The Perfect Father by John Glatt

The Perfect Father by John Glatt

In The Perfect Father, New York Times bestselling author John Glatt reveals the tragedy of the Watts family, whose seemingly perfect lives played out on social media--but the truth would lead to a vicious and heartbreaking murder.

In the early morning hours of August 13th, 2018, Shanann Watts was dropped off at home by a colleague after returning from a business trip. It was the last time anyone would see her alive. By the next day, Shanann and her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, had been reported missing, and her husband, Chris Watts, was appearing on the local news, pleading for his family's safe return.

But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than 24 hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: he had strangled his pregnant wife to death and smothered their daughters, dumping their bodies at a nearby oil site. Heartbroken friends and neighbors watched in shock as the movie-star handsome, devoted family man they knew was arrested and charged with first degree murder. The mask Chris had presented to the world in his TV interviews and the family's Facebook accounts was slipping--and what lay beneath was a horrifying image of instability, infidelity, and boiling rage.

In this first major account of the case, bestselling author and journalist John Glatt reveals the truth behind the tragedy and constructs a chilling portrait of one of the most shocking family annihilator cases of the 21st century.

John Glatt is the author of many bestselling true crime books, including Lost and Found, Secrets in the Basement, and others. He has worked as an investigative journalist in both England and America for more than 30 years. Glatt dropped out of school at the age of 16 and did a number of jobs, including tea boy and messenger, until landing a job as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper. He freelanced for numerous English newspapers before moving to New York in 1981, where he joined the News Limited staff and freelanced for Newsweek and the New York Post. In 1981, he wrote his first book, a biography of Billy Graham, and in 1998, he published For I Have Sinned, his first true crime novel.

He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Fox News, A Current Affair, BBC World News, and A&E Biography, among other programs, all around the world. His time is split between New York City, the Catskill Mountains, and London with his wife Gail.