Chris Watts Hasn’t ‘Changed’ After Finding Religion in Prison, Cellmate Secrets’ Cheryln Cadle Says

Chris Watts isn’t a “changed man” after he was sentenced to life in prison for triple murder, author Cheryln Cadle exclusively tells In Touch.

“I do not. I don’t think he is,” she says adamantly ahead of her appearance on Lifetime’s Cellmate Secrets. 

The Colorado native, 36, claimed he found religion while behind bars at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, despite not being “religious before he went in.”

“There’s a lot of prison religion, you know? And I think in one sense, it made him feel like he would get out sooner if people thought that he was just this, a redeemed man who couldn’t possibly do anything like this again,” Cadle, who wrote The Murders of Christopher Watts and Letters from Christopher: The Tragic Confessions of the Watts Family Murders, speculated. “In one of the letters that he wrote me, he states that he believed that he would be out of prison after maybe 25 years or something,” she added, noting that “he wants to help people on the outside.”

Cadle, a true crime enthusiast, corresponded with Watts via letters from prison. In them, he divulged information to her that was not yet known to the public.

“I think he knows he’s a murderer. He knows he’s a monster. He knows he did horrific things,” she says, “but I think for him to keep those separate is the only way that maybe he can deal … because he feels there’s no way he would do that now.”

Watts received five life sentences in November 2018 for murdering his expectant wife, Shanann Watts, and their two young daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, in August 2018. At the time, he was secretly involved in an affair with colleague Nichol Kessinger.

“‘If I had not met Nikki, I would never have killed my family,'” Cadle recalled Watts saying to her. “Christopher says he loved her like he has never loved anyone else before,” she told DailyMailTV in 2019. “At the same time, he loves Shanann, although he knows that she was not his soulmate and not the person he was supposed to be with.”

Watts pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, one count of unlawful termination of pregnancy and three counts of tampering with a deceased human body. His plea deal allowed him to avoid the death penalty.

Shanann’s remains were discovered in a grave, and the bodies of their daughters were found in oil tanks at a company he previously worked for. His late spouse was 15 weeks along in her pregnancy when she died.

He always “had this in him,” Cadle assures. “He didn’t just snap.”

Cellmate Secrets: Chris Watts premieres on Lifetime on Friday, June 25 at 10 p.m. ET following the enhanced encore of the original Lifetime movie Chris Watts: Confessions of a Killer.