Killer sought by Montreal police after failing to report to halfway house is arrested in
Montreal police say a convicted killer who was illegally at large has been arrested in Hamilton, Ont.
An arrest warrant was issued for Christopher Watts, 66, on Friday and police sought the public’s help as they searched for a man who was once diagnosed as a psychopath.
Watts had been “in Montreal when he breached the conditions of his (long-term offender) supervision,” Montreal police said in news release.
On June 27, 2001, a 13-year-old girl named Amanda Raymond died of an overdose on Watts’s bed during an all-night party at his home on Somme Island on Puslinch Lake, near Cambridge, Ont.
Watts underwent a trial and, on Nov. 24, 2003, he was found guilty of manslaughter. He was also found guilty of sexual assault and sexual interference for touching the teenager while she lay unconscious in his bed.
He later received a 12-year sentence that expired on Nov. 23, 2015, but as part of the same sentence, he was declared a long-term offender, which meant the Parole Board of Canada could impose conditions on Watts for 10 years after the prison term came to an end.
That period expired last year, but according to a decision made by the parole board in April, Watts violated the conditions imposed on him many times, including in situations where he was sentenced to additional prison terms.
In 2024, a judge in Ontario sentenced Watts to a prison term of 36 months for his fourth breach of his long-term supervision order. When the time he had already served was factored into the sentence, he had 799 days left to serve.
According to the recent parole decision, he was most recently serving time behind bars at a penitentiary in Quebec before he was ordered to reside at a halfway house.
On April 21, the board decided to revoke yet another release Watts recently enjoyed. At the same time, the board imposed a long series of conditions on his next release, which apparently took place sometime between April and the beginning of June.
The decision describes how, on Nov. 12, Watts qualified for a statutory release, but was required to spend most of it at a halfway house. He somehow obtained a cellphone, a violation of his release, and was given permission to have a computer and a USB stick that he could use for work. On Jan. 8, he handed a USB stick to a staff member of the halfway house where he was residing. When it was searched, the employee found two photos of nude young women stored on it.
The photos were another violation of his release conditions and he was returned to a penitentary.
The decision also details how Watts was once diagnosed as a psychopath in the past.
“A psychological risk assessment, dated August 2025, assessed you as a moderate-high risk for general recidivism, high risk for violent recidivism, and a well above average risk for sexual recidivism,” the author of the parole decision wrote. “The psychologist noted that you did not take responsibility for sexual offending and avoided certain topics during the interview.
“She recommended that you avoid all contact, even incidental, with teenage girls.”
His criminal record includes a case where Watts tied up a teenage girl and told two of his friends to kill her, but they left her abandoned on a farm instead.