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Close friends of the Colorado man accused of slaying his family are horrified that they defended him and welcomed him into their home.
“That’s something I’ll never forget, that we, we allowed this guy into our house,” Nick Thayer, a friend of Chris Watts, told local TV station KUSA.
The Thayers invited Watts, 33, to spend the night last week after he made a public appeal for the safe return of his wife, Shanann, 34, and their two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3. They also defended him vigorously on social media from people suggesting that he’d murdered his pregnant wife and their toddlers.
The next day, Aug. 15, Watts was arrested on suspicion of killing his family and was later charged with their murders.
“Had we had any inclination that we thought he was involved, at all, no way would I have let him in my house with my wife and kid,” Thayer said.
Nick and his wife, Amanda Thayer, were especially concerned that Watts stayed in a bedroom across the hall from their 5-year-old daughter Emily’s room.
“It’s just a haunting memory at this point,” Nick Thayer said.
Their daughter had planned to spend the weekend at a sleepover with the Watts girls — but now the Thayers don’t know how to tell her she won’t see her friends again.
“I just looked at, while I was giving her a bath this morning and taking her to school, I just kept looking at her like, how do I tell you that your best friend’s gone?”
Though the Thayers said they were good friends with the Wattses, they never discussed each other’s marriages, both Nick and Amanda said. But Shanann had reportedly told some other pals that she suspected Chris of cheating, and court documents allege that he was having an affair with a co-worker.
Chris Watts allegedly told investigators that his 15-week-pregnant wife went berserk when he told her he wanted to separate — and that he killed her after seeing her strangle one of their daughters on a baby monitor.
The Thayers said they’ve since apologized to Shanann’s family for sticking by Chris.
Nick said he told Shanann’s mother, “I’m so sorry, like, we didn’t know. We thought we were doing the right thing,” and that a member of the family responded, “We get it, we don’t hold it against you.”
