The Megyn Kelly Show
Missing Plane MH370 Mystery, Horrifying Chris Watts Case, D.C. Sniper Saga - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode
01 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What true crime stories are covered in this episode?
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to today's bonus Sunday true crime episode. We've got some news coming in in the world of MK true crime. More on that next week. So all month, we're going to be bringing you a Sunday mega episode featuring some MK show true crime coverage.
Today's includes in-depth features on the missing plane, MH370. the horrifying, horrifying Chris Watts case. Once you hear about that case, you never forget it. And the DC sniper saga. All right, here it is. Hope you enjoy the program and we will see you Monday. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and the final day of our Hot Crime Summer week.
Today, we investigate the mystery of MH370, the missing plane. You may think you know this story, but you do not know it like this. Oh my gosh. We're gonna take you from takeoff to the controversial search and investigation with famed writer, author, and journalist, William Longavisha. In addition to his journalism, he's also an aviation expert.
He was a professional pilot for many years before turning to journalism, and he has researched and investigated the MH370 findings more than pretty much any other journalist, including those involved with that recent Netflix special, and we're going to get to that too.
We will try to get to the bottom once and for all about what happened, where that plane is, and we will get into the head of that pilot. set the stage because I watched this whole special on Netflix about what happened to the plane. I was excited. I was like, okay, I want my answers.
I walked away frustrated and kind of angry that I had been led down a bunch of paths that seemed equally unreasonable and led to trust people who turned out to be, to me, kind of quacky and didn't get any answers. There wasn't an answer. So Is there an answer? I mean, is there a better place to go for what not definitively, but most likely happened to MH370?
Yes, there is completely an answer. It's indisputable. In fact, the answer is indisputable. The motive is a different question. The why is the question. The what is indisputable.
So let's start there. What happened to MH370?
This airplane took off, it was in 2014, March, at night, just after midnight, out of Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, so Air Malaysia. They were going to Beijing, about a six-hour flight, straight on up the coast of Asia, basically, to Beijing. And after about, you know, after leveling off, a few minutes after leveling off, it got over the South China Sea, disappeared from radar.
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Chapter 2: What happened during the flight of MH370?
The most important being the Imarsat data, right? Can you explain what that is?
Yes, I would say that the most important initial data points is primary radar, either military radar or just raw radar. And that showed within a few days, it clearly showed that the airplane turned west across the Mele Peninsula and then went northwest up the Straits of Malacca, around the top of Indonesia, and then south from there into the depths of the Indian Ocean.
It was on radar for a long time after making the first turn. So that's the first thing.
It was or was not? It was or was not? It was, okay.
It was on primary radar. It was not on normal air traffic control, computer-enhanced, transponder-based secondary radar, which is the normal air traffic control radar, carries a lot of data with it. It was on the kind of radar that the military uses for air defense reasons, and also that lies underneath normal air traffic control radar. So it was an unenhanced raw target
And that was the first thing. No matter what, it stayed. I'm going to say it was in the air, being seen by some form of radar for about an hour after making the first crazy silent turn off course from Beijing. As it proceeded then around the top of Indonesia, it then disappeared from radar range, normal radar range, both Thai and Indonesian, let alone Malaysian military.
But at about the same time that that occurred, that it was being lost from normal radar, it's complicated to explain this, but a series of electronic handshakes And these handshakes are related to an obscure communication device in the ceiling of the cabin of the 777.
This was a 777 Boeing that is responsible for some forms of communication, largely entertainment stuff and other things, reports to maintenance. So satellite based. And those handshakes are.
where either the airplane or the ground-based satellite, the ground base of the satellite system was trying to establish communications, always unsuccessfully, but the attempt to establish communications carried with it whispers of content, with hints of location and of direction, and in the end of a final violent dive.
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Chapter 3: What evidence suggests the pilot's actions were intentional?
Now, do we know why that was, that it wasn't being picked up on the normal air traffic control radar?
Well, because the airplane's transponder was turned off. If we're talking about a simple...
simple uh single failure this is not uncommon it's why airplanes typically have two transponders i mean transponder failures are not uncommon uh and you know it's not very exotic technology that kind of transponder it's similar similar to the traffic uh the total transponders you have in your car easy pass or something like that so um the transponder transmits all kinds of information
about the airplane, the flight number, where it's going, et cetera, et cetera, altitude. It piggybacks on the data coming in with raw primary radar. So we know that the transponder turned off. Did it turn itself off? Or did someone turn it off? Well, given that it's totally unrelated to communications, it happened seconds after communications stopped.
And given that it is totally unrelated to which way the airplanes flying, it happened at the same time that the airplane made its first radical crazy turn, we know it was turned off, it didn't turn itself off. These are independent, these would be independent issues. So
Yeah, that's what happens to me. It's a logical deduction. What about the second transponder? Were they both turned off? Because you say there's a backup. They both would have been turned off?
No, they weren't. You can't turn off the primary. I mean, the primary is what the military uses to see pieces of metal in the sky, right? They don't rely on transponders to say when the enemy is invading their airspace. So primary transponder, you can't turn it off. It's just going to pick you up.
And in fact, the Malaysian air traffic control has a baseline primary radar, but they didn't look at it. We're talking levels of incompetence here, which is part of the story of what happened here in terms of the disappearance. The military very quickly said, admitted, basically out of Penang on the peninsula there, where they have a fighter base.
that they were watching it, or at least they said they were watching it. They should have been watching it. And they said, well, we knew it was a threat and we knew what the airplane was, so we didn't bother to make anything out of it. We didn't send any interceptors up to find out what's going on because we knew it was MH370. So who cares?
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Chapter 4: What insights do we gain from Chris Watts' emotional state during his confessions?
It tends to be in a very emotional, very moving moment, none of which was present there. No, but you know, I looked at that again. I remember seeing that years ago, but I also looked at his confessions. And he is one of the most subdued, low-key people in those confessions. So I think that's his personality. He's not going to be extremely expressive. It's just not part of who he is.
And so that reaction to the news that Shanann is going to have a third baby is, you know, is pretty much in keeping with his very low key, almost at times depressive personality. It's the it's the common at the end when he says words to the effect, something about when you want something, meaning when she wants it. He did not make a comment about what he wanted.
So I thought the affect was keeping with how he is, but it was the final comment that was telling to me. Is there any reason to be concerned if you partner up with somebody who has that flat affect as a default? Like they have difficulty feeling emotion. They have difficulty feeling emotion, whether it's great love or great...
hesitancy in committing a murder you know they're not built in a way that is necessarily safe well that's a good point but i think with um with the whole idea of being able to understand your partner um or your family members you know you have to really look at them and and and be a pretty good judge of character on a daily basis and not just every couple of months or something like that.
So I think it's important to look at whether or not they're becoming more depressed. Are they talking about suicide? Are they talking about leaving the family?
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Chapter 5: What warning signs should we look for in relationships that may lead to violence?
Are they talking about not wanting to be a part of the family again? So for me, there are a lot of puzzle pieces that are likely missing from this family that were never posted on Facebook.
that would give us more indications that he had started to check out but with that checking out was there any indication that that with with that decision to no longer be really an emotional part of the family could that have meant that that anger towards shenan was building and building and building because looking at chris you don't see an angry man But that means he's internalized it.
But what did she see on a daily basis? What did she see that many of us would have just looked at and said, he's just having a bad day. And sometimes that's the case, but sometimes it's not the case. And those are the kind of indicators that you want to look for. To me, everything seems to go downhill as soon as he meets this other woman.
To me, based on her Facebook, based on the Netflix documentary, which is very worth your time on this whole show, it's called American Murder, The Family Next Door. He was kind of... the beta in the relationship. I mean, she was the alpha and in control about most of the decisions they were making.
And then he met this other woman and really started distancing himself and started, it seemed to me like a hatred started to brew for Shanon. The other woman's name is Nicole Kessinger. She worked like he did at this petroleum company. And We're showing a picture of her on the board now. And I mean, they met in June of 2018.
It was August 13th, 2018, that he committed a triple murder, quadruple murder of his entire family.
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Chapter 6: How can understanding Chris Watts' behavior help us prevent future tragedies?
I mean, two months, Mary Ellen. How do we even start to understand that? Well, his girlfriend, the woman that he met and started to have the affair with, she was kind of the conduit. He was already in that emotional state. My sense is that he was already feeling incredible animosity towards Shanann, and she didn't realize it. Then he meets this woman, and it could have been Susie Smith.
It could have been, you know, Ann Jones. But he meets her, and... And she responds to him and they begin to have that relationship. I don't think it was specifically her, but I think he was ready at that point. So I think it had been building up. That's interesting. So it could have been anyway, because we'll talk about her, but she's been very demonized by most people looking at this case.
And there are questions about whether she did something intentionally to encourage this. Well, I think I would be really careful as a profiler to credit her with any involvement in this case.
Until I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to her and look at her background, look at her personality, look at the kinds of things that, you know, that kind of really made her tick on a daily basis to see whether or not her personality lends itself to being co-opted like this. Because if it did, we have to look at it and say, they just met. They just met.
She starts to have this relationship, which she's probably very excited about. She's even looking at wedding dresses. And then to jump to the conclusion that now she morphs into this co-conspirator to help him, you know, annihilate his whole family is a little bit too much for me at this point. I think she got caught up in this in this.
excitement of having this relationship and it really is hard when something like this happens just like Scott Peterson not to say oh she had to know or she had to encourage him that is a big step to say that the partner encouraged Chris in something like this I'm not sure that that's there. And we know that in Scott Peterson, Amber Fry did not know anything about Lacey Peterson.
She was truly caught off guard that he was married at all. Had no idea. And as soon as she found out, she went to cops, worked with them. And as part of the reason, he is now in prison. She was a good guy in the whole thing. This woman, I don't know. She definitely misled the cops. She tried to tell them, oh, I didn't know he was married. And then they found Google searches by her.
You know, like, does the mistress ever get the man? I mean, she knew. She knew that he was married. and downplayed her knowledge with the police. It doesn't mean she encouraged a murder, a triple, quadruple murder. But it's one of the reasons why this woman has now had to change her name. She's effectively in witness protection because people blamed her. So at the same time, we see that
lackluster, I'm having the third baby reaction. Shanon posted one of many videos of the daughters talking about their dad, Chris, on Facebook. And I mean, you could find any number of these, but every video between him and the children showed a loving interaction, what looked like a loving interaction.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did law enforcement face during the D.C. sniper investigation?
It's a local police matter. Uh, The Montgomery County Police Department or Montgomery County Sheriff's Department was brought in immediately. And at that point, they were they had. I think they had just a handful of detectives working for them. And of course, these detectives would have to go from one scene to the next. And of course, normally they would get one shooting every several months.
And now they have two shootings within 24 hours, 27 hours, maybe. Do you remember whether there were eyewitnesses this early? You know, I imagine they'd be asking, did anybody see anything? Like, did anybody see anything? Did anybody have something to report on how it went down? There were a lot of there were a lot of people interviewed.
And the problem here in this case at this time is that whoever the shooter is, He's a ghost. Nobody sees him. Nobody heard exactly where the shot came from. In the case of the second shooting, they didn't even know a shot went off. So there was some confusion at that point. Of course, there are people who who were interviewed.
And this is something that we have to deal with all the time when people are interviewed about something as.
Chapter 8: What impact did eyewitness accounts have on the investigation?
as horrible as a murder, sometimes they will sort of fill in blanks that they don't really have in their memory. They will do this either intentionally or unintentionally. And this can cause an investigation to go off on tangents and actually really impede a thorough and quick investigation. And we will start to see that very shortly as these shootings keep continuing.
I'm recalling this story of a law school professor who got to class late, said, so sorry, had a road rage incident, lunatic on the street. I'm fine. Let's move on. About 10 minutes later, somebody shows up frothing at the mouth at the classroom door, banging on the door, threatening, threatening. Finally, the guy comes in, has a gun. This is back when I was in law school.
So, you know, early 90s before we were, you know, crazy about, you know, Matt, this is a mass shooting. There's a mass shooting. There's a mass shooting. Pulls out a gun. Everybody says, oh, some people get down. Some people cower. People scream before everybody had a cell phone. And the professor keeps yelling. The guy runs out. You know, the intruder runs out.
The professor goes to run after him. comes back into the classroom minutes later, hands out a form to everybody in the classroom and says, write down everything you remember about the intruder. It was all a farce. And today you would get sued by every single student in that class. Today you would. But it's a great teaching experiment because it's a social experiment, really.
But what it is, is trying to demonstrate the fallacy that eyewitness testimony is actually accurate. We do exactly the same thing in the FBI Academy and the FBI National Academy. We actually staged, though, actual bank robberies, for example, for our students to witness eyewitnesses. And they are there on site.
And you'll have 50 students, either new agent trainees or advanced police trainees, who are witnessing exactly the same event. And then we do sort of a chart, a flow chart of all the different answers. How many shots were fired? What color was the vehicle? How many people in the vehicle? How long were they in the bank? How long did they...
They shoot when they came out, how many shots were fired, then all of these details. And you will see that they're all over the place. But then but then we teach people, these people who professionally have to be able to recount details very well, how to focus and how to weed out all the other details.
Other aspects that can distract distract you, because when you're when you're involved in a life situation and then a violent crime happens in front of you, you didn't expect it to happen. You were expecting to take notes or to go to the store or to pick up your daughter from school and something else intervene. But all those other things are still distracting you. Right.
So that's the next level for anybody training to be basically in your job, which is to learn to use all that adrenaline for good to pay hyper attention. Yes, to focus. And I remember my colleague, we wound up practicing law together and she used to be a nurse before she went to law school. And so this has happened to her in her law school. And
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