the Watts murders involved the deaths of Shanann and her children Bella and CeCe. As the police camera pans through the neat, suburban home, we meet the only member left standing, Chris Watts, as he shakily spills all he professes to know to police about his family’s disappearance. From the beginning we get all the speculations that would come into play later on: Shanann abandoned Chris to start a new life, she left in anger after an argument but might return, she was kidnapped, and–as Shanann’s friend and colleague insists after Chris leaves the room–Chris knew more than he let on.

Background of the Watts Family Murders

Christopher and Shanann Watts were North Carolina natives who met and married in Mecklenburg county in 2010. An apparently happily married couple, Chris and Shanann’s lives only seemed to get brighter with the birth of their daughters Bella (born in 2013) and CeCe (born in 2015). They purchased their five bedroom home in Frederick, Colorado in 2013 while Chris settled into a career at Anadarko Petroleum. Shanann worked from home for a marketing company and spent enough time on social media outside of work to give friends and family a glimpse into her family life.

In 2018, the Watts family was about to welcome a new member as Shanann announced that she was pregnant with what she hoped would be a boy for her husband’s sake. But on August 13, 2018, Shanann disappeared along with her daughters after returning from a business trip in Arizona. Shanann’s friend and colleague, Nickole Atkinson, called the police for a welfare check after Shanann missed a business meeting and she received no answer when she knocked on the family’s door. Police went into the house as a visibly nervous Chris explained that he didn’t know where his family went.

Despite his vehement denial that he knew anything about their disappearance, investigators had their suspicions as the ostensibly happy family man had concealed an extramarital affair. The truth was still elusive as Chris continued to deny knowledge, but his cover broke down after he failed a polygraph test. A taped confession soon followed, but he only admitted to killing his wife, which he claimed he did in a fit of rage after Shanann killed her daughters. But it later came out that Shanann died first and the two girls were smothered by their father when they reached the oil-storage site where he would hide their bodies.

An Intimate Glimpse at a Sadistic Crime

Other true crime docuseries may overshadow American Murder, chiefly due to the high profile subjects, such as the Nightstalker and the infamous Cecil Hotel. But the advantage of this film for true crime enthusiasts is that it provides a level of intimacy not seen in the CCTV footage of Elisa Lam or the aged photos and police sketches of Richard Ramirez. Here we’re drawn in by home videos posted to Instagram and the text conversations we see and hear as if they’re happening in real time.

The documentary consists entirely of original footage from the film police took of the initial welfare check, to Shanann’s vlogs. It opens with these Facebook vlogs filmed by Shanann of their blissful domesticity while people left comments showing adoration for the family. From there, we’re shown texts between Shanann and her friends that slowly begin to contradict the functional facade we originally see through their vlogs. Despite the family having provided permission for all the footage and texts to be made public, the level of intimacy makes one feel especially voyeuristic.

The Shift of Blame in American Murder The Family Next Door

One of the biggest strengths of the documentary is that it feels like a whodunit, ignoring the fact that some viewers may be familiar with the case and its outcome. The viewer who comes to the film with no prior knowledge of the case is invited to entertain Chris Watts’ version of events that would paint Shanann as a vicious child killer.

Shanann was known for having a strong but benevolent personality and it’s no surprise that some people who followed the case on social media had nothing but scathing words for a woman who seemed to be “a bitch” who “drove him to it.” This public reaction is, perhaps, one of the most disheartening aspects of the case. Even exposure to the vitriol often spewed online doesn’t prepare one for the currents of misogyny that ran through the web.

The Lasting Impact of Familicide

When the Clutter family murders happened in Holcomb back in 1959, the nation was shocked by the reality that peaceful suburban lives could be so brutally ended. But what made it easier to process is that the murderers came from outside the family. When the DeFeo murders happened in 1974, it was unconscionable that a man could take the lives of his family, and perhaps that’s why the public gravitated toward a supernatural explanation.

The struggle one has with the Watts murders is that there’s no comprehensible motive. We have to accept that a man could seemingly live happily with his family for many years without showing any violence, but then without warning, he eliminates his family as they stand in the way of a new life he wants to transition to. American Murder shows us the true-life horror that any of us can be deceived by someone like Chris Watts.

Check out the trailer of American Murder: The Family Next Door here: