Never See Them Again (28 page)

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Authors: M. William Phelps

BOOK: Never See Them Again
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“What?” Harris said sharply, letting her know she was interrupting.
“Can you please, I
need
a nurse.”
TJ McCorvey was there, too, out in the hallway. “Do what?” he asked.
“I need a nurse,” she said again.
“What?” McCorvey said.
She said it again.
“She needs to see a nurse,” McCorvey repeated to Harris.
Christine doubled over and held her stomach: “Please, I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding.”
“We're getting one,” McCorvey said as Christine seemed to rock back and forth on her heels while holding her stomach. “Just sit down in there.”
“I love you, Justin,” Christine said, changing her tone.
“Just
sit
down.”
“Please . . . I can't move . . . please.” She held on to the door.
“Sit
down
!” someone yelled.
“I can't move from this spot,” Christine claimed.
“We'll get you some help,” Harris said.
“She said she can't move,” McCorvey told him.
“I'm bleeding,” Christine repeated, not saying from where she was bleeding.
McCorvey stepped into the room, picked up her chair, and placed it over by the door. Then he told her to sit down. Help was on the way.
“I'm bleeding. . . . I'm bleeding.”
CHAPTER 54
C
HRISTINE PAOLILLA DID
not give herself up during that first interview with Detective Brian Harris. He tried. But Christine had an unwavering unwillingness to come clean regarding her role in the murders. On top of that, Harris later admitted that he had probably screwed up the interview.
“Yeah,” he said, “I should have gotten together with Tommy [TJ McCorvey] when I left the room, before I spoke with Justin Rott. I should have said, ‘Tommy, this is what I want to do. . . . This is what Christine is saying. . . . What do you think?' Tommy was down the hall. I thought Justin would come down and say, ‘I told them everything,' but that kind of backfired. I should have had Tommy do it (convince Rott to speak with Christine). Justin looked at me like, ‘
Who
the heck are you?' Once he heard Christine say, ‘I love you, Justin,' that was it. It wasn't a mistake ‘casewise,' we still had plenty of chances left, but tactically, yes, a mistake on my part was made. I should have gotten together with Tommy.”
Christine was taken to the hospital because at some point her addiction to heroin and cocaine was going to catch up with her body; and then after a period of detoxification, she was cleared by doctors to be extradited back to Houston. But HPD could not take her without first putting Christine in front of a San Antonio magistrate. This was not going to be all that simple, once San Antonio law enforcement got involved. Ego runs through police departments like water in the pipes; some officers feel the need to flex their administrative muscle when the chance arises. Still, Brian Harris, Breck McDaniel, and TJ McCorvey were going to bring Christine back with them, one way or another. To make the trip easier, Harris ordered a small state police plane to meet them at a nearby airstrip—that is, as soon as they could get Christine in front of that judge and get the proper paperwork in order.
At the hospital Christine was feeling better. She said she was willing to talk; there were a few things she wanted to share.
Harris hoped she was finally ready.
After being asked, Christine explained that she thought Chris Snider had put the guns “back in his dad's safe.”
She next brought Snider's sister, whom she did not name, into the picture, saying that she believed Brandee had had something to do with providing the guns to her brother. After that, she went into a story about how Snider had said he “pulled the gun on them and, like, they started arguing.” He later told her that he had gotten into a fight with Marcus.
Harris knew this was an incredibly weak attempt at trying to place the blame on her co-conspirator, for the simple reason that if Chris and Marcus had gotten into a fight, Adelbert would have backed his cousin up. It was ridiculous. Pathetic. But typical.
Harris allowed Christine to talk, nonetheless. Sooner or later, he knew, she was going to trip herself up.
Christine continued to paint a picture of Chris Snider killing the four while she waited in the car. She said she did talk about the crime to some friends, but not in any detail. All she had shared must have come from what she had seen or heard on the news. And from there came a series of excuses and explanations as to how and why Christine Paolilla knew what she knew but had never gone into the house with Snider.
She said that she and Snider had fought in her car over the drugs he stole from the house (“weed”). She asked him to get rid of the drugs, but he refused.
She said he showed “no human emotion” or “sympathy” for what he did after he admitted killing the four. And this made her sick to her stomach.
She said he liked to correct the news when a story came on by saying, “That's not how it happened.” This also made her uncomfortable.
She said he was always trying to “show off” and brag about what he had done, like he was some kind of “playa,” now that he had killed four people.
After that, she and Harris talked about the wigs Christine liked to wear (black and auburn).
They talked about her being in rehab and meeting Justin Rott.
They talked about how Christine felt that Snider had threatened her life and how he had told her routinely that she was just as guilty as he was because she had driven him to commit the murders.
They talked about the fact that, according to Christine, Snider said he would kill her parents (or have someone else do it) if she ever went to the police.
Harris eased his way into saying, in not so many words, that Christine was full of nonsense. Harris lied to her, saying that they had spoken to Chris Snider and he had placed her in the house with him. Harris wanted to know how that was possible, and what did Christine think of Snider's accusation.
So Christine went through the details she had given Harris the day before, again describing how she had waited in the car
outside
the Rowell home.
Harris didn't let up. He explained to Christine that everybody carried DNA around with them and that it was easy to leave a DNA sample, haphazardly and unknowingly, wherever you went.
She said she understood.
Harris asked, “How would we explain your DNA
inside
that house?”
“Well, I've been to that house before.”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“Like, you know, I was there for her birthday, and, you know, people are always at her house—”
“All right,” Harris said, “I figured that, okay. But how would we explain a
smudge
mark on her clothing? On Rachael's shoulder, all right, and, um, and it kind of makes sense now, okay, a foreign hair.” He was trying to say they had uncovered a hair in the living room. “A lot of times when we're being hit, we do this”—Harris put his hands over his head like he was protecting himself from falling debris—“and we cover our head.” He was mimicking what Rachael was likely doing when Christine went back into the house and beat her to death with the butt end of the weapon Chris Snider had given her.
All Christine said in reaction to that was: “Uh-huh.”
Then Harris switched tactics. In a comforting tone, coming across to Christine as someone who was on her side, protecting her, the detective said, “See, what I mean is, how would we explain that [hair] being on or about Rachael? See, I don't want you to get jammed up—see what I mean?”
Whenever he said “we,” it took the “you”—that accusatory finger being pointed at Christine—out of it, and placed Christine in charge of her own destiny, all with the feeling that Harris and the HPD were her allies. It was a smart strategy. Become her friend and she would, sooner rather than later, trip over herself. From the littlest differences in her stories, Harris could tell that Christine was making this up as she went along. Liars, he knew from experience, always expose themselves by the sheer process of telling more lies.
Christine said something Harris couldn't understand. Then, “We shared clothes,” meaning she and Rachael. “I don't know if that would have anything to do with it.”
Harris next talked about oils on the skin. How, per se, if Christine had placed her hand over his hand, she would, effectively, sandwich the oils he had on his skin and seal them to his skin, concluding, “How do we explain
your
oils being on those guns we recovered in Kentucky? See what I mean?”
“In Kentucky?” This was surprising to Christine. A big uh-oh.
“Yeah.”
“I never been to Kentucky.”
“No? I know you have never been to Kentucky. But how do we explain
your
oils on that gun?”
“There was oils on the gun?” Christine felt the itchiness of that noose scratching.
“In other words, all that stuff you see in
CSI
about dipping into bleach, about wiping it down? It's like when you melt a piece of cheese, right? Does the cheese go away? No. It sears into the bread, right? It's the same thing with body oils. That's why
CSI
's a joke, okay? It seals things in, okay? There were attempts by Chris to, number one, wipe it down, to get them off so his dad wouldn't know it—”
“Okay,” Christine said. She was paying careful attention to what Harris was saying.
“—but those oils sear in, see, okay? At what point in time, did
you
touch those weapons?”
“Um . . .”
“You got to explain that.”
“When I was in my car that day, we were fighting and—”
“Okay, tell me about that.”
“I never, you know, grabbed the gun from him, you know, like there was only one that I saw.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Then I was, like, all, ‘Get out of my car.' Like, ‘I need to go to work.' I just wanted to go to work, to get away from him. At the time I wasn't even really thinking. I was, you know, I was just—I just wanted him to leave.”
They had hit a critical point of the interview. Harris knew he had Christine in a tight spot. Truth was, they had not even caught up with Chris Snider yet. Word was coming back that no one could find him. Harris was involved in putting a team together to begin the hunt for Snider, once he was able to secure Christine's extradition to Houston.
In responding to how her oils might have gotten on the guns, Christine made up a story about how she and Snider got into a fight inside the car, and that possibly she grabbed hold of his jacket, where he was storing the weapon (which she had earlier said he had stored in the pant leg pocket of the parachute pants he was wearing that day), and she might have inadvertently touched the gun. As far as when and where, exactly, this took place, or what was said as they fought, she couldn't recall.
Harris changed the subject. He asked about “any specific detail” Snider might have told her about the actual murders and how the argument between him and the boys had started and then turned into bloodshed.
She said something about Chris “trying to act cool” while he was inside the house, and Marcus picked up on it and they started to have words.
She could know that only if she was inside the house herself,
Harris thought, staring at Christine.
Harris asked if she had heard anything while she was outside sitting in the car, you know, like gunshots?
She said she didn't hear anything. A neighbor, though, Harris knew, one house away, down the block, had heard the shots, loud and clear. How was that possible?
They discussed the murders a bit longer. Christine did not really add anything more to what she had said already, besides offering up a few names of dopers that Chris knew from Seabrook, one being “Jason Uolla.”
Interesting,
Harris thought.
When Harris made a mistake and called one of Chris's friends by a different name, Christine laughed at the error. Amazing that she could find humor in all that was going on.
Harris asked about the supposed “special relationship” Christine might have had with Rachael.
“It was nothing,” Christine said.
After that, they discussed a few inconsequential items, and Harris ended the interview, saying that the batteries in his recorder were running out of juice.
Christine could breathe easy; she had gotten through a second interrogation without giving herself up. As Harris considered things, however, he knew she was holding back.
“She was cunning. She tried to explain away everything, which told me that any ‘withdrawal' from drugs was not affecting her ability to try and save her own ass.”
 
 
AS THE LEAD
investigator, Detective Sergeant Brian Harris now faced the problem of getting Christine Paolilla back to Houston, where he could continue to work on obtaining a confession. Harris knew she was there, inside the house, and quite possibly had pulled the trigger herself. He just needed Christine to tell him that. The San Antonio Police Department, nevertheless, needed to release Christine first, which would take a visit in front of a magistrate. All HPD had was a probable cause warrant to hold her.
As they prepared Christine for her appearance in front of the magistrate, Harris later said, he was stopped by one of the San Antonio police officers who had helped them bust in and take Justin and Christine into custody.
“You can't take her out of here. We need confirmation from your court that this is a valid warrant.”
“Come on. Are you serious?”
The officer could have allowed them to take her without a hassle.
The idea was to place Christine in front of a San Antonio judge, who would then order her held on probable cause for an additional day or more, which would allow HPD to transport her back to Houston. It was supposed to be a simple court appearance.
But San Antonio was not going to release her that easy.
Tom McCorvey stepped up in front of the officer's face: “Are you crazy?”

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