An anonymous man has come forward claiming to be a former lover of Chris Watts, the US father accused of murdering his wife and two children.
Watts was arrested on August 15, just hours before police announced they’d discovered the bodies of 34-year-old Shanann, four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste on a property owned by the Colorado man’s former employer, Anadarko Petroleum. The girls had been submerged in crude oil vats, while their mother, who was 15 weeks pregnant, had been buried in a shallow grave nearby.
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by PEOPLE, police uncovered that Watts, 33, had been having an affair with a coworker prior to the alleged crime. But now it seems it may not have been his only infidelity.
A man, who asked not to be identified, gave a telephone interview to US television program Crime and Justice on Wednesday claiming he had a 10-month affair with Watts.
The caller told the CNN program that he met the oil field operator on social media app, MeetMe, and said their intermittent sexual relationship began the first time they saw each other in person in June 2017.
“He messaged me. It seemed all very innocent at first. On the profile it didn’t have a last name or anything – it just had his last initial. He was listed as straight,” the man said. “We talked for a while and he just told me he wasn’t really out, or comfortable being out.”
While the man claimed Watts told him about Bella and Celeste, he said he only learned the father was married earlier this year.
“I met up with him and got in his Ford pickup [truck]. He had his daughters with him, and the oldest pretty much spilled the beans that he was still married. She asked him if she could sleep with him and mummy tonight. And that that’s when I found out,” he said.
“He told me his wife was verbally and emotionally abusive, that he didn’t love her and that it was clear she didn’t love him.”
The man said he called the affair off in April.
During police interviewa, Watts allegedly admitted to strangling his wife but claimed he did so in a "rage" after he witnessed her kill their little girls, according to PEOPLE.
The attack, he said, followed a discussion about his desire to end their marriage.
Police have reportedly dismissed Watts' story due to a lack of corroborating evidence, and are pursuing him for three counts of first-degree murder.
The anonymous male lover said he "felt ill" when he learned of Watts' arrest.
"Just through life experience you never really know someone, and you never really know what someone is capable of," he said.