Chris Watts worked for Anadarko, and an FBI agent learned that while many of the sites that workers visited to check on oil wells were not monitored, each of their vehicles came equipped with a GPS tracking system.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is sharing new details about the Chris Watts murder investigation.
A newly released file on the case shows just how quickly agents were able to determine where the killer dad had stashed the bodies of his victims: wife Shanann Watts and daughters Bella and Cece.
On Aug. 15, the same day that the FBI joined the murder investigation at the request of the Frederick Polie Department, an agent spoke with a an employe at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
Watts worked for Anadarko, and the agent learned that while many of the sites that workers visited to check on oil wells were not monitored, each of their vehicles came equipped with GPS tracking.
What's more, the agent leaned that the program used by the company could also track things including "hard acceleration and deceleration and speed," but most importantly for this case, seatbelt use.
This means that the system located in Watts' vehicle would not only show him driving from his home to the oil site where he disposed of his family, but also potentially show that three seatbelts, and not one, wee buckled inside the car before he set off on that drive.
One day after this interview, the FBI successfully located the bodies of all three victims.
Shanann, 33, was three-months pregnant when Watts strangled her and then dragged her lifeless body into his truck in the early morning hours of Aug. 13, 2018.
He then put his daughters, Bella, 4, and CeCe, 3, in the truck and drove to a remote oil site in Colorado.
Once there, he buried Shanann in a shallow grave and then smothered his two daughters with his bare hands. He disposed of their bodies in two giant oil drums.
Footage from a 7-Eleven shows Watts just a short time later casually grabbing some breakfast.
He had been having an affair at the time with a co-worker, Nichol Kessinger.
Kessinger told authorities that when she met Watts, he told her that he and Shanann were separated and in the process of getting a divorce but still living together because of the children.
In a lengthy interview with authorities obtained by Inside Edition Digital, Kessinger discussed her final communication with Watts shortly after the news broke about his missing family.
“I texted Chris one last time, and I told him, 'If you did anything bad, you're going to ruin your life and you're going to ruin my life. I promise you that,’” Kessinger said in that interview.
She said Watts responded in a text that read, “I didn't hurt my family, Nicky.”
