Killer dad Chris Watts gave away his guilt with four gestures including a 'look of pleasure', expert says. Photo / Supplied
Killer dad Chris Watts gave away his guilt with four gestures including a 'look of pleasure', expert says. Photo / Supplied
Body language experts have claimed killer dad Chris Watts revealed his guilt with four gestures including a "look of pleasure" during an interview urging his family to come home.
Watts, now 36, pleaded guilty to murdering his pregnant wife Shannan and their daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, on August 13, 2018.
After dumping their bodies at an oilfield he then cast himself in the media as a doting husband and father.
He released several video appeals for their return and aided police with their investigation.
Chris Watts gave away his guilt with four gestures, a body language expert claimed. Photo / Discovery +
However, body language expert Dr Cliff Lansley claims footage of Watts days after the killing of his family showcased his guilt with certain gestures.
Speaking on the documentary Chris Watts: A Faking It Special, he said early signs made it evident the 36-year-old wasn't as innocent as he made out.
Lansley said four gestures gave him away in just one TV interview.
"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," Lansley says, comparing two images of Watts' face.
"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."
Dr Cliff Lansley claims Watts showed signs of pleasure when speaking about his allegedly missing family. Photo / Discovery +
He also claims Watts gave more clues at the end of the interview when he looked down at the camera to make an appeal for his family to come home.
"While he's saying that, he slings out a left hand – a hand shrug – which rotates anticlockwise," Dr Lansley notes in the documentary that can be streamed on Discovery+.
"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."
According to Lansley, Watts also showed unease in the police body cam footage from the hours after he reported his family missing.
"We've got the swaying, we have the double-handed hand shrug, and we have a volume drop," he explains.
"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.
Watts was seen swaying from side to side in cop body cam footage. Photo / Weld County DA
"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'."
He's not the only expert to claim Watts' interviews gave him away.
Dawn Archer, a professor of linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, claims Watts' speech was riddled with clues.
"It's about him. And there's a lot of 'I' statements in there," she says.
"He then focuses on his apparent despair, but there's no matching effect in the voice; we don't hear that despair. More red flags."
Watts strangled his wife and suffocated his two daughters. Photo / Netflix
Watts also allegedly appeared "on edge" when police asked him to join them in watching surveillance footage of his truck captured on the night he killed his family, the experts say.
