- A husband charged with killing his pregnant wife
and two young daughters.
- [Host] It's the kind of story
that doesn't even sound real.
- [Reporter] Shanann's husband
and the father of her two children,
Chris Watts, has confessed.
- [Host] And it feels more like crime fiction
than something that could happen to the family next door.
- Neighbors here, some of them are still outside tonight.
They're all on edge.
- [Host] The FBI calls them family annihilators,
or people who murder multiple family members.
And when we see cases like this,
like the brutal killings of the Watts family in Colorado,
we're always left with the same question:
why did this happen?
- [Reporter] You don't annihilate your family
and throw them away like garbage.
- [Host] Here's a look inside the minds and motives
of family annihilators.
(eerie piano music)
Family annihilations are the most common type
of mass murder in the US,
but there's still so much we don't understand.
That's because mass murderers
are notoriously difficult to study.
Most die by suicide or are killed by law enforcement.
And in family annihilations,
all of the witnesses are killed too.
The truth is we can't know for sure
why these tragedies happen,
but there are at least a few things
we do tend to see amongst the killers.
First, family annihilators are overwhelmingly male,
and they often seem like law abiding citizens
and good fathers.
Second, almost all of these killings are premeditated.
Family annihilations are most likely to happen on Sundays,
and especially in August during summer vacation,
or on significant dates like Father's Day.
Third, the majority of family annihilators
had a personality disorder
like antisocial personality disorder
or narcissistic personality disorder.
And fourth, it's common for family annihilators
to have a history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse,
either in childhood or with their own families
later in life.
But how does all of this add up to make someone a killer?
That gets a little more clear
when you look at decades worth of these cases.
Common motives start to jump out.
What researchers saw the most was family breakdown,
meaning things like romantic rejection.
Infidelity or divorce proceedings
could have been a trigger for the killings.
Couples were either separated
or in the process of separating in over 40% of the cases.
Cases like the Boren family in Utah,
their deaths shocked their small community in 2014.
- Spanish Fork police say
a man shot and killed his wife, two kids, and mother-in-law
before taking his own life.
- Friends knew Josh and Kelly had been having problems
for months before the killings,
but nothing led them to believe Josh would hurt anyone.
- No one had any clue
that the marital problems were severe enough
that something like this might happen.
- [Host] Then seven months later,
investigators unearthed disturbing new details.
The search history on Joshua's work computer
turned up results for America's most brutal
serial killers and narcissism.
And his text messages showed a heated argument
with Kelly in the hours before the murders.
But these weren't isolated incidents.
In the months before the killings,
Josh had started seeing a therapist.
In his sessions, he admitted to drugging and raping Kelly
multiple times over the course of two years.
This wasn't true in every case,
but in around half of all family annihilations,
the offender had a history of domestic violence.
Before the murders, there's often a pattern
of controlling behavior and violent threats.
It's not always marital problems
that trigger these killings, though.
There was something else
in at least one out of every four cases:
financial distress.
In the months, or even years leading up to the killings,
the family was struggling with money.
Some were deep in debt like Ervin and Ana Lupoe.
In 2009, the couple was behind on their mortgage
and owed $15,000 to the IRS.
Then things started to get desperate.
Ervin and Ana both lost their jobs
at a hospital in Los Angeles.
And on the morning of January 27th,
Ervin faxed a two page letter to a local news station.
- [Reporter] At the end, he leaves a handwritten message:
"Oh Lord, my God, is there no hope for a widow's son!"
- [Host] He also called 911 that morning
claiming he came home to find his whole family dead.
Police rushed to their house in Wilmington,
but it was too late.
- Seven people dead, including five young children.
- [Host] Ervin had shot and killed Ana and their children
and then turned the gun on himself.
But finances are just one part of the equation here.
Some family annihilators see their killings
as a way to protect the family
from something they think is even more catastrophic,
like the threat of legal trouble, prison time,
or social services.
In 2015, Scott Westerhuis worked as a business manager
with his wife, Nicole.
The two handled grant money
at a nonprofit in Platte, South Dakota.
But that May, red flags started to go up.
A state audit indicated unusual activities
in their finances.
- [Reporter] Gym equipment, recreational items, and tools.
- [Host] Four months later,
a fire destroyed the family's home.
- Scott Westerhuis was responsible
for the death of his wife, Nicole,
and their four children
before setting fire to their home
and ultimately committing suicide.
- [Host] And when the police looked through the wreckage,
they found Nicole and all four of the Westernhuis children
dead from gunshot wounds.
It didn't make sense until investigators
started looking at Scott's finances.
He and Nicole had spent years embezzling money
from the nonprofit, at least $1 million total.
And maybe that was the tipping point.
After the killings, Scott's call records
showed he had four different conversations
the night of the murders.
On the phone, he learned the non-profit
had lost out on a $4.3 million contract.
He was losing money and inching closer to getting caught.
The killings may have seemed like a twisted way
to save the family from facing the fallout of his crimes.
The opposite actually seemed to be true
in some cases, though.
Some family annihilators killed to protect
only their own image.
Appearance was one of the five
most common motives across cases.
These family annihilators may be trying
to avoid things that could ruin
their social status, like divorce.
In 2018, if you spotted them on social media,
the Watts were a happy family.
- Ah! I got a turtle!
(kids playfully yelling)
- [Host] With two young children and a third on the way.
- We did it again! (chuckling)
So pink means.
- [Shanann] That's just the test.
- I know.
I just thought the pink is gonna be girls.
- [Shanann] I know.
- [Host] Shanann started to sense something was off
with her husband, Chris.
He was working out all the time. He felt distant.
She started to think he was seeing someone else.
Then on August 13th, she came home from a business trip.
This is the last video ever recorded of her.
A friend and coworker
reported Shanann missing later that day,
but Chris told officers he hadn't seen her or the kids.
- I hope that she is somewhere safe right now
and with the kids.
- [Host] Two days later,
police brought Chris in for questioning.
- So it was fairly clear
that you were not honest during the testing,
but I think you already know that.
You did not pass the polygraph test.
- [Host] This is common for family annihilators
that are motivated by appearance.
They flee prosecution, and if they're caught,
they deny their guilt.
- What it looks like is that you found a new life,
and the only way to get that new life
was to get rid of the old life.
- [Host] First, Chris admitted to having an affair.
- [Chris] I cheated on her.
She then accused me of it. I denied it.
- [Host] Then the rest started to come into focus.
After she came home from her trip,
Chris had strangled Shanann
and killed both of their daughters
before trying to hide the evidence.
- At this point, we have been able to recover
a body that we're quite certain is Shanann Watts body.
We have strong reason to believe
that we know where the bodies of the children are,
and recovery efforts are in process on that.
- [Host] So was Chris's double life
about to catch up with him?
And was his good guy persona
about to come crashing down with it?
It's hard say exactly why he committed these crimes,
but it does point to something researchers saw
in nearly all cases: toxic masculinity.
This sense of power and dominance
gets tied up in fatherhood,
and if that role is threatened,
the murders may be one last attempt
to assert this masculinity.
These killers see their family's property,
giving them the right to end their lives.
- [Family] Happy Birthday to you!
- [Host] See the problem here
is we only get the bigger picture,
the deeper family or financial problems after the fact,
and understanding the motives of family annihilators
involves a lot of speculation,
except for, in the rare case,
when the killer is willing to talk.
Dr. Robert Hanlon has spent decades
evaluating the minds of over 350 murderers.
And in 2003, he got a letter from someone
in the Illinois prison system.
Tom O'Dell was 18 years old when he killed his parents
and three siblings in 1985,
and after 17 years on Death Row,
the state commuted his sentence in 2003.
That's when he started looking for answers.
He was going to spend the rest of his life in prison
and he needed Dr. Hanlon
to help him find out why he murdered his family.
Over the next few years,
the two wrote letters back and forth
unraveling the threads of Tom's past,
and it looks similar to some of the other cases
we've already seen.
A long history of childhood abuse, property crimes,
drug use, job losses, romantic rejection.
The conversations culminated in a book,
and Dr. Hanlon was able to identify
some behavioral patterns in these killers.
He says that while some homicides
are random, like home invasions,
family annihilations never are.
First, there were the things
we can already see clearly as motives,
like an ongoing separation, divorce,
rejection, or infidelity.
But then there were other factors too,
like the recent death of a friend or relative
along with an increase in social isolation
or worsening mental health,
and especially increases in aggressive behavior
or impulsive violence towards people or objects.
Of course, it's important to note here,
no single one of these characteristics
makes someone a killer,
and none of their victims
should be blamed for these crimes
because Dr. Hanlon says there's no definitive list
of what could cause a family annihilation.
Humans are just too complex,
and experts will need to continue doing this research.