Chris Watts, the Colorado man serving five consecutive life sentences for murdering his pregnant wife and two young daughters in 2018, has submitted a formal request to marry from behind bars at a maximum-security Wisconsin prison. The woman he wants to marry is Lizzie Henderson, a 39-year-old Ohio realtor who has visited him dozens of times and even applied to change her legal name to Lizzie Watts.
According to the New York Post, Henderson relocated to Wisconsin to be closer to Watts, who is incarcerated at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun. The two have told each other they are in love, and Henderson submitted a marriage request to prison officials as part of the process. Per the Daily Mail, which first reported the relationship, Henderson visited Watts 20 times in 2025 alone and spent Christmas Day with him that year.
A Relationship Built Under Strict Supervision
Any romantic contact between the pair has unfolded under tight institutional limits. Dodge Correctional Institution prohibits physical contact between inmates and visitors until the very end of a visit, at which point up to 10 seconds of contact is allowed. During one such visit, Watts and Henderson reportedly embraced for that full 10 seconds before parting.
A woman identified as Lisa Johnson told the Daily Mail she witnessed the two canoodling during a 2025 visit to the facility, describing Henderson as googly-eyed and really excited to take a picture with Watts. Henderson has said publicly that how the relationship began is between her, Watts, and God, and Watts has claimed to be a born-again Christian, reportedly clutching a Bible while speaking with her. The Post notes Watts has had a string of pen-pal girlfriends and female admirers write to him since his imprisonment.
Wisconsin's Rules for Inmate Marriage
Wisconsin prisoners can submit requests to marry, but they must meet strict criteria and receive formal approval from the warden before any wedding can proceed. Under Wisconsin Department of Corrections Policy DAI 309.00.06, updated in 2018, incarcerated individuals must show the marriage poses no security threat and that the proposed spouse is not a victim or co-defendant, and the policy generally requires an inmate to have at least nine months remaining on their sentence unless that requirement is waived, according to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Even if approved, the marriage would not change the physical realities of Watts's confinement. Wisconsin state correctional regulations do not permit conjugal visits for any prison inmate, meaning no private overnight visits would ever be allowed. The U.S. Supreme Court's 1987 ruling in Turner v. Safley established that inmates retain a constitutional right to marry and that prison officials cannot deny such requests without a legitimate security justification, though that right does not extend to physical intimacy behind bars.
The Crimes That Put Watts Behind Bars
Watts, now 41, pleaded guilty in 2018 to killing his wife, Shanann Watts, and their two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, at their home in Frederick, Colorado. Shanann was 34 and 15 weeks pregnant with the couple's planned son, whom they intended to name Nico, when Watts strangled her and smothered Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, with their own blankets. He then drove his daughters' bodies to an oil field about an hour outside Frederick and disposed of all three bodies in oil wells.
Watts told police at the time that he felt trapped by his marriage and wanted to start a new life with a colleague, Nichol Kessinger, with whom he was having an affair. He lied repeatedly about the killings before eventually confessing and pleading guilty, and he was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without parole. Weld County prosecutors agreed to remove the death penalty from consideration in exchange for his guilty plea, doing so at the explicit request of Shanann's family to avoid a lengthier trial, according to background compiled on Wikipedia.
Watts was transferred from Colorado to Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun shortly after sentencing, a move officials made over safety and security concerns tied to his high-profile status and the risk of inmate violence. The facility, which converted from a state hospital for the criminally insane into a prison in 1978, now serves as the central intake and medical reception center for Wisconsin's adult male prison population, housing nearly 1,600 inmates as of 2023.
Financial Judgment Looms Over Any Future
Public fascination with Watts intensified after Netflix released the documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door in 2020, which drew on original law enforcement footage and personal archives and is credited with fueling an increase in pen-pal correspondence directed at him. But any financial upside from that notoriety, or from a future marriage, would run headlong into a massive civil judgment. In 2019, a Colorado judge ordered Watts to pay $6 million to Shanann's parents, Frank and Sandra Rzucek, following a wrongful death lawsuit — $1 million for each family victim plus $3 million for emotional suffering — meaning any assets or earnings he generates remain subject to claim by her family.
Waupun's prison system, where Dodge Correctional Institution is located, has faced its own scrutiny in recent years. Hoodline previously reported on a case involving a former guard at the neighboring Waupun Correctional Institution, part of a broader wave of misconduct probes and criminal charges brought against correctional staff following inmate deaths at facilities in the town.
