The father of a Colorado mother who was brutally murdered with her two young daughters has said that his family has been the target of merciless online bullying.
The Denver Channel reports that Frank Rzucek, the father of Shanann Watts and the grandfather of Bella and Celeste Watts, held a news conference outside the family’s former Frederick, Colorado, home, begging for the online harassment to stop.
“Just stop. Please, just stop,” Rzucek reportedly said in front of news crews this week after flying in from North Carolina to read a prepared statement.
“I don’t want to go into the specifics, but I will say that our family, including Shanann and her children – and our grandchildren – have been ridiculed, demeaned, slandered, (and) mocked in the most vicious ways you can imagine,” Ruzcek said.
The grieving father reportedly said that internet trolls has been spreading false rumors about the victims, and that Shanann’s relatives have even received death threats.
“This is so wrong. It is cruel. It is heartless,” the father said.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Chris Watts pleaded guilty in November to the murders of his pregnant wife and 3- and 4-year-old daughters. He is serving multiple life sentences in a Wisconsin prison.
In February, Watts sat down for a prison interview with law enforcement agents, and shared for the first time the details of the brutal killings last August. Watts admitted that he strangled his wife in bed and then drove his daughters — with Shanann’s dead body in the car — to an oil field where he buried Shanann before smothering his daughters to death and dropping their bodies in oil tanks.
Watts admitted that he was having an affair with a co-worker, Nichol Kessinger, at the time of the murders and had told his wife he wanted a divorce on the morning of her murder.
According to the Denver Channel, Rzucek said at the news conference that he had appealed to popular social media sites like YouTube and and Facebook for help stopping the harassment, but that the companies have not cooperated. He reportedly said he wanted Congress to create laws that would spare “victims of unspeakable crimes from this kind of abuse.”
“[Shanann] would have defended herself and now I’m here defending her,” Rzucek said.
“It doesn’t need to be like this, I shouldn’t have to be out here doing this.”
[Feature image: Frank Rzucek (L) Frankie Rzucek (R) at the Weld County Courthouse on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018 (RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via AP, Pool)]
