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Authors: M. William Phelps

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CHAPTER 24
F
RUSTRATED, DETECTIVE BRIAN
Harris sat down and wrote a letter to his lieutenant on June 7, 2004. Harris wasn't so much concerned that the case hadn't been solved, but more along the line of information coming in and there weren't enough resources or cops to wade through it all. On top of that, he wanted to let his boss know—officially—that he was interested in taking control of the case. He wanted permission, essentially, to run with it, wherever it led.
This is a solvable case,
Harris kept telling himself.
Harris had gone through all of the documents and broke the case down into groups of similar information. He wanted to do this, he wrote in the letter, so that whoever ended up investigating the case and working on it—even for a day—could easily sift through an index and become acquainted with all of the ins and outs of the case. This way, nothing would be overlooked.
One of Harris's main issues was that he believed there were still “numerous people” who needed to be interviewed. He warned that the families had been calling and had become “concerned about the lack of attention on this case.” Those family members, Harris noted, wanted to know “how many” investigators were assigned, and what “the latest” had been. George had called a media consultant who had worked for the city promoting events, Harris wrote. The woman knew the chief personally and had already related the families' frustration to him and the need to draw attention back onto the case.
Harris said the families had requested a meeting with whoever was in charge. They had gotten together and were going to be placing billboards up around the Clear Lake area, announcing again the reward and the Crime Stoppers tip line. There was some talk that George wanted those sketches to be put up on the billboards. The message here was going to be that the sketches weren't necessarily the murderers, but the two people depicted in the drawings could maybe clear up a lot of unanswered questions.
That was the idea, anyway. But one had to listen to the music beneath the noise. If those sketches were on billboards, there was no telling what would happen.
Harris wrote that the families wanted to do this before July 18, the one-year anniversary. The idea was to place the billboards up within two weeks and “launch,” as Harris put it, the first series of media coverage. Harris finished his thought by explaining how he believed, from speaking with the families, that this case might “generate negative coverage” for the Homicide Division if family members thought they were being “neglected.”
Harris concluded that “exhaustive” work had been done on the case, and Tom Ladd and Phil Yochum had done a fantastic job. But more needed to be done. The sooner, the better.
Harris concluded that the obvious motive was dope, saying how he believed he had already “talked to the killers” during his interviews.
“I was basically trying to get the blessing from my superiors to go forth and dig into this case
my
way,” Harris said later. “Look, the families were calling, and nobody had any answers for them. I wanted the case assigned to me officially, so I could begin to get some things done.”
Harris has always been known in HPD circles as a cop who voiced his opinions. In that respect, Harris was maybe too outspoken for some of his Texas counterparts, who believed in the more traditional old boys' club. Part of that, of course, or at least the part that his adversaries mentioned more often than not, was the fact that Harris was a tried-and-true Yankee; he had grown up back east, on the doorstep of New England. He wasn't from the Texas belt of deep-seated Lone Star cowboys. He might have had a slight Southwestern twang in his voice from all his years living in Texas, but you could never take that East Coast attitude out of the guy.
Regardless of how anybody felt about Harris, most agreed there was one thing that his competitors (and detractors) could not take away: this cop got things done. Most of his colleagues knew it. His boss knew it. And most of the family members of the slain kids knew it. Heck, it was one of the reasons why Tom Ladd, a Texas cop to the core, had recommended Harris to begin with; Ladd knew Harris would not stop until he found out what had happened to those kids.
Upon reading the letter, Lieutenant Nelson Zoch, a man who, Harris said, “deserves two hundred percent credit, got behind me all the way and told me, ‘Whatever you need, let me know. I'll clear the way for you.' ”
That was all Harris needed to hear.
 
 
CREATING A BILLBOARD
was not the same as sitting down and sketching out an idea. George Koloroutis felt he needed to get Clear Channel, who owned all the billboard locations in and around the Clear Lake City region, to donate the space. George figured that if he could get billboards of the sketches and the Crime Stoppers tip line phone number, with the $100,000 reward, out there in front of the community, day in and day out, something would happen. The drawings alone would generate some sort of tip that would ultimately solve the case, George hoped. David Gronewold, Marcus Precella's stepdad, helped George with creating the billboard posters and was able to get his employer to donate some money toward the artwork.
Also, Clear Channel agreed to donate the space. George was grateful. The company provided fifteen locations for billboards. Strategically speaking, George wanted to place the billboard images on every road heading in and out of the Clear Lake region. The hope was that a motorist could not enter the community where the kids were murdered without seeing the sketches or reading about the $100,000 reward.
“It was clear to us by then that the male and female were from this area, and they were seen walking up to the house that day,” George said.
So even if the two people in the drawings were not the murderers, tracking them down and speaking to each could prove to be the missing link.
George wanted HPD's blessing to put the billboards up. He didn't want to step out and begin doing things on his own, making enemies of the people who had been helping him find his daughter's killer. Talking to Detective Harris, George understood that there was going to come a time for the billboards, but it would be prudent to wait a little longer.
Patience was key, Harris promised.
Eager to go ahead with the billboards, George listened, though, and waited.
 
 
THE KOLOROUTISES WERE
distraught. Same as all the families, the Christmas 2004 holiday had not been a celebration or time to relax and enjoy family functions.
“Our little girl was murdered,” George said. “My wife has a hole in her heart. It is the worst pain life can throw at you.”
Through all of this, now was not the time, George knew, to begin butting heads with HPD. He needed them as much as they—perhaps without coming out and saying it—needed him.
CHAPTER 25
C
HRISTINE PAOLILLA WALKED
out with the Clear Lake High School graduating class of 2004, but she did not have enough credits to earn a diploma. Back then, if you were a few credits shy of graduating, you could stroll proudly with your class, gown and all, under the assumption that you were going to return that summer, finish your credits, and earn your diploma officially—which was Christine's plan.
Nonetheless, Christine Paolilla looked good on that June day, smiling in a photo with her mother, Lori Paolilla. They hugged each other, shoulder to shoulder. Christine held a red rose and an official high-school diploma booklet, which was actually empty. The “Coke bottle” glasses, which had so much saddled Christine throughout her youth and caused her so much grief from the mean kids—a second aesthetic obstacle she had to overcome along with the loss of hair—were gone. Christine wore contacts. The gaudy wigs of her younger days were also a memory, as she had learned from Tiffany and Rachael that there were more appealing wigs she could wear with a smile. And on that day, the sun shined on her back, the sky the same shade of blue as the most beautiful robin's egg, and Christine's auburn hair glistened in the spring sunlight. Her arrest for shoplifting and problems with Christopher Snider were behind her, and it seemed Christine Paolilla was on her way to better days. Her two best friends had been murdered, sure, but she was going to overcome it all and do something with her life. The determination on her face—at least if you look at that photo and try to predict how she's feeling—showed a girl looking to go on to bigger and better things, leaving a past shrouded in chaos and death behind her.
The road Lori and Christine had traveled to Clear Lake was a tumultuous one. They had lived in Long Island, New York, according to an interview Lori gave to ABC News, while Charles Paolilla, Christine's biological father, worked construction in Manhattan. Lori stayed home with Christine and her brother. As Lori told the story years later, “[Christine's] father got up and went to work [one day] and never came home.”
It was after that, Lori admitted, that she fell into a life of drug addiction; the emotional pain of losing her husband, in such a tragic, untimely way, was a wound too big to contend with; she found the burden of caring for two kids and the sudden loss of her husband a hurdle she could only jump, with the help of drugs. The numbing effect helped her cope. Helped her grieve. Helped her get through the toughest that life had to offer at the time. Yet, as the drugs took hold of her life, Lori lost custody of Christine to Christine's grandparents. But then they, too, died. Just a toddler, Christine was said to have asked Lori one day not long after: “Why is it that the people I love go away?”
Some experts might speculate that this overwhelming series of losses in Christine's life set up a fear of rejection. This was said to be something Christine carried with her to Texas years later. Rejection (or maybe an expectation of loss), it would seem, became something Christine considered to be a part of life she would have to continually endure. For Christine, one expert later noted, she internalized those early losses, so that whenever she got close to someone, she automatically expected that person to exit her life at some point. Christine could have viewed the situation—subconsciously or consciously—as a way to feel sorry for the life she had been dealt, as though any authority figure in her life would ultimately abandon her and did not care for her. This type of trauma is easily absorbed into the psyche as a child. Let's say you then add the fact that Christine woke up one day in kindergarten to find clumps of her hair on her pillow, bald spots all over her head like a chemo patient, and her view of herself began to diminish.
On top of all that, Lori Paolilla said, Christine had “poor vision” from a very young age, and she was forced to wear thick glasses—the kind that kids made fun of. Most of these personal (albeit social) issues centered on image—and this can devastate a young girl whose life, essentially, is focused on how she looks.
As far as where Tiffany and Rachael fit into Christine's life after Christine ended up in Texas, according to Lori, Christine claimed that Rachael and Tiffany were “the sweetest girls [she had] ever met. She couldn't speak highly enough about Tiffany or Rachael,” Lori said later. Christine called them “fun,” “loving,” and her mother saw a real change in Christine's personality and overall demeanor after they met and started hanging out. One of the things that proved to Lori how serious Christine was about her feelings toward Rachael and Tiffany was that they were the only friends Christine had allowed to see her without her wig on. Some of the other kids at Clear Lake High had walked up behind Christine and had pulled her wig off when she was standing, talking to someone. They publicly embarrassed her. However, she was actually sharing her condition with Tiffany and Rachael in a personal and private way. It said a lot, according to Lori, about the person Christine was when she was around Rachael and Tiffany.
Along the way, though, this spiked-haired, skinny kid, with all sorts of body piercings and chains hanging from his greasy blue jeans, appeared one day and was back into Christine's life. Christopher Snider was, in one sense, a manifestation of what Christine's life had become at that time. She saw something in Chris. He won her heart, and, maybe more important, according to Lori, he developed a hold on her mind. Christine believed she could fix Chris Snider, which was when the problems started for her at home.
“There was something in [his] eyes,” Lori Paolilla told ABC. She noticed it from the first moment she met him. That look he had told her that this boy was going to be trouble for her daughter. One of the things Lori noticed, and Christine's stepfather, Tom Dick, agreed, was how Chris Snider began to isolate Christine. He kept close tabs on her, Lori claimed. One of the ways he did this was to show Christine that he was in control of her life—as in, one day, according to Christine, Chris showed up at Clear Lake High, stood around with Christine as she talked with her friends, and then, without warning, yanked her wig off in front of everyone, laughing as he did it. And still, Christine defended her man, cleaving to his side even more; she claimed, she was in fear of losing him. It was as if she expected to be shamed, to be ridiculed, to be put down, because it had been her view of life for so long. Some said Chris Snider would tell her, “No one else will have you but me. . . . You better not do anything I don't like or disapprove of.”
Others, though, tell this story differently. One source there on that day later claimed Christine's version of Chris Snider being the quintessential abusive/tough guy, embarrassing her in front of her friends, was nothing more than a faux persona she had dreamt up to cover her own sick and twisted behavior.
Chris and Christine had been flirting back and forth on that day. One of Chris's friends said to him, “Hey, you know she's wearing a wig, right?” Then Chris's friend walked over and pulled it off Christine's head.
Chris felt bad for her. “He kind of just fell into the boyfriend role,” a source explained, referencing when they reconnected at the party and hooked up for the second time.
Tiffany and Rachael explained to Christine that she could do better; there was another guy out there for her who would treat her with dignity, respect, and kindness. Tiffany and Rachael were strong personalities, who grew up in supportive, sturdy households, where morals and regard for others had been instilled. They'd had their share of pain throughout life, as most kids do, but they were not about to let a friend of theirs be abused by her boyfriend. They knew better.
Christine wrote it off as not being as bad as it looked. The guy had his good side, too.
Lori and her second husband, Tom Dick, did “everything in their power,” Tom later explained to ABC, to keep Christine away from Chris Snider. “There's only so much you can do. . . .”
They grounded her.
Didn't work.
It was hard to keep watch on a teenager and put in a full day at the office.
They took away her privileges to use the car whenever she wanted.
That didn't work, either.
She stole the keys.
Christine ran away.
They went out and found her.
And there she'd be, in her man's arms, Chris Snider smiling that devilish grin, as though he had won a round.
They called the police.
They sat with an attorney.
Neither could do much more than point out the frustration of having their hands tied as parents.
They tried getting a restraining order against Chris Snider, on top of having him arrested (he was two years older than Christine).
Yet, according to Lori and Tom, neither did any good.
They sat Christine down and talked about her life and the trouble they saw heading her way down the road.
It did nothing.
They warned her that her boyfriend was a different kind of player. She could never fix him. She didn't know what the hell she was getting herself into.
Christine ignored the advice.
“He had some sort of mental control over her that we couldn't break,” Tom Dick recalled.
And now here Christine was, with the summer of 2004 before her, only a few credits shy of her diploma. Snider was in Kentucky facing charges, doing time. Christine had a shot at a new start. The ball was missing from a chain still tied to her ankle.
Still, the last thing on Christine Paolilla's mind at this time was school. In fact, Christine ended up at a rehab in Kerrville, Texas, a near five-hour, 250-mile ride west of Clear Lake, past San Antonio. And it would be there, in the hills of Texas, where Christine fell into an even darker hole than she had just climbed out from, having been arrested and sent to drug rehab before she was even out of high school. If Christine and her parents thought Chris Snider—finally out of her life, for the time being—was troublesome and a menace to her well-being, the man Christine was about to meet (on top of getting that truckload of money in her hands) was going to put Chris Snider to shame.

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