This was not a movie, a TV show, or a thrilling book! The infamous Chris Watts murder was nothing but a reality to the mistress of the killer: Nichol Kessinger. I first came across the story of the Watts family murders case while scrolling through Youtube on a Friday and I was hooked onto the story (I later found out that millions of people did the same) till Monday, and still continuing to this day. The truth was never fully set in stone (as is the case in most domestic murders). Starting with the “missing wife and kids interview” to finding out Chris Watts’s gripping affair with Nichol Kessinger, to his trial, to the amazing Jim Cannot Swim criminal psychology break down of the interview tactics used on Chris- we get spun around like clothes in a washing machine waiting for some real reason to finally explain the hellish murders! And boy did it all get revealed thanks to the Watts family neighbor in Colorado who literally solved half of the case! Because that’s where the story really began for me. 

The first video I watched was a Youtube video with a catchy title: Neighbour’s Security Camera Helps Catch Killer Husband – or something of this sort. Immediately, you want to see the story, the reaction of the culprit getting caught red-handed, and how this smart neighbor managed to do so – all of which was captured thanks to a cop whose footage recorded everything! It recorded everyone being panicked about the missing news of Shanann Watts (Chris Watts’s wife), who was pregnant at the time with their third child. Her friend, the neighbor, and the cop seemed to be moving quickly, except for Chris who came quite late to his empty house with a missing wife and kids! 

Captured on the cop cam is Watts’s initial version of his wife leaving her phone, her martial ring behind, and the children’s blanket behind but the detective wasn’t buying it. It was only when the neighbor invited him to play his security camera footage on a TV screen that Chris Watts really began to sweat. Soon everything would unravel – the aftermath of the gruesome murder he committed, captured in grainy black and white footage, marking his moving truck as a piece of inedible evidence, and the very grey gruesome reality of being in a relationship with someone who just felt cornered by a marriage he cannot get out of, financial pressure, not really wanting a third child and of course, being in love with your mistress: Nichol Kessinger. 

Nichol Kessinger: All The Facts, Biography, And Where Is She Now 2021?

Nichol Kessinger instagram

Nichol Kessinger is best known for being Chris Watts’ short term serious girlfriend and not just a quick fling. The release of the documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door on Netflix gave an in-depth look at the crime that occurred in Frederick, Colorado, in August 2018. This doc got everyone talking about her, and it’s clear that people are looking her up on Instagram. Here are her social media details: 

• Her account is not public. 
• Her account name is: nichol_kessinger_88
• Number of posts she made: 17 posts
• Her follower count is high: 1,855 ( possibly some true crime fans here)
• She’s only following 2 accounts
• Her account might be fake, as there are numerous fake accounts for semi-celebs.
• Nichol Kessinger’s real Instagram account might have shifted to another handle as she has changed her name, and moved to another state! 

Nichol Kessinger age

As of 2021, she might be 32 or 33 years old as Nichol Kessinger was born in 1988. The date of her exact birthday is unknown to the public. 

Where is Nichol Kessinger now 2020?

Nichol Kessinger has neither been seen nor heard since 2018, which is the year that she testified in the Watts case. After she spoke publicly in her interview with the Denver Post in 2018, she was in fear for her life, googling a lot about other famous crime mistresses, and may have gone into witness protection. Here are the facts: 

• Before she went off the grid, Nichol searched online for “Did people hate Amber Frey?” on August 19, 2018, according to court documents. The google search is referring to the woman who had an affair with infamous killer Scott Peterson, who murdered his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn child in 2002, Nichol also searched for information on the mistress Frey’s book deal and her net worth.
• There are some internet rumors swirling around that Nichol is in the Witness Protection Program, but that’s unconfirmed. 
• Nichol said to Colorado police that she “would not be surprised if it’s gonna be hard to go out in public sometimes for a couple of years,” per the Daily Mail. 
• According to the Daily Mail, Nichol was asked to relocate to a different state and was even given a new job. Ultimately, it’s hard to know what happened to Nichol. But one thing seems to be clear: She wants to be left alone.
• The last update of where Nichole Kessinger is now is she’s living at Claude Court Road, Northglenn. She is also rumored to be with another guy named Jim Gutoski. He is also a geologist and it seems the two already met when Kessinger was still in a relationship with Watts.

Who is Nichol Kessinger?

Childhood:

Nichol Kessinger’s early life and pre-Watts family murder was largely spent in her home state.

Education:

Nichol Kessinger attended and passed out of Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science in 2013. From Aurora to Denver to Fort Collins to Littleton, Nichol K certainly had no shortage of opportunities in the sciences while she lived in Colorado. 

Career: 

Though Nichol Kessinger’s career started off as a bookkeeper, she steadily moved upwards — and became a field engineer. Over time, she became a contract employee with Tasman Geosciences in 2018 under Anadarko Petroleum Co., where Chris Watts worked. Here she was a geologist who was working in the environmental department at Anadarko Petroleum while he was then an operator at the same company, he was paid well. 

Meeting and falling in love with Watts: 

These two were little more than colleagues at the beginning and Nichol Kessinger quickly became Chris Watts’ mistress. 

The divorce and no third child lie:  

According to The Denver Post, they met in June 2018 and started dating in early July of that year but under the guise of a man who is going through a divorce: “We started hanging out pretty frequently in the last week of June,” she told the Colorado police. “He informed me that he did have two kids, that he was currently in the process of a separation from his wife. As far as I knew, that was becoming pretty finalized.”

According to Nichol’s interviews with Colorado police, Chris Watts told her that he and Shanann were getting a divorce and that he was towards the end of divorce proceedings. The mistress of Chris Watts said she had no idea that Chris was still with Shanann, or that the couple was expecting their third child. 

More shockingly, Chris Watts’s ex-girlfriend also told law enforcement that Chris mentioned that at the end of July, 1) his divorce had been finalized, and 2) he even asked her to help him find a new place for him and his daughters. 

Nichol Kessinger lied about the divorce as seen on her google searches:

According to the Netflix documentary footage of Nichol’s interview with police shows, she stated that she only learned the truth about her boyfriend’s marriage after news broke of his family’s disappearance. 

• However, according to documents in the Watts investigation released by the Weld County District Attorney’s Office and obtained by People, Nichol’s google search history revealed that she typed out the phrase “Man I’m having affair with says he will leave his wife” on July 24, 2018. A month later, she also searched Google on topics related to “marrying your mistress”. 
• Kessinger spent more than two hours searching the internet for wedding dresses just a week before Watts killed his family – this is proof that Kessinger was reportedly thinking about marriage with Chris.
• If her internet searches are any indication of getting serious, then so was Chris’s search history according to People.  Chris’ search history revealed that he typed out: “When to say I love you for the first time in a new relationship,” on July 25, proving that the relationship with his mistress was moving fast.
• Kessinger also spent 45 minutes googling “how to prepare for anal sex” and “the anal sex guide” on the night before the murders according to documents released by Weld County, Colorado, District Attorney’s Office. 
• Lending more weight to the idea that Kessinger knew that Chris wasn’t separated from his wife, the records also exposed that law enforcement officials examined Kessinger’s phone and found hours-worth of google searches for “Shanann Watts.” After the murders, she also searched “can cops trace text messages,” per People. 
• The cops discovered from Kessinger’s internet history that she had looked up information on Amber Frey’s net worth following the murders. Kessinger could certainly relate to Scott Peterson’s girlfriend As Chris Watts’ mistress. Nichol was also a woman who fell in love with a man who murdered his pregnant wife. Was she considering monetizing the tragic incident? While not illegal, it certainly appears as though and we don’t know if she will ever do so.
• There’s still maybe zero hard evidence that suggests Chris Watts’ mistress knew just how finalized his separation would be. However, Chris and Nichol were on a 111-minute long phone call on the night of the murders.

The sneaky dates:

Chris Watts sneaked around to spend romantic weekends with Kessinger, which also involved taking sultry dirty photos of his girlfriend. To prove this a search of Watts’ phone found secret pictures of a nude or semi-naked Nichol Kessinger. They were hidden away but located in a secret calculator app that was only accessed by typing in a four-digit code.

Chris and Nikki’s secret relationship began when Shanann and the girls spent several weeks away from Watts over the summer visiting Shanann’s family in North Carolina — a period during which Shanann kept trying to call Chris in hopes of repairing her relationship and struggling marriage. After she and the kids returned home to Frederick, Colorado, Shanann took another short solo work trip. Chris killed his wife and two daughters a little more than a month after that –  Shanann returned home again on August 13, when Watts strangled her and smothered his two girls with his bare hands and a pillow (in his car, on the way to dump Shanann’s body). 

The mistress of Chris Watts and the murder himself were dating just over 30 days before Watts had been found guilty of murdering his family.

Getting caught with the credit card:

Shanann Watts returned from a business trip to Arizona in the early hours of August 13, 2018, the same day she would be murdered. During her trip, Chris Watts decided to take Nichol Kessinger on a date on August 11th to The Lazy Dog Sports Bar and Grill in Erie, Colorado. 

Their date was 2 days before Shanann returned home and this made her suspicious as Chris spent over $60 on their joint account. She looked up “Lazy Dog Menu” that same day, trying to find out if he’d bought one or two meals at the establishment. 

But from the lady who had an affair with Chris, this very transaction was important to her relationship with Chris. According to the Frederick Police Department, “Watts used a credit card to pay for the meal. She took that as a positive sign in their relationship because Watts usually paid for items with gift cards, a practice she took as an attempt by Watts to conceal his activities from his wife.”

While this was important to the mistress, Chris made the mistake of exposing his affair to his wife. Kessinger told police that she believed it was a positive step in their relationship but Shanann would later confront Chris who then killed her. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant when Chris choked her in a rage that blacked him out and killed the mother of his children. 

The break up with Chris Watts:

According to the Post, Chris Watts’s mistress Nichol said that she learned from the news that Chris had lied to her about his marriage and said that she suspected Chris the reason for his family’s disappearance because he was too calm and unemotional about the whole thing. Something “seemed off,” the mistress stated.  

“It got to a point that he was telling me so many lies that I eventually told him that I did not want to speak to him again until his family was found,” she said. “With a pregnant woman and two children missing, I was going to do anything that I could.”

Soon after Nichol met with investigators, Chris was arrested and eventually charged with the murder of his wife and two daughters.

Chris Watts’s mistress Nichol  cooperated with police during the investigation into the Watts family murders, according to the Denver Post. She later gave an interview with the Denver Post, saying that, “I don’t think there is a logical explanation for what he did. It’s a senseless act, and it’s horrific.”

After ending their affair, she reached out to investigators to tell them about the lies Watts had been telling her over the past few weeks: “It wasn’t fair to his family for him to have an affair, it wasn’t fair to me to have him lie to me and make me think that everything is going to plan. And still to this day, I don’t even know what’s a lie and what’s not”. 

During interviews with Colorado police, she expressed concerns about her name being “slandered” due to her short term yet serious affair with the murderer. Based on the interview recordings obtained by Daily Mail, she revealed: My name is about to be like slandered, for probably a while. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to heal. But I would not be surprised if it’s gonna be hard to go out in public sometimes for a couple of years. She also added: And that really hurts me. I’m just like, this is a horrible horrible thing. Like, how dare you, you know. And people aren’t gonna understand that. You know, they’re gonna say, ‘oh you know, you’re the woman that had an affair with this man who took out his whole family. 

Did Nichol Kessinger get charged?

Nichol Kessinger went through multiple police interviews, revealing facts about their relationship and all the details Chris had provided about his missing family. She even approached investigators before Watts’ arrest! This ex-girlfriend was a part of multiple police interviews, describing details of their relationship and what he had told her about his missing family. 

However, Nichol also got rid of all of Watts’s information from her phone before she met with the police. The bombshell confession from Kessinger helped the police tremendously when it came to solving this crime. They quickly found cards, photos, and letters the couple had sent each other and determined that Watts had been planning to start a new life outside of his marriage.

“Nichol Kessinger turned out to have information that I can best describe as being a bombshell,” said Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke.

The police interviews with Kessinger were all conducted  after ending her relationship with Watts because of the lies he had been telling her during their short-lived yet serious relationship.

“This shocked me just as much as I think it shocked the rest of the world. All of it,” the ex-girlfriend and mistress said during an interview aired on the doco. “Like, he lies so much now that I go back and think about all the s**t, and I’m like ‘it’s all lies’.”

While this mistress was adamant about the fact that she never would have pursued a relationship or even agreed to date a married Chris Watts, she perfectly well knew  that Watts was still with his wife –  you can read the “Nichol Kessinger lied about the divorce as seen on her google searches” above under our “Who Is Nichol Kessinger?” section. 

After admitting to the murders, the Killer dad claimed had it not been for Ms Kessinger he would not have killed his family. Blaming your murder on your mistress is no way to justify what you did but I believe that this mistress knew a lot more than she was leading the cops to believe. Nichol is free from any charges, but in my opinion, she is not too innocent if you take a look at her google search history. 

Is Nichol Kessinger in witness protection?

According to online rumors, Nichol was put into the witness protection program, which provided her with a new name and a new identity.

• Nichol Kessinger currently resides in another city and state: 

In late 2018, Radar Online magazine confirmed that Nichol Kessinger had relocated from Colorado to another state, started a new job and was placed in the witness protection program.

• After Chris Watts’s terrible crime, she was repeatedly threatened and abused: 

Mistress Nichol Kessinger has since received “several threats, public shaming, and could be considered one of the ‘most hated woman’ in America,” a source told local media. “She plans to start fresh with a new name, new town, and ultimately a new identity.”

• Nichol Kessinger decided to change her name and start a new life: 

Watt’s mistress has a new name that is unknown to the public since giving evidence in his murder case. The ex-girlfriend has reportedly made the decision to change her name since being linked to the brutal multiple murders. According to the Daily Mail, the 32-year-old believed to have applied for witness protection after requesting to change her name in Jefferson County, Colorado. The life-altering request comes after the recently aired Netflix’s documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door that exposes the Watts family murder.

The Nichol Kessinger cheating affair wasn’t the first extramarital affair Chris Watts had: 

Their sex life was rough and intense: 

The mistress of Chris Watts painted a picture of a man who was adept at manipulation. According to her, Chris was a “softly spoken” father-of-two, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. 

Why? Well, a week before Watts killed his family, in documents released by Weld County, Colorado, District Attorney’s Office, Nicole Kessinger was online for 45 minutes Googling “how to prepare for anal sex” and “the anal sex guide” on the night before the murders.

Yes, the murderous father liked things rough with his mistress, and his wife also attested to this. However, no one could foresee him killing his own blood. 

Chris Watts’ mistress was just as shocked as the rest of the world when she found out her lover was a wife and child murderer. In Nichol Kessinger’s statement she said: “ When he spoke to me he was very soft-spoken. He appeared to be a good listener,” 

According to investigators, the two exchanged sexually explicit photos and had an intimate relationship. In her conversations with the Colorado police, Nichol Kessinger saw him as introverted and polite. 

He also hooked up for rough sex on a Tinder date: 

Nichol painted him as a kind man, but when it was time to get down to the bedroom business, Chris cheated on his wife because he had a fantasy: Rape Fetish! 

Chris Watts used Tinder to fulfill rape fantasies before the murder, according to Amanda McMahon who met with investigators to explain her night with Watts after meeting him on dating app Tinder, including his predilection for “rape fantasies”.

Before Watts mercilessly slaughtered his pregnant wife and 3 children and dumped their bodies in oil drums and a shallow grave — crimes for which he will spend life in prison — he used the Tinder app to play out his dark sexual fantasies.

Tinder date Amanda met with Watts in the car park of a Chick-fil-A (a fast food takeaway restaurant) after the two conversed over the app, according to police documents, reports news.com.au.

Amanda McMahon told the investigator that Watts followed her to her apartment after they left the restaurant, consensually. But, when they went inside things became “really fast and aggressive” so much to the point that McMahon told the investigator who filed the report that Watts was “very rough”.

McMahon described the encounter as humiliating and uncomfortable, stating that Chris Watts tried to push her into having anal intercourse and kept pulling her hair. Amanda McMahon stated that at one point she had to “push Watts off her”.

Despite his aggressive behaviour, this Tinder date said that she didn’t suspect he could become a murderer. “It’s kinda funny now,” she said according to the report. “Because Watts is a murderer.”

Amanda McMahon even publicly posted about her encounter with Watts on a Facebook group for crime buffs and insisted (was very similar to Nichol Kessinger, the mistress) that she didn’t know he was STILL married. The revelations show another, disturbing side of the killer dad who was into “rough and aggressive” one-night stands with Tinder dates but no one could have guessed the viciousness of his crimes and ruthlessness of his deceit. Not even his friends, family, and his former mistress who today, still struggled to come to terms with what happened. 

In the end, one thing remained common between all of his cheating: he never ever mentioned that he was married or was a father – neither to his long-term girlfriend Nichol, or to his other flings like Amanda.