The New York Times on Chris Watts Court Trial
The New York Times, an extremely credible source, has several articles about the Chris Watts cases and even court video footage of Watts’ conviction. The New York Times is known to lean to the left with their political articles, but there is no biased information in their articles about Chris Watts and what he did to his family. The article, Chris Watts Gets Life in Prison for Killing Daughters and Pregnant Wife, was written the day that Chris Watts was sentenced to prison, November 19, 2018, so the author released all of the information right after the trial. The author, Sandra E. Garcia, is a reputable author that writes about a wide span of different topics. I have found that The New York Times has a wide variety of articles about the Watts case, while other databases such as, The Wall Street Journal, has little to no information about the recent case.
The article by Sandra E, Garcia does a great job of explaining what Chris Watts did to his family and what occurred during the court sessions. For example, Judge Marcelo A. Kopcow said, “This is perhaps the most inhumane and vicious crime I have handled out of the thousands of cases that I have seen.” before sentencing Chris Watts to forty-eight years for the unlawful termination of Shannon Watts pregnancy and thirty six years for the disposal of the victim’s bodies. The author also used other New York Times resources such as, Chris Watts from Colorado Pleads Guilty for Murdering his pregnant wife and 2 Daughters, which explains in more detail about the trial and what Watts did before confessing. According to this New York Times article by Sarah Mervosh, Chris Watts blamed his wife for murdering his two kids, so he used that as an excuse for killing his pregnant wife. This detail adds to the horror of this case because Watts blamed his innocent, dead wife, knowing that she could not tell her side of the story. It is insane to me that Watt’s could easily put the blame of the murders of his children on his wife, after brutally committing murder to his entire family.
In the first article, Garcia also included information about how Watts handled the bodies after the murders and Chris Watts’ reaction to the attorney describing the horrific things that he did to his wife and daughters. Michael J. Rourke, the Weld County district attorney, said, “ The man seated to my right smothered his daughters… Bella fought for her life” and as Rourke described these events, Chris Watts cried. This article also includes information about what Shannan’s family said at the sentencing hearing, the Rzucek family, Shannan’s parents, described Watts as a, “heartless monster and said they believed he should spend the rest of his life behind bars.” I think that the article contained important information about the details of what Chris Watts did and had key quotes from the attorney, judge, and family members.
