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Authors: M. William Phelps

BOOK: Never See Them Again
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CHAPTER 52
O
NE STORY CHRISTINE
Paolilla failed to share with Brian Harris—or anyone else—as she began to talk about her role in what had happened on July 18, 2003, took place the day after the murders. She was at Chris Snider's parents' home in Crosby, Texas.
There was a part of Christine that viewed her relationship with Chris Snider as a “Bonnie and Clyde” type of romance, both of them connected by the crimes they had committed
together
. Some later said Christine had planned the murders of her friends so she and Chris could have this one interrelated bond between them that Snider could not sever—the ultimate secret, in other words, keeping him from ever walking out on her, like she presumed everyone else throughout her life had done.
Some evidence pertaining to this theory was the fact that Christine and Chris were routinely taking off to Walmart or another retail store with a strategy to rob the place. Snider later reported that during one afternoon postmurder, he and Christine took a trip to Walmart (she always drove; Snider never owned a car) and boosted two DVD players. They went back. Christine became manic inside the store, as if she was in her element, an elated state of grace to steal. She loved it. “Hey, babe,” she'd said to him while they were walking through the CD section. “Come here.” Chris walked over. Christine took a quick look around. Then, happy no one was watching, she stuffed his pants with CDs, laughing. There was a glistening look in her eyes.
The ultimate heist, though, took place on July 18, something both Chris and Christine could not help but to boast about twenty-four hours later. Brandee Snider was at home on this day, July 19, sitting on her bed inside her room. She heard her brother and Christine stumble into the house loudly, as they often did, making their presence known to anyone around.
Next thing Brandee knew, the door to her bedroom was flung open. There stood Christine and her brother, ear-to-ear grins on their faces. Chris was holding something.
“Look . . . what . . . we . . . have,” Christine said proudly, a look of euphoria on her face. Certainly not the dark and troubled gaze of someone who was overwhelmed by the fear of watching her boyfriend kill four people, worried he was going to kill her and her family (as she had said repeatedly in the months afterward).
Chris raised his eyebrows.
Christine now held the bag—the size of a pillowcase—full of pills.
“X,” one of them said. “An entire bag of X.”
Thousands upon thousands of dollars' worth of the drug.
Brandee flipped out. Jumped up off her bed. “There's only one way, Chris, that you could have gotten this.” Brandee was upset and angry. She didn't understand what her brother wanted with all those drugs, enough to put him in jail for decades.
Chris and his girl stepped into Brandee's room, closing the door behind them. Chris knew his sister. She couldn't keep anything from their mother. She was honest like that, to the core. She would tell. But he went ahead, anyway, and showed her the bounty he and Christine had just burgled.
“What is all this? Are you guys crazy?”
They smiled over such a huge score.
“What do you think?”
“You've
got
to get rid of that right now,” Brandee said.
“Come on,” Chris told his girlfriend. He took the bag and walked toward the bathroom. “We're flushing it.”
“What?” Christine responded, shocked. “No, Chris. No.”
Brandee stood by as her brother flushed the pills, handful by handful, down the toilet, the clear water spiraling dollar bills into the city sewer system. This was a major hurdle for Snider to overcome in the relationship, family members later said. For Chris to turn and tell Christine what they were going to do (especially with drugs) was out of character for him.
Later, Brandee found out that she should have stayed and watched them flush it all, because she heard from her brother that they had flushed only half of the bag and kept the rest.
CHAPTER 53
D
URING HIS FIRST
interview with Christine Paolilla, Detective Brian Harris felt that she was placing the onus of the murders entirely on the back of her accomplice, Chris Snider. The young woman took no responsibility whatsoever for anything having to do with killing Rachael, Tiffany, Marcus and Adelbert. In fact, per Christine's version of that afternoon's events, she had never even gone
into
the Rowell house. Yet, Harris was not going to accept Christine's story at face value. He knew from her posture and demeanor, as she talked her way through the murders, along with the interviews he had conducted throughout the case, and the interview going on across the hall with Justin Rott, that Christine was lying. She was trying to pull one over on HPD and remove all of her culpability for this horrendous crime.
“Christine,” Harris said at one point, repeating himself for what to him seemed like the umpteenth time, “in order for mercy to work, I need to have
complete
honesty from you.”
Christine stared at him blankly, her leg bouncing nervously, a bite of her lower lip. She was undoubtedly scrubbing through her options—all of which were just about running out.
“Christine, what did he say he did with the guns? He would have had that conversation with you. What did he
say
he did with them?”
The suspect stammered. Harris had her on the ropes.
“I don't . . . I—I . . . don't . . .”
“Christine?”
“I don't know. He did not . . . I swear!”
“Whose
guns
are they?”
“I guess they're his dad's.”
They went back and forth. Christine, in a desperate attempt to plead her case, tried to absolve herself. But Harris could see that her story was falling apart.
“Why didn't you go to the funerals?” Harris asked out of nowhere, trying to catch her off guard.
“I don't like going to funerals. . . . Anything, I don't . . . ,” Christine said, dredging up some tears, mentioning that now tired story of her dad dying when she was two years old, and how funerals brought all that pain up for her.
Harris shifted in his seat, thought for a brief moment, and then broke into the “Prodigal Son” story from the Bible. He explained to Christine that her life story reminded him a lot of the bad son in that popular Bible tale. The bad son had squandered all of his inheritance on partying and on the luxurious and wasteful things life had to offer during the days of Jesus Christ. It was a good analogy, probably perfect in the situation that Christine had found herself sitting in, having blown through—in $500-a-day increments—close to a quarter of a million dollars that the death of her father had given her. It was almost laughable to watch her sit there and cry about a father she never knew, a man who had died when she was barely old enough to walk and not yet out of diapers. She was crying, allegedly, for this young child who she once was, but blowing all of the money, which his death had given her, on heroin and cocaine didn't seem to make one bit of difference.
Most human beings, Harris noted aloud, when confronted with a traumatic/criminal situation in which they played a role, generally tried to minimize their part in order to allow themselves to feel better, to make a nice cushion for mercy to fall upon. That, Harris said, wasn't the right road to travel if Christine's goal by sitting and talking to HPD was to acquire redemption and, hopefully, be shown some mercy for doing so. If Christine wanted to redeem any part of her involvement in this evil act, the murders “that bastard,” Harris called Chris Snider, had committed “all by himself,” Christine was not going about it in the right way. She needed to provide him with details, Harris said rather loudly. Christine and Chris had been together for months after the murders, Harris knew. They had spoken on the phone routinely after the murders. Throughout that time, Harris pointed out, again and again, they had talked about the murders. If Chris Snider had gone into that house by himself, how in the world did Christine know all these details she had given to her husband and to others?
“Because,” Harris added near the end of his little “Prodigal Son” rant, “
nobody
can open up their arms to you,
Christine
!”
And on that note, Harris stressed, her time was running out.
Now or never.
Christine Paolilla shrugged. Then she said: “Uh-huh,” as if what Harris had just spent minutes explaining had been spoken to her in Swahili. It was as if she had not understood one word.
It was difficult to keep Christine focused on one particular subject because the signs of feeling the heavy burden of having murdered two of her best friends, and needing to talk about it, had begun to wear her down. She'd drift off, stare at the wall or floor, and Harris would have to say, “Hey, stay with me here, Christine . . . come on.”
Harris brought up the caliber of the weapons.
Ignorantly, Christine said she had no idea what a caliber was.
Harris became excited: “How would he (your husband)
know
the caliber of guns used in the murders?”
Christine found herself backed into a corner. She sat for an extended period of silence, thinking. Then, suddenly, “I know how,” she said with excitement, as if
aha, I figured it out!
“Because we had”—she paused, looking puzzled—“right, yes, we talked about it. And it was . . . it was something that had come on the news. That nothing had been found yet. And then I went on the website.”
She was all over the place. As she spoke, Harris dropped his head, saying with the gesture:
Give me a freakin' break here. . . . Do better than that!
But he figured he'd amuse her sensibilities and play along for a few beats, asking, “One of the
websites
?”
“That's how he knows.”
“How does he know about [the caliber of the weapon]?” Harris wondered, making a point that the caliber of the weapons used was never mentioned in the news reports or on the website.
“I believe the website told what guns they were.”
“Okay, okay, how would he know this fact—that
Rachael
was in a crawling position, had a cell phone by her, and y'all believed she was dialing nine-one-one, and that it was a
good
thing that you went back in there?”
Only a person in that room with those dead and dying kids could have known those facts as Justin Rott had explained them.
Christine seemed shocked by this revelation. Her appearance conveyed:
How did you find
that
out?
“I never, never said that to anybody,” she said.
“And how would that person [now referring to one of the tipsters] be able to relay certain details,” Harris said, ignoring her answer. Then Harris tried another one of his tactics specifically designed for this situation: remove the blame from the suspect, place it on something other than her conscience. “But the good thing about that is
that
person says that you were sick to your stomach, and you didn't want to do this. You felt like you were
forced
into it. You didn't want to do it. And then when it happened, okay, I think you know what I think happened. I think Chris did what he did and you did run up the driveway, okay? And I think that you went into the house and saw what he did, and you went, ‘Oh, gosh,' that . . . he's running behind you and then you see him make sure that they're all dead, and then he looks at you and he says, ‘Now you're in this with me!' And he manipulates your mind that way. You see what I mean?”
Harris continued for another few minutes, doing his best to persuade Christine that she wasn't the one to blame, that it was Snider, the “psycho bastard,” Harris called him, who had manufactured this entire crime.
Christine wouldn't bite: “I was
never
in that house.”
Harris asked what she was wearing that day—if she could recall that simple fact.
Walgreens work clothes, she said.
“Did you have anything on your head?”
“I'm feeling sick right now,” she said.
“Did you have anything on your
head
?”
Harris was losing her. Christine wanted a nurse. Her skin was pasty, white as vanilla ice cream. She had dark bags and half circles underneath her eyes, but she was alert and coherent. She knew what was being asked of her and, in turn, responded by asking intelligent questions.
It was 4:45
P.M.
Harris could see his subject was breaking down. Her head kept falling to one side.
“Can I see a nurse?”
“Let's take a break, okay, and let's get you . . . get you together.”
Christine asked for a nurse again.
Harris explained that someone would be summoned to have a look at her. “Take some water,” he said; then he got up and walked out of the room.
With Harris gone, Christine lay back in her chair, curling herself up in that yellow blanket, hugging it tightly, her head falling to one side. She moaned some, and looked uncomfortable. Totally still, Christine just about passed out—that is, until she heard voices outside the room, which startled her awake. She sat up, listening. Then she dropped her head on her right shoulder and passed out.
A door slammed in the background. More voices. One of them was Justin Rott's. This piqued Christine's attention.
Harris barged into the room. “Look,” he said, standing over his suspect, pointing at Christine angrily, “I'd like to take you back to Houston so you can be closer to your mom, but I can't do that if you're going to be all [messed] up and gonna pass out and all that other [stuff], okay?”
Harris was angrier now than he had been since they began. He was frustrated and tired and quite unimpressed with the line of crap Christine was giving him.
She looked at him and appeared to be startled by his demeanor. With her image facing the camera directly, it was easy to calculate the toll the drugs had taken on Christine Paolilla; she appeared skeletal and ghostly, ashen-faced, having been deprived of any natural nutrition or fluids. She looked weak and tarnished, a fragment of her old self.
“I'm gonna be sick,” Christine said, “. . . if I could just see a nurse and she could just give me something, not like drugs or anything, but . . . I'm not saying I'm gonna OD or anything. If I could just see a nurse.”
Justin Rott was outside the door. Harris walked back out and spoke to him. Christine heard her husband's voice and brightened up; some red color even washed back into her face. She leaned forward in her chair to get a closer look outside the door.
The voice got closer and louder. Harris walked in front of the box door and Christine could hear him clearly saying, “Hold on . . . hold on . . . hold on . . . okay” to someone in the hallway. Then Harris walked back into the interview room and, pointing at her, addressed Christine: “Come here.”
“Okay,” she said, getting up languidly.
“Come
here
!” Harris said sternly, with force, telling her to hurry the hell up.
She got up and walked out into the hallway.
“Stand right here,” Harris told her. Then to Justin Rott: “Tell her.”
Justin sounded as though he had been crying. He said something none of them could understand.
“This is her
life
,” Harris said with force. “You're worried about
your
stuff? This is her
life
!”
They didn't speak.
Harris looked at Justin: “Did you tell us the details of what happened?”
Justin spoke, but Harris couldn't understand him.
“Tell
her
to
tell
the truth.”
“Just tell the truth, hon,” Justin said after a long pause.
“Go on back in there,” Harris ordered Christine, who wanted to stay in the hallway with her husband. “Come on, go back in there. . . . Go
back
in there. . . . Go back in. . . . Sit down.”
Harris closed the door behind Christine after she sat. He stood in the hallway with Rott. Christine walked sluggishly over toward her chair and leaned on it without sitting. Then she turned and walked back to the door, placing an ear up to it so she could hear what they were talking about. Could this have been Harris's plan the entire time?
Harris was reading Justin Rott the riot act, finishing many of his sentences with, “Do you
understand
that?” They were close to arguing. “Here's the problem,” Harris said at one point, laying out the situation for Rott, who had by then given HPD everything his wife had ever said to him about the murders.
As they talked back and forth, Christine opened the door slightly and said, “Sir?”

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