Chris Watts has ended his relationship with Lizzie Henderson after reportedly telling her that God had instructed him to break up with her, just weeks after the couple’s plans to marry in prison were revealed.
Two sources said the relationship ended after pressure from Watts’s family, particularly his mother Cindy, who had not approved of Henderson. Watts, 41, is serving multiple life sentences at Dodge Correctional Institution in Wisconsin for the 2018 murders of his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two daughters.
“She never warmed up to Lizzie,” a family source said. “But no one was on board with him having a relationship with her. And Chris listens to his family.”
“Chris would never marry someone who his mother didn’t approve of. Not even in jail.”
The sources said Watts told Henderson he no longer had “peace” about the relationship and believed God was telling him they should not remain together.
Henderson, 39, had moved from Ohio to Wisconsin with her mother to be closer to Watts and became a regular visitor to the maximum-security prison in Waupun. Prison records showed she visited him 20 times in 2025 and spent Christmas Day with him in 2024.
She had also filed a confidential application in Racine County to change her name and had begun using the name Lizzie Watts, relatives said. The couple had reportedly sought permission to marry within the Wisconsin prison system.
The relationship appeared to have advanced well beyond that of a conventional prison correspondence. A fellow visitor, Lisa Johnson, said she saw Watts and Henderson kiss during a visit in August 2025.
Johnson said Watts was holding a Bible and that Henderson appeared captivated by him. At the end of the visit, she said, the pair embraced, kissed and exchanged declarations of love.
Henderson previously acknowledged the relationship but declined to explain how she had become involved with one of America’s most notorious killers. “How things began is between me, him and God,” she said, describing Watts as a born-again Christian.
She also said she understood that outsiders would struggle to comprehend the relationship. Asked about Watts’s crimes, she said: “He knows how I feel. I don’t know all the people involved but I would want to respect them.”
She described the murders as “something harsh for anyone to experience”. Henderson could not be reached for comment on the reported break-up.
Watts’s reliance on religion to explain the split marks a reversal for a relationship in which faith had been presented as central. He has described himself as a born-again Christian and spent years studying the Bible in prison.
The family source said: “If Chris says that God wants him to do something, he’ll do it. And I guess God wanted him to remain single.”
Chris Watts’s life sentence for family murders
Watts became the focus of an international case after Shanann, 34, and their daughters Bella, four, and Celeste, three, disappeared from their home in Frederick, Colorado, in August 2018. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant with a son the couple planned to name Nico.
Watts initially presented himself as a distressed husband and father, but investigators became suspicious after learning he was having an affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger. He later admitted killing Shanann and taking her body and the girls to an oil site where he worked.
He pleaded guilty in November 2018 to five counts of first-degree murder and other charges in a deal that spared him the death penalty. A judge sentenced him to five life sentences, three of them consecutive, without the possibility of parole.
Watts was later transferred from Colorado to Wisconsin because of security concerns. Since his conviction, he has attracted a string of admirers and prison pen pals, while the murders were examined in the 2020 Netflix documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door.
For Henderson, the reported break-up ends a relationship for which she had relocated her life around the prospect of a future with a man who will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
