Chris Watts‘ second mistress is coming forward to speak out about their terrifying relationship before he murdered his entire family.
As we previously reported, the 39-year-old is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the brutal slayings of his then-pregnant wife Shanann (pictured above) and two daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste. He denied doing anything wrong for a while after they were reported missing on August 13, 2018. He even insisted to one of his mistresses, Nichol Kessinger, that he never “hurt” his family before his arrest. However, Chris later pleaded guilty and confessed to the crimes. He admitted he strangled Shanann in their home in Colorado before dumping her body at a job site at the oil company he worked for. He then suffocated his daughters to death and stuffed their bodies in the oil drums.
But before the horrifying murders, he had been cheating on Shanann with not only Nichol but a Colorado hairdresser named Amanda McMahon. She is now opening up about what happened with Chris eight years after his arrest.
In an interview published with Dailymail.com on Tuesday, Amanda said she met Chris on Tinder amid her divorce and custody battle. And after a few weeks of flirting and texting, they agreed to meet in person in the parking lot of a local Chick-Fil-A. It was there Chris claimed he was separated from Shanann and going through his own messy custody battle, as his wife was using the kids against him. Of course, Chris was lying. He was still married to Shanann. They weren’t even separated when he met up with Amanda.
Despite his supposed complicated situation, she thought he had been confident and sweet, which she now realizes hadn’t been genuine:
“Looking back on it, I could tell any kind of sweetness he had was very fake. I won’t say forced, because he was able to turn on the charm for anything he needed…but something about him felt off.”
But Amanda said she still invited him to her apartment nearby. While at her place, they decided to watch a movie — Shutter Island, specifically. And she didn’t choose it. He did. A chilling choice when you consider the thriller is about a man who kills his wife after discovering she murdered their kids. And even more chilling when you learn Chris told police he only strangled Shanann because he supposedly saw her kill their daughters. Obviously, investigators figured out he was lying.
Soon, the pair started to hook up, which Amanda said began consensually but took an unsettling turn when he became extremely aggressive. She alleged to the cops that he pulled her hair, put his arms around her neck, and attempted anal sex in what she described as a “rape fantasy.” Amanda added to Dailymail.com that she had been scared he would hurt her in that moment:
“He had just this animalistic fury come over him. He just went into like a zone. He just didn’t look the same in his eyes. In the snap of a finger, he went from normal to crazy – like brutal, almost. I remember just kind of being scared to really say anything. It happened way too fast, and it threw me off.”
So scary…
When police arrested Chris in 2018, Amanda told them that she only had a “fast and furious,” one-off fling with him in the spring of 2018 that left her “shaken and feeling dirty,” and that was it. Now, however, she’s revealing she didn’t tell the full truth. Amanda alleged to the outlet that they actually had been in a relationship for months — starting way before 2018!
According to Amanda, they began seeing each other around April or May 2017. She insisted they met up only a handful of times between then and early 2018 and that they only had sex on at least two other occasions. During their time together, Amanda claimed Chris would ask for her prescription opioids so he could get “messed up”:
“I had my own prescription that he would essentially beg for things out of. It seemed he wanted to get away from something or numb himself… and honestly, I was trying to forget things too, so I understood where he was coming from.”
Amanda said she never “used” with Chris nor saw him take the pills she gave him, but he asked on at least one occasion if she had access to any “uppers” like Adderall, which she didn’t. She also claims he’d trash talk Shanann to her, calling her a “f**king psycho” and a “gold digger.” The mistress continued:
“He would say the most awful things… talking her down and making her seem like a horrible, unstable person… say[ing] he wished she’d work and complain that he had to support her. Any shot you could take, he took… he just did not like that poor woman.”
Amanda claimed she can’t remember much else about her meetings with Chris due to her own opioid use at the time. She shared, though, that their relationship came to an end in March 2018 after she decided not to contact him again after changing her phone number. She grew tired of his constant complaints about his marriage to Shanann, requests for drugs, and texts at all hours of the night. And she wouldn’t see Chris again until months later when he appeared on the news begging for information about his missing wife and kids. We all know what happened from there.
Looking back on that time, Amanda cannot help but now feel terrified over her encounters with Chris:
“It’s pretty terrifying. I got me thinking, if his M.O. is to just kill, it would’ve been easier to take me out to get that itch scratched. But I’ve had years to think about that, and obviously he wanted to have a new life…which is obviously more complex in that aspect. He’s just sick. Maybe he was suppressing his urge to hurt her. And judging by how he was with me, I can see how he’s capable of going into that animalistic mode. It’s a terrifying thought.”
Wowwww. Amanda is truly lucky to be alive today following her disturbing interaction with Chris. OMG.
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For more information on violence against women, go to https://www.justice.gov/ovw/resources-for-survivors.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources.
[Image via Netflix/YouTube]