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Authors: M. William Phelps

BOOK: Never See Them Again
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CHAPTER 37
A
S THE END
of the summer approached, a storm brewed, a literal tempest, that is. Katrina had started out as a Category 1 hurricane, over the Bahamas, on or near August 22 to 23, and by the time it hit land, this prodigious tropical depression had manifested into a devastating Category 3 hurricane. The storm surge alone was enough to send thousands of New Orleans residents out of that bowl-shaped supercity, heading for dry (upper) land, an area of which turned out to be Houston. And yet Katrina wasn't the storm that had sent Justin Rott and Christine—“I didn't want to change my last name”—Paolilla running from their new condo. Hurricane Rita had made a near direct hit that September on Houston/Galveston, which pushed Rott and his wife, as well as scores of other residents, toward safer ground. For Justin and Christine, it was his parents' house in Arlington, Texas—they had apparently relocated from the Chicago area, too—that he chose.
He and Christine ended up spending two days waiting out the destruction and devastation of Rita. This had worked out for Justin: he had wanted to introduce his parents to his new wife, anyway.
By now Christine and Justin were fighting that terrible itch, that subtle yet substantial urge to get back into the game. That money they had was burning a hole in their sobriety, telling them it was okay to fiddle a little here and a little there. That demon on their backs was now on their shoulders and speaking:
Maybe a bag of dope on the weekends. A few beers. Then back to real life on Monday until the following weekend. Yeah . . . we can do it right this time
.
A savage disease hibernated inside of Justin Rott, one that Christine had no idea how to defend herself against. Justin was a recovering heroin addict. He had fought legions of demons, not a solitary devil. The guy was constantly on guard against the biggest dragon of them all—sitting there, waiting, dictating to him how to live life. Once that needle was stuck back into his arm, there was no turning back. And with what seemed to be unlimited funding, that sleeping giant, who had sat dormant for some time now, was ready and waiting to pick right back up where Justin had left off the last time, when he wound up homeless.
From Arlington, shooting dope “not every day, but close to it,” Christine and Justin drove to San Antonio.
Why?
“To use drugs,” Justin said later. A good dope addict goes to where the best dope is—and he had a dealer in San Antonio.
They had actually started using before the trip to Arlington. If Justin had to put a motive behind the reignition of his drug habit, and introducing Christine to the needle, he said he'd be lying if he pinpointed a specific reason. There had been no precise, calculated decision, or an exact moment. In other words, it didn't happen after an argument or a brush with police. A drug addict doesn't have to be sent over the edge, or necessarily
pushed
off the wagon; the disease of addiction is always there, always plotting and planning, always playing games with the mind. One weak moment is all it takes to burst like a blood blister and begin to control once again every aspect of an addict's life.
Justin knew this.
They had decided before leaving his parents' not to stay in San Antonio. Yet, they had no ties, really, back at the condo. They had purchased a dog, and the dog was traveling with them, so there were no pets to attend to back home. They had money. What seemed to be, at the moment, an endless supply of cash. They could roam from place to place, providing, that is, there were drugs wherever they wound up.
“So,” Justin explained, “at first, supposedly, we were just going to go there (San Antonio) for a little while and then go home.”
As they drove, the subject of the murders and Christine's involvement came up inside the car. By now the newlywed husband knew that his wife was involved; although they were not necessarily openly talking about Christine being some sort of runaway fugitive who needed to be hidden. Christine had told him just about everything. Where it happened. Somewhat how it all went down. And her version of why.
“Just be quiet about it,” he said when she brought it up during the car ride to San Antonio. He didn't want her talking to anyone else about it in the same manner as she had been doing with him. He was on edge; they were both withdrawing from the dope and needed a fix—hence the trip to San Antonio. He didn't want to hear about anything besides when that next bag of dope was going to be entering his bloodstream.
“We'll talk about it later,” he said to Christine at one point. It seemed it was all she wanted to talk about now.
“Rachael . . . ,” Christine said. She started crying. “I can sometimes see her.”
“What?”
Christine was having flashbacks. She once explained how, when they'd watch a movie, she'd see someone get shot and think of Rachael, her “friend.” She'd stare into the mirror while combing her wig or brushing her teeth and see Rachael's face. It was consuming her, she told Justin. She couldn't handle it anymore, which was where the amnesia drug of choice—smack—came into play: the all-powerful numbing agent.
Christine had now found her new best friend—
cheeba, chiva, chieva
, whatever else you want to call it—to be all she had been searching for. A true love affair had begun. Christine didn't need all that much convincing to take off with the drug and run as fast as she could. She had the genes. The past history. The foundation for such an affair was bursting inside her already.
One thing about Christine that emerged as her life unfolded throughout this period was an inherent willingness to adapt, but in her own narcissistic way. For example, like her mother, Christine had chosen not to take on Rott's last name. Lori was Lori Paolilla, not Lori Dick. Not because she didn't like that last name, but according to Christine, it was a mere nuisance to change over bank accounts and driver's licenses, et cetera.
Christine, Justin Rott later said, “did the same thing” as her mother. “We were going to do it (change her name) at one time. We had just opened up bank accounts and . . . we used that excuse for a while . . . that we didn't want to change everything around. If anyone has ever done it, it's kind of hectic, all that change. One thing led to another,” Justin finished, “and it wasn't an issue, really.”
And in defense of those who don't share a last name, it generally
isn't
an issue.
Justin and Christine began a tour, essentially, of hotels and motels throughout the San Antonio region, paying with credit cards and cash from Christine's rapidly dwindling trust fund account. And this trip wasn't anything close to a honeymoon or extended vacation that some couples might take; it was about doing as much drugs as they could, as fast as they could, and staying as high as they could.
Truly, as time would tell, this was a bender to end all benders.
CHAPTER 38
H
URRICANES KATRINA AND
Rita stalled just about everything to do with the Clear Lake investigation. Nearly all HPD detectives were now in uniform, working the Houston Astrodome and other places around the city where that huge influx of “Katricians” had settled in the state, and more crime than HPD had ever seen began to consume all of their time and energy.
“By the end of the summer,” Brian Harris said later, “our caseload was picking up.”
That would be a gross understatement. The murder rate in the city skyrocketed nearly 27 percent, with what Homicide called “the Katrina murders.” Any tip that might have come in concerning the Clear Lake case, including that tip in July regarding Christopher Snider and his girl, Christine, was placed in a notebook and saved. With all the post–Katrina/ Rita crime taking place in the city, tracking down Clear Lake tips was certainly not on the top of the Homicide Division's list of things to do in the Clear Lake case. Add to that, that Clear Lake's number one advocate, George Koloroutis, had now moved his family—because of his job—to Kansas, near Kansas City, the Clear Lake murder investigation was about as cold as it had ever been.
And wouldn't you know, this happened precisely at a time when it could have been easily solved with a small amount of gumshoe police work.
 
 
BEFORE THAT TRIP
he took with Christine for Christmas dinner, Justin Rott had never been to Houston. Justin had not heard about the Clear Lake murders before his wife introduced him to it. Those types of crimes were not something Justin had made a point to follow in the news. It's safe to say that Justin Rott was concerned with his sobriety at times and finding dope at others. He might have seen a news story about it, but he didn't know anything until he met Christine.
And now he was married to one of the murderers and they were shooting dope together as if the poppy fields in Afghanistan were in jeopardy of drying up.
As he thought about it later, little hints that something was wrong had been there all along, though Justin was not attuned enough with the situation to know what they meant. There was one time, after they had first started dating, when Justin and Christine prepared to part ways and go back to their halfway houses. Christine had broken down for no apparent reason inside the car. “We were just sitting there,” Justin said later, “and she just started crying hysterically.”
“What's wrong?” a concerned Justin Rott asked his then-girlfriend. “Talk to me.”
“There're some things,” Christine said through tears, “there's . . . um . . . there're some things that I want to talk to you about and tell you, but I'm afraid.”
Justin had never seen his girl this upset. Her body trembled. Something had rattled her cage. She wanted to spit it out, but for some reason she couldn't.
“Tell me, Christine,” he begged. “Come on.” He was trying to say that there was nothing they couldn't handle together. They were a couple now. They loved each other. She continued to cry. “There're some things”—Christine looked out the window—“there're some . . . things that happened in Houston that I am scared people will find out.”
Secrets. Not a good thing, Justin knew from experience, for a drug addict trying to stay sober to keep stuffed.
He was curious, but he decided to let his girl talk. It was the best thing to do. Justin Rott was a good listener; he truly cared about what a person had to say and made the person feel that while she spoke. There can be no doubt that Justin consoled Christine with sincerity, not having any idea that what she was talking about had to do with her murdering four people. He was staring into the face of pure evil, the pure machinery behind psychopathic behavior, trying to help this young woman as much as he could.
“It was an ex-boyfriend of mine,” Christine said. She kept pausing. Crying and sniffling.
The pain was immense, Justin believed.
“I was involved . . . ,” she continued.
Justin didn't know the ex-boyfriend's name then. Christine kept referring to him as “Chris.” Chris this, Chris that.
“It was at the house,” Christine said in vague descriptions of that day, not making too much sense. Justin didn't push the matter, for fear of turning Christine away.
“It's okay, Christine.”
“Chris and me, we were at my friend's house, going in there, looking. We were going to buy drugs, get high, and some things, you know, like, some things . . . happened, and some people ended up dead.”
“And some things I didn't understand,” Justin said later, referring to this moment. “And I really didn't question her much. I really didn't believe it. . . .”
Justin wondered who Christine was talking about.
“Two males,” she said at one point. They were still sitting in her car outside the halfway house where Justin was staying. “Two females, Rachael . . . Rachael. We were really good friends.” He presumed she meant her and Rachael. “We all went to school together. We were all friends.”
Justin sat inside the halfway house after Christine took off that night and thought about the conversation. It was strange, sure. She was upset, definitely. But what was she actually saying? He had no idea.
“I thought maybe she knew of something that happened,” he explained later. “I really didn't believe that she was involved in anything. You know, people say stories—and she was so vague about it all. And, you know, I thought maybe something had happened to one of her friends and she knew something and she didn't go to the police.”
What Justin was certain of when later asked about this moment was that not once during the conversation, as Christine tried to explain to him that she was there on the day her friends had been murdered, did she
ever
give any indication that she had been brought to the house
against
her will, or that she was forced to go into the house and kill. Furthermore, she never said that anyone, specifically Chris Snider, had threatened her on that day or anytime afterward.
CHAPTER 39
A
S THE END
of the year approached, Justin Rott was doing drugs with his wife—at times they had done so much dope in a day that they were hardly ever in the moment—and he was thinking back to the strange things his wife had told him about the Clear Lake murders. The situation was compromising for him. He was pandering to a murderer, if he knew what she had done and did not turn her in. There could be some charges involved. At times he would stop, think about calling the cops, but then would convince himself that he loved his wife and maybe she was making it all up. Perhaps she had been there, but was not part of it? So many excuses darted through his heroin-brined mind that Justin didn't know what to think anymore. And whenever things became too much, all he had to do was shoot more drugs, thus making it all dissolve into a hazy fog of being perpetually high.
Near Christmas 2005, Justin and Christine had managed to get their act together enough to go visit Christine's mother and Tom Dick. During that week they were in Friendswood, they went out shopping one afternoon by themselves.
“I want to show you something,” Christine said. Justin was driving. They were on the I-45, near the 2351, close to the Baybrook Mall. Only about five to ten minutes away from Christine's parents' house.
Christine was in the passenger seat, giving him directions:
Turn here. Turn there. Drive over there and park the car near that building
. She looked around as if someone might be following them, obviously paranoid.
Finally, after all that turning, Christine told Justin to get out of the car and follow her. They needed to walk across the street toward a brick building and stand in this one particular spot she had picked out.
There, above them, stood one of the billboards with the sketches and Crime Stoppers info staring down.
“I didn't think anything of it,” Justin said later, “until we pulled up and she asked me to park on the side. There was some building in front of it.” She demanded Justin “park on the side of it.” She wanted to make sure the car was hidden.
Christine acted suspicious and jumpy. She didn't want anybody to see her car near the billboard.
After settling down, she turned to Justin, who was standing, staring up at the billboard, wondering why they were there. “Hey,” Christine said, “let me ask you. Does that look like me?”
Before they had taken off to go shopping, Christine had pulled out a photograph of Chris Snider back at her parents' house and showed it to him. It was part of a collection of photos her mother had around the house. “That's him there,” Christine had said, referring to Snider, pointing to the photograph. “That's Chris, my ex-boyfriend.” In fact, Christine was still talking to Chris Snider. He was gone, back in Kentucky, sometimes hanging around Houston, but she was still in contact with him. There was one time when Christine had spoken to Chris in front of Justin. Chris had just gotten out of jail and Christine wanted to get him into a halfway house in Kerrville. She turned and asked Justin if she should help him out as an old friend.
“No way,” Justin said. “I don't want your ex-boyfriend near us.” (“I was jealous,” Justin said later.)
Out of respect for her husband, Christine left Chris alone after that.
“So, does it look like me, or what?” Christine asked again as her husband stared at the billboard.
“No,” Justin said. “I don't
think
so.” (And it didn't.)
“Okay,” Christine said, “but does that look like Chris?” She was referring to the male sketch.
Justin studied it. He thought back to the photographs she had shown him at the house.
“Matter of fact,” he said, “it does. That looks like him.” Thinking about it more, he said, it looked “
exactly
like him.”
Definitely. The sketch was a spot-on representation of Christopher Snider.
Christine had a concerned look, shocked by Justin's response.
“I'm worried,” she said as they walked away from the billboard, “that it looks like me, and people are going to think it
is
me.”
But it was her.
“Look,” Justin said, “don't talk about it to anybody and don't bring anybody over here.”
Justin didn't want to believe—although all the cards had been turned over in front of him—that his wife had anything to do with such a horrible crime. It was easy to deny it. He loved her. He was in the throes of a double addiction: the drugs and Christine.
Christine started to say something more about it.
“Just be quiet,” he snapped.
She thought about what he said. “Okay. Okay.”
There was a time after this when Christine pulled Justin aside and admitted, “You know, God is going to punish me one day for this by taking you away.”
Believers would say God had others things on His mind where it pertained to Christine Paolilla and her involvement in the murder of four human beings.

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