Watts’ crimes are detailed in the Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door, which was released on Wednesday. Along with heavy social media documentation from his then-wife Shanann Watts, video footage and photos featured in the film do more than prove Watts was seeing Kessinger at the time he murdered his family. It shows clearly that Kessinger’s account of her relationship with Watts confirmed one of the father’s many lies surrounding his unhappy marriage.
Kessinger’s interview with police is featured in the documentary, too. In it, she admits Watts had told her he was separated from his wife, Shanann. This, though, was a lie. Kessinger also revealed she didn’t know about Shanann’s pregnancy. The pair met working at The Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and weren’t dating more than two months before Watts murdered his family.
In the documentary, it appears Kessinger reported to police to tell them what she knew of Watts from the good of her heart. But that’s not necessarily how the public took the reveal of Watts’s mistress. Kessinger was hounded by angry true crime fans who were rightly disgusted by Watts’s actions. But despite this, Kessinger denied having anything to do with the triple murder of Watts’ family.
Since the case went public and Watts was sent to prison for three consecutive life sentences without parole, Kessinger has completely disappeared. Where she is or what she’s doing with her life is an unknown. Some reports, like from the Daily Mail in 2018, claim Kessinger was put into the witness protection program by the American government because of the hatred she received. But there’s no formal confirmation that’s what happened.
Whether official or not, though, it does appear Kessinger has virtually disappeared from American life.
Shortly after Watts’ arrest, Kessinger gave a thorough interview to the Denver Post about her relationship with Watts and shock at his ghastly crimes. She explained why she first went to police. “I just wanted to help,” she explained. “With a pregnant woman and two children missing, I was going to do anything that I could.”
Later in the interview, she called Watts a “liar.”
Despite the public opinion of Kessinger, which had often villainized her, she proved important to Watts’ conviction. “Nichol Kessinger turned out to have information that I can best describe as being a bombshell,” Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke explained in a 2019 televised interview for Investigation Discovery’s documentary special Family Man, Family Murderer: An ID Murder Mystery.
For more information on where Watts is now, click here.
