Confessed family annihilator Chris Watts is reportedly taking steps to appeal his conviction, according to an insider source who spoke to People magazine.

The unidentified source, who is reportedly close to Watts, told the magazine that Watts is looking into his legal options for a possible appeal of the conviction, even though he pleaded guilty to murdering his pregnant wife Shanann Watts and their two young daughters, Bella and Celeste.

The source reportedly said that Watts has been doing research into his possible options and spoke to some attorneys on the phone, but also said that Watts doesn’t have the money to pay for an appeal.

“It would cost him money that he just doesn’t have,” the source told People. “But he is still exploring his options.”

As described in the report, the source indicated that Watts felt there were “mitigating circumstances” the day he killed his family, but it is unclear specifically what that means.

“Everything happened so fast there at the end [of the legal proceedings],” the source told People. “And he’s not sure he was in the right mind to plead guilty like he did. For him, it’s not just about him getting out of jail — it’s also that he hasn’t been able to really have his day in court.”

Watts pleaded guilty to all three murders on November 5, less than two months after he claimed in an interrogation that Shanann was responsible for the girls’ deaths, and that he killed her “in a rage” as a result. In a lengthy interview with state and federal investigators in February, Watts gave an extraordinarily detailed account of the morning he murdered Shanann and drove with his daughters and his wife’s dead body to an oil field, where he murdered his daughters and stuffed their bodies in oil tanks.