Family killer Chris Watts had a 'look of pleasure' on his face after he murdered his wife and two daughters, experts have claimed.
In August 2018, after his wife Shanann and daughters Celeste and Bella all went missing, Watts played the doting dad and husband appealing to the public for information on finding his family.
However it would later be discovered that the vile father-of-two had murdered his pregnant wife before killing his little girls and dumping their tiny bodies in oil tanks near his work.
Now, in new true-crime documentary Chris Watts: A Faking It Special a body language expert says Watts left tiny clues in his gestures which 'prove' he was lying all along.
Speaking to news cameras at the time of his family's disappearance, Watts said he was worried, but for Professor of Linguistics Dawn Archer, while the claimed to be sad, the tone of his voice didn’t back up his claims.
She said: “It’s about him. And there’s a lot of if ‘I’ statements in there.
“He then focuses on his apparent despair, but there’s no matching affect in the voice; we don’t hear that despair. More red flags.”
Cliff Lansley highlights four behaviours that give Watts away as a liar, as he shamelessly pleaded for his family’s safety, whilst knowing he had killed them and they would never be coming home.
This includes a look of pleasure, possibly because he thought he was getting away with his crime and fooling those watching his fake pleas.
Cliff says: "If you look at Watts’ face in more detail with a close-up, on the left-hand side you’ll see baseline. This is Watts’ normal face during the non-emotional parts of the interview.
"But on the right, when he says, ‘I just want them back,’ and he’s talking about his children here, you see the lip corners raised; you see the eyes tighten. His cheeks are raised. This combination of these two muscles is an indicator of genuine pleasure."
At the end of the appeal, Watts looks down the camera to make a direct appeal to Shanann, Bella and Celeste to come home. As he does this, his body continues to give clues to his deception.
"In addition, while he’s saying that, he slings out a left hand – a hand shrug – which rotates anticlockwise," Cliff explains.
"Now, a single hand shrug is not enough for a behavioural analyst to rely on, but when he closes his eyes for a full second, and you see a slight head shake no when he’s making the claim he wants them back, we’ve got a cluster of four behaviours which say there’s nothing in this statement that you have confidence in, because it’s not true."
His body language continues to give away clues when police arrive at the family home and Watts pretends to be stricken with worry whilst helping with the search.
But Dr Cliff points out: “We’ve got the swaying, we have the double-handed hand shrug, and we have a volume drop.
"The swaying shows anxiety, so there’s anxiety going on. He’s making an affirmative claim that she was still here when I was here at 5:15am, but his hands are doing a partial gesture – it’s leakage, you can just see it on the bottom of the screen – so that small movement of the hands, the rotation, is what we call a double-handed shrug, which is part of the full gesture ‘I have no confidence in what I’ve just said.’”
As Forensic Psychologist Kerry Daynes adds, Watts’ twitchy behaviour even alerts his neighbours. She says: "Even the neighbour immediately clocks that ‘hey, there’s something wrong here, he’s acting a bit strange,’ because he’s used to Chris Watts being really uncommunicative."
Police quickly pieced together Watts’ trail of deceit which revealed Watts was leading a double life, carrying on with an affair behind Shanann’s back.
Chris Watts pleaded guilty to the murders of his wife and two children and was handed five life sentences – three consecutive and two concurrent – without the possibility of parole.
He also received an additional 48 years for the unlawful termination of Shanann’s pregnancy and a further 36 years for three charges of tampering with a deceased body.
For psychologist Daynes, Watts’ motivation to annihilate his entire family was because he felt "belittled and controlled".
"I think Watts killed Shanann because he simply decided he didn’t want to be in a relationship with her anymore. He felt control by her, he felt belittled by her. These are valid things to feel,” she says.
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"But, for God sakes, get a divorce. But he didn’t do that because he didn’t want to deal with the emotional fallout of it, he didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of it. So, he took control of the situation in the most cowardly way possible."
*Chris Watts: A Faking It Special will be available to stream from Saturday 15th May exclusively on discovery+
