Killer dad Chris Watts is blaming his former mistress for his decision to brutally murder his wife and two little girls — and only refers to her as “Jezebel.”
The Post has obtained several handwritten notes from the 39-year-old Watts, who is serving a life sentence in a small cell at Dodge Correctional Institution.
In one letter, dated March 2020, Watts wrote a prayer of confession. “The words of a harlot have brought me low,” he wrote. “Her flattering speech was like drops of honey that pierced my heart and soul. Little did I know that all her guests were in the chamber of death.”
“How did I let this happen?” he continued. “The blessings you have bestowed upon me were right in front of me, and still I followed the perfume of a strange woman.”
Watts shared most of his thoughts with Dylan Tallman, a fellow prisoner at the Wisconsin lockup who befriended Watts. Tallman was in the cell next to Watts, and the two men became close.
“We started talking,” Tallman says. “We had a lot of very long conversations, spiritual conversations.”
They began studying the Bible together, with Watts even calling Tallman his “spiritual twin.” While tabloids speculated that their relationship had turned sexual, Tallman flatly denies that.
“No, that was someone just making things up,” he told The Post. “We were studying the Scriptures together.”
For more than a year, Watts had planned to write a book with Tallman. When Watts changed his mind, Tallman repackaged their writings in a series of three books, titled “The Cell Next Door.” (Parts one and two are already available. The third installment will be released later this week.)
In the first book, Tallman said he and Watts called Nichol Kessinger “Jezebel” as they talked about her — a reference to a biblical woman who “by her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality.”
“I was having an affair with this girl and I ended up in love with two women at the same time,” Watts told Tallman, according to the book. “It’s what led up to what happened. She is of evil spirits, like Jezebel.”
(In the 1 Kings and 2 Kings books of the Bible, Jezebel was a wicked queen who turned the people away from God and convinced them to worship idols.)
“He admitted that he was stupid to cheat on his wife, and he asked God’s forgiveness every day for his infidelity,” Tallman writes.
Watts claimed to Tallman that Kessinger told him to choose between her and his family on the night of the murders. “Jezebel was the forbidden fruit,” he allegedly said, “and it was costly.”
Watts has admitted to strangling his pregnant wife, Shanann, in their Colorado home in August 2018. He then drove her body to a job site at the oil company where he worked and dumped her. His two daughters — Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3 — were in his truck. He suffocated them as they begged for mercy, and stashed their bodies in oil drums.
Watts pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colorado prison officials soon arranged to have him transferred to Wisconsin for his safety.
Kessinger still lives in Colorado, but now goes by a different name. She has not spoken publicly for several years about her relationship with Watts.
She did not return The Post’s messages for comment.