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The American Murder Netflix doc on the Watts family was bad.
Bad, lazy, bunch of missed opportunities, it takes more away from the events than it adds and is one of the least substantial examinations of the murders, preferring to buy into the line that these murders happened out of no where and are impossible to explain.
That family was in desperate financial straits and it started breaking down their marriage and everything that happened afterward was a symptom of this earlier unraveling that was not being dealt with because they did not have the means to do anything about it
True crime as a genre does this shit all the time where they're quick to characterize this kind of thing as the work of a person whose actions are so horrific it's not even worth it trying to rationally understand how they came to do what they ultimately did
because if we did that then we'd have to be able to take into consideration the conditions in which people are living in our society that contribute to such horrific outcomes, and once we identify them as factors it's a moral imperative and objective public good to change them
They had a $450K home at a time when they were at best making like $60-70k a year, substantial medical debt, 3 out of the 4 members of the family were chronically ill, they've got another baby on the way while facing foreclosure, and one of them was working for a fucking mlm
They also had student loan debt so put that on the pile too. On top of all of that they had declared bankruptcy two years prior to this and would not be able to declare bankruptcy again until like 2023 and they were already in serious trouble.
That degree of hardship destroys relationships (fortunately most don't end in family annihilation) and goes a long way to explain how things started going so wrong. That man began to see his family not as people but as expenses, as burdens, ruining his life.
This family hit a kind of trifecta of predatory industries that set them up to fail and give them no way out after. They were granted a home loan that was laughably beyond the scope of what they could actually pay so they were doomed to foreclosure from the beginning
They were in serious debt for medical care that three of them required plus surgeries for Shannan and her younger daughter to the tune of $50k AFTER they had gone through bankruptcy proceedings so it didn't fall into what was discharged 2 years prior
They had extreme credit card debt, nearly $100K in total that they'd racked up trying to stay on top of their bills and daily living expenses, so they were only going to end up digging themselves in deeper and deeper there
And finally, Shannann was working for an MLM, which given their dire financial predicament was probably the worst occupation you could possibly have while going through all of that.
I don't believe Shannann was making as much money as she claimed she was once you factor in product she'd have to purchase to maintain her rank in the Le-Vel scheme and keep that car allowance coming, otherwise she's stuck making the payments in full on a Lexus she cannot afford
and yes, Le-Vel has a car allowance but it's for specific luxury vehicles, leased only, and they can stop giving it to you as soon as you fail to make the number of sales in a month that earns you that bonus.
They already had to sell Chris's beloved mustang to help with expenses, leaving him with a truck an employer provided truck that had GPS pinging it constantly to make sure he never used it to go anywhere but work and home. He had to switch vehicles to pick his kids up from school
They were in a situation where they've got a luxury car they can't afford with or without the allowance because if she doesn't perform well enough it's gone. You have to make those sales and if you don't that month then you make up for it by buying extra product to get there.
thread continues here https://twitter.com/non_bona_dicta/status/1316268635011383297?s=20
