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Chris Watts’ 2018 guilty plea may have closed the legal case, but for Shanann’s family, the tragedy morphed into years of relentless online vitriol and defamation.
Nearly eight years later, her relatives say they endured a persistent wave of online harassment they describe as cruel and unrelenting and fueled by true crime conspiracy theories.
“I never saw so much evil in this world. Towards us, towards other victims,” Frank Rzucek, Shanann’s father, said in a new Fox Nation special. The new special is available to watch on Fox One starting on March 23.
Watts was sentenced in November 2018 to life without parole for the murders of his wife, Shanann Watts, 34, and their daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. Watts, then 33, pleaded guilty to all charges against him in exchange for prosecutors not pursuing the death penalty, the Weld County District Attorney’s office said.
Chris and Shanann Watts with their daughters. (Facebook)
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Rzucek and other relatives say the online messages distorted Shanann Watts’ life and character, or falsely suggested that her family was somehow involved in or responsible for the killings.
“And, you know, the hate has got to stop. They had nothing to do with it but lose a loved one. Or in my case, it was four,” Rzucek said, referring to his daughter, granddaughters and Shanann’s unborn child.
Immediately after the crime, in August 2018, Watts told responding officers from the Frederick Police Department in Colorado that his wife and two young daughters had “vanished.”
“My kids are my life,” he told KMGH. “I mean, those smiles light up my life. When I came home and then walked in the house, nothing. Vanished. Nothing was here.”
Chris Watts was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife and daughters. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Within days of the disappearance, Chris Watts was arrested and the bodies of his pregnant wife and children were found.
A break in the case came after a neighbor provided home security video showing Chris backing up his truck into the driveway early in the morning the day Shanann and the children disappeared. The video did not show Shanann or the children leaving. Along with the video, authorities also tracked Watts’ digital footprint, including his cellphone data and GPS tracking data.
After failing a polygraph on Aug. 15, 2018, he confessed during an interview. He led investigators to an oil and gas site operated by Anadarko Petroleum near Roggen, Colorado, where the bodies were recovered.
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Shanann Watts, who was approximately 15 weeks pregnant at the time, was found in a shallow grave. Bella and Celeste were found, authorities said, inside separate crude oil storage tanks at the same site. Their bodies were recovered after the tanks were drained.
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A photograph of Shanann Watts and her daughters, Bella, 4, left, and Celeste, 3, is shown at a makeshift memorial in Frederick, Colorado. (AP Photo)
In 2025, Shanann’s brother, Frankie Rzucek, won a defamation and harassment lawsuit in the United Kingdom against a YouTuber accused of spreading false claims about the family. The case resulted in the creator being ordered to shut down the channel, which is believed to be the first time in the U.K. a conspiracy-focused YouTube account was removed following a legal ruling tied to harassment and defamation.
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The family said the legal victory marked a turning point but did not end the broader problem.
“You can’t stop nobody from doing anything because they say it’s freedom of speech. Well, there is freedom of speech, and there’s freedom of hate, too,” Rzucek said.
The body of Shanann Watts, 34, was found in a shallow grave near an oil tank on property owned by the oil and gas company where her husband had worked. (Colorado Bureau of Investigation)
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In the United States, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act largely shields platforms from liability for content they did not create. The law has been credited with enabling the growth of social media but has also been criticized for limiting recourse for victims of online abuse.
On the 30th anniversary of Section 230, lawmakers made efforts to reform the law, debating whether platforms should bear greater responsibility for harmful or defamatory content shared on their services.
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“It’s mostly unregulated,” attorney Tom Grant told Fox Nation, pointing to the difficulty families face in trying to remove harmful content or hold creators accountable.
The home where Chris Watts lived with his wife, Laci, and their two young girls. (Google Maps)
The harassment has not been limited to public posts. Family members say they have received direct messages and other communications that they describe as threatening and deeply personal, compounding their loss.
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Lena Derhally, a psychotherapist and author, said some people turn to alternative narratives or blame victims to impose order on events that feel senseless.
“People want to try to make sense of the world, and so, they don’t want to believe that this type of evil exists,” Derhally told Fox Nation. “And so, I think though that’s why we’re seeing so much of this victim blaming.”