New York Times bestselling author John Glatt reveals the true story of a family whose storybook life turned into a nightmare. Shanann Watts lived her life on Facebook. Her social media was a stream of photos of her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, and loving tributes to her devoted husband, Chris. But after returning from a business trip early one morning in August 2018, Shanann and her daughters disappeared. Local news channels broadcast an interview with a heartbroken Chris pleading for his family's safe return.
But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than 24 hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: his wife and daughters were dead, and he was the one who had dumped their bodies at a nearby oil site. Heartbroken friends and neighbors watched in shock as the handsome family man was charged with first degree murder. The mask Chris had presented to the world in his TV interviews and the family's Facebook accounts was slipping--and what lay beneath was a horrifying image of instability, infidelity, and boiling rage.