Amanda McMahon, who had an affair with Chris Watts months before he murdered his wife and two daughters, has detailed unsettling and violent encounters during their relationship. In an interview on the Daily Mail's Trial USA podcast, McMahon described Watts' aggressive behavior during their first sexual encounter, including choking her, and his increasing disparagement of his wife, Shanann Watts.
McMahon stated she was intimate with Chris Watts for approximately eight months. They met on Tinder while she was experiencing a difficult divorce, and Watts claimed he had also recently separated from his wife. He referred to Shanann Watts as his "baby mama" and "never referred to her as his wife," McMahon told reporter Luke Kenton. According to McMahon, Watts portrayed his wife as using their children as "pawns to make his life miserable."
During their initial meeting, McMahon recounted that Watts became "extremely rough" and choked her without consent. "He did something that made me pretty uncomfortable," she said. "He choked me. He was pretty aggressive… he had his hand on my neck probably about a few minutes in." She described him as having "animalistic fury" and that "things just kind of changed. Something came over him, and we went from normal to crazy, like brutal almost."
Kenton, who conducted the exclusive interview with McMahon, noted a recurring theme of Watts' "visible lust for violence." McMahon speculated that Watts may have been directing aggression felt towards Shanann during their sexual encounters. "McMahon believed that Chris was desperately dissatisfied with his life," Kenton said. "He wanted to escape the life he had with Shanann and blamed her for it. In that internalised resentment, he would take it out on the women around him, which included her, which could obviously happen in sexual encounters."
McMahon also shared that Watts increasingly used derogatory terms to describe his wife in the months leading up to the murders. "He would just say the most awful things," she said, recalling Watts calling Shanann a "gold digger" and "psycho." He allegedly stated that he wished she would work and that she "did nothing but nag." McMahon commented, "I always thought that the best thing you could do for your children is to love their parent - and that's definitely not by saying horrible things about your ex-significant other."
The interview with McMahon is featured in a four-part miniseries on Chris Watts on the Trial USA podcast, timed with the eighth anniversary of the August 13, 2018, murders. On that date, Chris Watts strangled Shanann Watts in their Frederick, Colorado, home following an argument. He then drove his daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, to an oil field where he smothered them and concealed their bodies in oil tanks, burying Shanann nearby. Prosecutors suggested Watts' motive was to start a new life, and he is currently serving a life sentence.