Shanann Watts’ Brother Wants You Watch ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’ On Netflix

"It gives my sister a voice."

Updated 4 years ago, October 19, 2020

The horrifying story of Shanann Watts and her children has been told thousands of times at this point. The pregnant mom was murdered by her husband, Chris Watts, who went on to murder the couple’s children in their Colorado home, all because he was having an affair and wanted to be free of his family. Last month, Netflix dropped their original documentary on the family, American Murder: The Family Next Door, and it quickly shot to the #1 position on the streaming platform.

Now Shanann’s brother, Frankie Rzucek, has made a post encouraging people to watch this documentary about his sister:

“I highly recommend watching this. It’s on Netflix. The director made sure we were a part of the whole process and we met the whole team personally. They made sure we were ok with them making this before they even started, unlike lifetimes horrible movie. This Documentary gives my sister a voice and she speaks throughout it. It also shows what her life was like before he came along and how happy she was with her beautiful family until he cheated and turned into a different person and became that monster.”

Rzucek even excitedly shared that he discovered Kylie Jenner was watching the series:

In recent years much of true crime content has come under fire for glorifying murderers and forgetting about victims. This was a big conversation when Netflix and Amazon Prime both released films about Ted Bundy in the last year, focusing on his love life. The reason American Murder: The Family Next Door is being well-reviewed is that it makes an effort to tell Shannan Watt’s story in her own words, using the stories she told about herself and her family on social media and over text messaging to her friends.

Previously, the world was shocked to see the viral video of Chris Watts pretending not to know where his family is and being questioned by a police officer, Shanann’s best friend, and their neighbor who caught Chris loading Shannan’s body into his truck on the neighbor’s Ring camera:

There’s even video of Chris Watts taking (and failing) a polygraph:

Now that Netflix has popularized the case even more, we’re thankful the victim’s family thinks they did a good job. The documentary is free for anyone with a Netflix subscription and available here. If you’d like to dig deeper into the case, here are some other documentaries we recommend.