Respected Army Officer Lived A Double Life Behind The Scenes, Then It All Started To Come Out

For 19 months, Chelsea had been smitten with Kane. He was a tall, dark army officer who had reached out to her on Instagram. And despite the many obstacles that stood in their way, the pair appeared to be making a go of things, too. Then it all crumbled. Chelsea discovered that the man she loved was leading a double life.

Panicking and confused, Chelsea embarked on a mission to uncover the truth. But after traveling all the way from Virginia to Illinois, all she discovered were more lies – and a fiancé who appeared to have forgotten about her existence. Then, as she dug deeper, she realized that Kane’s web of deceit stretched even further than she could have imagined.

So what was the true story behind this seemingly clean-cut military man? Did he really have a tragic past and an award for valor in battle, or were those all tall tales spun as part of a cruel and twisted game? On the brink of giving birth, Chelsea was forced to accept that Kane was a fraud. And that was just the beginning...

When Chelsea first encountered Kane back in 2019, she could never have guessed that their story would unfold the way that it did. The soldier had messaged her out of the blue and complimented her Instagram photographs. She’d been delighted to respond, too.

After all, what wasn’t there to like? To begin with, Kane appeared to be nothing less than an all-American hero. And as he and Chelsea talked, they realized that they had a lot in common. Both loved shooting, for example, and he was a fan of skydiving – something that Chelsea had always wanted to try. But they needed more than those things to keep their romance going.

As the two carried on chatting, Chelsea discovered that Kane was ten years older than she was and had two children from an earlier marriage. On top of that, he also lived 600 miles away on an army base in North Carolina. But by this time she was already smitten. That physical distance wasn’t going to be an obstacle.

Finally, the long-distance couple were able to meet face-to-face for the first time. According to The Daily Beast, Chelsea was on her way home from vacation when she decided to drop by Kane’s base in Fort Bragg, NC. And the spark was undeniable. The two started a relationship, and it was great – for a while, anyway.

Despite the distance between them, the pair kept their romance alive by talking to each other on the telephone every day. Then, just weeks after their first meeting, Kane came to Chelsea with some news. He was, he said, being transferred to Virginia. That was 250 miles away from his current post. And faced with the prospect of being even further separated from her new love, Chelsea began to consider her options.

Could Chelsea uproot her life and move to Virginia to be with Kane? Although the two of them had not been together for long, she mulled things over – and eventually decided to follow her heart. Yes, she packed up her belongings and set out for a fresh start. It was a decision she may have come to regret.

At first, it seems, Chelsea was living the dream. Unable to live on the base with Kane, she settled into a nearby townhouse rented for her by her soldier beau. He’d come and visit her, of course, and all was great.

When they had some free time, the couple explored the surrounding countryside on foot and treated themselves to meals out. On other occasions, they simply sat and enjoyed long talks – all the signs of a healthy and loving relationship. But as Chelsea would later discover, Kane was concealing a dark secret the entire time.

Turns out Chelsea had a secret of her own, too – although it was a much happier one. In October 2020 she revealed to her partner that she was pregnant with their first child. “The first thing he did was grab me in the kitchen and give me a hug and a kiss, and then he grabbed my hands and we ended up praying. It seemed really genuine. And he seemed like he really cared and he really wanted us to be a family,” Chelsea later said to The Daily Beast.

Excited to welcome a baby into the world, Chelsea spent money on a journal. That way, she could record her thoughts and feelings along the way. But in the end, as she told The Daily Beast, she found the experience “really depressing.” And the pregnancy blues weren’t the only thing threatening to destroy her fantasy of domestic bliss.

As the couple’s relationship progressed, Chelsea began to notice little things that didn’t quite add up. For example, she found a video where Kane claimed to have a daughter. Curious, she then asked him about the child – only to be told that she had tragically died.

Of course, Kane may not have wanted to talk about such a traumatic event. But there were other hints, too, that something was amiss. On one occasion, Chelsea noticed that the soldier had finished alongside the same woman in two 10k races. When she asked him about the mystery girl, though, he dodged the question.

And then there was the incident that had occurred in the spring of 2020 – shortly after the pair had first moved to Virginia. Having gone on ahead to settle into her new home, Chelsea had been heartbroken after Kane told her he was being deployed. Then, several months later, she saw his vehicle on the local army base.

At first, Kane had denied that the vehicle was his. But then, just days later, Chelsea saw him in person, climbing into that very same car. Speaking to The Daily Beast, she revealed, “He played it off as if he was trying to surprise me post-deployment and that he had to quarantine, and that I ruined the whole surprise.”

Then, in February 2021, Chelsea received a phone call from a woman she believed to be Kane’s ex-wife. But Kane won her round, convincing her that his former wife was mentally unwell – and a gold-digger to boot. By this point, Chelsea was five months pregnant, and she didn’t want to start doubting the father of her unborn child.

After all, Kane was a hero – a military man who claimed to have been awarded a Silver Star for valor in combat. He had even invited Chelsea to the ceremony where he would receive the prestigious medal. This proud event would never happen.

Then Chelsea’s due date was just 24 hours away. Rather than looking forward to the moment, however, she was consumed by anxiety and fear. Two days earlier, she had started to experience contractions and had called Kane to share the news. She was shocked, though, when he told her off for harassing him at work. She hadn’t heard from him since, either.

Sure that the baby was on its way, Chelsea called the Army base in desperation. But when she got through to the sergeant major, he called her by the wrong name. Worse still, it was a name she recognized: one that belonged to Kane’s ex-wife. Confused, she explained that she urgently needed to speak to Kane – only to be told that he was on leave.

At the end of her tether, Chelsea had little choice but to do the unthinkable. Picking up the phone, she dialed Kane’s ex-wife. “I was like, ‘Listen, I know you probably don’t like me because I’m the new person in his life, but I’m calling you out of desperation because I haven’t been able to find Kane,’” she said to The Daily Beast.

But the woman on the other end of the line had a chilling response. She wasn’t Kane’s ex-wife but his current one. Yes, the pair were still married. Even worse? The father of Chelsea’s unborn child was hundreds of miles away in Illinois.

Chelsea was dumbstruck by this news, but she didn’t take it lying down. Instead, she climbed into her car and drove west to Illinois, reaching her destination 16 hours later. At about 2:00 a.m., she stood outside Kane’s parents’ house, confident that her soldier lover was inside.

“I knew he didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Chelsea told The Daily Beast. But even then, things didn’t go to plan. Rather than come outside and talk to Chelsea, Kane stayed behind the door. And before long, the cops were called to address the rapidly escalating situation.

According to The Daily Beast, the official police report contains Kane’s dad’s original 911 call. Apparently, he had claimed that Chelsea was threatening to burn down his home. And when officers arrived on the scene, the soldier added fuel to the fire. Allegedly, he told them that had never seen Chelsea before. He even suggested that she was a stalker who had tracked him to Illinois.

Thankfully, the officers soon realized that something was up. They heard Chelsea’s side of the story and saw that she had photographs to back up her claims. They dismissed the allegations, too, and told her that she was free to go. But that wasn’t before they unwittingly dropped another bombshell: Kane was not alone inside. 

As Chelsea listened in disbelief, she began to realize the full scale of Kane’s deceit. According to the police officers, he was with another woman – and it wasn’t his wife. It was the woman who’d been alongside him at the end of those 10k runs. Just how many girlfriends did this lothario have on the go? Chelsea would soon find out.

The next day, Kane attended a divorce hearing where his wife petitioned for full custody of their three children. Their daughter, it turned out, was still very much alive. And at the courthouse in Illinois, the military man’s web of lies continued to unravel. Apparently, Chelsea had been far from the only ‘other woman’ in his life.

Both Chelsea and Kane’s current wife testified at the hearing, and they were joined by a third woman. The Daily Beast named her “Jessica” to protect her identity. According to her statement, she had been engaged to the philanderer back in 2017. And her story was certainly a familiar one.

This other deceived partner had been fed stories about Kane’s tragic past – as well as deployments that kept him away from her when she needed him to be around. In reality, though? He had been sneaking out for secret liaisons while his wife was at home expecting their third child. Determined to get to the bottom of things, the scorned women formed an unlikely alliance. 

Banding together, Jessica, Chelsea, and Kane’s wife looked over documents and managed to identify a number of other women who had been in relationships with the soldier since 2016. Unfortunately, some of them were reluctant to come forward with their stories because of their own military connections. But others had no such concerns.

“I think what I went through, I went through for a reason, because I was going to be the one to speak up,” Chelsea told The Daily Beast. “He’s been getting away with it for over a decade. Your time is up.” Later, she admitted that she felt some hesitancy around publicizing her story. In the end, though, she ultimately decided, “I also kind of want to see him burn.”

“He’s got this playbook,” Jessica told The Daily Beast. “He tells these lies about his dead children, about his PTSD, his deployments, and all the horrible things he’s had to do. He creates these imaginary traumas to cloak his lies in. It’s amazing lining up those lies across all the people I talked to and being like, ‘Wow… You too?’” At least there was one happy moment to come.

On June 13, 2021, Chelsea’s daughter Addison was born. Despite the traumatic events that took place just before her birth, she was in good health. And even though the new mom was heartbroken after finding out the truth, she still sent Kane photographs of the baby girl. According to The Daily Beast, though, he did not respond.

Then, as she struggled to adapt to her new life, Chelsea took to social media to share her story. And as the tale gained traction across the web, more women reached out to her to share their own unpleasant encounters with Kane. In one Instagram post, there are even allegations that the misconduct extended into his military life.

While covering the story in July 2021, reporters from The Daily Beast scoured Kane’s military records. And they exposed the sheer extent of his duplicity. Apparently, he had not been deployed overseas in seven years, proving that he’d lied to Chelsea and Jessica. He had never earned a Silver Star, either.

According to the military news website Army Times, Kane is currently under investigation for the allegations leveled against him. After all, adultery is a punishable offense – one that can even lead to dishonorable discharge in certain cases. In the meantime, The Daily Beast reported, he has been placed on suspension.

And today, Chelsea’s Instagram serves as a stark reminder of Kane’s lies. There are snaps of them together, but the bleak captions describe what was really going on. Despite all her struggles, though, the new mom has no regrets. She told The Daily Beast, “If it wasn’t for all this stuff I went through, I never would have gotten [Addison]. And I love her to pieces.”

Chelsea is doing her best to share her story so other women can be aware and empowered, but she can't reach everyone. And, unfortunately, some cases like this have an even grimmer end. Just look at Shan’ann Watts and her kids. It all started when Shan’ann got a friend request from a stranger named Chris on Facebook.

“One thing led to another and eight years later, we have two kids, we live in Colorado, and he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Shan’ann said. The couple was married in Charlotte, North Carolina, and on December 17, 2013, their daughter Bella was born.

Chris and Shan’ann suffered a major financial loss and filed for bankruptcy in June 2015, and the next month, on July 17th, their daughter Celeste was born. For the next few years, the Watts parents focused on raising their children and growing their careers, eventually moving to Frederick, Colorado.

In Frederick, they were both working parents. Chris worked at Anadarko Petroleum as an operator and Shan’ann worked at Le-Vel, a nutrition supplement company. Shan’ann loved posting about her daughters on Facebook and was a devoted mother. Though she was busy from Le-Vel, she made time for her girls.

On June 11, 2018, Shan’ann had big news for Chris — she was pregnant with their third child. This time she was having a boy. We’re not sure how Christ reacted to this announcement, but that same month is when he started an affair with his Anadarko Petroleum coworker, Nichol Kessinger.

Chris and Nichol had their first date at the end of June and consummated their relationship by the beginning of July. They immediately started to meet up 4-5 times a week. To separate his family and his mistress, Chris lied to Nichol, and told her he was divorced from Shan’ann.

Shan’ann, Celeste, and Bella went on a family vacation in July. Chris spent the week with Nichol at the Shelby American Collection car museum and Great Sand Dunes National Park. On July 30th, Chris wrote a love note to Nichol and then promptly joined his wife and children on their trip.

Two weeks later, Shan’ann was returning from a business trip with her friend and coworker, Nickole Atkinson, at 2 a.m. on August 13, 2018. Nickole dropped Shan’ann off at her home. This is the last time she would ever see her friend. Nickole tried to call Shan’ann the next afternoon, but no one ever picked up.

Nickole grew concerned and called Chris, who was at work. When he didn't seem very worried about his wife, an increasingly-frustrated Nickole contacted the police. The police searched the Watts home, discovering that Celeste and Bella were also gone. No one was sure where the female Watts’ were, and they were declared Endangered Missing Persons.

Naturally, the police began their investigation by questioning Chris about his family’s whereabouts. He'd been flippant on the phone with Nickole, but once the police were involved, his demeanor shifted. He was inconsolable, and went on the news begging his community for help finding his family. While he worked on his public image, investigators uncovered his affair with Nichol.

On August 15th, Chris failed a polygraph test. In a moment of desperation, he asked if he could speak with his dad. That’s when Chris finally revealed the tragic truth: He'd killed his entire family. He hid Shan’ann's body at an Anadarko Petroleum site, along with the bodies of Bella and Celeste.

It was all so violent, and all anyone wanted to know was why the doting father turned on his own flesh and blood. According to Chris himself, it all started on the morning on August 13th, when Shan’ann was trying to recover from her business trip. As soon as he saw her, he knew he had to unload his conscience.

He confessed to Shan’ann that he was having an affair with Nichol and that he wanted to end his marriage. The fact Shan’ann was pregnant with their unborn child they’d named Nico Lee was irrelevant to Chris. An angry Shan’ann reportedly said that Chris would never see his children again — so, he strangled her.

Once Shan’ann was dead, he wrapped her in a comforter. Then, he grabbed Bella and Celeste and drove to the oil site. He smothered Celeste in the backseat and disposed of her before doing the same to Bella. Chris finished this disgusting act by burying Shan’ann.

With this confession, Chris pleaded guilty to the nine charges against him: five counts of first-degree murder, one for unlawful termination of a pregnancy, and three for tampering with a deceased human body. This conviction earned him five life sentences plus another 84 years.

Chris is currently at a maximum-security prison in Wisconsin, but that doesn't mean his horrible crimes will soon be forgotten. Shan’ann, Celeste, and Bella are survived by her parents and her brother, Frankie Rzucek, who are determined to keep their memory alive in the form of the Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door.

"She was born to be a mother,” Frankie said of his sister. “She had ambition in her eyes and wanted a great life for her children and herself." Of American Murder: The Family Next Door, Frankie said, "This documentary gives my sister a voice and she speaks throughout it," he wrote on Facebook. 

"It also shows what her life was like before [Chris] came along and how happy she was with her beautiful family until he cheated and turned into a different person and became that monster," Frankie wrote. Besides the material being well-researched, the team who made it consulted with the Rzuceks.

“The director made sure we were a part of the whole process, and we met the whole team personally,” Frankie wrote. “They made sure we were ok with them making this before they even started, unlike Lifetime's horrible movie." The channel made Chris Watts: Confessions of a Killer without the family’s input.

The Rzuceks were upset with Lifetime’s cash gab of a movie. "It's a false narrative that does not accurately depict who Shan’ann was in life, who Bella was in life, who CeCe was in life," attorney Steven Lambert said in an interview. "When people go out and make things without their input ... it does pain them, it does hurt them."

Chris Watts will likely be in prison for the rest of his life, but that doesn't mean people will stop talking about his terrible crimes — especially when, as Shan'ann's family said, TV cameras get involved. The story of a husband murdering his family is compelling enough, but what about when it's the other way around?

Chris Watts' story made for disturbing TV, but it was the alleged crime, trial, and eventual unravelling of Casey Anthony that really captivated the masses. When the young mother was accused of murdering her only child, the world couldn't look away from TV's most confusing and shocking murder trial. People watching had to ask themselves one question.

"What do guilty people do?" asked prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick in her closing statements to Casey Anthony's jury. "They lie, they avoid, they run, they mislead... they divert attention away from themselves and they act like nothing is wrong." This, she said, was exactly what Anthony (right) was doing during her trial.

While the prosecution asserted Anthony tried to free herself from being a parent by killing her child, the defense claimed Caylee drowned by accident and George Anthony, the grandfather, hid the body. Casey lied, the defense said, because of abuse in her own childhood. On July 5, 2011, the verdict was in.

Alleged lies, confusion, and gaps in the prosecution's story led the jury to find Casey Anthony not guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and aggravated child abuse charges. She did, however, receive a four-year sentence for providing false information to law enforcement. The high-profile trial ended with a whimper.

Because of time served and good behavior, Casey Anthony spent just ten days in jail. Meanwhile, those connected to the trial tried picking up the pieces of their lives. They all had different thoughts on Anthony and whether they thought she was guilty.

Anthony's relationship with her parents is still very unsettled. During the trial, Casey accused her father of sexual abuse when she was younger. He firmly denied it, saying the accusations were made up to help Casey's defense.

Casey has been reported to have continued keeping a some contact with her mother, Cindy (below), but not her father. It wasn't until November 2018, when George survived a bad car accident, that something changed.

From a TV interview, George Anthony confirmed his daughter had reached out to him after the accident. In the same interview, George hoped the two could repair their relationship. But no one was sure if that were possible.

Casey's parents still lived in the Orlando, Florida, home they had back during the trial. A threat of foreclosure almost succeeded in throwing them out. By September 2019, they had finally resolved it. Other persons of interest had similar bad luck.

Another person of interest involved in the case was Anthony's nanny. Zenaida "Zanny" Gonzalez was, according to Anthony, watching young Caylee when the child went missing. The defense attorney believed, because of Casey's repressed trauma, "Zanny" was initially made up by Casey.

After the trial, Gonzalez tried to sue Anthony for defamation. The case didn't make it far, and in January 2016, Gonzalez was arrested on charges of theft. While working as a cleaner, Gonzalez had stolen and used the credit card of a cancer patient.

Meanwhile, Casey Anthony's old friend and roommate, Cameron Campana (below), doesn't believe any of her old friends or roommates keep in contact with her. Neither does he. Now 31-years old, he still can recall when his private life became suddenly very public.

Casey Anthony had been living with Campana and four others before her daughter went missing. Any routine college life was upended with the discovery of Caylee's body. Campana's last glimpse of his old friend was at her May 2011 trial. He has distinct memories.

Campana remembers the little girl's love for dancing whenever he had to babysit her. That no justice was served, he says, haunts him. And while he can't be certain that Casey Anthony was a killer, he hardly tries to think too much on it nowadays.

Meanwhile, Casey Anthony's boyfriend back then, Tony Lazzaro, never knew Anthony's child was missing. Casey and him had met online sometime before he was pulled into the media circus. His life changed in ways he never imagined.

After the trial, Lazzaro slipped back into a more private life. He was briefly involved in the music industry before moving into a different field. To this day, he has never been a part of interviews reflecting back on the trial. This wasn't the case for everyone.

Years later, Casey Anthony opened up about her horrific ordeal. "I understand the reasons people feel about me, she said. "I understand why people have the opinions that they do." But she reiterated her innocence.

"People found me guilty long before I had my day in court,"Anthony said. "I don't give a s*** about what anyone thinks about me, I never will." She did admit that she lied several times to officers, but she had reasons for that, too.

"Even if I would've told them" the truth, Anthony said, "I firmly believe I would have been in the same place. Because cops believe other cops... My dad was a cop, you can read into that what you want to." She, too, is trying to put her life together.

Her current life has been a quiet one. Now 32, she remains in Florida, sharing the home of an investigator that helped in her defense, Patrick McKenna. She works as a researcher for him. Recently, she spoke about Caylee publicly for the first time.

"Caylee would be 12 right now. And would be a total badass," Anthony told The Associated Press. "I'd like to think she'd be listening to classic rock, playing sports and putting up with no nonsense." She's even recently admitted something shocking about motherhood.

A source close to Anthony revealed to People magazine that Anthony is open to the idea of having another child. One could only wonder if another media frenzy could be on its way when that potential birth. George offered remarks at the possibility of another grandchild.

“Knowing now that she could potentially be a mom again, I hope she does better this time around than what she did last time,” George said on the Dr. Oz Show. Of course, most people will never forget that happened to Casey's first child...

Of those involved, little Caylee Anthony was the one who deserved so much more. She never got the justice she should have received, which is often the case in these horrific crimes against children. All we can do is hope that Caylee and other young victims of violence are at peace.