Unsung Murder Ballads
This is a True Crime podcast that focuses on murders, solved or unsolved. We will occasionally break our own rules when that catches out fancy and cover something that may not exactly be a murder.
We would like to warn anyone listening that we do cover sensitive content and it's usually presented to the co-hosts with little to no knowledge of the case details so that their responses and reactions are genuine. And we tend to do all this with some dark humor. So, if this doesn't work for you, we understand. There are a lot of other podcasts out there for you to enjoy. However, if you think that might be your thing, please give us a listen, interact with us on our social media pages, and get to know us.
Hosts: Janus Dead & Joyous Dead, with an occasional special guest.
Unsung Murder Ballads
Episode 169: Nichol Kessinger
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In this episode Janus and Joyous discuss some red flags and inconsistencies surrounding the mistress of Chris Watts, Nichol Kessinger. While she has never been named as a person of interest in the Watts Family Murders, there are still some questions regarding what did she actually know.
Unsung Murder Ballads is a true crime podcast, and as such, we will be discussing topics that are disturbing, graphic, and often violent in nature. So this is not for children under the age of 13.
SPEAKER_01But you know this because you did start playing this episode. So here are some things you might not know about us.
SPEAKER_04We are going to be critical of mistakes made by both criminals and law enforcement.
SPEAKER_01We're going to express our views on things that you might not always agree with.
SPEAKER_04We will occasionally go on an off-topic tangent.
SPEAKER_01And we're going to use dark humor to express ourselves now and then.
SPEAKER_04So if you're easily triggered, this might not be the podcast for you.
SPEAKER_01However, if this is your cup of tea, then raise your pinky finger while you sip and join us for this week's horrific case, you sick bastards.
SPEAKER_04This is episode 169. I am Janice Dead.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Joyce Dead.
SPEAKER_04Alright. So before we get into tonight's episode, there has been something in the news that we kind of need to talk about a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Oh Lord, I don't even know what you're talking about because there are so many fucking things in the news right now.
SPEAKER_04Agreed. So many things.
SPEAKER_01I genuinely don't even know what you're bringing up.
SPEAKER_04Well, and and I don't think you would be paying attention to past episode cases. So I I don't I'm not surprised. You could be right. Yeah, I'm not surprised.
SPEAKER_01I'm more worried about World War III, perhaps.
SPEAKER_04And and you know what? That's a valid concern. Um so with that said, but that's not what we're gonna discuss here tonight.
SPEAKER_01So we're not talking about mass murder, just individual murder.
SPEAKER_04Correct. We're not talking about yeah, annihilation. Yep. Um back in episode 95, which was a roulette episode where each of us did two episodes that only lasted a little bit of time, uh, you actually covered and presented a case about Letitia Stotch.
SPEAKER_01This was a Okay, remind me.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I know I knew you weren't gonna really remember it. Um, this is a woman in Colorado who killed her stepson, put him in a suitcase, and drove him to Florida where she dumped the body.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
SPEAKER_04Well, apparently the appeals court has allowed her to have a new trial because one of the jurors was incorrectly selected because he was related to one of the people on the prosecution side.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's definitely improper. That's definitely uh Yes. So against the rules.
SPEAKER_04So Stotch is probably I mean, she's getting a retrial. Now, it's probably gonna end the same way.
SPEAKER_01But here we are exactly, but she does have a right to a retrial.
SPEAKER_04Right. So even though under those circumstances it just it sucks that they're gonna they're gonna have to spend the money on this, but that's where we're at. She's actually going back on trial. Fun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it sucks. It's a waste of everyone's money, it's a waste of our tax money, it's a waste of just Yeah, all of it. Yes. But I understand in cases like that why it's super important that you have a right to a retrial, because that is kind of bullshit and a major fuck up that they fucked that up in jury selection.
SPEAKER_04And and what I don't understand is what were they thinking? It's not like anyone, not like someone on the prosecutor side didn't recognize a family member.
SPEAKER_01Right, it's so weird.
SPEAKER_04It's not like it was your second cousin's ex-wife. You know what I mean? Like you can almost forgive that one.
SPEAKER_01Right. Like if it was someone like you, it's like distant family, but are we saying it's like it was like closed family?
SPEAKER_04It it's unclear. There's not a lot of information on that. Yeah. All right, but I wanted to cover that before we dove in because it's fun when you get to go back and be like, yeah, this was almost 50 episodes ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's wild. It was a long time ago.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, more than.
SPEAKER_04Holy shit.
SPEAKER_01Over a year? No wonder I don't remember it.
SPEAKER_04Actually, I have my little chart in front of me that aired. We released that in September of 2024. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That was a different time.
SPEAKER_04I can't believe we've been doing this since March of 2023.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's nuts.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's been three years.
SPEAKER_01Three years.
SPEAKER_04Jesus. Wow. What have we done with our lives?
SPEAKER_01Lots and nothing at the same time.
SPEAKER_04Right? It's fun. But so this tonight, our episode is a follow-up on our last episode, which was the Chris Watts case. Uh, just a quick recap. Chris Watts was a man in Colorado who killed his wife and children, tried to hide their bodies, and um, yeah, he was eventually caught and convicted to life in prison. That's the the short of it. His case was pretty straightforward. But tonight we're gonna discuss the mistress that he had, who was actually in a weird way, she was the one who kind of buried him in the beginning, or how that's how he got caught.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. She she tipped him off.
SPEAKER_04Correct. So we're gonna talk about Nicole Kessinger, and we are gonna talk about a lot of the red flags that surround Kissinger. Because very interesting. There's so many things that police didn't follow up on. Now keep in mind this is all circumstantial. There is no proof one way or another that she was directly or even indirectly involved, and a lot of this is speculative, but it's based on interviews that she did with police. They're based on things that were posted, things that came out after the fact. So there's a lot here. Now, my I gotta say, my main source on this, the thing that really tipped me off and made me watch get dig deep, was another podcast called Seriously. And uh, I think her name is Anna Elise or Annie Elise. She did a really great job, and I would say I got probably 70% of my information from her.
SPEAKER_01Cool. Shout out to her.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was it's a really good, she I think it was like two hours long, and don't worry, we won't be covering all of it. Not the way not the way she did.
SPEAKER_01But um, I just already a part two, right?
SPEAKER_04And this is um, well, she did. I want to say between what she talked about Chris Watts and what she did for Nicole Kessinger probably takes up at least six hours worth of stuff. So anyone anyone who wants to do a deep dive seriously is a really good podcast. She does a great job, and she also has a YouTube channel called Tend to Life. So between those two, she has done a lot of work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so I like I said, I do want to point out that uh Kessinger did multiple interviews with police. Her stories were not always consistent, so it can sound a little confusing based on what she said and when, but I'm gonna do my best to keep it all in as close to what I we you know what probably happened as possible. It's also gonna jump around a little bit chronologically. I'm gonna do my best, but I there are certain things I don't want to talk about until the end, so I am gonna kind of skip around a little just to talk about the more important things at the end.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01All right. Let's rock.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So Nicole Kessinger was born on July 3rd, 1988 to her parents, Dwayne and Nancy, in Colorado. She lived there pretty much her whole life until after the deaths of the Watts family. At 19 years old, she was arrested in June of twenty thousand seven for disorderly conduct in Aurora, Colorado.
SPEAKER_01Wait, remind me when these murders happened.
SPEAKER_04The murders happened in 2018.
SPEAKER_01Um, I'm just trying to gauge her age at the time, but yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So now the interesting thing is there's not a lot of information about what exactly her disorderly conduct was, but she was 19. But something that I'm not really going to dive into, but came up was there is a former student friend of hers who said that she had threatened someone and something that happened when she was either in her teens or early 20s, but I couldn't find any information outside of a Reddit post that talked about it. And we all know how Reddit is interesting.
SPEAKER_01Maybe it's on like a juvenile record or something.
SPEAKER_04So who knows? But because it's a Reddit thread, I didn't really give it too much credit.
unknownLike it's not a good idea.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, not really a reliable source. Yeah, I'm mentioning it, but I'm moving on. So she graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor's of Science in 2013, and she started a career as a bookkeeper and later started working as an engineer. Over time, she became a contract employee with Tasman Geo Sciences, and Kessler and Watts became acquainted in June of 2018. And that happened when the company that she worked for basically signed an agreement with Anna Darko Petroleum, which is where Chris worked. Gotcha. Chris Watts was not wearing his wedding ring in those days. So he was very clearly either already cheating on Shannon or getting ready to cheat on Shannon.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, or looking to, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right. So he told Kessinger that they had already broken up, that she was his former wife, and that their divorce case would be finalized soon, quote unquote soon. And his and Kessinger's relationship started in early July. After Shannon, Bella, Cece, and Nico were murdered, Kessinger did voluntarily go in to speak to police. She had an interview with them on August 16th, 2018, and that interview was over three and a half hours long.
SPEAKER_01That's a long one, I think. I don't know, never been interviewed by police. To be honest.
SPEAKER_04I think three and a half hours for anything is long, except maybe sleeping.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, true.
SPEAKER_04But apparently through most of that, she was just rambling and talking her way through it and basically trying to convince investigators that there was absolutely nothing to see here in regards to her. And she does it in a way that's kind of I don't know, it's weird. I don't know how else to explain it. So she says that after meeting Chris in June of 2018, she didn't even know Shannon's name, at least at first. However, when police obtained the search warrant to go through her phone and computers, on her Google searches, they found her searching Chris Watts, his name, as early as August of 2017. But they but they supposedly didn't meet until June of 2018.
SPEAKER_01And a plausible, right? It's one of those things where it's like plausible deniability, like maybe you're looking up someone you might work with, but you haven't met yet. Well, and that's he imposed something weird on teams.
SPEAKER_04Or I was thinking like, yeah, there's probably some they knew that they were gonna, these two companies were gonna work together. She probably thought, saw him, probably thought he was cute, did a search. That was my thought.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But however, she was also searching the name Shannan Watts as early as January of 2018. So again, six months before they started dating. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or before you before they met, you said, right?
SPEAKER_04According to her, they met in June of 2018, but she's searching Shanan's name in January of 2018.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's weird.
SPEAKER_04It's really weird. And again, maybe she did that search for him and then saw that he was married or saw pictures. It it could spiral.
SPEAKER_01We've all done a weird little stalk on the internet before.
SPEAKER_04So it's more why lie about you didn't know her name is the is the thing.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_04So there are also reports that Nicole's father, Kessinger's father, was in the the I mean, he was in the interviews with her. It was like he was her lawyer. And so he but he's a former police officer or has connections to the police. And so he's sitting there. And he there's a report that said he kept asking, quote, if Chris confesses, it'll be the end of the case, right? Unquote. So clearly he's thinking, I don't want my daughter to get in trouble here. If he confesses, we don't have anything to worry about, right? Kind of thing. I mean, it makes sense. Right. And there's a lot of people who think that's why Chris Watts confessed so quickly. Because he was basically trying to save Kessinger from being implicated. Right? See, there's some weird shit. And we're only a few minutes in here.
SPEAKER_01So something else that doesn't for sure.
SPEAKER_04Yep. Something else that doesn't really add up is Kessinger said that she and Chris went on their very first date on her birthday, which was early July. July 7th, I believe.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04She said that it was right that right before Father's Day, Chris had told her that he had kids, which she apparently thought was really cute. And he also told her that he was separated from his wife. So she assumed he was a single dad. But Father's Day was Father's Day was June 17th, 2018, well before their first date.
SPEAKER_01Right. But this is when she said they met.
SPEAKER_04Correct. So I don't know. It's weird, but in in my mind, again, if you're still gonna lie about not knowing Shannon's name, the whole thing is weird.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04But you're right, man.
SPEAKER_01All the different parts of it are like more or less suspicious.
SPEAKER_04Right. And I guess what do you consider a date to be? You know what I mean? I've always hated that that weird indistinction. Because I remember there was a woman I dated, uh, you you you'll know who I'm talking about. Um and she cheated on me a lot. And I remember you're talking about and I remember talking to her about two people we both knew that were sleeping with each other while cheating on their significant others. And I remember so during when I thought when I was getting the clues that she was cheating on me, I would ask her, like, hey, are you seeing someone else? And she'd always be like, No. So then after we figured out that these two people were cheating on their significant others, I said, I can't believe those two were seeing each other. And she said, Maybe they're not seeing each other, maybe they're just fucking.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_04And that was the big light bulb over my head all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_01But she was like, Oh, yeah, I'm not seeing anyone else. Well, um, I guess you're closing your eyes while they're fucking you, huh?
SPEAKER_04Right? So, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, I always hated that ambiguous kind of language too. It's like, man, can't we just have definitions of words that we agree on?
SPEAKER_04Right. So, so maybe their first date was in July, but maybe they were already involved. I don't know. It's weird.
SPEAKER_01Who who knows? Or they were flirting, right? Because he's like, Oh, yeah, it's Father's Day. I'm gonna spend it with my kids. I'm such a good dad. Probably not gonna murder them.
SPEAKER_04Well, so exactly. So now the funny thing is, Shannon had written a public tribute to Chris Watts on her Facebook page on that Father's Day. So if Kessinger is claiming she didn't even know Shannon's name before that, but it's also there's evidence that she was accessing Shannan's Facebook page and reading these things.
SPEAKER_01So it's a little weird. All a little strange. But also, I think if she had seen that on the Facebook page, she would know that they're still together.
SPEAKER_04You would think so, yes. So Kessinger also tried to say that after she saw pictures of Chris Watts' daughters, that she wondered why he would want to give up all of that, like his family. She said that it seemed like a beautiful life and that he had these beautiful girls. Why would he want to give it up? So at this point, she's claiming that she actually encouraged Watts to go and make amends with his wife and try to make his marriage work. Damn. So she's trying to portray herself as this like selfless person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she's like, oh, I was the mistress, but no, I I was just really trying to save their marriage.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I know he was sleeping with me and all, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. A little bullshitty to me.
SPEAKER_04And she also tries to behave like their relationship was barely anything. Yet her phone logs show that they called and texted each other nearly every single day. And Kessinger wanted police to believe that she was the one trying to counsel him to fix his fucking marriage. Yeah, right. So police asked her about collecting the data from her phone, and she responded by saying, quote, I feel like this situation is crazy, regardless whether I give you my phone or not, unquote.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I typically I wouldn't want to voluntarily give a cop my phone.
SPEAKER_04I'm not gonna lie, yeah. I don't there's nothing on my phone, but I'd still be like, who the hell knows how you'll misconstruce something?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. I don't trust him.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But her father, after she said that, interrupts and he says, Well, if you do, it's just gonna reiterate everything that you've already said.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, now she's making herself look weird.
SPEAKER_04Right. So there are, from the Watts case, over 2,000 pages of discovery. Okay. Damn. And a lot of what we're talking about comes from those 2,000 pages. And Kessinger tried to delete as much as possible off her phone before she ever went into that interview with police. Yup. So she said in that interview that she didn't learn about Shannon's pregnancy until the newspaper reported it after Shannon went missing.
SPEAKER_03Oof.
SPEAKER_04However, computer records show that Kessinger frequented Shannon's Facebook page, especially where Shannon was announcing her pregnancy. She was always talking about it.
SPEAKER_01Hmm. And this is an unwise thing for her to be lying about.
SPEAKER_04She also said that had she known Shannon was pregnant, she wouldn't have bothered to get involved with Chris in the first place. And at this point, one of the investigators, an FBI agent, stops her for a second to kind of ask her more about that. And is basically he's like, hey, maybe that's motive.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04And her father steps in and he tells the officer to stop asking leading questions.
SPEAKER_01Wow, she's lucky she has her dad there, huh?
SPEAKER_04Well, not only that, he's first off, he's behaving like he's her lawyer, and he's not. And and he even calls the officer by his first name. He's literally like Nick, stop asking leading questions. It's really fucking weird to watch that video.
SPEAKER_01That is really weird. It's a little too familiar.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it's weird. He doesn't need to be there. He's not her attorney, she's not a minor. So why are they tolerating his presence?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's very weird.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Now, because Chris Watts confessed to killing Shannon and his children, police didn't get to the point of their investigation where they needed to verify anything independently. Because he had already confessed. So they didn't keep digging. They said it was absolutely no reason to investigate Kessinger at that point in time because it wasn't a witch hunt. Okay. Which I guess is true. But if there's an accomplice, maybe maybe look into it.
SPEAKER_01Right. But they're just like happier for their easy win because they got a confession.
SPEAKER_04Right. So again, we're now we're gonna move on to some other red flags and discrepancies that were outlined in this 2,000 pages of documents. Alright. So going back to their first interview again on August 16th, Nicole said that the second day of Shannon being missing is when she decided to stop talking to Chris because she thought he was being far too casual about the whole thing. Okay. She goes, that's why I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the first day, because I was like, no way. Murder was not even on the top of my mind when someone just doesn't come home one evening.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_04But then she continued and said, Then the second day I was talking to him, and he was a hot mess, I could tell. And then with the way he was talking to me, and then she was like, I'm cutting him off, and he and I stopped talking to him. She's basically going, I at that point I was done.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04Now, based on those pages of discovery, her final call with Chris was actually when she was suspected. To have been listening in on a call with a detective. Uh-oh. Between Chris Watts and a detective. So this detective is asking Nicole, and we're going to get more into that. Let me let me just say that. We're this is something we're saving towards the end. Um we're going to get much more into that because that's some weird shit, too. So this detective is asking Kessinger about the seriousness of their relationship, and she's like, Oh, I never had any of intentions of moving in with him. It wasn't that serious, blah, blah, blah. Right?
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04She kept saying she wanted them to have their separate lives, that she didn't want it to be anything more than casual. So, well, we dig into some of her Google searches, and it turns out that she was typing things in like, does a married man marry his mistress?
SPEAKER_01Right. Right.
SPEAKER_04And she spent two hours searching and looking at wedding dresses.
SPEAKER_01Didn't we talk about this last week where I was like, yeah, well, like, sometimes you just do that and you're just like kind of ideating.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I get it. And I didn't say anything last week because I knew we were doing this this week.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, exactly. Like, listen, I've I've been on one date with someone and looked at wedding dresses and rings.
SPEAKER_04Well, Kessinger said that she didn't even talk to Chris at all on the 14th because she was mad at him. But once again, this proves not to be true because evidence proved that she actually talked to him several times in the early morning hours of the 14th.
SPEAKER_01And that includes she just really just maybe you should have told the truth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, maybe. But well, I mean, obviously she hasn't been arrested or convicted of anything. Because otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about circumstantial evidence.
SPEAKER_01True.
SPEAKER_04So she tells the detective that she needed to bring something up to them because she had forgotten it previously, and this is during a second interview.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04She said that the night after everything unfolded in one of their many phone conversations in the early hours of the day she said she didn't talk to him, that Watts apparently asked her what to do with Shannon's wedding ring.
SPEAKER_01Uh uh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So he's claiming they were already split.
SPEAKER_04So no, if you remember correctly, her wedding ring was left in the house. It was one of the things that after she went missing that were left behind. So he's trying to say that that was evidence of her leaving him.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04So on this phone call, he's asking Nicole Kessinger what she thinks he should do with Shannon's wedding ring. And she's telling police that he asked her this. I don't think that's that crazy of a thing to ask, but to ask your mistress after your wife goes missing for a couple days.
SPEAKER_01Is it a couple days later? This at this point it's a couple of things. Should I like keep this in case she wants it back, or should I go pawn it right now?
SPEAKER_04Well, and that's kind of all right. So so you have that mindset. Okay, so that's kind of what he's doing, what she says that he's doing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what my assumption would be. So obviously the circumstances are weird with it being a couple days.
SPEAKER_04Right. And now the irony is that that's exactly what Kessinger told her to do. She was like, I don't know, go pawn it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I just thought it was weird that after only a couple days, he's already like, What am I gonna do with this? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It is weird, and we know that he killed them, so it's even weirder, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_04To me, and and it's interesting to hear your thoughts because I was like, Man, this woman should be in jail as an accomplice, but you're you're giving it a much more pragmatic view, which I'm appreciating.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, just from the point of view of a breakup, like I don't know, man. I've had really bad breakups, and I literally was like, I have this like semi-valuable item of theirs. Do I literally burn it?
SPEAKER_04Like fair, fair.
SPEAKER_01Do I throw it in the trash? I have this piece of jewelry that they bought. Like I literally I had like a piece of jewelry that someone had bought me, and I was like, should I go pawn this right now? Like, I'm so mad. I've had that thought before.
SPEAKER_04But again, we're you're not talking about your wife of X number of years that you've had kids with.
SPEAKER_01Right. That's the I I have not been in that situation, no.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_04So next, Kessinger told detectives that she contacted police to tell them about the affair because of how weird she was feeling about Chris's behavior. She wanted to be the one to come forward and reveal that they were having an affair. She wanted to be helpful. However, police already knew about their affair.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_04It turns out that someone that worked at Anna Darko had already called police and told them about the affair.
SPEAKER_01Okay. We got some useful people, huh?
SPEAKER_04Well, it turns yeah, and it turns out that someone else who knew that that person called then contacted Kessinger and told her that police already knew about the affair, prompting her to contact police.
SPEAKER_01Uh, and try to like get ahead of it, be like, no, I totally separately knew. Or like, I just wanted to tell you this.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Which explains why she tried to clear shit off her phone.
SPEAKER_01Totally. Totally. This is this is sus.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Police then asked uh Kessinger about the phone call that she made to Chris that she had deleted off the call list or whatever, that was 111 minutes long the night of the murders.
SPEAKER_00Oh dear.
SPEAKER_04Um That call took place before midnight and before Shannon had arrived home at 2 a.m. When they asked her, Kessinger's response was, did I? Are you asking me? Are you telling me?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's suspicious, girl.
SPEAKER_04She said that they were FaceTiming, but she couldn't remember anything about what they talked about. She said it was just so much random stuff that she doesn't remember the details.
SPEAKER_01Huh. No, I think he would recall that, especially if he found out the next day that his wife was fucking missing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you'd think so. During this interview, Kessinger said Kessinger said that she had been to the Watts house on two occasions. She said that she didn't go there often because she didn't feel comfortable there. However, in an earlier interview, she said that she had never been there. But the next day, after learning that they needed her cell phone records, she suddenly remembered that, oh yeah, I'd been there a couple times.
SPEAKER_01Right, because her GPS is probably gonna say she'd been there.
SPEAKER_04Right. So in a in a written statement that she wrote in September, she said that she had only been there twice, on July 4th and on July 14th. She starts talking about a trip she took to the Bandomere Raceway where she and Chris Watts had gone. But she stated she didn't remember until afterwards, which is why she didn't bring it up. But like she also said that she didn't remember what they did after that, but she thought maybe they went to his house. Now the trip to the Bandomere Way the trip to the Bandomere w raceway was on July 21st, which would have been a third time that she had been at his house.
SPEAKER_01Girl, you're gonna remember the first time you're at someone's house.
SPEAKER_04She's yeah, she's all over the place. I mean, there's a reason we're discussing it, right? I mean, it sucks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's weird.
SPEAKER_04So we go back to the timeline of the murders, and Nicole Kissinger has no alibi for the time of the murders.
SPEAKER_01And the next I mean, in theory, she's asleep, right? Like the alibi is I was asleep.
SPEAKER_04Well, she also had a 111-minute phone call, FaceTime call with Watts, then literally up until Shenan gets home-ish. That's true. She also didn't clock in to work the next day until 3 p.m. Hmm. And not only did she not clock in until 3 in the afternoon, but her activity while at work was during an extremely short window, which is also kind of sketchy. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about the morning of the murders. A neighbor reported seeing a truck that was very similar to one Kessinger owned, and the neighbor said he saw it outside the Watts family home.
SPEAKER_03Hmm.
SPEAKER_04Kessinger's phone pinged on a tower in Frederick, Colorado, which is where the Watts family home was, and it pinged there at 6.16 in the morning. Kissinger lived 25 minutes away. So why is it pinging?
SPEAKER_01You in theory would not have pinged on this tower, like she lives near a different tower.
SPEAKER_04Well, again, we and that's just it. We've we've had situations like that in the past, we've talked about where there aren't that many towers. But normally when she's at home, her phone is pinging on a different tower.
SPEAKER_01Gotcha.
SPEAKER_04So fill in the blanks.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Right, because she's not at work. It's like she's having an early day and at work.
SPEAKER_04Right. And see, it's just it's fucked up. So basically, and so far, in my opinion, I don't think she killed anybody, but I think she knew it was gonna happen, or she was called to help at the end.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, that's that's what it sounds like to me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Now her entire phone history was in Discovery, as we said, and her phone didn't make a single phone call the day of the murder until 2 26 p.m. in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_01And because right before she goes to work.
SPEAKER_04Right, and because they can go back and look at her whole phone history, she basically makes at least one call every hour, every day prior to this.
SPEAKER_01Okay, she's a chatty Kathy, but except for this one day.
SPEAKER_04Except this one day. She literally, if they look back, there's never a gap. But here we are with this massive gap.
SPEAKER_01But I guess it's like this is her, she's not working.
unknownCorrect.
SPEAKER_01Maybe she could just call people.
SPEAKER_04Right. She's not at work, she's not making phone calls, and she has no alibi. And her and her phone is pinging near the Watts house.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So, you know, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck.
SPEAKER_01It could very well be a duck.
SPEAKER_04Right. So she gets to her office around 2 p.m. that afternoon, and her phone shows that her next call is at 2.26 p.m. She made two other calls from her office, one at 228 and one at 2.35. Back to back. Now, at this point, Chris Watts is arrested and he is pleading guilty. And as such, Kessinger has no reason to be near his house for over a month after those murders. And there is not a single there's not a single cell phone ping of her near his home. So again, it's showing that it only happens when she goes to his house.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_04Really weird. So we're gonna go back to those calls that she made at work. Right after making those calls from her office, one again, one at 228, one at 235. Those phone calls were to her spiritual advisor. Which I I guess like it's like a priest, I guess. I don't know, it's weird to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't know what that is either. Maybe a priest, and maybe a non-denominational sort of priest. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Well, he was a 73-year-old man named Robert, and some reports have his last name being as Izardi, but I'm not 100% clear on that one. Okay. Now, I don't know if I should include this part, so I will preempt it by saying this part may not be 100% valid. It's hard to verify. This spiritual advisor, one of the major features of his teachings is the practice of sex magic. Now, similar to many secret societies, the membership is allegedly based on the initi an initiation system with a series of ceremonies, and they all use some sort of ritual drama. So interesting. It's weird. I couldn't verify that, and it shows up in multiple sources, though, so it's weird. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Weird, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So after she made these calls to her spiritual advisor, she immediately leaves the office. And she went to meet workday, huh? Right? And she went to meet a friend named Jim at her apartment at approximately 3 45 p.m. So she was there for less than an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Weird. Right? Then at 5 01 p.m., Kessinger calls Watts twice, but both calls go unanswered. And she deletes she deletes those calls from her phone log. At 5 30, Watts calls her back, but that call goes unanswered, and she again deletes that from her phone log.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
SPEAKER_04Now here's where things get even more weird. At 11 09 that night, the night of the murders, after Shannon is reported missing, there was a 51-minute call between Kessinger and Watts. And it was and it was deleted from her phone eight minutes later, like eight minutes after the call was done. Then at 12 09 a.m., Watts calls Kessinger back and they speak for another 31 minutes. Then at 112 a.m., Kessinger calls Watts again and they talk for only three minutes. Weird. Then at 1.51 a.m. Watts calls Kessinger again and they speak for another eight minutes. This is weird. It's sketchy. This is this next part is I think absolutely critical about this phone exchange because it leads many to believe that Kissinger was involved or knew something more than she was wet letting on. And detectives believe that they were trying to coordinate a story. And they would hang up and then one of them would think of something and call the other one back. Plausible. Weird. At one point, Watts and a detective were playing phone tag. This is before his arrest. They're playing phone tag. And this detective is calling Watts, and they're they actually connect, but there was like dead air. And then Watts then Watts would call him back. And the same thing would happen. There would be this weird dead air. So then he called Chris back again. And it just wasn't connecting. And this goes on for like ten minutes. Finally, Chris Watts takes a break in calling the detective back because he and this is on his phone log as well as Kessinger's. He calls Kessinger during this weird after that weird interaction with the detectives, and they spoke for less than one minute.
SPEAKER_01Weird.
SPEAKER_04Then Watts calls the detective back, but he calls the detective from his work phone, not his personal phone. At this exact same time, his personal phone connects to a conversation with Kessinger.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So it is believed that he had that call with the detective on speaker with Kessinger listening in on his personal phone. Because the call between Watts and Kessinger on his personal phone lasted the duration of the call with the detective. So what the fuck?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04They believe that that weird dead air exchange of them playing phone tag was basically Watts trying to figure out how to three-way in Kessinger into the call without alerting the detective that she was there.
SPEAKER_01Plausible. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And that he eventually just hangs up and calls her from his work phone and so forth and so on. So fucking weird.
SPEAKER_01So weird, but yeah, it's it's it's believable, this claim.
SPEAKER_04Right. Hours after Shannon was missing, or whatever, you know, what have you, Kessinger went in and deleted all of her search history into and basically anything that had her name on it. She also tried interesting. She also tried to destroy the SIM card from her phone before she gave it to investigators.
SPEAKER_01That's really, really, really sus.
SPEAKER_04It's so it's just like, I don't know. I personally, I and I we're, I mean, we have a little bit more to go here, but I just think we have an accomplice after the fact, at the least.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And like at a minimum, she is she's lying about something.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, she's complicit. We're gonna backtrack a little bit here. Chris Watts event eventually ended up telling law enforcement that he when he attacked Shannon that night, that at first he had tried to subdue her using oxycotin. And that investigators weren't able to understand or trying to establish how he had obtained Oxycotin because it he would never had it prescribed to him.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
SPEAKER_04Now he told them that where he got it from would remain a secret that he would take to his grave, and he never shared that information with them.
SPEAKER_01Huh. The discovery So he got it from Kessinger.
SPEAKER_04Most likely, because again, discovery logs from her phone shows that she was on the phone with him, and then the phone call disconnects, and she calls a clinic, talks to them for a little bit, and then calls Watts back again. When the transcripts were pulled from the clinic that she had called, it showed that she had called inquiring about how much how much Oxycotin could be safe to take and how much would cause a miscarriage.
SPEAKER_01Huh. Yep. That's uh I think it's pretty obvious.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and this was done before she claimed that she remember, she's claiming she didn't know Shannon was pregnant until after she went missing.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_04This call was made before that. So, yeah. Then there was that point in the Watts story, the Watts family story, where Shannon had taken the kids to North Carolina, but Chris Watts had stayed behind. And at one point, Chris did go out and visit the family for a little bit, but then returned alone. It is suspected that while he was there, he had secretly tried to give Shanan the Oxycotin to induce a miscarriage, because at one point during his visit she became very, very ill and complained about severe cramps.
SPEAKER_01That is really fucked up. Holy shit.
SPEAKER_04Again, all of this is circumstantial, but but obviously after that didn't work, the plan obviously escalated from there. Yeah. After he returned to Colorado from North Carolina on August 7th, Shannon started telling her friends that Chris had changed his mind about wanting to have a baby, and she ended up canceling a gender reveal party that she had planned.
SPEAKER_01Oof.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So it's fucked up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04After Chris came Chris Watts came back from North Carolina, he and Kessinger just picked up right where they left off. And on August 12th, that's when they went on that infamous date to the Lazy Dog Cafe where Shannon saw the charge for their dinner bill on their credit card statement and had confronted him later.
SPEAKER_03Oof.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Now this is another one of those things where I don't know if I should really share it, but I'm going to because it's just so fucking weird.
SPEAKER_01And this goes back and let it go.
SPEAKER_04Well, this goes back to my thing about I don't believe that the date of their first date was really their first quote unquote encounter.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04At some point in Kessinger's Google search history, before she went. Out on that date with Chris Watts, she spent forty-five minutes Googling how to prepare for anal sex.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Oh dear. So I mean, maybe that's a first date activity, and I'm just really out of the whoop. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01You know, it takes all kinds. Um don't have dinner first, Queen. There's your first content.
SPEAKER_04At least not something spicy, I guess. I don't know. It's fucking weird.
SPEAKER_01That is a really weird thing to have to Google before a first date. Again, a first date.
SPEAKER_04No. And that's why I'm suspicious that no, that wasn't their first date. Or at least not their first encounter. But you know, who am I to judge? You know?
SPEAKER_01You know, it takes all kinds.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it does.
SPEAKER_01It really does.
SPEAKER_04So and I uh and it's a weird thing to share, but when I saw that, I was like, yeah, we're gonna bring that up.
SPEAKER_01You know, but it is one of those things where it's like, man, girl.
SPEAKER_04I don't get it.
SPEAKER_01If you're gonna do that on a first date and you're Googling that because you've never done it before, girl, there are other people to date. I swear to God. There are so many other people in this world that won't expect that on a first date.
SPEAKER_04It's so weird.
SPEAKER_01It's so weird. No, that that's that's really, really weird.
SPEAKER_04So a lot of people feel that the detectives on this case really handled Kessinger with kids' gloves, and they you know, it just doesn't make sense why they didn't look into her further. Um, but we do Yeah, I agree. Now we do have to talk about the foot like footage and people suspecting Kissinger because the night of the murders, some people think she actually helped Chris, which we just talked about a little bit. But as people analyze some of the camera footage from neighbors' door cams and things like that, many people believe that Kessinger can in fact be seen on some of that footage. Oh. Now I went through it, I can't quite see what they're seeing, but I'm also just watching it on my laptop or my phone, so I don't have the high-tech whatever.
SPEAKER_01Right, and it's also like from security cameras, so it's probably not a very good footage anyway.
SPEAKER_04Right, but people are insisting that this person looks like a there there's a silhouette of somebody and it looks like a woman. And again, it does kind of help like figure out why her phone pinged there. You know, she maybe she wasn't maybe she wasn't involved in the killing, but just the cleanup, maybe helping him load his vehicle with them. It's weird. But I again I watch the footage, I don't see what other people see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sometimes we can see things because we so badly want to.
SPEAKER_04Right. I mean, and again, if she was there that late, it explains why she didn't go to work, why she has no alibi, why she's not using her phone.
SPEAKER_01Why her phone ping. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And again, she she made all those weird calls to her spiritual advisor and then dipped out of work to go to a friend's house. The whole thing's just fucking weird.
SPEAKER_01It is, it it all doesn't pass the sniff test, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_04And then another weird, strange coincidence, not I mean, weird thing, on August 19th, Kessinger did a Google search about Amber Fry. Now, Amber Fry is the mistress of Scott Peterson, and Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his pregnant wife. Oh and literally Oh dear one of the searches she did was about whether or not people hate Amber Fry and how much money she made on book deals after the fact.
SPEAKER_00Oh my fucking god.
SPEAKER_04So yes, these are all circumstantial things.
SPEAKER_01We don't know they're all things that it's like I can you could explain away by like her being a weirdo, being like, you know, morbid curiosity, but it's uh altogether doesn't it doesn't look good. And they should have looked closer.
SPEAKER_04And she has never been charged or even formally named as a person of interest, and she has essentially disappeared off the face of the planet since. The most the most recent part of her, I guess. I guess the most recent things I saw is apparently there was some video footage of her, I think in Montana at a wedding, and someone had a camera set up catching people coming and going or something, and people believe that she has seen she is seen in that video. I watched the video, it was a number of years after, so she was heavier. So if it is her, it doesn't exactly look like her, but it could be. And then in of all the places that I found any evidence of where she has been, was Ancestry.com.
SPEAKER_01Fascinating.
SPEAKER_04This shows her having lived from having left Colorado and living in other states, and the most recent one I saw was Florida. And apparently she's going under the name Nicole Miller.
SPEAKER_01So fascinating.
SPEAKER_04So yeah, so did Nicole Kessinger have anything to do with it? I don't know, but I I've said it a few times now. I do think she was an accessory after the fact, and her father's connection to law enforcement saved her ass.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's for sure. Whether she did something or not, she was certainly not investigated enough. No for just how much weird shit there was.
SPEAKER_04Once he confessed, they were like, all right, case closed, shut the books, don't but when other people went in and found all this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I just gotta say, like, shout out to the people who are into like carrying justice as a hobby. Like that rocks. The people who spend their free time saying, Hey, I think there's something fucked up here, I think justice has not been served, and they spend their time doing that. I think that rocks. So if any of any of you are fans of the show, if any of you are listening, I think you rock.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thank you for all your hard work because that is where all my information came from. You know, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. And she got away with something, and hopefully no one else ever gets hurt in her wake.
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, hopefully she's just the kind of person who helps out fucked up things and doesn't initiate them. But um, yeah, it's it is there's a lot of weird shit there that, you know, at this point I don't know if they could even figure it out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't think it'll ever I don't think they're ever gonna risk doing anything to upset Chris's Watts Chris Watts' conviction.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_04So I think she got away with whatever she had a part in. There's nothing we can really do about it now. I don't think they'll ever commit the resources to it.
SPEAKER_01But no, no, and there's so many other cases and exactly. So anyone who is every cases where nobody is, you know, in prison for that are completely unsolved, and that's true. It's technically not a cold case.
SPEAKER_04No, this is you're right. He confessed to doing it. The evidence is there that he did it. He probably did it alone. I think she was there after the fact, personally.
SPEAKER_01That's what it seems like. Especially I feel like the most damning piece of evidence there is the the cell phone ping.
SPEAKER_04Yes. The 111-minute phone call before she arrived home, and then what, four hours later she's at the house?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's yeah, that's the most suspicious thing to me.
SPEAKER_04So whether or not she knew it was gonna happen, I guess, is the biggest question.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04Because if she knew it was gonna happen and didn't contact police, now she's an accessory.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's fucked. This is that's why I had to cover this one after the fact. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think this episode is longer than the Chris Watts one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it ended up being, yeah.
SPEAKER_04But there was just so much to sift through, and I didn't even cover it all. I didn't even cover it all. That's the crazy part.
SPEAKER_01That's wild. Yeah, that there's even more of this stuff that yeah, just looks very suspicious.
SPEAKER_04It really does.
SPEAKER_01So and I'm gonna go out go out on a limb here and assume that this was a white woman.
SPEAKER_04Of course, yes.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, and she's and then I never she never would have gotten away with that. She never would have gotten, you know, waved off by the police if she were not a white woman.
SPEAKER_04Well, maybe if she was like a middle class or upper middle class black woman or Hispanic woman, and her father was also in law enforcement, like respected in law enforcement.
SPEAKER_01I know it's hard, but but even maybe, you know, it's like right.
SPEAKER_04But to be fair, Shannon and Nicole look a lot alike.
SPEAKER_01As interesting.
SPEAKER_04As I was looking up images of them to post on our Instagram and our Facebook, I had to verify that it wasn't that when I posted an image of Chris Watts with Shin with uh Nicole Kessinger, that it wasn't Shannon. Wow, they look that much alike.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's really weird.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's fucking odd.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, so like that vibe.
SPEAKER_04No, not at all. So thank you everyone for joining us once again. I'm Janice Dead.
SPEAKER_01And I'm Joyce Dead.
SPEAKER_04And we'll see you next week.
SPEAKER_01Bye.